“If you’re looking for the old man …” he paused at the intentional slip, smiling winningly … “I mean, the colonel, he just left.”
“I know.”
Maraklov understood, as everybody did, the special relationship between Wendy Tork and the colonel. Which, of course, was the chief reason for making her his friend. And it was not exactly hard duty. Tall, good figure, brunette with hints of gray, still foxy for a woman going on forty. But be careful, he reminded himself. And helped himself do that by remembering the research on her. A considerable dossier: Wendy Tork, Ph.D., electrical engineering. Chief of DOPY5, the cryptic office symbol of HAWC’s Director of Penetration Aids, Project Y5—the Megafortress Plus, the super-bomber and strategic escort battleship. This woman had developed many of the twenty-first-century electronic jammers used on American military aircraft, including new jammers that could electronically defeat infrared- and laser-guided missiles. She had built a jammer the size of a toaster that could disrupt much of the known electromagnetic spectrum for thirty miles in every direction. Considered a sort of outsider in HAWC because of her former independent contractor status, she tended, except for the colonel, to keep to herself. Scuttlebutt said that started after the mysterious Old Dog mission that she and most of the brass at HAWC were involved with eight years before. It seemed to have affected her more than the others.
In any case, possibilities here, he had decided, for a special source of information. “How about lunch?” he said easily.
“Do you have time? Don’t you have a meeting this afternoon?”
“I think they’d rather not have me at this particular meeting,” he said, pretending embarrassment. “I’m sort of in the doghouse. But it’s my lucky day. I don’t have to be back until late, and I have a pretty lady to share lunch with. If she’ll give me a break.”
For a moment she hesitated, then decided why not … they were, after all, friends.
If there was room on one of the shuttle helicopters that flew hourly to and from Dreamland, it was open for anyone at HAWC to hop a ride for the twenty-minute flight back to the “mainland,” as people from Dreamland called Nellis Air Force Base. But Maraklov had a different plan. When he climbed aboard the Dolphin transport helicopter he went forward and spoke briefly with the crew. Then as the helicopter touched down on the broiling tarmac at Nellis, Ken touched Wendy’s arm as she began to unbuckle her seat belt.
“We’re not there yet,” was all he said.
The helicopter lifted off once again and sped northwest. Ten minutes later it touched down on another military-looking airfield. As they left the chopper Wendy noticed the helicopter landing pad had been painted with a stylized Indian thunderbird symbol.
“What’s this?”
“One of the best-kept secrets in the Air Force,” he told her. “Indian Springs Air Force Auxiliary Field. This is where the Air Force Aerial Demonstration Team, the Thunderbirds, work and practice even though the unit is based out at Nellis. You know, the Thunderbirds do a lot of demonstrations for the brass and foreign dignitaries here — not to mention that the Thunderbird pilots get the best of everything, being on the road so much — so Indian Springs is an oasis for them out in the middle of nowhere. The base is open to all military personnel, but that’s not widely advertised. I knew the Thunderbirds were gone/ so I asked the Dolphin pilot to get us permission to land.”
They walked past immaculately groomed desert landscaped yards and freshly painted buildings to a Spanish-style stucco building with red tile veranda and cane-ceiling fans. They were seated at a table on the veranda.
“I’ve been coming to this area for eight years,” Wendy said, “and I’ve been at HAWC for three years, and I never knew about this, or only vaguely if at all. Patrick and I are both so busy …”
He nodded. “The Dolphin pilot enacts a toll for side trips — I think he’s got a Chris Craft on Lake Mead that needs refinishing. Guess who’ll get asked to help.”
“Well, it’s delightful and I’m glad we came.”
“You’ll have to tell Patrick about it, if he doesn’t know.”
“Believe me, I will. I know how important his project is to him, to all of you, but I do wish he’d slow down just a little. Actually I don’t know if he’d take advantage of a place like this even if he knew about it.”
“Sure he would … but he is a busy man.”
Over lunch he said, “Most people here thought you two would be married by now. You’ve known each other for seven years? Eight?”
“Eight,” Wendy said. “Ever since the Old Dog flight … God, has it been that long?”
“That must have been some mission,” Ken said. “I’ve heard about it, of course, but mostly scuttlebutt. I’d like to get the whole story from you someday.”
She only nodded, smiling briefly.
“Well, the colonel joined HAWC a short time after that project … ended. What about you? You didn’t join HAWC until recently, a little before I came here.”
“I still had a civilian position in my own laboratory. Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t just leave or get reassigned to Dreamland. I started to work more closely with General Brad Elliott and his group, but my home base was still in Palmdale. I visited every chance I could, but Patrick and I were still apart. When they announced the reactivation of the Old Dog project 1 saw my chance and got assigned to HAWC permanently. What I didn’t expect was that Patrick was going to shoot up like he did under General Elliott. Don’t misunderstand. I knew Patrick was good, very good, but when I first met him he was, believe it or not, thinking about leaving the Air Force and working his family’s business in Sacramento. It’s hard to get promoted by just being the best navigator around. And that’s all I thought he wanted to be. I was wrong. In two years he went from being just another non-technical test-flight crewmember to a project director. He got promoted so fast you’d think there was a time warp. One year after becoming director of his first program he was made chief of a full-blown flight-test development program with state-of-the-art hardware. In another five or six years he’ll have his first star and probably be chief of HAWC soon after.” Through most of this she’d been looking down into her napkin. Now she looked up abruptly. “God, if I sound like I’m complaining, I’m not. Or I don’t mean to. Just for the record, I happen to love McLanahan even more than I respect him … Okay, enough of me, what about you? There’s an army of ladies in Vegas waiting to snag someone like you. When are you going to take the fall?”
He laughed. “The right woman is hard to find, even in the sun belt.”
“But you’re having a good time looking, right?”
“I confess … I’m not suffering.” It had gone well, very well, he thought.
The waiter reappeared with the check and a message.
“Helicopter’s on its way,” he said. “We should head back.”
As they waited on the helicopter landing pad a few minutes later, Wendy took a deep breath of warm yucca-scented desert air and looked out at the mountains surrounding the tiny base. “I enjoyed it, Ken. The lunch and the talk. I haven’t gone on like this for a long time. Thanks.”
“We’ll do it again some time.”
“I don’t want you to spend too many weekends refinishing some chopper pilot’s boat.”
“Believe me,” he said, watching her, “it’s worth it.”
Yes, she could be another source of information … on the new ECM gear, for example.