No Contest

“Anywhere,” Smith said. “Just keep it in state. The trail can’t diverge too broadly. It has got to be a live number.”

Mark Howard’s mind whirled, and he snapped out a command to the Folcroft Four. The computers dredged the recent news stories for a phone number and came up with—

“Perfect,” Mark Howard said. He instituted the redirect, and the number changed, forever routing press-and-hold calls away from Folcroft Sanitarium.

“Hello?” answered the United States senator.

“I’d like to talk to the ladies’ man.” The caller giggled.

The senator sighed. “He’s not available. And you should be in school, young lady.”

She hung up. The phone rang again almost immediately. “Yes?”

“You don’t sound like the ladies’ man,” a strident woman demanded. “I wanna talk to the ladies’ man.”

“I’m sure you do. I’ll let him know you called.”

It rang a third time. “How did you get this number?” the senator demanded.

“Off of TV, duh. Is he as good as they say he is, you know, in bed?”

“Not at all, honey.” The U.S. senator, D-NY, left the phone off the hook and turned on the television. It didn’t take her long to land on Good Day, U.S.A., with its video of a slowly spinning blimp. “Live from Phoenix,” the screen said.

“…may be just a publicity stunt, but officials are alarmed that, apparently, the airship is not showing up on Phoenix air-traffic control radar. Our avionics experts have concluded that, for an airship of this size, some sort of radar-invisible composite must have been used in the structure of the airship. This raises the possibility that the airship is possibly stolen, secret military technology.”

The senator’s huge mouth fell open.

“Which raises some disturbing questions. Who would have the military intelligence to even know about a secret, stealth airship—and have the influence to access it?” Katie asked.

“And they’d have to be recklessly impudent. By that I mean extremely irresponsible, Katie, to use it for a television promotional stunt.”

“Who fits that description, Katie?”

The senator’s husband came down the stairs in his boxers and a dingy, threadbare bathrobe still bearing the great seal of the President of the United States of America.

“Mornin’. You left the phone off the hook. Hill.” He settled the phone on its base. He didn’t notice that his wife was red-faced.

The phone rang immediately. “Hello?” He listened, then said in a whisper. “’Course it’s me! And who might you be?”

The sound of a diesel locomotive interrupted him. It was his wife. The senator was not happy.

Chapter 36

Colonel Simonec found his flight crew huddled around the tiny portable TV on the toolbox. “Let me see!” He shoved bodies out of his way.

He hadn’t wanted to believe it, but there it was on the eight-inch screen. The top-secret Extremely Big Ear drone airship, EBE 1, was drifting uncontrolled through Phoenix, dangling a banner for some TV show.

Simonec allowed his mind to leap into the future. Where did he stand? Sure, he was charged with the care and deployment of the EBE, but he hadn’t ordered it on its missions. He had been forced to surrender control. They couldn’t pin this on him. Right?

Simonec grabbed the TV and brought it close to his face. Something was glinting off the EBE’s right flank strut. The EBE was a stealth ship, designed not to glint.

Simonec marched the chief of his ground crew into a corner of the bay. “Tell me you took the damn watch off the EBE before you sent it out last time.”

His ground crew chief looked at him a long time without answering, but that was as good as an answer.

“Tell me you at least wiped your fingerprints off it.”

The ground crew chief looked as if he were going to throw up.

So that was it The watch was still secured to the EBE and the watch would be traceable to Simonec’s ground crew. They couldn’t prove Simonec knew about it, but they didn’t need to prove it. Simonec was responsible for his ground crew. They’d perpetrated some act of sabotage, and that meant they must be in on whatever screwy mess had gotten the EBE into Phoenix—that’s what the higher-ups would assume.

Simonec knew that somebody in the U.S. military was going to get scapegoated for this fiasco, and he knew it would be him.

Katie Abing couldn’t wait for the commercial break to end. “This is going to be one of our best shows ever,” she told her makeup girl.

“You’re kicking butt, Katie. Just don’t let that jerk Bob step all over your sidewalk.”

“Yeah.” Katie got all shivery inside as the cameraman held up his fingers. Three. Two. One. The live light came on.

“Welcome back to Good Day, U.S.A. I’m Katie Abing, and it looks like the inmates have taken over the asylum! Let’s go live now to New Mexico and correspondent Allison Quarberg. Allison, can you explain what we are looking at?”