Weng ducked back from the truck headlights, wondering how high up the operation went if a major was involved. The truck took off and was soon concealed in a fog of dust, blazing down the ranch road toward the highway. Weng crouched low and dashed back to the cover of brush where Charlie hid. Whispering to him in Chinese… “It’s their officer. A major. The man with him is the driver of the flatbed trailer. They’re coming back for the crate. We have to be ready to follow them.”
Hal ripped open the plastic packaging around a small Alcatel disposable cell phone. He stood in the cramped quarters of a fitting room in the Bonne Marche shopping mall. Made even more cramped with the large suitcase stuffed beside him holding his MP10, the stealth suit and helmet. The neon tracksuit lie discarded on the floor, and Hal was now dressed in dark jeans and a brown jacket with the price tag hanging off a sleeve. He popped the battery in the phone, inserted a SIM card and pressed the tactile power key. It fired up with a jingle from 2005.
Hal ripped off one of his new brown loafers and tugged off his sock, sitting down on the corner bench. He angled the sole of his foot up, reading two sets of numbers scrawled on it in permanent marker. J followed by a seven digit number and H followed by a seven digits. He punched them both into the springy buttons of the keypad, and saved them to the contacts. Jenny and Henry’s phone numbers. He sent a coded text to Jenny that read, “I’ll be late for yoga,” and one to Henry that read, “Happy hour?”
Hal put his sock and shoe back on, and cleaned up his mess in the fitting room, waiting for their replies. A text ringtone blared over his phone. He quickly turned the volume down, reading the text from “J,” “It’s okay. See you soon.” He sat down, waiting for Henry’s reply. Reading the time on his new French Connection analog quartz watch, calculating the time difference. Hal skimped on the phone, but splurged on the watch. It was a quarter after noon. 10 p.m. in New Mexico. Hal pondered why Henry hadn’t replied yet. Is the old man asleep already? A knock sounded outside the fitting room.
“Avez-vous déjà fini?”
“Yes. Oui! Coming out now.” Hal collected his bags and exited the fitting room.
A cell phone vibrated with an incoming text. The screen lit up, showing a repeat of the text Hal sent earlier. The phone was on the polished-granite surface of Henry’s kitchen island, in a completely dark house. A beam from a flashlight outside raked past the window. It was Henry, rounding the corner of his house from the backyard to the side where his circuit box lived. He scanned around the yard to the neighbors homes around him. They all had power. A brisk chill ran up his spine. He reached the power box and the door opened freely. Unlatched. If someone was in the yard, why didn’t they trigger the motion sensors? Henry thought. Feeling imminent danger, he mentally ran through his options. He could hop the wall and run for safety, but whoever knew how to hack his security system would likely have the perimeter surrounded. Any attempt to climb over the wall would make him a fish in a barrel for even a rookie sniper. He could try 911 on his landline. There was a fifty-fifty chance it was dead too, and whoever broke in may be waiting there, anticipating Henry’s next move. The landline was out and his options were dwindling. It came down to making a break for his cell phone inside or the gun rack. The phone was closer.
Henry dropped the flashlight and zipped around the corner of his house. As fast as an old man with a beer belly could zip. He plowed through the back door, turned on a dime and lunged toward the kitchen. Reaching out, expecting to sweep up the phone off the island counter, but his hand swiped across a clean surface. His phone was gone. They’re inside.
“CDG sil vous plait,” Hal said, leaning to the window of a cab, instructing the cabby to take him to the Charles de Gaulle airport, having learned to say ‘please’ in French. Hal barreled into the cab with the large suitcase he plopped onto the seat next to him. He clutched the burner phone in his fist, still waiting for Henry’s reply. It’s not like him, he thought, as he sent another text. “Answer, Hank!” He said into the phone.
“Quelle?” The cabby replied.
“Not you— sorry.”
Hal broke protocol. Instead of sending another coded message, he called…
An old GMC pickup fired up beside the bunkhouse, spewing a cloud of smoke from the tailpipe. The tailgate was missing and loose strands of hay were strewn about the dirt-caked cargo bed. The rancher lent it to the bunkhouse boys when their truck was totaled in a “hit and run.”
Weng drove with Charlie riding shotgun, searching the desert horizon with the night vision scope. “Got ‘em,” Charlie said in Chinese.
They took off down the dirt road. Headlights off. Weng wore a black Special Forces helmet with night vision goggles, enabling him to see the road. They were a couple of miles behind the convoy made up of the flatbed trailer, piggy-backing the RPA crate and the air force pickup trailing behind. The convoy took a left, surprising them. Going down an even more desolate road, deeper into the desert, instead of taking a right to Highway 70, Holloman, Alamogordo and civilization. The convoy continued north on the dilapidated and bumpy dirt road.
It took Weng’s truck another minute to reach it. They followed hidden in the dust cloud and dark, trailing the convoy. The NVGs were useless in the thick cloud. Weng sped up just enough for the pickup’s tail lights to break the dust cloud.
The convoy led them north for a mile. Weng updated Matt with the convoy’s location over the radio. He was following them from the bunkhouse over the satellite feed.
“They turned west on County Road,” Matt’s voice sounded over the radio. The convoy took a left on an abandoned highway, several miles northwest of Alamogordo and just north of the Holloman border. County Road was a little smoother, but pothole-ridden with clumps of shrubs sprouting up from the pavement. Weng slowed down and remained in the dust cloud, allowing the convoy to get way out ahead of him. He proceeded onto the old paved road, following the convoy lights ahead.
“South on Sabre Road,” Matt said over the radio. Weng was losing the convoy lights so he sped up. The surrounding area was flat desert with light scrub. A handful of abandoned Air Force shacks appeared on both sides of the road. Surrounded by perfectly round patches of bare desert ground.
The old ranch truck slowed at the intersection, creeping over the cracked and pock-marked pavement. Charlie kept an eye on the convoy through the NVG scope, pulling it down in a moment of astonishment. “Is that snow?”
“Sand,” Weng said. “White sand. We’re on the missile base. Or where the missile base was a decade ago.”
“They stopped,” Matt said over the radio.
Weng snuck the truck up within a half mile of the stopped convoy. Pulling it off the road into the cover of sagebrush. He and Charlie proceeded on foot, getting within a quarter mile.
“They’re unloading the crate at an old fueling station,” Weng said over the radio to Matt. “We’re not far from the perimeter of the base. It probably still has power.” He flipped up his NVGs and Charlie gave him the night vision scope for a closer view. Confirming his hunch when he saw airmen running power cables from the old station hut to the RPA crate. Another airman angled a communication disk back toward Holloman. In line-of-sight of the air traffic control tower. “It’s their new home,” Weng said over the radio to Matt. “Setting up remote surveillance now.”
Henry reached to his back pocket for the flashlight, then saw its beam raking through the grass outside. He forgot to grab it. He flipped the light switch and when it failed to turn on, he remembered he left the circuit box before turning the power back on. Blind in his own house with no phone, he had to go back. First the power switches then the flashlight. Get it together, he thought. His cell phone RANG. Sounding like it was ringing from the living room. Whoever took it was letting it ring, Henry thought. Perplexed. He abandoned the plan to turn on the power, and crept with caution to the living room, aware it may be a trap. He stopped suddenly, staring to the middle of the living room. Mystified by the cell phone that seemed to hover in midair, four feet above the floor. It was still ringing. Was it hanging on a string? Just as he reached out for it, the answer clicked in his brain. Unfortunately, a moment too late as the assassin in the stealth suit, Ghost Two, unleashed a devastating punch to the old man’s jaw. Henry’s knees buckled. He felt arms around his neck. The cloaked assassin grappling him in a lethal vascular neck restraint — a chokehold. The phone fell to the floor next to Henry’s knee. He lunged forward, rolling the man over the top of him, and scooping up the phone at the same time. He couldn’t break the man’s grasp, but he fought the oncoming blurriness to swype a message across the keypad, struggling to hit send. The ghost realized he was trying to call or send a message and choked even harder, changing positions to increase his leverage over the old man. Squeezing the life out of him in a tactical military chokehold.