On the morning of the fourth day, I was waiting for Fester in the dark, laced into the Nikes and ready to go. All the work done to regain some strength after the long stretch in rehab had been a big help. The investigation into the deaths of Tanaka and Wright had put me off my schedule, but now I was getting on top of things. I waited but Fester didn't show, so I went off on a run anyway — just for the hell of it.
I'd showered and just put on a clean ABU when the sergeant finally arrived, pulling up in a Humvee. I wasn't sure what he wanted. I pointed to myself and then at the door on the off chance he wanted me to get in. The sergeant gave a nod. Mystery solved.
“Where'd you get to this morning, Sarge?” I asked as I got inside. “Sleep in?”
No answer.
“You know, you make it damn hard for a guy to get a word in edgewise,” I said.
“You haven't had the breath to waste on talk, Major,” he replied. After a while, he said, “Yesterday in the pool. Saw you'd been wounded.”
“Afghanistan and Washington.”
“Washington?”
“Don't ever get between a congressman and his reelection contributors,” I said.
Fester gave me a look like he'd just whacked his thumb with a hammer. I realized he was smiling, something he didn't seem to do much of. “I also served in Washington.” He pulled up his shirt. There was a chunk out of his ribcage the size of my fist.
“You got that in D.C.?” I asked.
“No. Somalia. But I've done a tour of Washington.” The sergeant smiled again. Twice in one day. Maybe Fester was losing control.
“So, what's going on?” I asked when he'd regained a little composure. “You decided to go easy on me because I've stopped a few slugs?”
“No. You passed the physical. Now it's time for a change.”
“Passed?”
“You're on the edge when it comes to your age, sir. Major Cummins and I wanted to make sure you were up to the job.”
“What job?”
Fester shrugged.
I knew I wasn't going to get any further. Even if Cummins or Fester knew what job they were training me for, which I doubted, they'd never let me in on it. “So, where're we going?”
“You'll see.”
Around half an hour later I was wearing a black jumpsuit — my watch and all loose articles stowed in a locker — and I was standing in an octagonal-shaped room. I could hear my breathing and my heart beating because, for one thing, the room was heavily insulated for sound, and, for another, my ears had plugs in them. The place reeked of leather and sweat.
Five other people in the room were similarly dressed. Another five, the instructors, wore bright pumpkin-colored suits. Above us, in the ceiling, the seventeen blades of the 3500-horsepower Babcock fan began to rotate and an ominous vibration came up through the floor. Within minutes the room was filled with the roar of a column of air screaming toward those rotating blades at close to 150 miles an hour. Fester took a couple of steps forward and launched himself into the center of the Sergeant Maj. Santos Alfredo Matos Jr. Military Free Fall Simulator, otherwise known as the VWT — the vertical wind tower. Seeing it in action still made me gawk. Fester flew. The newcomers were openmouthed. The sergeant immediately assumed the classic high-arch position and maneuvered about the space by altering his body shape and using his hands and fingers to steer in the same way a bird uses the feathers on its wingtips. After a couple of minutes of demonstration free-falling, he exited the column of air, rolling on his back and letting the thick cushioning around the circumference take his fall.
He tapped me on the helmet. My turn. I did what I'd been briefed to do — took a step and dived out into midair above a wide mesh safety net, arms and legs spread-eagled. Unlike Fester, I kept going, the hurricane wind spitting me out the far side. I hit the padding like a fastball smacking into the sweet spot of a catcher's mitt. Nice bit of demonstration flying there, Streak, I told myself as I rolled off the padding.
I got back on my feet and adjusted the helmet a notch tighter. From across the chamber, Fester told me with hand signals to do it again, only with a little less this time. So I took a step and jumped. This time I managed to stay caught in the roaring column, my body arranged in the high-arch position as it had been trained to do so many years ago, the forces of gravity and wind resistance in balance.
The air pressure rushing past my mouth and nose made breathing difficult, just like in a real free fall. In fact, the overall sensation was almost identical to falling through the air at terminal velocity, which is to say, it didn't feel like I was falling at all; more like lying on top of a few hundred fists pummeling away on the underside of my legs, body, and arms. I used my hands and fingertips to spin, and then altered my body position to rise and fall in the column. MFF — it was all coming back. I was having fun. Too much, apparently. Fester was gesturing at me to come on over. I noticed Major Cummins had made an appearance and was standing beside him, wearing the kind of scowl he might have worn if I'd just told him I was dating his daughter. He was in the process of biting off a fingernail which he then spat out. I landed a little less like a gooney bird in a storm the second time around. Cummins and Fester were already heading for the exit. Fester motioned at me to follow.
Outside the chamber where it wasn't so noisy, Major Cummins shouted, “We just got word from SOCOM. There's been a change of plan.”
THIRTY-SIX
Cummins drove me to the strip and didn't spare the horses. An Air Force C-21 executive jet from the VIP squadron was keeping its fan blades warm. The loadmaster pulled me almost bodily into the plane and we were rolling before the hatch closed. Inside, I was shown to a leather, executive-style chair. Some senator had used the plane before me and the drinks cabinet was stocked. It appeared the senator and I had a mutual friend by the name of Glen Keith, and the two of us were so damn pleased to see each other I almost forgot I was flying until the loadmaster put the cork back in the bottle.
Less than half an hour later, I was on the ground at Andrews AFB, getting into a blue car with a driver. Forty-five minutes after that, I was being shown into a room at the Pentagon. If I were a home-delivered pizza, I'd still have been hot. The room was darkened — too dark for me to make out faces until my eyes adjusted. Up on a multitude of screens, various maps, intelligence reports, and satellite images of terrain and weather systems were being discussed. I was taken to a seat at the table and ignored by the shadows seated around it. I figured I was there to listen. The country I was here to listen about, according to all the intel up on screen, was Pakistan. Somehow, I wasn't so surprised. A woman I didn't recognize was in the middle of giving a briefing on the nuclear warheads sitting atop Pakistan's Ghauri missile, which, I learned, was theoretically capable of hitting every major population city on the Indian subcontinent. An admiral asked a question about the Chagai region of Pakistan, where previous atomic devices had been tested.
I shifted in my seat, unable to get comfortable. Pakistan was behaving like it had a hand full of aces, and letting everyone at the table know it. The new revolutionary government in Islamabad was cocky, dangerously so. I could feel the pace accelerating like a runaway steamroller.
I heard someone ask someone else by the name of Willard a question. I recognized the voice of the person asking as belonging to General Henry Howerton. I recognized the guy being asked the question when he stepped into the light bouncing off a screen. Willard F. Norman, Deputy Assistant Director, Directorate of Operations, CIA. He was slight, sedentary, and pear-shaped, with delicate hands that looked soft. Rumor had it he washed them a little too often. Norman looked like the kind of guy you wouldn't leave alone with your niece. His small, pale eyes were nervous. They flitted about the room like finches escaped from their cage. A thick clump of dyed brown hair above his left ear was combed over his skull and oiled enough to stick there no matter how hard the wind blew. I remembered he'd come up through CIA ranks, making a name for himself in HUMINT — spying, basically, though on whom and to what benefit were unknown and would most likely remain so for a long time to come. Whatever he'd done, it was enough to land him in a corner office at Langley.