A few seconds later, his phone rang. Judge Wilkins made no attempt to mask the annoyance in her voice. “Dr. James’ bail has been paid. He’s free to go. The court has sent his release orders. Make sure he understands that he cannot leave the city for any reason. Failure to comply with any of the terms of the release will result in his arrest and forfeiture of the two million in bail, every dollar of it. Tell Dr. James that if he cannot afford an attorney, call the public defender’s office. I’ll see him in court in September. I suggest you get moving.”
A contempt charge came with a $10,000 fine and jail time. Harris dropped his head and shook it. Shit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Harris walked up to my jail cell and unlocked the door. He didn’t say a word, didn’t even look at me. I just stood inside the cage I’d been dying to get out of, staring at the open door. I tried to make eye contact with him and read his expression, but he wasn’t giving anything up.
When I was released from jail, I had no plan, no car, and very little cash in my wallet. I decided to walk around town for a while, hoping to clear my mind and figure out what to do next. An hour later I was crossing Magnolia Avenue when I heard a woman’s voice yell my name. Raising my forearm to shade my eyes from the sun’s glare, I looked in the direction of the voice and saw an arm waving at me through the open window of an aging, fender-dented, white Honda Accord. As I approached the car, the driver called out again, “Dr. James!” It was Elizabeth Keyes.
Elizabeth Keyes had been my office manager for the past two months. Never before had a staff member endeared herself so quickly. Everyone who came in contact with Elizabeth liked her. It probably didn’t hurt that the thirty-two-year-old blonde was fashion-model gorgeous.
“Elizabeth.” I said, surprised to see her. “Good to see you. Clearly, you’re feeling better than last time I saw you.”
“Likewise.”
“Thanks.” I stood for a moment, then said, “Poor Boyd.”
“Yeah. Dr. Carey. That’s so sad.”
Then, lowering her voice, she asked, “So you’re a free man now?”
“Um, well, sort of… ” I stammered. “At least for now. I’m out on bail.”
“Wow! How’d you come up with all that money? The paper said it was, like, two million.”
“I didn’t,” I said quietly. “Someone else paid it.”
“Do you know who?”
I shook my head and looked around nervously. This was not a conversation to be having with an employee who also happened to be the patient who’d almost died in my operating room. After all, that unfortunate incident was being investigated as an attempted murder, for which I was the prime suspect.
Leaning toward the car’s open window, I said, “Well, I’d better get going. I’m glad to see you’re doing well. Take care, Elizabeth”
“Dr. James,” Keyes called after me as I stepped away from the car. “Do you need a ride somewhere?”
I hesitated, not sure I wanted to trade the freedom of walking for the confines of a car. But then I thought, Maybe Keyes knows something I don’t, like what happened to the friend who was supposed to pick her up. Maybe she saw someone else in the OR…
“Sure,” I said.
As I got into the front passenger seat, I couldn’t help but notice that her curves were accentuated by her skin-tight T-shirt and workout pants. “You look a lot better than the last time I saw you. But are you sure you’re okay now?”
“All better!”
“You had me worried there,” I said.
“Oh, I just had too much Valium. Once it wore off, I was fine,” she said. “Where to, James? Your house or mine?”
This was a side of Keyes I’d never seen, and it caught me a little off-guard. But I liked it.
“Well, since my wife gave me the boot and started screwing around, I don’t have a home to go to,” I said. “But you can take me to a hotel.”
“And you’re going to pay for that how?” she asked.
How does she know I’m broke? Before I could ask the question, Keyes answered it. “Rumor has it your wife cleaned you out, and since you haven’t been able to work… ” Turning toward me, her face filled with empathy, she laid her hand on my leg and cooed, “I’m so sorry all this is happening to you. You’re welcome to stay at my place.”
“Alright.”
“In separate bedrooms, of course,” she added quickly.
My two options flashed through my mind: Sleep on a park bench, or go home with a beautiful woman. It took all of two seconds to decide.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Positive.”
“It’ll just be for a couple days, till I figure something else out.”
“Buckle up, Doc,” she said as she pulled the Accord away from the curb.
“Could we stop by my office on the way?”
“You’re allowed in there?”
“I just want to check on my orchids.”
“You and your orchids. Can they wait till tomorrow? I’m all sweaty from my Zumba class and really want to get home and shower. And I’ve got a ton of stuff to do today.”
I had no choice but to agree.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Camp Peary sits on a 9,200-acre parcel of land separated from the rest of Virginia by an eight-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. About 8,000 acres are wooded, and 2,000 cleared acres are used for military housing and training areas. The enormous, three-mile-long airstrip at the base is surrounded on one side by the York River and on the other by the 400-acre Bigler’s Millpond. It is the most technologically advanced runway in the U.S. defense system.
The airfield at Camp Peary can accommodate the largest aircraft in the world. Embedded in the concrete are sensors that measure wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, air temperature, cloud and fog cover, and precipitation. At times of dangerous weather conditions in Washington D.C, planes flying important government officials to the capital are rerouted here.
Apart from such emergency situations, the Camp Peary airstrip is closed to all civilian and military aircraft, and is reserved, with special clearance, for high-ranking military officers, and for secret landings by the world’s most important diplomats. Though shrouded in secrecy, the camp has long been rumored to be a training base for the CIA, used for the testing of various classified materials and equipment.
In this isolated and secured environment, three men now worked under the body of an MQ-1 drone, or Predator, as it was known. The unmanned aircraft was small — only twenty-seven feet long, with a wingspan of forty-eight feet. For three days, the men had been fitting a direct energy laser system to the underbelly of the aircraft. The little pilotless airplane only stood about four and a half feet off the ground, and that made for back-breaking work.
Never before had a laser weapon system been installed on a drone aircraft. In the past, existing laser systems had been too heavy. Operational lasers, such as the type President Reagan had proposed in his Star Wars plan for missile defense, weighed over five tons.
The leader of the laser group, Jacob Weizman, was a thin, balding Israeli in his sixties. Generally, he gave instructions to the other two men, and then before they could perform each assignment, elbowed them away and did the work himself.
Alpha Charlie, wearing sunglasses, a Redskins cap, and a sweatshirt, watched at a distance. He smiled as he witnessed the interaction between the owner of the aircraft company and his men. Both of his guys had been with him for twenty or more years.