A Time for Patriots

“What just happened back there?” Patrick finally asked after they had been dropped off beside the CAP Cessna 182.

“I knew Andorsen was a big name around Nevada,” Leo said, “but I never realized how big. Call the sheriff? His man calls the district attorney. Call the Highway Patrol? He calls the Nevada attorney general. The FBI shows up? He’s got the U.S. attorney general on speed dial. It looked as if that special agent saw his entire career flash before his eyes back there.”

Patrick shook his head in confusion as he withdrew his cell phone and called the Battle Mountain CAP headquarters. Spara answered the phone. “Rob, sorry I couldn’t check in, but—”

“Just get back here, Patrick,” Spara interrupted. “No flight release, no pilot pro stuff, no special clearance — just get back here ASAP. The Class-C airspace is all yours — hell, just about all the airspace over northern Nevada belongs to you.”

“What’s going on?”

“The phone has been ringing off the hook all morning, and I’m expecting to hear from the frickin’ president next,” Spara said wearily. “Your new buddy Andorsen is one connected dude, and that’s putting it mildly . Get back here soonest.” And he hung up.

The oddities continued after Patrick took off from the dirt airstrip. The F-16C Fighting Falcon interceptor was gone, but it had been replaced with a Nevada Air National Guard HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter, which moved into position on the Cessna’s left side. Its pilot did not respond to any calls on GUARD or approach control frequencies. Patrick was cleared for immediately landing at Battle Mountain when still fifty miles away from the airport, and was instructed not to change frequencies, even after he landed. Base security vehicles — including an AN/UWQ-1 unmanned Avenger air-defense and ground-security vehicle, and a driverless Humvee carrying eight Stinger heat-seeking missiles and a.50-caliber radar-guided machine gun — escorted the Cessna to the Civil Air Patrol hangar.

It seemed as if the entire squadron was there to greet Patrick and Leo after they climbed out of the Cessna. Rob Spara was standing at the left entry door when Patrick got out. “Don’t worry about putting the plane away, Patrick,” he said. “They want to do a debrief. Now.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” Patrick asked.

“Hell, General, dip your spoon into the alphabet-soup bowl ten times and you’ll come up with a dozen different answers,” Spara said. “We’ve got every agency in the book out here, and several I’ve never heard of — and I expect those are the ones you created.”

Base Air Force Security Forces airmen were there to control the crowd around Patrick and Leo, but Bradley was able to break free of the squadron members being corralled away from the arrival and meet up with his father. For the second time in a day, Patrick enjoyed an unexpected hug from his son. “Hey, big guy,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say except, “You made it back okay.”

“I’m glad you’re back, Dad,” Brad said, hugging his father tightly. He held his father for several precious seconds, then released him and said breathlessly, “They put us in the break room and wouldn’t let us talk to anyone. Then they let us out, but we had to stay in the hangar. Then we had to go back to the break room, and they took away our cell phones. There are weird guys talking into their sleeves everywhere. Man, everyone is freaking out around here!”

“Things are tense, big guy,” Patrick said. “A major terrorist incident just happened.”

“But what do we

got to do with it?” Brad asked. “They’re acting as if we had something to do with it!”

“It’s just a coincidence,” Patrick said. “Reno is nearby; we had a violation of restricted airspace; we didn’t respond the way they wanted—”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Patrick said. “You’re home, I’m home, no one got hurt, you got a find and a save — those are the important things. Let me talk to these guys real quick and then we’ll go home.”

There were six men and a woman in the small break room when Patrick, Leo, and Rob entered. They had laptop computers set up on the countertops. As soon as they entered the room, one of the men began frisking them, and not gently either. To Patrick’s surprise, the lead agent was the same one who had confronted them at the abandoned airport at Valmy! There was also a very attractive female agent whom Patrick had not seen before.