“Hanratty, report!” the guardsman’s radio spat.
Even with the garbled sound of the cheap radio, I knew I would never pass my voice off as male. So much for the sergeant’s plan.
Figuring that Hanratty’s watch commander would immediately dispatch someone if he didn’t get an answer, I punched the button, giggled, and said, “He’s kind of busy right now. Do you want me to have him call you when he sobers up?” I held the radio out at arm’s reach, giggled again, and said, “Stop that! I’m talking to your boss.” Then I hit the switch and cut it off. I didn’t know if I had slowed down a search party or not.
Sergeant Crossno had reached the lighted area. I saw him gather himself to sprint the rest of the way to the plane. So far, I hadn’t seen anyone else on the tarmac, and no alarms had been raised. I lay prone, the rifle cradled in my arms, and scanned the area, looking for any movement.
Crossno leaped forward, running as fast as he could toward the plane. The plane itself shielded him from sight of anyone on the first three floors of the tower building. I held my breath and waited. When he crossed into the shadow of the plane itself, I allowed myself to breathe. He reached up and touched one of the engines, then immediately dropped to the ground.
I could feel the electrical systems of the plane through the magitek box. The engines were turned off, so I couldn’t feel anything mechanical. But the major thing was that I could feel the three magitek devices on board.
The sergeant waited for five minutes, then leaped to his feet and ran back toward me. He almost reached the shadow line when I heard a sound like a shout from the direction of one of the low buildings to the right of the tower. Crossno must have heard it, too, because he dropped into a crouch, but kept running.
I swung my rifle to point in the direction of the shout. Peering through the magitek-enhanced telescope mounted on the rifle, I searched for movement. Just as Crossno got back to my position, I saw a man wearing mechanic’s overalls standing at the door of one of the buildings.
“Gather up your stuff,” I told the sergeant, “and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Aren’t you going to do something to the plane?”
“Later. Let’s go.” I slithered through the hole in the fence and melted into the shadows of the forest. He followed me.
Chapter 51
We soon found the main commando unit and the rest of my team. I set the magiteks to disabling the helicopters and small airplanes we could see on the ground. It was pretty basic stuff to simply break an engine or some of its components and could be done at a distance. Very different than what I would need to do to the intercontinental jet sitting out there.
Then I called Osiris.
“We ran into a problem,” I told him. “A pair of guards stumbled onto us, and we had to disable them. But they’ve already been missed. I’m afraid you might have to modify your timetable.”
I went on to tell him about the Akiyama jet.
“I wondered how Hiroku managed to sneak into North America,” Osiris said. “A full-sized cargo plane landing on a short airfield? Could you modify planes to do that?”
I sighed. “Yes, and I became a cop to avoid spending my life doing it. Osiris, do you have any idea how boring it is to do something like that day in and day out?”
He chuckled. “But, I assume you could teach another magitek how to do it? Dani, you sound as though that plane is something ordinary, but Findlay doesn’t have a single plane in our fleet that’s enhanced like that.”
“Oh. It shouldn’t be very difficult. I’ll tell you what, I’ll take some notes before I destroy it, okay?”
All the Akiyama magitek had done was put enhancers on the jet engines and install a magitek converter and a baffling system, similar to the one I’d installed on my police car but a lot larger. The enhancers increased the engine’s thrust, and the baffles increased the plane’s lift. I was sure the G-forces at liftoff would be a little uncomfortable, but the effect wouldn’t last more than a few seconds.
“But what about the assault?” I asked. “Are you still going to wait until tomorrow?” It was almost dawn, and the original plans called for troops landing on the peninsula at two-thirty the following morning.
“I’ll get back to you.”
We sat in the woods outside the fence, about fifty yards from where most of the aircraft sat. I covered my anxiety by spending my time creatively disabling several of them. On one helicopter, I froze the ball bearings in the tail rotor assembly. On another, I disabled the air intake for the main engine. A small propeller-driven airplane suffered an electrical problem.
Around noon, I snuck around to where Sergeant Crossno and I had been the previous night.
Sloppy and arrogant, the Moncrieff guardians hadn’t investigated as thoroughly as they should have. The hole I had cut in the fence was still there, but the one Sergeant Crossno had cut a hundred yards away had been patched. I wondered what rationale they came up with to explain to themselves the one hole and their patrol’s ambush.
When I got in range of my box affixed to the giant jet’s engine, I used it to disable the two magitek enhancer boxes built into the engines. The boxes were still there, still functional, but no longer connected to the engines. Then I cast a spell into the baffle assembly to reverse the baffle’s thrust.
I didn’t think my alterations would be noticeable, even to another magitek. But without a significant amount of work, that plane was never going to reach the speed necessary to take off from that
