by Rick Cook
“You can pick us up at the airport,” Jerry said. “Day is probably better than night. It’s the destination that’s a little tricky.”
“Where you going?”
“Uh, Groom Lake, Area Fifty-One.”
“Just outside inner fence toward the end of runway,” Kuznetzov added, leaning over from his table.
Charlie looked at the Russian narrowly. “This cargo don’t explode does it? ’Cause as a patriotic American and a veteran of four wars I don’t hold with blowing up US air bases.”
“It doesn’t explode,” Jerry assured him. Then he thought of the Las Vegas police car. “Well, not unless you get her angry.”
“Her?”
“The cargo’s kind of livestock.”
“I may charge you boys extra for mucking out the airplane. Can this thing be trusted to use a sick sack?”
“Well, she’s a flying creature anyway,” Jerry said, “so I don’t think she’s subject to airsickness.”
“What the hell is this critter?” Charlie roared, just as the music ended and there was a lull in the casino racket. “A five-hundred-pound canary?”
Suddenly half the people in the bar were looking at them.
Jerry turned beet red under the attention. “Uh, something like that,” he whispered.
Charlie grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Boys,” he boomed, “I think I’m gonna enjoy this little trip.”
Looking at their pilot, Jerry wasn’t so sure he would be able to say the same.
Fifteen
Biplane Bye-Bye
The morning was bright, cold and crystal clear. The mountains on the other side of the airport looked like they were only a mile away.
When the truck pulled up to the gate on the general aviation side of the field, Jerry and Taj were in the front seat as the least conspicuous of the group. Moira, the Russians, Taj and Bal-Simba were in the back.
The guard came out of the shack huddled in his flight jacket, his breath leaving little puffs in the frosty air. He kept his hands in his pockets until he needed one to hand the clipboard under his arm up to the cab.
There was a sign by the gate informing them that all vehicles were subject to search when entering and leaving. For an instant Jerry was afraid the guard was going to ask to look in the back of the truck, but he only nodded as he retrieved his clipboard.
They’d be more likely to check them on the way out, Jerry decided. But that didn’t matter.
Jerry pulled the truck into a parking space in back of a row of tan metal hangars. Although there were a number of cars in the parking lot, the place looked deserted. Then he remembered that pilots liked to take off at dawn. Those cars probably belonged to people who were already airborne.
Quickly Jerry and Taj rolled up the truck’s tailgate. “Okay. We’re here.”
“About tune,” Kuznetzov said as he hopped down. “The dragon is getting carsick.”
Moira followed him out, gulping deep lungfuls of air and looking decidedly green around the gills, even for a dragon. “I am sorry, My Lord. I am not used to riding in closed conveyances and this body is unwell.”
“No harm done,” Gilligan assured her.
“But five minutes more . . .”
“Never mind that,” Jerry cut the Russian off. “Let’s go find our ride.”
Just at that moment Charlie came around the corner of the hangar wiping his hands on a rag. In the light of day his orange jumpsuit looked even gaudier than it had in the cocktail lounge. He saw Moira, did a double take and got his composure back.
“You folks ready to go?” he asked, staying well clear of the dragon.
“All set,” Jerry assured him.
Charlie eyed Moira. “Don’t you need a leash for that thing?”
“I am quite under control, thank you.” Moira said with a sniff.
“Holy shit! She talks! Uh, no offense ma’am.”
The dragon nodded. “None taken.”
“Well, come on then. I got her gassed, oiled and pre-flighted. She’s right around here.”
Charlie led them around the hangar and pointed proudly. Although the ramp was occupied by the usual gaggle of Pipers, Cessnas and Mooneys it was obvious to all of them what he was pointing at.
It was a biplane. A very big biplane with an enclosed cabin, a radial engine and a dull-green paint job. Next to the civilian registration numbers on the body was a large red star. “AN-2 Colt,” Charlie announced proudly.
“That’s a Russian plane!” Gilligan almost shouted.
“This one’s Polish, actually,” Charlie told him. “Design’s Russian though.”
Mick groaned. “We’re going to fly into a restricted area in a Russian plane.” He looked over at Kuznetzov. “Why didn’t you get us a Mig 29 escort while you’re at it?”
“No Mig 29s in town until air show next week,” the Russian deadpanned. “Besides, we cannot get dragon into a Mig 29.”
Mick just shook his head and turned away.
“Be reasonable, Mick,” Kuznetzov said. “There are not many planes that can carry all this and still land in dirt.”
“Reasonable?” Gilligan yelped. “You’re asking me to be reasonable?”
“Ivan’s right,” Charlie said cheerfully. “These babies were made for hauling cargo in and out of rough fields. She’ll land on a dime and give you back a nickel’s change.”
“Besides, I don’t think we’ve got much choice,” Jerry said. “There’s no time to find another plane and we’re probably going to have company faster than that.”
Gilligan looked at the others and his shoulders slumped. “That thing’s got a radar cross-section like a barn door.”
Charlie grinned appreciatively but Gilligan just snorted. “What about you?” he asked Charlie. “Are you gonna come all the way?”
“They don’t have airplanes in this place?” Charlie asked.
“No,” Jerry told him. “Just dragons.”
“Dragons, hell!” He nodded to Moira. “Uh, no offense ma’am but it don’t sound like my kind of place. I’ll just drop you folks off.” He took a map from the leg pocket of his flight suit and unfolded it on the ground nailing a corner of it with his knee.
“Okay,” he said as the others gathered around, “our best shot is to head north to about here.” He stabbed a finger down on the map. “Then we drop to minimum altitude, pop over that ridge and run straight for the target.”
“How fast can they intercept us?” Jerry asked.
“Fast,” Kuznetzov put in. “Once they see us, first fighters arrive in three point five minutes.”
Gilligan looked at the Russian oddly, but he was oblivious.
“Now the way I figure it,” Charlie went on, “we can get to this place with, oh, two-three minutes to spare.” He looked at Gilligan and his friends. “But son, this dingus of yours had better work because there’s no way in hell we are gonna get back out.”
“How are you going to explain this?”
“Simple. I’ll tell them I was drunk and I did it on a bar bet.” He smiled broadly. “No way in hell they won’t believe me. You people were just sightseers who were along for the ride. You didn’t know what I was gonna do until I did it”
“You know you’re going to lose your license over this.”
The old man’s grin faded. “Son, I’m gonna have to give it up when I take my physical next month anyway. When this is over I’ll move to Costa Rica or someplace where they don’t have all these pissant rules for pilots.”
There was also an excellent chance he would go to jail, but Gilligan didn’t mention that.
“Don’t worry, it will work out.” He glanced over Gilligan’s shoulder toward the rear of the plane. “As long as that talking lizard isn’t around. I’m a good bullshitter, but I’m not that good.”
“That’s okay,” Jerry told him. “She won’t be there when the cops arrive and neither will we.”
“Well, let’s do it people,” Charlie said. “I hear sirens and I don�
�t think they’re fire engines.” He looked at Gilligan. “You take the right-hand seat with me. The rest of you get in the back.”
“That ground isn’t that smooth,” Gilligan said as Charlie refolded the map. “We’re gonna land pretty rough.”
“Nah, don’t worry,” Charlie said. “They built these things in a tractor factory.”
“Actually tank factory,” Kuznetzov told him. “Tractor factory was cover story.”
The sirens were getting closer. Jerry looked back toward where the truck was parked.
“Now what?” Kuznetzov demanded.
“I was just thinking. We really should turn the truck back in. Or at least call them to tell them where they can pick it up.”
“Jerry.”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up and get in the damn plane.”
As Jerry scrambled aboard and Vasily slammed the door behind him, Charlie reached down and hit the starter. The big Kuznetzov radial chuffed two or three times as compressed air from the starter tank turned it over. Then one cylinder caught and fired, then two more and then the aircraft was filled with the roar of the engine.
Slowly, the plane turned out of its tie-down spot and started down the taxiway. Charlie used the rudder pedals to wiggle the nose from side to side so he could make sure the way was clear. From instinct Mick swiveled his head to check for possible interference. The older man was talking into his headset, obviously communicating with the tower, but Mick couldn’t make out the words over the engine.
They reached the turn-in and Charlie ran up the engine while standing on the brakes, scanning the gauges as he did so. Satisfied, he backed off on the throttle and turned the plane onto the runway.
“Okay folks, here we go,” Charlie bellowed over his shoulder and shoved the throttle forward again. The engine noise rose to a crescendo and the big biplane began to gather speed. Out his side window Mick could see a couple of police cars coming out onto the field with their red and blue lights flashing.
If those damn police cars don’t interfere, he thought.
It occurred to Mick, who hadn’t had so much as a parking ticket since he sold his sports car, that he was now involved in about half a dozen felonies. He found it was an odd sensation. He also realized he didn’t much care, not if it got him back to Karin and a place where magic and dragons ruled the skies.
The police never had a chance. In what Mick thought was a suicidally short distance, at what he was sure was an insanely low airspeed, Charlie hauled back on the wheel and the plane swooped into the air, hanging on the big prop. Lift and thrust battled drag and gravity and for a stomach-hurting instant Mick was sure gravity would win. Then the plane seemed to find itself, steadied, and began to climb like a contented cow on a hilly pasture. Now the only way to stop them was to shoot them down, Mick thought.
Then he remembered that could very easily happen.
Sixteen
Lord of the Flies and the Lord of the Fliers
It was the flies, Peter Hanborn told himself. I’m being punished for the flies.
He was a thin, serious man with intent brown eyes behind heavy spectacles, He was not yet thirty but his increasing baldness made him look ten years older. Just now he felt about a hundred years older.
Well, damn it, an endangered species is an endangered species. And the Southern Nevada Garbage Fly was certainly endangered. He still didn’t regret his attempt to get the fly listed under the Endangered Species Act, despite the hundreds of editorials, two Congressional inquiries and thousands of angry letters which had deluged his department as a result. To this day he didn’t accept the taxonomists’ opinion that his proposed endangered species was really just a sub-population of ordinary house flies with a slightly different distribution of characteristics as a result of generations of breeding in a landfill in the middle of the desert.
But that didn’t mean he was looking forward to this. He glanced over at McWilliams, the government’s counsel for the petition. The older man seemed as cool and unruffled as if this were an ordinary case instead of this, this travesty. At least I had solid population data when I made my proposal, Hanborn thought. This thing wasn’t even supported by a headline in the National Enquirer.
Not that there wouldn’t be headlines in the Enquirer, not to mention the Weekly World News and every fringe publication from here to London. Twisting around to look at the half-dozen spectators on the hard wooden benches he wondered which of them was the stringer for the tabloids.
The state was opposing the motion, naturally. They considered it such an open-and-shut case they sent their newest attorney, a kid named Sculley, to handle it. It didn’t help that Sculley looked and acted like Jimmy Olsen from the old Superman comics.
Hanborn was so sunk in his own misery that he missed the bailiff entering the courtroom and had to scramble awkwardly at his announcement.
“All rise. Court is now in session. The honorable Judge Margaret Schumann presiding.”
Judge Schumann was a tall, slender woman with iron-gray hair and a demeanor to match. “Be seated.”
It had to be Maximum Mazie, Hanborn thought miserably as he sagged back in his seat. Now there was a very real possibility he would not only be a laughingstock, he would go to jail as well. He slumped even further until he was almost sitting on his shoulder blades.
Judge Schumann was oblivious. “Counsel ready?” she asked, flipping through her copy of the petition. Both lawyers rose and nodded. “Let’s begin then. Now the government,” she gestured at McWilliams, “wants an injunction to protect a new and possibly endangered species. The state opposes, is that correct?”
“It is, your honor,” Sculley said. “We feel—”
“We’ll get to what you feel in a minute, Mr. Sculley.” She kept her attention on McWilliams. “Doesn’t the Endangered Species Act have provisions for emergency listing of a species?”
“It does your honor,” McWilliams said, “but we are asking for protection for this animal until the emergency provisions can be invoked. We have reason to believe that the few surviving members of the species, perhaps the entire remnant population, is in immediate and dire danger.”
“Your honor,” Sculley cut in. “The state contends that if this animal does in fact exist there is absolutely no evidence to show that it is entitled to protection under the Endangered Species Act. Further, the thing, if it exists, is dangerous and the state must be able to protect its citizens.”
Judge Margaret (Maximum Mazie) Schumann hadn’t made it to the federal bench without a finely tuned set of antennae. These endangered species cases were tricky. They usually meant someone was trying to build something someone else didn’t like. In Las Vegas, where development was nearly as big an industry as gambling, that usually meant a lot of money was at stake. It was even worse when you were asked to issue an injunction for an animal that wasn’t even officially listed as endangered. Besides which, she recognized the clown sitting beside the government’s lawyer as the nut who tried to get the flies at the local landfill declared an endangered species.
“Someone trying to build a golf course?”
“No, Your Honor. The species is being hunted to possible extinction by the Las Vegas police.”
“What is this thing? King Kong?”
A couple of spectators chuckled.
“It’s, uh, a reptile,” the plaintiff’s council said. He looked at his Fish and Wildlife expert for support.
“A large reptile,” Hanborn added miserably.
For the first time the judge looked interested “What kind of reptile?”
“Uh, if Your Honor will just read Exhibit A attached to the petition you’ll find a description.”
Judge Schumann flipped through the document. Reptile, large, species unknown. Wings . . .
Maximum Mazie Schumann jerked her head up and slammed her gavel down. “Court’s in recess.” She glared down at the counsels’ tables. “I want to see the parties in my chambers. Now.”
Mazie Schum
ann had started out as a dancer in the Las Vegas shows. While she was strutting it by night she went to college by day and then to the University of Nevada law school. When she graduated she traded feathers and beads for a gray wool suit and a job with the Clark County District Attorney’s Office. Thanks to her abilities, drive and political skill she eventually wound up on the Federal District bench. If she was not a towering legal scholar, she was smart, politically savvy, and a hard-boiled no-nonsense judge who retained a streak of the theatrical. The media loved her, lawyers respected her, criminals feared her and nobody, but nobody, trifled with her.
Just now Maximum Mazie felt she was being trifled with.
“Now,” she demanded as soon as her clerk closed the door to her office. “What the hell is this? A publicity stunt for a casino?”
“No, Your Honor,” McWilliams said smoothly, “it’s not a publicity stunt. It’s . . .”
“Crap,” Judge Schumann finished. “That’s what this is. Mr. McWilliams, do you know how long it takes to bring a civil case to trial in this district?”
McWilliams knew almost to the day, but he also knew when to shut up and take his licking. “No, Your Honor.”
“Nearly two years. Two blessed years to get a serious case to trial and you come marching in here wasting this court’s time with crap. I know a load of crap when I see it. And this,” she said, tapping the petition with a blood-red fingernail, “is prime-cut, table-grade crap.”
“Precisely, Your Honor,” Sculley said. “That has been the state’s contention . . .”
“Don’t gloat, counselor. You’re as much a part of this as they are.” Sculley went from gloating to wilting in one smooth transition.
Judge Schumann cocked an eye at McWilliams. “Anything from the petitioner?” McWilliams was more experienced than Sculley and he knew when to keep his mouth shut. Hanborn shrank into his chair and devoutly wished he was somewhere, anywhere, else.
“All right. I’m going to grant this petition. That makes it a matter of public record. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the newspapers don’t get hold of this.” She glared at Hanborn and McWilliams. “As a judge I can’t comment on the matter to the media. That means you two will have to explain this pile of horse apples to the taxpayers.”