Sluf was too shocked to say anything. They were all Pakistanis, all four pilots and several maintenance men, gathered around a small crane and a bomb dolly, with charts and diagrams all over the floor. Sluf looked around the rest of the hangar but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “What the hell are you doing in here?” he finally asked.
Khan and the others began walking toward him. “I could ask you the same thing,” he replied.
“Except that I have a reason to be here and you don’t.”
“Of course we do. We are doing training.”
“With a crane and a bomb dolly?” Sluf said skeptically.
“Yes. It is part of what we do. We must always train. We needed a quiet place away from the rest of the people.”
“You never got permission.”
“On the contrary. Mr. Luke gave us permission to use this hangar whenever we wanted.”
“That’s bullshit, Khan. He put me in charge of facilities. No one is to use this hangar. It isn’t available. And you sure as hell never told us you were going to practice bomb loading. Where the hell did you get that crane anyway?”
“We brought it with us,” Khan said as he reached Sluf and stood directly in front of him.
Sluf shifted uneasily as two of the Pakistanis moved around to either side of him. “Why would you bring a crane with you?”
“For these practices. All of our men must practice all the time. We must always be ready for war with India.”
Sluf wasn’t buying it. “At six in the morning?”
“Yes. Before our other obligations begin.” Khan studied Sluf’s face. He glanced at the two men flanking Sluf and nodded very subtly.
“I want you guys out of here. Just leave the crane, and we’ll see about getting you some space to—”
Sluf stopped as the man to his right suddenly gasped and bent over in pain. Sluf was completely confused by what might have happened to the man but realized too late it was just to cause him to turn his head. The Pakistani now directly behind Sluf grabbed him in a choke hold and pulled back hard on his neck with his forearm.
Sluf fell backward into the man as he fought the pressure on his throat. He pulled on the man’s arm and tried to scream out. He had no air. He knew he had only seconds to get out of the hold or he would be dead. He tried to get his feet under him so he could lift up against the shorter man, but the man kept shifting to keep Sluf off balance.
Khan stepped forward with lightning speed and drove his fist into Sluf’s solar plexus, driving out the remaining air in his lungs. Sluf began to see stars. He flailed at the man behind him with his fists but couldn’t land a punch. He tried to kick but realized his kicks were going in directions he couldn’t control.
Then his vision started to go, as if he were pulling too many Gs. Sluf’s gelled hair fell into his face as he expired in the arms of the Pakistani, who waited until there was no movement. He lowered Sluf slowly to the hangar floor.
Khan knelt down and felt for a pulse in Sluf’s throat. There was none. “He is finished.” He stood and looked around, then at the man who had killed Sluf. “Put him in that tool locker. Tonight you will go to Reno to buy those GPS receivers we have told them we need. On the way you will find a bridge or a cave and take care of this,” he said, looking at Sluf. “They will never find him in time to stop us now.”
13
“Morning,” Luke said to Glenda as she stood behind the counter.
“Well, the big boss. I’m surprised to see you here. I don’t think you’ve had breakfast here before,” Glenda replied, smiling. She was a kind-faced woman in her mid-fifties who exuded humility.
Luke looked around, surprised, at the crowd. There were ten students eating breakfast and five instructors. Other staff members were spread throughout the café, and Stamp sat at a table by the door. He had arrived early in his MiG-17 and walked straight to the Area 51 Café.
“Did you agree to call this the Area 51 Café?” Luke asked Glenda.
“You know how he is. If I didn’t let him, then we’d have to explain him wearing that hat all the time, wouldn’t we? Now those who don’t know just figure he’s wearing a hat after the name of the café.”
Luke laughed out loud. Just then Raymond walked in from the back of the café. Luke and Glenda exchanged a glance without saying anything. “Three eggs scrambled with some bacon, and an English muffin.”
Glenda nodded.
Luke stood by the counter and watched Glenda put the eggs on the grill. He watched her husband fill the refrigerator with gallons of milk from the back. Luke addressed Glenda again: “Have you decided whether to let Vlad use your voice?”
Glenda shook her head. “I just don’t know about that, Mr. Henry. I don’t think I even understand.”
“Simple. A lot of the warnings in the MiG-29 are voice recorded. They say things like ‘Raise your landing gear,’ “ he said in a quiet voice, like HAL, the computer in 2001. “Or ‘Your left engine is on fire.’ That sort of stuff. The MiGs came with Russian warnings, which of course are not a lot of help to those of us who don’t speak Russian. Vlad—probably his company, actually—had some German woman record the warnings for us, but in English. They sound hilarious. Nobody can understand her—‘You haff ze left enchine on fi-ah!’ He must have paid her about five bucks. She is as far from fluent as you can get. We’re all running around saying, ‘Achtung! Race ze lahnding gee-ah?’ We’re starting to talk in German accents. Vlad’s tired of taking shit all the time, so he decided to ask you. I think you’d be perfect. It’d be like our mothers warning us that we were about to fall out of the car or something. I guarantee you your voice would get our attention.” He spoke quietly and gently, “ ‘Low fuel!’ ”
“I don’t know, I’m afraid I would do something wrong,” she said, smiling warmly.
Luke grabbed a porcelain cup off the stack next to the Bunn coffeemaker and poured himself a cup. “There’s nothing to go wrong. If it gets screwed up, we’ll just redo it. We can record it here. Why don’t you? It’ll make you famous.”
“Oh, all right.”
Luke spied Raymond again. “Hey, Raymond. How are you doing?”
He replied in his humorless way, “Fine, Mr. Henry. How do you like the café?”
“Great. Don’t know about the name, though.” Luke didn’t realize that Vlad had come into the café and was standing right behind him. “You seen Sluf? His airplane is already here.”
Glenda answered. “Not yet, but he always comes here first thing. He’s so nice.”
“Don’t be too charmed,” Luke warned. “He’s a ladies’ man. They all like him, and he just uses them.”
“Good morning, Vladimir,” Glenda said over Luke’s shoulder. “I’ve got your bread ready.”
“What bread?” Luke asked.
“Black Russian bread. Good for butter and jam. Filling,” Vlad said enthusiastically.
Luke turned and looked at Vlad, whose hair was a wreck. “Hard night?”
Vlad frowned. “What you mean?”
“You look like something the cat dragged in.”
“What does this mean, cat dragging?”
“I finally got my cell phone working, Mr. Henry,” Raymond said, proudly taking his phone off his belt clip.
Luke glanced at him. “That’s great.”
“I need your home phone number.”
Luke was surprised. “What for?”
“I always keep the home phone number of my boss in the cell phone, in case of emergency. I mean, around here anything can happen. Right?”
Luke looked at Raymond’s hat again. “Right.” He gave him his home phone number. “Don’t be giving that out to any intergalactic salesmen.”