The SP's, caught completely off guard, wound up off balance from the shove. "Stop him!" the sergeant yelled, seeing Roddy headed for the door.
The person coming in was a teenage boy looking for his father, a navigator on a flight that had not yet arrived. He stared, eyes bulging as if ready to pop out of their sockets, while Roddy raced by. Then he looked out and called back, "He's running over to that line of parked cars."
Roddy dashed into the row of vehicles, finding himself between a van and a pickup truck. The back of the pickup was loaded with several bales of straw and a large bag of grass seed. A sheet of black vinyl partially covered the bales. Roddy hurdled over the side, jerked the vinyl off and burrowed beneath it. He lay motionless.
Moments later, he heard shouting nearby.
"I don't see anything underneath," one voice said.
"Use your light and look inside every damned vehicle." It was the sergeant.
Then Roddy felt the truck bed shake as someone jumped onto the back bumper. They poked around on the vinyl and tugged at it, but Roddy had grasped one edge so that it wouldn't budge.
"Hey, Sarge," the first voice said. "A bus just pulled up down the street. Reckon he could have—"
"Get on the horn and have somebody intercept it. Tell them who we're looking for."
Roddy felt another shake as the man jumped down to the ground. Then the voices began to fade away. Apparently they were moving their search to another area.
Roddy waited a minute or so until he thought he would suffocate. Then he eased the black plastic sheet aside and rose slowly to look around. The area was quiet. He saw no one. He climbed out of the truck bed and moved to where he could see the front of the building. Then he noticed a large truck parked at the corner of the building beside a high wire fence. The flight line lay beyond. Keeping his body low, he made his way down to the truck and carefully climbed onto the hood, then on top of the cab. Throwing caution aside, he jumped across the fence. His knee buckled as he came down on the hard pavement, but he rolled onto one side to break the fall. When he got up and brushed himself off, he found he had suffered no more than a few scrapes on his arm. Fortunately, he had rolled onto the side opposite the shoulder that suffered the bullet wound.
Looking around, he could see no one along this area of the flight line. With the holiday, operations were virtually at a standstill. If there were any guards, they had evidently joined the group out front searching for him. The Pave Low still sat there with its navigation lights flashing. He could see a light on in the cockpit and figured Dutch was probably still there talking with Sergeant Nickens.
He walked quickly toward the chopper. Entering through the open cargo door, he made his way forward to the cockpit. When Dutch Schuler turned around and saw him, his mouth fell open with a look of shock.
"Colonel, how the hell—"
"Damnit, Dutch, listen to me before you say or do anything else. I don't care what Wing Patton said, I am not crazy. I did not kill Elena Castillo Quintero. Matter of fact, she was a damned close friend. The guy who killed her is the one who's responsible for what's about to happen at the Capitol. I've been working closely with two people on this. He's already killed one of them tonight." He pulled the radio from his pocket and switched it on. "Let me see if I can raise the other one. Burke, this is Roddy. Do you read me?"
Burke Hill's voice blared from the small set. "I just tried to call you. From what I heard on the police scanner, Romashchuk's guys have released that neurotoxin around the Washington Monument. All hell's broken loose over there. How soon will you be here?"
"I've run into a problem. My old co-pilot, Major Schuler, has been brainwashed by General Patton. He thinks I'm crazy. He's sitting here right now."
"Can you hear me, Major?" Burke asked.
Dutch directed a critical frown at Roddy. "Who is this guy?"
"Burke Hill. He's a former FBI agent, the guy who saved the American and Soviet presidents from that assassination plot in Toronto a few years ago. Remember?"
Major Schuler nodded and held out his hand for the radio. "This is Major Schuler, Mr. Hill. If somebody's plotting to fire mortars at the Capitol, why isn't the FBI or the police doing something about it?"
"That's a long story, Major. I'll be glad to tell you on the way. But if we don't get there in the next twelve to fifteen minutes, it will be too late. My family is in that audience as well as Roddy's, and untold thousands of others. I hope I don't have to blame you for letting them die."
Dutch clenched his teeth with a grimace that reflected the perilous state in which he had suddenly found himself. It was almost more of a burden than he could handle. His career had just been successfully rehabilitated. He was in line for an assignment that would be the envy of any young field grade officer. But if he assisted Colonel Rodman in getting away from Andrews after the instructions General Patton had given him, he would probably face a court-martial as unforgiving as the one that had convicted Roddy. That was one horn of the dilemma.
He had seen his old commander acting under extreme stress many times in the past. The man he saw now appeared to be just as much in command of his faculties as the Warren Rodman of old. Also he could not ignore the implications of Burke Hill's rebuke. Could he chance being held responsible for failure to save countless thousands of innocent people? He didn't understand the police report of neurotoxins released at the Washington Monument, but it would certainly tie in with the Colonel's concern about a mortar attack involving nerve agent shells.
All of these conflicting thoughts and observations, the highly troubling pros and cons, seemed to overload his capacity to sort them out quickly on a cold, rational basis. As a result, he went with his emotions, with the admonition of that plaintive voice deep within that said forget about trying to cover your own ass, do what seems the right thing to do.
The engines were still warm. They had used only a minimum amount of fuel on the previous flight. He tossed the radio back to Roddy and turned to the flight engineer.
"Sergeant, let's fire up this sucker and get it in the air."
A grinning Roddy pressed the transmit button on the transceiver. "We're on the way, Burke. Get that flashlight ready."
"Hope you don't mind taking the copilot's seat, Colonel," Dutch Schuler said as the twin turbine engines began to whine.
"It's been awhile, but I think I can handle it," Roddy said as he eased into the seat.
75
"America's soldiers have always fired their guns in the pursuit of peace," said the voice on the radio.
Burke listened with growing apprehension as the dramatic tones of E. G. Marshall came through the speaker in Walt Brackin's Blazer. Time was an implacable enemy. Could they possibly find the terrorists in what little time they had left?
"With our nation thankfully at peace on this day that commemorates its founding, we hear the sound of cannon fire only as part of a musical tribute, a recognition of the sacrifices, for many the ultimate sacrifice, made by the men and women of our armed forces over a span of more than two hundred years. The United States Air Force Band, the U. S. Army Chorus and the Salute Gun Platoon of the Third U.S. Infantry join the National Symphony Orchestra in Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's thrilling 1812 Overture."
The music began almost too softly to hear, but there was no mistaking the sound that reached Burke's ears from outside. It was the sound of a helicopter. He jumped out of the vehicle and ran into a cleared area, where he began to wave the flashlight in a circular pattern as the thunderous noise came closer.
When the chopper appeared suddenly over the trees, its forward progress stopped and it began to drop straight down like a massive, free-wheeling elevator. Before it had even touched down, he saw someone in a flight suit beckoning from the open door. Running at a crouch, he moved beneath the huge, whirling rotor blades. A hand reached out to grab his arm and pull him into the aircraft. It was his left arm, and Burke winced as the tugging strained the stitches in his shoulder. He stared about wide-eyed as he was hurriedly pushed toward the front. He had never been in such a huge helicopter.