The Big Lifters

by Dean Ing

  Quickly, from the Treasury agent: “Where’s that IR video?”

  The stakeout: “Mr. Peel went out and got it. I told him not to, before we got some help here. The Sheriff’s people pulled out a week ago. ”

  “Christ, Peel, you just beg for it.” The agent sighed and turned back to his stakeout. “Put you down pretty hard?”

  “Not that hard; I went down and rolled while I drew. Got two rounds off while she piled into the van but I was firing at the tires. It’s still possible she was just scared, maybe getting ready to bed down with some guy inside. She almost ran me down and I had a boa constrictor around my chest. I finally got here to the house, but I wasn’t good for much, I can tell you.”

  “We’ll discuss it later,” the Treasury agent said, in tones that added, “. . . and you won’t enjoy it much.”

  “We heard the ruckus,” Wes put in, “and somehow he got to my front door in two minutes flat.”

  “Well, our suspect is long gone,” said the T-man. “We can run a make on her plates right now. Where’s the video camera? We can plug into your VCR, see if you recognize her.”

  Vangie brought the little camera with its big battery pack and IR beam tube, and moments later they had rewound the cassette. On Wes’s big color-piojection screen in the living room, they sat through perhaps a minute of a previous surveillance, as two young men walked down the road, hands in pockets. Then a cut to a Toyota panel van, parked beside the road, with a patch of brightness where its hot tailpipe signaled hard infrared emissions. A youthful figure with medium-length hair, wearing a blouse, skirt, and flat heels of an old-fashioned girl, emerged quickly and raised the vehicle’s engine hood before disappearing again into the van. The next, and last, shot was a close-up of a license plate. Not the plate of a commercial van.

  “Maybe a rental,” said the Treasury man, tapping at his memocomp. “Let’s hope not. Go back to where she raises the hood.”

  Wes did so, and stopped when he was told. Moving forward a few frames at a time, he reached a point where the darkhaired young woman with the huge soulful eyes was turning back toward the driver’s door. Unwittingly, she stared straight toward the IR emitter for an instant. She was a looker, all right.

  The Treasury man grunted. “I’ve got a plate to check. You folks sit here and study that face. If this was a comedy of errors, she’s probably called the police by now. But I’ll bet you’ve seen her somewhere, and a hundred to one she’s been seeing you.”

  Wes played the scene backward and forward, now and then looking toward Vangie, halting the cassette repeatedly to stare at the impassive face of the young woman. They had to admit, finally, that so far as they knew they had never seen her before. For all her youth, Zahra Aram had managed her mission very well until this night.

  * * * *

  Zahra fought down her panic long enough to realize that she would need hours to lug that expensive equipment from the van, wipe every surface clean of her prints, and get the tires changed to throw off pursuit. Zahra did not have hours, in her own mind. She’d heard the whap of a slug into the van, somewhere near her feet, and that would be an instant tip-off if it was visible. She took Castro Valley Boulevard to Lake Chabot Road and flicked her high beams wildly, searching for a spot from where the van could be driven into the lake. By the time she found an access with a suitable downslope, it was midnight and Zahra was mewling with such fear and frustration that she almost forgot to haul her bicycle from the van.

  The van went in with appalling slowness, as if forging into a lake of moonlit molasses, but it floated awhile, and because it went down by the nose it moved farther forward, into deeper water. Zahra prayed it deeper, mounted the bike, and pedaled for an hour before she found an unmutilated public telephone outside a Castro Valley 7-Eleven.

  In Lansing, it was nearly four o’clock in the morning when Golam Razmara answered his phone. He replied in surliness which quickly progressed through rage to horror as Zahra poured out her tale. The van, its equipment, and her usefulness: All vanished now. Golam furiously denounced her for incompetence, then impressed upon her how absolutely imperative it was that she put many miles between herself and the Bay Area, immediately, and without attracting attention. Above all, she was not to seek Golam out by any means whatever. He would, imsh’Allah, contact her at school in the fullness of time - Farda.

  By dawn, Golam was en route to the three-room digs of Kosrow Nurbashi. Since the brief call from Winthorp, warning only of electronic surveillance, Nurbashi had begun preaching still more caution to Golam and Ali Zahedi, his last two minions. Golam Razmara did not know what Nurbashi would command next, but he guessed that they would not long remain in these comfortable haunts. Golam knew, however, that the mullah’s response would, as always, invoke some grotesque revenge.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The role of the mullah, as repeated endlessly by Khomeini, was as clerical ruler: velayet-e-faqih. This being so, Kosrow Nurbashi had been schooled deeply and dogmatically in a few things, and very sketchily in most others. Nurbashi knew so little of some humdrum facts of American life that he did not even maintain a bank account, preferring instead to rely on his followers to exchange smuggled emeralds for cash.

  This weakness delayed Farda’s revenge for several days, because even purchasers of jewels were hard to contact during a Labor Day weekend; yet ultimately it had its peculiar strengths. For one thing, it forced Golam Razmara and the lank, taciturn Ali Zahedi to fence their unset jewels in different cities: Golam in Detroit, Ali over two hundred miles away in Chicago. This lessened the scuttlebutt about the sudden influx of fine stones into the market. And because Nurbashi was at best a poor driver, it fell to Ali, in Chicago, to purchase the kind of vehicle Nurbashi wanted; something fast, built like a tank, and with a huge capacity to store the tools of their trade where they could be reached instantly. Ali bought the stretch Cadillac limo in Evanston for cash; not much cash at that, thanks to its thirst for gasoline which Khomeini himself had made exceedingly dear.

  On Wednesday, Nurbashi and his two dedicated crazies struck Interstate 80, bound for Omaha and ultimately for Hayward. While Golam and Ali took turns at the wheel, Nurbashi took his ease behind them, one elbow on the airline bagful of twenty-dollar bills, resting his feet on the voluptuous roundels of a bass viol case. The viol lay inside, in case it became necessary to open the case. But if anyone demanded to see the instrument, the ruse would be obvious, for its back had been pillaged so that the two Uzi submachine guns and the sawed-off Browning shotgun would fit inside. The two explosive vests hung neatly among the spare clothing that swung from a strap whenever the limo lurched during its long pilgrimage to Hayward, and to Armageddon.

  * * * *

  On that same Wednesday, David Kaplan reached Los Angeles in the C-2, silently grateful for the attention Tom Schultheis devoted to long-range planning. Kaplan’s Class A license to haul hazardous cryogenic liquids had involved a few lies two years before, but his specialized training since then had been legitimate. The C-2 was up to spec, with no steel cord in its tires and a fully-grounded cryo trailer for those monstrous Thermos bottles of stainless alloy. His permit, too, was legitimate, linked to Exotic Salvage. The chief problem was that, while ‘ ‘reading’ ’ the ferociously cold and explosive liquid hydrogen, internal fluid movement caused the boil-off of some two percent of the stuff each hour.

  The conspirators knew that arrival at Highjump’s hangar with one ounce less hydrogen than they needed was the same as having no fuel at all. It had been Schultheis who thought of their cellular radiophones, too; so Kaplan knew when the schedule slipped, even for an hour, back at the hangar. By now it looked like he must fire up the C-2 around six on Thursday evening to arrive near the hangar during the early hours of Friday.

  Rogan had refused the pills that would have kept him working, as Schultheis worked, virtually around the clock with old Wolf Schultheis forever checking and rechecking details a tired man might miss. As Rogan put it, “No chemicals in my pi
pes, man; when I crank this sucker up it’s got to be in realtime.”

  * * * *

  Wednesday was realtime for Wes, too, though it began to seem a little unreal soon after lunch. He personally handed visitor badges to Joey Weatherby and a curiously subdued Grover O’Grady before escorting them down mahogany row to his office where, for the first time, Weatherby and Vangie met face-to-face.

  “I hope you can let this old sleeping dog lie,” Weatherby said to her. “By the way, Tib sends his regards. Grover, wipe that letch off your face, this lady is spoken for.”

  O’Grady, whose face mirrored no such thing, had nonetheless been thinking it. He only said, “Yessir,” understanding very well that Mr. W. was wearing his jocular attitude. And

  Mr. W. did that only on those rare occasions when he felt uneasy.

  Vangie hid behind her southern belle facade, producing a schedule printout for them. “I’m not sure what you want to see, but there’s a new Shorthauler cab on the shaker table this afternoon, and Delta Two’s helium cells are going in.” “Told you she was sharp,” Wes winked at the burly NTC chairman. “Or we could just have a drink and crowd around my desk screen and talk graphs.”

  “Plenty of time for that,” Weatherby rumbled expansively. “I’ll have that drink and then somebody can show me around your plant. Mind if Grover videotapes the tour?”

  Wes gave them the killer smile as he opened the liquor cabinet. “I’ve got nothing to hide outside the delta hangar, and I’ll be with you anyhow.”

  The bushy brows went up. “For three days?”

  “A pleasure,” Wes nodded, splashing scotch over ice. “Vangie has left a Weatherby-sized hole in my schedule, and if any brushfires break out, they should be easy to handle. Even that would be a snap if my design and stress heads weren’t on vacation. You won’t miss ’em, if you like sight-seeing in a delta dirigible,” he added slyly as they set the glasses down.

  O’Grady perked up at this. “That guy Rogan, will he take us up?”

  Wes, ushering the two men to the door, told them Rogan was working on another project with their top instrumentation man, but Jim Christopher was a fine pilot and a first-rate flight instructor. Wes was too busy to ask himself why so many of his best people had arranged to be out of touch at the same time.

  * * * *

  And on the outskirts of Council Bluffs, wheeling back toward the interstate from the truck stop, old Manson Perkins

  cursed as he twisted violently on the wheel of his Freightliner. His hitcher, the little Indian broad sitting across from Perkins, squealed in fright, watching that speeding black limo swerve back into place inches before Perkins would’ve clipped it. At least Perkins figured she was Indian; lots of Sioux and Osage hotsies in these parts, and some of ’em not too choosy to climb into the rack with a stove-up old veteran of the highway wars. ’Specially if she wanted a free ride and meals clean to Motown, though nothing was really free. What was it he’d seen on that bumper sticker? “Gas, grass, or ass: nobody rides for free.” “Stupid asshole found out who’s boss,” he remarked calmly, looking across at the Osage girl, whose frown suggested she was still thinking about their close call.

  Zahra Aram looked at him and quickly produced a smile. For one instant, staring into the windshield of that black limousine, she had imagined the face of Golam Razmara, a Golam whose face was pinched in fright. But Golam, of course, would be back on the campus when classes began in a few weeks, so he was somewhere around Lansing. Imsh’Allah . . .

  * * * *

  And on Thursday, as Zahra boarded a Greyhound for her last leg to Lansing; and Golam surrendered the wheel to Ali near Ogden, Utah; and Joey Weatherby watched a video in Wes’s office of Delta One snatching a fifty-ton load from a flatcar; Wolf Schultheis, in the Highjump hangar, spoke with Kaplan on their cellular radio link. “Dey are all on cots, snoring like drunken men,” he observed gently. “But Allington swears dey will be ready for you early in the morning.” “And how about you?” asked Kaplan, beginning for the first time to wonder, in a subdued panic, what in the hell they had committed themselves to, and what tiniest, fatal detail one of them might have forgotten. “Does it look like a ‘go’?”

  “I cannot possibly be certain,” the old man admitted. “My preliminary work was so long ago, and you and Thomas have

  made so many changes - good changes, yes, I believe.” He paused for the duration of a breath. “But it must be done.” “Even if it doesn’t work,” Kaplan replied, and neither of them could be sure whether it was question or assertion.

  “Even den. It could work, and dat will be seen afterward, no matter what does happen. Like de Natter project in 1945.” “God! I hope not, Mr. Schultheis. Most aeronautical historians claim the Natter was abandoned after the first manned launch killed the pilot.”

  “I know. We will simply have to set dem straight on it. And on dis, if it does not go well. Yet I have faith.”

  “How’s Rogan?”

  “As I told you: snoring. But as to what you mean to ask; he, too, has faith.”

  “That we’ll do it?”

  “Dat we must try,” said the old man, cautious to the last.

  ****

  And on Friday. . .

  TWENTY-THREE

  On Friday, 8 September 1995, a low-pressure region lurked off the coast of Baja California at dawn, and Boff Allington chewed a thumbnail to ribbons as he watched early-morning weather reports in Highjump’s hangar. Above the Mojave they had only a smear of stratocirrus and, toward the southeast, nothing but the purest blue. That, and the sight of the C-2 grinding its way up the access road in early light.

  Kaplan, the only one who had not slept the previous night, dropped like a stricken man on a cot for a brief rest, his feet protruding beyond the coverlet. Glenn Rogan, on his Yamaha, covered the hundred miles from Highjump’s hangar on Clark Mountain to Barstow in an hour and a quarter. Minutes after eight, he signed the usual papers as if bored with the day’s task, then climbed into the maglev maintenance unit alone. He held its pace down to two hundred during the trip back, aware that the refreshed Kaplan would need more time to ease the C-2 over rutted dirt paths to their staging area, towing a quiet volcano behind him.

  It was no secret to anyone involved with the maglev route that the track followed old power lines because it was a cheap solution. The route ran southwest to northeast but, four years previously, Tom Schultheis had seen from the air that one - and only one - stretch of that route ran for ten miles due west to due east. Actually, he would have been happier to see that stretch aimed in a southeasterly direction, but it didn’t take much fuel to translate an initial flight path twenty degrees or so, and a man can’t have everything.

  That stretch had everything else, though. It was even downhill off the flank of Clark Mountain, where gravity could aid acceleration. And finally, it was at the highest point on the maglev’s route through the high, dry wastes of the Mojave. For Highjump, the higher and thinner the air, the better.

  At the time, before his first designs of that maglev maintenance unit, Schultheis had felt gooseflesh thinking that no one had ever proposed a better scheme for a laughably cheap, electric, fully recoverable first-stage booster that never left its rails. Except that John Wesley Peel did not even want to discuss such things, quite content to pursue his own agenda for America’s cargoes.

  At first with great caution, then with mounting enthusiasm as Wolf Schultheis approved the numbers and David Kaplan hired on with Peel Transit, Tom Schultheis had begun to plan the project they finally dubbed Highjump. It meant abandoning other pastimes; largely ignoring a wife who demanded attention; conspiring with a man who, innocent or not, had given Tom’s wife some of that attention.

  It also meant cheating Wes Peel, designing components for other projects that were really perfect only for Highjump, and diverting the test hardware to Exotic Salvage. Almost certainly it would mean a handful of ruined careers, once their fraud was unmasked. To a man, they agreed; it was worth the
penalty.

  As Rogan tested the maglev’s remote controls during its passage up to the flank of Clark Mountain, David Kaplan palmed a lever on the C-2’s cable winch, lifting the still-unfueled Highjump vehicle from its cradle. Moments later, with the younger Schultheis and Boff Allington steadying stubby wingtips that were prototypes of the maglev canards, Highjump nestled among air bags that spanned the rear half of the C-2’s long flatbed, behind the cryogenic tanks.

  For a C-2, the load was no sweat. Hydrogen was, after all, the lightest substance in the universe - and one of the cheapest, as well as one of the most explosive. A half-hour later, with Tom Schultheis beside him sweating every jounce over that hardpan path, Kaplan drove beneath soaring power lines and chuffed his air brakes beside the maglev.

  * * * *

  Rogan deployed the crane of the maintenance unit, moving with great economy, saying little as they wrestled Highjump’s small aluminum launch cradle - for the second time - into place atop the maglev’s sleek hull. They used bronze tools, now, for bronze would not create spaiks, and they could hear the hiss of hydrogen outgassing from those stainless steel containers nearby. They worried about those occasional spits and spats above them, as dust particles fried high up in the power lines; but the breeze had never failed them here, and the out-gassing hydrogen wafted aside as it climbed, an invisible column of lethal stuff begging to be touched off. Lying on their backs, Rogan and Schultheis carefully wiped down the Fresnel beam-catcher lens that spread across Highjump’s belly, flanked by retractable panels and an arm’s length ahead of that sapphire port. This time, no magnesium struts lay anywhere near the port.

  Allington and Wolf Schultheis were not needed for the mating and fueling steps; for one thing, because even with her half-ton of water as cargo, Highjump weighed scarcely more than a family sedan before fueling, and could be manhandled into her launch cradle by three men. For another, a mistake while fueling the tiny brute would consume everyone present in the kind of firebloom made infamous first by the Hinden-burg, then by the Challenger.