“Fine.”
Hal nodded. “She looked great, really great.” Again a pause. “Something on your mind, Hal?”
He took a deep breath. “Hope you don’t mind me asking, but … how are you two getting along?”
“Jesus Christ, Hal …”
“Dammit, Patrick, you know why I’m asking, and you know I wouldn’t ask unless it was important.”
“So we’re peeking into bedrooms to find a spy now, is that it?”
“Easy, pal. You knew all about Elliott’s orders to expand the search for these security leaks. I briefed the senior staff and outlined exactly what guidelines I’d follow and what steps my staff would take. Wendy and Ken—”
“What the hell do you mean, Wendy and Ken …?”
“Do you know she was seen at Indian Springs Auxiliary Field the other day?”
“Yes, I know.”
“With Ken James?”
“So what? This is getting far out—”
“You’re getting defensive,” Briggs shot back. “What’s the story?”
“The story is they went to lunch.”
“At Indian Springs?”
“It’s James’ little hideaway. It was the day of the last air combat dry-fire test. I was held up by the flight data lab, so James took her to lunch. Apparently he regularly cons the Dolphin pilot into taking him. Any more questions?”
Briggs nodded — that was the same story he’d gotten from the Dolphin pilot. “Patrick, please don’t make this any tougher for me—”
“Tougher for you?” McLanahan propped himself up in bed, was about to get up but paled and decided against it. “What the hell are you saying? Is Wendy or Ken under suspicion?”
“Everyone at HAWC is under suspicion, even the Ops personnel — especially the Ops personnel. But when DreamStar’s only pilot starts hanging around with a chief scientist from a completely different section of HAWC — who also happens to be the very close friend of the DreamStar project director — a bell has to go off—”
“She lives with me, Hal. Come on … “
“Do I really have to spell this out? What if you guys were having a major league argument? What if she left or you told her to? What if … dammit, Patrick, you know what the hell I’m talking about.”
“I do, and it stinks.”
“The leaks started when she got to Dreamland—”
“Which is also when the DreamStar project went operational,” McLanahan interrupted.
“It’s also the time Ken James arrived.”
“Along with a dozen other people,” Patrick shot back. “You’re spinning your wheels, Hal. Wendy’s undergone government security background checks since she was a senior in college. Ken James is an Academy grad. He’s undergone far more thorough background investigations than just about anyone at HAWC, including me.”
“He’s also had a pretty rough family life …”
“Which doesn’t make him a spy. I know all about his past, his father, his mother’s suspicious death in Monaco while he was in the Zoo. But the guy’s been polygraphed, examined, questioned, investigated and scrutinized on a regular basis by a dozen different agencies since entering the Academy. If he’s got a questionable past it would have surfaced by now.”
“Well, I’ve still got to check every scrap of info that’s not there, Patrick. You’ll end up hurting security, not helping,” Hal said, not wanting to press it further at the moment. “Gotta go. I’ll see you on Monday.”
When the door to his hospital room closed, Patrick felt more alone, more isolated than ever before. Mercifully, his body’s total exhaustion forced him to drop into a deep sleep.
Ken James was in DreamStar’s cockpit. He had no flight suit, no helmet. The canopy was close and all power was of He was trying to decide how to activate’ his fighter without ANTARES operating when a brilliant beam of light hit the cockpit from somewhere on the ramp … Hal Briggs was holding a huge spotlight on him. Patrick McLanahan was carrying a bullhorn. Wendy Tork stood beside McLanahan crying. She was motioning to him to come out of DreamStar … He lifted the canopy. It weighed only eighty pound but it would hardly budge. He had to stand on the ejection seat to get better leverage. But as he struggled to lift the heavy Plexiglas windscreen, McLanahan rushed forward, carrying a huge fifty-caliber machine gun. Then Briggs hit him in the face with the brilliant beam from the spotlight and McLanahan raised the machine gun. “Hold it right there …”
James’ eyes snapped open. He was confused, disoriented. Then he heard the sounds of footsteps, coming closer, only a few feet away …
He scrambled for the tiny transmitter on the nightstand beside his bed — he had rigged the wall safe with a remote-control trigger to incinerate its contents from anywhere in the apartment. With his other hand he felt for the Beretta automatic pistol hidden under his pillow …
“… Don’t go away, because you’re listening to the solid gold voice of the solid gold strip, FM one-oh-two …”
Ken pulled his finger away from the button just in time. It was his clock radio, set for the station with the two early-morning DJs with their taped sound effects. The bedroom lights, also preprogrammed to come on when the alarm clock went off, were glaring in his face. Swallowing hard, his ears ringing from tension, he carefully held the hammer of the Beretta with one hand while pulling the trigger, letting the hammer slowly uncock.
It had been another nightmare night, another confused awakening. For the past two nights he had lain in bed, dressed in shorts, shirt, and sneakers, with one finger on the remote-control detonator and one hand on the Beretta pistol beside him. Sleep had been almost impossible. Every noise, every creak, every voice outside shook him awake in an instant, and he would lie there, listening for the sounds of police feet pounding up his stairs or the sight of flashing red-and-blue lights outside his window. Each time he had decided to escape, to get out of town and head off to Mexico before they came and arrested him for espionage, but he would always talk himself out of it, out of deserting DreamStar. He would manage to drift off to sleep, only to be awakened an hour later by another sound. He had managed only a few restless hours of sleep all weekend.
Now he half-walked, half-stumbled to the bathroom. The tension was taking its toll, all right. He had dark circles under his eyes, his face was pale, his lips cracked and dry despite the beads of sweat rolling down his face. He turned the shower on full cold and stepped into it, forcing himself to stand in the icy water a full minute before feeding in warm water. He stood there, hoping that it would wash his nightmares away. It did not.
Still, once into his morning routine, his mind began to analyze the situation more rationally. He had holed himself up in his apartment all weekend, afraid to leave but afraid he would be arrested by military intelligence. The fact that no one had come to him or called was reassuring. Perhaps no one had noticed Kramer and Moffitt, the two Russian agents based out of Los Angeles, at his apartment after all. Maybe Briggs wasn’t conducting round-the-clock surveillance of his apartment …
His mood was bolstered later that morning as he drove through Nellis toward the waiting area for the shuttle bus to the HAWC research area. None of Briggs’ men made a move for him. There seemed no added security other than the forces that had been added weeks earlier when the initial crackdown had been started — if anything, the added security forces seemed more dispersed and less obvious. He felt relief as he stepped aboard the bus that would take him to Dreamland. Surely Briggs wouldn’t let him go to Dreamland again if he had discovered his meeting with Kramer and Moffitt.