Chapter 47

Outside I found George busily working near the back of the loader. One of the men from the gang was helping and George introduced him as Gary. Gary had been a construction worker, usually as a welder, but was a qualified pipe fitter too and he had also slummed as an ironworker a few times.

Right away I knew Gary was going to be a big help for us. I was pretty sure we were going to need a much bigger hanger and John's talking about pouring concrete had me convinced we needed to start soon. It was nearing fall now and we needed to get the concrete poured before any freezing weather came up.

Anyway, they were already nearly through with the loader's modification. Just a few more welds and it would be done. The only other thing we knew the loader needed now was Freon in its air conditioner. We didn't have anyone who was sure they knew how to charge it.

Most everything was under control and I headed back inside and to my study. I saw Henny and told her the loader was nearly ready, warned her it wouldn't operate exactly like the tow tractors at the air base. She already knew this from looking at it and said they would just have to be careful until they got familiar with it. She intended to try it on the least valuable airplanes first.

Supper was ready already so I ate. Shelly and Sarah sat with me and talked about Johnny some more. I told them I was leaning toward letting him in now, but I would have to have a real sit down talk with him first.

I went into my study after dinner and winpopup jumped up again after a few minutes. It was Brenda messaging me from the control center. She asked if I would come back to them for a few minutes. I sent her an OK and headed back.

When I reached the control center Brenda, Clair, and Jasmine were all looking at the main monitor. They had the radar's screen up. I decided they must have gotten it turned on at least.

"What is that?" I asked, to be sure.

"It's the missile command's radar system. It's picking up two targets over Barksdale. It has a couple of other targets out near Phoenix," Brenda said.

"How can it pick them up as far as Phoenix?" I asked.

"It only got those because of their altitude. They are up around thirty thousand feet. One is an F16 and one is an F15. The two at Barksdale are helicopters. One Huey and one Cobra," Brenda told me.

"How can it tell what they are from so far away?"

"Their IFF tells it. That stands for Identification Friend or Foe. It's a transponder on the aircraft. It can be turned off but I guess none of them thought of that," Brenda explained.

"Radar from somewhere has hit me Al. It was only for an instant but it's happened five or six times. There it is again."

Brenda quickly flipped two different switches on the console. Then she went back to studying the readout.

"Who was that Brenda?" I asked.

"It was the Cobra over Barksdale. This equipment includes scanners to try and pickup radio traffic. Since there is so little traffic now it got them quickly. It sounded like they noticed our radar and so I set it to only grab a new look every ninety seconds." Brenda told me.

"It seems to have stopped now Al. I wonder who it was?" The Cobra's pilot asked.

"I'm sure I couldn't guess. I haven't even seen anyone else flying. Someone has taken a big chunk of the planes away from her since we visited last time though," The Huey's pilot, Al, told her.

"Can we talk to them Brenda?" I asked.

"I think so, what do you want to say?" she asked.

"I want to invite them to visit."

"We don't know who they are or what they are like," she said.

"We never will if we let them get away. Can you turn on the missiles yet?" I asked.

"They are on. They're set to track and manage the battle, but must have manual confirmation before a launch," she told me.

"Can they deal with a Cobra and a Huey?"

"They can probably deal with fifty or more," she said, boasting I thought.

"Well what's the problem? We'll have them come here. We'll scramble a couple of the F15s and a Comanche, maybe an A10 too. We should be able to handle them well outside our perimeter if they seem hostile.

"If they try to sneak up acting friendly and then fire we might have some trouble, but with all those planes out there they really won't know what to shoot first will they?"

"Hell, when you're right, you're right. They'll be on target overload when they see them and they'll surely know they can't get away alive. They didn't sound like they were on a suicide mission did they?" Brenda asked, handing me a microphone.

"Hello Al, can you hear me?" I asked.

I didn't get any response. I waited a few more seconds and repeated myself. Still nothing.

"Hello Al, we heard you and your partner talking. We know where you are and can name the place to let you know we're telling the truth, but if someone else is listening we don't want to give them your position. Answering us won't cost you anything," I said.

"This is Al, who are you?"

"My name is Jack and we're friendly. We assume you came to that place looking for planes. We have already acquired the most valuable ones for our operation. Those that are still there have been disabled," I said.

"Are you that group that called itself the gang? I thought their leader was named Jake," he said.

"We were forced to absorb the gang. Jake was uncooperative and had to be killed. We would like to meet with you and discuss our situations. What are your thoughts on that?"

"We aren't opposed, though we would want to meet at a neutral place for everyone's protection."

"I could lie to you and make arrangements for a supposed neutral place, but I'm not going to. There isn't a neutral place if you can't check it out completely. If you had enough equipment to make sure we weren't laying for you it wouldn't be neutral for us. If we name it over the air we could be telling a third party where to attack us all. If you want to talk you can come here. If you don't then we will just sign off. I can only tell you we will not harm or detain you?"

"I'm not saying yay or nay, but if we want to where do we go?" Al asked.

I didn't have a fucking clue what to tell him that wouldn't give us away completely. I asked Brenda what to tell him. She gave me a bearing to give him and said to tell him he would know where we were if he flew down that bearing for two or three hours.

I told this to Al and he asked us not to shoot him if he showed up. We told him we wouldn't. That was all we heard from him. I asked Brenda if she had tried to make sure the missiles would really come up from their hidden position. She told me she hadn't.

I cursed myself for not thinking of it before I invited Al to come on over. I suggested we might want to test them soon, as in the next three or four minutes.

She flipped a couple of switches and typed something into the keyboard. A monitor soon showed all missiles were in launch readiness position.

I asked her if we even knew where to go look and see if they were actually up. She told me we didn't need to and started another monitor cycling through video of all the missile launchers. They were all up and certainly looked functional.

We could only wait now and hope Al Showed up. Brenda began explaining more to me about the missiles and radar than I wanted to know, but I listened and tried to understand anyway.

I knew now I needed to know more about it than I did. Besides, Clair and Jasmine were listening attentively and I thought I might as well too.

The radio squawked again forty minutes later. It was the woman we'd heard earlier talking to Al. She said she was coming our way. We looked at the radar and saw her. Brenda told me the missiles had a lock but that she was still out of range. I asked her to make sure they wouldn't fire and she assured me they wouldn't.