A Time for Patriots (29 page)

“Thank you for your continued support
of our community,”
the voice said.
“The Nevada Highway Patrol is here to assist you. Please return to your vehicles. Thank you for your cooperation.”

It took several minutes, but soon the energy level of the protesters seemed to decrease, and one by one they turned and headed away from the main gate. A few slammed their signs on the armored vehicles and spit on the Highway Patrol vehicle's windshields, but the officers did not react.

“Well, this is definitely a new one for me,” Nevada Highway Patrol sergeant Leo Slotnick said. He was standing beside his car, the second in the convoy behind the armored car, talking with his partner. He was wearing a bullet-resistant vest over his uniform that read
NHP
and
POLICE
in large yellow letters, a Kevlar riot helmet with face shield, and heavy Kevlar gloves—his riot baton and cans of pepper spray were inside the vehicle, out of sight but quickly available. Most persons passing by him waved hello—no one seemed to be angry at him personally. “A protest march, way out here in Battle Mountain? I think it's pretty funny. I had to dust off my riot gear—
literally
dust it off.”

“Whatever happened to the sheriff's department?” Leo's partner, a relatively new member of the Nevada Highway Patrol named Bobby Johnson, asked. He was outfitted the same as Leo but with a small digital video recorder affixed to his helmet; Leo was his training officer in his first six-month probationary period. “They're a no-show?”

“They said they couldn't spare the manpower,” Leo said. “Technically this road is a state highway, so we have jurisdiction, but they should be out here with us. They never showed when the Civil Air Patrol was searching for that downed plane either.”

“I heard one of your guys thinks he was shot at by someone in this crowd,” Bobby said. “These bastards were shooting at aircraft over the base? Are they nuts? I think we should search each and every one of them for that rifle.”

“Bobby, think about it—there's thirty of them, and just twelve of us,” Leo said. “If there's a gun in that crowd, we don't want it let loose on us. If they start heading off and going home without another shot being fired, that's a good thing. Next time there's a protest, we'll be ready with more guys.” As his eyes scanned the departing protesters, he caught a glimpse of two men, apart from each other but definitely together, walking along with the crowd toward their vehicles but looking as if they were scanning the crowd themselves. “Get a shot of those two tall guys at twelve o'clock,” Leo said.

Bobby turned in that direction but couldn't really see whom Leo was referring to. “What's up?”

Leo shook his head. “Just a hunch,” he said. “Remember what you were taught at the Academy about the personalities that create a disturbance?”

“Agitator, instigator, aggressor, and . . . and . . .”

“The lemmings—the followers,” Leo said. “Who are the agitators here?”

“The guy who organized this march.”

“True,” Leo said, “but couldn't you also say it was the Air Force when they rolled out those armored vehicles over there? Maybe the crowd wouldn't be so agitated if they hadn't brought those out.”

“Well, then couldn't you say that
we
are agitators for bring our armored car?”

“Good point,” Leo conceded, “although then you have to think about officer safety, and that's a command decision. Now, the instigator is the one who does the first noncivil action—in this case, maybe the ones hitting the armored car with their signs. But he doesn't usually cause the riot. It's the aggressors that you have to watch out for—the ones who wait for something to happen, then push everyone around them over the top. Then the lemmings do whatever the aggressors and the rest of the crowd does, and the thing turns into a riot.”

“So if you can find the aggressors, you might have a chance of stopping the riot.”

“Exactly,” Leo said. “The agitators are the hotheads, but they're usually just lashing out, not attacking—they get the crowd's attention with an overt act, but the crowd hasn't turned into lemmings yet. The aggressors do the extreme actions that turn the crowd.”

Bobby continued searching the crowd, but still couldn't see whom Leo was referring to. “Gotcha.”

Leo made eye contact with one of the tall guys he was watching, broke eye contact and scanned the crowd for a few seconds, then came back to the guy—and they made eye contact again. “And the first rule of surveillance?”

“Countersurveillance,” Bobby said. “Make sure you're not being watched yourself.”

“Either we're being watched, which I doubt,” Leo said, “or these guys were on their way to do something else and have now noticed that
they've
been spotted. They're spooked, but they're not running—they know it's the running man that attracts attention.” He looked behind him at some of the protesters widely circling his car, but couldn't see anyone else who stood out—there could easily be another pair behind him, but he couldn't make them out. “Weird vibes around here, that's for sure.”

When he looked back at the pair, they had both vanished, and no one was running or shoving—they had quite literally disappeared.

Later that day

“I
don't know what to say, Brad,” Patrick said as they examined the Civil Air Patrol Cessna. They had pans and buckets underneath the hole in the left wing, collecting leaking avgas. Maintenance crews already had the shattered window off, and they were getting ready to start removing inspection panels and rivets to replace the damaged left-wing sections. “You have about thirty hours total time flying the C-172 and P210, and I don't recall you ever getting airsick. I know you flew in the back of the Aerostar a few times when Gia was with us, but you were a lot younger and you weren't looking out the window—you were usually asleep. Did you ever get airsick flying cadet-orientation rides?”

“I don't think I ever flew in the back,” Brad said. “There was never anyone else riding along.”

“So today was the first time that you've ever ridden in the back of a light plane with your eyes open and searching out the window,” Patrick summarized, “and every time you've done it, you've gotten sick.”

“But what does that mean, Dad?” Brad asked. “If I can't ride in the back without getting sick, I can't be a mission scanner, and if I can't be a scanner, I can't be a mission pilot. And that's what I want to be!”

“Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, big guy,” Patrick said. “We'll get you a few rides with you not doing scanner duties but just sitting in back, not looking out the side windows, to get you accustomed to sitting in back; we'll find out about approved medicines or other remedies. You can still be a transport mission pilot—ferrying planes, taking cadets on orientation rides, towing gliders—and a mission observer, and there may even be a way for you to be a mission pilot without being a scanner first. I think the reason they have you qualify for scanner first is to see how well you do in a light plane. But we know you
can
fly a plane without getting airsick—it's just that you get airsick riding in back. We'll start checking out all the options. But just remember, there's more to Civil Air Patrol than flying. You can lead a ground-search team, and you can man an incident command post and put together sortie packages—”

“But I want to
fly,
Dad. I want to be a pilot, in charge of a crew.”

“And you can fly . . . just maybe not with the Civil Air Patrol as a mission pilot,” Patrick said. “We'll have to see what happens. But don't act like it's the end of the world if you can't be a mission pilot. There are plenty of ways to serve. You'll find that life throws you a lot of obstacles—you have to figure out how to overcome them. That's the fun of being a grown-up.”

“Well, so far being a grown-up really sucks,” Brad said, and he turned and walked away.

“Amen to that.” Patrick turned and saw Jon Masters standing beside him, looking at the damage to the Cessna. “So you think someone took shots at you, huh? He's got to be a pretty darn good shot—you were five hundred feet up, going about eighty knots?” He went over and looked at the hole in the wing. “Pretty good-size hole—maybe a hunting rifle?”

“Or an infantry rifle,” Patrick said.

“A military shooter? A marksman with serious military hardware? You mean, someone from the base?” Patrick had no answer. Jon was silent for a short while, then asked, “So what's Brad sulking about?”

“He got airsick when riding in the back of the Cessna as a scanner,” Patrick said. “He's okay up front, but not in back.”

“I get airsick sitting in the back too, sometimes, but I take a dimenhydrinate and I'm okay,” Jon said. “I don't think that's an option if you're a crewmember, though.”

“Back in my B-52 days, I had gunners and EWOs who flew facing backward and got airsick all the time, especially when flying low-level,” Patrick said. “They were using stuff like scopolamine patches behind their ears for airsickness, but I don't know if that's the case anymore. They have wristbands and neckbands for seasickness, but I don't know if those are gimmicks or not. Ginger-root pills worked good for me if I took them before a space flight. We'll find out. But I don't like to see Brad start to mope around after each and every downturn. He's got to learn to roll with it.” He looked at Jon. “So what are you up to?”

“Moping around after my latest downturn—losing twenty million dollars' worth of aircraft in one night,” Jon said. “The Sky Masters, Inc., board members hit the freakin' roof.”

“Why? The government should make it right. It might take a while, but . . .” He looked at Jon, his eyes narrowing. “Okay, what did you do?”

“We . . . hadn't exactly worked out the details of the contract before the Sparrowhawks were deployed,” Jon admitted.

“Uh-oh . . .” Patrick said. “You didn't get a signed contract before you deployed? You
donated
the Sparrowhawks to the government?”

“I have a
draft
of a contract,” Jon argued, “so we can argue that it wasn't
meant
to be a donation.” Patrick smiled but shook his head ruefully. “The FBI said they were in a hurry, and I wanted to get the aircraft out there before they put the job out for bids. It'll work out, don't worry.”

“Sure . . . five years from now,” Patrick said. “Well, I guess that's why a lot of the contractors we hire are attorneys.”

“Exactly,” Jon said. “Our job is to get things done, not worry about stupid contracts. Let the suits work out the details.”

“Right,” Patrick said. “Besides, you got insurance on the Sparrowhawks, right?” He saw Jon's downcast expression, and his eyes widened in surprise. “Jon,
no insurance . . .
?”

“I have R-and-D insurance out the ying-yang,” Jon said, “but . . . well, I didn't have a government contract—yet—and you wouldn't believe what those insurance companies wanted for these simple little missions. You'd think we were flying armed combat missions over Iraq again!”

“Jon, you can't do stuff like that,” Patrick said. “At best you could get fired—at worst, you could get fired, sued,
and
have to pay for the Sparrowhawks yourself!”

“Hey, look who's talking about bending the rules! You practically made an entire career out of it!”

“I did it when I had the discretion as the on-scene tactical commander,” Patrick said. Jon looked at him with a skeptical “oh, really?” expression. “And when I did it otherwise, I was either kicked out, forced to retire, or was sued. You work for a private company. The directors and officers make the decisions, not you.”

“Well, I'd be worried—if I already wasn't the smartest guy in the company,” Jon said dismissively. “They can't fire me or sue me—it'd tank the stock and we'd be lucky to get a contract to provide propeller beanies to Cub Scouts. Don't worry about it.” He paused, looking in the direction of where Brad walked off. “I feel sorry for the kid,” he said. “What's a scanner do?”

“His job is to search for mission targets or for hazards,” Patrick said. “Apparently Brad has trouble when he looks sideways out the window in a turn, or has to look downward or backward—we don't quite know yet what triggers the motion sickness.”

“He looks out the window? That's
it
?”

“He'll also take pictures, make records of what happens on a mission, run checklists, maybe talk to mission base or ground teams on the radio, but basically his job is to search outside the plane, from engine start to engine shutdown.”

“We have stuff that can more than take the place of a scanner,” Jon said. “We've developed sensor balls that can fit easily on the wings of a little bug smasher like your Cessnas. They're a quarter of the size of a Predator's sensor dome but do even more stuff and perform better. Plus, the scanner can operate the sensors from the ground. You save weight, the plane performs better, and you put fewer crewmembers at risk. Plus, once we install the video datalink, you can up- and download voice, data, telemetry—almost anything.”

“You know,” Patrick said after adopting that “ten-thousand-yard stare” expression for a moment, “the Civil Air Patrol flies missions called Predator Surrogate. They mount a Predator sensor ball on the Cessnas, and they fly around the Nellis Air Force Base ranges. The Army and Marine Corps use them to train sensor operators. It solves the problem of ‘see-and-avoid' and loss of control that unmanned planes have—you have two guys in the plane that can look for traffic, and they can take the controls if the aircraft loses contact with remote operators.”