The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [110]
Van sat down, his face flushed and blazing. What was that about? Had he really done that great a job? Impossible. That crushing humiliation with the KH-13 . . . Van looked dazedly across the room to Dottie’s table. Dottie looked happy enough to burst.
When the banquet broke up, Van sought her out. “Did you hear all that clapping?” he asked her. “Was that just me?”
She jounced Ted on her hip. “Oh, honey, Ted and I were just so proud.”
“Let’s get out of here. That was truly weird.”
“You promised Tony you’d go to the landing strip and help him with the test flight.”
Van had promised Tony no such thing. “Let’s go put our feet up. We’ll feed the swans or something.”
“Oh, no, not now. I’ve got to go have a drinky-winky on the big verandah with the CIA wives,” said Dottie. “They’re telling me all these amazing stories about the husband I never knew I had.”
“They’re not ‘CIA wives,’ honey.”
“Well, that big redhead sure is. The one who’s really looped. I think she knew your mom!”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
ERLETTE HOUSE, VIRGINIA, MARCH 2002
Van had no alternative but to walk to Tony’s jet. It was a surprisingly long way. Erlette House had actual fields out here, growing tall, peculiar, East Coast historical crops. What was that stuff over there? Flax? Hops? Hemp? He’d never seen the like.
The AFOXAR staffers, eager for publicity, had flown in an entire Joint Special Ops command post. It was pushing it more than a little to have tents, briefing boards, spotters’ binoculars, laser rangefinders, and spidery spread-spectrum antennas, but AFOXAR was never going to have a better opportunity than this to advertise their services to a crowd of feds. Van offered a vague wave to Hickok, who tapped the side of his ground-contol helmet and gave a thumbs-up.
Van walked up the jet’s embarkation stairs. Tony’s jet was scarily big. It could have held twenty people, if someone had ripped out the love nest’s white leather couches and the twenty-three-inch tiltable digital display screens.
So here he was inside a fully fueled private jet in Virginia. It really was that easy. If he knew how to fly this jet, he could be smashing into the White House in minutes. Van went up to the cockpit cabin, which had no security door. There was no pilot on duty. There was no one inside the jet but Tony Carew.
“Where’s your pilot?” said Van. “AFOXAR said they’d put five or ten tech guys in here!”
Tony lifted a finger to his lips. “Shhhh!”
Van had never been inside a jet’s cockpit before. The BBJ had two pilot’s seats, tastily upholstered in lamb’s wool, plus two black plastic yokes and six bluely glowing digital screens. Big flat planes of glass surrounded Van on three sides.
“You’re the pilot, Tony?” Van said. “When did you get a pilot license?”
“Oh, come on, Van. Who needs one? John Travolta can fly one of these things. Fleabitten al Qaeda guys straight from Yemen can fly them. They’re not a big deal. And whose show is this, anyhow? Is this about a bunch of punk kids from AFOXAR? Why let them hog the glory?”
Van said nothing. He wasn’t thrilled at the way this was going. He scrunched himself into the copilot’s seat. He was looking at a gleaming forest of switches and dials. The BBJ had a massive double-handled throttle, like a huge yellow beer tap. His seat had a flip-down pane and an overhead projector.
“I flew her over from Colorado myself,” said Tony. “That was a milk run. I had to fire my pilot. I’ll have to get rid of that leather decor, too. I’m selling this thing, you know. I’m selling her to the party directorate of Bharatiya Janata. In India, she’s gonna be a political campaign plane.”
“No kidding.”
“Indians can do all kinds of cool things with jets once they’re free of the good old FAA regulations. For those village voters in India, a jet like this is pure stage magic. They’ll paint her green,