Logic, practice drills, and the failed genuine attempts by a few to gain access to the airport demonstrated a confidence in the facility's security Smith should have felt but failed to believe in. Shirin Reyes was not like anyone else. If there was a flaw to be exploited, she would find it. A part of him hoped she would try.
He walked out into the space between the plane and the hangar. The rest of the security team gathered in a classic diamond formation, preparing to escort the first of the invited passengers aboard the plane.
Smith took a moment to look up into the empty sky, then stared out into the darkness of the mountain cliffs as though he could see through rock and earth. The black air had a cold dampness that hinted at something he couldn't put his finger on. Perhaps it was an anticipation, a hope, a preparedness for a life and death battle.
He likened it to the feeling ancient armies must have felt as they neared the top of a ridge to see an overwhelming force awaiting them on the other side. That quiet moment of stillness before the charge. Yes, he thought to himself, it was a time when his thirst for violence was more readily accepted.
The security team at the hangar door motioned they were ready. He took one last sweeping look at the airfield and waved them on to the tarmac.
21:19:17
The night vision goggles fixed firmly in place translated little vibration through the optical lenses as Shirin scrambled up the steep incline. Her hands helped stabilize her as her feet fought for purchase on the loose, rocky terrain. The heavy and bulky pack on her back made navigating the narrow, almost non-existent pathway more challenging than she had anticipated.
According to the old man, Zelig's plane was scheduled to take off at 21:40. She had fewer than twenty-two minutes. Grunting, she tightened the housings of the night vision goggles around her headband and pushed herself harder and faster up the mountain.
21:19:36
Ben and Robyn sat silently in the back seat of the taxi. They didn't discuss whether what they were doing was right or wrong or stupid. They were on their way to Nepean Hospital.
They were going to help Barratt. They didn't know how and couldn't verbalize why, but it was a shared understanding between them.
21:19:54
Barratt sat up at a forty-five degree angle in the hospital bed. He was still in the Recovery ward. The padding taped over his dressings was largely unnecessary, he thought. But he was grateful for the analgesics being pumped into his veins for dulling the pain ebbing back into his consciousness.
He was alive. He shouldn't be, but he was. He didn't know the extent of his injury yet, but he could move. He would heal and he would find the monster that put him there.
He panned the Recovery room, assessing. He was still groggy and hooked up to several IV lines and monitoring devices. Not feasible to slip out unnoticed. He decided to wait until he was transferred to a ward before escaping.
21:24:19
Director Zelig lifted the cuff of his designer shirt just enough to glance at the platinum Patek Philippe watch on his left wrist. It had been a gift on his last trip to Paris. Its original owner, the head of a large brokerage house, was at the bottom of the Seine. His death had been an unpleasant one.
Glancing at the €32,000 watch reminded Zelig of how far he had come in such a short time. He smiled a knowing smile. After tonight, he vowed, he could take the watch of any man, even the President, and no one would be able to stop him.
Looking out at the airfield from a private viewing room, he estimated his guests would finish boarding the plane within the next ten minutes. He wanted them to wait for him. It was a juvenile display of his power, but he didn't care.
Whether they openly admitted it or not, he was their master. By one device or another, he ruled their actions and their lives. He owned them.
21:29:31
Shirin could sense she was getting closer to the peak of the endless mountaintop. She was panting heavily now. The steep incline and the relentless pace of her climb were starting to show.
The heavy pack chafed along the small of her back, but she ignored the discomfort and powered on, not wanting to slow her ascent.
At this height, the air was thinner and colder; thankfully the underbrush began to recede in favor of a more barren landscape. It made racing up the last of the rises faster.
21:29:46
Ben paid the cab driver in cash. They had changed cabs three times on the way to Nepean Hospital. He wasn't sure if what he was doing was effective, but he'd seen Shirin do it, and in whatever way he could, he wanted to keep himself and his sister as safe as possible while they tried to help Shirin's friend.
Inside the hospital, Ben felt more in control again. He belonged there, and with that familiarity came a sense of confidence.
First stop, the locker room. He kept a spare uniform in his locker, and he would need to get Robyn a set of scrubs. In uniform with his ID tag, they would have almost unfettered access throughout the hospital.
Then they would find Shirin's friend, Barratt, and figure out a way to help him before any of the men chasing them found him.
21:31:14
Shirin reached the apex of the tall mountain. She dropped her heavy pack on the edge of the lone small dirt clearing, defined by low-lying shrubs and casually strewn rocks the size of basketballs.
At the end of the clearing, the small natural platform disappeared, dropping off in a sharp cliff edge, falling approximately four thousand feet to the wide plateau below.
Without her night vision goggles, she could easily have overstepped her position and fallen off the abrupt edge.
The cool night breeze brushed against her shirt, wet with perspiration. It was refreshing, and she was thankful for it. Kneeling down and bracing herself against a large rock, she had an angel's view of the ocean over the horizon and an unobstructed view of the airport and runway 1.4 miles to the east.
She packed away the night vision goggles and retrieved a pair of powerful binoculars from the backpack. The airport was not large. It had only one runway, but the land surrounding it had been cleared, and several layers of defensive fencing isolated access to it.
The distance and the glare on the ocean side of the airport made it hard for her to identify the subtle fortifications along the waterfront, but she knew that it too was well guarded and well patrolled.
She slowly traced the access road snaking around the peninsula leading into the secluded airport. The road was more like a private driveway. It was narrow and winding. It disappeared into the double barn doors of a large hangar.
She could just see the rear tail stabilizer of a medium-sized plane behind the large hangar. The rest of the plane was hidden, another security measure accounted for in the design of the airport. A high-powered sniper rifle from this vantage point would be useless.
Several dark sedans parked to the side of the hangar. She couldn't make out the plates in the dim light, but she had the sense that five out of the eight cars were government issue.
She had hoped the height of her position would vector over the large hangar so she could see the passengers boarding, but it didn't. Without a spotter and without satellite support, she had to work blind. She didn't trust the old man, but she believed him; Zelig would be on this flight. She looked at her watch. The plane would taxi out onto the runway soon.
Satisfied, Shirin returned to her backpack and started to carefully remove its contents.
21:33:56
Detective Leeds stood firm at the door of the enclosed ICU bay. He tried to focus more on keeping still and stoic rather than on the apprehension building up within him with each passing minute.
His mission was simple. Kill the patient who was brought into the room. Make it fast. Make it final. Hard to argue that level of simplicity with the men who owned him.
They didn't just own him, they owned his family, his career, his very life. Kill the patient. It wasn't hard. He was actually pretty good at following such orders. But this time was different.
&n
bsp; This time he had seen the old man, and the woman he had met with. He had done his best at the time to hide it, but he had recognized the woman. She was Shirin Reyes
He had seen her several years earlier. She looked different, but he knew it was the same woman. He would never forget her face.
He had been one of the first responders to the devastation at Williams Bridge. He was there when her husband died. He was there when she was scraped off the bitumen, bloodied, broken. And he was there when the feds and NSA task forces stormed in and mopped up the fiasco.
He had followed her career as a point of interest from that moment on.
If killing this patient as instructed somehow put him into her circle…well, that was a circle he wanted to stay very far clear of.
The head nurse had told him the patient was expected to be transferred within minutes. Detective Leeds cursed his life. No matter which way he looked at it, a whole lot of no good was heading his way.
21:36:28
Director Zelig walked up the gangway ladder briskly. He liked his movements to be fast, bullish, severe. To be perceived in any other way was a sign of mediocrity and weakness. And he was anything but mediocre or weak.
He nodded to the flight attendant at the door, a distinguished military man. His salute was still in mid-motion by the time Zelig passed him and entered the main cabin of the airplane. All conversations ceased. There was an instant silence, as though even the air around them froze in place.
There were two lines of first class seats on either side of the aisle. The first row and the rear rows were taken up by security personnel. The next two rows were for specially screened and chosen members of the press. The remaining five rows were allotted for Director Zelig and his guests.
Zelig broke the silent trance with a brisk wave and short thanks for attending this historic occasion. He looked each guest in the eye, as though intimidating them one by one.
With a grunt, he nodded almost to himself and took his seat. To his left, Agent Lipski was engaged in a quiet discussion on his cell phone and motioned to Director Zelig that he would be interested to hear the outcome of that call.
It annoyed him immensely that he would have to wait for Lipski to conclude the phone call, or that his junior agent would be the one disseminating information to him, but that was the nature of his position; he had to relinquish some control via delegation if he was to successfully rule the international espionage world.
Feigning disinterest, Zelig adjusted his expensive cufflinks, stole another satisfying glance at his Patek Philippe watch, and readied himself for take-off.
He clipped his seatbelt together and pulled the belt taut around his waist. Sitting back, he felt the plane gently moving away from the hangar, taxiing out to the runway.
21:36:28
Shirin tightened the leg strap over her upper left thigh, then the strapping over her upper right thigh. Both were snug and secure. She adjusted each shoulder strap, then fixed the chest strap.
The modified TonySuit Apache Wingsuit was prepped for pre-flight readiness. She had packed the parachute attached to her back herself, as she had overseen the modifications herself to the Wingsuit. She had tried it on and tested it. She had trust in it.
The military was slow to accept the Wingsuit's technology and potential, as was the intelligence world. It took a special kind of person to fly one on a mission, and with early failures, the powerbrokers of operations dismissed them until the technology could be improved to raise percentages of success.
To Shirin, that logic spoke of the meek and worked on the assumption that all agents were created equal. She was not.
She fitted the skydiving helmet in place, adjusted the chinstrap, lifted the visor, and fixed her binoculars out over the airfield again. The plane had not moved.
Shirin checked the gun holster sat her side underneath the wingsuit material, secured the clasps around the grips of both Berettas, and went through a final inventory of the utility bag tied to her waist.
She was ready.
21:40:05
Just under two miles away, the rear tail stabilizer of Director Zelig's plane started to move. From that distance, even the image through the Oberwerk 20x80mm binoculars was useful only to visualize general movement. For Shirin, that was enough.
The airfield was limited in potential with only one runway. It was shared for take-off and for landing. Given the nature of its use tonight, Shirin knew there would be no incoming flights. This location was remote to the point that flight controllers would have little issue with conflicting flight paths.
Once the plane was in line, it would go.
Shirin focused her attention on trying to identify the plane as it rolled out beyond the visual barrier of the hangar. She also needed to know on which side of the runway it would start its run.
The first prop came into view, then the second… It was a de Havilland. She was familiar with it.
Lowering the binoculars, Shirin quickly slipped her feet into the flight suit booties, closed the zips, and latched the magnets. She tested her grip by twisting her feet into the dirt. It was solid.
She pulled up the main suit zipper from foot to neck. Zipped her left arm in, then the right. The suit was flight ready.
Looking through the binoculars again, she could see the plane lining up on the near side of the runway at a constant pace. It would be in position in less than a minute.
Shirin bent down, collected the backpack from the ground, and flung it forward off the edge of the cliff. She wouldn't need it anymore. No matter what happened next, she would never return here. If she failed, she felt better knowing any evidence she may have left behind would be almost impossible to retrieve.
Adjusting the focus slightly, she could see the plane was at the end of the runway, halfway through its final turn. Once it was lined up, she knew it would go. She had to take off before it did. She kept watching it. Four seconds, three seconds, two seconds, one second, go!
Shirin tossed the binoculars off the edge, tightened the strap around her right wrist, her left wrist, closed the helmet visor, then took three long, fast strides to the edge of the cliff and jumped.
21:41:28
Time slowed as though the air was flash frozen, Shirin suspended over the edge of an awe-inspiring drop. Her arms were tucked at her sides and slightly behind, her legs neatly together, graceful. And then, the powerful forces of gravity smashed the stillness and sucked her down into the darkness of an endless abyss.
She was falling face first like a torpedo, black and invisible. She extended her arms out and felt her fall slow; then she spread her legs against the Wingsuit's fabric, and felt the webs between her arms and legs catch her weight.
Almost like a parachute opening, her fall seemed arrested, defying gravity.
Dropping her left shoulder slightly, Shirin twisted her torso, pulled taut with her legs, and felt the Wingsuit bank to the left and accelerate forward like a jet plane.
Skirting the edge of the mountain, Shirin calculated she was speeding forward about thirty feet for every ten feet lost in altitude. Knowing her suit, she could max just over two hundred miles per hour if she needed to.
Shirin adjusted her flight path to angle straight toward the left of the airfield. She could see Zelig's plane on the ground, in position for take-off. She knew instinctively she was still too far away.
Pitching her arms farther behind her, she pulled her legs farther apart, tilted her shoulders down and forward, and felt the Wingsuit respond instantly, driving her faster and faster.
The small vibrations of slicing her way through the air did little to distort her sense of sound or sight. Instead, she felt more alert and more aware of every detail around her. The paddock plains below reminded her vaguely of the rice fields she had flown over in the Philippines.
The sound of the accelerating engines winding up for take-off reached her before she was close enough to see the turning propellers. She had thirty seconds before the plane would be at it
s required acceleration for lift-off.
She was coming up behind the accelerating plane fast. She willed herself to fly faster, adjusted her limbs to maximize forward momentum, and focused her vision on the rear tail stabilizer of the de Havilland. She was 300 feet away, 250 feet, 200, 150 and closing fast.
The seventy-three-foot plane continued to increase its acceleration, with the end of the runway getting progressively closer. Shirin calculated she was screaming through the sky at approximately 190 miles per hour while the plane was still picking up speed, but only needed 165 miles per hour for lift-off. She had to slow down or risk overshooting it.
Moving her arms out and slightly forward, Shirin adjusted her speed.
Fifty feet. Forty feet. Thirty feet.
Coming up behind the plane, she could feel the turbulence of its 2000-hp engines. She fought to control the stability of her flight the closer she got to the large plane.
Twenty feet. Ten feet.
Shirin could almost reach out and touch the rear tail stabilizer as she passed over it. The slats over each wing were fully deployed. The nose of the de Havilland suddenly lifted off the runway. Its long body followed, pitching at four degrees, five degrees, six degrees…
Coming in quickly directly over the roof of the pilot cabin, Shirin pushed her arms forward, creating a sudden lift, then slowed her speed and tucked her arms and legs together as the main body of the plane rose ten degrees and met her in mid-air.
Shirin connected with the fuselage of the plane with a thud, almost knocking the air out of her lungs. Instantly she lifted her hands up to shoulder height, gripped the super electro-osmotic adhesive plates strapped around her wrists, and engaged the power button with her thumbs.
The adhesive plate of each device clunked onto the fuselage instantly, fusing her to the body of the plane. She had thirty minutes of continuous use for each plate before their power source depleted.
Against the Clock Page 21