Chapter 336: Air Force One and Two

Monday, April 16, 2007 (Continued)

I turned off the TV and returned the boat's electrical switches to their original positions, stole a raincoat and cap from the boat, detached myself from the hull and motored myself farther up the Potomac, crossing over to the north shore while I did so. I was looking for a bicycle to steal. I wasn't being very angelic, but no one's perfect.

There are plenty of fancy private homes with their own jetties, lots of narrow inlets, etc., so ample choice for discreet locations for me to leave the water. It didn't take long for me to find one with an accessible, adult-sized bike. It was inside the garage of a very upmarket house; the garage's pedestrian door being easy to open from the inside and not alarmed. There was no one at home, and the whole place was walled or hedged off from its neighbors, right down to the waterline.

I put the raincoat and cap on while the water was still deep enough for me to stand easily, then I motored to their jetty, climbing up onto it quickly and walking casually onto the property. The bike came out of the garage to meet me, I mounted it, and rode to the gate. I couldn't see any button to open it from this side, so I used a sight blob to scout outside the gate. The road was a quiet one. Weeks ago I'd spent a couple of hours memorizing the geography of DC, suspecting that something like my current little plan might come up. I was in St Mary's County, about fifty or sixty miles SSE of central DC. The river bank isn't heavily populated and the roads curve around a lot, so it was only a matter of waiting until there were no cars coming toward me, then quickly making sure no one was looking out of the windows of the nearby houses, then I flew myself and 'my' bike up and over the gate. I hit the ground pedaling.

I'd thought about 'borrowing' a car (I didn't need keys; simply put it in neutral and use NP to push and brake it), but I preferred to leave my ski mask on, and that'd be too suspicious. I'd stolen a bike because it's natural to ride a bike in a head-down position. A cap and a raincoat hood over the top completely obscured my head in a non-suspicious manner. Another major advantage of the bike is that my DNA material wouldn't accumulate in it, the way it might inside a car, even if I changed into fresh clothes. Chances are that after completing my little mission I'll have to get out of the area quickly, and taking a car with me would reduce my maximum acceleration and make it easy for them to follow me on radar. All things considered, a bicycle was the ideal form of transport.

I was heading toward Andrews Air Force Base about forty miles away. Once I was more than about five miles away from where I'd taken the bike, I started looking for a good place to stop, where I could sit behind some bushes out of sight of any passersby, but close to several houses. I easily found such a location, rode behind some trees, then hunkered down while I searched the nearby houses for a computer I could use without interruptions. I found two in the same house and spent the next twenty minutes using them to read up on Andrews Air Force Base and the two planes used as Air Force One; both 747-200B's, tail numbers 28000 and 29000. Purchase price sixteen years ago had been $325 million each and I was sure a great deal more had been spent on them since then.

I was VERY pleasantly surprised to discover that Google Earth identified the hangar that the two planes were kept in, labeling it rather cutely as "Hangar One". That saved me the bother of having to find the planes on the very large base, making my mission planning much easier. I was presuming that the planes were in the hangar now, as I hadn't heard anything about the President or Vice President being out of town. I only needed one plane to make my point with anyway.

According to Google Earth, Hangar One was placed in the middle of a square grass field that was about 1,500 feet across in both directions, bordered by roads on three sides and a runway on the other. Other than the runway side, which would be an unwise direction for me to come from, there was a considerable amount of grass between the roads and the hangar, typically about six hundred feet. About three hundred feet from the hangar on the three grassed sides were two wire fences, one about thirty feet inside the other. The hangar had ancillary buildings as part of it; I guessed for workshops, crew restrooms, storerooms, etc. The main part of the hangar, the largest part of it so where the two planes would be kept, was in the middle of the ancillary buildings that were to the east and west of it.

The point of closest approach to where the planes would be was directly south of them. If I could move along the southern fence line, I'd get to within three hundred feet of the main hangar's southern wall, which should put the planes themselves comfortably within my range, although the far end of them might be getting tricky as they're nearly two hundred feet long. That location would suit me very nicely, but I would have to leave the road and ride across open grass to reach it, which the guards might object to. Failing what seemed the ideal approach, I could simply ride up to the security entrance for Hangar One, which was a separate building five hundred feet to its west. I could easily knock out any number of security guards without warning as I got close, then I could carry on straight through the gate and another two hundred feet east to get within range of the planes.

Another very pleasant surprise was there being so much bush-covered land, especially southwest of the target hangar, where there were three golf courses, the closest of which approached to within a thousand feet of the hangar. That offered possibilities for getting close to my target.

There was a perimeter road that ran all around the large base, with security gates at several points, but there were many locations where the separation between public roads and roads internal to the base was only a few dozen yards. Admittedly there were walls and often areas of heavy vegetation separating them, but they wouldn't slow me down much. Trees would even provide helpful cover for me. I could pick my moment to very quickly 'jump' from a public to an internal area, then ride around the internal roads without having to pass though one of the base's main gates.

Another important feature of the base was that there were hundreds of houses inside the perimeter, many of which would doubtless contain spare uniforms. So many houses meant there'd be a great deal of internal traffic, so one more person biking around wouldn't get any attention. Biking would continue to work well for me because people wouldn't try to talk with me.

I did some more research on the base, spent some time memorizing its layout, did some research on 747-200s, making sure I knew where their fuel tanks were (mostly in their wings). My research over, I got back on the bike to pedal and push myself the rest of the way to Andrews AFB ("AFB" is "Air Force Base").

With NP-pushing from behind, it took me a non-tiring ninety minutes to get close to my destination.

I stopped a couple of miles away from the base to watch an empty house's TV. The ABC's "Time waiting for the President's call" stopwatch was still counting up. I turned the volume up very loud and moved close enough to listen. A few minutes later, one of the talking-heads pointed to the stopwatch and mentioned that the White House still hadn't responded since they'd picked up the tapes. That was good enough for me. I turned the TV down then off and resumed the last stage of my journey.

The Perimeter Roads (that's what they're called) around Andrews AFB enclose a rectangular area about 2 miles east-west by 2.7 miles north-south. Hangar One is pretty much in the center. To its east, running the full north-south length of the base, are the main runways. To the north and west of Hangar One are VERY many buildings, mostly residential; and to the south and southwest are three golf courses.

It was easy for me to stick to public roads while I rode around the base's exterior, using a sight blob to watch how people inside the base behaved. I saw dozens of uniformed Air Force men and women walking around unchallenged. Only some of them had security tags on, which implied I wouldn't need one but I'll grab one anyway to look more legitimate from a distance. There were plenty of buildings containing sleeping personnel whose tags would be easy to fly out of a bathroom window.

There was a long stretch of public road that had heavy bush between it and a residential area in the southwest corner of the base. It was easy for me to develop bike trouble at a suitable location, pull off the side of the road, fiddle for a few seconds, then duck behind some trees.

I'd chosen a location close to the home of a sleeping guy whose clothes were slightly larger than my size. I opened a rear window of his house and everything I needed came to me, including his boots and a spare pair of black socks that I'd wear as gloves. I'd been holding my raincoats sleeves down previously. That'd been fine on the open road, but passing people up close, I preferred to have my silver mittens completely covered.

I had to strip myself bottomless to remove the flip-flop's bases from my A-man suit's booties, then I put the suit back on, my own black pants on, and then the Air Force uniform and boots.

It wasn't raining, but wearing a light raincoat as a windbreaker was reasonable for a cyclist, so I wasn't too worried about that. I was leaving it open anyway, so my uniform could be seen. The only purpose of the raincoat was to provide me with a hood to hide my ski mask, which I had to keep on to hide my silver mask, which was hiding my black face, which was a fake face that I'd grown to hide my white face. The number of layers was amusingly ridiculous, but my life has been getting rather complicated recently. There was too much chance of my getting caught on a security camera somewhere so I had to keep covered up.

From a distance, my ski mask would make me look like a Black man, which two layers further down I was (sort of). The security badge was for a white guy, but anyone who got close enough to see that and my face would be seeing silver material in the eyeholes of a black ski mask, so the badge would be the least of the issues.

Making sure there was no one looking, my bike and I 'jumped' over the wall, landing in the small stand of trees on the other side. I was hiding at the end of a very short street, containing only fourteen houses. I checked them out to make sure no one was going to see me ride out of the "court" (it was a small street, but Google Earth had called it a "court"). A couple of the houses had someone active in them, one of whom was in the kitchen preparing a meal. He had a view of the street and looked like he'd take a while, so I opened and closed a door at the other end of his house and he went to investigate the noise. I left the trees and cycled down the street and into a more populated area.

I still had nearly a mile to go, riding along one of the base's main streets that led through much of the residential area and almost straight to Hangar One, passing to the south of it. I wasn't going to try for a surreptitious approach. I'd seen that there was plenty of foot and vehicular traffic and that it wasn't being checked, so being one of them was less risky than crawling through trees and undergrowth. There were a few bikes in use on the flat base, so I blended in very nicely.

The worst thing that was likely to happen was that I'd get challenged, whereupon I'd knock the challenger out and take off vertically at the greatest acceleration I could cope with. I'd be out of pistol range before anyone could react, but if they drew a weapon while I was within five hundred feet of them, I'd knock them out with NP-punches. I'd angle away from the well-equipped guards, so they'd have no hope of shooting me. It was only twenty five miles to Chesapeake Bay. If I was being closely pursued I'd dive into it for either an easy submerged trip to the ocean, or to move to somewhere I could hide until nightfall. Or I could simply fly the extra seventy five miles to the ocean, where they had no hope of locating me. In other words, the worse that was likely to happen was my having to flee without accomplishing what I came here for. Bad for my reputation, but certainly not a disaster.

I continued pedaling east along the street; cars passing me, and me passing pedestrians, so no one could get a good look at me. I had my head down so my raincoat's hood and my cap's brim hid my head entirely (I was using NP to hold my hood in place, against the wind blowing it off). People saw a uniformed guy, security badge waving in the breeze, pedaling unhurriedly along an internal street. There was nothing suspicious about me. Wearing the hood might be SLIGHTLY unusual, but no one was concerned enough to leap on the issue in the short window of opportunity they had before we separated again.

I rode all the way through the residential area without a word being said to me or my getting even a second look. I left the houses behind, carrying on in the same direction for another quarter of a mile. To my immediate south was part of a golf course, to my north were three baseball diamonds. None were high security concerns that the Air Force would guard from a cyclist.

After that quarter mile, I had arrived at a choice. I was now at the southwest corner of the block that Hangar One was in the center of. The hangar itself was about a thousand feet northeast of me. If I carried on riding east on the road for another eighth of a mile, I'd be directly south of the hangar but still eight hundred feet from it, which was still too far, so I'd have to turn north at that point and ride across the grass toward the hangar. That might attract unwelcome attention, as it was a big, wide, empty grass area and I'd be the only thing moving in it.

While heading this way, I'd already decided to turn north at this point rather than continuing east as just described. The road north took an eighth of a mile to reach the branch east that took a few dozen yards to reach Hangar One's substantial security gate and guardhouse.

North was clearly the best way to go because it provided several options. On the west side of the northern road were the baseball diamonds, then north of them, a car parking area which currently contained fifty-odd cars. No one was playing baseball, so I thought most of those cars probably belonged to staff in Hangar One (the road to the security gate was roughly opposite the parking lot entrance). Usefully, I'd seen that north of the parking lots was a running track that several people were using. By riding north I was staying in a reasonably heavily traveled area which offered several possible reasons for my presence, so it wouldn't attract curiosity. I would attract curiosity if I continued to ride east as that took me into an area where there was no explanation for my presence, especially as it ran into the end of the runways, which wasn't believable bicycling territory.

Going north permitted me to turn right onto the grass and head directly toward the hangar's southern fence, getting me within three hundred feet of my target; or I could snoop out the guardhouse as I headed toward it, to decide which was best of cutting east across the grass, or knocking out all the security guards and going in the front door. Or if both those options looked like bad ideas, I could bike right past the security station and proceed innocently on my way, to try to think of a Plan C.

At the time I turned north, I thought my likely action would be to knock out all the security guards and enter the front gate. It was inelegant, but unconscious security guards couldn't cause me any trouble. It wouldn't take me long to do what I'd came here for, so by the time anyone reacted to the guards being unconscious - if they failed to answer the phone, say - I'd be long gone. My riding across the open field with no apparent purpose and with several well-armed guys five hundred feet to my left didn't appeal nearly as much as knocking them all out first.

As I turned north, I was pleased to note that the empty grass field that led to Hangar One's fence just seemed to be an empty grass field, rather than a minefield. There were no warning signs and no fence to stop people wandering onto it, which there'd surely have to be if it was a mine field, as Air Force people have been known to get drunk. That meant my favorite two plans were still both possible.

I was just about far enough north to start snooping the impressive looking building that was part of the Hangar One's security gate, when I noticed a couple of Air Force guards and a dog walk into sight around the outside of the fence at the far eastern end of the southern fence-line. If I rode across country toward them at double their walking speed, then we'd meet just outside the fence directly south of Hangar One, in my ideal spot three hundred feet from my target(s).

Doing that became my preferred plan immediately, with just a little more caution required. I continued north for another fifty feet to get within four hundred feet of the security gate, then I pretended to notice the dog team. I braked to a stop, lifted my head and looked directly at them. I put my left hand up as if to shelter my eyes from the overhead sun, but it was actually to block the sight of my ski-masked face from any of the guards at the security gate.

I held that position for a few seconds, while one sight blob searched the security gate area and the other kept an eye on the dog team, mostly to make sure they didn't raise binoculars to their eyes to look at my ski mask.

The security gate was VERY substantial. That didn't worry me much because if I went that way all the guards would be unconscious. I'm very brave in the face of thickly reinforced concrete and unattended guns. I was pleased to note that none of the guards were interested in me. They might not even have seen me yet.

I made my decision. I gave the dog patrol an exaggerated arm wave, then set off across country toward them. I watched the security guards in the blockhouse carefully, using my other sight blob to alternate between the dog team and looking at the ground just ahead of me.

I'd gone about fifty feet (heading slightly north of directly east, to reach the fence), when one of the gate's security guards spotted me. I chose that moment to give another exaggerated wave toward the dog team. They'd noticed me too, and looked a little puzzled.

The gate guard picked up a pair of binoculars and aimed them at me. He said something while doing that, attracting the attention of a couple more guards who turned to look at me too. I had nothing to worry about yet, as my head was completely hidden from their side views.

I was about 350 feet from the gate, angling toward it slightly so would probably be about 300 feet away at the closest point, before I rode east far enough to start opening the distance again. 300 feet was way too far for pistols, so I'd only start worrying if they picked up rifles. They had plenty of weapons close to hand and there were a dozen guards, so lots of lead could come my way if I let it. If they went for their weapons, they were all going to get put to sleep very abruptly.

What one of them did pick up was a walkie-talkie. Moments later, so did one of the dog-team guys. I waved at them again and kept cycling, closing the distance fairly rapidly.

I sent a sight blob into the hangar the moment I got within range of it, as I didn't need much visual resolution to count the number of 747s. They were both there. I smiled to myself.

There was no mistaking them even with the poor vision I currently had, as the paint job is unique. As my vision improved I could make out quite a few people inside the building, and some inside the planes themselves, maintenance people and guards mostly. I'd move them all to safety, of course. I was glad they were there, as my taking care of them would add to my reputation.

The security gate guards didn't get worked up about me. One of them kept his binoculars on me, and the others returned to guarding an empty driveway.

The dog team looked toward me with curiosity. I kept my head down as I approached closer.

I was about halfway to the two guards when I started my attack on the closest of the 747s. Making an NP-fingertip with a one-sixteenth inch thickness, adding a considerable number of other fingertips behind it, and placing them on the top of the plane's roof above its stern cattle-class seating area (presumably for the press), I pressed down very forcefully. It penetrated the skin effortlessly (literally, because all I had to do was think about what I wanted to happen). Then I turned the wedge ninety degrees to face forward and I pushed it horizontally. It sliced the top of the plane open from the base of the tail fin toward the cockpit. I didn't have the range to slice the entire length open as the plane was too long and extended beyond my maximum range, but I got most of it. I couldn't hear anything from where I was, but inside the hangar people were incredulous, and starting to run around, some toward the plane, some away from it. Other than a few people inside the cabin, almost no one would've seen what was happening, but I'm sure they knew where the sounds of tortured metal were coming from.

My online research had taught me that 747 wings weighed about 40,000 kg empty of gas. My maximum force was about 7,200 kg so I certainly couldn't pick up a whole wing, which is a pity because I would have loved to cut them off the fuselage and mount them vertically sticking through the roofs of their planes. Not being able to manage that in its entirety, I'd do so with just the tips of the wings.

I repeated the slicing technique to sever the nearest wingtip (the last 20% of its length) from the rest of the wing. There were some strong points across the wing, but nearly eight tons of force applied to a blade one-sixteenth of an inch wide didn't have too much trouble slicing through them. The point of the blade, even though it was the only NP-fingertip created by its owning mind, tended to collapse under the pressure, so that was the "trouble" I had. It only slowed me down a few seconds though because the wings weren't designed to resist a sheering force.