"Cool," she said, sitting cross-legged on the bed and looking him in the eyes with the beautiful dark eyes that always sent Troy around the bend. "Hypothetical? That's like when you make up something that represents something, like testing out some theory that you suppose is true, huh?"
Her perfect breasts looked almost better when framed by the thin, lacy bra than they did on their own.
"Yeah that's right," Troy said. "Using you and Richard as an example, what would you think if somebody… like the cops, for instance… came to you and said that Richard was mixed up in some criminal wrongdoing at the bank?"
"I'd ask them, 'What's that got to do with me?"'
"And they said it was real serious and they thought he was going to do something really bad that would affect lots of people… people you knew and loved… like your family?"
"Like if he was gonna take all the money and run off to the Bahamas, huh?"
"Yeah, something like that."
"Is somebody threatening your family, baby?" Yolanda asked. "If they are, I'll call my cousin, and him and his friends would kick the guy's ass."
"Nobody's threatening my family," Troy assured her. "This is kind of a work thing… so what if the cops asked you to spy on Richard?"
"You mean, be a snitch?"
"Yeah, sort of."
"No way I'd be a snitch for the cops, man," Yolanda explained. "You don't even rat out your enemies to the cops."
"Even if he was gonna run off to the Bahamas with money that belonged to your family?"
"Even if Richard was that kinda asshole, I wouldn't snitch to the cops. I'd call my cousin, y'know. I'd figure out some way to stop him so he didn't do it."
"That's sound advice, Yo."
"You must sure work with some assholes down there where you work," she said, stroking the stubble on his cheeks with her hand and beginning to breathe more heavily. "I sure wish you'd get another job and get your ass out of there if those people are like that. I sure wish you weren't going out of town again so soon, babe."
Chapter 35
Landing at McCarran airport reminded troy Loensch of the last time he had been in Las Vegas. Hal Coughlin was still very much alive back then, and Jenna was far more alive. A fire had burned in her deep-blue eyes in those days, and robust eagerness and excitement about life permeated her being. The last time that he saw her, her eyes seemed vacant, drained of their vibrancy by the despondency of loss, and of guilt, a guilt for which Troy held himself responsible.
As much as he enjoyed Yolanda, the warmth of her friendship and the heat of her body, Troy felt that he had fallen in love with Jenna. Yet, while Yolanda was his for the asking, willingly and at any time, he imagined himself never seeing Jenna again, and it was tearing him up inside.
When he was flying with Golden West, Troy had landed often at McCarran. Each time, he had shared ramp space or airspace with one of the white Boeing 737 jetliners known only as "Janet." Unmarked except for a single red stripe on each side of their fuselage, the Janet 737s were operated by Edgerton, Germeshausen, & Grier, a longtime contractor to the government agencies operating at the Nevada Test Site and the adjacent Nellis Air Force Base Range — the place the outside world knows as Area 51.
After all the stories and tall tales about Area 51, today he had discovered that this was what the white 737s actually do. For the first time, he had not only watched a Janet taxi anonymously across the McCarran tarmac, he had boarded one.
They had flown north, he and his fellow passengers, wearing uniforms and not, making their first stop at Groom Lake, the place where the Air Force tested the SR-71 back in the sixties and numerous other "black airplanes" in the half century since. It is here, the conspiracy buffs insist, that they still have the aliens from the 1947 Roswell crash. For Troy, Groom Lake was just another airline stop. He glanced out the window at the closed hangars, finding them so disappointingly ordinary. It was rather like Dorothy discovering that the Wizard of Oz was no big deal.
The Groom Lake stop was like any commuter airline stop, quick and routine. About a dozen of the passengers who had gotten on at McCarran deplaned, and four people got on.
Troy glanced up idly, watching as the new people stowed their luggage and sat down. Suddenly, there was an unexpected flicker of recognition. It was a thin man about Troy's age with short-cropped dark hair. Who was behind this vaguely familiar face?
Aron Arnold.
Aron Arnold from Svartvand, with whom he had dueled over the Peten jungle.
As they made eye contact, Arnold nodded his recognition and took a seat across the aisle from Troy.
"Aron Arnold," he said, extending his hand. "We met down in Guatemala."
"Troy Loensch. Yes, we did meet… a couple of times down there. What are you doing here?"
"Harris invited me to get involved in a special project up in Cactus Flat… I'm guessing that by the fact that this plane's last stop is Cactus Flat, that you and I may be headed to the same place."
"That's probably the case," Troy said. He shouldn't have been surprised, but the irony of the easy cordiality of Aron Arnold still seemed a bit eerie. "What do you know about this program?"
"Not much. It's about experimental aircraft, but then this whole desert out here is about mystery aircraft, both black and white."
A half hour north of Groom Lake, Cactus Flat Air Force Auxiliary Field was much the same as Groom Lake, with clusters of low, khaki-colored buildings, some closed hangars, and a long runway. The desolate landscape in which it lay was more like Sudan than it was like Mundo Maya or Kota Bharu. Everything about this part of Nevada appears brown and monotonous. The mountains have no trees and seem virtually devoid of any perceptible vegetation, except sagebrush, which is also dull brown.
It's a lot colder than Sudan, Troy thought as a blast of icy air hit him when he exited the door in the front of the cabin. It can be quite cold in the wintertime out in the high desert of central Nevada.
The other passengers, mainly engineering types carrying laptops, hurried off the plane and scurried purposefully in different directions.
"I take it by the way you're gawking around that you're the two new guys for HAWX? My name's Mike Dehnland. You must be Arnold and Loensch."
"Must be," Troy said. "I'm Loensch, he's Arnold,"
Dehnland, a man in his midforties with ex-military written all over him, greeted them with a firm handshake and an admonition to collect their gear and follow him. He gave them a half hour to settle in before the obligatory briefing that always comes early on one's first day at a new duty station.
Troy found his quarters quite spartan, not unlike a cheap motel room, although the room was a cut or two above what he had endured in Sudan or at Kota Bharu. At least the walls seemed to be sealed up well enough to keep out the blowing dust.
The briefing room was regulation U. S. Air Force issue, although all the personnel were in civilian clothes. A Firehawk logo hung on a patch of wall where you could tell by the mismatched paint color that the shield of an Air Force unit insignia had once hung there.
"Welcome to the Flat, gentlemen, home of the 24th Test and Evaluation Squadron of the U. S. Air Force," Dehnland said, delivering what was obviously a speech he'd given to newbies before. "Until three weeks ago, the 24th was involved in the testing and evaluation of some of the most advanced high-altitude aircraft in the world. As you know, this activity has been transferred in its entirety to Firehawk, LLC. Basically, all of the facilities, operations, and most personnel remain as they were; we just wear civilian 'uniforms' to work. The 24th still exists, but only as the host unit here at Cactus Flat, and as the cover for what we do here."