Sure, I made it all the way to a full bird colonel in the Marine Corps. As a much younger man, I did my combat tours, none of which, fortunately, turned out to be too hairy. My calling was psychology and psychiatry, helping and healing the people who really put their butts on the line for our country and the free world.
I do not consider myself to be an adrenaline junky.
Yes, I do ride very fast and powerful motorcycles, but even when I’m on my gnarly, fire-breathing Ducati Diavel, I turn the “go grip” with responsibility and maturity.
Yet here I was, strapped into another helicopter, a UH-60 Blackhawk this time. Did I tell you that I hate helicopters? The things scare me, and our last gambit over the Chesapeake had done nothing to change that.
I’d been amazed when the flight operations officer at Peterson Air Force Base had taken the code authorization Grazier had given us back in Washington, asked what we needed, and issued the Blackhawk when Winny requested it.
There had been no additional questions, no calls for authorization, nothing. I’d spent a lifetime in the Marines. No one had more paperwork than our military. But we flew away without so much as a signature on a piece of paper.
The implications of Grazier’s security clearance—and the latitude of his black ops protocol—left me stunned.
Winny sat at the controls, Karla beside her. If you’ve never been in the cockpit, the instrument panel looks more like a tightly packed collection of computer game monitors. Me, I was happy in the back. I tried not to throw up while staring down at sprinklings of pine-and-juniper forest interspersed with burned mountain slopes. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains looked rugged with their scabby rock outcrops—angry and worn in the hot summer sunlight.
The Blackhawk began to buck and lurch, sending my stomach into my throat. Fear turned my guts runny.
“What’s wrong with the bird?” I demanded through my headset.
“That’s desert down there in the valley, Skipper,” Winny told me. “Midsummer like this? You get a lot of turbulence.”
“We’re not getting shot at?”
“Not yet. But the day is young.”
I closed my eyes, wincing every time the chopper shook and creaked around me.
I’m not going to throw up. I’m not going to throw up. Make the promise enough times and maybe it won’t happen?
“There it is,” Winny’s voice came over the headset. “That’s Los Alamos coming up on the right.”
Knowing roughly where to look, I pressed a hand to my complaining gut, craned my neck, and saw the green bulk of the Jemez Mountains rising like a tumbled fortress above the main valley.
Winny banked, taking us along the drainage-cut slope, scarred by old fires, and housing localized patches of ponderosa timber that had somehow managed to escape the infernos.
The town itself was built on a high shoulder of the mountain, as if perched there. Sunlight glinted like sparkles from windshields, and speckles of color marked the distant walls and roofs.
If you had to design an atom bomb, there were worse places to do it.
The National Labs lay on the southwest corner of town, situated on a ridge top with a steep canyon on the southern edge. You just couldn’t mistake the blocky-pale, nothing-but-functional architecture of a government compound.
Up front, Karla was peering through the glass with binoculars. Her attention had fixed on the Skientia building as Winny made a slow circle of the area.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Getting in won’t be the problem, Skipper,” Karla told me. “Winny can carry Savage and me right up that drainage, assuming she manages to keep me from crashing through the trees this time.”
“They’re all burned, bitch. But I could bounce you and your little house of mirrors off those rock outcrops. That’d keep you in line.”
“Seven years of bad luck,” Karla countered. “And after I climbed up the rope and broke your wrists and fingers, the only thing you’d be flying is one of those video games.”
“Ah, shucks. Savage’s going to be riding in that thing with you. I like him. Guess he gets you a free ride in, Chief.” Winny chided in mock distress.
“Do you see the heliport?” I asked.
“Roger that, Skipper. If Winny brings us up the canyon, she can pass right over the Skientia building, hesitate long enough to set us down there beside the door, and do a touch and go at the heliport. Skientia’s security won’t be any the wiser.”
“That might work,” Winny agreed as she wheeled us around again. “I’ll want night vision goggles to make the drop. Shining a spotlight down there would tip them off.”
“You really want to go through the roof?” I asked, staring down at the graveled flat beside the roof access door. It was built into to a square boxy looking cube that housed the elevator pulleys and cables.
“Skipper,” Karla replied, “if we angle the mirror box correctly, they’ll think their entire world is secure. Once we cut through, Savage and I drop inside, and they’ll have no idea they’ve been breached.”
“Why do I not like this?”
“Because, Skipper, like we discovered in Aspen, these guys play for keeps.”