Kent looked at Julio Fernandez. They were in his temporary office, just off the corridor. “No, Lieutenant,” he said, “that will be all, unless you have something I need to know?”
Fernandez smiled. “Well, sir, as it happens, I do have something. I expect General Howard would ordinarily go for it, but he’s told me he won’t step on your prerogatives for long-term acquisitions.”
Kent stared at him.
“I have to show it to you, Colonel. It doesn’t tell all that well. We need to go to the motor pool.”
Kent glanced at his watch. “All right. Lead on.”
“Why am I looking at a recreational vehicle, Lieutenant?” Kent asked.
Fernandez smiled. “Not exactly your typical RV, sir, though this
Fernandez approached the vehicle, which appeared to be white fiberglass, with vaguely aerodynamic-looking decals on the sides in pale tans and blues. The coach entrance door was aft on the starboard side, behind the back wheels.
The lieutenant pressed his thumb against a reader and the door’s lock snicked open. Two steps led into the vehicle.
Inside there was enough headroom for a six-footer in boots to stand straight.
“Head is to the left, behind this door,” Fernandez said. He reached for the knob, and Kent moved deeper into the vehicle to give him room to swing the portal open. The door looked like oak to Kent.
In the head was a marine-style toilet, sink, mirror, cabinets, and a shower stall. Small, but useable.
“Enough water to take a dozen military showers, to cook with, and drink, all without refilling the tank, though it will run off shore water — you just plug in a hose outside and turn the spigot on. Same for power — upgraded to fifty amps from the normal thirty-five. Drains for gray- and black-water outside, of course.”
Behind Kent was a small galley, stove, sink, a microwave oven, and across from that a refrigerator/freezer. So far, much like any other RV. But past that, it got unusual.
“This is your basic Born Free twenty-four-foot rear-bath coach,” Fernandez said. “But instead of a fold-out sleeper couch over here, we have a bank of computers, GPS, Doppler radar, FLIR, laser bouncers, and com-gear, all with hardened electronics.”
A pair of captain’s chairs sat in front of the electronic array.
“Over here, this little board pulls out to form a table, thus.” Fernandez lifted, pulled, then lowered it, and a tabletop jutted from the wall. “Suitable for having lunch or doing map work, or playing games on your laptop.”
Kent nodded.
“Up over the cab, we pull down this platform, like so, and there is sleeping space for two operators — three if they like each other real well. Even comes with a ladder.
“There’s a big Onan generator installed, and if you aren’t plugged into shore power, this switch right here over the driver’s seat will crank it up. It is sufficiently large to run all the electronics for as long as you have fuel, which in this case means the vehicle’s fifty-five gallon gas tank. This is a Ford chassis and engine, your basic six- point-eight-liter V-ten engine, which, with its special beefed-up suspension and shocks, will give you approximately three thousand pounds of useable payload. That will include, with the installed equipment, three operators and their gear, and full fuel and water tanks, it will get nine or ten miles a gallon of unleaded if your driver doesn’t have a heavy foot, and climb anything you can take a sedan up. Cruises at seventy all day long.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes, sir. And it gets more so. The thing is built like a Swiss watch. You can stay out in the woods, if you have sufficient supplies, a couple-three months. The air conditioner is enough to cool the electronic equipment to safe operating range in ninety-five-degree heat, the furnace will maintain warmth in subfreezing weather. It’s a little tight, but there’s not an inch of wasted space in it.”
Julio led Kent to the driver’s compartment. “Here’s the real fun part. That bank of switches, there? Watch.” He lifted the switch covers and pressed three buttons. There came a hum of power, and as Kent watched, a pair of dark gray plates folded in from above and below over the windshield, coming to a sharp angle in front of the glass.
“Stealth gear,” Fernandez said. “Extrudable spun-carbon fiber sheets and plates that give you some nice radar-shielding angles. You get an exploratory ping on your detector, you turn toward the source, hit the buttons, and you turn invisible, more or less.”
“Very interesting,” Kent said.
“Yes, sir. What with domestic and international terrorists getting more and more sophisticated with their own surveillance gear, this vehicle is the perfect Command-and-Control Center for mounting operations in a hurry at a far remove.”
“I assume this hardware is not cheap,” Kent observed.
“No, sir, but it is reasonable. If we supply the electronics, the maker will build it to our specifications, and our cost is less than a hundred thousand per unit, delivered.”
Kent raised an eyebrow. “Really? That seems very reasonable.”
“Yes, sir. Company is in Iowa, American to the core, good Christian family-value kind of place. Sure, if we let it to the lowest bidder, we might get units cheaper somewhere, but they won’t be made as well. See those ridges, there, there, and back there? Those are steel roll bars. This is the safest RV you can ride in. In the forty-odd years the company has been making them, they’ve never had a single fatality in an accident. Not one.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Yes, sir, I thought so.”
“And you are telling me this because you think we should have some of these vehicles.”
“Yes, sir. They are portable. Stash five or six around the country, we’d have one a few hours away from any situation we’d need covered. They run about eleven or twelve thousand pounds in this configuration, so if we borrowed a big transport plane from somebody, we could haul one to any air base in the world where we could land one of the big honkers, like a C5A.”
“I can’t see one of these on the back roads of Afghanistan or Iraq,” Kent said. His voice was dry.
“We’re not supposed to go to those places anyway, sir; it’s against our charter. But from the outside, this could belong to Ma and Pa Retiree out to see America, and even without the stealth gear, it would give us advanced operations capabilities in places we couldn’t sneak into otherwise. Nothing like a fleet of camouflaged military trucks full of guys in uniform rolling down a desert highway in Utah or the woods of Idaho to draw attention.”
Kent considered it. “Do we have room in our budget for this?”
“Yes, sir. With a little creative swapping, I believe we can manage five units, maybe six, no problem.”
Kent gave him a tight nod. He knew all about wheeler-dealers. If Fernandez could horse trade as well as he talked — and John had always said that he could — it was a done deal. “And you say that General Howard wants this to be my decision?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, Lieutenant. Make it happen.”
“Yes, sir!”
“What are you grinning at, Lieutenant?”
“Permission to speak freely, sir?”
“You’ve been with John Howard since he was a shavetail, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I can’t imagine he kept you shut up. Fire away.”
“I was just thinking how reasonable the Colonel is, for a, uh…”
“—a jarhead?”
“Yes, sir. My thought exactly.”
“We might have a reputation for respecting history and tradition, Lieutenant, but we aren’t stupid. We would rather have our people in top-of-the-line gear when we can get it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go do your deal, Lieutenant.”
