where loyalty to flag and to country matter, would have been. Aron Arnold was not. As he was growing into a man in the featureless suburbs around Orlando, it was a world in which flag-waving was an irrelevant anachronism.
He had joined the U. S. Air Force because he wanted to fly. He had grown up playing video games, and he wanted to do it for real. He had been good at the game console and proved himself good in real cockpits as well. His total and all-consuming attention to being the best at doing what he did, combined with his detached and easygoing temperament, made him an ideal candidate when Svartvand BV was recruiting pilots — and killers. Aron Arnold was the ideal PMC man, with loyalty only to his employer of the moment, not to the flag beneath which he had been born.
When Svartvand was acquired by Firehawk, Arnold had no nostalgia for Svartvand, just as he had no particular loyalty to flag or country. For Arnold, it was never personal. When he had met Troy Loensch on the night that Svartvand had merged with Firehawk, he had detected a trace of uneasiness. Sure, they had been fighting to the death early that same day, and that was a serious irony — but it wasn't personal. At least it had not been personal for Aron.
He had felt that same uneasiness from Troy Loensch when they met again at Cactus Flat. Arnold was impressed by how Loensch had allowed his professionalism as a pilot trump any bad feelings he had for a man who had tried to kill him in air combat, but on the ground, they had stayed apart. There had been no rounds of boozing at the officers' club that ended with slaps on the back and vows of 'no hard feelings.'
When Loensch had been killed in the Shakuru crash, there had been wailing and gnashing of teeth at Cactus Flat. A lot of people had been saddened by his death, as people are often saddened by deaths of co-workers. Dr. Elisa Meyers had expressed much anguish for the loss of her Shakuru but had shed a tear for the man as well. Aron Arnold shed no tears. He had no feelings of empathy. It was a job, and Loensch had simply not come back.
Like Dr. Meyers, Arnold was sad to see the Shakuru Program come to an abrupt end, but the broader HAWX Program remained. Within HAWX there would be many possibilities. Raymond Harris. had even intimated that there would be a place for him in the cockpit of the Raven — and that prospect came with great excitement for Aron Arnold.
When Harris was named CEO of Firehawk, Arnold was brought back to the corporate headquarters in Herndon with the promise of 'big things' within the HAWX Program.
Arnold had no distinct loyalty to Harris, nor to Fire-hawk, but rather to his job. Like the knights errant of the Middle Ages, or mercenaries throughout time, his master was the task at hand.
Today's task, amid the pastoral beauty of the Catoctin Mountains, had been to persuade Fachearon to submit to Firehawk authority as demanded by Congress.
Today, Arnold had failed, just as he had failed on that day over the Peten jungle to bring down Troy's F-16. It was Arnold's belief that in the long run, Troy Loensch had gone down to a watery grave in the vast Pacific. It was Arnold's belief that in due time, Fachearon would go down, down to obscurity as a footnote to a turning point in American history.
Chapter 50
'This is a Firehawk-authorized operation,' Jenna said sternly — and she could be very stern when the moment demanded sternness — as she flashed the Firehawk ID card with its high level of security authorization.
'I don't know,' stammered the guard at Reagan National's government hangar. 'I wasn't given any advance not i f—'
From the airport, they could look across the Potomac and see the dome of the Capitol building. 'In case you aren't aware, this city is in crisis mode this morning,' Jenna said angrily. 'Not everyone is getting advance notification of everything. In fact, damned few people are.'
'I'm still not—'
'Do you want me to put you on Raymond Harris's personal shit list?' Jenna asked.
'No—'
'Do you know what will happen to you for impeding a Firehawk operation at this time?'
'Well—'
'Trust me, you have better things to do with your life than to be sitting around in a cell waiting to be executed for treason,' Jenna asserted.
'Okay,' the guard said, glancing again at Jenna's ID. 'Thank you,' she said impatiently.
'What about him?' the guard said, nodding at Troy.
'He's with me,' Jenna said, pushing the guard aside.
'Nothing works on a day like this like a Firehawk Ill,' Troy quipped as they entered the hangar.
'Wish you had brought your Firehawk Ill,' Jenna said.
'I left it in the jungle.' He shrugged.
Parked before them were a pair of Virginia Air National Guard F-16s. When the PMCs had taken over for the armed forces, the assets of the National Guard, which were under state control, were not included.
Shortly after she had hung up from Lucy's phone call, Jenna had a brainstorm.
Troy's first reaction was one of 'We gotta stop that bastard!'
Neither he nor Jenna had any idea how.
According to Lucy, Raymond Harris was already headed for the car that would take him Andrews Air Force Base. She had promised that she'd try to delay Harris, but they all knew he could not be stopped.
That was when Jenna had her brainstorm. She remembered that the Air Guard kept F-16s on strip alert at Reagan National. After September 2001, every state on the eastern seaboard kept at least a few interceptors primed, even though more than a decade had passed without their having been called into action against a serious threat.
Amazingly, Troy and Jenna caught a taxi on nearby M Street — one of the cabs that were avoiding the disarray downtown. The driver crossed the Potomac on the Key Bridge, bypassing all the congestion around the White House, and made it to the airport from Georgetown in fifteen minutes.
They knew that it would take Harris at least a half hour to get to Andrews Air Force Base, where the Raven was parked. They also knew that he'd be in no rush. He was out to attack a fixed target at Camp David — one that was not going anywhere.
Troy and Jenna found flight gear and helmets in the hangar and suited up. Being on strip alert, both aircraft were fueled and ready to go, so the two concentrated on making sure that the AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles were live and armed, and that the M61 cannons each had a magazine full of ammo.
'First time I've been in an F-16 since Sudan,' Jenna said longingly as she started up the stairs.
'Just like riding a bicycle,' Troy said. 'It all comes right back to you. Let's take it low level to Andrews and try to get him on the ground.'
'Roger that,' Jenna agreed. 'From what I've heard about the Raven, I sure would rather take it out on the ground than have to fight it in the air.'
The Air Guard personnel dutifully pushed open the doors as they powered up their General Electric F110 turbofans, and Troy gave Jenna a thumbs-up to taxi out ahead of him.
'Ladies first,' he said over the radio.
Jenna just replied with her middle finger and released her brake.
Seeing the two Air Guard fighters leave their hangar, the air traffic controllers in the Reagan National tower dutifully followed procedure, ordering a ramp hold on all commercial takeoffs and instructing all incoming flights to remain in the pattern. The Air Guard always went to the head of the line.
With both runways available, Troy and Jenna took off simultaneously. They kept their altitude to a thousand feet, low enough not to stand out on radar, but high enough to avoid transmission lines and power poles in the congested area around Washington.
They deliberately avoided overflying the city itself, not wanting to have the hundreds of news crews down there speculating about what these two F-16s were doing and alerting whatever air assets Firehawk might have flying this morning.
