Rude Astronauts

by Allen Steele

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “Well, Biocybe managed to produce a prototype of a biochip which it dubbed Ozymandias 88-F, or the Oz Chip for short. Since the Soviets have been lagging behind the West in computer technology for decades now, this is something they could really use. Charlie Weyler was its point man. He had been planted in the company as its marketing director and, when everyone was sure that the Oz Chip had been perfected to a certain point, they directed Weyler to steal the prototype and the plans.”

  “And you were there to stop him.”

  “I had been waiting for Weyler to make his move, yes.”

  “As the field agent handling the case.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Shaw had been sitting in his Ford Escort just long enough to start getting bored when he spotted Charles Weyler leaving through the side exit of One Biotech Park and begin walking through the near-empty garage. The problem was, when Shaw got bored during stakeouts, he started to smoke again. Usually it didn’t matter, but this time it was a serious mistake.

  He had found some stale Merits squirreled away in the glovebox and was fumbling with the lighter—again wondering how GM could put a microprocessor in the ignition system and still fail to make a dependable, half-decent cigarette lighter—when he glanced up and saw Weyler heading for the silver BMW CSi parked a few slots away. The BMW was virtually the only other car in the lot this Saturday afternoon; it had cross-country skis and poles fitted into the roof rack and an old Bush/Quayle sticker on the rear bumper. At that moment, as Shaw was looking up from behind the wheel with his stupid cigarette hanging out of his stupid mouth, Charlie Weyler turned his head and looked directly at him.

  Weyler quickly looked away. He walked a few more steps, then abruptly he broke stride and bolted for his car.

  “Aw, shit!” Shaw yelled. The unlit cigarette fell into his mouth as he scrambled to unbuckle his seat belt and throw open his door. By the time he was out of his car, Weyler had revved the BMW’s engine and was peeling out of his slot, sliding briefly on a patch of ice as he ripped out of the garage, heading for the industrial park’s exit and, beyond, the safety of the weekend traffic on Route 9.

  Shaw ducked back into his Ford, wrenched the key forward in the ignition and slammed his foot down on the gas pedal to hot-start the engine, and grabbed the radio mike from under the dashboard. “Station Baker to all units!” he shouted into the mike. “Geronimo is on warpath nine! Repeat, Geronimo is on warpath nine!”

  “And then you lost him. How did that happen?”

  “The net we put up wasn’t right for the situation. There was a lot of weekend traffic on Route 9 … Spag’s traffic, we call it here … and the two units were in the wrong places. Tango, the car across the highway from One Biotech in a convenience store parking lot, couldn’t get across the four lanes in time. The other car, Delta, was in the breakdown lane up the street from the park. It was in the right place, but the timing was all wrong. Weyler spotted ’em, I guess, and swerved over into the passing lane. When those guys tried to cut him off, they got in a collision with a civilian who came barreling up the right lane. So Weyler managed to dry clean us and get away.”

  “I guess you weren’t pleased.”

  “Hell, no, I wasn’t pleased. If he hadn’t spotted me in the garage, we could have nailed him before he made the highway.”

  “Then you admit fault for his escape?”

  “That’s what it sounds like, doesn’t it? He pegged me. I could have had a bumper sticker which read ‘FBI Special Agent’ and it wouldn’t have been more obvious.”

  “Take it easy, Mr. Shaw. This isn’t a formal case review. What made you think he was heading for Wachusett Mountain?”

  “Well, it was a process of elimination. Weyler must have known that his cover had been blown. He was smart enough to know that we must have covered his drop zone at the Galleria, where he was to meet his handler that afternoon, and his condo in Holden …”

  “You were trying to outguess him.”

  “Uh-huh. I figured that he needed to somehow get rid of the Oz Chip prototype which he had swiped from the Biocybe lab. We didn’t know it then, but he also had copied onto a computer diskette the project notes for Ozymandias 88-F. He had to dump that stuff somewhere, which meant that he had to arrange an alternate drop with his handler. We knew also that he had a cellular telephone in his car, so he could get in touch with his handler.”

  “Go on.”

  “It was sort of dumb luck. I had spotted his cross-country skis on the roof-rack of his car. His dossier had already established that he was an expert skier, and we already knew that he had gone cross-country skiing in Rutland State Park that morning. What better way to drop the Oz Chip than to arrange a zone that he could reach by skiing to it? Some place his handler could reach as well, where they could make the hand-off with only a few people around? Well, there was only one place that he could get to in a hurry which met that description. …”

  “Wachusett Mountain.”

  “That’s right. Right off I-290, which he could reach from Route 9 and I-190.”

  “Not a bad guess.”

  “It didn’t suck, no.”

  “But you didn’t take the weather into consideration, did you?”

  “To tell you the truth, I didn’t even notice that it had started to snow.”

  The young woman behind the counter of the ticket booth stared at the photograph of Charles Weyler for a moment, absently adjusting her wire-rimmed glasses. “Yes, I’ve seen him. He was here … um, about an hour ago.”

  “Where did he go?” Shaw asked impatiently, his hands shoved in the pockets of his parka. “Did he buy a lift pass?”

  “Yeah … wait a minute, no.” She thought it over. “No, I sold him a trail pass.”

  “A trail pass? For the cross-country trails?”

  “Yes, sir. I remember because he was carrying his own skis and poles.” Her eyes squinted as she sought to recall the memory. “And a blue gym bag, too. He looked like he was in a hurry. He went that way.” Leaning over the counter, she pointed to the beginning of the cross-country trail, just beyond the rental shop. “About an hour ago,” she repeated. “I’m not in any trouble, am I?”

  “No, ma’am. Thanks for your help.” Shaw took the photo back and slipped it into his pocket, then turned and hurried back to the parking lot of the ski area. A cold wind snapped snow into his face, and icy slush was filling his shoes. He muttered obscenities under his breath and zipped his jacket up to his neck.

  Brim, the Boston field office agent who had been in the Tango car which had been hung up in traffic during the botched interception on Route 9, was standing next to Weyler’s BMW, talking to one of the state police officers from the Holden barracks who had arrived at the scene. Two more FBI agents were working over the sleeper’s car: the doors, the trunk hatch, the hood, and even the gas tank cover were wide open as the cleaning crew methodically searched the vehicle. Under normal circumstances the BMW would have been hauled to the Springfield field office to be torn apart, with every loose piece of lint inspected and catalogued, but there simply wasn’t time for such painstaking work.

  Men and women in multicolored ski tights and carrying downhill equipment sauntered past the BMW, transfixed by the activity until they were each shooed away by another state trooper. Brim saw Shaw trudging towards them, excused himself from the trooper, and shuffled over past the police cruiser parked behind Weyler’s car. “Good hunch, buddy. You got a cigarette?”

  “Naw, I just quit.” Shaw stamped his feet in the snow to keep warm. “We’re still in a mess. The girl at the ticket booth …”

  “Hey, Shaw! C’mere!” One of the cleaning crew, Kadrey, was crawling out of the BMW as they turned around. As Shaw hurried over, Kadrey held out a small plastic bag over the roof of the car. Shaw took the bag from his hand and peered inside. Within the bag was a bullet.

  “Under the front passenger seat,” Kadrey said. “Forty-five. There’s some little sc
rapes on the sides that say it was loaded into a loose clip.”

  Shaw gazed at the round. There were a number of different firearms which used clip-loaded .45 caliber ammo, from Saturday night specials to submachine guns, but the absence of a gun in the presence of a bullet meant one thing for certain. Charlie Weyler was armed.

  “Things just got tougher,” Brim murmured, looking at the bullet. “Weyler must have gone to the summit. Either he’s up there, or he’s gone by now.”

  Shaw gave back the baggie to Kadrey, turned around and walked off, Brim following him. “No. He got here about an hour ago and bought a trail pass,” he said, thinking aloud. “Maybe … perhaps Charlie was going to meet his GRU contact at the summit for the drop.”

  Brim looked at him. “Then if Charlie’s on the trails …” He stopped and grinned. “That’s a big mountain. He couldn’t have gotten to the summit in an hour. And if no one is being let on the lifts, then we’ve got him. He can’t meet his handler, right?”

  Shaw had stopped and was gazing up at the mountain. The light snowfall which had started when he was in Worcester was rapidly turning into a nor’easter. The last radio weather forecast he had heard had stated that massive storm fronts from both the Great Lakes and the Atlantic seaboard were converging over New England; already the storm was being predicted as being the worst since the blizzard of ’78. Low, sullen grey clouds were scudding across the sky, and already the summit was beginning to white out. Although the ski lifts were still running, to keep the cables from freezing solid and snapping, the runs were being closed. The ascending chairs were empty, and the red-jacketed ski patrollers were herding the last downhillers off the mountain.

  “Uh-huh,” Shaw said. “But we’re still in trouble. If Weyler gets to the summit and doesn’t find his contact, he’ll dead-drop the Oz Chip. Find a tree knoll or a rock to stash it under, then find another way out. Someone else will come back and retrieve the chip later.” He shook his head. “There’s no two ways around it. We’re going to have to get Weyler on the mountain.”

  Brim glanced up at the mountainside. “Great. How the hell are we going to do that?”

  Shaw shrugged. “Only one way, bub.”

  “We weren’t aware that you knew how to ski cross-country, Mr. Shaw.”

  “I picked it up when I worked for the Denver field office, my first job for the Bureau. It’s a hobby. I never thought I would have to use it for an assignment.”

  “Had you ever skied Wachusett Mountain before?”

  “No. This was the first time for me.”

  “That’s funny. How could you have known that there was a cross-country trail there, if that was the case? Wachusett is mainly known for its downhill runs.”

  “Well … um, I had always meant to try out Wachusett. I just never got the chance, until this instance. Not that it really mattered, though. When I bought my gear in the ski shop, I got a good map of the mountain. That’s when I saw that one could reach the cross-country trails from the summit. That was a break, since otherwise I would have been trying to catch up with Weyler from the bottom of the mountain. Since he had a long head start, that would have been almost impossible. This way, all I had to do was head down the mountain and intercept him on his way up.”

  “I see. Of course, you were able to equip yourself for the mission from your car trunk.”

  “Uh-huh. Headset radios, the Heckler and Koch … they were in the trunk. All I had to get were the skis and the warm clothing. I had to buy that, since they didn’t have telemark cross-country skis in the rental shop. Um … I put it on my Treasury card, but if the Bureau wants me to reimburse it for the expense …”

  “Don’t worry about it now. I’m curious about your radio trouble, though. Tango Station lost contact with you at one point. Why did that happen?”

  “I dunno. I think I went out of range or something.”

  When he had reached the intersection of the Summit Loop and the Administration Road trail, in the densest part of the forest about one-third of the way down the mountain, he stopped, impaled his poles in a drift and unlatched his heels from the skis. It was a relatively level slope from here on; now he needed to use Nordic techniques, rather than alpine.

  The wind was broken by the trees, but he could still hear it whining through the snow-fleeced timber, softly creaking against the branches, sending heavy falls of snow plummeting to the ground from on high. Somewhere not far away in the forest something splintered and crashed. The woods were silent, if only for a moment, until the wind picked up again and the trees recommenced their death-rattle protests.

  Shaw unzipped his parka, took off his right-hand glove and reached into the warm cavity next to his stomach. He found the tiny radio unit strapped near his waist. He raised his left hand and put it on the headset mike, and gently rubbed his forefinger against the padded mike pickup. “Tango, this is Frosty, do you copy?” he murmured, caressing the mike with his finger.

  “Frosty … Skkhh … Tango, we … shhkk … please give your …” he heard through the headphones.

  “Tango, this is Frosty, do you copy?” Shaw repeated. He listened to a few more garbled words, then he calmly switched off the radio, pulled the headset out from under his cap and laid it around the base of his neck. He pulled his poles out of the snow, pushed his right foot ahead, planted his right pole next to it, pulled forward as he pushed off with his left foot and pole, and continued his journey down the trail.

  Shaw skied around a shallow curve in the snowed-over roadway and found himself at the top of a sharp rise. Far below was the top of a scenic overlook. Just beyond that, to the left, was the intersection of the North Road cut-off trail, leading to Balance Rock Road. He stopped here and scanned both sides of the trail before finding what he was looking for: a large boulder just off the right side of the trail, a perfect natural blind. He skied off the path to the boulder and checked its position. Perfect. He could see straight down the rise, but was himself concealed by the boulder.

  He unlocked the toes of his skis, pulled his boots loose from the bindings, and carefully laid the skis and the poles against the side of the boulder. Then, kneeling behind the huge granite rock, he unshouldered the Heckler and Koch and assumed a sniper’s crouch, resting his right elbow on his knee, his right hand supporting the rifle’s plastic stock.

  He switched on the built-in Starlight scope and peered through the eyepiece. An early twilight was falling on the mountainside, but the scope magnified the available sunlight filtering through the storm clouds, rendering the trail as clear as if it were noontime on an uncloudy day. Shaw spent a few minutes fine-tuning the sight, aligning the electronic crosshairs on a distant tree stump, then he switched the fire-control lever to single-shot and settled down to wait. The snow hissed around him. Except for the moaning wind, the silence was almost complete.

  His timing had been good; he did not have to wait longer than fifteen minutes before Weyler made his appearance. It had taken him about this long to make his way uphill, from the first cut-offs on the lower trails at the base of the mountain to Balance Rock Road, then up the snow-packed roadway to the more difficult grade of the North Road trail. As Shaw watched, a lone skier emerged from the forest.

  Charlie Weyler paused at the overlook, perhaps to catch his breath, then began to struggle up the sharp rise. Leaning forward, laboriously planting his poles in front of him as he herringboned his skis one step at a time, he forced his way up the trail. The wind rippled the loose red fabric of his ski parka and tossed the absurd orange pommel on the top of his cap. There was something dangling on a strap under his right armpit. Shaw could not clearly see what it was, but he had little trouble making a good guess.

  Shaw waited until Weyler was about fifty yards from his position, studying him through the cross-hairs of his scope, before he decided that it was time.

  “Weyler!” he shouted.

  Weyler’s response was automatic. He dropped his poles, simultaneously kicked his racing boots out of his bindings,
and hurled himself to the right, heading for the trees. Right move, maybe, but definitely in the wrong direction. Shaw let Weyler get a few feet, then he carefully swung his rifle to the right and squeezed the trigger twice. There was barely any recoil, little more noise than two loud grunts, but two caseless Dynamit Nobel rounds slammed into the trunk of a birch about three feet from Weyler.

  Weyler stopped and whirled around, swinging up the Ingram MAC-10 submachine gun Shaw had figured he would be packing. Crouching low, Weyler swung the Ingram in an arch from left to right. The compact gun snarled and .45 calibre bullets chopped through the trees. A couple of shells ricocheted off the boulder in front of Shaw, but the FBI agent only ducked back a little. Weyler was firing blind.

  “Are you through yet, Charlie?” Shaw shouted.

  Weyler held his crouch, defensively moving his gun back and forth, but not firing. “Is that you, Shaw?” he shouted back.

  “I want the chip and the disk, Charlie,” Shaw called back. “Drop ’em on the path and you get to live.”

  Weyler was nervously glancing in Shaw’s general direction. “That was you in the garage, wasn’t it?” he said loudly. “What’s the matter, don’t you guys trust me?”

  “You sold out to the Chinese, pal,” Shaw answered. “That was really stupid. I’m making sure you keep your first deal. Dump the chip and the disc in front of you, then you can take the trail down the other side to Harrington Farm. Your other car’s still down there, I checked for you this morning.”

  Weyler was still hesitating, but now he was looking straight at Shaw’s boulder. He had focused in on the sound of Shaw’s voice. “Don’t be a jerk, Charlie,” Shaw said. “Do it now or you’re screwed.”

  Shaw carefully flipped the fire-control lever over to full-auto. He watched through his scope as Weyler, keeping his right hand on his gun, carefully reached his left hand around to his right pocket. Ripping open the Velcro flap, he reached inside and first pulled out a small grey capsule. He slowly pulled it out and stuck one end into the snow, then he withdrew a 3.5-inch plastic computer diskette and dropped it on the ground next to the capsule containing the Oz Chip prototype.