Tom Clancy's HAWX

Chapter 59

"They were using Firehawk ID cards," Jenna's colleague told her. "But nobody recalls any of the names. It was chaos over there at the airport on Saturday. It was chaos everywhere. There were at least five of them. One of them was a woman, but she drove away with the others in a van when the two guys took the F-16s."

"They just let them get away with it?" Jenna asked, silently noting how wrong the rumors of her own encounter at Reagan National Airport had become. As much as she deplored the inherent sexism in the rumor's distortion of fact, she was glad to discover that the imaginary woman had not been one of the pilots.

"Somehow they got their hands on Firehawk ID, and on Saturday, nobody was questioning Firehawk ID… anywhere."

Even after this exchange on Sunday, Jenna's decision to go in to the Firehawk offices on Monday morning was made with great trepidation. It need not have been. The media had consulted with itself and had decided to stick with the theory of rogue Air Force pilots — male rogues — and once decided, the theory took on an unshakable life of its own.

The Justice Department, the NTSB, and even the U. S. Air Force itself launched investigations — but they sought only people who fit the profile decided upon in this theory with a life of its own.

It was strange to walk through the lobby, with its stylized aluminum rendition of the company logo, a bird's head surrounded by flames, and to hear the buzz of conversation about the death of Raymond Harris.

"Ms. Munrough."

Jenna spun around at the sound of the receptionist calling her name. She was still a bit on edge, still expecting to be busted at any moment.

"Yes?"

"Ms. Munrough, you're wanted at a briefing in the seventh-floor conference room… um… they asked me to tell all the top management that there's a nine o'clock meeting up there this morning."

"Thanks," Jenna said, breathing a sigh of relief. A meeting. Even at Firehawk, home office life was a succession of meetings. The bureaucracy must go on. The king is dead — long live the bureaucracy.

She checked the time on her cell phone. She could get a cup of coffee to go and still make the meeting.

As Jenna rounded the corner going into the coffee room, she found herself face-to-face with Lucy, her friend from special projects who had alerted her to the nuclear weapon.

Lucy flashed a glance that asked, Did you have anything to do with Harris getting killed?

Jenna replied with one that asked, Are you kidding? Of course not. Did you?

Lucy just shook her head, nervous to be accused by Jenna's expression.

"Did they find the thing?" Jenna asked under her breath.

"Yeah," Lucy said nervously as she poured her coffee. "How was your weekend?"

"Fine," Jenna lied for the benefit of a couple of people who came into the coffee room. "I just hung out… did some laundry… watched a lot of television. How about you?"

"I was down at the White House on Saturday. Avoided the television, myself."

"I know what you mean," Jenna said, taking her coffee and heading toward the elevator that would take her to the rarefied atmosphere of the celebrated seventh floor.

The conference room was filled with all the top home office people, the department heads, and some of the people from Raymond Harris's staff. She recognized Aron Arnold, the pilot whom Harris had recently brought in from Cactus Flat as sort of a fair-haired boy.

Jenna knew Arnold's history with Troy Loensch, though he had little to say about him. She knew of their inauspicious first meeting, but that they had flown together with the HAWX Program.

The mood in the room was one of expectation. With Harris out of the picture, everyone was curious to know what the board of directors might have in mind for Fire-hawk's future.

This question was answered moments after Jenna set her cup on the table and slung her purse strap over the back of her chair.

An unassuming, middle-aged Hispanic man entered through the door at the opposite' corner of the room.

"I'm Jose Turcios." He smiled. "But most people call me Joe."

With that, he went on to explain that he had been with Firehawk for nearly a dozen years, running special projects and field operations around the world.

"I'm honored to tell you," he continued, "to tell you that the board has named me to succeed Raymond Harris as CEO of Firehawk. They are big shoes to fill and I'm just a size ten."

He paused for the few chuckles that came in reaction to his poor attempt at levity, and continued.

Conspicuously absent in Joe Turcios's comments was the increasingly vitriolic diatribe about the evils of ineffective government that everyone had grown used to hearing from Raymond Harris. Maybe it was that Turcios just had a different style, or perhaps it was simply that the events of the past seventy-two hours simply spoke for themselves.

"The future at Firehawk is promising, and it will obviously be a busy one," Turcios added. "Now that Firehawk and our PMC partners at Cernavoda have the added responsibility of managing the executive branch of the federal government, there will be plenty to keep us busy… but I don't want to allow that to detract from our core business of conducting air operations."

For many of the people in the room, who had aviation backgrounds, this was a welcome comment. Even though most were indeed part of the home office bureaucracy, few wanted to think of themselves as bureaucrats.

"With this in mind, I'd like to officially announce that we are going to expand and add additional resources to HAWX, our High Altitude Warfare, Experimental, Program. The future belongs to those who own the technology of the future, and I intend for this to be Firehawk. With that in mind, I'd like to introduce the new head of the HAWX Program. Some ofyou have met Aron Arnold. He's new to the home office but not to Firehawk….."

As the meeting broke up, Jenna noticed Arnold coming toward her.

"I don't believe we've been formally introduced, Ms. Munrough," he said, extending his hand.

"Might as well call me Jenna. I've seen you around. You're in from Cactus Flat, I hear."

"Yeah, I was there until the general invited me to join him back here a couple of weeks ago… and you can call me Aron."

"So, I guess you'll be headed back out to Cactus Flat, Aron?"

"I'm not much of a home office guy." Arnold shrugged. "By the way, I had a chance to fly with Troy Loensch out there. I hear that you were in his Air Force unit over in Sudan?"

"Yeah. I flew with him over there. That's where we first met Harris."

"Too bad about what happened to Loensch," Arnold said. Jenna couldn't detect whether he was being sympathetic or just making conversation.

"Too bad for sure," Jenna replied. She detected no trace of emotion, but then, Arnold struck her as an emotionless individual.

"Helluva way to die… lost at sea and all. I was out there at Cactus Flat when the word came in that he had gone down," Arnold said. "We crewed together on a few Shakuru flights before it happened….. Actually, that's one thing I wanted to talk to you about."

"What's that?"

"How long has it been since you've been in the cockpit of a high-performance aircraft?" Arnold asked. Jenna felt herself jump slightly.

What was he asking? What was Raymond Harris's fair-haired boy asking? Did he know? Did he expect her to answer that just two days ago she was in a cockpit shooting Sidewinders at Raymond Harris?

"It's been a while," she answered noncommittally. "Why?"

"Because from what I've heard… and seen in your resume, you're the kind of pilot we need at HAWX. I'd like to ask you to consider transferring from Herndon to the HAWX Program."

"Y'all are inviting me to come out to the desert and fly high-altitude stuff?"

"Exactly. I'll talk to Turcios and we'll work it out. Are you interested?"

"Tell me more," Jenna said, unslinging her purse and setting it down on the conference room table.

"We have a lot of new stuff coming on line out there," Arnold said. "I figured you wouldn't mind trading a desk chair for an ejection seat."

"What the hell," Jenna said thoughtfully. "I think this probably would be a good time for me to be getting out of Washington for a while."