He was in charge of nothing right now except cleanup. Sure, he had been given the Cheetah program, but that was already a thriving project nearing operational deployment. He was just another caretaker, marking time.
His eyes automatically sought out Wendy’s, and he found her looking in his direction. They exchanged faint smiles. She had been watching him off and on the whole time. Better snap out of it, you stupid mick, he told himself. She’ll have enough on her mind without worrying about you.
The briefing ended and the flight crew moved toward the exits and the bus ready to take them to the flight line. McLanahan went to each crewmember and wished him or her a good flight.
“You should be going with us, Patrick,” Angelina Pereira said, giving him a very unmilitary hug. “This is your plane. You belong on her. You and General Elliott too.”
She was wearing the same orange flight suit as Wendy, and she too looked dynamite in it despite being fifteen years older than Wendy. Her hair was more gray then he remembered, but her eyes still sparkled. Angie would always be a handful for any man — she had married and divorced twice since the Old Dog’s first mission. He could still see her in the denim jacket she had worn when she climbed aboard the Old Dog eight years earlier, and he could remember her gratitude when the Russian caretaker at Anadyr Airbase in Siberia gave her a full-length sealskin coat in exchange for her denim jacket, even though at the time the jacket was covered with General Elliott’s blood. That coat today had to be worth at least five thousand. She would not have parted with it for five million.
He could also remember her dropping into marksman’s crouch as she fired on that same Russian airbase caretaker after he discovered who they were and ran off to warn the militia. One minute she was eternally grateful to the guy; the next she was trying to blow him away. She was one tough lady, all right.
“Not this time, Angelina,” Patrick said with a halfhearted smile. “But I’ll have the fire trucks and the champagne ready to hose you guys off when you land.”
“It’s your project as well as ours.”
“Not any more. Besides, you guys did all the work … “
“No, you did. Back over Russia.” Like him, she had been thinking back to the Old Dog’s first mission. “Even though you won’t fly with us) your name’s still on the Old Dog, on the crew nameplate. It’ll be there as it’s flying.”
“But I’m not the radar nav any more—”
“No, you’re not; you’re the seventh man, Patrick. Sorry to sound corny, but you’re the soul of the Old Dog.”
She squeezed his hand, picked up her helmet bag, and walked off. He saw Wendy then, watching him once again from the back of the conference room. He went over to her.
“How do you feel, Mrs. McLanahan?”
“Wonderful. Happy. Nervous. Excited. I’ve got butterflies the size of B-52s in my stomach … Are you going to be okay?”
“Sure.”
“Wish you were going with us. You deserve it more than anyone else.” She could tell he was unconvinced. She smiled at him. “When should we break the news?”
“At the post-flight reception tonight.”
“Can’t wait.” She gave him a kiss and hurried off to join her crew.
He called out behind her. “Good luck. See you on the ground.”
Wendy flashed him an exaggerated thumbs-up. “Piece of cake,” she called out as she rushed off to catch the crew bus.
As the crew of the new Megafortress Plus headed off to begin their mission, Staff Sergeant Rey Jacinto was nearing the end of his tour of duty on the graveyard shift, on patrol guarding Hangar Number Five at the flight line at Dreamland. It was the absolute pits.
He had done everything wrong. After four years as an Air Force security guard he knew how to prepare himself for a change in shifts — plenty of exercise, the right amount of rest, not too much food, no caffeine or alcohol twelve hours before the shift. But this time everything had gone to hell. His wife had car trouble Monday afternoon and so he was up all morning towing it to his brother-in-law’s place. It had been hot, dusty work and he couldn’t resist a couple of beers at two o’clock in the afternoon — that only violated the eight-hour rule by two hours. No big deal.
His body began asking him for sleep at three o’clock, but the car needed a new water pump and his brother-in-law insisted they could do it before he had to leave. Then, to top it all off, he sat down at six o’clock for homemade pizza. Knowing that he hadn’t had any sleep in twelve hours and he wasn’t going to get any in the next twelve, he downed nearly a whole pot of coffee after polishing off four huge, thick slices of pizza.
Rey felt pretty good as he reported for duty at seven-thirty for the shift-briefing, inspection, weapons checkout and posh changeover, but when he parked his armored assault vehicle in front of Hangar Number Five, things began catching up with him. The combination of caffeine and lack of rest made his muscles jittery. The night air was cold, so he turned up the heat in his V-100 Commando armored car, which only increased his drowsiness. He had brought his study materials for his bachelor-degree class, but the thought of even trying to listen to an hour’s worth of audio textbooks on micro-economics was too much.
By four A.M., four hours from changeover, Sergeant Jacinto was struggling to stay awake. Everything was quiet on the radios — no exercises, alerts, weapon movements, nothing. With the B-52 down the way in Hangar Three being readied for a flight, a security exercise would be too disruptive and would not be called. The engineers who had been working on the XF-34A DreamStar in Hangar Five had long since departed, and the munitions-maintenance troops weren’t scheduled to arrive until after his shift-change. Even nature was conspiring to screw him up. Thin clouds blocked most of the bright moonlight, so the ramp and most of the area were completely dark, and there were no birds or animals making their usual noises on the dry lakebed aircraft ramp. It was a dark, quiet morning. If he didn’t go completely crazy he was going to die from the strain of trying to stay awake.
Rey had just completed his hourly walkaround inspection of Hangar Five, checking all the doors and exits. He was so bored that he even began to pick up scraps of paper and pieces of junk on the ramp. He returned to his truck and keyed the radio.
“Red Man, this is Five Foxtrot.” Red Man was HAWC’s Security Control Center.
“Go ahead, Five.”
“Requesting ten mike for relief.”
There was a pause, then: “Five, that’s your fourth potty break tonight. “
“It’s Rey’s time of the month,” someone else on the security net chimed in.
“Cut the chatter,” the security controller ordered. “Five Foxtrot, unable at this time. Stand by. Break. Rover Nine, this is Red Man. Over.”
“Rover Nine, go.” Rover Nine was one of only two M113 armored combat vehicle-equipped crews that cruised around the huge compound, doing errands and relieving the post guards as necessary; they had numbers higher than two to hide the fact that there were only two of these heavily armed roving patrols on the flight line.
“Five Foxtrot requests relief for ten mike ASAP.”
“Stand by,” came the reply in an exasperated voice. A few moments later: “Red Man, we’re at the shack getting coffee — Five Foxtrot’s been drinking the stuff like it’s going out of style.” Rey Jacinto cringed as his code name was broadcast on the net — boy, was he going to get it when this shift was over. Good thing none of the other guards could leave their posts to get on his case. “We’ll be another ten here; then we need to check in with the main gate. Ask Five Foxtrot if this is a number two or if he can use the piddle pack. Over.”