A Time for Patriots Page 24

  “I tried that,” Brad said. “I think it’s sitting in the back. I feel all cooped up back here. I never got airsick when I sit in front or when I’m flying.”

  John turned to look at Brad, and he saw how miserable he looked. “I think we better put it down, Patrick,” he said. “Brad’s not—” And at that moment they heard a loud PRRING! and felt a sharp metallic impact vibration from the left wing. “What was that? Did we hit a bird?”

  “Didn’t feel like a bird,” Patrick said. “Back me up on altitude while I look, John.”

  “Roger.”

  Patrick searched the leading edge of the wing for the source of that noise. “I don’t see any—”

  “I see a hole in the wing!” Brad said suddenly. “Out by the tip, just forward of the aileron! Fuel is coming out!”

  Patrick saw it a moment later. “Now, how in heck did that happen?” he asked no one in particular. He turned the control wheel slightly, then scanned the instrument panel. “Everything feels okay, and the engine instruments look—” And at that instant they felt and heard another sharp rap on the airplane, this time from somewhere on the tail and rear fuselage. “What the hell . . . ?”

  “Hey, the back window is broken!” Brad exclaimed. They all turned and saw the rear Plexiglas window with numerous spiderweb-like cracks emanating from a deep round hole near the upper edge! “It looks like a bullet hole!” Brad said.

  “Holy crap, I think someone’s shooting at us!” Patrick shouted. He mashed the microphone button: “Battle Mountain Tower, CAP Twenty-seven-twenty-two, declaring an emergency, requesting immediate landing clearance.”

  “CAP Twenty-two, Battle Mountain tower, roger, cleared to land, any runway,” the tower controller responded immediately. “State fuel and souls on board and the nature of your emergency.”

  “CAP Twenty-seven-twenty-two, three souls, four hours’ fuel on board,” Patrick replied as he banked steeply toward the northeast-southwest cross runway. “I think someone hit us with gunfire.”

  There was a momentary pause; then: “CAP Twenty-two, say again?”

  “I think someone on the ground hit us with gunfire,” Patrick said. “They put a hole in our left wing and back window.”

  “Roger,” the controller said, obviously trying to remain calm. “Do you require men and equipment?”

  “Affirmative,” Patrick said. “I’m going to land on Runway zero-three. Advise any other aircraft to remain clear of the protesters outside the main gate—I think one of them might have a rifle.”

  Outside the Main Gate to Joint Air Base Battle Mountain

  A short time later

  The appearance of the two squat remote-controlled Avenger air-defense armored vehicles inside the main gate of the air base, with their Sidewinder antiaircraft missile-launcher tubes and twenty-millimeter cannons aimed forward and elevated in a definitely menacing position, only served to enrage the protesters even more. The crowd of about thirty chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, the killer robots have got to go!” and “Spy planes spy planes, what do you see? Innocent citizens living free! Spy planes spy planes go away, if you come back, you will pay!”

  Just then they heard sirens behind them. A convoy of six Nevada Highway Patrol vehicles, sirens and lights on, moved slowly up the road to the main gate, led by a vehicle that somewhat resembled the armored vehicles inside the base. “This is the Nevada Highway Patrol,” a voice on a loudspeaker blared. “You are blocking a public thoroughfare without permission and interfering with freedom of travel. Please disperse immediately. Thank you for your cooperation.” The convoy stopped just a few yards away from the crowd of protesters.

  “We’re not going anywhere until they shut down the robots and spy planes!” someone shouted.

  “Your grievances will be forwarded to the Department of Defense and the governor and attorney general of the state of Nevada,” the voice on the loudspeaker said. “Be assured, all of your grievances will be promptly addressed. But you are still blocking a public-access thoroughfare and creating a disturbance. Please return to your vehicles and leave the area so free access to this public roadway can be restored. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  “We’re not going anywhere until the governor or the president orders all the spy planes and robots out of Nevada!” someone in the crowd shouted. “This is bullshit! You’re flying weaponized planes and operating armed robots out of this base to terrorize innocent citizens! How do we know you’re not looking in on me or my children right now? We want it to stop right now! Right now! Right now!” And the chanting and anger level rose once again.

  “Please return to your vehicles and leave the area,” the voice on the loudspeaker said over the chanting. “The public roadway must remain clear. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  “Oh yeah?” someone else shouted. “What are you going to do—blast us with that cannon or those missiles, cop? You gonna drop a bomb on us from one of those CAP planes you got flying around?”

  “Thank you for your continued support of our community,” the voice said. “The Nevada Highway Patrol is here to assist you. Please return to your vehicles. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  It took several minutes, but soon the energy level of the protesters seemed to decrease, and one by one they turned and headed away from the main gate. A few slammed their signs on the armored vehicles and spit on the Highway Patrol vehicle’s windshields, but the officers did not react.

  “Well, this is definitely a new one for me,” Nevada Highway Patrol sergeant Leo Slotnick said. He was standing beside his car, the second in the convoy behind the armored car, talking with his partner. He was wearing a bullet-resistant vest over his uniform that read NHP and POLICE in large yellow letters, a Kevlar riot helmet with face shield, and heavy Kevlar gloves—his riot baton and cans of pepper spray were inside the vehicle, out of sight but quickly available. Most persons passing by him waved hello—no one seemed to be angry at him personally. “A protest march, way out here in Battle Mountain? I think it’s pretty funny. I had to dust off my riot gear—literally dust it off.”

  “Whatever happened to the sheriff’s department?” Leo’s partner, a relatively new member of the Nevada Highway Patrol named Bobby Johnson, asked. He was outfitted the same as Leo but with a small digital video recorder affixed to his helmet; Leo was his training officer in his first six-month probationary period. “They’re a no-show?”

  “They said they couldn’t spare the manpower,” Leo said. “Technically this road is a state highway, so we have jurisdiction, but they should be out here with us. They never showed when the Civil Air Patrol was searching for that downed plane either.”

  “I heard one of your guys thinks he was shot at by someone in this crowd,” Bobby said. “These bastards were shooting at aircraft over the base? Are they nuts? I think we should search each and every one of them for that rifle.”

  “Bobby, think about it—there’s thirty of them, and just twelve of us,” Leo said. “If there’s a gun in that crowd, we don’t want it let loose on us. If they start heading off and going home without another shot being fired, that’s a good thing. Next time there’s a protest, we’ll be ready with more guys.” As his eyes scanned the departing protesters, he caught a glimpse of two men, apart from each other but definitely together, walking along with the crowd toward their vehicles but looking as if they were scanning the crowd themselves. “Get a shot of those two tall guys at twelve o’clock,” Leo said.

  Bobby turned in that direction but couldn’t really see whom Leo was referring to. “What’s up?”

  Leo shook his head. “Just a hunch,” he said. “Remember what you were taught at the Academy about the personalities that create a disturbance?”

  “Agitator, instigator, aggressor, and . . . and . . .”

  “The lemmings—the followers,” Leo said. “Who are the agitators here?”

  “The guy who organized this march.”

  “True,” Leo said, “but couldn’t you also say it was
the Air Force when they rolled out those armored vehicles over there? Maybe the crowd wouldn’t be so agitated if they hadn’t brought those out.”

  “Well, then couldn’t you say that we are agitators for bring our armored car?”

  “Good point,” Leo conceded, “although then you have to think about officer safety, and that’s a command decision. Now, the instigator is the one who does the first noncivil action—in this case, maybe the ones hitting the armored car with their signs. But he doesn’t usually cause the riot. It’s the aggressors that you have to watch out for—the ones who wait for something to happen, then push everyone around them over the top. Then the lemmings do whatever the aggressors and the rest of the crowd does, and the thing turns into a riot.”

  “So if you can find the aggressors, you might have a chance of stopping the riot.”

  “Exactly,” Leo said. “The agitators are the hotheads, but they’re usually just lashing out, not attacking—they get the crowd’s attention with an overt act, but the crowd hasn’t turned into lemmings yet. The aggressors do the extreme actions that turn the crowd.”

  Bobby continued searching the crowd, but still couldn’t see whom Leo was referring to. “Gotcha.”

  Leo made eye contact with one of the tall guys he was watching, broke eye contact and scanned the crowd for a few seconds, then came back to the guy—and they made eye contact again. “And the first rule of surveillance?”

  “Countersurveillance,” Bobby said. “Make sure you’re not being watched yourself.”

  “Either we’re being watched, which I doubt,” Leo said, “or these guys were on their way to do something else and have now noticed that they’ve been spotted. They’re spooked, but they’re not running—they know it’s the running man that attracts attention.” He looked behind him at some of the protesters widely circling his car, but couldn’t see anyone else who stood out—there could easily be another pair behind him, but he couldn’t make them out. “Weird vibes around here, that’s for sure.”

  When he looked back at the pair, they had both vanished, and no one was running or shoving—they had quite literally disappeared.

  Later that day

  “I don’t know what to say, Brad,” Patrick said as they examined the Civil Air Patrol Cessna. They had pans and buckets underneath the hole in the left wing, collecting leaking avgas. Maintenance crews already had the shattered window off, and they were getting ready to start removing inspection panels and rivets to replace the damaged left-wing sections. “You have about thirty hours total time flying the C-172 and P210, and I don’t recall you ever getting airsick. I know you flew in the back of the Aerostar a few times when Gia was with us, but you were a lot younger and you weren’t looking out the window—you were usually asleep. Did you ever get airsick flying cadet-orientation rides?”

  “I don’t think I ever flew in the back,” Brad said. “There was never anyone else riding along.”

  “So today was the first time that you’ve ever ridden in the back of a light plane with your eyes open and searching out the window,” Patrick summarized, “and every time you’ve done it, you’ve gotten sick.”

  “But what does that mean, Dad?” Brad asked. “If I can’t ride in the back without getting sick, I can’t be a mission scanner, and if I can’t be a scanner, I can’t be a mission pilot. And that’s what I want to be!”

  “Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, big guy,” Patrick said. “We’ll get you a few rides with you not doing scanner duties but just sitting in back, not looking out the side windows, to get you accustomed to sitting in back; we’ll find out about approved medicines or other remedies. You can still be a transport mission pilot—ferrying planes, taking cadets on orientation rides, towing gliders—and a mission observer, and there may even be a way for you to be a mission pilot without being a scanner first. I think the reason they have you qualify for scanner first is to see how well you do in a light plane. But we know you can fly a plane without getting airsick—it’s just that you get airsick riding in back. We’ll start checking out all the options. But just remember, there’s more to Civil Air Patrol than flying. You can lead a ground-search team, and you can man an incident command post and put together sortie packages—”

  “But I want to fly, Dad. I want to be a pilot, in charge of a crew.”

  “And you can fly . . . just maybe not with the Civil Air Patrol as a mission pilot,” Patrick said. “We’ll have to see what happens. But don’t act like it’s the end of the world if you can’t be a mission pilot. There are plenty of ways to serve. You’ll find that life throws you a lot of obstacles—you have to figure out how to overcome them. That’s the fun of being a grown-up.”

  “Well, so far being a grown-up really sucks,” Brad said, and he turned and walked away.

  “Amen to that.” Patrick turned and saw Jon Masters standing beside him, looking at the damage to the Cessna. “So you think someone took shots at you, huh? He’s got to be a pretty darn good shot—you were five hundred feet up, going about eighty knots?” He went over and looked at the hole in the wing. “Pretty good-size hole—maybe a hunting rifle?”

  “Or an infantry rifle,” Patrick said.

  “A military shooter? A marksman with serious military hardware? You mean, someone from the base?” Patrick had no answer. Jon was silent for a short while, then asked, “So what’s Brad sulking about?”

  “He got airsick when riding in the back of the Cessna as a scanner,” Patrick said. “He’s okay up front, but not in back.”

  “I get airsick sitting in the back too, sometimes, but I take a dimenhydrinate and I’m okay,” Jon said. “I don’t think that’s an option if you’re a crewmember, though.”

  “Back in my B-52 days, I had gunners and EWOs who flew facing backward and got airsick all the time, especially when flying low-level,” Patrick said. “They were using stuff like scopolamine patches behind their ears for airsickness, but I don’t know if that’s the case anymore. They have wristbands and neckbands for seasickness, but I don’t know if those are gimmicks or not. Ginger-root pills worked good for me if I took them before a space flight. We’ll find out. But I don’t like to see Brad start to mope around after each and every downturn. He’s got to learn to roll with it.” He looked at Jon. “So what are you up to?”

  “Moping around after my latest downturn—losing twenty million dollars’ worth of aircraft in one night,” Jon said. “The Sky Masters, Inc., board members hit the freakin’ roof.”

  “Why? The government should make it right. It might take a while, but . . .” He looked at Jon, his eyes narrowing. “Okay, what did you do?”

  “We . . . hadn’t exactly worked out the details of the contract before the Sparrowhawks were deployed,” Jon admitted.

  “Uh-oh . . .” Patrick said. “You didn’t get a signed contract before you deployed? You donated the Sparrowhawks to the government?”

  “I have a draft of a contract,” Jon argued, “so we can argue that it wasn’t meant to be a donation.” Patrick smiled but shook his head ruefully. “The FBI said they were in a hurry, and I wanted to get the aircraft out there before they put the job out for bids. It’ll work out, don’t worry.”

  “Sure . . . five years from now,” Patrick said. “Well, I guess that’s why a lot of the contractors we hire are attorneys.”

  “Exactly,” Jon said. “Our job is to get things done, not worry about stupid contracts. Let the suits work out the details.”

  “Right,” Patrick said. “Besides, you got insurance on the Sparrowhawks, right?” He saw Jon’s downcast expression, and his eyes widened in surprise. “Jon, no insurance . . . ?”

  “I have R-and-D insurance out the ying-yang,” Jon said, “but . . . well, I didn’t have a government contract—yet—and you wouldn’t believe what those insurance companies wanted for these simple little missions. You’d think we were flying armed combat missions over Iraq again!”

  “Jon, you can’t do stuff like that,” Patrick sa
id. “At best you could get fired—at worst, you could get fired, sued, and have to pay for the Sparrowhawks yourself!”

  “Hey, look who’s talking about bending the rules! You practically made an entire career out of it!”

  “I did it when I had the discretion as the on-scene tactical commander,” Patrick said. Jon looked at him with a skeptical “oh, really?” expression. “And when I did it otherwise, I was either kicked out, forced to retire, or was sued. You work for a private company. The directors and officers make the decisions, not you.”

  “Well, I’d be worried—if I already wasn’t the smartest guy in the company,” Jon said dismissively. “They can’t fire me or sue me—it’d tank the stock and we’d be lucky to get a contract to provide propeller beanies to Cub Scouts. Don’t worry about it.” He paused, looking in the direction of where Brad walked off. “I feel sorry for the kid,” he said. “What’s a scanner do?”

  “His job is to search for mission targets or for hazards,” Patrick said. “Apparently Brad has trouble when he looks sideways out the window in a turn, or has to look downward or backward—we don’t quite know yet what triggers the motion sickness.”

  “He looks out the window? That’s it?”

  “He’ll also take pictures, make records of what happens on a mission, run checklists, maybe talk to mission base or ground teams on the radio, but basically his job is to search outside the plane, from engine start to engine shutdown.”

  “We have stuff that can more than take the place of a scanner,” Jon said. “We’ve developed sensor balls that can fit easily on the wings of a little bug smasher like your Cessnas. They’re a quarter of the size of a Predator’s sensor dome but do even more stuff and perform better. Plus, the scanner can operate the sensors from the ground. You save weight, the plane performs better, and you put fewer crewmembers at risk. Plus, once we install the video datalink, you can up- and download voice, data, telemetry—almost anything.”