Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 5 - Red Horseman

by Red Horseman (lit)

  He was still alive!

  That Russian must have been low on fuel. In a hurry.

  Too bad for him.

  Jack Yocke tapped aimlessly on his laptop computer and from time to time glanced at Toad Tarkington sitting in the big chair. Toad had a pistol in his hand and kept looking at it, turning it this way and that, wrapping his fist around the grip and hefting it.

  Herb Tenney lay on the couch with his hands taped together behind his back, his ankles taped together, and a strip of tape over his mouth.

  Herb seemed calm.

  Jack Yocke had done the taping with a roll from the first aid kit when Toad brought him into the room at gunpoint.

  Now the three of them sat-Herb calm, Yocke full of questions, Toad playing with that goddamn pistol.

  "Did he come willingly?" Jack asked, breaking the silence.

  "Uh-huh." "Where did you find him?" "in the cafeteria. Waited until he had finished his coffee and followed him out." "Would you have shot him if he didn't come along?" Toad merely glanced at Yocke, then turned his gaze back to the pistol in his hand. The reporter saw the same thing that Herb Tenney must have seen fifteen minutes ago. Toad would have pulled the trigger with all the remorse he would have had swatting a fly.

  Jack Yocke had another question, but he didn't ask it.

  Did Jake Grafton tell you to corral Tenney? Toad didn It do anything unless Jake Grafton told him to, Yocke told himself, and once told, Toad would do literally anything.

  The asshole was like a Doberman, ready to rip the throat out of the first man his master sicced him on.

  Yocke sighed and went back to tapping. He was listing what he knew about Nigel Keren, about the Mossad bribing Russians to get Jews out of the country and assassinating Russian politicians, about the KGB blowing up the Serdobsk reactor, about a hangarftjl of nuclear-armed mobile missiles and warheads that were going south into Iraq a planeload at a time. He was sitting on at least four huge stories, any one of which would win him a Pulitzer prize, and all he could do was tap on this frigging keyboard and pray that someday soon he could telephone something to the Post. If he still had a job!

  He felt a little like the prospector who has spent his whole life looking for traces of color when he finally stumbles onto the mother lode.

  And doesn't know where the vein leads.

  All he really had were pieces of stories.

  Jack Yocke had spent five years chasing stories and he knew that he didn't have all ofany one of them. Oh, he had some great pieces, but he didn't know where the roots led.

  Jake Grafton knew. Of that he was convinced Damn, he was getting as goofy as Tarkington.

  Toad sat there playing with his pistol and if you asked, he would tell you that Jake Grafton knows everything. What's your problem? Grafton will tell you what he wants you to know when he wants you to know it. If that time ever comes.

  And if it doesn't, then you shouldn't know Jack Yocke didn't think Jake Grafton knew all the answers. He thought Jake was feeling his way along, examining the trees, trying to size up the forest. Jack Yocke didn't have Toad's faith.

  The truth, he decided, was probably somewhere in the middle.

  He jabbed the button to save what he had written and then turned off the computer. He closed the screen over the keyboard and pulled the plug out.

  "You done?" Toad asked.

  "What's it look like?" Yocke snarled. He was extremely frustrated, and Toad marching in a big CIA weenie at gunpoint hadn't helped.

  "Would you like to help me?" "Do what?" Jack asked suspiciously.

  "Well, you gotta sit here with this pistol and watch our boy Herb. I have an errand. If Herb twitches, blow his fucking head off. If anybody comes through that door besides me, blow their fucking head off.

  Think you can handle it?" "No.

  "You ought to be the pro-choice poster child, Jack.

  if your mother only knew how you were going to turn out she would have grabbed a rusty old coat hanger and done it herself.

  "Any time you get the itch, Tarkington, you can kiss my rosy red ass. I am not about to get mixed up in the middle V of a war or shoot anybody.

  And no more goddamn cracks about-was Toad tossed the gun at him. Yocke snagged it to prevent it from hitting him in the face.

  Toad stood up. He looked over the items from Herb's pockets that were spread on the low coffee table and selected a ring of keys, then faced Yocke. "Anyone besides me comes through that door, they'll kill you if you don't kill them first. And you can bet your puny little dick that Herb would cheerfully do the job if he had his hands free.

  Think about it." With that Toad went to the door and carefully opened it" He looked out.

  Now he checked to ensure the door would lock behind him, passed through and pulled it closed.

  Jack Yocke looked at Herb Tenney to see if he had any big ideas.

  Apparently not. He then examined the pistol in his hand. This thingy on the left side looked like the safety.

  Is it on? Yocke kept his finger well away from the trigger, just in case.

  He had had a journalism professor who once told the class that the problem with the profession was the company a reporter had to keep to get his stories, Truer words were never spoken, Jack told himself ruefully.

  "If I get out of this alive," he informed Herb Tenney, "I'm going to get a job washing beer mugs in a bikers' saloon.

  Associate with a better class of people. Keep better hours. Make more money. Get laid more." Out in the hallway Toad slowed to talk to the marine sergeant sitting at the head of the stairs with an M-16 across his knees. He also wore a pistol in a holster on a web belt around his middle.

  "Everything okay?" "Yessir. Not a soul's been around." Toad glanced down the ha at the marine on the other end, who was looking his way.

  Satisfied, Toad said, "He's in there with Jack Yocke. If he comes out shoot him in the legs. Whatever you do, don't kill him." "Aye aye, sir." When he was inside Herb's room, Toad scanned it, then went straight to the bathroom and Herb's shaving kit above the sink. Yep, the shit still had that plastic pill bottle with the child-proof cap.

  Toad glanced at them to ensure they were what he wanted, then pocketed them. He considered taking Herb his toothbrush. Naw. His fucking teeth could just rot.

  Out in the bedroom Toad got Herb's suitcase and opened it. Well, ol' Herb was a neat packer. His mother would be proud.

  Toad dumped everything into a pile in the middle of the bed and examined the lining of the suitcase. He and Jake Grafton had been through Herb's stuff once before, but it wouldn't hurt to do it again.

  Carefully and thoroughly.

  ca Underwear, socks, shirts, trousers, a sweater. A spare n of shaving cream. Toad squirted some onto the carpet.

  Yep, shaving cream.

  The closet held several suits, ties, white shirts and a spare pair of shoes. Toad examined the shoes. He got out his penknife and pried off the heels. Nothing. He felt the suits carefully and threw them on the floor. Except for a spare pen and a pack of matches that Herb had overlooked, the pockets were empty.

  Now he turned his attention to the room, systematically taking everything apart. As he worked he thought about Rita.

  Pregnant. Refusing to stop flying.

  If he were her, he would... But he wasn't Rita. Rita was Rita an that was why he married her.

  You just have to take women as they come. It's hard to do at times, considering. Amazing that hormone chemistry could make such a big difference in the way men and women's brains worked. It was like they were a different species, or creatures from another planet.

  He threw himself into the chair and sat staring morosely at the mess in front of him. There was nothing here to be found, of that he was sure.

  So he thought some more about Rita in the cockpit of that jet, flying through a strange sky over a radioactive landscape, nursing the stick and throttles and dropping bombs and fighting the Gs.

  There were so many things that could go wrong.
And a Russian jet for chrissake, designed, built and maintained by a bunch of vodka-swilling sots.

  She can handle it, he told himself, wanting to believe.

  She'll get back all right. She's with Jake Grafton. I mean, she's good and he's great.

  They're a good team. They'll make it.

  Fuck, they'd better! He wasn't up to losing Rita just now. She had damn near died in a crash a few years backjust the memory of those days made him nauseated.

  And he didn't want to lose Jake Grafton either. Grafton told him to snag Herb Tenney, and if Grafton didn't come back, Toad was going to have to figure out what to do next.

  Not that he had a lot of options. One thing sure, thoughHerb was going to be finishing off his supply of happy pills if Jake Grafton didn't make it.

  When he opened the door to the apartment, the first thing he saw was Jack Yocke's pasty face, then the Browning Hi-Power which he held with both hands. It was pointed askew at nothing at all.

  Toad locked the door behind him and took a look at Herb, who was pretending to sleep.

  Yocke held the pistol out to Toad butt-first.

  Toad took it and stuffed it into his waistband.

  "Thanks," he said. "I kept waiting to hear the shots." Yocke didn't think that comment worth a reply.

  "Would you have used this?" Toad wanted to know.

  "I don't know." After they had sat Herb Tenney on the ceramic convenience in the bathroom, then fixed a can of chili for lunch, Yocke asked, "How can you just walk around sticking pistols in people's faces?" Toad looked mildly surprised.

  "I'm in the military. Jake Grafton gives orders, I obey them." "This isn't a movie, you know. That's a real gun with real bullets." Toad helped himself to another spoonful of chili.

  When it was on its way south he said, "You keep looking for moral absolutes, Jack. There aren't any. Not in this life.

  All we can do is the best we can." "But how do you know you're doing the right thing?" "I don't. But Jake Grafton does.

  It's uncanny. He'll do the right thing regardless of the consequences, regardless of how the chips fall.

  I'll take that. I do what I'm told knowing that the CAG is trying to do right." Even as he said it his mind jumped to Rita. He had bowed to Rita's decision to fly while pregnant based on faith in her judgment.

  Now the chili made a lump in his stomach. He dropped the spoon into the bowl and shoved it away.

  "You gotta believe in people or you're in a hell of a fix," he said slowly.

  "You answer a question, Toad, by evading it. What is right? Why do you think Grafton knows what right is?" Toad was no longer paying attention. He was staring at his watch, watching the second hand sweep. They should be on the ground by now.

  if they were still alive. Why hadn't they called?

  Did he really trust her judgment, or was he a coward not to assert hmf9 If anything happened to her.

  Jake Grafton saw the smoke column twenty miles away.

  The black smoke towered like a giant chimney at least three thousand feet into the atmosphere. As he got closer he could see that the wind had tilted the column, which was Visibly growing taller, mushrooming into the upper atmosphere.

  Creeping up to two hundred feet to avoid the dust being sucked into the inferno raging at the base of the smoke, he bounced in turbulence even here on the up-wind side of the fire. The turbulence made his bowels feel watery: that damaged wing might have a broken spar. As the plane bucked the stick felt sloppy and the secondary hydraulic system pressure dropped. He must be oh so careful.

  The hangar was ablaze. Rita.

  Ten or fifteen minutes ago?

  Something silver on the mat? A wing?

  It couldn't be a wing from Rita's plane, could it?

  Could it?

  He edged in for a closer look. No. It was a big wing, attached to a transport that was also on fire. She caught someone parked on the mat and shot them apart.

  He turned away from the blaze and consulted his fuel gauge. Fuel would have been okay plus a bunch if he hadn't spent all that time maneuvering at full throttle and let that jerk shoot up his plane. Going to be tight.

  Right engine was still alive and pulling hard-no more warning lights.

  The slop in the controls when operating on the backup hydraulic system was acceptable as long as he didn't have to defend himself, as long as the secondary pump held together, as long as he could make his aching right leg work. The plane flew okay on one engine if he held in forty pounds or so of right rudder. The rudder trim wasn't working. Sorry about that!

  He had about forty miles of radioactive terrain to cross before he could get out and walk. It was a little like flying over a shark-infested ocean-you prayed for the engine to keep running, counted every mile, watched the minute hand of the panel clock with intense interest.

  Jake Grafton's eyes scanned the vast distances between the horizon and the bottom of the cumulonimbus clouds.

  He gazed up into the gaps between the clouds, searched behind him and out to both sides. The sky appeared to be empty. Because he knew how difficult another aircraft was to spot in a huge, indefinite sky, he kept looking. And occasionally his eyes came inside to check the clock.

  So she made it to here and took out the hangar and that transport on the mat. He hadn't seen any craters on the mat that would mark misses.

  Apparently she put all her ordnance into the bucket, a neat, professional job.

  Thank you, Rita, wherever you are.

  He listened to the engine. He watched the clock hand sweep. He unhooked his oxygen mask and swabbed the sweat from his eyes.

  Forty miles of terrain required about ten minutes of flying to cross.

  When the ten minutes had passed Jake began to relax. His right leg was hurting since he had to maintain constant pressure on the rudder, but he felt better. It was goofy when you thought about it--Captain Collins said about forty miles, and of course the fallout zone had no definite boundary.

  The intensity of the radiation would just decrease as the miles went by. Knowing all this and feeling slightly silly, Jake still felt better with each passing mile.

  If this shot-up jet would just hold together.

  When the city of Lipetsk appeared in the haze at ten or twelve miles, Jake Grafton eased the nose of his Su-25 into a climb. He went across the city at several thousand feet and made a gentle turn to line up for the northwest runway about eight miles away.

  Nothing happened when he lowered the gear handle.

  He round the little emergency switch and held it in the down position. The gear broke free of the wells and fell into 1he slipstream-he could feel the drag increase.

  His numb right leg refused to put the right amount of pressure on the rudder. The nose wandered a little from side to side. Carefully playing his single engine, Jake Grafton tried to keep the speed up and fly a flat approach.

  Only when he was sure he could make the field did he use the electrical switch to drop ten degrees of flaps.

  He cut the engine immediately after he felt the tires squeak. Without brakes this thing would roll forever; he had no idea how to engage the emergency system. He had tried turning the parking brake handle ninety degrees and it didn't want to rotate.

  When the jet was down to about twenty MPH it began to drift toward the edge of the runway. There was nothing he could do. It rolled off the edge and came to rest in the grass.

  For the first time in over an hour, Jake Grafton relaxed his right leg.

  It was numb, shaking.

  Jake used the battery to open the canopy. As the huge silence enveloped him he took off his mask and helmet and wiped the sweat from his hair.

  He was drained.

  Somehow he managed the energy to get his gloves off and begin unstrapping. When he got the fittings released he sat there massaging his right thigh.

  "Admiral! Admiral Grafton!" It was Rita, running across the grass toward him.

  "Hey, kid. Am I glad to see you!" She slowed to a walk, just
fifty feet or so away. She glanced at the shattered wing pylon, then looked up at Jake.

  "I got the hangar, sir." "I know," Jake said, and wiped his eyes with his fingers.

  "I know." THE HEL1COPTER'S TWO RADIOS WERE MOUNTED ON A shelf on the bulkhead between the cockpit and passenger compartment. The leads had a collar that allowed them to be unscrewed when the radio needed to be removed for servicing. Jake Grafton used his fingers to twist the collars and pull out the plugs. Then he told Spiro Dalworth to tell the pilot to land at the Lipetsk railroad station.