The reference was to members of Ronnie’s family and she said, “I know—I know.”
“And your beloved brother,” Douglass said, and that took her aback.
She said, “But my brother’s right here—you wouldn’t harm one of our own group!”
“Under the circumstances we need your services more than his,” Douglass said. “He’s expendable. He’s got nothing to do with the military base. So you see his life is in your hands.”
“Just in case you think about changing sides,” Nicole drawled.
Ronnie said, “Nobody in this country even knows I’m his sister.”
“You know it and he knows it. That’s all that really matters, isn’t it?” Douglass turned to go. “You know what you’re to do. Come on, Nicole.”
When they were gone she sat with no more expression than a plastic mannequin’s but her right hand slowly closed into a small fist and the knuckles turned white.
Chapter Fourteen
Forrester stood with one hand on the iron balustrade looking out across the heaped-up distance toward the approaching airplane. On the tower above him the radar dishes turned steadily, without sound, and out toward the hangars crewmen with big sound suppressors clamped over their ears stood clear of intakes and exhausts while airplane engines, tuning up, sucked the thin dry air by the ton. Wind ruffled Forrester’s hair and whipped away whatever Bill Ryan was saying. The others—Spode, Colonel Sims, Professor Moskowitz, Major Pete Chandler—stood in a knot a few feet away, watching the distant F-111 extend its wings and turn final on the range with a tearing sigh of sound.
The plane sank toward the desert and lined itself up on the runway. It grew big as it rocketed forward, sun racing along its wings in fragmented reflections, and Ryan yelled something about its performance supremacy-while the F-111 hit the pavement a mile away and rumbled forward at high speed past crash crews. When it stopped at the maintenance hangar its crewmen climbed out in their hooded moon suits and the three uniformed men on the platform with Forrester all gave him a gung-ho show of teeth as if they were very proud of the fact that the six-million-dollar airplane had managed to land without breaking up.
An airman came out of the tower onto the concrete apron and saluted and spoke to Colonel Sims. The wing commander nodded and followed the airman inside. Forrester listened to Bill Ryan’s idle talk with half his mind and flicked his eyes over the others. Top Spode had something on his mind and that was disturbing because Forrester needed Top alert today. Moskowitz beside him was, dwarfed—neat, gray, small, potbellied; the Professor had been awarded the Medal of Freedom for his work on the Titan missile program but he looked as if he’d be at home in a quarter-half poker game or in a bar with a schooner of draft beer. He had the knobby knuckles of a longshoreman.
Bill Ryan was saying, “You’ll have to go the rest of the way without me. I’ve got to stick around the admin block. This job keeps me strapped to a watch and I get the feeling we’re overdue for a surprise alert inspection. They spring them on us all the time to test our reaction time—we don’t want to get caught with our planes down, do we?” Ryan smiled without pleasure; he seemed irritable.
Forrester said, “We’ll try to keep out of your hair.”
“Sure. Bud Sims will take you around—the birds are really his bailiwick. I’m just the landlord. Major Chandler here has authority to clear you into any area you want to see. Professor, good to meet you.” Ryan shook hands with Moskowitz and Spode, batted Forrester’s arm and went inside the tower. Colonel Sims was corning through and held the door for him and they exchanged a few words in the doorway, and when Sims came out onto the apron his face was screwed up into a mild perplexity.
“Gentlemen, I’m very sorry to cop out on you but I’ve just had a call from a hospital in Yuma—my wife was down there looking over some real estate and she’s been taken ill. I’m sure it’s nothing serious, but I’m going to fly down there.”
“Of course,” Forrester said. “I’m terribly sorry to hear that—I hope she’ll be all right.”
“I’m sure she will. But she’ll want me there. My deputy will be taking over my duties until I get back. I’m afraid Colonel Winslow can’t run the store and show you folks around at the same time but I’ve told him to cooperate with you to the best of his ability. Major Chandler here will guide you wherever you want to go. I’m sorry to duck out this way but they’re warming up a plane for me down there right now. Gentlemen?”
There was a quick round of handshaking and Sims went, walking fast, a tall man who wore the uniform as if he’d been born to pose for a recruiting poster.
Jaime Spode’s outdoor eyes were crinkled into suspicious slits. “They’re dropping off like flies. If I didn’t know better I’d think we had bad breath.”
Major Chandler uttered an uneasy laugh. “It must look like that. But I’ll do my best to fill in for the Colonel.” Chandler’s eyes were covered by huge curved mirror-lensed motorcycle sunglasses and he wore gray Air Force coveralls, cut very tight, with a dozen zipper pockets. Forrester thought he must have spit-shined his boots with lighter fluid and a nylon stocking: the toes had a wicked shine and altogether the meaty-shouldered chief of base security gave a sinister impression of latent violence. The polished ones were often the pathologically sadistic ones.
Standing rigidly with his chest out like an aquatic bird’s, Chandler said, “At your service, gentlemen. Where to?”
“The launch complex, I think,” Forrester said and Chandler took them downstairs through the admin tower and whistled up a gray USAF Chevrolet, For Official Use Only. Forrester got in back with Moskowitz; Spode slid into the middle of the front seat between the Major and the driver, and Chandler turned with his left arm over the back of the seat and said, “We’ll be bumping into a little more confusion than you’d normally find out there today. We’ve got a standardization-and-evaluation team down here from Z.I. Command to inspect our combat capability. I’d like to avoid getting underfoot—if they trip over us they’ll score points against the base.”
Moskowitz’ eyes twinkled and Forrester nodded; Chandler was going by the book but he wasn’t going to go out of his way to make things easy.
A B-52 bomber circled high overhead with vapor trails spreading from its eight jets and Major Chandler kept up a running monologue thick with jargon that both explained and obscured the installations they drove past. The road went through a guarded gate in the security fence and across absolutely empty desert—greasewood, cholla, manzanita, ocotillo, paloverde, sand. A narrow side road ran off to the right and Chandler said, “One of our ABM silos, about a mile over there.”
“Sure,” Moskowitz said, “to defend our investment.”
“To defend our strike capability, Professor. We can’t just leave the birds wide open for the Reds to knock out with their first strike.”
“I know, but it’s still a strange world in which people are defenseless and only strategic weapons can be protected.”
“We could protect everybody”—Chandler’s face twisted toward Forrester—“if Congress gave us the money to build a full-scale ABM system.”
Forrester said, “I’m not the department of sympathetic cars, Major. That’s over in Congressman Breckenyear’s office.”
Chandler’s face made no visible change. Forrester wished the man would take off those infernal sunglasses. Chandler said, “War travels fast these days, Senator—we’re just keeping up with the Ivans.”
“Or are they the ones who’re just keeping up with us?”
“You rather let them get ahead of us, Senator?”
“Ahead and behind are words that don’t mean much when you’ve already passed the finish line. I’m talking about overkill now.”