But
come, ye sons of Liberty,
Columbia's offspring, brave as free,
In danger's hour still flaming in the van,
Ye know, and dare
maintain, the Royalty of Man!
Robert Burns
CHAPTER 40 AREA 51
Nellis AFB in northern Las Vegas was large. Instead of the British NAAFI store they had a whole BX shopping mall. Colonel Moriarty began to realise just how big it was when the USAF driver drove him and Albert Shlessinger, east towards the desert pink mountains.
“How are they treating you?” asked Albert Shlessinger.
“Oh pretty good. My heads a bit rough though.”
“I should have warned you about going down town with that crew. Did you get to any casino’s?”
“No. Just bars full of girls who think I have a cute British accent.”
“Ha!” That was about as close as Albert came to laughter.
The electric buggy turned onto Tyndale Avenue beside the huge hangers west of the runway.
“This must cost a bit to irrigate. All these lawns and trees. You know there are English towns smaller than this.”
“Just don’t let our taxpayers know how much of their defence dollar goes on gardening.”
“We used to do it. Back when we had an Empire. Conscripts planting flowers round RAF golf courses. Painting stones white. Actually we still do it. Last Autumn I was on a base with a General due to visit. The RSM had everyone polishing and sweeping up everything. Then the wind blew and more leaves fell. So he tied ropes to the trees round the parade square and got all his men tugging at them, to shake the leaves off. Crazy. Then the General cancelled his visit.”
“Ha!”
They turned off Tyndale Avenue, through the hangers to a concrete ramp, with lines of parked aircraft disappearing into the haze. An old B52 roared skywards, laying a smoky trail of FT synthetic JP-8 across the blue. Beyond was the tall six sided control tower, the same light pinky brown colour as the desert mountains behind it.
In the distance a convoy of trucks and attendant technicians surrounded the old C-5B Heavy Lifter.
“Looks like the usual last minute panic,” said Shlessinger.
“Well, there is a lot to go wrong I suppose. Not just the Lander but the chopper inside it.”
“You’ve taken a lot of interest in this project,” said Shlessinger.
“You know I have.”
The electric buggy circled towards a row of three Boeing passenger jets and stopped. Both men joined a queue by the aircraft.
“Who are all these kids?” asked Moriarty
“I guess they’re families off the base here. Going to see the show. Gives their parents a chance to boast about what they do here.”
“I expected it to be a lot more secret than this.”
“This ain’t the cold war. We only care about commercial enemies these days. Intellectual property rights. Trouble is we get American contractors and they sub contract to Japan and China and they sub-sub contract to God knows where. And before you know it our secret stuff is for sale in some third world bazaar, at a quarter what we pay for it.”
“Is that why you’ve got so many foreign officers here?”
“I guess we’re either trying to impress them with our might, or sell them something.”
The technicians stood back from the C5B as its engine started, then strolled towards one of the passenger Boeings. The C5B trundled towards the runway as Moriarty and Shlessinger climbed the steps of their Boeing.
They found their seats amid the families and soldiers and heard the C5B roar past. Then the first passenger jet took off took off with the techies.
Finally the last Boeing roared into the sky and Colonel Roger Moriarty was looking down on Las Vegas, complete with Egyptian Pyramids, a roof top Venice, an Eiffel Tower, and a giant version of London's Post Office Tower with a complete fair ground on its roof.
The plane banked north
towards the mountains. Colours were more complex than pinky brown.
There were oranges and chocolates, greys and bleached yellows. He
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