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There were surveillance cameras along the pedestrian routes, but he also knew where each of them was, and he stayed out of their lines of sight.
He saw the first sentry up ahead dressed in black with body armor and carrying a sub gun with a thirty-round extended mag and a walkie-talkie attached by Velcro to his shirtfront. A sweep light mounted on a tower was making its rounds over the ground. Robie watched its routine and then moved forward, avoiding its glare.
He drew to a stop about fifteen feet later and waited for the guard to finish his walk. When he disappeared around the corner of one building, Robie crept forward, his gaze moving across the area in front of him, side to side, then a look backward to check his full rear flank.
Two more guards appeared on the scene and they were joined by another—not an armed guard, but a woman dressed in civilian clothes. They all shared a smoke and talked. Robie strained to hear what they were saying but couldn’t quite make it out.
The woman finally left and the guards moved on, one going right and the other left.
Robie skirted along the shadows, occasionally looking down at his GPS tracker and the facility map on his phone. The building he wanted was up on the right. He reached the door but, after looking at it, decided not to make his entry that way.
He crept around the corner and eyed the window there. Basic snip lock, blinds half drawn. He risked hitting the window with his light to check the inside edge for signs of an alarm port. He saw none.
That was when he heard someone coming.
With his knife he flipped the lock, raised the window, slipped inside, and closed it a few seconds before a figure passed by. As he gazed out the window in the direction of the pyramid building he saw something extraordinary. Three guards came out of a side door pushing two gurneys with two men lying on them. They hurried over to the ambulances parked there and loaded the gurneys into the back of one of them, and two guards climbed into the rear. A driver must have already been in the vehicle because it started up, geared into reverse, and pulled out, its taillights winking as it drove away.
Robie had taken pictures of all this with his phone. He lowered the blinds, turned away from the window, and looked around the small office he was in. There was a desk with large American and U.S. Air Force flags resting in stands behind it. Gunmetal-gray file cabinets were parked against one wall. That was his target. In the digital world the military could still be counted on to also deal in good, old-fashioned paper products.
He slid open each drawer until he found the one he wanted.
Personnel files.
He went through them as quickly as possible, holding a pen-light in his mouth and shining its light into the drawer to keep as much of the illumination as possible hidden. Twenty minutes later his hand closed around the file he wanted, after he made sure there were no others that fit the bill. He took pictures of each page with his phone camera, put the file back, closed up the drawer, and turned to leave. Right as someone walked up to the door and he heard a key being inserted into the lock.
IT WAS THE SAME WOMAN. Up close, she was around thirty, with straight blond hair that fell to her shoulders, an athletic build, and resolute, focused, intelligent features. She shut the door, clicked on the light, and moved over to a desk by the window. She sat down, opened the desk drawer after unlocking it, and pulled out some files.
As she sat at her desk she was intently focused on the documents in front of her. So much so that she didn’t notice it at first. The sound, that is. Or sounds.
But the collective noises outside finally made her glance that way. She stiffened and then, as the sounds became more recognizable, she relaxed. She was about to turn back when the woman tensed again as she looked at the window. Now it wasn’t simply the noise that had jarred her. It was something else far more tangible. Literally staring her in the face. Her hand immediately went to the phone on the desk. She had barely picked up the receiver when she collapsed forward.
Robie stood next to her, having come out from his hiding place behind the flags. He had on a small gas mask and was holding a bottle in his hand. The knockout spray had an amnesiac component to it. When she woke up she would remember nothing. He glanced at the window. She had no doubt seen that the blinds had been fully lowered. She might have been in the office earlier and could have even been the one to raise the blinds. She had probably been about to call security when Robie had stopped her. He darted to the window, edged the blinds aside, and peered out. There definitely appeared to be more activity out there. The sounds had lessened somewhat, but they were still there.
He waited three beats for the noises to move away and then took his opportunity to escape.
Outside he reversed his course and made his way to the inner security fence. Before he got there he heard the sound above and looked up. Maybe that was the source of all the ruckus going on here.
The small jet was coming in for a landing on the runway that ran east to west behind the buildings that constituted the Air Force station. The landing gear hit the asphalt and the pilots applied the brakes along with the thrust reversers, and the small jet rolled to a stop. As it did so, several people hurried over to the plane and a golf cart drove up and parked next to the aircraft.
Someone of importance was clearly arriving.
For Robie, the temptation to see who was getting off the ride was too strong, overriding his good sense. But in Robie’s line of work one’s personal safety was not paramount. His focus was mission-centric. He had come to gather intel, and this alone might be well worth the clandestine visit. In fact, this might be just as important as what he had found in the file cabinet.
He reversed course and edged along the side of a building, until he gained a sight line to the runway as the plane’s airstairs came down. Robie moved closer still as a few moments later the passengers began to deplane.
The first person off was a tall man around fifty with broad shoulders. He was not in uniform but rather in a trim, dark suit with no tie. The second person off was a woman, also around fifty, dressed in a gray pantsuit. She clutched a soft-sided leather briefcase. The last person off was another woman, younger, dressed in a dark skirt with a matching jacket. She was checking something on her phone.
Robie watched all of this and even managed to snap pictures using the camera built into his optics. He followed their movements as they walked over and climbed into the golf cart. As soon as they were in their seats, the vehicle zipped off. Robie took some more pictures before the cart turned and disappeared between two buildings.
The next moment Robie was off and running.
Because it was clear to him now that they did indeed have dogs here. And they had picked up on his presence.
As he ran he took three items from his pocket and tossed them behind him in a triangle-shaped pattern, each about five feet apart from the other.
He glanced back; the beasts were running free. Luckily their handlers were nowhere in sight because while Robie had a chance with the canines, he had no chance against a fired bullet. There were two of them: one a German shepherd that looked big enough and vicious enough to rip his arm off, the other a smaller Rottweiler who looked even meaner. Robie had it on good authority that the surprises he had left behind would do the trick and that even the best trained dogs would not be able to resist, even when in full chase mode. He hoped the authority was really that good.
Both dogs skidded to a halt and attacked what he had left behind. As soon as they took a bite of what he had dropped, they wobbled and fell over. They would be super attack dogs again, but only long after Robie was gone.
