Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (73 page)

 
          
“Something
wrong?” Patrick asked.

 
          
“We’ll
explain everything inside,” the FBI agent replied. “Your plane will be secured
inside the hangar.”

 
          
“You
guys ever move a plane like this before? The nose gear is sensitive.”

 
          
“We’ll
be careful,”
Norwalk
responded, definitely sounding like he wasn’t planning on being careful
at all. He spoke into a radio, and before long one of Sky Masters Inc.’s
technicians came out riding an aircraft tug, accompanied by another agent. The
tech scooped up the Aerostar’s nose wheel with the lifter. Meanwhile, the main
hangar door opened. The plane was pushed back into the hangar beside one of the
company’s DC-10 mission support/ launch/tanker aircraft.

 
          
Patrick
was taken to his office in the headquarters facility. Special Agent Norwalk and
another officer stayed inside with him. “Now, mind telling me what’s going on?”
Patrick asked once they were seated inside.

 
          
“First,
General, I advise you that you are hereby under arrest,”
Norwalk
began. “You have the right to remain
silent; should you choose to give up the right to remain silent, anything you
say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to
an attorney and to have the attorney present during questioning. If you cannot
afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at no charge. Do you
understand these rights as I’ve explained them?”

 
          
“What
am I being arrested for?”

           
“General, do you understand your
Constitutional rights as I’ve explained them to you?”

 
          
“Yes.
Now can you tell me—?”

 
          
“Do
you waive your right to remain silent?”

 
          
“I’ve
done nothing wrong.”

 
          
“Are
you willing to answer questions for me?”

 
          
“Yes.
Now tell me what’s going on here.”

 
          
“Do
you know where Dr. Jon Masters, Dr. Kelsey Duffield, and the Sky Masters Inc.
crew members that were stationed at the
Tonopah
Test
Range
are right now, General?”

 
          
“I
thought they were at Tonopah. Are they missing?”

           
“You’re telling me you have no idea
where they are?”

           
“What’s going on,
Norwalk
? Has something happened? And why am I under
arrest? Do you think I had something to do with it?”

           
“Did you have anything to do with
Dr. Masters and Dr. Kelsey recently, say, in the past two days? Have you been
in contact with them?”

 
          
“Hold
it, hold it,” Patrick said, raising his hands and shaking his head in
confusion. “You’re not answering any of my questions, and I’m getting confused.
I feel like I’m being tricked into admitting something, and I think I should
stop this questioning until I get my lawyer.”

 
          
The
last thing
Norwalk
wanted was for McLanahan to “lawyer up”
now, so he nodded and put on a faint smile. As long as McLanahan only said “I
think
I should stop” and not “I want a
lawyer” or “I
want
to stop,” he could
still question the suspect, even if the suspect believed his responses wouldn’t
incriminate himself. “I’m sorry, sir. We just got here, and it’s been a long
day. Let’s all relax and just talk.” He looked around the office. “You got any coffee
around here? It’s been a
really
long
day.”

 
          
“Sure,”
Patrick said cheerfully. “It’s been a busy day for me too. Call in the rest of
your guys—there’s plenty for everyone.”

 
          
“Nice
plane you got out there,”
Norwalk
said as Patrick went out to the outer office to start the coffeemaker.
“What is it?”

           
“An Aerostar—the fastest
piston-powered twin you can buy,” Patrick said proudly. “It’s got six seats in
it, but it’s really only good for two persons with full fuel and luggage.”

           
“You fly out from
San Diego
?”

           
“I keep the plane out at North
Island Naval Air Station— the base commander is a friend of mine. It’s about a
seven- hour flight, plus a couple potty breaks—eleven hours total, including
the time zone changes.”

 
          
“It
sounds pretty fast.”

           
“It’s a rocket ship,” Patrick said.
“I just wish it could hold more people and baggage. Me, the wife, and my son
pretty much max it out.”

 
         
The
armrest of the rear bench seat inside the Aerostar flopped down, and one eye
peeked out from behind the seat. Seeing it was all clear, both seat backs in
the split bench seat flopped down, and Chris Wohl and Hal Briggs unfolded
themselves from the small baggage space behind the seat. “Oh, God,” Briggs
said, groaning as he stretched and flexed his sore legs and back. “My leg
cramps have cramps.” As he usually did, Chris Wohl ignored his friend and
former commanding officer, but it was obvious he was experiencing much of the
same difficulty unfolding his legs.

 
          
After
he got feeling and circulation going in his limbs, Briggs crawled over the
bench seats, staying low, then peeked out the smoked side windows into the
hangar. No guards visible on the hangar door side; none visible out the forward
windscreen. He looked out the right windows and saw one armed guard seated up
on the concrete stairway landing leading into the flight department offices.
Briggs made hand signals to Wohl where the guard was, then made his way to the
forward entry hatch.

 
          
Meanwhile,
Wohl knocked twice on the rear bulkhead. Behind the pressurized cabin was the
unpressurized baggage compartment, which in Patrick’s plane was normally mostly
filled with an auxiliary fuel tank. But gloved fingers popped the false steel
cover off, and two Night Stalkers emerged from the space normally occupied by
the fuel tank. They were clothed in heavy winter-weight flight suits Jackets,
boots, hats, and gloves, and each had a green oxygen bottle and mask. They,
too, took a few moments to stretch and get their limbs going again, then donned
FM commlinks and readied automatic pistols. “Cargo One is up,” one of them
reported.

 
          
“Stand
by,” Wohl said. “One guard in sight. Pop your hatch and get ready.” The Night
Stalkers unlatched the baggage compartment door as quietly as they could but
did not open it.

 
          
Meanwhile,
Briggs made his way to the split clamshell entry hatch, unlatched it with a
twist of its handle, opened the top half just an inch or two, then unlatched
and lowered the lower half. He hoped the guard couldn’t see the open lower half
from where he was sitting. Briggs stepped out and then lowered the upper half
of the door all the way. “Let’s go, Sarge—”

 
          
“Freeze!”
he heard.
“Hands where I can see them! Now!”
The lone guard had seen the
hatch open and had quickly sneaked around the Aerostar, his rifle lowered.

 
          
Briggs
shot his hands up in the air. The guard braced his rifle against his right hip,
then pulled his walkie-talkie from his web belt and keyed the mike button:
“Unit Three to Control...”

 
          
“Cargo!
Out now! Hard!” Wohl whispered into his commlink.

 
          
The
lead Night Stalker in the baggage compartment threw himself out the baggage
compartment, landing about five feet in front of the startled FBI agent. The
agent pulled the trigger on his rifle. The single round missed the Night
Stalker by a few inches, then ricocheted off the side of the Aerostar, missing
Briggs’s head by scant inches as well.

 
          
The
second Night Stalker inside the baggage compartment aimed and fired his weapon.
Tiny crystalline darts about the size of a short golfer’s pencil hit the FBI
agent. The darts instantly exploded into a fine dust that penetrated the
agent’s black fatigues. The agent had just enough time to realize that he was
hit before the nerve agent in the dust completely immobilized his entire
voluntary nervous system and he collapsed to the concrete hangar floor.

 
          
Briggs,
Wohl, and the two Night Stalkers quickly split up, taking separate exits into
the building. They were gone before any other FBI agents had responded.

 
         
Special
Agent Norwalk was in the middle of a sip of coffee when he heard the shot, and
he nearly dumped the coffee on himself.
“What
the hell
... ?”

 
          
“Don’t
worry—that’s just the cavalry showing up,” Patrick said matter-of-factly.
Norwalk
was reaching for his service pistol when
Patrick touched a hidden switch on his desk, then covered his eyes with his arm
and tightly closed his eyes just as the room lights went out and an immense
flash of light completely blinded the two FBI agents. The room lights then came
back to normal. Patrick was able to simply walk over and disarm both men by
plucking their weapons from their hands—the sudden flash of light disoriented
them so badly that they could hardly tell up from down.
Norwalk
was shouting for help as he bumped and
caromed off the furniture; the other agent couldn’t stay on his feet any longer
and finally slumped to the floor.

 
          
Briggs
and Wohl rushed into the office moments later. Briggs looked at the two
writhing on the floor. “There’s the last two. All present or accounted for,” he
said, then shot both with the crystal nerve darts. “I think the guy out in the
hangar shot your plane.”

 
          
“Bastard.
He’ll pay for that,” Patrick deadpanned. “Let’s go.”

 
          
Within
minutes, Patrick started up the DC-l0’s auxiliary power unit and powered it up
while one of the Night Stalkers drove one of the company jet fuel trucks over
to the DC-10. After Patrick directed him on how to use the DC- 10’s
single-point refueling system, he went up to the cockpit and started getting
ready for their flight out of the country. Meanwhile, Briggs and Wohl loaded up
as many sets of the Tin Man battle armor, the powered exoskeletons, the
electromagnetic rail guns, and as much ammunition, spare battery packs, tools,
and as many other devices as they could carry in the DC-10. In less than twenty
minutes, they had completely refueled the DC-10, loaded it up, and were all on
board.

 
          
“All
that cargo space, and no weapons aboard,” Briggs said as he looked down the
cavernous cargo area. They had enough cargo space and payload to carry two
Megafortresses’ worth of air-launched weapons—but they had no time to get any
out from the storage bunkers. “Too bad.”

 
          
“We
got the fuel, the battle armor, and the rail guns— that’ll do for now,” Patrick
said. “The nerve agent will wear off in another thirty minutes—we need to be
long gone before they wake up.”

 
          
JAGHBUB
,
UNITED KINGDOM
OF
LIBYA
 
THE NEXT MORNING

 
          
“Unfortunately,
we weren’t able to bring many weapons with us,” Patrick said to Sayyid Muhammad
ibn al-Hasan as-Sanusi. They were back in the big aircraft hangars at Jaghbub’s
military airfield, supervising the refueling of all the planes. One of the
Megafortresses had to abort while over the
Atlantic
; in addition, all of the EB-1C Megafortress
Two aircraft had been returned to their Air National Guard unit. Their remaining
force: two EB-52 Megafortress flying battleships and two AL-52 Dragon airborne
laser aircraft, Dragon One and Two, with Dragon Two carrying its untested
plasma laser on board. “But I would sure like to take another look at your
weapon storage areas, Your Highness.”