Eagle Station

Brad McLanahan watched the solid black Scion executive jet touch down. Slowing quickly, the Gulfstream G600 came to the end of the runway, turned, and taxied on toward Hangar Two. High overhead, its two Texas Air National Guard F-16C Falcon fighter escorts peeled away, rolling south as they flew off toward Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas. Late afternoon sunlight glinted off their clear bubble canopies.

For a moment, Brad stayed outside, watching the agile F-16s dart across the sky. At one point in his life, and not so long ago, either, flying high-performance aircraft like those Falcons for the U.S. Air Force would have been his dream job. He shook his head. Things sure had changed over the past few years. Silently, he turned and walked back inside the hangar to join the little group waiting there. He slipped into place between his father and Nadia.

Kevin Martindale checked his watch. “Well, at least they’re right on time.” He looked tense. “And a good thing, too. The turnaround on this visit is tight. Which is why I told that Gulfstream’s flight crew not to screw around.”

Next to him, Hunter Noble half turned with a quizzical look. “So what would have happened to your guys if they had run late? This time of year, that’s not so unlikely, you know — between normal bad weather and air traffic control delays, I mean.”

Martindale gave him a thin smile. “Bad things, Dr. Noble. Very bad things.”

“Oh,” Boomer said. He mimed a pistol pointed at his head. “As in bang.”

The former president snorted. “Of course not. I can’t just have people killed on a whim.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Boomer said, winking quickly at Brad and Nadia, who were trying hard not to laugh out loud.

“Not legally, anyway,” Martindale continued darkly.

Perhaps fortunately, the shrill, earsplitting whine of the executive jet’s twin turbofans made any further conversation impossible. Slowly, the Gulfstream rolled in through the hangar’s big open doors. With its engines spooling down, the midnight-black aircraft swung toward them and then braked to a stop just a few yards away.

Its forward cabin door opened. Several serious-looking men and women in dark suits hurried down the Gulfstream’s cabin steps and spread out into a semicircle. Slight bulges marked the holstered weapons concealed under their jackets. After a few moments, during which they carefully scrutinized their surroundings, one of them turned back toward the jet and nodded.

Brad and the others straightened to attention as a tall, broad-shouldered man emerged. Buttoning up his own suit coat against the cold, he trotted down the steps and came toward them with a friendly grin on his face. His security detail closed in around him, parting only when Martindale stepped forward with an outstretched hand.

“Welcome to Battle Mountain, Mr. President,” the head of Scion said quietly.

A few minutes later, they gathered in a small, windowless room at the far end of the hangar. Ordinarily, Sky Masters used it to brief pilots before test flights aboard new experimental aircraft. Now the president’s Secret Service detail was stationed outside the briefing room’s closed door. Corporate security personnel, all former military, held a discreet perimeter around the hangar itself.

“I wish we had time to give you a real tour,” Brad told Farrell as they sat down. “From the air, Sky Masters is just a bunch of industrial-looking buildings. The really cool stuff goes on inside.”

Farrell nodded regretfully. “I surely would have enjoyed that, Major. Maybe I’ll get the chance someday when I’m not pretending to be somewhere else.”

Right now, as far as the press, public, and, with luck, Russia and China were all concerned, J. D. Farrell was only on a quick working vacation at his private ranch in Texas’s Hill Country — with no plans to go anywhere but back to Washington, D.C., in a couple of days. Arranging the logistics for this secret visit to Battle Mountain had taken a lot of doing. Overruling the Secret Service’s objections to the president going anywhere without the usual army of White House staff, bodyguards, medical teams, helicopters, and armored limousines had finally required direct intervention by Farrell himself.

It would have been much simpler, Brad knew, to hold this meeting by secure video link. But the president had made it clear he was tired of “dealing with y’all mostly through some damned television screen. Maybe it’s old-fashioned, but I sort of appreciate seeing the folks working for me in person every so often.”

Meaningfully, Martindale laid his smartphone faceup on the table. He’d set it to display the time remaining before they needed to hustle Farrell back aboard his plane for its return flight to Texas. “The clock’s ticking here,” he reminded them all.