Tomahawk (2 page)
Authors: David Poyer
Slowly the great shapes grew, until they could make out the immense down-slanted dihedral of wings, the underslung pods of engines, the long, straight lines of fuselages.
Headlights dawned on the far side, sending snow-blurred shadows fleeing across polished aluminum. They hurried their steps, reaching into their coats. A moment later, they were beneath the wings.
The slam and clatter of metal on metal was faint at first, muffled by the storm. But it kept on, now growing louder.
The headlights swept past, dwindling down the runway. Then they dipped as the vehicle carrying them braked suddenly.
They swung back, probing toward the undercarriage of the bomber.
When the security force's truck slid to a halt in a flurry of snow and its doors flew open, the two intruders dropped their arms from a pyloned cylinder. Guards tumbled out of the vehicle. Their mouths made black O's in the white howl of the storm. Cartridges snicked into rifle chambers.
The headlights showed a dark red patch on the snow. They pinned the man and woman under the plane like animals on a highway. The two backed away, letting go of their hammers, which vanished instantly under the driven whiteness.
“Raise your hands. Now!” a sergeant shouted.
Instead, the intruders reached into a tote bag. The guards' rifles leveled.
A banner unrolled from gloved hands, whipping out into the wind. In the glare of the headlights, it read NOT BY MIGHT, NOR BY POWER, BUT BY MY SPIRIT.
The sergeant of the guard hesitated, then lowered his pistol. The Jeep's radio crackled. He reached in and seized the handset.
“They're peace activists,” he said. “Yeah⦠call the ready maintenance people. They've been hammering on one of the fuel tanks.”
A question. “No. Not armedâ¦.Yes, sir, threw some
blood or somethingâ¦. Right. Search âem, cuff âem, and bring âem in. You got it. Better call the officer of the day. And scramble the on-call squad. Might be more of them out there.”
A few hours later, in the cold white light of dawn, a security policeman approached the first break in the wire. He stopped several feet off, lifted a camera, and began taking photographs: the tire marks leading off the perimeter road; the scuffle of tracks, still faintly visible: the bent-back, snipped-off steel barbs. Then blinked at what hung above the gap in the fence, swaying and dancing in the cold raw wind.
“What the hell's that?” said another, behind him. “Don't touch it. Don't take a risk, man.”
“I don't think we need to worry,” said the photographer. He aimed the camera again, framing them carefully in the viewfinder, and snapped off three shots from different angles as they hung there. Then he stood back as another man flipped open an evidence bag.
Carefully, holding them by the tips of their wings, they detached the handmade copper angels from the wire and dropped them into the black nylon sack.
I
THE PROGRAM
1
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Slowing for the exit off 395, Lcdr. Daniel V. Lenson, U.S. Navy, squinted into a sparkle like the sunlit sea. It came from ten thousand parked cars, surrounding the five-sided building like breaking surf around a high island.
Lenson had gray eyes and sandy hair. The top ribbon on his short-sleeved whites was the blue and red on a white field of the Silver Star. Above that was the ship and wave insignia which meant Surface Line. The oldest, the proudest, but in some ways the least forgiving community in the Navy.
When a horn blared behind him, he snapped his attention back to the off-ramp. Eight A.M., and the summer air was already hot. He cranked his window shut and turned the air conditioning on full.
Today, he was starting his first tour of shore duty. No more six-month deployments. No more in-port duty sections. Time to relax, start postgraduate work, have his daughter visitâin short, get a life after four stressful atsea tours.
Parking was horrendous. He searched for half an hour before he found a space out in the wasteland. At the south entrance, lines of buses idled, waiting to discharge passengers. A jet roared overhead, taking off from National Airport. A handful of demonstrators stood holding signs, the arriving mass dividing to stream in around them.
He remembered all at once, as if he'd blocked it out till now, the last time he'd been here. The court of inquiry. He'd been so doped up, he didn't recall it well. Just hour
after hour sitting in the anteroom, waiting to testify. Seeing a man in the cafeteria he'd known was dead. He still didn't have an explanation for that. Then those iron minutes facing four admirals across a green baize table, while he spoke the words that had cauterized his pain but crippled his career.
A lot had changed since then. Susan was gone, and their daughter, Nan, with her. Bringing
Barrett
back from Cuba outweighed the fitness report Ike Sundstrom had nailed him with after the Syrian incursion. But with nine years in, he had to decide soon whether he was going to get out, try something else, or go for a full twenty. Before it was too late to start over.
He took a deep breath. Turning from the rising sun, he joined the throng of uniforms and suits and dresses heading up a long stairway. A moment later, he was lost in the hurrying crowd.
Off the main corridors the Pentagon became narrow 1940s-tacky passageways ceilinged with rusty air ducts and dripping pipes and sagging cable runs. He wiped sweat off his forehead as he compared room numbers with his orders. When a second knock brought no response, he let himself in.
A tiny front-desk area held an enlisted man and a computer. A daisy-wheel printer clattered. Dividers of frosted glass hived minuscule offices.
“Lenson, Lenson,” the petty officer muttered. He stared at the orders, then turned them over, as if they might have something on the back.
“Actually, I'm not due for a couple days yet, but I thought I'd start getting checked in.”
“Been to Navy Annex yet? Up on the Hill. They're gonna want to see you about your medical records, service records.” The second-class looked at the front of the orders again.
“Something wrong?” Dan asked him. âThis is Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Surface, right?”
“Oh yeah. But I didn't get anyâlet me make a call, all right? You want to sit over there, there's a paper you can look at.”
He lost himself in
Navy Times,
a discussion of the bloody stalemate in the Iran-Iraq war. Then flipped to an article about the six-hundred-ship fleet. Congress was wavering in their support of the buildup, now that they'd seen the price tag.
“Commander?”
He looked up, then rose. The other officer didn't introduce himself. Instead, he said, fanning himself with Dan's orders, “There's some kind of glitch here, uh, Lenson. I remember talking to the detailer about you, but my confused and vague impression was that you dropped out early in the selection process. Trouble is, we got a body already reported in to this billet.”
“Gee,” said Dan. He honestly couldn't think of anything else to say.
“Look, you're early. May be a perturbation in the systemâit just hasn't caught up to you yet. You can hang your hat here till you get things straightened out. Or you could check this all out with your detailer.”
Dan grabbed his hat. “That sounds like the best thing to do, sir. I'll run up and see him, then get back to you.”
An hour later, he stuck his head into Alan Sonders's cubicle at the Navy Annex. Sonders was bald, and old for his rank. Scribbled-on printouts hung from the wall by dull silvery duct tape. Charlie Brown scowled down from a cartoon that had been photocopied too many times. The caption read “God put me on earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now, I am so far behind, I will never die.” The detailer greeted him with a millisecond handshake and pushed more printouts off a chair. “Nice to meet you in person,” Dan said.
“Yeah, see? We don't really have forked tongues and gill slits.” The phone fang; Sonders said, “Excuse me,” and started talking. When he hung up, it rang again. He looked around. “Hat,” he said, pointing. Dan handed it to him. “Lunch?”
“Sure.” He wasn't hungry, but it looked like the only way they were going to get to talk.
They ate “lunch” standing up at machines in the basement.
Sonders got a cherry pie sealed under a solid white rime of sugar. Dan settled for coffee.
“Okay, what can I do for you today?”
He refreshed Sonders's memory: that he was coming off a
Kidd-class
destroyer out of Charleston. That Sonders had sold Dan on the job over the phone. Eight to five, he could see how the Pentagon worked, then go to school in the evenings. That there were three women to every single guy in D.C. “The orders came through. They look kosher. But when I go over there, there's somebody else in the billet.”
“Yeah, one of our new female-type ship drivers. Off
White Plains.”
“So where am I going?”
“Well, you're still gonna be in D.C. So your personal arrangements are not going to be any different.” Sonders sharked half the pie. He mumbled around it, “Ever hear of an outfit called JPM-Three?”
“No.”
“Know an Evans? Scott Evans?”
“I don't think so.”
“How about Barry Niles?”
Dan said slowly, “I knew a Commodore Niles.'*
“Rear admiral now. Here's what happened. You were headed for OP-Oh three, like we discussed. Then I got a call from this Evans. Colonel, Air Force, apparently the number two over there. Niles just got tapped to take over as director. He wants bodies, line types strong in engineering and engineering duty officers. I read them a list and you got the nod. They have a Brickbat, so there wasn't a lot I could do. I tried to call you in Charleston, butâ”
“Okay, I got most of that, but what's a Brickbat?”
“Systems acquisition talk for highest national priority. Sure you don't want one of these pies? They got apple, peach, cherryâ”
“No thanks. What's JPM stand for?”
“Joint Project Management Office.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“I'm getting blank tape on the specifics, but I know
it's something with missiles. You an âup round' on missiles?”
“I was weapons officer on
Barrett.
We had Standard and Harpoon. And a lot of bugs, too.”
“Then maybe it's a good match. It's in Crystal City, south of the Pentagon. I'll call over, find out where they want you to report in.”
“So you're saying I'm shanghaied.”
“A strong word, but not inappropriate.”
Dan didn't have a good feeling. The few times he'd seen NilesâCommander, Destroyer Squadron Six thenâ he hadn't come away with the warm fuzzies. “Does this happen often? Getting jerked around like this?”
“Not
often,
but it happens.”
“Good sign? Bad sign?”