45. Greased Lightnin'

I had a headache that felt like my skull had used my neck like a punch-bag’s spring. Nobody’s brain was supposed to bounce around the inside of their coconut. I looked up and looked away quickly, since the view up the split in Margaret Cansino’s dress was strictly off limits for someone trying to hang on to their angel’s wings.

‘Gabriel? What in Saratoga Springs are you doing here?’

The marines were out cold on the floor. Margarita Cansino had a pistol in her hand. She must have reacted first after Uriel had gone, taking the Patient with him. That stop-motion click only worked at short-range, even for someone as powerful as the Director of the CBI.

‘Didn’t hit them too hard, did ya?’ I struggled up and shook myself like a dog. An aged St Bernard.

‘No, Gabriel. I did not. Come on. Let’s go.’

‘I don’t wanna sound like your mother, Margarita, but you’re going out like that?’

She looked herself up and down in the mirror by the chinese screen, then smoothed down the sides of her dress with both hands. ‘Don’t you like it, Sugar?’

My mouth was a little dry so I didn’t answer, she shrugged and found a jeans and sweatshirt combo in the desk drawer. I’d been hoping she’d go behind the dragon and pagoda like before but she didn’t. I turned my back and felt two itches, one of them between my furled and hidden wings.

‘How are we going to get out of here?’ she said.

‘Not out the front gate.’

I hoped the base wasn’t on lock-down. Operation Round-Up. Everyone stays at place of work or their off-duty accommodation. No-one moves. Anyone moving apart from base-security was an intruder. I’ve seen plenty of movies. If I had been alone of course, it would have been easy. Get to the dumpsters by the Enlisted Men’s Dining Facility unfurl the golden feathers and fly-bye Johnny. To make matters worse, when Uriels strong right hand had set the birdies flying round my head, my appearance had reset to default. A sports coat with no tie and a half-decent pair of Levi’s.

I brushed a hand through my hair, ‘I’ll think of something.’

‘I was afraid of that. She stepped to the office door, ‘Come on, Junior.’ She was in the office across the hall before I could ask her what she meant by that.

When I entered the office of the OIC Project Management, Logistics and Supply, the redhead was plugging a USB into a very slimline monitor with no tower in sight. She laughed,

‘I love Apple. They think they’re invulnerable. A worm can turn up in any apple, given the right conditions.’

‘What ya mean by that?’

‘The military takes so long to buy things that they’re out of date three years before they start using them. Apple stop supporting the OS about a week after the hardware arrives on base.’

‘What are you doing then?’

‘I’m cracking the password.’

‘With that USB?’

‘Nope, that’s going to print us two golden tickets. DOD contractor passes for all Groom Lake facilities.’

‘So how are you going to crack the security.

She pointed at the wooden block at the front of the desk. The golden lettering read ‘Captain M. Kenickie. USAF’

‘So what?’

Margarita Cansino turned a 7 by 5 picture frame towards me. A couple in their thirties, one guy with a pompadour and a leather jacket and a woman wearing some 50’s pedal pushers and chewing gum. They were leaning against a hot-rod.

‘No one ever uses those generated passwords. Who in hell can remember something that looks like algebra on acid? His password is going to be Kenickie or Rizzo, I’m just trying to figure out how old the photo is.’

‘What f-’ I stopped. ‘So you can use his birth year...’

‘Give the man a cee-gar.’ She typed expertly despite her long nails. ‘And one for me too, Junior. Switch that printer on over there.’

We were out of there in five minutes. Both marines were still out cold across the hall.

Half-an-hour later we walked out of the main gate.