The Third Option

chapter 37
The small hangar sat on a secluded portion of the massive Andrews Air Force Base, just south and east of Washington, D.C. It was manned twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, by a rotating set of pilots, technicians, and mechanics. When the call came in to scramble, the pilots were off the couch and strapped into the cockpit of the advanced Bell 430 helicopter within seconds. With the help of the chopper's Full Authority Digital Electronic Control system, the bird was started and ready for takeoff in thirty seconds. The Bell 430's normal civilian configuration was for two pilots and seven passengers. This bird had room for only four passengers. The rest of the room was taken up by surveillance equipment. A lone technician sat in back to monitor it.

As the four-bladed chopper began to roll away from die hangar, the copilot asked the control tower for permission to take off and gave them his desired heading. The request was granted almost instantly. No flight plan would be filed. No record would be kept of the helicopter's departure.

The pilots were both alumni of the Army's famous 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, based out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The group was known as the Night Stalkers. Both men had flown together in the dangerous skies over Somalia back in 1993. They considered themselves lucky to be alive. Several of their closest friends didn't make it back from that deployment.

The power was increased to the twin-turbine Allison 250-C40B engines. The helicopter lifted gracefully from the tarmac, its three landing wheels instantly retracting into the smooth underbelly of the machine. Heading due east, to avoid the main north-south runways of the base, the helicopter reached an altitude of three hundred feet and leveled off. They quickly reached a cruising speed of one hundred forty miles an hour on a loose easterly heading. One minute into the flight, the technician in back gave the copilot the exact location of their target. The copilot punched the numbers into his navigational computer, and a second later the computer gave him an ETA of nine minutes and thirty-four seconds.

The fast and quiet helicopter sliced through the cool fall air. Most pilots would be nervous flying at three hundred feet during the day, let alone a dark overcast evening, but these pilots were different. They had been trained by the U.S. Army to fly in the worst weather conditions possible, and in helicopters that were far less responsive than the Bell 430. To them, going from the noisy drab green choppers of the Army to the sleek, shiny; and quiet Bell 430 was like going from a Ford Taurus to a Jaguar.

As they neared the bay and the bright lights of the city faded behind them the pilots donned their night-vision goggles in staggered intervals, making sure to give each other time to adjust. They looped in south of the target, turned off their navigation lights, and swung out over the bay to a distance of three miles. Less than twelve minutes had elapsed from the time they had received the phone call to the time they were on station.

The pilots put the bird into a hover fifty feet above the dark water of the Chesapeake, and the technician in back went to work. Using an array of high-resolution and IR thermal imaging cameras, he began to survey the target.

PETER CAMERON WALKED back into the house and sat down on the couch near Rielly. With phone in hand and a genuine grin on his bearded face, he said, "I've got some good news and some bad news. Which one do you want first?"

"The bad."

"Mitch isn't going to make it tonight, but he will be here bright and early in the morning."

"What time?"

"Around seven."

Rielly seemed a little dejected. She picked up the remote control and turned off the TV. It was approaching midnight, and she was tired. "I'm going to bed, then." Rielly stood. "I assume none of your men is upstairs."

"No. They're all down here. You will have complete privacy."

"Thank you." Rielly left the room, and Cameron followed her to the foot of the stairs.

"I'm going to have to leave for a little bit, but I'll be back before you get up."

"All right." Rielly said good night and went upstairs.

Cameron watched her ascend the staircase and admired her figure. Duser approached and did the same. When Rielly closed the door to the bedroom, Duser said, "She's got a nice ass."

Cameron frowned and jerked his head for Duser to follow him. The two men stepped out onto the front porch. In a hushed voice, Cameron said, "Keep your head in the game, and don't even think about touching her."

"Relax. She's going to be dead in the morning. What do you care?"

"Just keep your f*cking hands off her, all right? Her boyfriend is going to be out here early, and I need you to concentrate on matters at hand." Pointing to the vehicles in the driveway, he said, "The cars have to be moved."

"Where?"

"I don't know, but they can't be here when he arrives."

Duser nodded. "I'll figure something out. I need to send someone on a coffee and food run."

Cameron wasn't sure what coffee and food had to do with moving the cars, so he ignored the comment and said, "I have to go back into the city to grab a few things. It should only take me a couple hours." He checked his watch. "I'll be back around two. Three at the latest, all right?"

"Yeah."

"If anything unusual happens, call me."

"Will do."

"I HAVE ON E individual. He looks to be standing post at the rear of the house on the bay side."

Rapp, Coleman, and Dumond had all donned headsets equipped with lip mikes. Using the van's secure communications equipment, Dumond had uplinked to a satellite so they could communicate with the chopper and see what they were viewing in real time.

Rapp listened intently as the faceless voice described the situation at his house, the van rocking slightly as they drove east on Highway 214. The lower screen in front of Dumond showed a picture that looked like a film negative-black and-white with varying shades of gray in between. The shots were being taken by an IR thermal imaging camera. The picture on the screen changed to one filled with mostly black and areas of red, yellow, white, and blue. Rapp stared at an area he knew to be his kitchen and listened to the technician say, "The crrtains are drawn, but I'm getting two... maybe three more heat signatures on the inside... that's on the first floor of the house... and possibly one more upstairs on the second floor."

Rapp lifted his eyes to the area above the kitchen. He eagerly asked, "Can you tell if any of them are female?"

"The guy in back is definitely male. The people inside are sitting down, so I can't tell."

"What about the one upstairs?"

There was about five seconds of silence and then, "It could be male or female, it could be a dog. I can't tell. I'm only getting a small heat signature."

"Are you getting any audio?" asked Rapp.

"A little background noise, but that's it. I think they might have the TV on."

"Can you get me an idea of what's happening on the other side of the house?"

"Affirmative. Give us a minute to relocate."

Rapp pushed the lip mike on his headset up and said to Dumond, "Get Irene on the horn, and tell her to get the Special Operations group airborne and en route to my house immediately;" While Dumond was making the call, Rapp looked at Coleman and asked, "What in the hell is going on?"

"It looks like someone is having a party at your house."

Rapp actually smiled. This was good news. He finally had an enemy he could engage. "What do you think the chances are that the Professor is in there?"

"Based on his cell tower usage, I'd say it's a pretty good bet that he's sitting at your kitchen table as we speak."

Rapp looked at his cell phone. "We could confirm that pretty easily."

"How?"

"Call him right now. The bird should be able to pick up noise of his phone ringing."

Coleman thought about it for a second and said, "Wait the time is right. Let's get out there and get the SOG in place. We don't want to spook him."

"All right."

"Do you think that's Anna upstairs?"

"l hope so."

The faceless voice came back over their headsets. "We have a couple of cars in the driveway." Rapp, Coleman, and Dumond looked up at the screen and watched. "We also have one individual standing near the front door. He ears to be carrying a weapon. Let me see if I can get a little closer." The picture zoomed in on the warm body standing on the front porch. The man's body was mostly red with a yellow glow around the edges. Near his waist was an elongated area of blue.

Coleman spoke before the technician did. "It looks like a machine pistol with a suppressor attached to the end."

"Either that or an assault rifle." Rapp squinted at the image.

A second red figure appeared on the front porch and then a third. Rapp's immediate fear was that they had somehow sighted the chopper. Using their call sign, Rapp asked, "Libra Three, have you been discovered?"

"That's a negative." It was a different voice this time. "We're two miles out and obscured by a tree line."

One of the men left the porch and walked over to one the cars. He climbed in, and a moment later the car started moving. The technician announced, "One, of the cars is leaving."

"We see it." Rapp flipped up his lip mike, looked at Marcus, and snapped, "Find out where we are, and tell him to step on it!" Pulling the lip mike back down, he asked, "Libra Three, can you keep contact with both targets?"

There was no response at first, and then, "That depends on how big the separation gets between the two."

"Keep an eye on both for as long as you can."

Dumond left the small door to the front of the van open and sat back down at his console. "He said we just passed Queen Anne Road."

"That means we should be at the Muddy Creek exit in five minutes." Looking at Coleman, Rapp pointed behind them with his thumb and said, "Tell the boys to be ready for some action." Rapp watched the screen and listened to the technician call out the car's maneuvers. Rapp's thoughts kept going back to Anna. He was going to have to decide pretty quickly if the chopper was going to keep an eye on the house or follow the car.

Coleman knew what Rapp was thinking and said, "The house isn't going anywhere." Rapp didn't say anything, he just kept staring at the screen. Coleman said, "Did you hear me? I said the... "

"I heard you."

The secure phone on Dumond's console started ringing. Dumond grabbed it and then turned to Rapp. "It's Irene. She wants to know what's going on."

Coleman persisted. "Mitch, the Professor could be in that car."

"I know, I know." He looked at Dumond and said, "I can't talk to her right now."

The pilot of the chopper came over the headset. "You're going to have to make a decision between the car and the house."

I can't afford to lose contact with the car," Coleman persisted.

Dumond held out the phone a second time. "She says she wants to talk to you."

Rapp felt like ripping the phone from the console and throwing it out the door. It wasn't what he wanted to do. But he knew what was right. Rapp lowered his lip mike and said, "Libra Three, stay with the car." Then, tearing the headset off, he grabbed the phone and growled, "What?"