by Philip Chen
The car radio crackled.
"Sir, a strange car followed us onto the access road."
"Unit Three, check out the car and report back immediately. Probably some dumb tourist," said the Marine Lieutenant in the lead sedan. "NAVFAC security, we have uninvited guests."
"Roger. Intercept and identify."
The dark metallic gray Suburban slowed to a stop, blocking the Toyota sedan that had turned onto the private road.
A Marine private got out of the Suburban and walked cautiously back to the strange sedan. A second Marine stood at the right rear corner of the Suburban with his AR-15 assault rifle at the ready. As the first Marine approached the driver's side of the sedan, the driver rolled down the window.
The Marine said, "Sir, can I help you? This is a private road."
The driver of the car stared at the young Marine and without a comment took out his Colt auto pistol and held it to the face of the Marine. "Get that truck out of my way, asshole."
He pulled the trigger, its loud report heard by the occupants of the two sedans already far down the private road. The young Marine took the full force of the .45 caliber slug in his face. The power of the bullet flung his body into the underbrush lining the road. Softened by his years on Wall Street, Mike flinched visibly at the clatter of gunfire. However, he quickly recovered his composure, hoping for the world that Margaret had not noticed.
The second Marine instinctively aimed his AR-15 assault rifle at the occupants of the sedan and opened fire, as did the Marines inside the Suburban. The four occupants of the sedan jumped out as the fuel tank exploded, engulfing the car in flames. They dove into the brush, returning small arms fire with an assortment of Uzi's and other automatic rifles.
The four attackers succumbed quickly to the superior firepower of the Marines in the Suburban and the attack was over before it had even begun in earnest. The Marine guards checked the four bullet-ridden bodies in the brush alongside the narrow dirt road. They found no identification. The sedan would later prove to have been stolen.
As the drivers of the other two vehicles accelerated down the road, the Marine Lieutenant radioed the Navy installation that the Suburban was under attack. Mike sat quietly in the second car, knowing that there was little that he could do at the moment. Mike had been an agent of CSAC long enough to know that in this shadowy world anything could happen. What was troubling was that the Sentinels were a closely guarded secret at CSAC and no one should have known why Mike was being taken to NAVFAC, or even, for that matter that he was being taken anywhere. The entire episode was illogical.
He turned to Margaret. "What do you make of that, Chief?"
"Don't know, Commander. Certainly wasn't in the operational plan for this trip." Margaret's face remained completely devoid of emotion. This was just business as usual for this veteran of CSAC.
She held a small Uzi automatic pistol with the safety off, just in case other attackers were about. The Uzi had been secreted in a panel in the rear door.
Mike sat back in the leather seat, chastised not by Margaret's remarks but by his asking in the first place. How unsophisticated; how unprofessional. Of course, Margaret was right; it wasn't his job to worry about why they were under attack no matter how unexpected or strange. Asking such questions might be expected of a rookie. Mike was not a rookie and he should not have asked. His only assignment was to get to Newport News.
Being a civilian for so long had made him weak. Notwithstanding that fact, he couldn't get the notion out of his head that the attack was irrational. Mike had no room for irrational behavior, especially where CSAC was involved. He sat silently and looked out the side window.
Entering the facility, the two cars stopped at the small heliport where a Navy UH-1N Huey helicopter waited. The NAVFAC facility was on a high state of alert occasioned by the unexpected attack on Mike's caravan.
The rotors of the helicopter were already turning. Mike and Margaret quickly exited the sedan and climbed into the back bench covered in khaki canvas. The Marine guards took the two vehicles over to base security to investigate the attack. Sliding on to the seats behind the pilot and co-pilot, Mike and Margaret buckled themselves into the harness restraints and put on the earphones that were hanging on the bulkhead.
The pilot, a young Navy Lieutenant, spoke over the intercom. "Commander, we should be in Newport News within two hours."
Mike nodded. "Can you scramble our ETA to the Shipyard and advise them that we came under attack?"
"Roger."
I wonder what that was all about, thought Mike still unable to shake the attack from his mind, as the thumping of turning rotors accelerated into a high-pitched whine. As the helicopter lifted off and reached its cruising altitude, it was joined by three Sikorsky HH-53H helicopters that had been circling over the heliport. The Sikorsky helicopters, fondly called the Jolly Green Giants or Giants for short, flew in formation with Mike's helicopter. One lagged behind and above the other three aircraft.
As the green and gray of New Jersey flashed below him, Mike settled back for the ride comforted by the fact that the Giants would assure his safe arrival. Even as he mulled over the strange attack, which had been a nuisance at best, Mike began to reflect on what he needed to do when he reached Newport News. His thoughts raced through all the options, all the contingency planning, the endless scenarios and gaming that CSAC had gone through in anticipation of this day's arrival.
The apparent lack of activity at Watch Station Three was puzzling. Whatever form it took, this was the only activity in over twenty years of watching. Logic dictated that all four sites should have behaved in a similar fashion. Mike wondered which system detected the activity first, hoping that the form of measurement, in and of itself, could shed some light on the mystery.
Over the intercom, Mike could hear the pilot and co-pilot communicating with each other and with the pilots of the Giants. The attack on the access road to NAVFAC was enough to put the pilots on heightened alert. However, the flight was uneventful and everyone relaxed.
After awhile, a scratchy voice blared out over the intercom, "Commander, there are some sandwiches and pop in the cooler on the deck in front of you. Help yourself to lunch."
From the pilot's speech, Mike guessed that he was from the Midwest -- the use of "pop" for soft drinks had been a dead giveaway.
Reaching down to the red and white plastic cooler sitting in front of his feet, Mike rotated the cover open. Inside the cooler were a half dozen rigid, triangular-shaped clear plastic containers each holding a cold sandwich. The cover of each container contained a printed label describing its contents. Mike hated reading the labels on packaged food. Every time he did he marveled at the amount of preservatives and other chemicals thrown into those little packages. He had once read about an archaeological excavation at a forty-year-old landfill, which uncovered forty-year old hot-dogs that still seemed fresh and edible. Mike had never again eaten hot-dogs.
Whatever the hell is calcium stearate, anyway, thought Mike.
Also in the cooler were a dozen soft drinks in aluminum pop-top cans. The selection went from root beer to diet colas.
"Chief, what would you like?"
"A ham sandwich would be great, and a diet Sprite."
Handing the sandwich and the diet drink to Margaret, Mike wondered how she had stayed so slim throughout the years they had worked together. Probably from drinking diet soda. After making sure that everyone was taken care of, Mike picked an egg salad sandwich and, following Margaret's example, a diet Pepsi to wash it down. Biting into the slightly stale and icy cold sandwich, Mike couldn't help contemplating the irony of it all.
At this very moment he could have been sitting down on a comfortable Chippendale chair, at a dark mahogany dining table, in the richly appointed partners' dining room on the fifty-second floor of the Franklin Smedley Associates' offices. Instead of a skinny white bread sandwich with icy cold, wilted lettuce and a strange plastic taste, Mike could have been dining on pâté of duck appetizer, medium r
are medallions of veal in truffle sauce, and a glass of chilled Chardonnay from Chateau Ste. Michelle, a favorite of Mike's from the eastern half of Washington State.
Oh, well, thought Mike, as the image of a civilized lunch dissolved to gray, food is food. He bit down on the plastic-tasting sandwich.
1993: Missing In Action
0730 Hours: Friday, June 11, 1993: CSAC Offices, Washington, D.C.
"Have you checked all the later flights from Minneapolis?" said Smith to the young, dark haired woman standing before him. "Maybe the Seattle flight was delayed and he caught a later Washington flight."
A recent recruit to CSAC, Joyce Ellington had graduated from the University of Denver with a degree in English literature. Spy novels had always been her favorite spare time reading. Knowing that she was in an agency whose existence was unknown to the world was a real high, the answer to her youthful dreams.
With long black hair, light green eyes, a slim figure, and five foot height, she could still pass for a high school student or younger. Having graduated Phi Beta Kappa, she was generally regarded as an up and coming analyst. She wore cotton dresses in soft pastel colors, which further enhanced her overall youthful appearance.
"George, we haven't heard from Richard Winslow since he left SeaTac yesterday morning. He was encoded at the Naval Air Station in Bellingham, Washington, and was placed on Northwest Flight 8 to Minneapolis/St. Paul, which we know arrived on time at 4:48 p.m. Central Daylight Savings Time. His flight to Washington was scheduled for departure at 6:05 p.m. Even if Winslow had to go from the Gold Concourse to the Green Concourse, he should have had ample time to make the grand tour."
"The grand tour?"
"The Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport is laid out in a rough 'H' with the main terminal at the center of the 'H.' Two of the legs of the 'H' wrap around slightly and extend for some distance in a parallel fashion, bracketing the parking garage which is located in the center of the airport. The distance between these two concourses, the Green and the Gold, can make life hell for a passenger, if he has to go from the end of the Gold to the end of the Green -- the grand tour."
"Wish I hadn't asked," said Smith with a thin smile. "What about Winslow?"
"We don't know. It looks like the earth opened up and swallowed him."
"Say, I know what. Let me call my old friend, Herb Adams," said Smith, picking up his telephone and punching in the telephone number of the FBI field office in Minneapolis.
Herb Adams, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Minneapolis/St. Paul field office, was a friend of Smith's from his FBI days. Six foot six inches tall, Adams still retained the powerful build from his college days as a fullback on the University of Nebraska football team. He was one of the Bureau's highest ranking black agents. Unlike more ambitious agents, Adams did not view his assignment to the Northland as being exiled to Siberia.
Most agents wanted to be in high visibility field offices such as New York, Atlanta, or Los Angeles. Adams, in contrast, felt that his abilities would shine through no matter where he was and that the rather sleepy pace of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul was just about right.
Even though he had known Smith for over twenty years, Adams still did not know the true nature of his friend's occupation. As far as Adams knew, Smith had left the Bureau about twelve years ago, when they were still earning their stripes, to become a security official with the State Department, unexpectedly. Adams had thought at the time that Smith's move was odd -- to leave a high-profile job as an FBI agent to become a faceless bureaucrat at the State Department. Shortly thereafter Smith had resigned from State to become an independent security consultant.
Although Adams thought it was curious that Smith had taken that path, he was pleased that his old friend seemed to be happy and prospering as an outside consultant. Adams had always found it funny, though, that Smith never talked business from the day he left the Bureau -- even when he was on his own as an independent consultant. It was unlike the gregarious Smith he had known while they were struggling as young special agents. Even though they didn't get together as often as they did when they were both in the Bureau, Adams always enjoyed his telephone chats with Smith.
When he heard that his friend was on the telephone, Adams dropped what he was doing to take the call.
"Hey, George, how've you been?"
Adams absentmindedly picked up the scuffed and well-worn leather football that had been sitting on his credenza. It was a memento from his University of Nebraska football days. He had made the winning touchdown in a close game with Notre Dame and had received the game ball for his efforts. On it were inscribed all of his classmates' signatures; some of whom had moved into the major leagues and were now big-time players. Herb always loved to hold that football when he was speaking on non-official business; it was like a talisman that the world was a much nicer place than what he saw in the course of his normal activities.
"Great, Herb. How have you been?"
"Nancy is looking at colleges; she may want to go east. Both Beth and I are really excited, but I've got to tell you, I'm too young to have someone in college."
"I know how you feel. When Charlie went to the University of Virginia this fall, his mom and I cried."
"How is Adele? Is her shop in Georgetown doing okay?"
"Adele's doing great, her shop had some shaky times at the start, but it's been going great guns since May. But that's not why I called."
"Oh?"
Herb replaced the football on to his credenza and sat upright in his seat.
"You know that I've been working as an outside consultant to the State Department."
"Yeah."
"One of my jobs is to help them maintain a network of special couriers for sending messages and packages internally around the continental United States."
There was a pause at the end of the line.
"I didn't know that State used special couriers internally."
"As you can imagine, it isn't publicized for obvious public relations reasons, but you can imagine that certain messages just cannot be sent over public telephone lines, by mail, or by Federal Express."
"I suppose so," Adams said; he was all business. "I guess that's why the State job was so interesting. How can this simple special agent be of help?"
"I'll be blunt. One of our couriers didn't show up at the appointed time and place. We think that something happened to him. Herb, this has to be handled with kid gloves. You can't file a field report on this."
"I understand. What information can you give me?"
"His name is Richard Winslow from Seattle, Washington. He was on Northwest Flight 8 from Seattle, Washington, this morning and arrived in Minneapolis/St. Paul about 5:00 p.m. He was supposed to transfer to Northwest Flight 376 for Washington's National Airport, scheduled to take off at 6:05 p.m. He never boarded that flight."
"Maybe he just decided to take a later flight."
"For reasons I can't discuss, these messengers are not the kind that would deviate from the schedule. Besides, if I told you, I'd have to kill you," said Smith, trying to joke his way out of an awkward moment.
Adams did not appreciate the humor. Smith was not the type to tell jokes, or lies. And when he tried, it was obvious.
Adams paused for a moment. "What I can do is search InfoNet for possible leads such as hospitals, morgues, or other places where missing people show up. We can also put out a missing persons report on Richard Winslow on InfoNet."
"Great. Say hi to Beth for me," said Smith. He returned the telephone to its cradle and looked up at Joyce, who had been waiting patiently. "If anyone can find out what happened to Winslow, Herb Adams can."
On the other end of the line, Adams sat quietly taking in what had just happened. He then dialed for his assistant.
1630 Hours: Friday, June 11, 1993: Newport News Naval Station, Virginia
The Navy UH-1N Huey hovered in the air about ten feet above the landing zone. In an instant, the helico
pter touched down with a jolt. A tall, thin, erect, white-haired gentleman in dress whites stood waiting for Mike next to a light gray sedan. Next to him stood a Marine lance corporal at parade rest. On the right front fender of the sedan was a small blue flag with two white stars. Even with sunglasses, the familiar features of Rear Admiral Robert McHugh were easily discernible. Mike was glad to see his old friend.
As the rotors of the helicopter glided to a gentle idle, Mike jumped out and, with his head held low, hurried toward Rear Admiral McHugh.
McHugh grinned broadly as he shook the hand of his old friend. "Welcome, Mike. It's not every day the U. S. Navy gets to welcome a Wall Street bigwig. Sorry about the rather unruly reception you had at NAVFAC."
He then returned a salute from Chief Petty Officer Margaret Marston. "I see you got your man, Chief."
"Admiral, it's always a pleasure to see you," said Mike. "It's been almost five years. How's Gladys? Why the formal greeting?" Mike knew how much McHugh hated the pomp and circumstance that went with his position.
"Had to, hate this stuff, you know. But the base commander's wife wanted a party." McHugh shrugged. "That's the reason for the get-up, Gladys and I have to go over there for a cocktail reception at 7:00 p.m. She wondered if you can come over later for coffee, after you've checked in at the BOQ."
"I'd love to."
McHugh and Mike got into the gray sedan. Mike was grateful that the sedan was nicely cool, given the oppressive heat of the afternoon Virginia sun.
After the two friends had settled down, Mike said, "What do you make of this, Bob? Things are getting out of hand; you can't even go for a ride down a country road without being hassled."
McHugh nodded. "One of our couriers, Mildred Swensen, was also attacked -- we're not sure if it was related to this current mission or if somebody made her from previous assignments. Another courier hasn't checked-in, we're trying to get a fix on his whereabouts. The courier from Watch Station One was only able to fly military, bumming a ride on an Orion which flew him to Andrews Air Force Base, where his wife picked him up and took him to headquarters. His cylinder was extracted and sent to Laurel for decoding."
