by Dean Ing
Gary flexed his hand carefully, and then punched the code in, and the gate began to slide open. He felt himself propelled outside; watched the man toss his old jacket into the car; then he was made to lie across the Ford's sloping hood, holding on with one hand, as the man drove the car slowly around and through the opening. He almost fell off as the car stopped, the driver still armed and watching as he stepped back to the shack to retrieve the hat with a flick of his hand. Gary knew the monitor at Wickham's station would not show the edge of the open gate; its field of view was limited to things outside the gate. You weren't supposed to have to worry much about what went on inside.
The man parked near the lowered doors of Blue Hangar, which had been partitioned off a week before so that even the guards could not see what was in half of it. The Ford stood where perimeter arc lights permitted a slice of shadow, before the guy got out and whipped the tape from Gary's mouth. Gary began to wonder how much the bastard already knew about the place. Evidently quite a bit: "Who's your shift captain, and how many others on this shift?"
Gary swallowed. "Too many. Look, face it, buddy, you better quit while—"
That was as far as he got before the man backhanded him, grabbing him by the collar, leading him to the passenger's side of the Ford where the woman still slept. "You face this," said the man. "I succeed: I leave the woman with you and we all live. I fail: we all die, no ifs, ands, or buts. That's a promise. It means you and I are on the same side. Which do we do, live or die?"
"Shit," Gary muttered. "Shift captain is Cully Wickham, he's probably at the comm center. Gabe Trotti's the other man. Makes his rounds on a weird schedule the comm center gives us."
"Stays with the shift captain between rounds?"
"How'd you know?" asked Gary, but got no answer.
His captor was silent for a moment, then said, "You know where the monitors are, so you know the best way for us to get to the comm center. We wait for Trotti to make his rounds and follow him back, and we all get to live. Or you screw up," he added grimly, "and we don't."
Gary nodded. "I better have my hat and coat if this is going to work," he said, wondering again if the guy was going to slip up because if he did for even an instant, by God, Gary would be on him like a coat of paint.
But the man was very careful, shifting hands as he shrugged out of the coat, keeping that evil little weapon pointed where it would give a man a new navel, roughly thirty-eight caliber. He tossed the coat, then the hat, to Gary and followed as Gary moved off toward the hangar's air-conditioning plant. Gary pulled his ID card and slipped it into the slot, then moved inside the welcoming blackness and waited, crouching. This was it, the moment when he had an advantage because he could see out but no one could see in.
A beam of light speared him, narrowing quickly; one of those little pocket Maglites, naturally, and he was caught crouching with his hands open. "I can just kill you now if this is how it's going to be," said the gunman. Gary tried to grin but failed, and flicked on the room lights knowing he'd used up all the hero in him.
Gary led the way to the stairs, hearing the tiny creaks of the metal as he moved upward to the upstairs door, the one that unlocked automatically with the fire alarm circuit but, as only the guards and Ben Ullmer knew, would also open with a guard's ID card. It had been installed as an internal fire escape for personnel in the Snake Pit library. "I'm gonna turn the lights off now," Gary said.
"Not 'til you tell me why."
"You can see light through a little crack under this door," Gary explained. "The library night lights aren't bright, but when we make our rounds we snap on the overheads for a looksee. We'll know when Trotti goes by."
"And wait a half hour or more?"
"Sometimes," Gary agreed.
"I'm double-parked," the gunman said wryly. "We go in now and take our chances."
"Yeah, what's it to you if I get killed," Gary muttered, but he inserted his card, took a deep breath, and pushed through into the big, dimly-lit room with its steel shelves, holding the very apex of a century's flight technology, that towered to the ceiling. They moved quickly to the main door with its wire-embedded window, and only a blind man would have missed the sudden flare of light from the hallway outside. Footsteps. A door open down the hall.
"Does he come in here?"
"Always, to hit the lights. He's supposed to," Gary said, as if justifying what was about to happen.
The man stepped back, hauling the roll of tape from his jacket fast enough to make Gary flinch again, and Gary might have just possibly had time for his move as the tape ripped, but then that instant was gone forever and the tape went across his mouth. It smelled like chewing gum.
"Lie flat against the wall here," the man ordered, barely above a whisper, and Gary followed orders again, now more frightened for Trotti than for himself. They weren't close friends, didn't even have the same politics; but it was almost worse watching this happen to a colleague you trusted, and who trusted you, than to get it yourself. Almost. Should he kick against the wall? Don't even think about it...
Another door opened nearer, and soon closed, and then Gary heard the distinct click-step, click-step of Trotti's shoes with those damned taps he wore to keep his heels from wearing.
Then the swish of an ID card, a faint clack, and the nearside door opened because as always Trotti walked two paces to the main light switch, and with his chin on the tiles, Gary saw the door swing shut but Trotti did not look around at the gunman standing fully in the open behind him, the automatic now in his left hand.
When Trotti did turn, the man hit him a terrible blow just below the sternum, his right fist coming from thigh height and plunging deep into poor Gabe Trotti's soft gut, and if the gunman hadn't snatched at Trotti's coat lapel, Gabe would have sprawled across a row of chairs. Gabe's feet turned inward, almost dancing really, as he bent double with both hands clutching his belly, hat falling to the floor, Gabe's bald spot comically and pathetically revealed.
"Down," said the gunman, and kicked Trotti's ankle, keeping him from a loud fall by that pitiless lapel grip. Trotti went down on one side in a fetal position, trying to breathe with a diaphragm that was almost totally paralyzed. Gary, who had two older brothers, knew that you didn't die from a hard right to the gizzard. You just felt like you were going to, and you could no more call for help than you could fart Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
With a quick, hard look toward Gary, the gunman stood over his new victim and tore off strips of tape while Trotti began to gasp a little air, sticking one edge of each strip neatly to the edge of the nearest reading table. That little detail was the thing that made Gary Macallister hate him the most, the way he did everything as if he'd thought it out coldly, maybe done it a thousand times before.
Then he knelt, shifting his gaze to Gary now and then, but talking to Gabe Trotti. "Make one noise and you'll never make another," he said, the pistol aligned along Trotti's big Italian beak. "Breathe through your nose, now," he added, and fitted the tape cruelly over Trotti's little mustache.
Trotti's hands came up, but weakly, and though it was a struggle for a moment with that tape flicking and sticking while Trotti tried to ward it off, it was never much of a contest and soon his wrists were bound behind him. The ankles went even faster but at least, Gary thought, poor old Gabe was breathing well enough to get his color back. His face was a deep red, in fact, as the gunman trussed his ankles to his belt.
By now, the big roll of silver tape was smaller than it had been, and as the gunman looked at the roll, Gary thought that monstrous face would be smiling without the pantyhose. After a practiced glance at the table legs, the man eased two chairs away, dragging Trotti on his belly so that the table legs exactly flanked Trotti's bent elbows.
It took a moment for Gary to see the logic of it, but when tape linked each elbow to a table leg, and with his knees bent back, there was no way Gabe Trotti could go anywhere, not even bang his feet. Of course a man could bang his nose against the tile, if he we
re so inclined.
"Now you," said the man, gesturing with the automatic toward Gary. "But first give me your ID card. And remember if I have to kill any of you, every one of you gets it."
At least Gary didn't have to lie facing Gabe's furious gaze. With his elbows taped to the legs of another table, he wondered what the rustling signified until he managed to turn his head as the gunman stepped into the hall. His shoes stuck out of his hip pockets and he wore Gabe Trotti's brogans, unlaced, their heels tapping a false message as they moved off.
Gary kept expecting gunfire, hearing only his and Trotti's breathing, until two sets of footsteps echoed in the corridor a few minutes later. The gunman knew how to use an ID card, shoving an enraged Cully Wickham through the door ahead of him. Gary saw, as the gunman forced Cully to lie prone beside a third table, that the shift captain's wrists and mouth were already taped.
Wickham's mistake was trying to kick as the tape circled his ankles. The man knelt on Wickham's back, bouncing his forehead off the floor with his free hand. "Suit yourself, if you want more of this," he said, ignoring Cully's groans. Gary had often wished he could give Wickham a whack like that. Now that somebody had, Gary could only feel helpless rage over it.
Moments later, Cully Wickham lay secured under the heavy table, facing away from the others. Gary could not see the gunman now, but watched as Trotti's shoes dropped to the floor. He did see the man as he stopped in the corridor doorway.
The guy must've been on a tight schedule because he was checking his wristwatch as he spoke. "I'll be back now and then to check. The man who has managed to get even one arm loose will get a slug through his kneecap. Think about it," he added darkly, and Gary heard his pace quicken in the corridor.
It was so quiet after that, Gary knew when the phone rang downstairs fifteen minutes later. It stopped, then began again and went on ringing for a long time, the loneliest sound Gary Macallister had ever heard. Shortly afterward, the gunman ducked into the library again, said, "You three just may make it," and left on the run.
It must have been another ten minutes before Gary heard the soft thrumm of a big motor and creakings of metal. It sounded like hangar doors opening but that didn't figure, unless the guy was driving his Ford inside Blue Hangar to hide it. For sure, he couldn't tow those long-winged aircraft away through the gate, and rumor had it that nobody on earth really knew how to fly them.
The two-tone hoots of sirens were so faint at first that Gary thought he was imagining them. But the sounds grew fast, so fast that the chuffing that abruptly started to reverberate from the hangar was soon drowned out, and when he heard tires squalling outside Gary expected to see the gunman burst into the library, back to his hostages. Maybe, Gary thought as feet pounded up the corridor stairs, the guy would be content with the girl in the black Ford.
In the ferocious tumult of the next two hours, Gary Macallister kept asking if the gunman had gone over the fence. It was two hours before someone told him exactly how the guy had gone over it.
TWELVE
"They would've had him if it wasn't for those goddamn sirens," said Ben Ullmer, stepping aside for a shirtsleeved forensics tech. The black Nikes and jeans were the last things Ben had expected on a fed, but the forensics man's blue wind-breaker left no doubt with its huge white FBI lettering across the back. They were all over the hangar by first light, stretching yellow bands of tape to cordon off areas of interest, leaving only a corridor for foot traffic through most of Blue Hangar. "Did you know a guy in the lead car said he saw something big lift off the runway as they were driving past the main gate?"
Dar Weston nodded, blinking away the sensation of hot dust under his eyelids. He had taken the Lear to Elmira after Ben's call without waiting for details, taking only Terry Unruh because Terry was the one man under him who already knew about Black Stealth One. And how many will know by noon? A thousand? A million? "If he didn't finish fueling up, he might be safely on the ground by now," Dar said.
"Count on it," said Ben, "if he hasn't augured it in. Since he doesn't have wet wings, the tank holds only twenty gallons and the hellbug cruises at six gallons an hour. 'Course, he could stretch his range by loafing along; but I don't much think this guy's a loafer."
For the first time since he stepped from the Lear, the CIA man found a trace of hope. "Without long-range tanks, we still might have a crack at him. With a hostage along, what does that do to his range?"
"Not much," Ben admitted. "Let me show you on the wall map," he added, pointing to a section of hangar wall which abutted the offices. A set of air navigation charts had been pasted together, yielding a map big enough to require the ladder that leaned against it.
"Be there in a minute," Dar said, looked for Terry Unruh's blond mop of hair and black down-filled jacket, waving as Unruh saw him. The lank Unruh broke off his discussion with a man whose three-piece suit said FBI more clearly than any lettering, and walked quickly to meet Dar. One thing about Unruh, those pale blue eyes could watch a dozen things at once. Damned good man, Terry Unruh, with a Master's in chem engineering and twenty years in the Company but with two strikes against his rising higher.
Strike one: his involvement with drugs many years before, as an undergrad toying with the kinds of chemicals that could alter your metabolism in funny ways.
Strike two: his lying about it. They'd found out during an annual "flutter," the polygraph tests given to Company men in the ranks. In the old days, Terry might've been fired, especially since he'd passed the flutter on those same questions before. But then the Company had fired Ed Howard, who had gone straight to the Sovs in revenge. These days, a man with Terry Unruh's old sins might be kept—but not promoted too far.
"How are you getting along?" Dar asked, not loud enough to carry.
"You'd think we were on the Other Side," Unruh said, with a baleful glance toward the FBI techs who were working the hangar floor over with cordless Dust Busters, changing bags often, inscribing each bag.
"We are, in a trivial sense," Dar replied. "I don't have to tell you how long the Feebs have been waiting for a chance to show us up. This is domestic federal crime, so I can't fault Ullmer for calling them in. Just keep smiling, and bring me any salient detail that turns up."
"Not to step on any toes, Dar, but the plumbing for this operation has got to change radically, and fast. Won't we need an ops center for this? It's going to get big," Unruh said a bit defensively.
"I know; and don't be so afraid to tell me when my fly is open," Dar said, patting the man's shoulder lightly. "As it happens, we've got a good location below that big wall map and we've got to share control with NSA. Ben Ullmer won't complain if you set it up, he's got more important worries and so do I. Get someone to rig partitions and scrambled extension phones; coffee, tables and chairs, the usual. I'll trust you to do it right. Just remember I'm going to be mobile as hell."
That was the way to keep your man happy without promoting him, Dar reflected while walking to the map. Give him his head, let him enjoy the job, and praise him when he does it right. Of course, that presupposed an employee who was both smart and dedicated. Unruh fitted those specs so well it was almost frightening.
Dar could see from reflected glare that the sprawling map, which Ullmer had begun to attack with a felt-tip pen, was overlaid by a thin layer of transparent plastic. Ullmer, his half glasses perched far down on his nose, leaned back on the ladder for a better look and nearly fell.
"Careful," Dar said, one hand reaching up to push against the NSA man's buttocks. "This country has never needed you so healthy as it needs you now, Ben."
Ullmer only grunted and finished drawing an arc, using a hand-lettered tape to define a radius outward from Elmira. "This line is the hellbug's range from two a.m. to maybe dawn. Four hundred miles," he said. "Maybe five hundred if he throttled back for minimum fuel consumption. Top speed's about a hundred and fifty knots, but you save a lot of fuel by throttling back."
Dar watched the longer arc take shape. "So he c
ould already be in the edge of Ontario, or near the North Carolina border, if he's really good."
Ullmer stepped down and folded his arms as both men stared at the map. "He's the best. He'd have to be, just to get the hellbug out of the hangar and into the air, first time he ever saw it. I would've said it couldn't be done by anybody who didn't know the hellbug inside out."
"Are all your people accounted for?"
"We're tracing a pair on vacation; neither of 'em flies, so far as we know. If you mean Raoul Medina, shit, he's in my office getting sweated by our people. He was home in bed—and not alone, either. Mad as hell; can't much blame the guy. They say he drove like a maniac getting here."
"We've got to blame somebody," Dar muttered, "starting with me in the Company and Sheppard in NSA."
Ullmer unwrapped a cigar, turning his head slowly, his voice gruff: "This wasn't the plan. Or was it?"
"Christ, no! But the Other Side is primed and ready to take what we offered as Black Stealth One. This"—Dar waved toward the forensics men—"may mean they were readier than we thought. Who's to say the pilot hasn't already landed in Quebec or on some Russian trawler?"
"Quebec, maybe. Not a trawler; the hellbug's wings are too long and they're bonded on. Have to saw 'em off to get it into a cargo hold, even if the son of a bitch could land it vertically, which I doubt. Even Medina admits she's a handful to hover. And I tell you for flat-ass certain, Medina hasn't checked out anybody else. Hasn't even been here past his usual shift; too busy chasing nookie."
"Well, we're all going to be damned busy chasing Black Stealth One, Ben. God knows where I'll be by this time tomorrow."
"I'll be with you. Wife's already packed my bag." Ullmer saw doubt in the CIA man's face and flushed. "I'm no older than you are, Weston, and nobody knows what that airplane can do better than me. Who the fuck else is better qualified to hunt it down?"
Dar held his palms up and out as if warming them with the heat of Ullmer's objection. "Point taken, Ben. But pretty soon, your runway is going to look like Dulles International and we're going to have to start looking like a team with a plan. I'm open for ideas."