The colonel handed the phone to Metzger and he and Desh exchanged greetings. Desh offered his heartfelt thanks and gave him their location near Lancaster. Metzger consulted his onboard computer and after a few minutes suggested a rendezvous point. If they caught route 283 northwest toward Elizabethtown, they would find a high school just outside the city limits. The helicopter would land on the fifty yard-line of the school’s football field.
Desh spotted the school forty minutes later. He parked in the lot, and they walked the short distance to the field. They had been unable to find a flashlight in the stolen car so their vision was severely limited on this dark night. They stationed themselves under the bleachers and awaited their ride. Even by helicopter, it would take Metzger a while to cover the distance from Bragg, probably another hour or so.
This wasn’t the first time he had been under the bleachers with a beautiful girl, Desh reflected, but never as an adult, and never a girl like this. He desperately wanted to hold her. He suppressed this ridiculous impulse, disgusted with himself. Civilization was coming to a fork in the tracks, with one track leading toward heaven and the other toward hell, and his actions could determine who controlled the switching station. What an epitaph that would make: the future of humanity destroyed because the man in a position to stop the threat was in the thrall of infatuation and couldn’t keep his head in the game.
After what seemed like an eternity they heard the sound of a chopper cutting through the night sky, and minutes later an elongated helicopter appeared above the field, its body dimensions roughly those of a dragonfly. It hovered noisily over the fifty-yard line and lowered itself to the ground. Desh and Kira jumped through a wide opening in the middle of the aircraft and were greeted heartily by Griffin and Connelly as the helicopter lifted off once again. Despite the presence of eight steel troop seats facing the front of the craft and two side-facing gunner seats, all the passengers remained standing, holding on to straps to help maintain their balance.
Connelly was wearing a sling on his left arm to prevent movement, but looked surprisingly good. Griffin looked somewhat ridiculous without his facial hair—a clean-cut Wookie—but Desh pretended not to notice any difference in the man.
“Jesus, Colonel,” shouted Desh appreciatively over the din of the helicopter. “You got us a Blackhawk?”
“Only because Bragg was all out of Harriers,” replied Connelly wryly.
39
Jim Connelly handed them both a sophisticated set of padded black headphones, with a speaker arm they could position under their mouths. They slipped them over their heads while Connelly repositioned the set he had been using, which he had removed while greeting them.
Metzger was in the pilot’s seat in the front of the chopper. He looked back over his right shoulder. “Where to?” he said into his own headset. He was about the same age as the colonel, with black hair and bushy eyebrows.
“Hagerstown, Maryland,” said Kira in a normal tone of voice. Even so, the entire group could easily hear her through the headphones, which did a remarkable job of insulating their ears from the unrelenting din of the chopper. “It’s about seventy miles northwest of D.C.”
Metzger nodded and the Blackhawk swooped off on a southwesterly heading. He dialed up a map on his computer and within minutes settled on a flight plan. When he had the aircraft under control he reached back and shook hands with Desh and then Kira in turn.
“We appreciate the ride, major,” said Desh. “Do you think you got away cleanly?”
“I think so,” he answered. “I altered some computerized flight logs to disguise the theft. Hopefully this will buy us a day.” He shrugged. “I also disabled the transponder so they can’t locate us immediately when they do discover the unauthorized use.”
“Well done,” said Desh.
Metzger nodded to acknowledge the compliment. “We should be there in about thirty minutes,” he announced. “Where do we land?”
The four passengers eyed each other for inspiration, but no one offered any immediate thoughts. A Blackhawk wouldn’t be easy to hide.
“We need abandoned areas that don’t get any traffic,” said Metzger. “Think.”
Kira pursed her lips in concentration. She had been living in a trailer park just outside of Hagerstown for months. She should be able to come up with something. “There’s a community pool near the town’s northern border,” she said. “After summer it’s drained and the facility is chained up. It has a very large deep-end we could land in.”
Metzger shook his head. “Won’t be deep enough. This bird’s almost seventeen feet high.”
Damn, thought Kira in frustration. She turned back to sorting through additional possibilities. They had been picked up in a football field. While this was a nice wide-open space, it couldn’t conceal the chopper. She smiled. Perhaps she just had the wrong sport. “There’s a minor league baseball team in Haggerstown,” she said. “The Suns. They play in Municipal stadium. Seats over four thousand. Enclosed by bleachers and a home-run fence.”
“How tall are the bleachers?” asked Metzger.