Before Thomas could respond, Joshua jammed the loaded slingshot into his free hand. Thomas put down his drink and examined the manner in which the parachute was draped over the toy soldier’s back.
“You’ve jumped before?” quizzed Brittany, surprised by this revelation.
Thomas humbly answered. “During my stint in the Air Force, I gave it a try a time or two.”
“Gave it a try a time or two?” repeated Vince in utter disbelief. “I’m not in the habit of tooting your horn, little brother. But sometimes your humility annoys the hell out of me.”
Vince looked at Brittany and added, “Even though he should be proud as all get-out, Thomas has logged well over five hundred jumps. Most of them took place during his years with Air Force Special Operations.”
“You never told me that you were an Air Commando,” said Brittany to Thomas.
“There goes another skeleton out of the closet,” Thomas said lightly, but his serious countenance betrayed that he would like nothing better than to change the subject.
He stood and launched the paratrooper into the cloudless sky. It flew more than three times higher than Joshua’s previous shot, and was soon barreling back to earth but without the benefit of the parachute.
Somehow it had become tangled around the soldier and failed to open.
The plastic toy plummeted into the pool and disappeared into the shallow end. Joshua was off in a flash to retrieve it, with a barking Max on his heels. “If I remember from my own abbreviated jump training back in basic,” offered Brittany, “I believe you’d call that malfunction a snivel.”
Thomas appeared oddly affected by the parachute’s failure to open.
Vince noticed his brother’s posture suddenly stiffen, and his facial features tighten.
“Hey, Thomas, we’d better get those chicken breasts on the fire,” he said in an effort to divert his brother’s attention.
“And we’d better get back to work on our salad,” Kelly said to Brittany.
As the women returned to the kitchen, Vince walked over to the grill to recheck the coals. Thomas remained where. he was, his gaze locked on Joshua’s efforts at retrieving the submerged toy soldier.
Vince knew what was bothering him, and he decided it would be best not to say anything about it.
“How about getting that platter of chicken, little brother? After that bike ride of yours, you must be famished.”
The roar of another low-flying 727 appeared to break his morose spell.
Thomas headed for the picnic table, picked up the platter, and joined his brother at the grill.
“Can you imagine a beautiful fire like this one, wasted on chicken?” observed Vince as he picked up the tongs. “Pop wouldn’t believe it.
The way I remember it, his pit cooked nothing but spareribs and pork steaks.”
This innocent comment hit home, and Thomas sighed. “It’s times like these when I really miss him, Vince.”
A rapturous sizzle arose as Vince laid the first of the butter flied boneless chicken breasts on the red-hot grill.
No sooner did he lay out the next breast, than his beeper began buzzing incessantly.
“Never fails,” said Vince.
Just as Vince was in the process of putting on his bifocals to read his pager’s digital display, Thomas’s beeper activated. Without bothering to empty the rest of the platter, Thomas reached into the back pocket of his cycling jersey. He didn’t need glasses to see the flashing message that simply read, code nine.
“Damn!” he softly cursed.
“I’ll double that,” said Vince. “I knew this day off was too good to be true. There goes yet another holiday barbecue down the drain.”
Because their pagers directed them to the same location, they decided to travel together. Without taking the time to change their clothes, and leaving the women with the hastiest of goodbyes, they piled into Vince’s Jeep Cherokee and drove off toward D. C. The holiday traffic was light, so they sped past National Airport and crossed the Potomac via the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Here they encountered a brief backup of cars, most of them filled with families headed toward the flag-draped Capitol Mall.
A turn northward onto the George Washington Parkway allowed them to bypass this jam. They passed Georgetown on their right, with the boat-filled Potomac flowing lazily to their left. Four-and-a-half miles later, they turned right onto 1-270 north, and exited soon afterward at Burning Tree Estates.
They were in the Maryland countryside now, and Thomas had no trouble finding the two-lane highway that led to their destination. The Federal Executive Branch mail-sorting facility was purposely situated in this relatively isolated location, to insure its anonymity. This little known installation was responsible for pre sorting all letters and parcels addressed to either the White House or the adjoining Executive Office Building.
An unmarked driveway conveyed them to the facility’s security gate.
This was the sole entryway. Completely encircling the thirty-acre site was an eight-foot-high fence of chain-link, topped with razor-wire.
Vince brought his vehicle to a stop in front of a remote controlled barricade. A uniformed security guard with a pistol and a no-nonsense demeanor approached them and demanded their identification cards. After checking their names off a computerized list of approved visitors, the guard handed each of them a plastic visitors badge to clip to their Tshirts.
The barricade was raised, and once past the checkpoint, a two-lane, concrete driveway led them through a dense forest of mature oaks. At the far end of these woods was their goal — an immense, 100,000-square-foot warehouse, set in the middle of a spacious clearing.
A half dozen large loading docks were set into the one story, concrete structure’s western side. Only two of the bays were currently filled, one with a brightly colored semitrailer belonging to the United States Postal Service, and the other holding a smaller Federal Express van.
They parked in the visitors lot, and made their way on foot to the main entrance. A few puffy clouds drifted overhead, with the late afternoon sun having pushed the temperature to a delightful seventy-eight, humidity-free degrees.
Another security checkpoint greeted them inside. A female guard took their names, and instructed them to be seated in the waiting area while she called the watch supervisor.
The waiting room was little more than a cramped, carpet less cubbyhole, filled with a half dozen government issue, light blue, plastic molded chairs. If the decor had a name, it would be early DMV. A soda machine was jammed into the corner, and while Thomas took a seat, Vince walked over to the machine to check out the selection.
“How does an ice-cold Dr. Pepper sound?” Vince asked as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his billfold.
Much to his disappointment, the machine refused to accept any of the three one-dollar bills he was carrying. Even smoothing them out and feeding them in upside down failed to do the trick, prompting Vince to turn away in frustration.
“I don’t suppose you have any money on you, Thomas?”
Thomas double-checked the contents of his jersey. “Come to think of it, Brittany’s got my money clip.”
“So, now you’re even letting her carry your cash,” teased Vince as he sat down opposite his brother. “Musicals and ballets at the Kennedy Center, bike rides to Mount Vernon, long lunches at the White House commissary …”
Any further ribbing was interrupted by the arrival of a short, barrel-chested man in his mid forties. Senior Postal Inspector Mike Galloway knew both Kellogg brothers equally well, and his curt greeting was that of a tired, old friend.
“Sorry about ruining your holiday, guys.”
“It’s all part of the job, Mike,” replied Vince. “Weren’t you supposed to be taking those vacation days this week?”