Frank's Independence Day (The Night Stalkers) (9 page)

As he turned, she struck.

She’d kept the blade despite the shock and with a single stroke she dragged it across his jugular vein and throat.

Hot blood splashed her face and arm. She was moving before he hit the floor. He was still trying to gasp his final breath when she dove out the door and hit the tarmac. With a fast roll she regained her feet and sprinted back to the protection of the garage.

Sweeping up Sam and Charlotte, she raced into the night.

Behind them the tacticals opened up on the plane even as their drivers raced the Toyotas to redline, sprinting down the field.

There was a low cough, like the world catching its breath, and Beat dragged her two charges to the ground.

The plane blew with a deafening roar that lit the night sky like a torch a dozen stories high.

One of the tacticals, its driver still too drunk or hung over or asleep to compensate, twisted the wheels on his truck sharply while traveling too fast. The vehicle rolled into the burning airplane taking its driver and gun crew with it.

Their screams didn’t last long.

While the other tactical was distracted by the mayhem, the three of them slipped further into the night.

# # #

“What the hell happened?” Frank’s roar filled the room. It wasn’t his place, but he couldn’t help himself. One moment they’d had a clear ring tone on Beat’s cell phone and the next it looked like the airport had blown up.

“Someone get me a clear shot of the airport,” General Brett Rogers snarled out. Frank had never heard that tone from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs before and decided he’d better shut up.

A tech sent the command to some obscure bunker, probably in Utah, and the remote pilot sent his command over satellite to turn the Raptor’s camera. Moments later it centered on the flame. One tactical had rolled in and also burned, they could see the bright sparkles of the ammunition firing off in the intense heat at the heart of the fire.

The other truck was backing off slowly, being beaten away by the heat.

“Someone roll back the footage.”

Moments later they were staring at the long view with the airport off in the corner of the picture. It was a ghostly image of greens and blacks that came from infrared cameras for night vision. Cooking fires flared bright in some of the surrounding neighborhood. No streetlights or houselights. Power was out in the largest city in the country.

“Zoom and enhance,” Rogers ordered. “C’mon people. Think ahead. Work the problem.”

The resolution was lousy, but in moments the little embassy plane filled the screen, a dull green cross a couple-dozen image pixels square against the cooler black of the airport parking area.

“There!” Frank pointed. A lone figure, about ten pixels big but large enough to see how carefully they were moving, sidled up to the plane.

“That’s got to be Beat. No one moves like that but a trained agent.” She was alive. Frank had never been so glad to see a heat trace. Or she’d been alive three minutes ago.

The silence in the room echoed as the video spooled in real time.

The three pixels at the nose of a plane brightened.

The Navy tech whose face had remained in the corner of screen reported, “Brightness change approximately equal to control panel lights.”

Before he could wonder if Beat was going for flight or radios, the brightness disappeared. She’d made it to the cockpit and either found what she’d wanted, or what she’d hoped to find wasn’t there. He knew the pilot was dead. He also knew she didn’t know how to fly.

“Radios. She went after the radios. They must not have been usable. That’s why—”

“Here’s where her phone rang,” the tech cut him off.

Nothing.

“Agai—”

Before the tech could finish, a flash of light, and another. The brightness shone out all of the side windows on the side facing the Raptor’s camera flying far overhead.

“Brightness change indicates gunfire. Single rounds.”

One more.

Their phone call had gotten her shot. Someone asleep on the plane, and they’d woken him with a goddamn phone call. His idea had gotten her killed.

“Phone signal lost.”

Then a figure dove out of the door, did a hit-roll-run combo that every aching inch of his body knew by heart. And she’d just done it out an airplane door opening five feet above hard tarmac. That had to hurt.

But Beat was alive. It was all he needed to know. She was alive. Relief flooded through him like a salve to his soul. The world just wouldn’t be a worthwhile place without her in it.

The tech followed her. She swept up two other dim figures of only a few pixels each some distance from the plane and disappeared back into the city right off the edge of the Raptor’s field of view.

She’d kept the ambassador and one of his assistants alive.

Damn she was good.

Chapter 19

1989: Frank

Beat wasn’t the only
one with tricks up her sleeve. After the
Ghostbusters II
matinee at the East San Antonio six-plex, which was only okay, though Sigourney had been damn hot, Frank got Beat into her car. But he managed to snag the keys and settle her in the passenger seat. Still exhausted from her cross-country drive, she’d obviously been feeling weak and pliable. And he wanted to keep her that way.

He took the northern route across town from Fort Sam, telling her he had a special spot for dinner. Which he did. It was Monday, July 3rd. Because most folks didn’t have to work tomorrow, San Antonio was having the big city party tonight. They’d met one year ago tomorrow.

He merged into the late afternoon mayhem, got as close to Woodlawn Lake Park as he could in the thick traffic and parked it. The temp was 90s-ugly falling toward 70s-not-quite-so-ugly. It was a little cooler by the lake, but about a hundred thousand people were showing up. Here, instead of July Fourth smelling like hot dogs and sauerkraut in Manhattan, it smelled of roasted chilies and fresh salsa. Temperature, though, was about equally brutal.

The food vendors were doing an awesome business, and he and
Beat snagged some fish tacos and lemonade and chose their spot by the
lake. It wasn’t packed solid with people yet, still an hour or so until the fireworks. The all-dayers were there with kids and float rafts and picnic baskets and blankets and sunburns and all that noise.

He and Beat just took an empty spot and sat back on the grass. The lake was a couple hundred yards across and folks were still out in those little paddlewheelers for two. The cops actually had a couple of power boats on the water ready to chase away anyone who tried to get too close to the fireworks setup.

Frank would start mellow, pick a safe topic.

They talked about Africa. Security standards. Communication. They wandered through the best summer street food in New York. As the evening light settled toward fireworks dark, he went back to her comment from the afternoon. The crowds were pretty serious now. Everyone jabbering excitedly on too much sugar and anticipation. They could have shouted the combination to the Fort Knox bullion repository and no one would have noticed.

“You said something about helicopters.”

“Yeah.”

Frank liked how they could pick up a conversation hours later and stay on the same page. She was so easy to be with.

“Panama City is going to be a mess.”

Frank pictured the maps and reconnaissance photos that were covering their office walls. A mess was an understatement. The Panama Defense Force was everywhere. Multiple airports, not counting the one at the far end of the canal. Taking them all out while trying not to kill the thirty-five thousand Americans living there would be a good trick. Taking out radio and television stations another one. And on top of all that, bag the Pineapple himself. Dictator Manuel Noriega had an acne-pocked face, and some brilliant Army guy had dubbed him the ‘Pineapple.’ Did they hire people to be that stupid on purpose? Worse, the name had stuck.

“You said they’re banking hard on these helicopter pilots.”

“SOAG, Special Operations Aviation Group. These guys apparently kicked some serious ass in Grenada and the Persian Gulf on some piracy gig. It looks like the powers that be are having them play front and center.”

“Where are they stationed?”

“Fort Campbell, Kentucky.”

“Good. I have to go visit those guys.”

Frank rubbed a hand across his eyes. She’d just gotten here about eight hours ago and she was already planning on leaving.

He sat up.

Would have gotten to his feet to leave if she hadn’t stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Not right away.”

He kept his back to her, just sat there and stared at all the happy families. The ones where the women could sit still for thirty damn seconds without picking the next battle and rushing off to it. How was he supposed to survive this?

She shifted until she was kneeling in front of him.

“Hey.”

She inspected his face and he managed not to look away. He watched the rapid shift of emotions. He’d been trained to see it. He could see it at the macro level where hate, anger, or fear rippled so fast that the people in a crowd didn’t have time to register the sudden change, they simply felt it. He’d also learned to see it in an individual face. And he knew no face better than the one looking at him from less than a foot away.

It started coy, playful, with that wonderful hint of sex that always seemed to dance around the corners of her mouth. Then it shifted. First uncertainty, the tightness in brows, the smile sliding off the lips. The widening of the eyes and slackening of the jaw as surprise rippled through on its way to…

It had been a single year since he’d met Beatrice Belfour and signed up for training. They had beaten, chased, challenged, and strained him past anything he’d imagined possible. They made living in the projects look easy by comparison.

None of that had prepared him for the final expression hardening on her features. The narrowing of eyes, clenching of jaw, the head pulling back as if trying to retreat before the body could get the message to move away.

“No, Frank. This wasn’t the goddamn deal.”

He hadn’t meant for it show, how much he wanted her. How much he needed her. He could feel the pain shifting to anger but couldn’t stop it. Could feel his teeth ache with the pressure and the forward lean. His head shifting forward “like a goddamn pug dog,” he really wished the instructor had given him a different image for that emotion.

Then it blew out of him. Beat Belfour brought cold, but Frank’s anger brought heat.

“No, it’s not your goddamn deal, Be-a-trice, but it is mine.” He gritted his teeth to keep his voice low. Of course it was this conversation that the fat ladies on the next blanket over suddenly decided to listen to.

“I found the woman I want, but she doesn’t want me. So go fly off and see the flyboys.”

He struggled to his feet and dropped her car keys in front of her.

“Happy anniversary, Agent Belfour.” He had to space his words around the opening salvo of fireworks bursting overhead like a howitzer. “Pleasure seeing you again.”

He turned and walked away. It was the hardest damn thing he’d ever done.

# # #

Beat didn’t show up at Fort Sam Houston on Tuesday. No one did except Frank. It was a national holiday, everyone else was busy celebrating or relaxing somewhere.

He received her first report Wednesday morning. She’d somehow managed to embed herself as the Secret Service liaison to the Army’s immensely secretive 160th aviation group.

It was hard to credit the tactical capabilities she was reporting. These guys were as crazy as the Secret Service in their training habits. Night vision was still so new that Frank hadn’t even been trained on it yet, and these guys had been flying helicopters at night for two years using that technology.

They redesigned their choppers just as thoroughly as the Secret Service redesigned Presidential planes, choppers, and cars. He’d tried to get on the 747 team, but that was a seriously huge step that not even a top-of-class rookie could hope for. Developing the next Air Force One was a cherry assignment and only cool guys with tons of experience got it. He hadn’t even gotten a letter, his application had simply been returned with a small, red tick mark in the “Not accepted” box.

At first he always had the other guys process her reports.

As time passed, he started reading her reports rather than his team’s summaries. She sent them to the team from stranger and stranger places. One came from D.C., though he knew she was in Miami at Hurlburt Field watching scenario practice. Then one routed through the New York office that talked about a simulation flight in Panama. It was like she’d somehow become disconnected from him and from wherever she was in world at the same time.

Sometimes he held a report and wondered if she still truly existed.

Each one he opened was fascinating, and ripped out his gut all over again. There was nothing personal in them, not a single thing. But he could still hear her voice in the writing.

As specialists in head-of-state protection, the Secret Service was getting pulled in on planning for Operation Nifty Package, pulled in by the point guard of Beatrice Ann Belfour.

Inside the overarching Operation Just Cause, intended to depose Noriega and neutralize the brutal Panama Defense Force, the combined military and secret police force, lay a smaller, trickier task.

Noriega had been convicted as a drug trafficker by a U.S. Federal Court. The U.S. government didn’t want a dictator-martyr on their hands. It could destabilize a half-dozen other countries. They wanted him alive. That was Operation Nifty Package.

They tracked down his personal jet and a damn serious little gunboat. They pinpointed a dozen villas, uncovered several mistresses, and a thousand little habits. This was all fed into the overall Nifty Package plan through the conduit of Beat and Frank.

The game was escalating. He no longer had time to be pissed at her.

Hell, he didn’t even have time to sleep. It was mid-December and soon, very soon, the game would be on.