Nick of Time, Smooth Criminal [read aloud .TXT] 📗

Thank you, buddy, whoever you are, for taking a chance with this novel.

To begin with, this novel is not exactly one of my darlings. I regret the negative connotation this statement makes, but I wish to be honest (at least, in print). Having said that, I do not make any comment on the quality of the story being good or bad - I leave it to the better judgment of the readers. I admit it has almost everything I personally believe a good novel should spurn: irrational storyline, illogical scenes and incomplete research. If you are a stickler for any of these like I am, you will do well to forsake this novel. If you were to comment on any of these while you read, I would beg you to forgive me and overlook the shortcomings, as this novel did not come out of the mind of a seasoned writer but just an obsessed teenager. I write this just as a practice to improve my writing and my faculty to research.

I developed this story when I was seventeen. It has got in it every kind of Hollywood action I was familiar with as a teenager. I assure you it would make you feel like reading a heterogeneous novel adaptation of many Hollywood thriller movies. But, I wish to believe there is a chord of my own imagination skewered through them all to bind them together into one thrilling, exciting novel.

It was a daunting task to take up this novel, considering the amount of research involved in it. I am going to fall terribly short of perfection with research throughout this novel. It is partly because many scenes in this novel revolve around United States federal and military agencies, most of the details of which are classified. It is also because I am not a native American, and I know less than even a US civilian would about military technologies and strategies and protocols, so I have to rely on the soul support of the Internet. On top of them all lies the irrefutable fact that I could not spend all my time writing and researching for this novel, as I need to feed a few mouths and contend a few hearts through other means that pay me.

I wish this story gives you, reader, a wonderful time. I was mostly criticized about the length of my writing and the complexity of the words I used in my previous works. I hope I do not sound so arrogant when I say this, and I honestly don’t say this out of arrogance. I would rather write as myself and be criticized for what I am, rather than changing what I am and praised for being someone else. I assure you any reader who has read any English novel could read mine, too. Your valuable comments and support are going to be my driving factors to move this novel along.

Here goes my gratitude for all the people who made me take the giant leap from fruitless-plotting-to-no-end phase to actually-sit-down-to-write-it phase. Thanks to:

All my childhood chums for hearing the story out when it was in its budding days, and egging me on to improve it. Special thanks to Michael Vijaya Raj and Irshad Ali for occasionally pulling it back from the darker corners of my mind.

My love, for having spent two sleepless hours to hear it all out and point out to me where it was good and where it went boring.

My old classmate of name Hari Saravanan, whose inadvertent comment before a rushing Chemistry exam, served as the starting point for this story.

All the creators and actors of famous Hollywood action movies whose virtual representations are characterized in this novel.

My love and Swaathi for being my Ideal Readers, to whom I submit every update of this novel prior to posting it for public reading, for possible enhancements.

Michael Vijaya Raj, again, for the time he spent to develop the cover of this novel. My love, Irshad Ali and Maria for taking time to choose among the covers I laid out.

And you, reader, for spending your valuable time with me through this novel.

And, last but not least, Wikipedia, for being the inexhaustible wealth of information from where I dug up most of the nomenclature and technicalities required for this novel.

Edwards Air Force Base, Rosamund, California

February 13 2012, 09:55 pm PST

“Five-minute-tentative until take-off, sir.”

“Thanks, Eddie,” Matthews answered without looking back. He inched closer to the domed glass wall. His hands were clenched together behind his back in a seeming manner of exuding authority, but one was actually restraining the palsy of the other. He was surveying the heavy blackness outside with a kind of childish fascination, wondering why he had to be on the other side of this boundary, this glass wall, which easily separated the welcoming peace of night from this abominable chaos he was a part of. His reflection in the glass that he had been ignoring with some effort grimaced at the thought.

Brigadier General Roger J. Matthews was getting older, a fact people around him were only too enthusiastic to point out. The signs they looked for were all there - lines turning deeper across his face, his hair growing thinner with interspersed tufts of gray, his hairline receding up his balding pate - yet, Matthews was sure he was years away from the onset of senility. He never said this out loud to anyone. His response for his buddies’ remarks on his age would be a smile, one that served as an asserting gesture to their comments, and they grinned back with more content. Matthews knew he would be as snappy as the young lieutenant he once was as long as his main assets functioned properly; his eyes. The accuracy of their vision had been looked up with awe and envy even by many other accomplished pilots. It gave Matthews a queer sense of pride though it was none of his own achievement, like the beauty of a pretty girl gave her pride. His sharp eye sight, along with his love for flight and his determination to thrive, had been the blessing of his career, which spanned twenty years now in United States Air Force. He had innumerable successfully completed missions to his name as Experimental Test Pilot of F-15s and F/A-22s, more than 3500 flight hours, combat experience in F-111 and F-15E and many more accomplishments in his repertoire, most of which he himself had forgotten.

When Roger Matthews was named the Commander of 412th Test Wing a year back, he was the happiest man on the USAF. It had all the elements he loved the most. It had hours and hours of testing pilots and flights. It brought him closest to the magic of upcoming technologies in aviation. It gave him the chance to develop and evaluate F-22s and F-35s, but most importantly the bombers, B-2s and B-52s; he loved the bomber crafts. His office as the commander of the Wing brought under his direct control the second largest military air force base in United States, Edwards Air Force Base. All the more welcoming reason to be of service, he had thought. He was sure he was going to see much action in the Air Force Test Center, the prime section of the base, in the coming days, and he took up the challenge of preparing the air crafts to combat with interest. His office had been good, giving him all the adventure he expected of it, until tonight.

The nightmare started almost a month back. It certainly was a nightmare, because it started at a night and awakened him from his sleep. Matthews was a methodical man; he lived by ironclad time schedules. For him, an unwelcome lapse in his routine at any point of time put the whole order of the rest of his day at risk, much like a misplaced brick put the whole building standing above it in jeopardy. A disturbance even before the day started placed the faulty brick right at the base of the building. He scrabbled for his cell phone, jammed an angry finger into its touch screen, and demanded who the hell it was. A sweet female voice on the other end asked if it was Brigadier General Roger J. Matthews. He said it was. “Apologize me to call you at this late hour, General. This is Holly Smith from The Pentagon. The Secretary of Defense wishes to speak with you. Would you be so kind as to answer?”

In the days that followed, Matthews was debriefed by various four-star people about the mission he was to look over in almost a month’s time. His part was simple, he was told, it just involved a transportation. His security clearance was suddenly declared high, and he was led into paneled rooms far away from his command, was made to take oaths of secrecy in front of people he had known only by titles. He understood he was going to play a small part in the execution of a mammoth leap his country’s defense was preparing itself to take. He could also see the small part he was going to play relative to the stupendous plan in the background, nevertheless, would be a determining factor in his own career.

He looked into his watch. Three more minutes.

A semblance of order was slowly creeping into the flurry of activity that had been going on behind him. He turned around and swept a leisurely look across the whole chamber. For a clandestine activity taking place in an unadorned corner safely away from the snooping eyes of the media, he observed, it involved a lot of people. He had not realized it while he was in the midst of the crowd and making himself a part of it, but now he saw the room was pretty populous. There were people everywhere. People hunched over monitors, people yelling into the mouthpieces of microphones stemming from their ears, people running around with sheafs of papers disgorged by printers and people pawing at the consoles mounted on walls. Some of them were clad in USAF blues, some in service dress like himself, and a few in plain clothes. Each of them was buried in his or her own work, fully aware that each had been handpicked by higher command on account of his or her security clearance and skill level, backed up by careful study of background, and that the piece of work he or she did was indispensable in its own way for the whole machinery to run properly or else they would not have been here at all. They paid scant attention to the man in control.

His eyes were drawn to the pair huddled together on the other end the room. They were facing away and into the darkness of the night as he had been. One of them was the most powerful man in the room at present; General Stephen Wright, The Chief of Staff of the Air Force, CSAF. The woman talking in hushed tones at his side was General Danielle Cunningham, Commander of Air