“I thought you said your father was a retired Air Force officer.”
“He is an Air Force officer, and he is retired. He’s here at Eielson acting as a consultant to the 354th Fighter Wing.” Having reached the door by that time, Cal opened it and jumped down. Then he reached up to lift Gina down. As he set her on her feet she was looking at him wide-eyed, but she didn’t say anything, probably because she was as aware as he was of their audience. He helped her on with her coat, shrugged into his, and was just turning around to head to the limo and get the confrontation over with when a deep, gravelly, and way too familiar voice spoke in an abrupt tone behind him.
“I got a message saying you were landing here.”
That message had no doubt come via the control tower, when Cal had had to identify himself before being given permission to land. Well, his plan had been to get in contact as soon as he was on the ground anyway. Suspicious as he was of Whitman’s, and possibly the CIA’s, involvement in what had gone down, he’d made the decision not to head for the small private airfield where he was supposed to return with Rudy for a rendezvous with Whitman, but to come to Eielson instead. The flash drive in his belt, and the information he possessed, were vital to national security. At this point, there were two institutions the integrity of which he felt he could trust absolutely, and that were also equipped to deal swiftly and effectively with whatever was on that flash drive: the Air Force, and his father.
“Hello, General.” Cal turned to face his father. Neither offered to shake hands. The devil of it was, they looked alike. The old man was heavier, jowlier, more squinty-eyed. Plus the silver hair. And the full uniform. But the resemblance was unmistakable.
“You in trouble?”
“I was going to call you when I landed. We need to talk privately.” Cal put a hand on Gina’s arm, drew her forward. His father had already raked her with a look, and, knowing his father, Cal knew what the old man was thinking: this was one of Cal’s quickie chickies, as he called them. Only Gina wasn’t, as Cal meant to make clear. “This is Dr. Gina Sullivan. She’s a professor at Stanford. Gina, meet my father. Major General John Callahan.”
“How do you do, General,” Gina said with perfect, exquisite composure, offering her hand.
With a quick, glinting look at Cal, who knew that he was thinking something along the lines of DOCTOR Sullivan? You’re coming up in the world, his father shook hands. “Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Sullivan.” His attention returned to Cal. “What can I do for you?”
It was cold, and windy, and Cal wasn’t about to leave Gina standing around on the tarmac while he answered that question. On the other hand, his business was urgent—and private.
“We can talk here, but I’d like Gina to wait in your car,” he said. For security purposes, to thwart any possibility of being bugged or spied on, having an unscheduled conversation in the great outdoors was probably as good as it got.
His father looked at him, nodded, then said to Gina, “Dr. Sullivan, if you’d care to—” and made a gesture toward the limo.
“I’ll just be a few minutes,” Cal told her. She nodded and headed for the limo. He waited until she was ensconced in the rear seat—the airman who still stood at attention by the rear flank of the car opened it for her—and then drew his father away until they were standing alone on the tarmac.
Then he told him everything.
“We’ve got Detachment 632 here on the base. They can check that flash drive of yours out,” his father said. Detachment 632, Air Force Office of Special Investigations, specialized in counterintelligence investigations, among other things, and their capabilities and reach were absolutely on par with the CIA’s or any other government agency’s. Cal had known that D632 was based at Eielson, which was another reason he’d chosen the base. Along with his father’s clout, which would get the wheels rolling instantly.
“I don’t want to hand the flash drive over to you out here. It’s probably best if as few people as possible are aware of its existence.”
His father was looking thoughtful. “We’ll drop Dr. Sullivan at the hotel here on base—I presume you don’t want to stay in my house”—which was an absolutely correct assumption, especially since Cal was planning to share a room with Gina—“and take that thing over to D632. They’ve got hella good IT specialists.”
Cal wasn’t sure how much his father knew about IT specialists, but as that had been more or less his plan for the flash drive, too, he agreed, with one proviso.