Sedona Conspiracy

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO ^{GROUND TEST}

Eric felt excited, but also had a nagging apprehension that had begun the day before. At first he’d thought it a lack of confidence about the ground test, but the procedure was so clear in his mind it was like the test had already been successfully performed. Perhaps it was Nataly he worried about. They’d had lunch once in the past two weeks, and she’d been her usual ethereal and affectionate self, but when he’d called the next day she was suddenly very busy. There were times when he felt the woman was peering into the very core of him. Her gaze would become intense, she would squeeze his hand warmly in hers and, for Eric, everything except Nataly would cease to exist. Maybe she’d finally seen what was really inside him: a merciless killer for political masters, a man who could only live for himself in order to survive.

In two decades he’d never had such intense feelings for a woman, a longing that went far beyond the physical. And there were moments when he felt Nataly returning those feelings with a look, a touch, and a light brush of her lips on his. The thought of it made his eyes moist.

He didn’t want to lose her, even after the mess at the base was finished.

The van bumped hard in the usual place on the usual road and there was the usual decent to the tunnels below high desert buttes. Twenty minutes later Sergeant Alan Nutt, his faithful base companion, accompanied him to Sparrow’s bay. Several people were waiting for them.

Steward was there, and Frank Harris for Systems Analysis, but today it would be Rob Hendricks’ show. As head of Flight Operations it was Rob’s responsibility to write procedure for all ground and flight-testing, but unlike Steward, his ego never got involved in the work. Eric liked him, though Rob didn’t accept the ‘Good Luck’ theory of Eric’s breakthroughs with Sparrow any more than Steward did. He reacted in a different way. He simply assumed that for reasons unknown to him people who knew how to get Sparrow into space were feeding Eric information, and it made common sense to go along with what they said. He’d even said openly he thought trying to find out why Eric was The Chosen One was a waste of time.

Rob had asked Eric to write up the ground test procedure, and Eric complied, with the proviso there could be only one copy, to be kept in Sparrow’s cockpit at all times. Davis had strongly objected to that, but gave in when Rob promised to somehow obtain another copy. He told Eric this, and Eric had seen the logic. If there was an accident, Eric might be killed and the procedure record burned up with him, leaving the rest of them with nothing. The people who’d brought Sparrow to them had demonstrated all too much that they couldn’t be counted on for vital information, at least for the rest of the team. In the end, Eric had allowed one disk copy to be stored in Davis’ safe. If Brown objected to that, he’d have to deal with Davis.

Captain Dillon was inside Sparrow when Eric arrived, and two techs were standing on the wings to look in at him.

“Morning,” said Eric, and Hendricks gave him a look of surprise when he climbed right up onto Sparrow’s wing and nudged a tech aside.

“Aren’t you going to give us a briefing?” called Hendricks.

“You have the procedure, and so do I. Let’s get to it. Morning, Captain; have room for me in there?”

Dillon was already throwing switches, and the ready light on his side of the cockpit was green. “All set, sir. Climb in.”

Eric climbed into the seat next to Dillon, and strapped in. A tech handed his headphone to him, and he put it on. The entire procedure to the limit of their knowledge was on a single sheet of paper on a clipboard, all of it drawn only from Eric’s memory. He put the clipboard in his lap.

The roar of heavy engines was a momentary distraction. Four fire trucks pulled up alongside Sparrow on both sides and targeted the craft with four-foot nozzles prepared to spray foam. When the trucks were in place, both techs saluted and got down from the wings. Dillon touched a lever on his side of the cockpit; the canopy above them levered downwards and locked in place with a snap. The red interior light went on and seemed too dim until Eric’s eyes adapted to it.

“Here we go,” said Eric, and threw five switches in rapid succession. They could hear the whine from Sparrow’s aft section even with the canopy closed. When the sound was steady, Eric threw the final switch on the board, and a single light glowed on a panel by his right knee.

“Should be getting some heat now,” said Eric.

Hendricks responded instantly. “Warming. T at twenty-two and climbing. We’re going to the trucks.”

Eric nodded at Dillon. “Powering up.”

Dillon’s left hand moved a lever forward, and soon they could hear the whine of conventional turbines rising in pitch until there was a thump, then a steady vibration in the cockpit. At that instant, a second light went on by Eric’s right knee.

“Ah, hah!” he said. “That is reassuring. Now bring it up to half thrust.”

Dillon pushed the lever again, and cockpit vibrations seemed to smooth. A switch light at the top of the panel by Eric’s right knee turned green when Eric threw it.

“That’s it, we’re done. The rest has to be done in flight. Power down, and shutting down. How’s the heat out there?”

“T went to fifty, but leveled off when you went to half-thrust. I wish we knew what the hell we’re doing here, Price.” Hendricks did not sound pleased.

“So do I, Rob. I’m just following directions.” Eric followed the switching sequence in reverse as Dillon powered down, and a minute later there was no sound to be heard except for their nervous breathing.

“That took about five minutes, and I was up half the night worrying about it,” said Dillon.

“The real stress test comes when we’re in the air, Captain. That’s when we find out what that last panel is there for. All we know now is that it’s ready to do it when we reach half-thrust. God knows what would have happened if I’d thrown those switches before then.

Dillon smiled, and shook his head. “I’ve been doing first-flight on high performance aircraft for fifteen years, sir, but I’ve never been in one where we had no idea what was going to happen when we threw a switch. It’s not what I’d call good engineering procedure.”

“Anything that works is good engineering,” said Eric.

The two techs had returned to Sparrow’s wings and helped Dillon and Eric climb out of the cockpit. On the ground, Hendricks looked glum, and folded his arms as he made his judgment. “That has to be the shortest ground test on record. Tell me, please, what we just accomplished.”

“We didn’t blow up,” said Eric.

“You have the startup procedure verified up to liftoff,” said Dillon. “When can we fly?”

Hendricks paused, and tapped his foot. “It’ll have to be at night. I’m thinking Sunday, or early Monday morning.”

“We could do it any night. We’ll be at altitude in less than a minute. There’s no security issue.” Dillon was clearly anxious to see what Sparrow could really do.

“Sunday is soon enough,” said Hendricks, and that looked like the end of the discussion. Eric raised an eyebrow at him.

“There are some things we want to look at first,” said Hendricks. “When you were powering up, the fuselage T was increasing fast, but suddenly leveled off. At that point we saw something strange, like a thermal plume, all around the aircraft. The air shimmered. Maybe it glowed. We have it all on film, optical and IR. I want to compare the two views. I don’t think it was a thermal plume. Didn’t you feel anything unusual when you powered up?”

Eric shook his head, but Dillon said, “It got quiet and smoother, just before we hit half thrust.”

“That’s when the green bulb lit up on our mystery board,” added Eric.

“I’ll run stress and temperature data correlations with what we have on film. I want to know everything I can before you fly. It’ll be Friday before we have it all written up, and Saturday will be flight check and fueling. We might be able to lift off early Sunday morning. That is the earliest.”

Dillon smiled wanly. “Yes sir.”

“This means both of you will be staying here Friday through the weekend, and maybe Monday. I hope you haven’t made any other plans, but if you have you’d better change them.”

At least Nataly wouldn’t have to find an excuse for not seeing him this weekend. “I wouldn’t miss this flight for anything, Rob,” said Eric.

“And it’s long overdue,” said Dillon.

Steward and the two techs had opened up Sparrow and were crawling around inside with their instruments. The fire trucks pulled back and parked in a corner of the bay. Sergeant Nutt came up to Eric with an expectant look on his face. “Colonel Davis, sir, right after the test, he said.”

“Okay,” said Eric. He turned to Dillon, held out a hand. “See you on Friday, Captain.”

The men shook hands, and Eric went away with the sergeant to make his report to Davis, and indirectly to the mysterious people who had brought Sparrow to them.

He wondered if he’d ever have the chance to talk to Mister Brown again.

By noon the techs had finished their measurements on Sparrow, and closed her up again. Elton Steward sat at the little table by the aircraft and analyzed data on his PC for another two hours. Rob Hendricks showed up, talked with Steward a while, Steward folded up his PC and the two men left the bay together.

There was little activity in the bay the rest of the afternoon. A welder was busy on the arm of a crane, high above the floor, and a crew cleaned up an oil spill near the large baffled door. Four guards continually patrolled the perimeter of the bay every day until lockdown. Late afternoon, on separate occasions, three uniformed men came out of the door that led to the neighboring portal bay. They crossed the bay and went out another door, taking a shortcut to the parking area by the main tunnel in the base.

As lockdown approached, the baffled door rolled upwards ten feet, and three men came in with a forklift. The welder who’d been working high above them stopped what he’d been doing and climbed down the crane’s ladder to the floor. The arc-welding-unit power supply was picked up on a pallet and carried away.

The four guards checked to be sure all personnel doors were locked, and went out through the baffle door. The door rolled downwards, hit the floor. Magnetic locks engaged with a loud snap, red lights went on near the ceiling and strobed slowly. The lights that had been on all day now dimmed until there was only a strobing, red gloom in the bay. Lockdown would last until oh-five-hundred the following morning.

Sparrow sat silently in gloom for over five hours until, suddenly, the door leading to the portal bay opened again. Four men came out of it. They wore military fatigues, and carried heavy black satchels no larger than briefcases.

The men walked up to Sparrow. Two climbed up onto the wings, and opened the cockpit. A minute later the aft section of Sparrow rotated upwards, and the other two men climbed inside with their satchels. They worked for over an hour, then climbed out again with satchels now held lightly in their hands. They waited patiently. It was another hour before the men inside the cockpit were finished with their work.

Sparrow’s fuselage was closed again. The other two men emerged from the cockpit and closed it up, stepped down from the wings.

The four men talked softly for several minutes, reviewing what they’d done, and then they walked back to the door leading to the portal bay and made their exit.

It was quiet in the bay for exactly one hour, and then, quite suddenly, the figures of two men materialized out of clear air right by Sparrow. They wore helmets with opaque facemasks and were clothed in black from neck to foot. Both carried short, stubby weapons, and one was talking on a cell phone.

The men waited by Sparrow for twenty minutes, and then the personnel door leading eventually to the office of Colonel John Davis opened up, and a man entered the bay.

The man was Sergeant Alan Nutt.

Alan walked over to the men and shook hands with them. There was a murmured discussion that went on for several minutes, and then Alan stepped up onto Sparrow’s wing and opened the cockpit. He reached inside without hesitation, there was a thud, and Sparrow’s aft section opened up again.

Alan went back to inspect the inside of Sparrow with the other two men. There was another discussion, and Alan crawled inside Sparrow until only his feet were visible. He worked at something for several minutes, and called out. The other two men grabbed his ankles, slowly pulled him out and helped him stand. Alan was holding something the size of a shoebox away from his body at arms’ length, and gingerly put it down on the table by Sparrow.

The three of them went back up on Sparrow’s wing, and Alan got into the cockpit. He remained there for half an hour. Sparrow’s aft section levered shut, and soon after that there was a brief whine from the craft. Alan got out of the cockpit, and closed the canopy. He stood on the wing, and made a call on his cell phone. He talked to someone for several minutes before hanging up, and then turned to his companions. They listened intently as he talked, and then they all climbed off the wing.

Alan walked to the table to retrieve the box he’d taken out of Sparrow. Behind him the other two men disappeared from view, their images rippling, fading, then gone from the feet up.

Alan picked up the box, again held it well out from his body, and marched to the door leading eventually to the nearby portal bay. He punched in a code to open the door, went through it, and closed the door behind him.

And Sparrow’s bay was quiet again.