Austin watched with grim satisfaction as the man plummeted to the ground headfirst. He hit the concrete with a sickening crunch, his skull shattering beneath the balaclava and his back and neck breaking in multiple places.
I hope you were dead before the fall, but too bad if you weren’t. Austin was too tired for sympathy, especially for someone who had just shot him.
The sirens grew louder, and he knew help had almost arrived. His eyes felt heavy, and he put his head down on the ground, looking at the dead operator seventy-five feet away from him, blood from his ruined head leaking through the black mask and darkening the concrete.
So much for an easy training day, he thought, and passed out.
PART II
SPACE COWBOYS
CHAPTER 7
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
Chantilly, Virginia
1130 EST
Although connected to Dulles International Airport by a mile-long concrete road composed of the same material as the runways, the Udvar-Hazy Center was isolated, surrounded by woods, fences, and fields. In addition to Dulles to the north, the Fairfax County Police Department Driver Course and a business park—complete with a private school—were directly to the west on the back side, less than 175 yards away. The only public access road to the museum was the Air and Space Museum Parkway, connecting Route 28 to the east and Route 50 to the west. More important than its location, however, was the facility itself—a living and breathing monument to every little boy’s dream of flight, space exploration, and adventure.
A massive structure that was awe-inspiring upon approach, the facility was composed of several buildings of shiny steel, glass, and concrete. From the parking lot, a visitor first spotted the huge cylindrical IMAX museum on the right, connected by a single-story glass building to one of the hallmarks of the museum—the 164-foot Donald D. Engen observation tower. From there, visitors could watch airplanes land and take off from Dulles Airport next door, complete with a resplendent background of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The multistory, black-glass main entrance was left of the tower, and farther past the entrance was the museum store and the sole restaurant—a McDonald’s. As impressive as the facade was, it was the enormous hangar behind the front buildings that was the centerpiece of the museum.
The Boeing Aviation Hangar was one thousand feet long, approximately one hundred feet wide, and one hundred feet high. The walls and ceiling of the structure were white with enormous HVAC tubes hung on each side halfway up the full length of the hangar. A series of interconnected walkways linked one side to the other, bisecting the cavernous space and passing, suspended, by one of the main attractions—the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, famous for dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. In addition to the Enola Gay, nearly two hundred aircraft from all periods of aviation were on display, hanging dramatically from the ceiling, resting on the floor, or mounted on various pieces of machinery that raised the aircraft. It was a dizzying display of technological marvels that was a testament to mankind’s ingenuity and quest for glory by defying gravity.
Even though the pièce de résistance was the main hangar, beyond the hangar was an additional space—the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar, which contained the space shuttle Discovery and other dazzling exhibits. To the left of the exhibit, a second-floor walkway led through a door and overlooked the huge glass-enclosed restoration hangar. Other areas that served various functions—processing, storage, archives—were beyond the restoration hangar but inaccessible to the public.
The first thing that John Quick noticed when he walked through the main entrance was the constant thrum of humanity, like a live wire that crackled through the atmosphere. He saw through the atrium into the main hangar beyond, the glimpse only hinting at the size of the gargantuan space. Oh my God. This is going to be a nightmare.
A late-fiftyish African-American federal police officer in a white short-sleeve shirt and black pants waved him over to the security desk as John heard Amira say “Wow” behind him. That about sums it up.
As they neared the desk, John opened his mouth to speak, but the guard held up a hand as the radio on his belt crackled. John reached into his pants for his FBI badge when the guard looked at him and waved it away dismissively, revealing a tattoo on his right upper arm that was partially hidden by the sleeve.
“Roger, sir. I’ll walk them down myself,” the guard said into the push-button handset attached to his left shoulder. “Be down in less than a minute.” The guard focused his attention on John and Amira, momentarily pausing at the strikingly beautiful woman dressed in black yoga pants and light-purple Under Armour zipped hoodie.
“No need for that, Mr. Quick. Your friend is already downstairs in the security operations center. They spotted you from the overhead cameras the second you walked through the door. Let’s get you down there so you can join the party,” the guard said.
“Where’d you serve? Saw our beloved Eagle, Globe, and Anchor on your arm,” John said, as the man stepped from behind the desk and motioned to a staircase on the right side of the atrium.
“I did twenty-six years with the Marine Corps and retired in 2007 after two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.” The guard eyed John cautiously, as if assessing the fit, rugged newcomer. “What about you? I can see it on you. When did you get out?”
John smiled. “It always shows, no matter how hard we try to hide it. I got out in 2004 after twenty years. Last tour was in Fallujah,” he added, but left it at that. No need to reopen the horrors of that operation, especially since the ones responsible are all dead.
The guard nodded as they walked down the stairs, as if contemplating the answer to a complicated math problem. “The name’s Anthony. I help run this show. Nice to meet you, Mr. Quick.”
“Call me John, and this is Amira, and she was not in the Marine Corps,” John added.
“I could’ve told you that,” Anthony replied.
“How so?” John asked as they reached the bottom of the stairs.
The guard stopped, looked at Amira, and said in a friendly and flattering way, “No offense, ma’am, but you’re too damned beautiful. Let’s go.” Anthony motioned to a set of glass doors to the left of the stairs. “That’s your stop.”
As they walked side by side, John leaned in and said, “You know he’s talking about me, right?”
“Moron,” Amira said in a hushed tone.
“All day long,” John said, and smiled. “All day long.”
CHAPTER 8
Lau Han sat at a table closest to the tinted glass of the McDonald’s, which afforded a full view of the front entrance. A Chinese man in his late fifties, black hair falling casually across his forehead and a new Nikon DLSR camera hanging around his neck, he blended in with the endless supply of tourists at the museum.
Dressed in a tan polo and white shorts, he slowly sipped the McCafé latte he’d purchased after his unhealthy lunch of a Quarter Pounder—no cheese—and french fries. How could Americans eat this filth? Years of living in Europe and the Mediterranean had spoiled him, and he’d become accustomed to the fine cuisine in Greece, including fresh calamari snatched from the coast of the Aegean Sea.
I loathe this country, he thought, the anger that had been a smoldering ember for the last six months suddenly burning brightly at the sight of John Quick and a beautiful light-skinned woman of African—I think it’s African—descent walking up the steps to the front entrance. The casual observer might have noticed a subtle change on Lau Han’s face, a flash of rage in the eyes that glowed with hatred, but it was gone just as quickly. Not the actual rage. That was never gone, not since Lau Han’s son, Lau Gang, had been killed in Sudan six months ago while conducting a covert operation—one for which Han had recommended him—for both the Organization and China.
It was guilt that consumed him, knowing that he’d sent his only son to die, brutally killed, either at the hands of the man he saw walk in the front door or someone else. They’d prevented Lau Ga
ng from successfully completing his mission, but Han didn’t care about that, not anymore. The only thing that mattered now was revenge.
He’d known that his son was impulsive, and he’d counseled him to make his decisions as calculatedly and dispassionately as possible. Han had seen in his son the potential to be a master spy for China’s Ministry of State Security, even though it wasn’t the MSS that was Han’s true benefactor—it was the Organization. He’d recruited Gang into the real shadow world, a world in which very few clandestine operatives dwelled but also where the real power was wielded. Unfortunately, that world and the secret rebellion occurring in it had killed him.
Han had sided with the members of the Council who sought to exercise the power the Founder so rarely utilized. He understood a key fact of human existence—conflict was continuous. There was no end to it, ever. The Founder naïvely believed he could manage it through small operations, but Han understood—real change required major actions. And that was what Gang was attempting to do when he’d been killed—bring about major change, a change that the members of the Council could manage once the tipping point was reached.
In fact, bringing the world to the brink had been the real objective, but his son had fallen short, paying with his life. The rebelling members on the Council had planned for the possibility of failure, but while they planned strategically, Lau Han planned emotionally. After months of calculations fueled by revenge, he’d contacted the Recruiter, and he’d devised a plan that could serve both the purposes of the rebels on the Council and his own.
It was why Lau Han sat in a McDonald’s restaurant, knowing that all the players—his and theirs—were now in the arena. John Quick and his partner had been the last to arrive to the battlefield of his choosing, and only one word reverberated in his lizard brain—revenge. The day had finally come, and Lau Han was eager to get started.
* * *
Udvar-Hazy Security Operations Center
Unbeknownst to Lau Han, Logan West was focused on the same thing, although he called it something slightly different—vengeance for the death of Mike Benson. But unlike Lau Han, Logan knew that the physical compulsion for vengeance—it’s revenge, Logan, his subconscious told him, pure and simple—was dangerous and self-destructive. He was self-aware enough to recognize how serious the compulsion had become when he’d had the nearly uncontrollable desire to pummel a driver who’d cut him off and nearly caused an accident on I-95. He was used to careless drivers—he had to be, navigating the treacherous concrete death traps of the DC Beltway—but it’d taken him more than the normal ten or twenty seconds to calm down. He’d actually considered following the reckless offender, until he recognized how irrational that behavior would be, especially for a man leading one of the most clandestine units in the US government.
As a recovering alcoholic more than two and a half years sober, he knew that obsessing over Mike’s death was both dangerous and an insidious and destructive form of resentment with no tangible object for his frustration. Instead, he internalized the anger and outrage, doing his best to conceal it from his wife and closest friends. Yet it was always there, just under the surface, as if taunting him from his Freudian id, daring him to deny it what it wanted—payback in blood. And in light of the first substantive lead they’d had in the last six months, the monster was itching to be let out of the cellar.
Not yet, Logan thought, and exhaled, staring at the bank of camera monitors that filled the entire back wall of the security operations center.
“We have cameras on every support beam in both the main and space shuttle hangars. We pretty much have line of sight over ninety-nine percent of the square footage in the museum. You can actually see them, if you look up and know what you’re looking for,” Lieutenant Ricardo Christenson said.
A former Army Ranger who’d separated after ten years as an officer with multiple deployments to Afghanistan, he’d had enough of war. Having lost several friends in combat, he’d taken what he considered the easy alternative—stability and a federal law enforcement position. Working his way through the bureaucratic quagmire—which was often especially burdensome for federal police—he’d spent his entire career at the Udvar-Hazy Center, until one day, after promotion after promotion, he found himself the officer in charge of security for the entire facility. He’d been grateful, and he hadn’t looked back for one second, especially with a seven-year-old daughter and a wife who cherished the fact that he came home every night.
“They look like wireless routers, but the antennas actually transmit the video signal, as there was no way to run wiring a hundred feet up to the center of the ceiling, not in a massive place like this,” Lieutenant Christenson continued.
“It’s impressive,” Logan replied as he continued to study the wall of monitors. “But I don’t know how the hell we’re going to spot the man we’re looking for. There are so many people,” he said, almost in disbelief.
Logan looked from monitor to monitor, until he stopped on one that was centered on the Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird spy plane just past the main entrance into the massive hangar. A man with a short beard, dark-blue jeans, light-blue polo, and a black Oakley backpack studied the world’s fastest jet-propelled aircraft, snapping an occasional picture.
“Check this out, John,” Logan said, as John walked over to the screen. “Fits right in, doesn’t he?”
John scoffed and leaned in for a better look. Cole Matthews “fit in” as a tourist about as much as John Quick did as a seminarian.
“You really think the Recruiter is going to show up today?” John asked.
“Honestly, I have no idea, but it’s the first real break we’ve had. We have no choice; we have to see it through.” Logan turned to Amira. “Interested in getting in on the action? Since they know who John and I are, you and Cole are the next best things. I’d even rank you above him, but don’t tell him that, it will hurt his fragile ego.”
“You know, sometimes you’re almost as bad as your boyfriend here,” Amira responded.
“Not in this lifetime. He’s got me beat six ways to Wednesday . . . or whatever that stupid day of the week is,” Logan added with a grin.
Amira looked at the monitors once again, deciding on a location. “I’m going to roam the suspended walkways and try to stay on the top level. It’s got a view of the entire floor and walkways below.”
She inserted a miniature wireless earbud that would be invisible under her hair, which was pulled back in a ponytail but covered her ears.
“I’ll start the app on the phones and dial in John and Cole once you walk out of here,” Logan said, referring to the software program they’d purchased to protect their internal communications, especially in a public venue like the museum. The software utilized the wireless Internet service at the museum, sending 256-bit, unbreakable, encrypted voice and text messages between the phones.
“Keep me posted if you spot him. Otherwise, I’m going to go do my best to pretend I’m interested in the scenery,” Amira said, and headed for the door.
“Whoa!” John said. “How can you not be into this place? It’s every kid’s dream!”
“No,” Amira said. “It’s every boy’s dream. I’m a grown-up. I’ll stick to gun ranges and obstacle courses. That’s what gets my adrenaline going,” she said, winked, and walked out the door.
“That’s why I love her,” John said, and looked at Logan. “And why I’m totally doomed.”
“I have zero sympathy for you. It must be so hard to have such a beautiful and formidable woman at your side,” Logan quipped. “Now pull up a chair, try not to talk, and let’s see if we can spot this sonofabitch. Otherwise, it’s going to be—”
Logan’s phone rang before he had a chance to complete the sentence or initiate the encrypted application. He looked down and saw “Jake” flashing across his screen.
“It’s Jake. I told him we’d update him if something breaks,” Logan said as he answered the call.
“Hi, Jake. What’s up? We’re ju
st getting everyone into position here, but I don’t have anything for you yet,” Logan said to the director of the FBI and a man he considered family.
“It’s not that. I know you have that under control. There’s been an incident, an attack—actually, more like a ruthless execution,” Jake Benson said.
This isn’t good. His voice has an edge to it, Logan thought. “What happened?”
“A highly trained team ambushed the director of the NSA’s two-vehicle convoy on the BW Parkway. They incapacitated his entire security detail—leaving them alive—but then they shot the director point-blank in the middle of the road.”
“Jesus Christ,” Logan muttered, knowing the director was a Marine general, one of the good ones, from what he’d read about the man. The suppressed anger was suddenly at full throttle. For Logan, an attack on one Marine was an attack on all. Stay calm, he told himself, and breathed deeply.
“It gets worse. These guys were so brazen, they did this right next to the Rowley Secret Service training facility. They used the helipad the Secret Service has as an LZ, landed a helicopter that was apparently painted like a local Fox News bird, and then took off, after they shot an agent who’d been training on one of the ranges.”
“How’s the agent?” Logan asked, dreading the likely answer.
“He’s going to make it, but he didn’t go down without a fight. He shot and killed one of them as the bird was lifting off. Even though it’s a Secret Service training center and we’ve got multiple agencies and jurisdictions, we’re sending an FBI forensics team to see if we can get a quick ID on the body,” Jake said.
“Good for him, taking one out,” Logan said, his blood pressure slowly decreasing with the knowledge that at least one of the murderers had been stopped, cold. “Any idea where they went?”
“Negative. The smart bastards knew what would happen and planned for it. By the time Anne Arundel County PD got their police helicopter in the air, the team was long gone, but the real Fox News helicopter had arrived on scene.”
Field of Valor Page 6