“Well, boys, looks like we might as well go for this closest one.
We’d have to stop off and deal with the janitor there anyway.” A man in a plain jumpsuit and leather jacket with insignia was fussing with the nearest helo, polishing this and that, coming in and out of the chopper with small tools, humming.
Moments later the three shadows looked larger and much more dangerous than dirt humps. One of them, the largest man dressed in black from head to toe and with a blacked-out face, loomed over the pilot. A funny gurgling noise was heard, and then there was a loud thump. Soon all of the shadows melted into the chopper, and the passenger’s side door silently rolled shut.
The German was sitting in one of the six luxurious armchairs in the cabin, with his arms behind him, his wrists neatly bound with a plastic choke-tie. Con Slaughter was sitting next to him with his businesslike boot dagger to the German’s throat. The German was about Con’s age, thirty-five or so, with flashing blue eyes and thick brown hair cut short. Slaughter never took his eyes from the man’s face. “What’s it look like, Fong? Can you do it?” he asked in a normal tone. They could speak in normal tones, for the four-billion-dollar helicopter was completely soundproofed. The passenger seats were about two feet behind the cockpit, with a reinforced door that Fong had left open.
“You kidding me, sir? Easy as booting up a Drone.” Still, he sat for a few minutes, studying the myriad panels and gauges and displays.
In the copilot’s seat beside him, David Mitchell frowned darkly, then said tentatively, “Lieutenant Fong, it’s all strange looking to us, of course, but you know there’s got to be the same stuff that makes this helo work as makes any other one work. So—so—don’t you think that’s the HUD input? And, okay, that’s probably the navigation array, laser/Doppler—what’s this, sonar? Yeah, sonar . . . radar altimeter, hey, yeah, this is good. We got NavStar/LORAN, AHRS . . . that’s—I dunno what that is—this must be the main targeting console, don’t you think . . .”
“What do you think this is?” Fong asked.
“That’s gotta be the Coke machine, sir.”
“Puppy’s funny,” Fong said acidly. Rio Valdosta’s little riff on David had sort of stuck with the team. “Okay, Captain, I got this baby down. You think maybe Attila there would give us a hint about how to tell the tower that he needs to go for a little ride?”
Slaughter had learned, and had conscientiously developed, a fast and effective trick. It involved putting pressure on a certain group of muscles and nerves in a man’s neck that sent screeching, blinding pain up into his skull and burning pinpricks all down his spine. Men who normally would gladly die before giving up information were supposed to be able to take this pain for only a short period of time because theoretically they would never pass out, and it would never lessen. The pilot lasted about twenty seconds. Gasping, he blurted out something—but it was in German.
David Mitchell said, “Uh, sir?”
“I’m busy, Mitchell!” Slaughter grunted, struggling with the German. He was going to give it another, and better, try.
“But, sir, I’m working on the radio here—I think—yeah! Listen!”
David had managed to pick up some chatter from the tower to a Tornado squadron leader.
They were conversing in English. It had been the international language of all air traffic for close to a century. Even Fong, who was still deciphering controls, had forgotten this.
“We’re not very smart,” Slaughter growled, relaxing his grip on the man’s neck—but replacing the knife at his throat.
“No, sir,” David agreed. “Anyway, sir, I think you’d better do the talking. Your voice sounds more like his. Just speak with a German accent.”
“You gotta be kiddin’ me. I’ll sound like—like—”
“An impostor and an imbecile,” the German growled with a thick accent.
Slaughter nicked the man’s chin, no more than a shaving cut.
“I was going to gag you, but maybe killin’ you would keep you quieter.” The man’s eyes flickered, but he didn’t flinch or show fear. He did, however, grow very still.
After long moments Slaughter said, “You’re being so good, I’m going to let you live. Once we get this bird in the air, I think you might have what you call a vested interest in keeping it up. ’Til then, you better be quiet, or your life’s going to be short, brutish, and nasty.”
The German remained expressionless, but he gave a short nod.
“Give me the comm, Deac,” Slaughter ordered. Deac handed back an earpiece and wire mike.
“What’s this bird’s designation?” Con asked the German quietly.
The pilot blinked.
“I’m going to start chopping off your fingers,” Slaughter said conversationally. “I’m going to take them a knuckle at a time, so we’ll have plenty of negotiating room. I’m going to start with your right thumb. If you don’t tell me the designation of this helicopter after your right thumb is gone, then I’m going to start on your left thumb.”
“Fenrir Nine,” he said sulkily.
“Tower, this is Fenrir Nine,” Slaughter said immediately, with a guttural Teutonic accent. “One of my auxiliary fuel pod gauges is malfunctioning. Permission to take a test run, due east eighty kilometers at one thousand.”
A bored German-accented voice responded, “Permission granted, Fenrir Nine.”
Fong started up the chopper, which sounded as smooth and rich as a big cat’s purr. They lifted up into the sky and sped due east.
“You’re not going to let me live, are you?” the pilot asked. To his credit, he didn’t sound afraid, merely curious.
Rage filled Slaughter. When he looked at the man, he thought of his dead comrades whose bones, surely cleaned by wolves and vultures and bleached white by the sun, must still litter Fort Carson. Slaughter taunted him, “Your Luftwaffe hasn’t been too merciful to us. I’d say you were in some mortal danger, mister.”
Deacon Fong and David Mitchell and anyone else who had been around Con Slaughter for very long knew that when he barked—as he was now—he wasn’t biting. When he talked slow and soft, he was most dangerous.
Of course, the German pilot didn’t know that.
In flight over Texas, Deac and David—as if Slaughter’s careless choice of words had hexed them—had problems deciphering the fuel gauges. The BK 2000s had four auxiliary pods, which enabled them to fly across the Atlantic. The main tank was low on fuel, and Deac and David couldn’t decide whether they had actually switched over to an auxiliary.
Listening to their low, tense voices, Slaughter took his eyes off the German only a few seconds. But the German was fast and strong and well trained—and unbound. He’d managed to work his small dagger out of his zippered sleeve pocket.
He jumped up, knocked Slaughter a stunning backhand in the mouth with his bunched fist, and then stabbed Deacon in the carotid artery.
Slaughter, who had reeled but not fallen with the force of the blow, slit the German’s throat only a moment later.
David switched control of the helo to the copilot.
They winged on into the night.
Neither Con nor David spoke for a long time. The helicopter, which David had immediately reset to autopilot with the ground-hugging terrain sensor, pretty much flew itself. David risked a look back into the dimly lit cabin. Con, one hand still gripping his bloodstained knife, was slumped into an overstuffed armchair. His head was bent, and his bloody fists pressed his eyes.
“Sir?” David said softly. “You can’t go there, you know. It wasn’t your fault any more than it was mine or Zoan’s . . . or God’s.”
Dully Con asked without raising his head, “What are you talking about, Mitchell?”
“I saw him coming. I watched him do it,” David answered in a pained voice. “I couldn’t move.”
Eventually Con murmured, “And Zoan?”
“He knew. He must have.”
“Then why didn’t he go ahead and stop him?” Con ranted, stiffen
ing.
“Because, sir, we don’t like it much, and we understand it even less, but sometimes it is the time to die. Tonight was Deac’s. And his.”
Con said nothing. He stared blankly at the dead German sprawled on the floor of the cabin. His blood had soaked into the thick sky-blue carpet, Con noted, and his eyes were wide open.
With a touch that was not ungentle, Con closed them. Whatever else he was, he was a soldier, and he died fighting. No man could ask for a more honorable death than that.
“Sir?” David said in a stronger voice. “We’re going to be at the border soon. We’ll have to do some navigating. So I’d appreciate some help.”
Con looked as if a heavy dark veil had dropped from his eyes.
As gently as he could, he maneuvered Deacon Fong’s body out of the seat. Deac was the smallest of the team, and Con carried him with ease. After hesitating only a moment, he laid him down beside the dead German pilot. Quickly he arranged their blood-soaked hands to lie in peace across their chests. Both of them have such fine hands, agile-looking, clever fingers . . . mortal enemies in life, but brothers in death. Good-bye, Deac. I’ll miss you, and I’ll mourn you.
At dawn, an enormous black helicopter hovered over a five-mile-square patch of fallow field just north of Elegy, Alabama. A figure dressed all in black, a man with long legs and arms and a grim face, rappelled out, released the line, and waved. As the chopper angled tail-up to turn and soar north, he raised both his arms in a long farewell.
The chopper flew straight and unchallenged over deserted miles of fields and empty little towns and houses and barns. About two-thirty, it landed, a perfect and smooth textbook landing, in a high field of winter goldenrod just south of Hot Springs, Arkansas.
David Mitchell turned off the helicopter, gathered up his pack, stepped outside, and slowly closed the door. The conscientious and complete soldier that he was, he first camouflaged the helicopter so it could not be seen from the air.
It took him all of the remains of the day to dig the two graves, refill them, and fashion two crude wooden crosses from the sweet green branches of a nearby dogwood tree. He stood for a long time at the graves, his head bowed, his lips moving, tears rolling down his face.
After a time of mourning, he turned his face north and began to walk. Within moments he was just another gray shadow in the soft southern night.
THREE
JUST AS TESSA KAI had predicted, the weather turned bad. A low cloud cover sank in, hiding the heavens. The dingy gray sea squalled. It grew cold. The days were bleak and lightless, the nights bitter and lifeless.
Victorine decided, after Tessa Kai’s death, that she and Dancy had to leave Perdido Key. The only logical place to go was Pensa-cola Naval Air Station, about twenty-two miles east. It would be tough. They would have to journey at night, along the beach, which was hard walking and cold traveling. Victorine would have to find Dancy some clothes and shoes, and she would have to find exactly the right supplies that they could carry.
“I’m going with you,” Dancy insisted.
“It’s too dangerous,” Victorine argued. “You know, Dancy, that right here in the condo is the safest place on the island.”
Dancy merely looked at her. At sixteen years old, she was a lovely girl, delicate looking with her ash blonde hair and small frame and wide blue eyes. Right now they shone, luminous and vulnerable, and a hint of tears shimmered in them.
Victorine softened a bit and said, “You don’t want to stay here alone because of—your grandmother?”
“No,” Dancy said vehemently. “I could never be—afraid of Tessa Kai. It’s because of you, Mother. Suppose you just walk out that door and never come back?”
Her statement jarred Victorine. Dropping her eyes, she murmured, “All right. I suppose you’d have to come anyway if I’m going to fit you correctly. Especially boots. It’s very important, if you’re walking, to have boots that fit well.”
“Oh, thank you, Mother,” Dancy cried with such a torrent of relief that Victorine felt a little ashamed of herself. But Victorine, as soon as she had closed and locked the door on her mother’s crypt, had changed. She allowed herself to feel savage anger and a hot desire for revenge for a feasible time; then she consciously shifted her mental state to cold calculation. The only fierceness she felt now was determination that nothing—nothing—was going to happen to Dancy. Not one hair of her child’s head was going to be touched, not if she was still drawing breath.
After that, everything Victorine did and thought about was how best to protect Dancy.
It took them two days to gather clothing and supplies, even though both were anxious to leave. For one thing, the Pikes, including the man who had killed Tessa Kai, had wandered on to the west—and had never come back east. Victorine thought they might still be on the Key, although they might have gone on over to Gulf Shores or even out to Fort Morgan. She doubted it, though. The cottages and condos were about as scarce in Gulf Shores as they were on the Key. Fort Morgan had been uninhabited for years.
Still, they had to bike seven miles west to the Commissary, the only place Victorine could be sure of getting the foodstuffs they needed. She’d already been there twice and hadn’t seen a sign of the couple who ran the big store in the winter. Actually it was more of a supplies warehouse. When Victorine had gone to get supplies, she had been constricted by what she could carry on her bike and then up seven flights of stairs. She’d always gotten fresh fruit and vegetables, and juice and canned goods. Now they needed different kinds of food.
They loaded up on dried fruit, nuts, dried beef, candy, powdered milk packets, coffee and tea, honey and sugar. Victorine scrounged around in the aisles of clothing stacked to the cavernous ceiling in the storeroom, but almost all of it was casual summer wear, which was exactly the kind of clothing that Dancy had. In dusty boxes in a back corner, she found some winter clothing, even though it was unorthodox. It was commissars’ uniforms. About 40 percent of the Commissary were women, so Dancy found clothing that almost fit: Ty-wool blouses, canvasette breeches, Syn-tex underwear. The best find, however, was the boots. Dancy found a perfect fit in the black lace-up paratrooper’s boots. When Victorine saw her as she tried them on, she bowed and said deadpan, “You look wonderful, My Commissar.”
“Troll, you mean,” Dancy said, making a face. “At least I’m glad they don’t have the insignia. I feel like I’m wearing a Halloween costume as it is.”
“They’re warm clothes, they’re sturdy, and the boots are wonderful. I wish I could find some my size,” Victorine said. “But I guess my old hiking boots will do.”
Victorine had thought that they could pack and rest the next day, and then leave the next night. But as they were getting everything ready to go, Victorine realized that she’d forgotten two very important items: warm socks and warm headgear. Unbelievably the thermometer at the Commissary had read thirty degrees.
Victorine had to go back, which meant that Dancy had to go back, and Victorine could have kicked herself. The fact that there was no reason for her to be sharp about cold-weather hiking didn’t matter.
She was angry at herself.
They found wool socks with the commissars’ clothing and the berets, but Dancy refused to wear one. Finally they found a box— it must have been ancient—of black ski masks. They were wool and itchy, but Victorine insisted that they at least wear them as hats and cover their ears. The wind off the sea, with the temperature at thirty degrees, was probably close to twenty.
By the time they got back late that evening, Dancy was too tired to leave. If Victorine hadn’t been quite so absorbed in her calculations, she might have noticed that Dancy was very pale. But she didn’t notice, and if she had, she probably would have thought it was because of Tessa Kai. Victorine was feeling the strain of being in the condos where her mother was lying in state down the hallway.
The next day passed with Dancy sleeping quite a bit and Victorine reading and pacing restlessly. It was again dreary and rained a h
ard-spitting splatter that lasted only a few moments. But the weather didn’t clear.
They left as soon as the sun set, though they couldn’t see it. The darkness came swiftly.
Victorine’s backpack was about twice as heavy as Dancy’s, yet after the first hour, Dancy’s pace was agonizingly slow. The raw wind caught at their words, and the tide was high and roaring, so they had to shout to make each other heard. After a while, they didn’t try to talk. They struggled on in the wet cold and raging salt wind. The lovely powdery sand, which was so fine for beach picnics, sucked at every step they took. Dancy began to stumble. Victorine took her arm.
They had gone only about three miles—it seemed as if they had been walking in the howling nightmare for eons—when Dancy wrenched away from Victorine and stumbled to the surf. Victorine ran after her. Dancy bent over double and vomited. Shaking, almost falling, Dancy turned, wiping her mouth. “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said.
If Dancy had shot her in the heart, Victorine couldn’t have felt worse. She put her arms around Dancy and said as calmly as she could in her ear, “Is it a migraine, darling?”
Dancy nodded shakily.
Victorine took a deep breath. An ugly flicker of anger rose in her: Why didn’t she tell me! Victorine had been acting like a drill sergeant so, of course, the child didn’t want to tell her that she was coming down with one of the horrible two-or three-day afflictions that all three of the Thayer women had been cursed with. None of that mattered now.
Victorine said, “Give me your backpack. See up there? Can you see? That’s Perdido Quay. We can stay there. Can you make it, darling? Because I could carry you and then come back and get the backpacks.”
Already the pain must have been seeping into her like acid because Dancy held the left side of her face as she shook her head.
Fallen Stars, Bitter Waters Page 6