Like tonight. The White Sands Range monitors sensed the signature, analyzed it and decided it was another small radioactive material spill. The location was put on the list for cleanup by the radiation cleanup crew. They called, themselves the Hot Janitors. The Hot Janitors had about three weeks of work to do before they’d get to the A002 site.
But the Folcroft Four saw the same bit of radioactivity and recognized it. Smith’s quick probe of the White Sands duty roster showed no scheduled work that would have unearthed the A002. His analysis of the other security feeds at the missile test range founds no sign of intrusion. Just a small dust storm.
As Smith watched the blurry thermal satellite feed, he saw the dust storm make a ninety-degree turn. He grabbed the red phone.
Chapter 19
General Tainey liked his command to run smoothly. “A well-oiled machine, son, that’s what!” He had said these words recently to a lieutenant colonel who had been inefficient and sloppy. “Can’t afford to have craziness and what-all—not when you’re shooting off missiles! Every damned hand needs to know what every other damned hand is doing!”
The lieutenant colonel had tried to defend his actions. A substandard batch of amphetamines, issued by the Air Force to combat pilots, had been the real problem. The stay-awake pills were too strong. One pilot was experiencing cardiac arrhythmia. Another flopped on his back without any pulse whatsoever.
“That’s two,” the general pointed out acerbically. “All six pilots took doses from the same batch, General. I felt it was best to get them medical attention before they had severe reactions.”
“Which you didn’t even know they would have, now, did you son?”
“It seemed likely—”
“It seemed likely? Them ain’t the kind of words you can depend on, dammit! Whatever seemed like was going to happen, I know what did happen! Exercises were shut down for eight straight hours! And it’s likely I am gonna get my ass chewed out! And if I get my ass chewed, you will be emptying my wastebaskets!”
Somehow, the commanders up the ranks had bought the whole story about the dying pilots and hadn’t even reprimanded the general, so he’d gone easy on the lieutenant colonel and hadn’t ripped off all his stripes. Just some of them.
Now there was another debacle in the works. Two, in the same damned month? New assholes were gonna get chewed big-time.
“Yes, Mr. President,” the general answered politely. He could out-protocol any President you threw his way. “You say I have an intruder, Mr. President?”
Okay, so that rattled the general a little.
A moment later, the general forgot his manners. “May I ask where you received this intelligence, Mr. President?”
The President answered. The general’s face colored.
“Right away, Mr. President.”
General Tainey slammed the phone and stomped out of his office, surrounded by yammering aides, and burst into the missile range command center, where more than thirty Air Force men and women busied themselves.
“What the hell is happening on my missile range?” the general exploded.
He got thirty blank looks in answer.
“We got intruders on my missile range, and you don’t even know it? I just told the President of the United States of America that we were on it! Now get on it!”
One of his aides scurried up with a portable phone. “General Brown for you, General.”
“General Brown? General Brown from where and why do I care?”
“From the Joint Chiefs, General. Calling with additional orders from the President, General.”
Dammit all to hell! Worst thing about a crisis is when all them ninnies upstairs started adding their two cents’ worth. Why couldn’t they just let a man do his job? “Yes, General Brown?” he said politely.
“General Tainey, your standard security systems are unable to pinpoint your intruder. I suggest you deploy your low-altitude motion-detection drones.”
Tainey chewed on that and responded, “General Brown, I don’t think I follow you.”
“Don’t play games with me. General Tainey. You have four experimental drone aircraft sitting in Hangar GH457, all equipped with Ultra-High Resolution LADAR devices.”
“Uh-Uh-Ultra-High Revolution what?”
The lemony voice of the strange general was like acid in the brain of the commander of the White Sands Missile Range. “General Tainey, I know the Air Force is terminating the UHR-LADARs. I know they are in the process of being redesignated Objects of Plausible Denial. I also have photographic and thermographic records of the crash sites of the two failed UHR-LADAR drones In my possession are complete financial records of the UHR-LADAR project. I am fully aware that the project is being scrapped and denied because of minor cost overruns and major financial bungling.”
“I don’t know any General Brown with the Joint Chiefs!” Tainey blurted, because it was the only response he could come up with.
“You decide how to deal with this, General Tainey. You can get those UHR-LADAR in the air right now and defend your missile range against this intruder, or face a court-martial for embezzlement and fraud.”
“But I didn’t!”
“You did, General.”
“It’s SOP!”
“Your choice, General Tainey.”
General Brown hung up on him. General Tainey had a long moment of indecision. The phone bleeped in his hand and dragged him back to the here-and-now, which was the command center at White Sands Missile Range, which was where a bunch of folks were standing there waiting for him to give them some kind of orders.
“Well?” he thundered.
“No sign of any intruder yet, sir,” a security officer reported.
The phone bleeped again.
“That’s the President for you, General,” an aide hissed.
Dammit! ‘Yes, Mr. President?”
“General Tainey, I understand you’re deploying a sort of robotic aircraft that senses motion.”
Dammit all to hell! “Yes, sir, doing it now.”
“Keep the Joint Chiefs posted.”
“Of course, Mr. President.”
General Tainey hung up the phone and started shouting, and he didn’t stop shouting for four solid hours. All the while he was thinking that this General Brown, whoever he was, sure had some connections.
Chapter 20
The UHR-LADAR took motion detection images so sharp and clean they were like high-contrast, three-dimensional photographs. This required a high degree of interface with the drone control systems, and some penny-pinching in that department had resulted in an aircraft that was almost guaranteed to crash itself once in every one hundred hours of flying time.
The drones were airborne in minutes, and Dr. Smith tapped into their command data feeds, praying they would stay aloft at least a little while.
Jack Fast got a beep from his laptop.
“Oops. Time to go,” he informed the hand of Jesus.
He tapped out a command and checked the coordinates of the airship. It was miles away, but at top speed it would be back in time to make an escape. Besides, the intercept aircraft were moving slow, like prop planes. Some sort of special surveillance craft. Yawn.
The aircraft’s surface was practically sparking with voltage as it sailed across the desert, a black shadow growing bigger. It came to a stop over the long row of devices that had been collected from all over the missile range. Each one of them was a lost secret—an officially forgotten piece of technological history. Sure, some of them were old and probably useless, but every one of them was a technological mystery for Jack to explore.
Now all he had to do was get them home without blowing them to smithereens.