Air Marshals

by Wynne, Marcus

  Charley emptied a drawer directly into a box. "The desk marshals and our good personal friend Dinkey think we've been doing this for too long."

  "The gals down at JD's are going to be heart-broken now that Donald Gene and his love machine are leaving town."

  "Send them postcards and perfumes from far off places," Charley said.

  "I think I'll start working on my flight attendant briefings."

  "Don't you mean debriefings?"

  "The briefs will come off, but I won't be brief."

  The two of them laughed. Charley leaned back in his chair and looked at the world map on the wall. He traced the routes they would be flying soon, and he tried to put himself into the mind of the terrorists he knew were out there.

  'Where you going to come to?' he wondered. 'Where you going to come to, so I can kill you?'

  ***

  QUANTICO, VIRGINIA:

  The Forward Operating Base for the Federal Air Marshal Units is hidden away in an isolated corner of the sprawling Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia. Down a long stretch of unmarked road is a cluster of refurbished Quonset huts and range facilities previously used by the CIA and DEA to train operatives for work in Central and South America. The Marshals had moved in and added a few specialized facilities, most notably a tire house modeled on the one at Marana and the briefing building, which contained offices, lodging for teams in pre-mission isolation, conference rooms, an auditorium, and the briefing room. The briefing room boasted the best video and computer equipment money could buy. One of the most impressive pieces was a big screen monitor wired to a CAD system that could display the latest configuration of every commercial aircraft and many of the private ones in the US inventory. Seating configurations, exits, structural framework, avionics and even the distances within the cabin laid out in inches and metric could be displayed on command. The pre-operational mission deployments were presented there. Drawn from their respective field offices all over the country, Air Marshal Units would assemble and train together in isolation for a week before a routine patrol mission. In addition to their pre-mission prep, they trained in their field offices and in quarterly recurrent training at the Marana facility, which kept their skills, especially the rapidly degradable shooting skills, honed to a fine edge.

  It had been over a year since Charley had been out to Quantico; he had helped set up the training facilities here. He was glad to see that the resident Marshals, mostly administrative people, had spent some time cleaning up the area. There were flowers around some of the Quonsets, and the front of the briefing building was fully landscaped. He pulled up in the small parking lot outside the briefing building. He and Donald got out of the rental car and hurried up the stairs into the building.

  "Christ, I forgot how long it takes to get out here," Donald muttered.

  "It's not like they can start without us," Charley said.

  They hurried down the hallway, breaking stride just long enough to wave to Barbara, the administrative secretary and Mike Crock, the mousy and quiet manager who oversaw Marshal operations. When they came into the briefing room, the other six members of their team looked up from the long conference table.

  A balding, muscular man with a thick Boston accent said, "Well, look what the cat drug in." Butch Verlaine, a retired Massachusetts State Trooper and SWAT officer, shook his head. "Do you see that, Stacy?"

  Stacy Bagley was a big, heavily muscled black woman with an angelic face. "They must be scraping the bottom of the barrel if they got to bring these two old tired fucks out of retirement," she said.

  Donald Gene laughed. He walked up and tried to sweep Stacy up in an embrace. "Come here, sugar tits. Jesus, you're getting fat as hell. Did you miss Daddy Don?"

  "Get off me, faggot. Did you grow a dick yet?" Stacy said, pushing him away.

  "You're still my sweet mouth gal, honey...I don't care what the other girls say about you."

  "I know what they say about you, you pitiful old fuck."

  "Quit teasing me, baby. You know I gots what you need. Just say it, baby."

  Stacy fought to keep a grin off her face. She cocked her fist threateningly at Don.

  "Just say it, Stacy!" Butch said.

  Stacy set her hands on her hips, rolled them forward in a Mae West-like parody, and said in a deep and sultry tone, "Oh...just DO me, Don."

  Charley and the rest of the marshals, even the three new ones who had been sitting by bewildered, broke into loud laughter. Don high-fived Stacy and gave her a kiss on the cheek and walked away in search of coffee. Charley shook hands all around, starting with Butch and the hulking Steve Paulson.

  "Hey, T-Man," Charley said. "You ever learn to shoot?"

  "Big fool just shot the President's 25 again -- two perfect 300s back to back. That was right after he won the damn Bianchi Cup again," Stacy said, slugging the quiet Steve in the shoulder.

  "I've been lucky lately," Steve said mildly.

  "It's not natural for any human being to shoot like that, Paulson," Donald Gene said, helping himself to a cup of coffee. "I don't believe you're human. I think you're from the planet Krypton, a man of steel in search of a woman of Kleenex." He looked over at Stacy and winked. "A Budweiser and a blow job would kill you, son."

  "You leave him alone, Donald Gene, you fucking pig," Stacy said. "Stevey is a gentleman and we appreciate him just fine as he is."

  "That's right," Butch said.

  "Word, home-boy," Stacy said, high-fiving Butch. "That nasty Donald Gene would fuck a rock pile if you told him there was pussy in it."

  Donald Gene blew on his coffee. "I love the way you talk to me, baby."

  Charley went to the three new marshals, just out of basic training. "How are you guys doing? I'm glad to see you," he said.

  John Chopski stepped up and shook Charley's hand. "I'm really glad to be on your team, Mr. Dey," he said.

  "It's Charley, John. Mr. Dey was my dad and he's dead and gone. OK?"

  The shaggy headed John, who looked like the college linebacker he had been, was pleased. "Okay, Charley."

  "I'm glad to have you here," Charley said. He looked at the other two marshals, both young women.

  The dark-haired one, very attractive with a sharp, intelligent look to her held out her hand and said, "I'm Joan Slyce, Charley. I was in the class before last."

  Charley noted her firm grip and said, "How come you're just getting assigned now?"

  "Clem Fiandalo told me to hold off until you got back on board as a team leader."

  "Clemmie knew I was going to be assigned as a team leader?"

  "A few weeks ago he told me."

  "I guess I need to talk to him."

  "He said to say hello to you, and to tell you to celebrate the anniversary of the Karachi 'We Are The World Tour.'"

  Charley laughed. "I'm going to have to know you better before I tell you that story." He turned to the tall blond woman who hung back during all the friendly banter. "It's Karen, right? Karen Rolling? Did you get all your gear and admin stuff taken care of?"

  Karen shifted uncomfortably and crossed her arms. "Yes."

  Charley studied her and mirrored her posture. "Are you looking forward to your first mission?"

  "I don't know," she said.

  Donald Gene came over and looked at her. "I remember you," he said. "We had to put you through judgment pistol shooting five times, didn't we?"

  "That instructor was trying to fail me," Karen snapped.

  "Seems to me you claimed he was trying something else," Don said.

  "That's none of your business."

  "Maybe you think so," Donald Gene said. "Let me tell you something. I don't give a shit whether you sit to pee or not. What I care about is that you carry your weight without any excuses. That's got nothing to do with you being a woman, it's about you being a marshal. You understand me?"

  Karen was red-faced. Stacy stepped in and said, "Word. You girls and me, we'll talk later. I'll get you taken care of. You leave these womens alone, D
onald Gene. I'll deal with them."

  Charley broke the tension. "Let's take a look at the pre-mission schedule."

  Karen turned away and seated herself at the table. Stacy looked at Don with a 'what?' expression on her face. The rest of the marshals seated themselves and Charley flipped through the stapled schedule.

  "Okay," he began. "First order of business is to run the qualification, test-fire the weapons and all that good stuff, refresh on hand to hand...anybody know if they've cleaned up the hand to hand pit?"

  "I checked," Donald Gene said. "We can all get hot and sweaty together there."

  "Good. Then we got tactics...Don, what is this?" Charley said, folding the schedule back to a page.

  "Well, buddy, I may have overlooked telling you that young Mr. Dinkey has developed a new tactical scheme that he wants us to use on this mission," Don said, poker faced.

  Charley stared at him. "Is he on drugs?"

  "Everybody seems to think so," Butch said. "Some of the boys in Unit 20 got into it with him in Miami. Seems he got on the plane right before the pax boarded and told them to change the whole seating configuration."

  "You have got to be shitting me. Who was the team leader?"

  "St. Germaine. He had Dinkey escorted off the plane."

  "No shit?" Donald said.

  "And when young Mr. St. Germaine got back to DC, they pulled him off the mission and got him humping ammo out here for the duration," Stacy added. "Word's getting out not to be messing with this Dinkey. He's the Administrator's golden boy."

  "Golden shower boy," Donald said.

  "That isn't right," Steve said. "That's a team leader call, not one for the desk marshals."

  "That's right," Charley said. He shook his head in disgust.

  Donald Gene grinned, a gleeful Satan. "Ooooh, I see trouble coming."

  ***

  There's an elegant kind of beauty in watching seasoned professionals come together as a team. Charley Dey watched his shooters run through their activation drills, the pre-choreographed responses to a hijacking incident. First they dry-fired the routine and refined their movements out of the seats. Then they went hot, firing quick and fast around and over each other, punching neat groups of holes in the noses of the pop-up targets. Steve was impressive as always. The Sig-Sauer looked tiny in his hands, locked as solid as a Ransom Rest on a bench. His shot groups, no matter what speed or angle to the target, could always be covered by a quarter. Steve, Butch and Jon were working well together, practicing two and three-man activations.

  Stacy worked with the two new women. She'd earned her stripes the hard way, coming into the program under the affirmative action mandate that required women and minorities in the cadre. Her skill and toughness had won over and convinced even the hard core male chauvinist shooters who had questioned the value of women and a mixed sex paramilitary operation. Charley had been one of the early doubters too. It hadn't taken him long to realize that the tough ex-military and police men he flew with could be easily identified and killed by terrorists. While terrorists regularly used women as operatives, they never seemed to consider the possibility that there might be women operatives on the other side, which gave the Air Marshals an edge. The women who carried their weight were cherished in the program. They were especially tough on each other, policing themselves as Stacy was doing now with Karen and Joan. Joan was forward leaning and aggressive, a good shooter, good at taking direction. Karen was stiff and defensive, but Stacy was working with her, first tongue lashing her, then sweet talking her.

  Donald Gene limped around, laughing and joking. He filled in on two and three man activations, going back and forth between the two loose groups working in the mock-up. Charley wasn't worried about Donald being ready; he was still the shooter he always had been. When it was time to switch on, Donald's face changed and he became one with his weapon, the targets falling before him as so many men had. There were few combat-tested veterans left in the Marshal cadre; Don was one of the few, along with Charley, who had refused further promotion so that they could stay on the teams. That experience and institutional memory was priceless, especially with the newer, younger generation of marshals.

  Charley worked into the activation drills and took his turn shooting with each of the buddy teams. He looked for weaknesses, filed away strengths, watched for the subtle signs of unit integrity that were so essential in this mission. The hand to hand pit was a good place for that. He watched the new marshals as they joined in the rough and tumble play he encouraged in the pit, where he could assess their aggressiveness and see how they handled themselves. Jon did well, bonding quickly with the quiet Steve, whose shooting he admired, and the older father-figure of Butch. There was a good mentorship situation growing there. Karen was still stiff, but he saw her laugh with the others when Stacy challenged Donald Gene in the pit and gave the ex-SEAL a real run for his money. Joan tackled big Steve. Charley had to laugh at the sight of the former Olympic bench presser slowly swinging his arm at the slight, dark-haired girl, who ducked under it and struck at his testicles.

  "Shit!" Steve yelled.

  "Sounding a little high there, big fella," Stacy crowed, her arm around Joan. "We'll keep this one, Charley!"

  Karen hung back. While it was usual for a new team member to be reticent, to be quiet, to hang back and look for acceptance, the massive chip on her shoulder concerned Charley. She was grinding an ax, but Charley wasn't sure for who. After her run-in with Donald Gene she had shied away from him. While he would never admit it, Don was downplaying his normal aggressiveness to give her a chance to come up to speed.

  In the evenings, when the team relaxed together in the lounge/recreation room, the getting-to-know-you process continued over beers and between games of pool.

  "Stacy, how long have you been flying?" Joan asked over her Coors.

  "Well, friend-girl, I was the daughter of a poor white sharecropper..." Stacy began in her story-telling voice.

  "Fuck you, you lying bitch. I was your daddy and you were the product of incest," Donald Gene said from the couch he was sprawled on. He laughed and ducked as Stacy launched a full beer can at his head.

  "You have the filthiest goddamn mouth of any human being on earth, Donald Gene, and I'm going to cut your nuts off you talk that shit to me again," Stacy said. She turned back to Joan, whose eyes were open wide in surprise and said, "Ignore that fool, honey. You watch out...he's got his eyes on those pretty tits of yours, and I'll kick your ass if you're dumb enough to sleep with this fool."

  "I'm young, but I ain't dumb," Joan said.

  "Word, friend-girl!" Stacy crowed, giving Joan a high-five. She leaned back, ignoring the leering Donald Gene. "I got started as a secretary. No, I ain't lying," she said at seeing the surprise in Joan's eyes. "I was working in Cleveland, and I wanted to try something new. I'd always been in sports, basketball, track, body-building. So when they come round looking for volunteers, I said, 'Stacy, get your young ass out here and show these mens what to do!'"

  "She's only here because she slept with an instructor," Donald said.

  Butch and Steve went "Uh oh."

  Stacy lunged at Don, grabbed his neck in a choke hold and wrapped her thickly muscled legs around his middle like a python. "What did I tell you, fool?" she growled. "How do you like me now, white boy?"

  Don choked and spat beer till Stacy let up.

  "You know, I'd kill your worthless ass if I didn't love you so much," Stacy said conversationally, from on top of Don's chest. "I carried this fool through his basic class. He'd never have made it without me."

  "You two were in basic together?" Joan said.

  "With Charley too, baby. The first class. I was one of three women in with thirty-two men."

  Charley nodded in agreement. He watched Karen, who was curled up in an easy chair, sipping a coke. She never took her eyes off Stacy while she told her story.

  ***

  Federal Air Marshal Unit 10 followed Charley Dey into the briefing room for their m
ission tactical brief. At the far end of the room, in front of the big screen monitor that displayed the seating schematic of a Boeing 747-200 series aircraft, Simon Dinkey stood talking with his assistant, Purdy. Charley and Don seated themselves at the opposite end of the table and the rest of the team filled in the remaining seats.

  Dinkey stood silently in front of the assembled team until he saw a few of them shift uneasily in their seats. "The purpose of this briefing is to outline the proposed tactical schema for securing a 747-200," Dinkey began.

  Don sat poker-faced, staring at Dinkey. "Bite your tongue, homeboy," he said softly. "Let the maggot have his say."

  Charley grunted.

  Dinkey began with the standard overview of the mission concept, outlining the basic seat positions that enabled the marshals to control and dominate the critical areas of the aircraft. He touched on the need for fire control and team work in engaging targets, reinforcing the concepts that Charley and Don had been refining and then installing in students for years. Charley leaned forward when Dinkey started to elaborate on individual responsibilities in activation.

  "...and so, the operator in this position will present his weapon and stand up in his chair..."

  "Excuse me?" Charley said. "Don't you mean get up out of his seat?"

  "No, I mean stand up on his seat," Dinkey said patiently. "He'll have better observation and coverage from up there."

  "Stand up on his chair. In the middle of a gunfight, in an aircraft flying at 30,000 feet, when the captain is going to be taking the plane down as fast as he can to 10,000 feet," Charley said in disbelief.

  "That's what I said, Dey. The advantages..."

  "We're not going to do that."

  Dinkey glanced over at Purdy, then back at Charley. "You'll do whatever you're directed to do, Dey," he said.

  Donald Gene leaned over to Charley and spoke softly into his ear. "Hey. Cool off. Tell him you think it's wonderful and of course we're going to celebrate his tactical genius by doing exactly what he says. And when we get out of here we'll do what we always do."

  Charley stared at Dinkey. "Absolutely right, Mr. Dinkey. Absolutely right."