by Glenn Cooper
When his old friend Henry Spence called invoking the 2027 Club and told him he’d foot the gas bill, Dane was quickly behind the wheel of his ’65 Mustang motoring to the hangar at Beverly Muni Airport on the rugged Massachusetts coast. On the way, he left a voice mail for his live-in lady friend informing her he was going to be away for a few days and a second voice mail to the younger woman he was seeing on the side. Dane was a young sixty.
In the distance, about fifteen nautical miles to the north, the late-afternoon sun was glinting over long, skinny Lake Winnipesaukee, a large deepwater body dotted with two hundred pine-bristling islands. Dane suppressed his tour-guide instinct to point it out. His three passengers were behind him, sound asleep in facing red-leather seats. Instead, he started chatting with the tower at Laconia Airport, and several minutes later, he was swooping over the lake and approaching the runway.
Jim Zeckendorf had left one of his cars for Will at the airport, its keys in an envelope at the general aviation desk. Will bundled his family into the SUV and took off for the house, leaving Dane behind to check the weather, file a flight plan, and catch a quick nap in the pilots’ lounge.
It was a straight ten-mile shot east on Route 11 to Alton Bay, one of the small towns that ringed Winnipesaukee. Will had visited once a few years earlier for a weekend of fishing and drinking. He recalled he had a girlfriend in tow but for the life of him he couldn’t remember which one. It had been a time when women were flying in and out of his life at speed, a bimbo blur. All Will could remember for sure was that Zeckendorf, who was wifeless that weekend, was more interested in his girlfriend than he was.
Zeckendorf’s second house was befitting a big-time Boston law partner. It was a six-thousand-square-foot Adirondack, perched on a rocky ridge high over the choppy waters of Alton Bay. Nancy was too tired and numb to appreciate the rustic, airy, vaulted living room which flowed into an open-plan granite-topped kitchen. On a happier day, she would have been flitting from room to room like a honeybee in a field of clover, but she was impervious to the magnificence of the place.
It was dusk, and through a wall of lake-facing windows, stands of birch and pines were swaying in the wind and the gray-black waters were doing an imitation of the sea, methodically crashing against the stone breakwater. Nancy went straight for the master bedroom to change Philly and get out of her mourning dress.
Will zoomed around the house, checking things out. Zeck’s wife had made a trip up from Boston and stocked the fridge and the pantry with provisions and baby food and boxes of diapers. There were fresh towels everywhere. The thermostats were adjusted. There was a car in the garage with keys. There was even a brand-new travel crib in the bedroom and a high chair, with a price tag still affixed, in the kitchen. The Zeckendorfs were unbelievable.
He unpacked Nancy’s service weapon from its case, checked its clip and safety, then left it conspicuously on her bedside table next to a prepaid phone.
The baby was fresh and powdered, and Nancy was in comfortable jeans and a sweatshirt. Will tightly held Phillip to his chest and peered out the window while she rummaged in the kitchen. They exchanged banal domestic talk, a pretense the last two days hadn’t happened, but it seemed all right to give each other a break. He waited until she was ready to start the baby’s feeding, then placed Phillip, wiggling, into his chair.
Then he hugged her for a long time and only broke the clench to wipe away two streaks of tears on her red face, one with each thumb.
“I will call you every step of the way,” he said.
“You’d better. I’m your partner, remember?”
“I remember. Just like the old days, back on a case.”
“We’ve got a good plan. It should work,” she said emphatically.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.
“Yes, and no.” Then her confidence broke. “I’m scared.”
“They won’t find you here.”
“Not for me, for you.”
“I can take care of myself.”
She gave him a squeeze. “You used to. You’re an old retired guy now.”
He shrugged. “Experience versus youth. You choose.”
She kissed him full on the lips, then gently pushed him away. “I choose you.”
It was semidark when Dane took off. He banked over the lake, then made a graceful turn westward. When his course was set and the plane was leveled off at a cruising altitude of eighteen thousand feet, he turned to Will, who was shoehorned into the copilot seat, and he began to talk. It had taxed him to keep quiet for so long. They didn’t come more talkative or gregarious than Dane Bentley, and for the next eighteen hours, he had a captive audience.
Their first leg was going to take them to Cleveland, a distance of some 650 miles. By the time they landed about four and a half hours later to gas up, stretch their legs, get a bite from vending machines, and use the facilities, Will knew a great deal about his pilot.
Once Dane had decided in high school he was going military, it was a foregone conclusion he’d enlist in the navy. He grew up on the water in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where his family ran a charter fishing company, and his father and grandfather were ex-navy. Unlike most of his classmates, the Vietnam draft wasn’t hanging over his head because he was a gung ho volunteer, itching to use his pent-up energy to steam up the Gulf of Tonkin and fire off some big ordnance.
On his second tour in ’Nam, he volunteered for naval intelligence, got trained up in covert ops and communications, and spent that tour and one more motoring up and down the Mekong, tagging along with Swift-boat crews to scope out Viet Cong positions. When the war ended, he was persuaded to stay in with a plum assignment to the Office of Naval Intelligence in Maryland where he was made petty officer at the Maritime Operations Center.
He was a good-looking ladies’ man, ill suited to a suburban military community that catered to married guys and their families. He toyed with throwing himself into a commissioning program to make the officer corps or chucking it in and going back to the family business. What he didn’t know was that the Maritime Operations Center was ground zero for Area 51 recruiting. Over half the watchers at Groom Lake passed through Maryland at one point in their careers.
Like everyone who got corralled into Area 51, Dane was seduced by the mystery of an ultrasecret naval base land-locked in the Nevada desert. When he passed through final security clearance and the base mission was revealed, he thought it was about the coolest thing he’d ever heard. Still, he was an action, reaction guy. He’d never had a deep thought in his head, and he wasn’t about to start contemplating his navel or the mysteries of the universe. The lush fringe benefits and a Vegas lifestyle were all he needed to convince himself he’d made the right choice.
Will was taken aback that the man who was helping him thwart the watchers had been one. He was initially suspicious, but he had to trust his own ability to read people, and Dane’s earnestness and lack of guile satisfied him he was not a threat. What was he going to do anyway? Jump out without a parachute?
Dane provided an insight into the mind-set of the watchers. He’d done just about every job within their ranks during his three-decade career, from manning the metal detectors for the daily strip and scans to conducting field operations against employees who were suspected of obtaining unauthorized DODs for relatives or friends or otherwise compromising the integrity of the operation. They were a buttoned-down cadre, encouraged to be detached and humorless, interacting with staff in much the same menacing way that corrections officers deal with prisoners.
But Dane was too affable at the core to make management rank, and in his annual reviews, he was consistently advised to remain more aloof and warned not to fraternize. He and Henry Spence first met outside work when a chance Saturday encounter at a filling station led to a drink at the Sands Casino.
Dane knew all about Spence. The watchers were told he was a real hotshot, ex-CIA with a brain the size of a watermelon. The two men were polar opposites, brain versus brawn,
but there was chemistry based on that kind of magnetism. Spence was a Princeton-educated country-clubber with a socialite wife. Dane was a beer-drinking Massachusetts townie who liked banging heads and dating showgirls.
But both shared a passion for flying. Spence owned a top-of-the-line Cessna while Dane rented shit-boxes by the hour. Once their friendship got going, Spence gave Dane liberal use of his plane, and, for that, the watcher was forever in his debt.
Dane told Will he had only retired a year earlier, just shy of the mandatory age cutoff of sixty. He kept his condo in Vegas for the winters and planned to use his inherited Massachusetts bungalow for summers on the water. He’d gotten a sweet deal on the Beechcraft. After a year, the plan was working, and he was a happy guy. Spence hadn’t waited long to give Dane the distinction of being the only ex-watcher ever to be invited to join the 2027 Club, this to the consternation of other members, who had trouble getting comfortable with the idea.
In the distance Will could see the twinkling lights of Cleveland filling half the windshield and the blackness of Lake Erie filling the other half.
“You know Malcolm Frazier, right?” Will asked.
“Oh sure, he was my boss! From the second he got off the elevator on his first day, everyone thought he was going to become the top dog. Ruthless SOB. He’d give up his own mother. All the guys were scared of him. We’d be doing our jobs, and it was like, he’d be watching us. He’d rat out guys for stealing a paper clip. Anything to get ahead. You know, he made his bones on a hit. Some analyst who worked on the US desk smuggled out a little rolled-up note with DODs wrapped up in a piece of a baggie. Put it in between his cheek and his gum, like a wad of snuff. We’re not sure what he was going to do with them, but they were all Las Vegas residents with dates coming up. The guy got drunk and blabbed to another guy at the lab. That’s how we found out! Frazier took him out through a sniperscope at a thousand yards while the SOB was getting a drive-thru at Burger King. Maybe the guy was the Mark Shackleton of his day.”
“What do you know about Shackleton?”
“Pretty much everything.”
“What do you know about me?”
“Pretty much everything. Except for your recent antics. I want to hear about that after our next refueling stop.”
Will gave Nancy a quick call from the airport lounge. She was okay, he was okay. Philly was asleep. He told her to get some rest. There wasn’t more to say.
When they were ready to resume their trip, Dane did a visual inspection of the plane with a cup of black coffee in one hand and a flashlight in the other. On wheels-up, he declared brightly, “Next stop Omaha!”
Will wanted to sleep.
Chapter 31
A hundred miles to the south, at double their altitude and almost three times their speed, Malcolm Frazier’s Learjet was passing them, heading for the same destination.
Frazier felt like a punching bag. Secretary Lester’s reaction to the news that Piper had once again slipped the knot was the second coming of Vesuvius. Frazier promptly offered his resignation, and for a few hours it looked like Lester was either going to accept it or just fire him outright.
Then Lester reversed course after staring at his calendar. The Caracas Event was twenty days out. If he replaced Frazier with under three weeks to go to Helping Hand, it would sound alarms throughout the intel community. Instantly, he’d be elevating the hypothetical problem of a potential compromise of Area 51’s security to an actual problem. He’d be obligated to brief the Secretary of Defense, who would probably haul Lester’s ass to the Oval Office to take the heat directly from the President.
They still didn’t know what Piper had discovered in the UK, they didn’t know what Spence intended to do with the 1527 book, and they didn’t know if anyone even remotely had the intention of blowing the lid off of Groom Lake. Medium term, Frazier had to go. Short term, he was better than a backup quarterback. Lester gritted his teeth and made his decision.
Frazier had already gotten used to the idea of being fired, and when Lester called to reverse course, he cycled through a panoply of emotions. On one level, he might have been relieved to walk away from the mess, to leave his BlackBerry on his desk and ride the elevators up to the desert floor one last time. Good luck to them and good riddance. But on another, more visceral level, he hated the idea of going out a loser. The capstone of his career: getting hosed by Will Piper? He didn’t think so!
Piper always seemed a step or two ahead of him, and that scourged his self-esteem. Sure the fellow wasn’t a run-of-the-mill target, sure he’d been an accomplished FBI agent, but please! He was solo, with limited resources at his disposal, and he was up against Frazier’s machine. Based on the DODs he was carrying around in his pocket, he was pretty sure this was all going to end soon, he just didn’t know how.
Lester had given him one last chance for redemption. Whenever a mission went off plan, Frazier had come to rely on one factor to get him back on track-his intellect. He had risen to head of Security because he was a thinker as well as a doer. Most of the watchers were glorified Military Police, order-followers who carried out other men’s plans. He was a cut above, and in his own estimation, he could have been a high-level analyst like Spence or Kenyon if he could ever have tolerated being a deskbound paper-pusher.
So he committed himself to success, and a bit of lateral thinking came through for him. On a hunch, he had his men at the Area 51 Op Center put a filter on the landlines and mobile phones of all known members of the 2027 Club, every retiree in their files with more than a passing connection to Henry Spence. He guessed that Spence and Piper would be communicating on safe phones, but there was at least a chance they’d reach out more broadly.
The key phone intercept wasn’t processed for the better part of a day because of the volume of material. When Frazier received it, he was floundering in White Plains trying to come up with his next move. The audio file was marked highest priority, and he played it on the BlackBerry’s speaker.
Dane, this is Henry Spence, you got a minute?
For you, I got two minutes. I didn’t recognize this number. How’re you doing?
I’m hanging in there, at least for a few more days! I’m on one of those pay-in-advance phones. I think we’re okay, but let me make this snappy.
All right.
You remember the Shackleton affair?
Of course.
Will Piper’s been helping me with a 2027 matter. He went to England for us. He found it.
Found what?
The answers. We’ve got it all.
Tell me.
He’ll tell you. I need you to gas up your Beechcraft-I’ll pay-and fly him somewhere. Frazier and his boys are after him.
Fly him where?
Be at the general aviation terminal at Westchester County Airport in New York tomorrow at 2:00 P.M. He’ll give you the details but pack a toothbrush. Are you in?
Is the Pope Catholic?
Frazier now had a new outlet for his pent-up rage: Dane Bentley. An ex-watcher, one of his own! The ultimate betrayal! He had always half liked and half disliked the guy. It was hard not to be drawn to Dane’s affable side, but Frazier was always bitterly suspicious of his close ties with the worker bees. He’d never been able to pin any transgressions on him, but his suspicions kept Bentley out of his inner circle.
Immediately, he had one of his men check on Bentley’s DOD and when he got it, he was disappointed with the result.
Via the FAA database, the Ops Center quickly looked up Bentley’s plane registration and before long they had a filed flight plan: White Plains to Laconia, New Hampshire to Cleveland, Ohio, to Omaha, Nebraska, to Grand Junction, Colorado, to Burbank, California’s Bob Hope Airport. They also now had the number of Spence’s prepaid phone, and that might prove exceedingly useful.
“Los Angeles,” Frazier growled when he got the news. “He’s returning to the scene of the crime.”
“He’s going for the memory stick, isn’t he?” DeCorso asked.
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Frazier nodded. “Let’s get our asses to L.A.”
Will was amazed that Dane could be so energetic at that hour of the day. It was a good night for flying, with no significant weather on their route, so Dane was happy to concentrate much of his attention on Will’s story, which he assured Will, Spence wanted him to hear.
Will walked him through it, his tongue thick with fatigue. Dane was not an educated man, but he was excited about the Shakespeare connection and thought the Nostradamus angle was fascinating. He’d never heard of John Calvin, but he wasn’t sheepish about his lack of knowledge. He listened, spellbound by the account of the monk scribes and their mass suicide but was matter-of-fact about the Finis Dierum revelation.
“I don’t think the world’s gonna end just like that. I know Spence is into that kind of talk but, hell, I won’t be around to see it.”
Will looked at him sidelong.
“Yeah, I was a naughty boy. I got Spence to look me up before he retired. I’m outta here in 2025 at the not so ripe age of seventy-four. I’ve got to cram in a lot of hell-raising between now and then. You’re BTH, right?”
“Is there anything about me you don’t know?”
“Hey, the 2027 Club’s a bunch of old guys who get together to shoot the shit! Your Doomsday case finally gave them something to talk about.” He got distracted by some chatter on his headset. “I’m sorry about that girl and her grandfather. Sounds like you had a connection with her.” The way he said connection sounded loaded. Dane was on his wavelength when it came to women.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not my proudest moment.”
“Hey, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. That’s my motto.” He confirmed his altitude to an air traffic controller, then said to Will, “I want to thank you.”
“For what?”
