The soldier on the left cried out and fell, clutch- J
ing his lower back. The other turned toward Chandler
and opened fire with his submachine gun, but
the shots went high and right. Chandler fired several
rounds to throw off his aim, then threw himself
back into the tunnel as bullets pinged off the outer
security doors. Lying on his belly, he peeked out the
doors. The soldier had propped up Helen, who
looked semiconscious, using her as a shield while
he checked his comrade.
"Helen! Kaddiri!" Chandler shouted, his gun
poised to fire. "Get up! Now!" He was afraid she
would be too weak to act, but she heard him and
had enough strength to roll free of the soldier's
grasp. Chandler dropped the second soldier on his
first shot.
He ran to her. "Come on!" he said. "I'm going to
try to get you away!"
Heavy machine-gun fire rippled the ground not
five feet away from them, shot from one of the helicopters
on the flight line. Chandler fired two rounds
toward the helicopter, picked Kaddiri up, and ran
for the rear of one of the hangars. Placing her on the
ground behind the hangar, he tried to make a run for
one of the submachine guns dropped by the soldiers
who had taken Kaddiri, but a burst of gunfire drove
him back to cover. Two soldiers had dismounted
from the helicopter and were headed straight for
them. Chandler took aim and fired but his gun
clicked empty. He threw it away, looped one of Kaddiri's
arms up over his shoulder, and ran down the
ramp behind the hangars. It was their last, their
only, chance.
L
I've got one of the helicopters lined up!" the pilot
of the MV-22 Pave Hammer tilt-rotor aircraft
called out on interphone. "Give me permission to
shoot!"
"No!" Jon Masters shouted. "Helen might be in
one of those choppersc!"
"Put me right over the lead helicopter," McLanaban
radioed. "Target the second helicopter's tail rotor
with the cannon. Try to keep it on the ground,
but don't hit it!"
The MV-22 was flying about sixty miles an hour
in helicopter mode as it swooped across the two parallel
runways at Mather toward the R D center.
Patrick knew their altitude, about thirty feet above
ground, and their speed. He relied on his experience
as an Air Force bombardier for the rest.
As the MV-22 swept in on its targets, Patrick
stepped out through the left crew door onto the left
main landing gear sponson and steadied himself
against the left weapon pylon. At just the right moment
, he let go and flung himself out into space,
jumping right down onto the spinning rotors of the
first UH-1 Huey helicopter.
He looked like a doll tossed from a speeding car
onto a busy freeway when he hit the rotor disk. He
landed right-shoulder-first onto the left side of the
rotor, but the BERP suit protected him from being
sliced into hamburger. His body skipped across the
rotor disk, hitting again on the blade tips just forward
of the cockpit canopy before being thrown a
hundred feet into the air.
The helicopter's blades bounced like palm fronds
in a hurricane. One blade snapped and flew off into
space; the others dipped so low that they struck the
ground and then the tail, snapping off the tail rotor
. Unbalanced, the entire main-rotor assembly
cracked off the hub and shattered. The transmission
screamed into high rpm's, then it too shattered and
disintegratled. The transmission burst into a globe of
shrapnel, shelling out the turbine engine with a
huge explosion.
Patrick landed up against the steel post of one of
the facility's ballpark lights. He knew he was alive
because the ferocity of the electrical surges through
the suit had set his entire body on fire. He writhed
in pain and tried to relax his muscles, let the energy
move through him and dissipate; but the more he
tried to relax, the harder the waves of electricity
It felt like hours before they stopped. He didn't
dare move at first, thinking he was sawed into
pieces. The vision of those rotor blades rushing up
to his face was imprinted on his eyeballs. But when
he opened his eyes, he saw hangars, lights, and gray
cloudy skies. He was alive.
He got to his feet and looked over the R D
facility flight line. Soldiers were streaming out both
crew doors of the disabled Huey, some holding injured
comrades. The MV-22 Pave Hammer tilt-rotor
was directly over the second one-it could fire
straight down with its chin-mounted Chain Gun,
but no one on board the Huey could shoot straight
up because they'd be shooting through their own
rotor disk. The second Huey's tail rotor began to
disintegrate as 20-millimeter rounds chewed it to
pieces, and in seconds it was unflyable.
Soldiers began firing at the MV-22. "Hal! You're
taking ground fire!" Patrick shouted into his helmet
radio. "Get out of there now!" As the MV-22 moved
away, Patrick hit his thrusters, aiming straight at
the soldiers firing on it. He plowed into them going
full speed, knocking them over like an out-ofcontrol
truck.
Then he heard shouts of "Halt!" in German
through his onmidirectional microphone-and cries
of "Help!" in English. He hit his thrusters in the
direction of the cries, jumping across'the ramp behind
the second hangar. He could see two soldiers
chasing someone and recognized the running figure
of Tom Chandler, carrying a woman down the
fenceline behind the hangars. The soldiers had fired
a warning shot in the air, but Chandler wasn't stopping
. One of them raced after him as the other knelt
down and began to line up his shot.
Patrick hit his thrusters again but discovered
they hadn't recharged yet. He ran toward the kneeling
soldier, shouting, "Chandler! Gun! Behind
you; with his electronically amplified voice. Chandler
turned, pushed Kaddiri to the ground next to
the fence, and raised a pistol. At last, a "Ready"
indication. Patrick hit his thrusters and speared the
kneeling soldier with his flying body just in time.
The other soldier had thrown himself on the ground
when he saw Chandler's gun, trying to find cover.
Patrick got to his feet, made sure the one he had
downed was out cold, and yelled "Stop!" at the second
soldier. But he was too late. Chandler went
down just as Patrick reached the guy and put him
out of commission.
Patrick went over to Helen, lying where she had
fallen when Chandler dropped. She looked semiconscious
. "Helen! It's Patrick! Are you all right?"
She opened her eyes. "Patrick?" she said groggily.
"Patrick! I . . . I think I'm okay.
" She turned her
head toward Chandler. "He saved my life, the son of
a bitch. How is he?"
Patrick checked him over. He had a bullet in his
upper chest and left shoulder. "Not good," he said.
He tore off one of Chandler's pant legs and stuffed
the cloth into his chest wound to stop the bleeding.
They heard the sirens of approaching police cars and
fire trucks. "We're going to have to get him out of
here. And )rou need to be checked over too."
The MV-22 had swooped over the R D facility,
firing at soldiers on the ground, but now it touched
down on the ramp behind the second disabled
Huey. Patrick carried Chandler out onto the ramp,
with Helen hobbling beside him, just as the Sheriff's
Department and California Highway Patrol cars and
county fire trucks roared up. The officers . ran out,
weapons drawn, and aimed at Patrick. "Put him
down," they ordered. "Hands in the air!"
"Hold on, hold on!" It was the commander of the
Highway Patrol's SWAT team, Thomas Conrad,
who ran up, followed by Masters and Briggs. "Let
him go, boys. He's one of us." Then he pointed to
Chandler, still in Patrick's arms. "But not that man.
He's under arrest. Get him to the hospital but keep
an officer with him at all times. And this lady needs
medical help too. But hold it just a sec . . ." Conrad
went over to where Chandler was lying, withdrew
something from his pocket, and put it in
Patrick's right hand. "Here," he said. "You deserve
this a hell of a lot more than he does."
Patrick looked at it. It was Chandler's gold captain's
badge.
Jon Masters was focused only on Helen. He took
off his jacket and gently wrapped it around her. "Oh
God, Helen," he kept saying. "Are you all right? Oh
Helen, I'm so sorry . . ."
"I'm okay, Jon, I really am," she reassured him,
smiling at him weakly. "I . . . I must look like
hell, but I'm not really hurt."
"You look beautiful to me," he said. "But you've
been through hell, and we need to get you to the
hospital right away." The paramedics moved him
out of the way and helped Helen onto a gurney. As
they began to wheel her to the ambulance, she
reached out a hand and grabbed at his sleeve. "Don't
leave me, Jon," she said.
He took her hand and walked beside her. "I
won't, Helen," he said. "Never again." He realized
he was deliriously happy. "You crazy kid, you're
still in love with me."
"Yes you crazy kid," she replied happily, "I'm in
love with you."
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FACILITY,
SACRAMENTO -MATHER JETPORT
SEVERAL HOURS LATER
Nal Briggs thought it was the weirdest sight he
had ever seen. There sat Patrick McLanahan in
the chair in his office at the R D facility, taking
sips of coffee and working on the computer-with a
cord running from him to a wall outlet. Of course,
he still had the BERP suit on. But weird was the
word, like Patrick was some kind of futuristic halfman
, half-machine, both parts getting refreshed at
the same time.
It had been a very long day. After the shootout
with Townsend's men, the. R D facility had been
overrun with sheriff's deputies, then Highway Patrol
investigators, then FBI and ATF officers. Since
Townsend was so fond of using booby traps, the
whole facility had to be evacuated while the place
was searched. Then the interviews began, one
agency after another gathering statements from all
of them. Additional security units were on the way
from Sky Masters, Inc.s facilities in Las Vegas, San
Diego, and Arkansas to secure the Sacramento facility
, but until they arrived the place was being
guarded by Sacramento County Sheriff's Department
depifties, augmented with National Guard
troops.
"Out of the twelve soldiers that Chandler said
Were here," Briggs said to Patrick, "we got seven,
Sacramento County Sheriff's got one, and Folsom
police got another one. That leaves three unaccounted
for. Not a bad day's work."
"It's not them I'm worried about-it's Townsend
and Reingruber I'm after," Patrick said, seated at his
terminal. He was fingering Chandler's sevenpointed
gold star thoughtfully.
"Unfortunately, I think the only way we're'going
to learn what he's going to do next is to wait,"
Briggs said. "He's probably got a dozen more hideouts
in the area that we don't know about. He could
be anywhere. If he were smart, he'd be long gone."
"No," Patrick said. "He's after something here.
This whole caper of his never made any sense. First
he's into armed robbery, but he only hit one place.
Next he's into drugs, but then he blows it all up. He
raids this place, but it looks like this was just a target
of opportunity. He's an arms smuggler and
dealer, not a drug dealer. What's he doing here?"
"Nothing against your hometown, partner,"
Briggs said, "but there ain't a helluva lot here.
You've got Intel, HP, Packard Bell, Aerojet, and a
couple of other high-tech companies, and you've got
the state capital. Except for a couple of bases outside
of town, all of the military bases here are closed
or will be closed soon. There's nothing here."
"Henri Cazaux was involved in some pretty elaborate
schemes to cover his real objectives," Patrick
pointed out. "Maybe Townsend is doing the same
thing."
"But what? Cazaux was supposedly out to avenge
himself on the United States and the U.S. Air Force
for screwing up his twisted little head when he was
a kid," Briggs said. "You think Townsend wants revenge
on Sacramento? What for? That doesn't make
sense."
"Makes as much sense as anything else he's
done," McLanahan said. "Unfortunately, it doesn't
help us figure out what he's going to do next or help
us catch him."
"Hey, I say let's leave it up to the FBI now,"
Briggs said. "My bosses at ISA are screaming their
heads off, asking what the hell I'm doing flying support
for the local yokels. No one has any sense of
humor anymore." Patrick kept flipping through
computer records. "What are you doing there?"
"Just trying to figure out what Townsend's men
were looking at. They were obviously accessing all
our Internet stuff, trying to find a way to access our
company network, looking for passwords, downloaded
messages, journals, notes, that sort of thing. I
should be able to backtrack and find out what they
were looking at."
"Say what?"
"They were looking for clues about where users
stored their passwords," Patrick explained. "Remember
when you could look around the doorsills
and inside desk drawers around any combination
safe in
the Air Force and find the combination to
that safe? Guys had trouble remembering the cornbination
, so they wrote it down near the safe itself."
"Now, that's stupid."
"Stupid but commonplace," Patrick said. "Cornputers
can do the same thing, but they do it electronically
. You just need to know where to look."
"Can you see if they broke in to your system?"
"The security offices in Arkansas should be able
to tell us that when they do a security audit," Patrick
said. He called up several Internet-access programs
and browsers. "Judging by how much they
hurt Helen, they weren't able to get in." He paused,
lost in thought. "They were definitely looking at
the engineers' individual Internet-access applica-
tions, looking for stored passwords. The company
prohibits storing passwords and our applications
don't allow it, but some guys get careless or lazy
and program them in anyway, using macros."
"You lost me, man," Hal Briggs said. "That computer
stuff is for the birds. Give me a gun and a
chopper any day, and I'll solve all the problems o
the world." But curiosity got the better of him, and
he peeked over Patrick's shoulder. "You got something
?
"Not about our network, but something else,"
Patrick said. "This.is an Internet browser program,
for accessing articles on the World Wide Webthat's
the global network of computers, all linked
together. Browsers save pages in files called caches,
which allows the pages to load faster. You can look
back through the cached pages and see what they
were looking at. Pages accessed from secure sites
aren't cached, but articles accessed over nonsecure
sites are. Look at this."
Hal studied the screen. "That's weird," he remarked
. "What's CERES? The name of a town? You
think that's where Townsend is?"
"No," Patrick replied. "CERES stands for California
Environmental Resources Agency. They do
studies on the use of land, water, air . . . holy shit,
look at this."
"I'm lost, Patrick," Briggs said, shaking his head.
"This is more environmental stuff. The Bureau of
Reclamation? Why would they be looking up all
this?" But Patrick flipped to the next cached page
on the browser, and he started to understand. "Hey,
that's the dam right near here, right?" he asked.