listened, then sighed and held it out to him.
She remained sprawled across him as he put the receiver to his ear. “Magruder.”
“Admiral, this is John Palmer.”
It took Tombstone a moment to remember that was the name of the man in the suit from the previous night’s meeting. The spook. Of course, Tombstone thought, his concentration wasn’t helped by the things Tomboy was doing to him. “How can I help you, Mr. Palmer?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice even.
“We were wondering if you’d come to Andrews as soon as possible. We’ve got something you might be interested in seeing.”
Instantly Tombstone’s concentration was on the phone. He sat halfway up, almost tumbling Tomboy off him. “I’ll be there right away.”
He hung up the phone and found Tomboy kneeling beside him on the mattress, her naked body as pale and beautiful as a marble statue in the darkness. “I take it this is important.”
“Very.” He reached out and touched her cheek, then slipped his fingertips down the front of her body. “I’m off to Andrews. I think it has something to do with my little encounter the other day.”
“Ah.” Her eyebrows rose. She knew about the bogey, but nothing about the content of his meeting the previous night. Nor had she asked about it. Her own job had made secrecy second nature to her. She waved a hand at him. “Go. Go.”
He looked her up and down, and sighed. “Damn the Navy.”
“Not to mention the Air Force,” she said.
“I see you’re on the flight schedule for CAP tomorrow,” Bird Dog said in his most casual voice.
Lobo looked over her shoulder at him. She was pouring coffee, not spilling a drop despite the fact she wasn’t watching what she was doing. “Gee, you’re capable of reading a flight schedule. That’s very impressive.”
“I went to college and everything,” Bird Dog said. “It’s just that I’m surprised they’re putting you in the air again so soon.”
“Part of the job. I don’t write the flight schedule.” She stared at him over the rim of her cup. God, she had killer eyes. “Besides, Bird Dog, I
Bird Dog moved up to the coffeepot. “So, who’s your backseater again?”
“Handyman.”
“Like him?”
“He’s the best.”
“And who’s flying wing for you?”
“Hot Rock.”
“Hm. He’s pretty raw, isn’t he?”
That maddening smirk climbed into her eye. He felt the stream of scalding coffee dribble over his thumb, and suppressed a wince. “Why?” she said. “You worried about me? Think I might get into
“I just wish I could be your wingman, that’s all. We’d make a good team.”
“I’m sure whoever you
“Catwoman.”
“Good RIO. What did you do to deserve her?”
“I don’t make the assignments. But yeah, she is good. We’ll be up there tomorrow, too. So if you run into trouble…”
“Well, that’s nice, because Handyman and I will be up there if
There were a couple of fundamental differences between Naval Air Stations and Air Force bases, apart from the obvious fact that the majority of Naval bases were situated near water. For one thing, Air Force bases served better coffee while making you wait for the meeting that had dragged you out of your bed. For another, the base commander’s office had photos of F-15s and B-2s on the walls.
Other things were exactly the same. The murmur of voices in the corridor, the distant ringing of phones, the whistling shriek of jet engines outside.
Tombstone stood at the window, staring at what little of the airstrip he could see from this angle. Every now and then an F-15 Eagle, the Air Force’s answer to the Tomcat, would come in to land. Like any naval aviator, Tombstone was mildly contemptuous of Air Force weenies and their birds. However impressive an Eagle might be in the air, in the end it only had to land on a motionless, fifteen-hundred foot long strip of asphalt. Nothing to it. Now, try putting one down on top of a boat in the open sea.
There was a knock, the door opened and an enlisted man stuck his head in. “They’re ready for you now, sir. Please follow me.”
Tombstone followed the crisply laundered back out of the building and across a tie-down area toward an enormous, windowless hangar where his pass was carefully examined by another, better armed and altogether meaner-looking weenie. Finally the guard saluted and opened the door.
Tombstone stepped into a vast, echoing hangar. At first it appeared to be empty. Then he saw a small collection of metal objects scattered across a tarp in the center of the concrete floor. Three men were bending over the tarp: the Air Force rep from the meeting; John Palmer the spook; and the young DARPA nerd. The Air Force rep looked up and waved him over.
As Tombstone approached, he stared at the garbage on the tarp. Immediately he recognized pieces of the bogey that had pursued him all over the Maryland sky, laid out in roughly correct configuration. Part of the rear half appeared to be intact, if scorched and bent; one of the forward fins had been laid out in more or less correct position; of the nose section there were only tiny fragments, unrecognizable to Tombstone. Other pieces sat in trays to either side. Tombstone was reminded of an archaeological dig, with a half-exposed fossil.
Still, the general shape of the bogey was recognizable enough to give him a chill. “I’m surprised there’s this much of it left,” he said.
“It wasn’t easy to find,” said the Air Force rep. “Fortunately, the vehicle buried itself in six feet of mud before the warhead went off. A lot of the aft section was simply fired right back out like a cannon shell.”
Tombstone released a breath. “So, what is it, who built it, and why was it following me?”
The DARPA kid looked up, eyes shining with excitement behind his glasses; Tombstone was reminded of a twelve-year-old kid staring at the Milky Way. “It’s a UAV,” he said.
“A UAV? But — that can’t be right. Didn’t you read my report? It was
The kid grinned. “No it wasn’t; it was just following you around, like a Sidewinder, and trying to take you out.”
“You mean it was a heat-seeker?”
The kid glanced at Palmer, then back. “Not exactly. You ever hear of Predator?”
“You mean the Air Force drone?”
“Predator’s a lot more than a drone, Admiral,” Palmer said. “It’s a completely automated surveillance aircraft. It takes off, flies to a defined location, performs its mission, then returns to base and lands… all without a bit of human intervention. It’s the future of aerial reconnaissance.”
Tombstone frowned. “That’s all very interesting, but a surveillance aircraft — unmanned or not — does its thing over stationary ground. I’m sure it’s fairly simple to write a mission program for that, but I’m telling you, this thing was
