on McLanahan's side was opened by some dark figure outside. He noticed no interior courtesy lights illuminated- someone had punched holes in the plastic lenses with a knife.
'Sorry for the mixups, Sergeant Jenkins,' McLanahan said in a low voice in keeping with the hushed, tense atmosphere.
'No problem, sir, ' Jenkins said. His walkie-talkie crackled, and he spoke a few words into it. Then, he added, 'Good luck,' and pulled the door closed. The car moved off and was soon lost in the darkness.
'I don't need luck,' McLanahan said to himself, looking around in the gloom. 'What I need is out of here.'
The ramp was completely dark-even the small blue taxiway lights leading from the runway were turned off.
McLanahan put the terminal on his right side and stepped forward ten paces, as carefully as if he was following a pirate's treasure map.
Somehow, he could feel people all around him, lots of eyes watching him, talking about him, but he couldn't see a thing. He could make out a large, seemingly deserted hangar behind him, its huge front bay door open like a dark cave entrance. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he spotted a few light single-engined Cessnas tied down to his left. The parking ramp was breezy and beginning to grow cold.
He made a motion to pull down his jacket sleeve and check his watch, but he suppressed that urge. This time, he was just going to stand and wait. Checking the time would only make him that much more impatient.
He zipped his jacket up all the way, shoved his hands in his pockets, and stood watching the runway McLanahan guessed that about fifteen minutes had passed since Jenkins dropped him off. His eyes were fully adjusted to the dark now.
There were small birds everywhere, jumping and peeping nervously around him. An occasional rabbit scampered down the asphalt, stopping every now and then to test the air and sniff for danger. Once McLanahan thought he heard the static of a walkie-talkie nearby, but he saw no one. He watched every plane that landed-there were only two-expecting it to pull up in front of him any minute, but they never did.
Another ten minutes passed-or was it another fifteen or twenty?The sky was beginning to clear, and the temperature was taking a noticeable dip. Whoever he was supposed to meet out here was going to find a frozen navigator Popsicle because McLanahan was determined not to screw it up again, even if it meant catching pneumonia. He stamped the cold from his sneakers a few times, then removed his hands from the pockets of his light nylon windbreaker and blew warm air on them.
Let's get on with it, boys, McLanahan said to himself. He blew on his palms once again, cursing the air nipping at his uncovered ears, and slapped two chilly palms together irritably.
He never heard the slap. At that exact instant, in the dark hangar directly behind him, a high-pitched whine erupted.
McLanahan jumped an easy six inches and spun quickly toward the noise.
As he turned, he was blinded by the glare of a set of four landing and taxi lighis aimed directly at him. He had completely misjudged the distance. The lights were less than fifty yards away.
The whine became a low, bellowing roar, and a twin-engined jet taxied rapidly from within the dark hangar, the blinding lights focused directly on the lone figure on the ramp. It seemed to leap out at him, like a tiger springing through a hoop at a circus. McLanahan could not have moved if he had wanted to.
The jet sped up beside him, the wingtip fuel tanks passing a mere five feet from where he stood anchored on the ramp. A curved airstair door was flung open, and a lone man with an Air Force-looking uniform grabbed McLanahan's upper arm with a tight grip and half-guided, half-dragged him to the doorway of the screaming jet.
He was guided with a push onto a hard airliner seat, and a seat belt was quickly yanked around him. The belt was snapped tight around his waist, and McLanahan felt a prickle of panic. They weren't concerned for his safety at all-they wanted him to stay put.
He watched as the man who had pulled him aboard placed a headset over his head and thrust his face forward. He ordered, 'ID card. Quickly' McLanahan was startled by the sudden command, and impulsively reached into his right back pocket where the card always was. It wasn't there.
He squirmed around and felt for the card in his left back pocket. Not there, either.
'Quickly!' the man said again. He pulled a boom mike near his lips and spoke a few clipped words into it. McLanah an glanced at a pair of wild-looking, dark eyes, then turned away as he furiously patted his pockets. Glancing toward the front of the jet, he saw the co-pilot leaning to his left into the narrow aisle between him and the pilot.
The co-pilot wore a camouflaged helmet and a green flight suit. With a start, McLanahan noticed the co-pilot half-concealing a stubby, short-barrelled Uzi submachine gun behind the cockpit curtain.
'Oh, shit,' McLanahan said. His hands flew over his pockets, finally finding the card in his left front pocket. He fished it out and held it up to the man pinning him in the seat, nearly clipping a piece of the man's nose off in the process.
The man snapped on a tiny red-beamed flashlight, examined the card, then swept the tiny beam of light across McLanahan's dumbfounded face.
The man's hard features softened a bit, washing clear with an immense sense of relief.
He pulled the mike closer to his lips and leapt to his feet.
'Let's roll, pilot,' he shouted, dropping the card in McLanahan's lap.
The Uzi peeking behind the curtain disappeared. The man with the headset scurried back and hauled up the airstair door and dogged it closed. A few short moments later, the jet was screaming skyward.
The guard wearily dropped into a seat across from McLanahan and took a moment or two to take a few deep breaths.
'Sorry about all that, Captain,' the man said after the plane was safely on its way. 'When you disappeared from the airport terminal, we got a little nervous. We may have overreacted a bit. I'm sorry if we got a little rough.'
'I'm the one who should be apologizing, I think,' McLanahan said, slowly recovering from his shock. 'I've handled this whole thing pretty irresponsibly Are you Major Miller, the one I was finally supposed to contact?'
The man laughed and nodded toward the e aulets on his shoulders. 'No, Captain. I'm First Lieutenant Harold Briggs. I work for the project coordinator. We are Major Miller.'
'Major Miller was a code name for you,' Briggs explained.
'Whenever you or someone from your unit mentioned Major Miller, my section was notified. I'm in charge of getting you to the project coordinator.'
'The project coordinator?Who is he?'
'You'll find that out soon,' Brigs replied. 'We're on our way, finally, to meet him. Meanwhile, if you need anything, just let me know. Call me Hal, please. I'll be working with you for the entire duration of the project.
'The project?'
'Yes, sir,' Briggs said, smiling. 'I can't tell you about that.
You'll have to see the project coordinator for that. But, I am your aide from now on.
'Aide, huh?' McLanahan asked. 'Well, I don't know if I can handle that. 'He extended a hand. 'Call me Patrick and can the 'sir' stuff, okay?'
'You got it. 'They shook hands, and Briggs stowed his headset in an overhead rack and flicked on a light. Hal Briggs was very, very young, with short-cropped black hair on top of a lean, thin face and dark brown eyes. He wore lieutenant epaulets on his blue fatigues, a pair of Army paratrooper's wings, and an Air Force Security Police badge over his left breast pocket. McLanahan noticed he wore a green webbed infantry belt over his blue Air Force trousers, but he couldn't see the weapon bolstered there.
'Sergeant Jenkins said something about me being tailed,' McLanahan said as Briggs opened a small refrigerator near his seat and pulled out a couple of beers.
'Yeah,' Briggs said, popping open his can and handing the other to McLanahan. Briggs tipped his can to McLanahan and took a long swallow.
'Call it youthful exuberance. When you showed up at the terminal, then suddenly disappeared, I got… nervous. I called Sergeant Jenkins, who was my backup out there from Fairchild, and I sounded the alarm.
Aoy, those O.S.I guys can move out.'
