“I’m not bluffing about tomorrow, I swear. At one minute after noon, I’m a civilian. I give you my word.”
“Just go,” she said and walked up the stairs.
Pete looked in from the kitchen entrance, disappointment plain in his eyes.
Wentz held up his hands. “Pete, I’m sorry, man.”
“It’s all right, Dad. You gotta obey your orders.”
“When the crabs are done, stick a few in the fridge for me.”
“Okay, Dad.”
Wentz seethed, humiliated. He glared at Hamilton, then looked up the stairwell.
“Joyce?”
No response.
“Joyce! Don’t forget! Tomorrow, noon. Be there!”
Wentz turned and left the house. “You sons of bitches,” he said right to Hamilton’s face. “I ought to bust you down to E-1. I could, you know that?”
“I’m just doing my job, sir.”
“Your job isn’t to fuck up my life. I ought to transfer the lot of you to our tracking site in Nord, Alaska. See how you big bad SP’s like some of that shit.”
“We apologize for the inconvenience, sir.”
Guilt loomed behind Wentz like some huge, subcarnate shape as he walked down the driveway and got into the government sedan.
When the sedan drove away, Wentz had no idea in the world that he would never see his wife and son again.
—
CHAPTER 5
Officially, Andrew’s Air Force Base was not a test site. Officially, it functioned as the main transport hub for the Washington Military District and the President’s primary personal airport.
He had no time to change into his Class-A’s, but that was fine with him and his current mood. He was about to meet the four-star general who’d destroyed his weekend less than twenty-four hours before his retirement.
Hence, Wentz found it appropriate to report in jeans, sneakers, and a New York Yankees t-shirt, smelling like cat food and bay water.
Hamilton and his AFSS apes escorted him to Section HQ, the CO’s office.
Somehow Wentz wasn’t surprised to see that the CO was not there.
Two Technical Services men were leaving just as Wentz was about to enter: Wentz was used to the sight. They’d swept the office for bugs and other potential live surveillance devices, magged the walls for passive mikes, and placed static grids over the windows to block a reflective-laser tap.
Tech Services, in other words, meant serious business.
The first thing Wentz saw when he entered were two rows of four stars. What he saw next was the tight, sallow face of a man nearing sixty, Westmoreland-ish, sharp-eyed in spite of the price of his years.
Wentz approached the desk, snapped to attention, and saluted. Less than enthusiastically, he said, “General Jack Wentz, B Squadron, 41st Test Wing, reporting as ordered, sir.”
His host sloppily returned the salute. “Drop the protocol, Wentz. I’m as sick of it as you are. Have a seat.”
Wentz sat down, then craned his neck around. A captain with no name tag sat against the wall in a block of shadow. He looked like bad news. Beside him sat a female full colonel, a brunette, who appeared shockingly young. They both looked at Wentz with focused expressions.
“I’m General Rainier—” his host announced.
“Never heard of you, sir,” Wentz said.
“—of the United States Air Force Aerial Intelligence Command.”
Wentz repeated, “Never heard of it, sir.”
“No one has,” Rainier replied, “and we go to the utmost measures to keep it that way, Wentz. Now, I’ll make this short. The woman to your left is Colonel Ashton. She works for me. The captain next to her, whose uniform obviously lacks a name tag—well, you know the drill.”
“Great, a Tekna-Byman Op,” Wentz recognized at once. The Air Force’s version of Army CIC—their names were national security secrets. “Captain
“Captain Smith is fine, General,” the man said.
“He has some questions for you,” Rainier informed him.
“Smith” stood up, flipping through an aluminum-covered notebook like a traffic cop. Only this notebook had a lock on it.
“General Wentz, is it true that you led the initial F117 anti-fire-control raids—code-named Operation Slipcover—on 15 January, 1991?”
Wentz looked right back into Smith’s face. “No.”
“From May to December, 1993, did you test fly an experimental reconnaissance aircraft codenamed Aurora at the Tonopah Test Reservation in Nevada?”
“No,” Wentz said.
“On 12 February, 1999, did you pilot a parachute mission which involved a low-altitude, low-opening air-drop of Army INSCOM field operatives over the province of Kosovo, twenty-four hours after which a brigade commander of Serbian security forces—a Colonel Zlav—was assassinated by long-range sniper fire?”
“No,” Wentz said.
The room stood momentarily silent.
“All right, Wentz,” Rainier played along. “Here’s your passcard.”
The General smiled sourly, then passed Wentz a 3x5 sealed plastic envelope that read:
RESTRICTED, EYES ONLY, WENTZ, J.,
USAF, 221-55-4668
Wentz broke off the perforated edge, then withdrew another plastic card that read:
4B6: VERBAL CLEARANCE.
Smith cleared his throat. “General? If you will?”
Wentz sighed. “Yeah, I led the Black Bird raids on the Iraqi HF radar sites twelve hours before the war started, and I did the same thing in Panama, and, yes, I LALO’d the INSCOM grunts that scratched that asshole in Kosovo. I flew the Aurora at Tonopah and the X-23 at Palmdale and the SCRAM-jets and nuclear ramjets at Holloman and Goodfellow. I’ve flown the YF-24, the F-22, the JSF, and the YF-118. When Lockheed got the bid for the B-3, I was their flight-profile consultant. I’ve flown every classified aircraft we have, and I’ve participated in more classified aerial ops than I can remember, and with all due respect, sir—”
Rainier nodded. “We know, Wentz, you’re retiring tomorrow. The thing is we have a problem, and you seem to be the only one qualified enough to resolve it.”
Wentz scratched his chin. “Why me?”
