'Weakest link?' Troy quipped.
'I didn't say that,' Dr. Meyers replied.
'How was the flight?' Mike Dehnland said, arriving at the base of the ladder as Dr. Meyers began her walk- around of the big aircraft, studying each of the solar-powered engines with her halogen flashlight.
'Totally awesome,' Troy said as a ground crewman began helping him out of the super-high-altitude 'space suit' such as both pilots had worn for the flight. 'Except for sitting in one place for half a day in this cocoon. It was a great view from up there.'
'How did Shakuru handle?'
'Seems pretty slow and sluggish at first,' Arnold told Dehnland. 'But it sure can climb.'
'That because it's light as a feather… comparatively…. and all wing.' Dehnland smiled. 'Even in thin air up at eighty thousand, you have enough wing to keep you going.'
'Very stable up there,' Troy interjected. 'Although I gotta admit, I kept thinking about Helios and that wing mangling into an unstoppable dihedral.'
'There's a lot of wind under the old airfoil since that happened,' Dehnland said as the three men began walking toward the building where Shakuru briefings were held. 'Preventing that was one of the first mandates handed to the Shakuru design team.'
'Not to change the subject, but what's going on down there?' Arnold interjected, nodding in the direction of the hangar with the razor-wire perimeter. For the first time since he and Troy had been at the Flat, the doors were open, albeit just a few feet. Light was streaming out, and people were coming and going.
'Where?' Dehnland asked.
'There,' Arnold said, this time pointing at the hangar. 'That building doesn't exist,' he said, turning away from the mystery hangar.
'Then Raymond Harris doesn't exist,' Troy added. 'I see him down there.'
'You're welcome to ask him about it, then,' Dehnland said. 'In the meantime, we have a Shakuru flight to debrief.'
'Are you enjoying beautiful Cactus Flat?'
Raymond Harris grinned as he turned from the enormous coffee urn in the Cactus Flat officers' mess. It was the first time since Troy had arrived in Nevada that the two men had come face-to-face. Harris was his usual gregarious self, but the stress lines on his face were noticeably more pronounced.
'It's excellent,' Troy said sarcastically. 'Can't get enough of it… but we had a good view from Shakuru yesterday.'
'Isn't that Shakuru something?'
'Yes, sir.' Troy nodded, pouring himself a cup of coffee. 'It's slow on the uptake, but it sure takes you up there eventually.'
'It's the near future of manned recon,' Harris said. 'And it's the long-term future of clandestine strike missions.'
'I had no idea that it was being planned for offensive ops. I didn't see any provisions for weapons.'
'Not yet, but that's where we're headed… eventually.'
'Maybe that's why I didn't see anything about weapons in the briefing papers that Dr. Meyers handed us.' 'There are briefing papers and there are briefing papers.'
'How so?'
'It's all need-to-know, but there are a lot of things that Dr. Meyers isn't cleared on,' Harris said, lowering his voice.
'I thought she designed Shakuru? How is it that she doesn't know…?'
'There are two levels of need-to-know,' Harris said, as though explaining gravity to a schoolboy. 'There is the official level, the one that the government knows about — and the level that only Firehawk knows about.'
'If the government is the customer, and Firehawk is running the HAWX Programs for the government, why are there aspects of these programs that they don't know about?'
'Remember why the U. S. Air Force transferred HAWX to Firehawk in the first place?' Harris asked. 'To avoid nitpicking from Congress?'
'Right. And just as there are things that the bluesuiters want obscured from the pointy heads on the Hill, there are things that Firehawk needs to keep…. ummm… proprietary.'
'Secrets from the government?'
'If you want to put it that way. In business, you never tell your clients everything. It makes you seem more useful if you're able to get things done that they don't know exactly how you got them done.'
'When were you planning to tell them that Shakuru is going to be used as a strike aircraft?'
'You always have to hold some of your cards close to your vest,' Harris explained. 'It's a fluid world. Situations change. Remember Guatemala? Remember how we were at war with Svartvand BV one day, and sitting around the table with those guys the next? One day back then, you and Arnold were shooting at each other. Yesterday, you were flying as his copilot.'
'What does that have to do with—'
'Not all the changes swing like they did in Guatemala. Sometimes your friends yesterday aren't your friends tomorrow.'
'But you're holding back from the United States government,' Troy reminded him. 'You don't expect to be `not friends' with them.'
'The problem is that the United States government and the United States of America aren't the same thing. Ideally, the United States government has in mind the best for the United States of America. Sometimes they don't.'
'I see,' Troy said. His head was spinning. Maybe the two spooks from the CIA had been right about Harris on that awkward morning back at the Marriott Courtyard in Arlington. This was probably not a good time to change the subject to the mystery hangar.
'I figured you did,' Harris said. 'You're a quick study.'
Chapter 38
No way i'd be a snitch for the cops, man.
The words of Yolanda Rodriguez echoed in his head even as Troy sat in the same bar at the Palazzo where he had been with Jenna Munrough on that night so long ago.
After two months at Cactus Flat, he had gotten a fortyeight-hour pass, and he had done as most denizens of the Flat did. He took a quick hop to Sin City on Janet for a little R& R.
Troy had stopped into this bar, of all those on the Strip, for a drink — and for old times' sake, unsure what memories of Jenna it would bring back to him.
Instead, the words spoken by Yolanda were crowding Jenna from his conscious thought.
Troy had other things on his mind as well.
After two months of listening to Harris and his cryptic comments about the U. S. government, he was ready to believe that what the CIA had told him was true.
What should he do?
No way I'd be a snitch for the cops, man.
He could hear Yolanda's pleasant but emphatic words.
What had seemed like sound advice that morning when she spoke those words seemed less and less likely to fit the circumstances. Troy found himself debating whether to cross the line and to become a snitch for the CIA.
When he was in the U. S. Air Force, he swore his allegiance to the United States and its Constitution and its government. Was his allegiance now primarily to Fire-hawk and to Harris?
The meeting in Arlington had not happened — the CIA men had said so. But they had also given him
