by Dean Ing
"Comrade Major Vins, under Bulgarian cover, had a face-to-face with the American," said Maksimov, and turned to the man behind him. "Your assessment?"
"Latino, American citizen, former military pilot; real name Raoul Medina," said Vins softly, as though reading from some dull text. "He is probably what he claims, the test pilot for the stealth craft. Courage of the kind they call machismo, which is the kind that can demand more of a man than he can give. Such a man might commit a great crime ahead of schedule because he feels his nerve running out, or simply because of some unforeseen factor that tells him, 'now or never.' His car is parked at the facility in Elmira. I would say he is an unlikely decoy," Vins ended with the merest trace of humor.
Suslov, who had been thinking exactly that: "Why not?"
"The Americans avoid putting nonprofessionals at risk," said Vins, to whom there was only one profession. "And American professionals have some tradecraft. This man Medina is clever and determined, but as to professional tradecraft? Aaah," he said, now smiling as he waved a hand lazily. The smile faded with, "But could Medina be some decoy, a superb actor? We proceed with that possibility in mind."
Karotkin caught the implication and knew that the GRU had received sanction for the job while the KGB was still wondering. But damned if he would show irritation. "Then we do proceed as planned. You have little time to spare if you intend to meet the American in Mexico, comrade Major."
"Or," Suslov put in smoothly, "he may have more time than we thought." He glanced down at the notebook on his knee, placing the point of his pen on the left-hand margins of three lines as if completing a ritual. "Since dawn this morning, my people have had more traffic intercepts on data collection channels than we can handle. As you know, we can draw many conclusions even when we cannot decrypt a given message."
Karotkin was annotating and stacking cards, expressionless, probably angry because Suslov had not briefed him in advance. He would have to smooth Karotkin's ruffled feathers later by proving that there had been no time for it. The others waited politely until Suslov went on. "That Elmira facility is crawling with American operatives. They have a jet-fuel truck on that little runway to handle all the executive jets shuttling in there. Every military aircraft within five hundred miles of Elmira seems to be on alert status—including Canadians, who evidently have been alerted as well.
"Some air national guard personnel have been placed on standby. Each state governor is the commander-in-chief of that state's national guard, and usually honors requests by the White House. If you can believe this, comrades, some of the traffic from a state governor is by telephone, unencrypted and clear. We intercepted two interesting bits, clear unscrambled English, in Virginia and Kentucky: their Civil Air Patrols were asked to stand by for a search for a stolen aircraft. Believe it or not, they refused."
"Refused?" It was possible to surprise Vins, after all.
Suslov chuckled. "Their Civil Air Patrol does not take part in law enforcement, nor does it search for a downed aircraft with no flight plan or other known flight corridor. But a governor also alerts the state police, which operates some small aircraft and rotary-wing craft. From what we can determine, everything that flies under military control in that region is on alert status."
Maksimov snapped, "What region? Black Stealth One is supposed to have transcontinental range."
"A five-hundred-mile radius from Elmira. Comrade Colonel, they seem to know it will be in that area," said Suslov. "So far, they have made no statement to the press but as soon as they do, our man Melnik will be in on the chase."
Maksimov, perhaps the slightest bit amused: "You are waiting for a statement from the NSA? American presidents have grown old waiting for that."
"We have already telephoned anonymous tips to The Washington Post and Aviation Week, comrade Colonel. The American press will not long be denied," Suslov joked.
Maksimov stroked his chin. "Why would we want this in their press?"
"Because"—Suslov smiled—"it will create more confusion, while ruining the careers of their most experienced men."
Maksimov shrugged away this news as if such matters were for bureaucrats, below the notice of a warrior. "I am thinking that the aircraft's range may be a factor if Medina was forced to liberate Black Stealth One before its long-range tanks were fitted."
"Or perhaps the aircraft will not take off with those tanks full," Vins said. "It would not be the first time a military design in the field failed to meet the designer's hopes." His tone suggested that he had faced the same problem more than once.
Karotkin had kept his silence until he had something to add. Now he said, "If that search area expands geometrically before the day ends, we can guess that Black Stealth One does not have long-range ranks, and is being refueled on the ground."
"The one thing that bothers me is that our thief expects to refuel it while the country's entire body of law enforcement is chasing him." The notion offended Suslov's sense of order, of propriety. "The man is insane."
"Not chasing him, but searching for him. I am not sure you fully appreciate the difference, comrade," said Vins in that deceptive soft murmur. To the KGB men this was a goad because, as was well known, GRU field operatives trained for years to elude pursuers and, more important still, to avoid being spotted in the first place.
"In any case, comrade Major Vins will be on a commercial flight to Mexico City in two hours," said Maksimov quickly, with a glance at Vins which might have been a warning about manners. "He will need time to brief the team we are bringing in from Cuba. Unless Black Stealth One is much faster than the American search pattern indicates, they will be in place in western Mexico with time to spare. The rendezvous with the American is an old airstrip bordering a coastal swamp down the coast from Mazatlan, near a village called, ah, Llano Mojado. An ideal spot to load an aircraft onto an ocean-going cargo craft."
Karotkin's fingers scuttled for fresh cards as he said, "I should think we could simply fly it to a safer place."
"Several problems there," the colonel sighed. "We dare not risk crashing it before we have thoroughly examined it, and that cannot be done in a Mexican swamp. Besides, the Llano Mojado rendezvous is politically more expedient if the operation becomes a proval, a calamity. Let us say the American has worked out some way to hold on to his ransom money. We do not want him to know how or where we propose to move the aircraft."
Karotkin: "And how does a naval vessel move through a swamp?"
"An air-cushion cargo vessel," Maksimov smiled. "The team is all plausibly deniable except for two naval officers. If faced with capture, they know what is expected of them. And from there to a Nicaraguan hangar"—he shrugged—"is a matter we need not burden you with."
"Of course," Karotkin said curtly. "You seem to have accounted for all eventualities, comrade Colonel. My compliments; but as long as you have the sanction, I hope you are not counting on KGB for five million dollars' worth of Swiss francs in ransom money," he finished with some smugness.
"That small detail is already in flight by diplomatic courier," Maksimov replied, "to avoid any possible questions." Every man in the room knew that it was no small detail. The sum was wildly in excess of the usual payments made by the Soviet government to thieves. "Comrade Major Vins will sign for it in Mexico. That and certain other implements of his own choosing," he added with a heavy attempt to be droll.
Suslov: "You speak as though the payment were real. Surely—"
"Surely the GRU would not risk losing such a monster fish by using an artificial lure," Maksimov said easily. "We do not know what clever tricks this man Medina may have to satisfy himself before he makes the trade. We do know that our bait is real. Traceable by transmitters in the banding seals, but real." Maksimov saw only disbelieving stares from the KGB men, and now he spoke bluntly as if to children. "Do we want Black Stealth One more than we want the money? Yes? Then we pay its ransom!" More gently, then: "Of course, many things may happen to a thief after he runs with his ill-gotten mo
ney, comrades. Mexico is still a wild country, where a running man might be overtaken and eaten by wolves."
"Those, ah, other implements," Suslov said, the barrel of his pen raised. "Will they include two-way communication links?"
"The equipment would be too heavy," Karel Vins replied, "but I will carry a flashlight adaptable as a burst transmitter. What I need from you is a schedule of uplink windows."
Suslov nodded and stood up. He would have no difficulty providing a schedule listing the times, or "windows," when atmosphere-grazing Soviet satellites would be staring down at Western Mexico. And certainly Suslov was not about to comment on the fact that the vawlk could choose to transmit progress reports during this operation, but not to receive instructions. If Colonel Maksimov trusted him with millions in cash, surely Vins was on an inside track to the top. And one did not question the loyalty of such a man in his own presence.
FIFTEEN
"Corbett? Doesn't ring a bell," said Corbett, certain that his denial was pointless but trying it for luck. He frowned at his video display, pretending that it held most of his attention as he continued to try access codes. He wore a tiny earpiece in his left ear with a microphone boom and a slender cable that snaked across to a radio unit on the console. A similar unit protruded from the console on the girl's side. From time to time, he punched a different channel.
"Kyle Corbett," said the girl, enunciating the "r" in a way her down-east accent normally did not. "I remember the alliteration, Corbett. If you don't know your own name we're really in trouble. Oh, you're a lot older now—God, you must be a fossil, I couldn't have been more than five or six at the time, but I remember you. Two helpings of eggs Benedict, heavy on the sauce; I resented you for that. Wouldn't shoot off a bottle rocket for me, but you showed me how to do it. Did you know I got grounded for a week for setting a handful of those things off by myself after you left?"
He chewed his upper lip to stop the corner of his mouth from lifting as he recalled that carefree weekend. She'd been a tomboyish little fart, curious about everything. "Served you right. Whoever said a little learning is a dangerous thing was talking about kids," he said, glancing back at the video. "Damn," he whispered, clearing the keyboard again.
"You cut the phone wires to my apartment, Corbett," she said matter-of-factly.
"To the whole house. Sue me." He was now punching in new codes and booting the computer rapidly.
"The waiting line to sue you must stretch over the horizon by now," she said, and paused. "The See's candy, my nickname—you don't forget much, do you?"
"Not where double-crossing is concerned. You're proof of that."
"But you don't really want me hurt."
Her voice held its cadence, but something was missing in its timbre: the aggressiveness, he decided. She wasn't entirely certain, bluffing her way. He called it. "You're not a little kid anymore," he said, giving her the kind of look that earned him breathing room in a cantina.
She took her time responding, thinking it over, in a way that reminded him of Dar Weston. "Oh, I think you could kill somebody, Corbett. But you're the only person Uncle Dar ever brought to Lyme. And he's a great judge of character. He would never have chosen a friend who could kill an innocent hostage."
"Thank you, Dr. Freud," Corbett said, scanning the skies and fighting off a yawn. "Try this one: if it came to a choice between his country and his family, which one would he choose?"
No hesitation this time. "Country first, family second," she said. "That's been a sore point between him and my dad."
Corbett's glance was sudden, only long enough to assess that open, freckled face. She seemed to be holding nothing back, taking her world as her elders had described it. "Tell you what, Petra: hope and pray that you're wrong. The only reason you're here is that the feds just might not try to knock this thing down if Dar Weston's niece is in it." He tried to bite off a yawn but failed, checking his wristwatch, then selecting a map from the sheaf that fanned from a cloth pocket near his left thigh. "It was just your bad luck that Weston doesn't have a daughter of his own." He could see her face without a direct glance. It reflected no sudden concern or suspicion.
"Nothing lucky about it," she said, surprising him as she grasped an edge of the nav chart to help unfold it. "He couldn't do justice to kids and his career."
"He told you that?"
"He's said it to my mother often enough. I hear them, sometimes. I—that's none of your business," she ended brusquely.
Now he was studying the terrain, matching its features to the chart. As if to himself he said, "It was my business, once upon a time."
That's a hoot," she said.
"When he's half a world away from his family, Petra, even a man like Dar might need to talk to somebody. I knew everything about you long before I met you. And if Dar really thinks he'd sacrifice you to get this airplane back in pieces, I'm betting I know him better than he knows himself. Stuff like that is easy to say when your back's not against the wall."
"Paper empiricism," she nodded sagely.
"Say what?"
"That's why psychology isn't a real science," she recited briskly, as if removed somehow to a classroom in Providence. "A lot of researchers ask people what they'd do if, and take the paper answers as gospel. Paper empiricism; but Uncle Dar has always put his country first. That's as close to a sure thing as you could hope for."
He pointed toward the western horizon, where a contrail was slowly dissipating high in the stratosphere. Parallel to it, farther to the south, a steely glint no larger than a pinpoint steadily drew a hard white line across a turquoise background. They were obviously on a heading that would cross beneath it, but several minutes and many miles ahead. "There's your lab hardware, Petra," he said. They just may be setting up a graph and hoping we're a point on it. Not likely those guys will see us, and they damned sure can't pick us up on ordinary radar or IR sensors. But if they do spot us, we'll sure find out which of us is right about Dar. Assuming the decision isn't out of his hands, which it may well be."
"Intervening variables," Petra said, still following the progress of the turbojet across the heavens.
Corbett, exasperated, burst out, "Jesus Christ! Are you taking this seriously, kid? Your own life's on the line; those jets up there could slice and dice us with an easy pass like a machete through a dandelion; and here you sit, lecturing me on scientific method. Jesus," he said again, trying to regain his concentration on the chart.
The girl held her palms up, eyebrows elevated. "What the hell d'you want me to do, get out and push? I'm trying to keep from thinking about what happens if I'm right, and they catch us up here. There's nothing I can do to save my own life, you old fossil! I would if I could."
"Quit shouting in this fishbowl," he commanded, all the more irritated because the girl was perfectly right. Better to have her chattering like a cageful of magpies about anything, hell, Paris fashions or rock music, than out of her mind with fear. And why hadn't he thought of that himself? A night without sleep was one reason.
There'd been a time when he could party all night and then strap into an aircraft at dawn and, with a few minutes on 100 percent oxygen to blow out the cobwebs, do a morning of precision aerobatics without an instant of brain-fade. But on Black Stealth One, they'd never accepted the weight penalty of an OBOG, an on-board oxygen generator, so he could not even fly the hellbug at its own design ceiling. She's right, I'm a fossil right out of a fucking museum, he admitted silently, and I'm not operating at a hundred percent. "One thing you can do is hold the chart steady, kid. Your fossil pilot needs to figure out where to park this thing for some fossil fuel."
She steadied her wrist on the video cabinet.
"One thing you can do, too: stop calling me 'kid.' You know my name."
He nodded, noting the slow unwinding of the altimeter that told him his thermal current had played out, wondering if the girl was beginning to exhibit the classic behavior patterns of many hostages. Sooner or later, with no power to affec
t the course of their lives, many would turn to their own captors for closeness, cooperating, even imagining for the moment that captor and captive were colleagues. Some more than others; some sooner, some later. And some, never. Petra Leigh did not seem like the kind of young woman who would succumb quickly to such a malady. Could be sandbagging me, he reminded himself.
But it might not matter if she were sandbagging, if she were also cooperating in the meantime. A little friendlier interaction on his part might pay off in the long run. He tapped the chart and, thinking about cooperation, said, "Here's where we are, Petra, over North Carolina. Asheville is off to our right, near the horizon, and I don't see any signs of more thermals. Now let's hope I can get a restart." With that, he refolded the chart and attended to his instruments.
"I hope you can't," she said. "Whoever you're doing this for, I don't want to meet them."
The faint whisper of huge impeller blades wind-milling behind them became lost now in a sputtering hiss that reverberated in the cockpit, then steadied. He grinned, watching the tachometer, moving the throttle gently. "Saved us a bucket of avgas. That means we might really make it across the Gulf."
"We're going to Cuba," she said accusingly.
"Well—my route depends on whether I can find the right access code in there," he nodded at the video terminal. "Those guys in Cuba would nail us faster than our own people, if they spotted us."
"Our own?"
"Shit; your own. One point for you, Petra; I'm too old for flags, and you may as well know it. Here, hand me that minitel," he went on, pointing toward the tiny headset that hung from its Velcro loop near her radio.
She handed him the twin of the one he wore, different only in that the earpieces fitted opposite ears, and saw that he could operate two radio units simultaneously. "I don't suppose you could find us some new-age music," she said.