D. MacHale - Storm

Kent shot me a quick look.

“That’s where they keep the aliens!” he whispered.

“It’s no secret that this base has been used for decades in the development of advanced military aircraft. Contrary to popular myth, there are no aliens or alien spacecraft hidden there, at least to the best of my knowledge.”

I looked at Kent.

He shrugged. “That’s what he says.”

“I know little about the base other than the fact that its primary function was to be an aircraft design and test center. That function has changed. It is now the base from which the Air Force has been launching their attacks.”

Matt added, “We’ve had scouts observing the base for weeks. They see when the fleets take off and when they return. Our guesstimate is that at any given time there are at least seven hundred planes on the ground.”

That got gasps of surprise from the crowd.

Seven hundred planes? How could the Air Force have kept that many planes secret from the rest of the world?

Harris continued, “There are no facilities on the base for construction on such a massive scale. Our best guess is that they were assembled at several locations and brought to Nevada. Trust me when I say that the CIA was not aware of it.”

Matt said, “From what we learned, they are gearing up for another assault on major cities, starting with Los Angeles. That brings us to our mission.”

Matt looked to the bald guy, Cutter. He stepped forward and gazed at the crowd as if sizing them up.

“I have been a proud member of the United States Marine Corps Special Ops for over five years,” he began with authority. “I’ve served in Iran and Afghanistan and a few other places I’d rather not discuss, so I guess I know what I’m talking about, and what I know for certain is that this will be a hazardous undertaking,”

The guy sounded a little too proud of himself, but if he knew what he was doing, I wasn’t going to criticize.

“Our goal is simple,” he said. “We’re going to cripple the enemy.”

That got a rousing cheer and sustained applause. Cutter stood basking in it.

Matt had to step up and raise his hands to calm everyone down. I think Cutter would have liked the cheering to go on.

“As I said, this will not be easy,” Cutter continued. “Small teams will penetrate the base. Each operative will carry ten of these devices.”

He held up an object that looked like a silver hockey puck.

“We picked these up on a little shopping trip to Camp Pendleton last week. Each one of these contains enough C-4 to blow a hole through a fuselage and damage the avionics, rendering the drones inoperative. From what we’ve recently heard if the charge is anywhere near the planes power source, it’ll do more than just cripple the craft. It’ll evaporate it. Either way, if the planes can’t fly, people won’t die.”

That got more cheers.

“Catchy,” I whispered to Tori.

She rolled her eyes.

The crowd calmed down, and Cutter continued.

“These devices are completely harmless until the detonator is armed. Observe.”

He shook the silver puck. He threw it in the air and caught it. He threw it up and let it bounce off of the stage.

I have to admit, I flinched when it hit the floor.

He stomped on it with his boot. There was no boom.

“You’ll go through this again with our group leaders,” he explained. “But I will now demonstrate how to make these bad boys dangerous. One: Peel the plastic sheet off of the bottom. That will uncover a layer of adhesive. Two: Slap it onto the fuselage. Trust me, it will not come off. Three: Activate the timer. Each device will be preset to explode exactly thirty minutes after it is made active. The timing is not something you will be able to change. You prime the detonator by entering the four-digit code.”

He held the explosive up to show there was a small keypad on the opposite face from the adhesive.

“The code is the same for all the devices. Four-three-two-one. That was my idea. It’s easy to remember because there’s always a countdown before the boom.”

“He’s kind of a tool,” Tori whispered to me.

Surprisingly, the tool pressed the four buttons.

“Four-three-two-one,” he announced.

A green light appeared above the keypad.

“The green light means the clock is ticking. This particular device has been set to detonate in sixty seconds. Six-oh. The only way to disarm it is to input the code in reverse. One-two-three-four. I will not do that.”

Even more surprisingly, he didn’t.

Cutter moved unhurriedly to the back of the stage and placed the device on the floor.

“Is that thing really going to blow up?” Olivia asked me, incredulous.

From the nervous murmurs in the audience, most everyone was wondering the same thing.

“Last thing,” Cutter said. “Number four: Get the hell out of there.”

He walked quickly to the other Chiefs, herding them protectively to the side of the stage.

The theater had gone deathly quiet. All eyes were on the small silver disk.

“You might want to cover your ears,” Cutter announced.

Everyone did as they were told, except Cutter. I guess his ears were too tough.

“This is crazy,” Olivia cried. “He wouldn’t really—”

The disk exploded with a sharp, short boom that spewed a cloud of smoke from the detonation point.

I jumped, and I’m sure everyone else did too.

It took several seconds for the sound to stop echoing through the huge theater.

Cutter walked calmly back to center stage, waving away the smoke. “Each one of these devices holds five ounces of C-4,” he explained. “This is the result.”

There was a manhole-sized hole in the stage.

Cutter straddled the damage and said, “It’ll blast through the thin hull of a plane like paper. With nearly a thousand of these charges, we will put the enemy out of business.”

There was a stunned moment of silence, followed by an outburst of emotion. People stood and cheered. They screamed. They whistled. They clapped their hands and each other on the back. Cutter stood triumphantly over the hole in the stage and held his arms out as if to embrace the outpouring of emotion.

I have to admit, I got swept up in it too. Before that demonstration I had no idea how a group of untrained civilians could go up against the Retros. Whether it was real or wishful thinking, I now saw the possibility.

We were separated into four groups and sent to smaller rooms to continue the briefing. The four of us went with the group that ended up in a large carpeted meeting room at the Caesar’s Palace hotel. The room had windows, so we were able to see without headlamps. That was great. But there were no chairs. That wasn’t so great. We had to sit on the floor.

The four Chiefs rotated through, each giving us a little more information. With a smaller group we were able to ask questions.

“This all sounds great,” one guy asked Harris. “But there’s a whole lot of open desert between here and there. What’s stopping those Retros from taking us out before we even get there? I mean, we’ve got some nifty little bombs, but there won’t be any armored tanks running cover for us.”

“Valid question,” Harris answered with cool efficiency. “Our plan is based on one very important bit of information. We do not believe that the base is manned.”

Everyone erupted with surprise at hearing that.

Harris sat calmly, waiting for everyone to settle down again.

Kent was the one who stood and put it right to him.

“That’s crazy,” he said. “It’s an Air Force base with hundreds of planes. They’ve got to be guarding that!”

“You would think,” Harris answered. “But we have had eyes on that base for weeks. Mostly the eyes of the Paiute Native American tribe. This is their world.”