by Dean Ing
"No. I could say 'yes' if all I wanted was to get laid tonight, but, Kyle, I think we feel the same. I'm not certain I could fall in love with anyone on such short acquaintance, but I like you, I really, really do," she said, massaging his upper arm with gentle fingers. "I know you're twice my age, I know when I'm forty you'll be Methuselah. But that's a long time from now. Maybe I wouldn't care then, either."
He did not move away from her fingers because, simply, it felt so damned good. "Born thirty years too soon! I need reading glasses already, and I can't see in the dark anymore," he grouched. "But it's more than that. There's a thing that often happens to people after they're captured, taken over. They flip their allegiances inside out, find a kind of glamor in giving themselves to their captors. A week from now, you'll be realizing this self-control on my part is the only unselfish thing I've—"
"Unselfish. I'm glad you told me that," she said with tenderness he could not fathom. "Do you truly imagine that I'm another Patty Hearst?"
"I doubt it, but I don't know. She went for the outlaw glamor."
He could not tell whether anger or determination was foremost in her reply. "It would take me a lot longer than a couple of days to snap like that, mister. As for glamor—have you taken a look at yourself lately? You're overweight, your whiskers are sandpapering my goddamn sunburn, and you smell like gasoline! I hate to burst your bubble, Kyle, but I'm not just gaga over your glamor."
After a moment she said, more gently, "On the other hand, this incredible airplane is glamor. But I don't feel like making love to it. By and large, glamor sucks."
He grunted softly; she was massaging his shoulders now from behind, her feet touching his thighs, her position more companionable than sexual. "But for Black Stealth One, you'll make an exception," he said.
"Sure. If you have any glamor, Kyle, any social status in my eyes, it's in this airplane and what you did to get it. Not so much because you have it; but because you helped create it. Any muttonhead with money can have a nice house or car or airplane, but how many can build one?"
He sighed in contentment, leaning back, letting her rest her chin on his shoulder. I've been waiting all my life for a woman who understood that, but I didn't know it until this moment. And if I don't tell her the bad news now, I might weaken. "Petra, you'll have a lot of time to consider what we've said before you hear from me again. I can't take you any farther now."
Quickly, as if she'd been expecting something of the sort: "Don't say that."
"It's said, all the same. I just can't do it."
"Of course you can; you mean you don't want to."
He could feel the tension in her body and knew that she still hoped, with all the naiveté of youth, to somehow argue her way through. "Have it your way, then," he said, implacable. "I don't want to, and I damned well don't intend to, least of all now that I care what happens to you. Period, end of argument."
"But you promised—"
"Consider it broken. I'd break any promise rather than put you at risks you have no conception of. You wouldn't be a help, you'd probably get me killed, and I can't tell you why. I'm going alone tomorrow. Period."
She sat up straight and breathed very slowly and deeply, several times, before sliding her arms around his chest from behind him, her chin snug against his cheek. "But I will hear from you again. I'll hold you to that," she murmured.
"If I'm still in one piece," he said gruffly. "If you don't hear from me in, oh, say when the leaves turn this fall, you can figure you're not going to."
She shivered against him, despite the warm breeze. "Could we just hold one another?"
He turned, straightened his pallet, then lay with her, fingers linked, faces nearly touching. "I should go at first light," he said, very softly.
"God, I'm going to miss you," she whispered. "I think we'd be good for each other. And if it turned out otherwise—call it a no-fault love affair."
"Don't say that"—he chuckled—"until you know what kind of lover I am."
"I was working on it. I—I guess I knew you'd leave me tomorrow." And with a simple earnestness that held no sexuality she added, "I just wanted you to leave knowing I'm really a terrific lay, Kyle."
"I suppose I'm so-so," he rumbled grudgingly.
"I've felt your so-so," she said, giggling again, and touched her forehead to his, and then she snuggled down against him, her hands cupped together as if she were protecting something of great value, and slept, bathing his face in the candid scents of woman. For a time, he entertained an idea he would have thought laughable only days before. It was, he knew, unworkable. He had committed himself to his original plan, and if Medina was still willing when they met at Regocijo, they would use both aircraft to complete that plan.
Content in his ignorance of the Regocijo disaster, Kyle Corbett kissed his captive gently, and then he slept.
THIRTY-FIVE
"I'm not even asking for Ullmer," Dar said into one of the Navy's scrambler phones. "He's waiting for a Lear to return him to Elmira already, Abe... . Certainly I know," he replied to the CIA Director after a pause. "In the past two days, Ben Ullmer's had so many trained observers say they've seen something they couldn't have seen, he simply doesn't believe tonight's sightings from a couple of frightened civilians. He believes Black Stealth One is down in the Gulf."
It was after midnight at NAS New Orleans, and as he listened, Dar sipped his third cup of bitter coffee. He had consumed only two ales and an aperitif at Brennan's. He would have consumed more, perhaps, had the Commander's beeper not started the train of events that electrified Dar, made him dizzy with hope and sober with resolve as they sped back to the naval base.
He picked up his cup, but when he had it halfway to his lips, he forgot the steaming brew. "I'll tell you why, because those two sightings were in line from Corbett's last known course, and the time fits the parameters we know, and the descriptions fit too, if you bear in mind that they thought it was some kind of feathered monster. All of the other recent reports failed one or another of those criteria, especially the descriptions, everything from lights in the sky to little green men.
"What? I don't know the exact number; Unruh simply told me they had logged over three hundred reports, thanks to all the media coverage."
Now Dar had time to sip, injecting a "yes" at one point. But he kept shaking his head and finally cut in: "Ullmer says the airplane could not possibly get that far on the fuel it carries. I say it is foolhardy to underestimate what Kyle Corbett can do in an airplane....Ullmer is, naturally; but I have expertise with the man."
Again, Dar checked his impulse toward a headlong passionate plea, loath to risk losing the support of the man who could allow or forbid his pursuit of his own daughter. Abe Randolph, he knew, mistrusted too much passion in his people.
He waited until the DCI had finished, this time. "Absolutely no personal conflict between us; none from my end, at least. I have only the highest regard for Ben Ullmer as a man and as a professional, and I will so state in writing." Dar let his voice slide from formal tones into the more habitual way in which he spoke with Abraham Randolph. "Frankly, I'd say Ben is in mourning for that airplane of theirs. For your ears only, Abe, I think he means to resign.... No, Sheppard canceled NSA's end of this thing because our man called the bad news in from Mazatlan; they feel, quite rightly, that they've lost our whole damned joint operation in Mexico, their pilot and the aircraft included. They're just hoping the Mexican Federales don't learn about Regocijo for a week or so. Give us all time to build a cover of plausible denials. The blunt truth is, from here on it's purely a CIA operation—or none. I say we still have a chance."
He sipped this time as he listened, jotting cryptic notes in his personal shorthand. Then: "I certainly have, it's only midnight here and all I need is your blessing to proceed. And Unruh, of course, to screen any fresh reports and coordinate the possibilities with me." Pause. "A fisherman on Matagorda Island and a teenager in his dune buggy, a few miles northwest of a coastal town
called Rock-port. Black Stealth One may be damaged because they both reported a hundred-foot bird practically skimming the surface. Scared the hell out of them both."
Dar drew a long breath of relief at Randolph's reply and began to itemize the jottings before him. "We should have a press release from your end, announcing we've canceled the interagency operation, which we have. Citing solid evidence that the fugitive aircraft was forced down in the Gulf. Meanwhile, I need your recommendation to the Secretary of Defense that I get every rotary-wing and hovering fixed-wing aircraft in the region. I can fly the back seat of a Harrier... . Yes, I checked, they're right here on the base and a couple are two-seaters for training.... We fly east of San Antonio, refuel at Chase Naval Air Station nearby, and re-form before dawn in a line from Padre Island to Freer. Then we start a very slow sweep, converging toward the coast at Rockport."
A grim smile twitched at his jaw. "Well, he can't hide that cockpit, you saw it yourself in Elmira; it's how we spotted him in the Gulf and I intend us to be several squadrons strong, virtually touching wingtips within a thousand feet of the ground by the end of that sweep. He won't get past me this time, Abe."
Dar set the empty cup down and stood up as he heard his director's penultimate words. He replied, "If he's flying at night, yes; I could miss him, assuming he manages to get fuel nearby. But he didn't fly last night, and I think he could be overconfident. Say again? ... I know that, Abe; I'll be happy to resign if I'm wrong, but this time we'll bring overwhelming force to a small area, and we can force him down by sheer numbers of hovercraft. This time," he announced, "I'm going to get the son of a bitch."
THIRTY-SIX
He had forgotten to set his watch alarm, but no matter: the dry-hinge squeal of a gull waked Corbett while the sun was little more than an exuberant promise on the eastern horizon. The sky was cloudless, still star-flecked above and to the west. Probably no cloud cover all the way to Mexico, he thought. He would have kissed the young woman who slept at his side, but chose not to wake her as he gentled his arm from hers, flexing those familiar early-morning twinges of pain from his joints as he stood.
He used his seven-dollar blanket to wipe dew and bug remains from the canopy of Black Stealth One, taking his time to avoid scratching the polymer bubble, with no intuitive concern for anything that might be building low across the sky like a metal stormline, miles away. He hefted his roll of duct tape with mild astonishment, reflecting that he had used almost the entire roll of the stuff in a trail stretching from New York to Texas. He decided he might have enough of it left to make Petra's bonds look convincing.
She awoke as he knelt beside her to rub her arms, beginning to stretch before she opened her eyes, then opening them wide as memory and recognition flooded her face. She flung her arms around him with the hug of a small, sleek bear. Her "Good morning" was as intimate as foreplay, and as full of promise.
"Hi, little pistol," he said, hugging her with one arm. "Ready for your morning bondage?"
She saw the roll of tape, realized that it was necessary, and grinned, pretending to misunderstand. "I've never tried it, but I might like it." By the time she stood up to tuck her blouse in, Petra's face had clouded. "I wish," she said, and bit her lip. "You know what I wish. God, I'm starting to miss you and you're still here! Dammit, Kyle! I just hope you leave before I start crying."
He pulled her into an embrace, sharing a long and fervent kiss before she pushed him away. "Hey, dirty old men need love too," he joked.
"Go on, get it over with. I intend to be absolutely furious with you before I climb down from here for help," she said glumly.
He taped her ankles first, then unwrapped his handiwork and did it again. "I taped you up when I went for fuel last night, remember that," he said, and read her frown correctly. "Well, logically I would've had to. You think they won't analyze the stuff to see how often it's been used? Never underestimate them," he said, in unconscious irony.
He rewrapped her wrists too, making certain that she could reach the torn edge with her teeth, and then carried her to the ladder. "Don't forget the dust the hellbug raises," he said, pausing on one knee. "If you worry that tape loose before I'm gone, it'll get all dusty and they'll wonder about that."
"Don't forget to write," she replied solemnly, and he saw that her mouth was trembling. He kissed it, longingly, gently, and then walked to the cockpit. "And for God's sake be careful," she added suddenly, raising her voice in virtual panic.
He gave her a high-sign, then grinned and winked as the hellbug's engine cleared its throat.
"I hate that macho shit, I hate it! Go on," she yelled, drumming her feet on the tank dome in a brief frenzy, but once he closed the canopy he could not hear past the hellbug's subtle stirrings, and it might have been his imagination when he glanced at her for the last time, her eyes closed but her mouth forming, I love you, Corbett, as he lifted.
He set the hellbug's nose directly toward Beeville, remembering that this entire region was a training ground for Air Force cadets. I'd like to paint this thing as a bird and go high, but I'd best use ground effect to save fuel, he decided, calling up the pixel program to paint his craft for highflying searchers, then checking the IR display. Five minutes later, as the sun's first direct light hardened shadows in the cockpit, he could no longer see the oil tank. Black Stealth One wheeled southwest, in the general direction of Laredo and the Mexican border a hundred miles distant.
Corbett had not flown across this piece of country for years, but he remembered how suddenly the land changed from creek-veined arable acreage to sere, dry ranchland fit only for oil derricks and forced irrigation. "Derricks," he said aloud. There might not be many in his way, but those few probably would not show on his scope. Hell of a note, to get wiped out against a damn abandoned derrick over a dry hole. Pull up to two hundred feet? No ground effect there, I might as well be at twelve thousand. Well, keep your bloody eyes open, he commanded himself.
He knew a reasonable chance existed that he would be seen, but at this hour most Texans would be pulling on boots about the time he crossed the border. And whatever they saw, he imagined that he would be in another country's airspace in less than an hour. Considering the current political climate, he did not worry much about the Mexican Air Force.
He first suspected that he was not going to make it while skimming thirty feet above the lazy waters of a miles-long reservoir. The IR scanner dutifully registered the exhaust of a ferryboat—and then showed him a dotted line of pink on the horizon. The line lay directly in his path. Power line reflection? But he knew that power lines did not stretch a hundred feet above this prairie and as he watched, the dots became more distinct on his scanner though still too distant for a visual check. He banked to the west. That line still stretched to the horizon, and it was not stationary, but approaching fast.
He tuned for military frequencies and found two of them fully occupied, the transmissions strong and getting stronger. "...lagging, Broom Five; form on me," urged one commanding baritone, and "Mop Bravo group, close it in," said another, with brief acknowledgments—some of them using jargon that Corbett had almost forgotten, not Air Force but Army. The guys flying Bell "Huey" helicopters had sounded like that over the jungles of Vietnam. And judging from their terse comments, the Broom group had to be Navy or Marine, because the Air Force referred to rear-seat observers as "gibs," guys in back. Corbett felt an instant of cold trepidation as he glanced at the scanner and saw more blips than he could easily count, forty or fifty of them, low on the horizon. And now he was too close to risk a steep climb because, as he had learned the previous day, that gleaming canopy would not remain totally invisible this close to such a far-flung set of eyes, and his rate of climb was comparatively sedate.
"Broom leader to Broom Two and Broom Seven, sortie again on present heading and reform in five minutes, over."
"Ah, wilco, Broom leader, warn the slicks so they don't sweep me up on my way back" was one response. "Slick" was a generic military term for a hel
icopter. Corbett saw a sun glint as one of the dots ahead and to his left began to rise out of formation, picking up speed. He locked the pixel program onto that dot, saw it become a bulbous, ungainly swept-wing brute as it accelerated. Evidently the other sortie craft was so far down the line that Corbett could not spot it. But he recognized the aircraft with icy dread. Oh, my God: they've got a squadron of Harriers!
Mop and broom; it's a major sweep, Army "slick" choppers and those goddamn Harriers! And they're sending a pair of Harriers ahead to see if they can flush me, he realized, slowing, dropping nearer to the hard-baked soil. He knew by now that Broom was the Harrier code word, and stayed on Broom's frequency as he kept one eye on the blue-and-gray camouflage of what was obviously a Marine Harrier. It passed a mile to his left at four hundred knots and gave no indication of spotting him, but Corbett knew that he was more nearly invisible when motionless on the ground than while his gleaming canopy bubble skated above the surface. He planted his legs hard, employing the waste gates in an attempt to land almost instantly in one of the many broad depressions of the scrub-dotted landscape.
The line of sweepers, AV-8B Harriers interspersed with Army helicopters flying behind and even lower, was clearly visible now, a vast armada of machines all capable of hovering, and of outrunning him. Someone had worked out an unlikely but fearsome combination, the sinister Harriers flying so slowly that their thrust diverters flung mighty downdrafts of jet exhaust toward the ground. That line trailed a virtual dust storm behind it, the product of their downdrafts. Corbett did not remember until too late that, painted skin or not, the hellbug's diverted air sent a huge spurt of dust flying as it touched down. And the dust storm raised by the searchers was probably no accident; even a pixel-covered skin might stand out as a distinct outline in such a soup of flying particles.
Corbett had hardly felt the grazing thump of hardpan when one of the Harrier pilots in a line approaching at perhaps a hundred miles an hour and so near that Corbett could see their flaps extended broke in with, "Broom leader, your ten o'clock on the deck! Canopy in a circle of dust!"