When we arrived at the airport in Raleigh, we pulled up to a secure area away from the regular terminals. There were a half-dozen armed guards behind a high chain-link fence. Marie and Art were waiting outside it. They were posing as our parents’ PAs, or personal assistants. In reality they worked for Boone and were essentially serving as bodyguards. A few hundred yards beyond the fence sat the president’s plane.
It’s an impressive sight, even from a distance. It’s a big plane. The nose is solid blue and the words “United States of America” are painted on the sides. For some reason each letter looks about ten feet tall. The American flag is displayed on the tail and the presidential seal is on the fuselage near the wing.
Boone had said goodbye to us outside the coach. Felix was getting on a plane to San Antonio. He would have a couple of “guys he knew,” as he told us, drive the coach the rest of the way. Everything was moving quickly and Boone’s goal was to have as many assets on the ground in San Antonio as soon as he could.
“How are you getting there?” I asked Boone. There was no way to tell for certain because she was wearing sunglasses again, but I’m convinced Angela rolled her eyes. We knew how Boone was going to get there. An unusually fast way.
“I’ll see you in San Antonio,” was all Boone said. He climbed back into the coach and we watched as it pulled away.
“Great,” Angela said with a sigh. I tried to think of something I could say to cheer her up but nothing at all came to mind.
We entered the secure area and were greeted by Art and Marie. A Secret Service agent asked us to empty our pockets into big plastic tubs. Another agent went through Angela’s backpack. Two more Secret Service agents met us at the steps to the plane, patted us down, and waved a portable metal-detecting wand over both of us.
The next step was a Transportation Security Administration officer with a German shepherd on a leash. They climbed out of an SUV parked near the plane and the dog gave us … let’s just say, a thorough inspection. I was glad Felix hadn’t made me hold his clothes with blown-up Tahoe all over them back at the Big and Tall store. Something in the German shepherd’s eyes made me think he wouldn’t appreciate that very much.
“Nice doggie,” I said. Art and Marie and the TSA agent laughed.
After that, we were cleared and Marie and Art led us up the stairs.
The documentary I’d seen didn’t do the plane justice. For one, it was probably the cleanest airplane I’d ever been on. Usually when you get on a commercial airliner the entire interior just looks worn and faded. On the president’s plane everything gleamed. The carpet didn’t have a speck of dirt that I could see. The cabin walls and even the ceiling seemed to sparkle.
Marie and Art led us to the guest area in the middle of the plane just past the wings. There we were introduced to Chief Steward Rogers. He was in charge of the staff on board the plane. His uniform was black with a coat and pants that made it look a little like a tuxedo except for the gold stripes on the coat sleeves.
“It’s a pleasure to have you on board, Mr. Munoz and Ms. Tucker,” he said, shaking our hands.
“You can call me Q,” I said.
“And I’m just Angela,” she said.
“Well, I’ve had the great fortune to meet your parents already. Such nice people and so wonderful of them to be donating their time and talent to such a worthy and noble cause,” he said. Mentioning donations made me think of Buddy T., Mom and Roger’s pugnacious, irritating, and overbearing manager.
“Did Buddy T. come with Mom and Roger?” I asked Marie.
“Nope.” She smiled from ear to ear. “The president said it was a space issue and Buddy had to fly to San Antonio commercial. He refused, so Heather Hughes flew down with him on her corporate jet. They’ll both be there when we arrive.”
“Poor Heather,” I said absentmindedly, which made Marie laugh out loud. I wish I’d been there to see it when Buddy T. got that news.
“Would you like a tour of the aircraft?” Chief Steward Rogers asked.
“Absolutely,” I said.
We took the tour. It’s an unbelievable airplane. Chief Steward Rogers explained that, technically, we weren’t aboard Air Force One, because the president wasn’t with us. The call sign “one” was assigned by air traffic controllers to any military aircraft the president flew on. So the U.S. Marine helicopter he usually took to the White House from Andrews Air Force Base or Camp David outside Washington was Marine One. If he were to fly on a navy aircraft, it instantly became Navy One, and so on. But so many people had come to refer to the actual plane we stood on as Air Force One that the name stuck.
The plane was a specially converted Boeing 747. It had four thousand square feet of space on three different levels. We weren’t allowed everywhere, but we learned a lot of cool stuff. The communication systems allow the president to speak with anyone anywhere in the world. The wires and components are specially shielded from the electromagnetic pulses caused by nuclear explosions, so they wouldn’t go offline in the event of an attack. Unlike a civilian airliner, Air Force One could also launch countermeasures, which were super-hot flares the plane ejected to draw away heat-seeking missiles. Like I said, pretty awesome.
When we returned to the guest area, Chief Steward Rogers asked me if we would like anything to eat. My stomach growled even though we had eaten just a couple of hours earlier.
I glanced at Marie and Art. “What time will Mom and Roger be back from their appearance?”
“Not for another hour or so,” Marie said. Apparently Art was not the talkative type. He was pleasant enough, though. Hearing about Felix being in Delta Force had made me question the background of all of the SOS groups. Art always seemed to be “on duty,” which was probably an ideal quality in a personal assistant/bodyguard/spy/likely ninja assassin.
“Could I get a cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla milkshake?” I asked Chief Steward Rogers.
“Of course!” he said, beaming. “And for you, Ms. Tucker?”
“I’ll just have some green tea,” she said. Party animal, I thought to myself.
“Right away,” he said and disappeared.
I plopped down across from Angela. She was slouched in her seat, the tray out, and her laptop flipped open. Angela was tethered to her laptop. I had one just like it and hardly used it. Luckily she was hyperorganized and had been doing a ton of work for our school project. I was way lucky in the stepsister department, in that regard.
There was no way I was going to ask Angela if she was okay. One more question like that and she was likely to loosen a couple of my teeth with a well-placed tae kwon do kick. I knew how to get her talking and it was by shuffling a deck of my recently returned cards. Out of my pocket they came and I started fanning and cutting the deck one-handed. Basically I was just showing off. While the cards had a calming effect on me, they had the exact opposite effect on Angela.
I avoided the glare and about three seconds later she was chewing her bottom lip. I sighed. She knew I knew when she did this she had something to say.
“What?” I said quietly.
She stared at my hands working over the deck and frowned.
“Do you have to do that?” she said with just the slightest hint of annoyance in her voice.
“Yes, and what?”
“Q, sometimes I just have no idea what you’re saying,” she said.
“You’re doing the lip thing. Don’t argue with me about it. It’s your tell. Spit it out. Something is on your mind. If you can’t say it to me, who are you going to say it to?”
She paused and looked off to the side.
“Something about Boone is bugging me,” she said.
“Well, get in line, sister. There is a lot about Boone that’s bugging me. Mostly how he can pull off his … whatever it is that he does. Which reminds me, we need to come up with a name for it, like teleporting, or something,” I said.
“I thought you said it was a magic trick,” Angela said.
“I did. But I don’t think that anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because, we’ve both seen it. It’s not a trick or a wormhole, it’s real. In a case like this, you have to look at the evidence.”
“There’s got to be an explanation. Maybe some new kind of technology … maybe X-Ray came up with something,” Angela said.
“Maybe, but right now I’m working on a theory where he temporarily hypnotizes us. Then he goes off and does his thing and plants a suggestion in our subconscious mind that he’s disappeared and reappeared all of a sudden.”
“How’s that working out for you?” she asked with the hint of a smile.
“It still has some flaws,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” she said absentmindedly.
“Say it. Maybe it will help me bolster my theory.”
Angela leaned forward to make sure Marie and Art were still out of earshot. “I’ve been thinking about Boone wearing a Nazi uniform in that old photo,” she said. “What was that all about?”
“Double agent?”
“Maybe. I just wish we knew what his game was now,” Angela said.
“From what we’ve seen, his game now is saving everyone from bad people,” I said.
“Yeah. It’s just … you know my mom, despite what she said in the cemetery. She was always kind of suspicious of Boone,” Angela said.
“I think she’s suspicious of everyone. Doesn’t that come with the job of being a Secret Service agent?”
“I suppose. Remember how he told us the CIA recruited him right out of college? There’s no way that’s true. Unless he’s in his eighties.”
“He is pretty old,” I said.
“I guess,” she said. “But if he’s been around since World War II … and everybody has said he never ages and Croc looks the same. It’s just … too weird.”
“It is. And I’m sure either he’ll tell us or you’ll figure it out,” I said.
“Me? Why will I figure it out?”
“Because you figure out stuff. I do tricks. And I’m not going to rest until I figure out how Boone does what he does. We really need to come up with a name for it. A code word or something,” I said.
“You’re a magician. What about ‘presto’?”
“Not bad. I mean, it does kind of fit. I was thinking maybe ‘poof.’”
Angela arched her eyebrows and shrugged, clearly not as obsessed as I was with Boone’s little trick.
Angela was quiet a while. “Don’t get me wrong. He saved Bethany and us and all that. But if he can do this thing … why doesn’t he take over for my mom so she’s not the one in danger all the time?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because your mom is impersonating one of the most feared terrorists in the world. We’ve seen him poof in and out of places but he’s not a shape-shifter or anything weird like that. I suppose he can’t change things around for her even with his power,” I said.
Chief Steward Rogers returned with our food. I took a bite of what might have been heaven on a bun. It was the best burger I’d ever had in my life. If I were P.K., I would take every chance I had to fly on Air Force One and eat nothing but burgers. Burgers for breakfast. Burgers for lunch. Burgers for dinner and a midnight snack. I liked Roger. I could do worse when it came to stepfathers. But this whole vegetarian thing could be a deal breaker.
Angela sipped her green tea while I gorged myself. Hunting a super-secret sleeper cell of terrorists is hungry work and the burger, fries, and shake disappeared in about five minutes.
Just as I was about to resume our conversation, my iPhone chirped with an incoming e-mail.
“It’s from P.K.,” I said, looking at the screen.
The subject line read: MORE INFO FOR YOUR WH PROJECT
P.K. had cut and pasted some info on the White House in the body of his message. At the end was a link. He knew our phones were being monitored and this stuff probably wouldn’t even get a raised eyebrow from X-Ray. I clicked on the link.
Up came a photo in black and white. There was a handwritten caption at the bottom of it that read, “Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, London 1902.” In the front was a guy on a rearing horse holding his hat in one hand and the reins in the other. He had long blond hair and a funny goatee. He wore a buckskin jacket and pants. Behind him was a line of cowboys on horses also rearing up as the riders waved their ten-gallon hats in the air.
All except for the rider on the far right. His horse remained on all fours and his Stetson was perched atop his head. He was skinny and weathered-looking, with shoulder-length gray hair. Resting on the ground next to his horse was a very familiar-looking dog. Croc? Though it was a fuzzy image, the rider looked a lot like Boone.
I turned the screen around to show Angela the picture.
“The plot thickens,” I said.