“Thanks,” the young airman said in a high-pitched voice. He hopped out and trotted back to help his supervisor.
“Better chock the truck,” Jacinto called inside the hangar. The airman froze. Sergeant Howard looked at Jacinto, then at Crowe, and finally at the Stepvan.
“Do as the man said,” Howard yelled to Crowe. “You know all vehicles are supposed to be chocked out here.” Crowe ran to the truck, pulled out a set of yellow wooden chocks and placed them under the rear wheels.
“And stop running around in the hangar,” Howard yelled once more. “You know better. Or should.”
Jacinto suppressed a smile. He remembered back to his first solo guard duties while he watched the two technicians set to work. He was a million times more nervous than this guy …
His interest was quickly drawn to the amazing aircraft they were servicing. He had never been any closer than this to the plane, even though he had been guarding it for a year now, but he was still amazed by the sleek, catlike aircraft. It looked even more deadly now with its two huge air-to-air missiles hanging on the belly on either side of the large intake. Jacinto had read every scrap of unclassified information on DreamStar and had repeatedly asked for permission to look inside the cockpit but was always denied.
Sergeant Howard had wheeled a maintenance platform around to the left side of the cockpit and locked it into place, then scrambled up the steps and opened the canopy. Meanwhile Crowe had started up an auxiliary power cart in the back of the hangar and was hauling air and power cables over to the receptacles near the left main landing gear. A few moments later Howard had flipped the right switches in the cockpit — the battery and external power switches, Jacinto recalled from his reading — and cockpit and position lights popped in all around DreamStar.
Howard stepped off the maintenance platform and walked over to the back of the truck. Noticing Jacinto watching him from the front of the hangar, he waved him over. Jacinto, and soon Airman Crowe, moved over beside Howard.
Over the noise of the power cart. Sergeant Howard said, “Want to take look inside?”
Jacinto blinked in surprise. “Is it okay?”
“Don’t see why not. Ejection seat’s been deactivated, half the black boxes in the cockpit have been pulled out and the weapons are all pinned and safe. No better time.”
Jacinto nodded enthusiastically. He pulled the clip out of his M-16, placed the clip in a pouch on his belt, checked the safety on the rifle and leaned the weapon on the Stepvan bumper. “All right, I been waiting to do this for—”
A hand reached across his face, covering his nose and mouth and twisting his head sideways. Jacinto tried to roll away from the arms holding his head, but Howard had run up to him and grasped his chin, holding his neck fast. A split-second later Jacinto felt a sharp, deep sting on his exposed neck.
Three seconds later he was dead.
“Shto slochelosch? What the hell is the matter with you, Crowe?” the man named “Howard” cursed at his young partner. “Crowe” was staring at the body, watching Jacinto’s death twitch as the poison slowly destroyed the central nervous system. “You almost let him get loose.”
Crowe did not reply. Howard slapped the young man hard on the shoulder. “We must hurry, idiot. Time is running out.”
Pushed toward the still-quivering corpse, Crowe began unbuckling Jacinto’s combat harness and webbing, jerking his hands away as the last of the dead guard’s tremors left his body. Meanwhile Howard swung open the back of the Stepvan, removed several pins from the sides of the equipment racks along the inside walls of the van, then hauled the racks away from the wall.
Out from his hiding place inside the racks, wearing the ANTARES flight suit, was Captain Kenneth Francis James.
“Nechyega syerchyanznaga, tovarisch. It is all clear, Comrade Captain. We are — ready.”
James raised the muzzle of the machine pistol and put the safety on. “Speak English, you idiot. And help me out of here.”
Slowly, carefully, Maraklov was helped to his feet. Moving as if his joints were locked in place, he slowly walked to the edge of the Stepvan. Howard then lowered him to the hangar floor, where he made his way to the maintenance platform still set up beside DreamStar.
By this time Airman Crowe — real name, long unused and almost forgotten, was Andrei Lovyyev — had put on all of Jacinto’s combat gear and was just replacing the ammo clip in the M-16 rifle. “Blouse your pants in your boots, Crowe,” James told him as he crawled up the ladder. “And keep out of sight. You’re at least thirty pounds smaller than Jacinto, someone is bound to notice.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Remember, your call sign is Five Foxtrot. The duress code number is twelve and the duress prefix and suffix is victor.”
“I remember, sir.”
He turned to Howard. “You both have been briefed on the pickup location?”
“Yes, Captain. Good luck to you, sir.”
James balanced himself on the cockpit sill of DreamStar and swung his legs inside the cockpit. Then with Howard’s help, he connected the maze of wire bundles from his flight suit to DreamStar’s computers, set the heavy ANTARES superconductor helmet on his head and fastened it into place. By this time he was breathing hard, he could feel drops of sweat crawling down his arms and neck. Howard’s hands trembled slightly with excitement as he fastened the thick shoulder straps around the metal-encased pilot and pulled them tight. “Tighter,” James said in a voice muffled by the helmet. Howard braced himself and hauled on the straps as hard as he could.
“Thank you, Sergeant Howard,” James said. “You pulled this off very well.”
“Nyeh zah shto.” Maraklov had been James too long. He could barely understand a word, but the KGB agent’s soft tone of voice gave him the idea. The man was obviously pleased by the compliment. He rechecked James’ connections and climbed off the maintenance platform.
Meanwhile Crowe had climbed inside the armored vehicle outside the hangar, scanning the flight line — Howard could see his head jerk at every crackle of the radio. It had, he now realized, been foolish to bring such a youngster on a mission like this — it was Lovyyev’s first full-scale job since sneaking across the border from Mexico via El Paso and setting up residence under cover in Las Vegas three years earlier. To put him in the lion’s den like this was taking a big risk.
But it was too late for second guessing. Howard disconnected the missile trailer from the Stepvan truck and moved it out of the way inside the hangar, closed the van’s rear doors and moved it out of the hangar and clear of DreamStar’s taxi path. Next he took several large orange-colored traffic cones marked “DANGER HIGH EXPLOSIVE” out of the van and arranged them in a wide arc around the hangar doors. This was a normal procedure — the cones were a warning to anyone else on the flight line that work on live weapons was going on inside. But these cones were different. Each was a miniature mortar-launcher, operated by remote control. When activated, each would fire a high-explosive magnesium flash bomb a hundred yards away. The concussions and blinding white light produced by the mortar rounds would slow and presumably stop any quick-reaction forces from moving in until DreamStar was clear of the hangar.
After carefully aiming the disguised mortars at response roads and likely targets around the hangar — being careful not to crater DreamStar’s taxi route or exit — Howard stepped inside the hangar once again and rechecked that all safing pins and streamers were removed from the aircraft and weapons. He then walked to the truck, retrieved a M-16 rifle with a M-203 forty-millimeter grenade-launcher under the barrel, a metal box full of grenades and a bag of five thirty-round clips, and went back into the hangar to wait.