The Brad West Files Page 2

  He should have realized from the moment he had set foot on campus that he was sunk. Richter was the star of the show in the Anthropology Department. And all his graduate assistants were just a bunch of snotty sycophants.

  He shot a look back at his buddy. Skeeter included.

  Earl Skitowsky was a prominent member of the obsequious horde that clung to the illustrious professor like so many flies to a rolling ball of dung. They were just hoping to get a few crumbs that might fall loose.

  “I can’t stand that blustering buffoon,” he finally blurted out.

  “Richter?” Earl said. “He’s on the short list for a Nobel Prize. You have to admire that.”

  “But his ‘Reverse Land Bridge Theory’ is ridiculous. The notion that mankind originated in the Americas and traveled across the Bering Strait Land Bridge from here to Russia and China and beyond is about as likely as the ancient Egyptians inventing ice hockey.”

  “So maybe it wasn’t by land. Thor Heyerdahl proved that you can cross the ocean on a raft made out of reeds.”

  “At least Heyerdahl tested his theories. Our beloved Herr Professor only cares about validating his racist views.”

  “So his theories have turned the academic world upside down,” Earl countered. “You can’t argue with success. He’s on every talk show you can imagine, and he’s Discover Magazine’s Scientist of the Year.”

  “Ah yes, Discover, the last word in scientific truth. It’s like getting French-kissed by Madonna on national television. Everyone talks about it, but it signifies nothing.”

  “Well, I’d have to say,” Earl retorted, “for all his flaws, the good professor is a damn sight closer to getting a Nobel and a wet frenchie from Madonna for his theories than you do with your non-existent doctoral thesis.”

  Brad kicked some rocks off the path. They rolled downhill into a patch of flowering cacti. The truth sucked. But he was not about to concede defeat. “Richter’s entire theory is based on one solitary rock found in North Dakota. It’s like those guys from NASA who claimed that they’d found life on Mars because of a few dents in a meteorite.”

  He stooped down and picked up a rock fragment with his good hand. “Here’s what I mean. This rock is crystal abernathyite, a mineral so rare it exists in only two places on Earth: Temple Mountain, Utah, and Elk Park, Colorado. Now, what’s it doing here in Arizona just an hour’s drive from the Mexican border?”

  “You’re holding a chunk of Arizona fire agate,” Earl said.

  Brad took a closer look. Earl was yanking his chain. “Nice try. Stick with your cultural anthropology.” He tossed the stone to Earl.

  Earl studied it. “Could have sworn it was agate.” He lobbed it ineffectually down the hill.

  “Nice throw, Nancy,” Brad observed.

  “I don’t throw like a girl. I throw like a scientist,” Earl said with pride.

  “Anyway, that’s not the point,” Brad said. “You know as well as I do that rocks, unlike your pecker, do get around. People pick stuff up and dump it all over the place. Pebbles ride around in people’s backpacks, in the soles of their shoes, in the treads of their tires. Why not in a scientist’s briefcase?”

  “There you go again, accusing Richter of planting evidence.”

  Brad sighed. Why was it always him against Richter? Was it just that Richter with his overblown theories and lack of peer review was such an easy target? Why did Brad have so many problems with authority figures in general?

  “Listen,” he said. “Richter claims he found carbonized remains dating back two million years. What he found was a chemical as common as charcoal. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that.”

  Earl objected. “That’s carbon residue on a modern human fossil, predating findings in Eurasia, Australasia and Africa, all right here in the good old prehistoric U.S. of A.”

  “Yeah. And one fossil find rewrites the entire history of mankind. Right.”

  Earl was unmoved. “You can’t deny that it predates any previous find.”

  “Sure it was old. But I’ll never buy the Homo americanus angle based on one rock find. Never.”

  Earl struggled to keep up with Brad’s quickening pace. “Hey, you can bellyache all you want, but the truth is it’s you against the world, and you’re a wimp. You never could come up with an original idea for your dissertation, let alone an earth-shattering theory. The state is kicking you out for good reason. Look at you. You’re completely broke. You haven’t gotten laid in who knows how long. And the worst of it is, you’re one lousy rock climber.”

  “You know where you can stuff your bloody Homo americanus.” Brad kicked another rock down the hill. “I’ll patch things up as soon as I get back to campus.” He lowered his voice. “Even if I have to eat crow.”

  “Yeah, good luck with the new diet. Better get used to it.”

  But Brad’s eyes were already fixed on something that grabbed his full attention. The two helicopters were setting down at the distant air force base. He rubbed his sore hands together gently, then snapped open his binoculars case.

  He pulled out the pair of high-powered lenses and lifted them to his eyes. “If there’s one thing that I detest as much as Richter,” he whispered, and brought the helicopter landing pad into sharp focus, “it’s the arrogance of the military.”

  Chapter 2

  Colonel Trenton Philips’ convertible Humvee veered onto the tarmac at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. It aimed straight at intercepting the two helicopters that were arriving from the desert.

  “Who let those bastards set down here?” he thundered.

  Tight-lipped, his driver sped on.

  The Black Hawks hovered briefly over the landing zone, then put down gently on the helicopter landing pad. The two pilots were just emerging from their choppers when Philips’ vehicle screeched to a halt, leaving ten-foot-long skid marks. The pilots worked to remove their helmets and glanced up.

  Colonel Philips jumped out of the vehicle. “What in the name of Jiminy’s bastard son were you two barnstormers doing out there?”

  “Training,” the first said, and removed his helmet. Philips recognized the muscular Chinese pilot at once from the State Department fax that he held in his hand. He was Liang Jiaxi, the Chinese president’s own grandson. Liang had the casual smile of the extremely powerful. He had cut his hair short for his tour in America and looked more like an Apollo astronaut than a visiting dignitary.

  “My left nut you were training. It looked more like a joy ride at the American taxpayers’ expense.”

  The other pilot stepped forward, helmet sliding off easily. To Philips’ surprise, it was a woman, a petite Chinese beauty with a lovely mane of silky hair.

  “Let me speak.” Her voice was soft and soothing, but her movements were cat-like and assured as she prevented the other pilot from reacting physically. “We are practicing maneuvers taught us by your most expertise flight instructors of California.”

  Philips struggled to overcome his shock at the gorgeous creature with her shaky English grammar. “Listen, I don’t care where you come from, where you got your flight training, or how high up the chain of command your granddaddy might be in your country, ’cause this is my base and you two visitors will follow my rules.”

  “We will report this outburst,” Liang said, and moved between Commander Philips and the woman.

  “No, I will report your insubordination to whichever Senator allowed you two maniacs loose in this country.” He rapped his hand against the fax he was carrying, then noticed that the second picture was indeed that of a woman, Yu May Hua.

  The woman responded coolly. “In fact, your Ambassador to China arranged this visit for us, and you are acting like a bully.”

  Philips pointed two fingers toward the faces of the foreign aviators. “I’m going to watch you two like a hawk. Every takeoff, every landing, every second you’re in the air. And if I catch even the slightest infraction, I’ll personally boot both of you back to the People’s Republic of C
hina. Understood?”

  Liang and May stiffened, but said nothing.

  “Now,” he resumed, straightening his shoulders. “On behalf of the United States Air Force, I welcome you to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. I hope that your stay will be productive. Hop in my Hummer, and I’ll escort you to your quarters.”

  He turned his back on them, got into the front seat of the vehicle and waited for the two pilots and their duffle bags to land in the back.

  Earl took the binoculars from his friend and peered at the city below. “Hey, I can almost see what’s left of your dignity down there.”

  “Nyuk nyuk nyuk.” Brad yanked the binoculars off his friend’s face. Through the high-resolution lenses, he made out the palm tree-lined campus of the University of Arizona snuggled up against the hills. The afternoon had given him a supreme distaste for both the military/industrial complex and its intellectual whipping post, academia. He raised his wounded hand with middle finger extended and flipped them both the bird in a heartfelt gesture of disrespect.

  “Hey,” Earl said, offended. “That’s our university down there.”

  “Your university, Skeeter, old boy,” Brad corrected. “And you can keep your military, too.”

  “I don’t believe this. Taking on the military now?” Then a devilish grin appeared on Earl’s face. “How very un-American of you. Ya know, you could have been thrown into Guantánamo for doing less than that.”

  “Fortunately I didn’t do less than that.” He wanted an easy out from one of his and Earl’s pointless debates. He took a final close-up look at the two helicopters. It appeared that the pilots were arguing with a commander from the base.

  “See, they can’t even keep from fighting among themselves.”

  Earl took the binoculars from him and observed the scene. “Hey, one’s a gorgeous chick.”

  “Right.”

  “Will you look at that? She’s a raving beauty.”

  Brad took the binoculars back. “Don’t mess with me. I’ve had a rough day.” He packed the binoculars in their case and resumed the hike down the mountain.

  “Man,” Earl said. “What a babe.”

  At last they reached the end of the trail, where cars zipped past on the Catalina Highway. Brad opened up his pickup to take Earl back into town.

  He drove toward campus in silence. His academic life dangled as precariously as a climber on the face of a cliff, but he wasn’t about to tell Earl that.

  Especially not when he was going to face Richter with his tail between his legs and his hands clasped together for mercy.

  The Humvee approached a cluster of buildings on the airbase. They reminded May of Beijing. Rimmed by the Western Hills, her home had much the same topography.

  But in Beijing she was treated like a queen and didn’t have to answer for her sins or those of her air force compatriot, Commander Liang Jiaxi. In America, the sins were glaring and magnified a hundredfold under the watchful eye of the big nose foreigners.

  “I am so humiliated,” she said in Mandarin Chinese. The breeze carried her voice away.

  “Humiliated?” Liang said. “What are you talking about?”

  “We are guests here. You go flying like a madman and expect me to follow you.” She was choking up.

  “Exactly what are you trying to say?”

  “I’m sick and tired of following you everywhere,” she said at last. “To the air force, to flight training school, and now to America. I wouldn’t care if your grandfather was Mao. I don’t care that you have total control over my father’s fate. I just want this to end.”

  “End?” Liang countered. “You love me and you love your country.”

  Seated in front of her, Colonel Philips shifted uncomfortably. She wished that she could keep Liang’s voice down, but he obviously didn’t want to grant the colonel any respect by being discreet.

  Even though they were speaking Mandarin, she felt like they were airing their dirty laundry in public. “Keep patriotism out of this. I can’t continue being your Pekinese dog. This has gone on too long.”

  “Pekinese dog? You’re my fiancée.”

  “Then treat me like one!”

  She turned away on the bench seat. They passed a massive hangar and then sped alongside a passenger terminal, old-fashioned even by Chinese standards.

  Eventually they eased to a stop before a row of yellow-brick buildings, recognizable immediately as barracks. The neatly laid-out grid of buildings reminded her once again of her homeland.

  After an exhilarating tour through California with its gleaming glass and steel buildings, she was disappointed by Tucson.

  She had hoped for another glimpse into the future, into her own future. After all, her goal of becoming the first woman taikonaut in the Chinese Space Program depended on a forward-looking China. And if America led the way, then this backwater town was a pretty poor model.

  She turned back to Liang with his broad, handsome face and eagle-like gaze. If she was going to be accepted into the space program and rocket toward the stars, she would have to keep on good terms with him.

  Her longtime friend, Jade Wang was waving out a window of the brick barracks, and May waved back. Seeing a fellow female pilot who had preceded her in the helicopter training program brought some comfort.

  Colonel Philips stepped out of the Humvee and stood squarely to one side. “Ma’am, these are your quarters for the two-week duration of your training.”

  She distanced herself from Liang with his puffed out chest and smiled coyly at the colonel.

  “Women’s barracks only,” he said sharply. “Commander Liang will be housed several buildings away. And I will allow absolutely no fraternization on this base.”

  But once Philips turned his back, Liang gave her a suggestive wink. After all, he was more accustomed to giving orders than taking them.

  Chapter 3

  An hour later and fresh from a shower, Liang wandered about his officer’s apartment with a military-issue bath towel around his waist. He kicked back on the couch and picked up the telephone. He jabbed at the “0” on the keypad and waited.

  “Put me through to Officer Jade Wang’s quarters,” he told the operator.

  Within seconds, he was connected through to May and Jade’s private telephone.

  “Wei?” Jade answered. Hello?

  It was funny. Jade had preceded them to Tucson by several months, had gone to college in America and could act thoroughly American. Yet she answered the phone as if she were still in China.

  “It’s me,” he identified himself by the sound of his voice. “Is May there?”

  “She’s in the shower.”

  “I just took one, too. It was a long flight from California.”

  Jade lowered her voice. “Do you want me to come over now?”

  Liang looked down at his thick, smooth calves and bare feet. For a moment he considered the offer, but shook his head. “No. I just want you to keep me informed of May’s whereabouts at all times.”

  “Of course,” she said, sounding disappointed.

  “Naturally, you can come over another time.” He was unable to resist a grin. “Here’s my number.” And he read the number off his telephone. His blood pounded in his veins and he felt the surge delight of a man with power over women.

  “Are we still on track?” Jade asked, her tone official, yet secretive.

  Liang took a deep breath. Ah yes, the succession issue. He studied the telephone cord. If the Americans were anything like his own countrymen, the phones would be bugged. He couldn’t let out any incriminating details involving the change he would like to create in Chinese leadership. All he could give was a mere, “Yes, we’re very much on track.”

  He hung up the phone and used a remote control to flip on the television.

  Imagine that. CNN in every room. If only the Chinese government’s propaganda arm were half as effective.

  Just then, a familiar face came on the screen. Liang sat up and increased the volume.

&n
bsp; A woman’s voice-over began. “We will be interviewing Professor Richter live after this short programming break.”

  How about that: Richter speaking to America on every television in the country.

  “On in five, Professor,” the floor manager with long sideburns and sweaty armpits told the University of Arizona’s leading light.

  The eminent Professor Richter was about to announce his candidacy for the presidency of the United States on national television. But one couldn’t tell it from how calmly he sat offstage in makeup, his head tilted toward a cell phone at one ear. Soon, he would burst onto the American stage with such uplifting oratory that all America would rally behind him. In the face of foreign control and manipulation of America’s economy and political agenda, for Richter, nothing less than survival as a nation was at stake.

  He nodded at the young woman in tight jeans to proceed with the makeup. Then he resumed his conversation with the chairman of the National Science Foundation. The professor was on the verge of signing a television deal with the foundation on the creation of a new series designed to feature his theory and commentary.

  “I want this to be bigger than Cosmos,” Richter said.

  “It’ll make Carl Sagan look like an amateur,” the NSF chief purred.

  Richter turned away from the hectic activity in the television broadcast studio just feet away. “I want a coffee table book, too.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Full rights and royalties in writing,” Richter demanded. “Bigger than the Cosmos book. Bigger than A Day in the Life of the Godforsaken Soviet Union.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “Color pictures on every page.”

  “Four-color. High-gloss. I’ll get a production staff on it right away.”

  “And a website. I need a website.”