“I’m sorry,” the Aerostar pilot said. “I’m Doctor Clemenz, professor of history at Dartmouth. “Clemens with a z, ” he added, as if often asked how to spell his last name to make it jive with the unusual pronunciation. “My Aerostar is stuck out there on the taxiway. I was looking for someone who might give me a tow.”
“No problem, sir,” the Marine said with a thick Brooklyn accent. “But I better get you out of this area before we all get our dicks in a wringer.” He escorted the pilot along the wall toward the front of the hangar. Workers saw the big Marine, wore shocked expressions on their faces, and stepped toward him but retreated after a few steps.
“You guys actually service Air Force One here?”
“Not much use in denying it, is there, sir?” the Marine said jovially. “But please keep it under your hat, all right, sir? I’ve already got a lot to explain — like how you got inside here.”
“Front gate was ajar, side door was opened by someone wanting to get a breath of fresh air… listen, am I under arrest? I probably shouldn’t say anything else if I am.”
“I’m not placing you under arrest, sir — unless you try to run.”
“I assure you, I won’t… uh, I'm sorry, your name…?”
“Captain Cook, Dave Cook,” the big guy said, extending a hand.
Clemenz accepted it. “Marines?” Cook nodded. “I always thought the Air Force took care of Air Force One.”
“The Air Force flies it — the Marines are supposed to guard it,” Cook said after a short, uncomfortable pause. Clemenz nodded, accepting that explanation — the Marines guarded the White House, why not Air Force One? “The operative words here are ‘supposed to.’ ”
“Shit happens,” Clemenz said, trying to console the soldier and sorry that his trespassing was probably going to get the friendly Marine into big trouble, maybe even ruin. his career.
“Yes, sir, it surely does,” the big Marine said. He led the doctor through a doorway into an office, past more startled men. Most of them wore civilian clothes but were very heavily armed. Cook waved them away before they could grab Clemenz, dismissing them with a sharp shake of his head — Clemenz could easily feel the daggers darting from Cook’s blazing eyes to the guards, silently admonishing them for their miss. He grabbed one man tightly by his upper arm and whispered something in his ear, then let him go. “Have a seat, Doctor Clemenz. Coffee? Tea?”
“Not unless I’m going to be here awhile, Captain,” Clemenz said with a wry smile, afraid that’s exactly \yhat was going to happen. ‘
“I don’t think so, Doctor Clemenz,” the soldier said, picking up a clipboard and finding a pencil in a desk drawer. He copied Clemenz’s Hanover, New Hampshire, address, employment information, and names and addresses of any relatives and friends nearby — no relatives in Portsmouth, only a few acquaintances. Clemenz enjoyed fishing and lobstering and came to Portsmouth often, but he was fairly new to the area and usually came only in the summer, so he knew few people in town. He said he shared a house with another professor up in York Harbor. “How were you going to get to the house, sir?”
“Airport car,” Clemenz said. “Airport lets us park a car here for fifty dollars a month. It’s just an old beat-up Dat- sun. It’s parked right over by the DOT building… is this going to take much longer, Captain? I left my strobes on so nobody would run over my Aerostar. Can you help me tow it to the main parking ramp? I don’t mean to rush you, since I was doing the trespassing, but it’s getting late and I—”
“Of course, sir,” Cook replied. “If you don’t mind, sir, we’ll follow you to your house in York Harbor, just to verify your destination. Will that be a problem, sir?”
“No… no, I suppose not…”
“Was there someone you needed to call? Leave a message at the FBO about your plane?”
“When they see the plane parked out front, they’ll know it’s, me.”
“Very well. I think we’re done here,” Cook said. “I would like to take some pictures for our files. Do you have any objections to that?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Good. And sir, I’ll probably say this two or three times before you leave, but you must be absolutely clear on this: what you’ve seen tonight must be kept secret. I’m sure you can easily imagine the danger if any terrorists, saboteurs, or kooks knew that Air Force One is serviced here. Our security is usually very good, but if an amateur can stumble into this place, imagine what a trained terrorist squad can do.”
“I understand perfectly,” Clemenz said earnestly.
“Good,” Cook said. “Let’s get some pictures and we’ll wrap this up. This way, sir.” Cook led the way through the door back out to the main hangar, allowing Clemenz to pass in front of him…
… and when the professor exited the office, he saw about three dozen men, the workers that had been working on Air Force One, standing a few paces outside the door, backdropped by Air Force One itself towering over them. They were looking at Clemenz with a collective expression mix of surprise and… What? Pity? until Captain Cook emerged from the office. Then their expressions changed to one of downright, undisguised, genuine fear.
Clemenz somehow knew he was a dead man even before he felt the hand grasp his hair, yank his head up and forward, and felt the sharp prick against the back of his neck at the base of his skull as the knife was driven up along the top of his vertebrae and into the base of his brain. He gave a short cry, not necessarily from the pain as much as from the surprise and the resignation. He did not feel anything else after that.
Henri Cazaux let the corpse dangle at the end of his knife for several seconds, letting all the workers and security men get a good look. No one dared avert his eyes, although one man mercifully fainted when he saw the body quiver in its last throes of death. “This man just walked in here!” Cazaux shouted. “He just walked in! No one bothered to stop him, challenge him, even look at him, although he is obviously not wearing an identification badge or the clothing code of the day. He is going to hang here in front of. the hangar as a reminder to every one of you to keep vigilant. Now get back to work — the timetable is going to be moved up. Move! ”
Armed guards were taking three men away in handcuffs as Tomas Ysidro and Gregory Townsend came up to Cazaux. Cazaux tossed the dead professor off his knife against the wall — the man had died so quickly that almost no blood seeped from the knife wound. “Sorry about that, Henri,” Ysidro said casually, kicking the corpse so the small trickle of blood from the wound dripped on the man’s clothes and not onto the hangar floor. “If I would’ve gotten here earlier I could have supervised these bozos better, but I can’t be at two places at once.”
“Can you be in position by tomorrow night?” Cazaux asked.
Townsend thought for a moment; then: “I think so, Henri. We’ll need the Shorts to move the guys and their equipment, but I think we—”
“Don’t think, Townsend,” Cazaux said menacingly. “Can you be in position by tomorrow night or not?”
“I’d prefer two nights to get everyone into proper position, Henri,” Townsend said, “but the answer is yes. I can be ready to go tomorrow night.”
“This man will be missed in two nights’ time, perhaps sooner — we must go tomorrow night,” Cazaux said, wiping his blade clean and putting it back into its hidden sheath.