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“Yeah, they could have.” Rapp opened the small door leading to the driver and said, “Take us out to two-fourteen. Let me know as soon as we cross three-oh-one.” Rapp closed the door and looked at Coleman. “Tell the boys we’re going out to Maryland.” He quickly punched Stansfield’s number into his phone. When Kennedy answered, he said, “How quickly can you get a surveillance chopper to take a look at my house?”
“I can scramble one out of Andrews. I’d say they could be there within ten or twenty minutes.”
“Good. Get them airborne on the double.”
“Mitch, what’s going on?”
“I can’t get into it right now. Get the chopper moving, and call me back.”
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 the 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 fucking 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 movingthe 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?”
