In the dark, hiding next to the building, I check if any one obvious can see me. I don't have the "someone's watching' feeling, but I trust my eyes more than my fog. Then I take my clothes off, except for my stretchy top and shorts, grab the light, speak my favorite word (that's dumbass, used to be frak), almost fall over during the change, because the happy light is spreading way more than normal happiness to every inch of my body. Once I recover, I put everything into my backpack, and put it on, then grab some happy molecules and jet toward the runways.
I should look like a bird to the radar dish, and I keep my velocity down to the correct proportions to position myself, floating a couple hundred feet up at the end of the runway. Air Canada speeds toward me down the runway and leaps into the air, tucking it's landing gear safely away. I touch the molecules and ask for a push just as it passes, slipping just beneath the 767, matching it's speed and climb. Now it's safe to travel at any speed, because I'm a gnat compared to the radar reflection of the giant aluminum bird.
It's a long and boring couple of hours up to Vancouver, making me wish I had thought to bring my MP3 player. The light wants me to go around to the side of the plane and wave at someone though the window. I refuse. As we start our descent, I locate the airport below, and, as the plane lines up for the runway, I zoom ahead and to the side, waiting to see which gate Air Canada is allocated. It parks at gate 54 in the international arrivals area, so I enter the jetway at gate 55, which is conveniently empty, and get halfway into the airport when I realize that I have his body, but my clothes. Squeezing the light, I shrink to my normal self, dress, and walk into the terminal as the plane empties.
My two buddies head to customs, and I head back into the jetway at 55, turn back into him (the second most fun part of the trip so far), and fly out into the night. I go up and over the terminal building, thinking that's the least likely way to be seen, settle into the jetway for gate 44 in the domestic Canada area, and repeat the inverse of the process. Sure enough, after not too long of a wait, my targets come walking down the concourse from security, and plop themselves into nicer seats than they have at LAX in the lounge for the redeye to Toronto.
Satisfied that I have learned all that I can learn, I use the gate 44 jetway to exit the airport, and head home faster than I got up here, but slow enough not to destroy my backpack. For the most part, I am satisfied with my day, I have a license number and van description, the floor number 27 at the Marquis, and a flight number to Toronto from Vancouver that might yield names we haven't seen before.
On the way home, I realize that I followed the wrong guys. Rookie dumbass mistake. I should have followed the four guys in the van. They didn't need all four of them just to drop the others off, they were probably heading somewhere. I get back home just before sun up, and to LAX just in time to report to my flight for Denver.
At one p.m. Mountain Standard time I am doing my walk around the airplane at Denver International, prepping for the return to LA. December in Denver is cold and windy, though rarely snowy. Today it's about 25 degrees, with patches of ice on the tarmac and an occasional icicle hanging from the jetways. I used to hate this, but it has become truly invigorating, something to look forward to, my thing not his. Though I am not supposed to be doing other things, I send Perez a text, then dial Jen on my cel. She answers on the fourth ring. I don't even say hello.
"What are you and Perez talking about?"
"Me and who?," she asks. I can hear Kiana laughing in the background, along with airport noises. They must be in the terminal.
"Kiana."
"Can't hear you over all the noise." Kiana's laughing continues.
"Tell her I just sent her a license plate to check out." There's a pause. I hear Perez say, "I already know that one, ask him how he got it." Then, of course, my dumbassery becomes clear again. She must have looked at video of the terminal, much easier than driving around like a rookie. I don't wait for Jen to ask.
"Tell her I am a dumbass rookie who sat around departure and arrival for hours looking for people I recognized." Jen relays. The next voice on the line is Kiana.
"They didn't see you did they, Air Force?" There is true concern for me in her voice, I both like it and don't at the same time.
"No way. I'm Superdumbass, more stealthy than you know."
"These are not the kind of people we play with. Let me know next time you have a stupid idea, please."
"Hey, I have LAPD's finest to protect me, don't I?"
"I'm not kidding Air Force, the last thing we want, if they
are
planning something, is to get on their radar." I have a bad feeling.
"Is there something I should know?"
"Air Force, I watched them go through security and the bottles that were in their briefcases when they arrived were gone, and," she pauses, "I think someone went through my LAPDmail." She whispered the last, probably to keep Jen from hearing.
"Fuck me. You sure?"
"That's Jen's job, and pretty sure. She wants to talk again, I'll see you Sunday." Then Jen's back on line.
"We still on for dinner tomorrow?"
"Of course, and a few other things too."
"Great," she finished, "I'll see you naked then." Perez is laughing again.
We give each other the ‘love you's' and hang up. I am going back to the Marquis tonight and check out the 27th floor, maybe clean out the 27th floor. No one fucks with Perez.
I regain my senses on the way home. I've already made the wrong choices yesterday and today, and these guys are not the type to leave clues sitting around their hotel. On top of that, throwing Sergei and Nikolai out the window might feel good, but there's no guarantee that the situation would improve if I did.
Then I lose them (my senses) again. There is nothing wrong with a quick visit, I fly downtown all the time. Instead of driving home, I head for Anaheim, strip down to my underwear, and let the molecules die. At least I think they die. I know I do something to them that's probably not healthy.
The Marquis is easy to see from far away, but counting to 27 is not. I end up floating above the roof, hiding in the scaffolding from some rooftop construction project. Do they have a 13? Probably not, but I'm not positive. Are some of the windows double height floors? Which tower are they in? I consider going inside and riding the elevator up, but in my underwear I'd probably get arrested before I got out of the lobby. I just head back to Starbuck and home.
All my effort, and I actually accomplished almost nothing.
Sunday, Perez wants every detail of my Thursday, and I tell her the truth up to the point of seeing four guys get into the van, then lie to her and tell her I went home after that until coming back about five, saw four others get dropped off, then went home to bed.
"Hell of a risk, Air Force, hell of a risk. What would you have done if eight special forces guys had seen you and decided to take you out?" She's shaking her head, the thick black hair relatively stationary above it.
"Called you and let you come kick their asses." I smile weakly. I could tell her that I would mop the floor with them, but I'm never going to do that. If I spill the secret, Jen is the test driver. And that's
if
I spill the secret.
"I'm serious."
"Me too. How about we test whether or not someone is reading your email?" Job related change of subject to distract her. Works.
"How?" Just like Jen, you can see the intelligence in her face when she's on.
"Tuesday, send me an email saying that we need to get "it" out of my locker at Mountain Pacific, and to meet you there at midnight, after the place is shut down. Don't say what "it" is so that we can't get in trouble for it later."
"You've been watching too much television." Her eyes are saying something else though. I need to get them to argue with her brain.
"What other direction do we have to investigate? Either we follow the men, which you don't like, or we get them to come to us. Yes? To us is more controlled."
"Let me think about it, Air Force, let me think about it." We head back into the living room to join the discussion of what to do for Christmas.
When I get to Kona on Monday, there's a voice mail from Perez saying that she gave Johnson the video of our buddies, and he's off to Spears to try one last time to get him to open something official. I know it's not going to happen.
What is going to happen is me taking out a North Korean nuclear weapons site. I'm 10 days past six months into this adventure, have barely 900 days left, and what have I done? Screwed up. I have to try something real one more time.
I hide my clothes up the Kohala coast again, and haul ass westward. This time, I need to start in China. Security is always about the threats you perceive, and the way to beat it is to do something unexpected. I think flying over the fence and lifting a rack of bombs out with my bare hands constitutes unexpected.
The base is surrounded by low rolling hills full of trees, making escape without being detected a possibility. I wait until the one roving patrol has just passed, then pray to the molecules and swoop in. My feet never touch the ground as I grab the bomb rack, lift and push against the air. It is surprisingly easy, but my brain reminds me not to get over confident. Remember the last time is my motto.
Now I discover flaw number one. How do I make the bomb go off? Will it detonate on impact? Is there a timer? I decide I need to test. By now, I am 10 miles from the hopefully still unsuspecting airbase, so I slow to nothing and land behind one of the hills. There is writing on the bombs, but not readable by me. There is also a red flag on each one, attached to a metal rod that enters the nose of the bomb. Logic was never my strong point, but I'm betting I need to pull the flag out to activate the bomb.
I take the flag nearest me and yank. The flag and rod exit, the bomb does not detonate. I take the bomb, which off the rack turns out to be about my height, but much heavier, and throw it northward as hard as I can with just my right arm. It lands maybe five miles away, and detonates on impact. Not bad. I learned I can heave 2,000 pounds at least five miles, and that I can make the bombs go boom.
I need to get out of here before someone comes to investigate, so I grab the rack with it's remaining ordinance and head south toward the nuclear site, 6,000 pounds of bombs in my right hand. I hide the bombs in thick clump of trees, with a hill between it and the building they need to dismantle. I'd like to run more tests, because I'm guessing that they won't be enough against the thick concrete walls of the facility, but I would quickly run out of bombs. I need to open the building up, and I only know one way to do that, but first, I need to make it dark.
The electrical lines running into the complex are on the other side of the enclosure from me and my hill. I am not totally stupid. Sliding off to the west, I find a couple nice sized boulders on the side of another hill, and, using my best pitching motion, I hurl them all toward the spidery structures holding up the power lines.
The first one hits the left leg of the X shaped support, which causes it to sway just enough that the second boulder misses. The third hits just as the support spans back to the right, and takes it down. It is instantly dark throughout the complex, though horns are sounding and people are running. Within 10 seconds, about half the lights are back on, and not as brightly, a sign that they are on their generator.
Three more rocks fly, these from another hundred yards west, and the supposition on the Internet that the brick building is the backup power generator is confirmed. The horns go silent, the lights go off. I go up a thousand feet, then crack straight down at the concrete roof, feet first, shattering it. I had hoped to open a hole, but instead it has broken into chucks and a large number of jagged openings of different sizes are visible. I think they need to sue their contractor for construction defects, because there seems to be a lack of rebar. Everyone in the building appears to be fleeing.
I flash back into the air, looping down to the bomb rack, waiting until the flow of people from the building stops, then working one by one, toss bombs into the air, and watch them drop down on the cracked concrete. The first does nothing visible to my naked eyes, the second collapses more of the roof. The third and last one hits, and the building groans. A series of sounds start inside it, the snapping, bending, twisting, sounds of torture of metal on metal.
The building gives one final sigh, and then collapses in on itself. It must extend several stories below ground, because first the rubble settles to ground level, then drops once and then again, until the debris is 20 feet below where it started. The air is filled with concrete dust. It's a bad omen. Remember the last time. Dust in the air.
Once again, I cannot wait around to see what happens. I push the pedal to the molecules, gun it, and rush for Kona. I can't shake the sight of the dust falling gently to earth. The building is gone, I'm sure of that, but what was the cost?
