“Give me another, Jimmy.”
But Pop Keller couldn’t resist staring the woman’s way, turning on his stool so he was facing in her direction. The bartender set the club soda down on the bar, and Pop reached back for it. He’d give himself as much time as it took to finish it and then, what the hell, he’d join the woman in her booth.
“Livermore Air Force Base,” Blaine said, and he handed the binoculars to Sal Belamo.
Sal pressed them against his eyes and spun the focusing wheels. From their position atop a hill, they had a clear vantage point of the base across a double-laned highway. They had taken off from Kennedy six hours earlier, half of that time spent getting here from the small airport in Hastings, Nebraska. This time Blaine had insisted that Melissa not accompany them. In spite of her determined protests, she was waiting things out in nearby Hanover, Kansas.
“They got the right uniforms, guns, jeeps, the whole works,” Sal Belamo was saying. “Shit, place doesn’t look like it was ever even closed down.”
“That way no questions are raised.” Blaine told him. “Military might have left a small transition staff in place, so people see a little added activity, it doesn’t stand out.”
Belamo swept the binoculars across the base’s length. “I count a dozen guards on the perimeter. ’Bout what I figured.”
Livermore Air Force Base was one of the first of nearly a hundred such bases to be closed down in the latest round of military cost cutting. In its heyday it had had upwards of 3,700 servicemen in its population and been home to a wing of B-52 SAC bombers. Blaine gazed down and imagined the roar of engines shaking nearby walls and spirits at all hours of the day and night. Neighbors must have learned to bolt down their china.
The living quarters, apartments, and small homes rimmed the fenced-in base’s perimeter. Centered between them were ten runways, at least that many hangars, a control tower, and a three-story building that served as the base’s headquarters. But what had commanded most of McCracken’s attention from the time they scaled the hill were the eight small transport planes laid out in neat rows across the edge of the tarmac.
“This what you were expecting?” Belamo asked him, as he lowered the binoculars.
“Pretty much. Some sort of massive distribution’s about to get under way, by the look of things. What Johnny latched on to with those killings was just the preliminaries.”
Belamo fingered his binoculars. “Wish we could find the big fella with these.”
“He’ll be here, Sal.”
“Yeah, but meanwhile …”
“Meanwhile, we get started without him.”
Blaine waved the first team of commandos into position. They worked their way forward toward the fence enclosing the entire base complex, making sure they were well out of line of the nearest guard’s vision. The weapons they had brought along had been part of Nineteen’s stockpile. Accordingly, the bulk of their inventory was composed of M-16s, Galil machine guns, Uzis, and sidearms, along with limited supplies of grenades and a small complement of Stinger missiles. The element of surprise was the best thing they had going for them, and if that broke down, the battle might be over in a hurry.
The women pulled themselves along through a stretch of high grass the last bit of the way. The grass covered not only their approach, but also their slicing through the chain-link fence that was rimmed with barbed wire. Livermore had been closed for nearly two years now, and the grass had been cut only sporadically since then.
“You read me, Sal?” Blaine said into his hand-held walkie-talkie.
“Loud and clear, boss,” Belamo returned from the opposite side of the base. “All team members in position and cutting through.”
“Almost showtime.”
“Rock and roll. Hey, McBalls.”
“I’m here, Sal.”
“I was born for this shit. When this is over, no way I go back to a desk.”
McCracken watched through his binoculars from a position of high cover across the highway, as the women of his team began to slither through the holes they had snipped in the fencing. There were eight in all, eight in Sal’s team as well. That left four with him to cover phase two of the plan.
Sufficient communications gear for all of the women had not been present in the Nineteen stockpile, so once inside the base they were on their own. Each had a patrol area. Each knew the rules. The kills had to be silent and quick. Once these were completed, they would take up positions around the airfield perimeter and wait for Blaine’s fiery signal to move in.
He swept his binoculars across the fence once more.
“My team’s in, Sal.”
“Boy,” Belamo’s voice returned, “these babes are good.”
“Nothing they haven’t done before.”
“Us either.”
McCracken pulled the van off the main road at the sign reading RESTRICTED AREA. OFFICIAL PERSONNEL ONLY. He drove down a narrow chopped-up roadbed where two guards waited at the base’s main gate. He stepped down out of the van, and the camera looped around his neck bobbed a little. Two of the female commandos, scantily dressed in the clothes of tourists in the midst of a long drive, fell in behind him.
“Hey,” he said, as he neared the gate, “we get a look inside?”
One of the guards shook his head. The other hung back, hand not far from his M-16.
“Sorry, sir,” the closer one said. “No visitors.”
“But they been letting people in ever since it closed up. I lived here ten years and never saw the inside. I’m just back for—”
“Sir,” the other guard said, coming forward now, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Come on. How ’bout a break?”
The guards were almost close enough to touch through the gate now.
“Sir, this is still a restricted area. You are trespassing on—”
The guard’s head snapped back before he could say another word, his eyes turning upward toward the crimson hole in his forehead. The second guard hadn’t even had time to register what had happened when a similar shot dropped him. A third bullet from the markswoman perched behind the van took out the video camera that hovered over the gate.
“Cutters!” Blaine called.
Instantly one of the women came forward and sliced through the latch that affixed the gate into place. The other two shoved it open just before a rented 4×4 pickup with covered cargo bay pulled down the road, driven by the final commando. The pickup came to a halt just outside the gate at the same time as the two largest women finished pulling the dead guards’ uniforms over their clothes. They moved quickly toward a jeep parked alongside the guardhouse and made sure that their helmets covered as much of their faces as possible.
The plan now was for the jeep, apparently driven by the gate guards, to lead the 4×4 onto the base. McCracken would ride in the pickup’s enclosed rear. The two other commandos would ride up front. The precision of all the women, especially considering there had been no opportunity for rehearsal, was incredible. He realized that these particular women, at least, had come to Nineteen not to forget, but merely to wait for the time when they were needed again.
In all, the time lapse between the downing of the gate guards and the point when McCracken climbed into the back of the pickup was barely thirty seconds. Excellent under any conditions.
“Go!” he called.
The driver of his pickup hit the horn lightly. The signal given, the woman in the driver’s seat of the jeep drove off toward the center of the base with the 4×4 right behind.
“Sal, you read me?”
“Loud and clear, boss.”
“I’m in.”
“No more signs of guards. I’m following now. These women are beautiful, ain’t they?”