“This committee is not a Presidential rubber stamp, Admiral,” Lowe snapped. “Our respective staffs have been working overtime on this problem, and we’ve all come up with the same conclusion: we don’t need the military anymore.”
“In my opinion we never did,” FBI Director Wilkes said. “All we needed was a little more cooperation, and this situation probably could’ve been solved earlier.”
“We don’t want to totally dismantle the emergency system or cut out the military,” Mersky said. He opened his staff’s summary sheet and went on: “I propose the following: we keep all military surveillance in place except for the fighter interceptors. We keep the short-range ground-based air defense systems in place, namely the mobile Avenger Stinger systems, but deactivate all Patriot and HAWK systems. Airport and aircraft security will stay at maximum levels, with security situations reevaluated daily on a case- by-case basis. We deactivate all emergency air cordons in Class B airspace, but we mandate that all aircraft in Class B airspace must be on a flight plan—no aircraft allowed in Class B airspace with pop-up clearances.”
“Any other discussion?” Lowe asked.
“Discussion seems to be pointless,” Skye said.
“Very well,” Lowe said. “I move that Secretary Mer- sky’s and the Department of Transportation’s recommendations be adopted by the committee and presented to the President immediately.” The motion was seconded and approved. The Secretary of Defense’s representative voted in the affirmative for General Skye, and, because he had been suspended from the Executive Committee on Terrorism, Hardcastle’s negative vote was counted as an abstention. “Thank you all. Our next meeting will be tomorrow morning, unless the situation changes. General Skye, I don’t think we’ll require your presence unless a member of the committee requests it.”
“Fine with me, General Lowe,” Skye said. “This little game of power politics is a total waste of my friggin’ time anyway. But I’ll tell you this, Miss Lowe: I’m sending my strongest reservations about this committee’s actions up my chain of command. I’m advising the Chief of Staff of the Air Force that your recommendations do not reflect my opinion, and I’ll ask that he present my opinions to the Secretary of the Air Force and on to the White House— frankly, I don’t trust you to give the President the word for me. It’s nothing personal, General Lowe ...” Skye paused, looked at Lowe, then shrugged and said, “Okay, it is personal. In my humble and insignificant opinion, any person who lets her people, even guys like Hardcastle, hang out to dry like you did and ignores all the danger signs around her is an asshole—ma’am. And any committee who allows all of the above to happen on their watch should be publicly kicked in the ass.”
“I encourage free expression in my meetings, General Skye,” Lowe said tightly, “but now I’m giving you fair warning—get control of your tongue and your attitude before they get you into serious trouble.”
“My comments are totally on the record, ma’am—I trust they’ll stay there.”
“Count on it, General,” Lowe responded bitterly.
“Then my apologies if I’ve offended anyone—you know who you are,” Skye said, collecting his papers and rising to depart. “I hope the President knows what he’s doing, that’s all.” He got to his feet and dismissed himself from the meeting; Hardcastle, Vincenti, and Sheehan followed.
“I hope you get around to busting Skye’s nuts when you get a chance,” Wilkes said after the rest of the committee had departed.
“Skye’s already dug himself a hole he can’t crawl out of,” Lowe said. “We’ve got a bigger concern to talk about—namely, the President’s fund-raiser in California.”
“Security will be airtight,” Lani Wilkes said. “The President will be perfectly safe, especially once we get those missiles and fighters put away.”
“I agree,” Lowe said. “But I need all your best efforts on making sure that the body you got in the morgue is Cazaux, and that his organization is shut down. I’m putting the President’s security in your hands because you said you could handle it.”
“It’ll be taken care of, General Lowe,” Wilkes assured her.
“It’d better be,” Lowe said. “The President’s advance team deploys in less than two days from now, and once they’re on the road, every crazy and nut case will be out there hunting the President down.” She silently looked at the FBI Director for a moment, then added, “Frankly, Judge, you’ve been one step behind the Marshals and Hardcastle this entire crisis. In case you’ve forgotten, there’s an election coming up next year, and how the President reacts to this crisis is important. He wants to be seen in the sky and on the road again, and he doesn’t want to be seen hiding behind F-16 fighters or Patriot missiles—or too many government agents.”
Pease International Tradeport Portsmouth, New Hampshire Two Nights Later
Pease International Tradeport was once Pease Air Force Base, a small but vital Strategic Air Command bomber base, closed in 1990 and converted to civilian use. The eight large hangars that once housed B-52 Stratofortress bombers and KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling tankers now housed a collection of small fixed-base operators servicing light civilian planes—one hangar now held two dozen light planes in the same space that once could house only one B-52. The base operations building had been converted into a Bar Harbor Airlines commuter terminal, flying passengers throughout New England.
The original company which gave Pease Tradeport its “international” designation was Lufthansa Airlines, who in 1992 built a modern office complex in nearby Kittery, Maine, and converted three of the large maintenance hangars at Pease to a jumbo aircraft refurbishment and inspection facility, one of the most modern facilities of its kind in the world. The location was perfect—within an hour’s flying time of six of the top ten busiest airports in North America, close to many European and Asian transpolar flight routes, good schools, generous tax incentives, no income tax, a rural atmosphere but close to Boston and the high-tech Route 128 Corridor of northeastern Massachusetts. Pease International Tradeport was on the verge of becoming a major American airport, a vital reliever to already crowded and expensive Boston-Logan International.
Its popularity and success soon became its number-one problem. There had been two major crashes per year since the facility was opened.
Seacoast-area residents, backwoods environmentalists, and perturbed rich Massachusetts vacationers with beach homes in the Vineyard and Narragansett kicked the golden goose and told Lufthansa to scale back; indignant Lufthansa did them one better and left for the open arms, tax breaks, and relative peace of Raleigh, North Carolina. Pease International Tradeport became a virtual ghost town practically overnight.
But there were still high-tech heavy jet maintenance facilities at Pease, so occasionally the three-thousand-pound Cessnas would get a visit from one of their three-hundred- thousand-pound cousins. The busiest destination was Portsmouth Air, which leased about a third of Lufthansa’s aircraft refurbishment facility at Pease but still struggled to stay in business.
The Boeing 747-200 jetliner with Nippon Air livery had been flown into Pease the day after its prepurchase inspection at Mojave, and since then was locked away inside one of the remodeled hangars, one big enough to house the entire plane instead of leaving a tail section sticking out through a hole in the hangar doors. The hangars were designed to allow environmentally safe aircraft painting, completely sealing toxic fumes in and allowing multiple painting crews to work at the same time. Tanker trucks filled with paint were brought in to repaint the airliner, and work continued on for several days.
Pease’s air traffic control tower closed at nine p.m., and by nightfall the airport was silent, but it was not unusual to get after-hours traffic. At several minutes past one a.m., a Piper Aerostar twin-engine plane self-announced on Pease’s tower frequency, entered right traffic for runway 30, and lined up to land. Since Pease was one of the pilot’s favorite and frequent destinations, he knew it was best to stay high and delay landing until aft
er midfield, still with six thousand feet of runway remaining, in order to shorten the taxi time to the general aviation ramp on the northern half of the field. No problems with the landing, no problems taxiing clear of the runway and heading toward the dead-quiet transient parking ramp. The pilot noticed activity at the Portsmouth Air maintenance facility, but that was normal—those guys worked day and night on the few jumbo jets that came in these days.
Everything was going fine until the pilot, by himself in jthe Aerostar, decided to shut off the electric fuel-boost pumps after turning onto the parallel taxiway. Seconds later, both engines sputtered and quit, vapor-locked. He nearly drained his battery trying to restart an engine. Disgusted, he braked to a halt, shut his plane down except for the strobes to keep another plane from ramming his Aerostar, grabbed his briefcase, locked up, and headed toward the terminal to find someone to help him tow his six- thousand-pound plane to the ramp.
The general aviation FBO and the Bar Harbor Airlines terminals were long closed. The only other sign of life at the airport was Portsmouth Air, so he walked over to the huge hangar complex. The complex was surrounded by a twelve-foot fence topped with barbed wire,, but a Cypher- Lock gate near the parking lot was not fully closed, so the pilot walked in. The front door to the main office was locked. He walked around the offices to the west side of the hangar itself and tried another door—locked too. But just as . he walked past it to find another door, the steel-sheathed l door banged open, someone loudly hawked and spit outside, then let the door go—whoever it was never saw the pilot behind it. The Aerostar pilot caught the door before it closed and stepped inside the hangar ...
. . . and what he saw inside made his jaw drop in surprise—it was Air Force One, the President of the United States’ plane!
The huge Boeing 747 airliner completely filled the hangar. White on the top, light blue and black on the bottom, with a dark-blue accent running from the upper half of the nose section and sweeping along the mid-fuselage windows to the tail, it was an awesome sight to behold. The pilot, a professor at Dartmouth, knew that Air Force One used to come to Pease quite often when President Bush would fly here on his way to his family retreat in Kenneb- unkport years ago, but he never had the chance to see him or his entourage arrive—now he was getting a good firsthand look at one of the most distinctive planes in the world!
He could plainly see the words united states of America on the side of the fuselage, although the lettering looked . .. well, a bit sloppy, not even or symmetrical at all. He was near the tail section, and he could see the Air Force chevron at the base of the vertical stabilizer, and the . serial number 28000 and the American flag midway up the vertical stabilizer, painted as if the staff side were forward and the flag were stretched taut and blowing aft. The smell of paint fumes was very strong—it looked as if Air Force One was getting a touchup or a good cleaning. Funny—the pilot never would’ve guessed they’d do maintenance on Air Force Ones up here in little Portsmouth, New Hampshire, although they’d obviously keep that kind of information se- i cret.
The pilot began walking toward the front of the plane, under the right wingtip. He passed a few workers, but they didn’t pay too much attention to him. He stood along the wall of the hangar, watching a guy painting the Seal of the President of the United States near the nose, and, like the lettering on top, the paint job on the seal was passable but not very professional. It looked okay from a distance, but up close it—
“Excuse me, sir,” he heard. The pilot turned and was confronted by a tall, very mean-looking guy with short- cropped hair, wearing a dark-green flight suit. He looked like a Marine Corps aviator. He looked mean and nasty enough to kill with his bare hands, but fortunately he seemed in a good—or at least a forgiving—mood. “This is a restricted area.”
“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: wh
at 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! ”
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