by Dean Ing
Petra, whose features were pinched with fright, swallowed hard and twisted her body, loosening her harness with reluctance. "I can't see through the wing. There's a wire hanging down from the tip."
"The tip?"
"Well, six or eight feet from it. Two wires, actually. One hangs straight down; the other one slants a little."
"Makes a big difference," he said sharply.
"Wire's got to be caught at the inboard hinge of the elevon. I think there's a little drag chute on one end of the wire; a breeze must be pulling it. Christ knows what's on the other end. Look, this is going to take muscle. See the pin clipped to the control stick down between your feet? Slip it in so your stick is engaged."
She did so, with a glance at him that reeked of doubt.
"Now," he said, "we know the right elevon is stuck in the 'up' position because the control sticks are stuck sloping to the right."
"Wait a minute," she said, her eyes shut in concentration. "Okay, I can see it. In here," she tapped her forehead. "Also because we were sort of spinning down to the right before you got it stabilized."
"Don't try to understand it all, for God's sake, there could be another skyful of those things coming down any minute." A sigh, as he wrapped himself with intense calm. "Now, we're going to try and force the elevon the other way, but with both of us horsing on it too hard, we could snap a filament cable."
"In which case?"
"Don't ask. Just lean into it, that's right, I want you to preload it before I put my shoulders into it. Okay, I can feel it," he said, and felt the control stick begin to come upright when he had put half of his power behind it.
"OH GOD, KYLE," she screamed, staring ahead, recoiling.
The Neptune had turned after its pass, dropping down beneath the clouds, and some sharp-eyed aviator must have seen Black Stealth One immediately because the heavy reconnaissance plane thundered in, boring straight toward them, the twin scythes of its props perfect blurred circles, closing a gap of less than a quarter mile at a hundred yards a second. Corbett had no option save one: he firewalled the throttle and levitated Black Stealth One straight up, seeking the clouds that he knew he could not reach in time.
He bared his teeth as he saw the Neptune respond, realizing that the naval pilot could shred a wingtip with his propellers or simply slice through it with the far stronger wing of the Neptune. But, though the hellbug's downblast of air lacked the great power of a true jet engine, it did accelerate the gossamer craft and in an eyeblink the big Neptune had passed scant yards beneath them, with a shattering roar and two distinctly separate results on Black Stealth One. Corbett felt a faint tug from the right wing, then a tremendous buffet as the Neptune's slipstream tossed them, sucked them down, spun them in almost a half circle as the bonded structure of the hellbug groaned and creaked.
"It's free," he exulted, realizing that the P2V had somehow torn the wire clear. A whirling prop could have wound that wire up, or cut it; but no matter. The hellbug was floundering but apparently still intact, trying to right itself as Corbett sought the clouds again. He did not look back at Petra until they were surrounded in grayness, moving ahead under maximum power. Some half-perceived cog in his mental clock reminded him that every minute, at this pace, brought them two miles closer to the Texas coast.
She breathed long shaky breaths as she watched him. "I'm sorry I screamed," she said, rubbing her cheek.
"You know why I didn't? Too damn scared," he said.
"If you grin and wink I will get out and walk," she said, her mouth trembling into a shape that imitated a smile.
"There's blood on your teeth, honey," he said.
"Too late for sweet talk now," she muttered to the video console, and explored her mouth with her tongue. "Wow, the side of my face is numb; I wasn't cinched up tight when we did that whirligig-"
"It could happen again," he warned, easing ever upward until they soared atop the cloud layer. The sky was innocent of any other aircraft. Blinking in the sunlight, he asked, "What're you doing?"
"Running an IR scan," she said as if surprised that he needed to ask. "I don't want one of those big bozos to surprise us again. And what's so damned funny?"
"The way you adapt, I guess," he said. "If everybody your age learns as fast as you do, Petra, old farts like me might as well pack it in right now."
The girl seemed unwilling to believe him, though he had been perfectly candid. Most experienced copilots would have adapted faster to the physical part of flying this craft but few, he decided, could have picked up utterly new and abstract techniques any more quickly than Petra Leigh. He began toying with different frequencies again, while mentally reviewing the attack of that P2V.
It had been no fluke; they were ready with some kind of aerial tripwire that he had never heard of.
That recon plane had somehow penetrated their chameleon disguise from afar, picking them out of an otherwise empty sky. But how could they pick us up at all? Maybe something's wrong with the pixel skin, but it was okay this morning. If Ullmer's guys had buried some kind of transceiver in this crate, they'd have nailed me last night. Even the harness attachments are glass-filled nylon, there's not ten pounds of metal in the hellbug. Except for the fat, five-gallon steel gas can at my elbow! "Oh, lord, but I can be stupid," he said, and checked the fuel tank readout. "Petra, take the cap off the gas can and feed the end of that hose into it. Just squeeze the bulb, like you were milking a cow, and keep pumping as fast as you can 'til I tell you to stop."
According to the readout, they had used up nearly four gallons from the main tank. When Petra had refilled the tank, roughly a gallon would have to go over the side with that can, which had probably quintupled their signature on any kind of search radar, even X Band. He cudgeled his memory on C Band, X Band, side-looking, doppler, every kind of radar he could remember. Some radars were particularly good against low-flying aircraft, but he remembered an NSA memo from Sheppard to the effect that Black Stealth One would be all but invisible to that stuff. Trying still another radio frequency, he felt gooseflesh flood his limbs.
"...rendezvous in four-zero minutes," rumbled a southern-fried voice in his ear. He had known and liked and, yes, sometimes feared that voice, once. Ben Ullmer, or someone who could fool Ben's wife. "Will you make a second run, Cyclops Two?"
A soft, almost boyish reply: "Not without a visual sighting, but we've scrambled everything from Pensacola to Keesler and this airspace ought to be popping any minute."
That's all I need: those bases are right over there on the Gulf coast, practically on our right-hand horizon, Corbett fumed. He checked the fuel readout again, reached over to take the bulb from Petra. "Just giving you a rest," he told her, unwilling to mention his eavesdropping until he knew what to do about it. He squeezed hard and repeatedly on the bulb and continued listening.
"...certain he was tangled in your munition, Cyclops Two?"
"Affirmative, my copilot tells me we probably cut the wire when we tried to nibble at him with a head-on pass. You should've told me he could jink straight up."
And now Corbett's eyes slitted because the next voice was one he knew even better. "You attempted a midair collision? That's foolhardy with a hostage onboard," said Dar Weston.
"Our orders are pretty clear, sir," countered the younger man in Cyclops Two. "That thing is supposed to come down, and in our briefing you said a little damage could do it. The aircraft was going down in a tight spiral when we banked for our next pass, so I'd say we did something right. Sir."
Ben Ullmer again: "Any sign of wreckage in the water? Have you sent the coordinates to Air-Sea Rescue?"
"We're searching now, sir, in a tight orbit; and affirmative, the choppers are coming. Everything is coming."
"So are we," said Ullmer. "Cyclops One out."
Corbett saw that the main tank registered full. Well, Cyclops One, alias Uncle's puzzle palace and spook show, let's see if we can give you something to puzzle over when you get here, he thought, starting a brisk des
cent through the clouds as he checked his heading. "Petra, as soon as we break out of this stuff I want you to set the IR scan behind us. That guy who tried to ram us should be a few miles back, and you've got to lock onto him so he can't possibly spot us when we come down."
She began to punch the keyboard. "Exactly what do you mean by 'come down'?"
"Enough to hover and drop something into the water," he said, chuckling. He moved the hose from the gas can to the full plastic bladder, lifted the metal can by its homely baling-wire handle and shook it, satisfied with the slosh.
They broke clear of the clouds with small, even whitecaps perhaps a mile below. Almost immediately Petra said, "Locked on. How'd you know he'd be there?"
"Tell you later," he said, spotting contrails far to the right as jet interceptors rocketed high, much too high to be a threat, up from the Gulf coast. He watched the airspeed indicator climb as Black Stealth One neared one hundred and eighty knots, a speed possible only because he had it in a shallow dive toward the water and an ambitious gamble. "Find me a piece of cloth I can use to plug the spout on this can. A sock; anything. In fact, take out a dress, or shirt, a whatchacallit..."
"Blouse?"
"You choose," he waved a hand helplessly. "Something else you don't mind dropping in the water. And, ah, if your mouth is still bleeding, chew on the blouse a little. Won't hurt at all if it has a little blood on it."
"My mother gave me this yellow silk blouse. I thought I'd be seeing her this weekend. It wrinkles like tinfoil and I've waited for years for a reason to ditch it," she said, with a spiteful look at the bright garment. "I look pale as a vampire in yellow."
"Another time, all right?"
"My, but we're touchy," she said. Corbett rocked with déjà vu; he had heard Andrea Leigh use that phrase when Petra was no more than a waist-high pixie. Maybe foster parents are as real as any, he thought. I hope so. Phil Leigh sure raised a pistol. Ten minutes ago she was yelling her head off, and no wonder...
As she rummaged through her little overnight bag for a sock, he considered the engineering problems involved, and their solutions. "Damn I hate this, but my stuffs probably helping give us a radar echo too. Take my tools out of my bag, all the metal things. Wait! Not the clock or those little cardboard tubes; they stay. What'll go into this gas can, put it in for ballast. What won't, tape it to the bottom of the can." He fumbled into his pocket, wondering if he had managed to lose his cigarette lighter.
"What about your gun?"
"Like hell. A Glock is mostly plastic anyway. I'll keep it."
Dropping an expensive adjustable socket wrench into the gas can, she said, "I wish I knew what I'm doing."
"Later," he replied. "For now, just do it."
THIRTY
Cyclops one loitered three thousand feet over Gulf waters as the big Sikorsky Sea King helicopter, two miles away and hovering just above the water, winched the last wetsuited man aboard. Dar Weston, his forehead pressed against Plexiglas, continued to scan the waves for any sign of debris that would mark, without question, the end of Black Stealth One. A badly scorched five-gallon canister and a woman's bright blouse floating close together were, as proofs, highly suspect.
Because you don't want to believe it, he argued silently. You'd rather believe Kyle is still alive? He knew the answer. No irony could be more complete, more against the principles he had held inviolate throughout his career, than this: better to have Corbett alive than Petra dead. So much for the man I thought I was; the man my father thought I was.
But if Black Stealth One was still aloft, it was still his job to help track and bring it down. There was a pedant's word for that, he mused, still alert for floating wreckage he did not want to see. The word was "antinomy," a naming of opposites; two equally valid principles locked in combat.
Dar felt the tap on his shoulder and turned. "You're going to love this," said Ben Ullmer, lowering his headset around his throat like a necklace. "That fuel canister had mechanic's tools inside, and more taped under it. A piece of a burnt sock came out of it. Pretty clear evidence to me."
"A decoy, you mean?"
"Sure." Ben Ullmer's face held animation, almost glee. "Corbett set it on fire and dropped it on purpose. With a little smoke and a hard IR signature, he knew there was a good chance someone would spot it. The blouse too, to make us think they'd sunk. An old submariner's trick, setting their clothes afloat to fake a sinking." Ullmer squinted out of the portal, gnawing his lip. "He's still up here, Dar, somewhere. We have to believe that—not just on a personal level, but at the mission level."
"All right." Dar replied without vigor, lost for the moment in a waking dream. He imagined for a harrowing instant that Petra, exhausted and in shark-infested waters, lay somewhere below, seeing them, swallowing salt water as she screamed for help. "Look, we have to leave a couple of those choppers here for a while, just in case, while we take up the search again."
"Sure we can," said Ullmer, with a callused hand on Dar's shoulder. Ullmer toggled the onboard communication channel and instructed the pilot, studying a coastal chart as they conferred.
When he was finished, Ullmer leaned near Dar to avoid shouting over the drone of the engines. "I know what you're thinking. Listen, even if he's that kind of man—and I don't think he is—Kyle Corbett wouldn't push the girl out, knowing we might get a closer visual sighting now. He thinks she's his ticket out of this, but only if we can see her."
Dar moved back to his seat and cinched his lap belt. "Even if we do," he said, arguing against hope, "he's not going to come down unless we knock him down."
"He comes down when he's out of fuel, just like anybody else," Ullmer insisted, jabbing a forefinger into his open palm. "We can stay aloft longer than he can, even if he started out with an extra five gallons. If anyone spots him again, we know how to keep him in sight."
"You've lost me."
"He can't fool more than one searcher at a time! If we can spot him and surround him with several widely spaced chase planes, at least one can keep him visually targeted at all times. We just follow him until he runs out of fuel."
"And hope that doesn't happen over open sea," Dar said.
"He's not nuts. Fact is, that gas can could mean he's found a way to refuel in flight. I'll bet he doesn't get far from the coast the whole trip."
Dar selected another chart, cursed, grabbed for another. "I think he will. Taking the worst case, if he wasn't heading for Cuba it might be Nicaragua.
I'm trying to find a goddamn map," he said, furiously refolding a chart, "that shows Central America."
Eventually, they borrowed a North American route chart from the pilot of the P2V. It revealed the tip of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, and brought an educated guess from Ullmer. "He just might stretch it to the Yucatan, with five extra gallons. Only he didn't have a full five, 'cause he burned some of it for that decoy. Dirty, smart bastard," he went on, apparently to himself. "And because he is smart, he's got a sleeve full of aces; and he isn't gonna start off from Florida toward New Orleans and then turn south when his fuel is iffy." Ullmer looked up and saw Dar's gaze. "Unless that attack panicked him."
"He's not the type," Dar said, with a strong head-shake. "Did you ever see his psychological profile?"
"Why would I? NSA doesn't rely as much on that crap as you people do," Ullmer said with some pride.
"Touché," Dar said, unsmiling. "Well, the Company does, and I defend it. Kyle Corbett used to get some sticky missions back in the sixties because he's the kind that doesn't know how to panic. I've seen him after missions that might as well have been designed for panic responses." Shaking and sobbing off in a corner somewhere, where no one but me could see him, and then a cold shower and after that enough alcohol to bank his fires again, and no one but me the wiser.
Ullmer was waiting. "Yeah?"
Dar shook his head. "A little subdued after the mission," he said, "but no panic under pressure that I ever heard of. And I used to listen to his voice tapes. It was my job."
And I hated it, because I admired Corbett, perhaps loved him as we are taught to love our heroes. But I listened to the tapes of that man in mortal danger in the name of national security, the same flag I spread over myself when I had to kill him, all for the higher good. And see what all my high-flown motives have brought me.... "No, Ben, he wouldn't panic."
"He's not heading for the Yucatan," Ullmer said with sudden conviction. "And he never was."
Dar stared blindly down at the charts, remembering the kind of man Corbett was, the way he thought, the kind of counsel he had given in more innocent days. At last he began to nod, looking up at Ullmer. "He never was," Dar echoed. "I think he intended us to know he was in Florida, else he'd have taken more care to avoid leaving prints in that store."
"Which means that right-angle turn toward New Orleans was a planned maneuver." Ullmer saw another slow nod from Dar, chose and unfolded a long sectional chart, then moved forward in the narrow passageway to talk with the P2V's youthful navigator.
He returned presently, lurching as the big airplane began to bank in another of its endless—and thus far, fruitless—sweeps. "We're out here, south of Pascagoula, Mississippi," Ullmer said while making a circle with his finger. He moved that finger to the left, toward mauve and yellow markings that represented navigation beacons and townships. "When last seen, Corbett was heading toward, oh, roughly New Orleans."
He flipped the chart over and spread his fingers across a spatter of irregular shapes that sported little mauve and less yellow. "This is bayou and island country, south of New Orleans," Ullmer went on. "It's beginning to look like Corbett does not have fuel dumps waiting. He's taking it as it comes."
"Implying that he doesn't have any big organization working with him," Dar said, carefully noncommittal.
"Uh, yeah, I guess it does. We'll run all this past Elmira pretty soon but right now—if he can pick anyplace he wants to get fuel, there must be a thousand mom and pop gas stations here in Cajun country. He's done it once already and left a corpse, maybe to make sure we knew it."