Fire in the Sky

by Don Pendleton

  Brognola turned back to Greggson. "We can't go this alone anymore," he said.

  Greggson nodded. "We've got to choose carefully, though," he said. "Get out of our own circles and I don't know who to trust."

  "I've got someone in mind," Brognola replied.

  "The last time you had something in mind," Greggson said, "I committed a felony."

  "Think of it as research. You're simply getting a chance to view the criminal mind from the inside."

  "Why am I not reassured?"

  "Ready," Oscar said, as he handed the stack of papers back to Brognola. The head Fed began putting everything back in the case just as it had been before.

  "Ready over here," Ted Healy said, wheeling Michaels up closer to the exit.

  Brognola snapped the briefcase shut, closed the handcuff on the handle, then gave the key to Oscar. He then reached out and snapped the other cuff onto the man's wrist. Greggson had recovered the blue zipper case and the garment bag and gave them to Oscar, completing the disguise.

  "I won't pull any punches," Brognola said to Largent. "I have no idea what your chances are on this thing. To be frank, at this point we're buying time with you — maybe hours, maybe minutes. I can't make you do this."

  "I knew all that when I accepted the assignment," the man replied. "And I didn't accept it lightly."

  "You have the beeper?"

  Largent took a fountain pen out of his shirt pocket and clicked the top. "It's activated," he said, and replaced it.

  "You know we can't pick you up any closer than a fifty-mile range," the head Fed told him, "so this might not do you any good for a while. I have no idea what you're walking into down there."

  "I'll make contact as soon as I can."

  Greggson moved over to take the man by the shoulders. "Good luck, Oscar," he said. "The survival of the country may depend on what you do in the next few hours."

  "Good luck to you, too," the man replied, then looked at his wrist. "I'd better go."

  "Yeah," Greggson said, stepping away from him. The other men in the room quietly wished Largent well.

  Oscar Largent nodded once, then turned and strode out the door into the flow, his stomach churning. Behind, he heard the door open again and turned slightly to watch, out of the corner of his eye, as the wheelchair bearing the limp body of Captain Michaels was hurried out the door by Healy and Wortham, who turned and took it in the opposite direction.

  He felt odd as he moved toward the gate, as if he were expecting someone to recognize that he wasn't the man he pretended to be. That bothered him the most, the uncertain feeling of inhabiting someone else's life.

  The other part, the dangerous part, wasn't nearly as difficult to him as playing the role of someone else. Largent had been raised to believe in the ultimate goodness and justice of the U.S. Constitution. His father had been a preacher and a man of high principles, who believed that happiness and security could only come from grounding oneself in the bedrock of an ethical system. He had taught that belief to his five children. The thought that someone could want to overthrow the system that justly governed the country in exchange for a private brand of situation ethics, was simply more than Oscar Largent could bear. Being in a position to do something about it excited and energized him.

  But pretending to be someone he wasn't — that was scary.

  He made it through baggage check, opening the briefcase with the key and showing the man there the paperwork for the SMG without incident.

  Then he moved toward Gate 17, all the passengers who had been deplaned because of the bomb threat now being let back on the aircraft.

  He got in line with them, feeling as if every eye in the airport was on him. He looked around nervously, continually shifting his feet. Then, suddenly, he was face-to-face with the boarding stewardess. Mouth dry, he handed her Michaels's ticket.

  She looked at it for a second, then looked at him, tearing off the boarding pass and giving it back to him. "Nice to see you, Captain Michaels," she said, smiling at him. "Welcome aboard."

  He returned the smile. "Thanks," he said, and walked down the boarding bay toward the plane. Now, officially, he had become Norman Michaels, traitor.

  * * *

  "You mean peopleactually live out here?" Julie Arnold said, squinting through the blinding sunlight on Arizona Road 85. The sun caused the white sand stretching on both sides of the road to glow like fire and made driving a torturous adventure.

  "People live in all sorts of places," Bolan said, reaching out to turn up the air-conditioning on the rented Cougar. "Here is as good as any."

  "If you're a piece of cactus," she returned, pulling down her sun visor a little more and trying to scoot up in the seat.

  They had arrived at Phoenix Sky Harbor International two hours before and had rented the car immediately, making the trip south on the nearly deserted state road that cut right through an area known as Centennial Wash — which was a polite way of saying there was desolation for hundreds of miles all around.

  Southwestern Arizona was a land of extremes. Known as the Basin and Range region, it consisted of long, open-ended basins and valleys separated by individual mountain ranges. Add to this the extensions of the Mexican Sonoran Desert that jutted into the region from the south and you were left with a flat, arid land of cactus and rugged undergrowth punctuated by mountains that jutted abruptly from the flatlands in night-and-day contrast. It was a surreal landscape, made stranger by the intense heat that rose in shimmering waves from the basin floors to roast the life from anything not protected with shade and water.

  "What time is it?" Julie asked, her arm thrown over her face, covering her eyes.

  Bolan looked at his watch. "Nearly one o'clock," he said, smiling at the woman's Western-cut jeans and checked shirt. They had bought what they'd considered suitable clothes back in Phoenix. Bolan hoped that the folks in Gila Bend considered them suitable, too.

  Bolan had noticed that Julie had relaxed considerably since they'd left Florida that morning, probably thinking that moving this far from the action effectively took them out of it. He didn't share that feeling at all, but hated to break her mood by telling her that. Over the course of the past few days, he had come to ascribe a great deal of importance to Jerry Butler's coded messages, and Butler wouldn't have bothered with all the trouble over Gila Bend unless there was something to it. What, he couldn't imagine.

  "I still don't know what you expect to find out here in the middle of goddamned nowhere," she said, turning to stare at him under the protection of her arm. "And you look ridiculous in that stupid hat."

  He pulled his new cowboy hat a little farther down on his forehead. "I'm not having trouble with the sun like you are." He tapped his finger against the brim of the headgear in a jaunty salute. "And to answer your first question, I don't know what I expect to find, though I think there's a connection between Baylor Optical and Gila Bend."

  "So, what do we do, march into town and ask if anything unusual's been happening?"

  "Why not?" he said. "I'll tell you that the first thing I'm looking for is a manufacturing business of some kind, one that's been started in the past few years. My supposition is that, whatever Baylor Goggle was supposed to be used for, it's really taking place at Gila Bend."

  "A pretty flimsy connection," she said.

  He frowned at her. "You got any better ideas?"

  Julie sat up straight, kneeling on the seat to look at him. "Yes," she said. "We forget about all this and go hide out somewhere until it's all over with."

  "You know I can't do that," he replied.

  She pouted out her lower lip. "Spoilsport," she said, turning back around to sit properly. "Is this place going to be like a real city?"

  "Not much of one," Bolan admitted. "It's got about two thousand people living there. They might even have indoor plumbing."

  "Not funny," she said, folding her arms across her chest.

  He laughed, then pointed ahead. "I think we'll get to see for ourselves in j
ust a minute."

  Julie squinted out the windshield. Less than a mile in the distance a small town rose impossibly out of the desert heat. On both sides of the road small horse ranches broke up the monotonous landscape. The shoulder of the roadway was littered with paper trash and broken beer bottles, sure signs of encroaching civilization.

  They passed a Welcome to Gila Bend sign, then moved into the city proper, which consisted of a great many one-story structures, most of them geared toward eating and filling cars with gas. Bolan smiled, seeing many of the same restaurants he'd seen in Sanford the day before.

  They slowed down, noticing the other signs of civilization: churches, a schoolhouse, police and fire stations, a movie theater, a bank and an inordinate number of motels. He'd seen it all before.

  The types of businesses Bolan noticed made him feel a little better. This was a tourist town, a city that existed simply because people needed a place to stop for the night on their way into or out of California and the large stretch of Mojave Desert that cut it off. He saw no signs of industry apart from small, local businesses; anything unusual would stand out prominently, like those mountain ranges jutting cleanly out of the flatland.

  He drove into what looked like the center of town, the place where the two main drags intersected. A stone courthouse there seemed to be busy, plus a supermarket, auto-repair shop and gun shop. He pulled up at an angle to the sidewalk, between the yellow lines, and got out of the car, Julie dutifully climbing out the other side.

  It was hot, as hot as Bolan had ever imagined, and the air was thick with dust. He stretched, loosening his muscles, and looked around. It was time to have a talk with Julie.

  He walked around to her side of the car, decidedly uncomfortable in the cowboy boots that pinched his feet. Julie looked miserable and was fanning herself with the road map they had picked up in Phoenix.

  She looked up at him and frowned. "You're going to be serious now," she said. "I can tell."

  "Look," he said, glancing around. "There's a reason for most everything I do."

  "So I've noticed," she said.

  "Every step we've made so far has been observed," he went on. "We've nearly died because of it several times. If, indeed, Project GOG is entrenched here, it means we've walked into the viper's den. We have no idea how many locals could be on their payroll. Regardless of what you think about all this, we've got to maintain our cover while we poke around. We can't arouse any suspicion. It could be deadly for both of us. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?"

  She nodded, the relaxation draining from her face to be replaced by tension. "You're telling me to get with the program," she said.

  "Play the part as if your life depended on it. We're husband and wife. We're here looking to get away from the city slickers and big city life. If I'm wrong about this place, we'll have a good laugh about it later. But if I'm correct, our ability to handle this right may be the only thing that will keep us alive. Got it?"

  She nodded, her eyes fearful. "You're really worried about this, aren't you?"

  "You bet I am."

  She searched his face with her eyes. "I won't let you down," she said at last.

  He hugged her quickly, then reluctantly let her go. "Thanks," he said.

  She looked around with wide eyes. "Okay, Tex," she said. "Where do we start?"

  "I noticed a bar across the street. Not a bad place to go for gossip. And the name is Sparks, not Tex."

  "Does that mean I have to be Bernice again?"

  "We've still got the IDs," he said. "We might as well use them."

  He turned toward the blacktop street, waiting until a rusted pickup coughed past before crossing. Not a great deal was going on. It was the hottest part of the day, and only fools and people with necessary business to conduct were outside. Bolan wondered which category he fit into.

  They crossed the street slowly, their clothes not much different than those he saw around them. There was the modern equivalent of the general store off to their left, where a bearded old man covered with dust was supervising the loading of supplies onto an ancient flatbed truck by a pair of teenaged boys.

  They made it across the street, passing a parked car that had a saddled horse tethered to the door handle, then up to the entrance of a hole-in-the-wall with the unlikely name of Zanzi-bar. An Olympia Beer sign in neon filled the only unpainted part of the picture window, and the push-open door was windowless and painted red.

  "Ready?" he asked softly.

  She made a clucking noise. "Anytime you are, Mr. Sparks."

  Bolan pushed open the door and walked into absolute darkness, his eyes traumatized by the switch from bright sunshine. The place smelled like all small bars — like beer, cheap soap and sweat, the music serious country and western, heavy on the twang.

  Julie followed right behind, bumping into him in the darkness. They stood there for a moment, letting their pupils dilate enough to see the dim outline of a bar and tables. Then they walked to the bar and took a seat. Customers, all men, were scattered around the place in small groups, a washed-out aging blonde waiting on them and laughing in a high nasal whine that might have been cute when she was seventeen years old. The bartender was younger. He wore a T-shirt harping a Hank Williams, Jr. tour and had sandy brown hair and a mustache.

  The man walked up to them and seemed to be studying their faces. "What can I get you?" he asked.

  "A couple of draws," Bolan requested.

  "Sure," the man said, moving away.

  "What's a draw?" Julie whispered in his ear.

  "Beer," he said.

  "I hate beer," she rasped. "You know that."

  "I don't care if you drink it," he said. "That's not what we're here for."

  She sat back on I he swivel stool, pouting.

  The bartender returned, dropping two coasters on the bartop and setting two pilsner glasses of beer on the coasters.

  "Two bucks," he said, taking a five from Bolan, then going to the register to make change. He came back and left the money on the bar. "You folks new around here? Don't believe I've ever seen you in here before."

  "Just got in," Bolan admitted.

  "Passing through, then?"

  "In a way," Bolan said, taking a sip of the beer, then setting the glass back down. "We've finally had enough of so-called middle-class American life and decided to get away, just leave it all behind and start fresh someplace simpler, you know?"

  The man nodded. "You folks down from Phoenix?"

  "Yeah," Bolan replied.

  The man cocked his head. "I tried livin' there myself," he said. "I'd just got back from the war and thought I'd settle around a lot of people and get back in the swing... but it didn't work out that way."

  "You in Nam?" Bolan asked.

  The man nodded. "Hundred and First Airborne, air cav."

  "Huey-boy," Bolan said. "You fellas sure helped me outta some jams back then."

  The man looked at the bartop. "I took some shrap trying to rescue a Marine recondo team set up on a hill to watch troop movements. Damned NVAs were coming at 'em with German police dogs, can you imagine that?" He stared for another minute, reliving a private hell, then said, "God, they blew the living shit outta us that day." The man cleared his throat. "I been on disability ever since."

  Bolan stuck out his hand. "Name's Dave Sparks. This is my wife, Bernice."

  The man smiled, forcing himself out of his past. "Mike Reardon," he said, shaking hands with both of them. "Glad to make your acquaintance. So, you thinkin' about movin' down to these parts?"

  "Maybe," Bolan said. "If it feels right."

  "What line you in, Dave?" Reardon asked.

  "Auto mechanic."

  "Always use another one of those." The man smiled. "And if you want a slower pace, this is the spot for it. We ain't had no excitement since the preacher's wife run off with the Bible salesman back in '79. Is that quiet enough for you?"

  Bolan glanced over at Julie. Contrary to her statement about beer, she
had just finished hers and was pushing the glass back toward Reardon. "How about a couple more?" she said.

  "I haven't finished mine yet," Bolan said.

  "Hell, they're for me!"

  Reardon laughed and drew two more beers from the Coors tap.

  "Seems to me a lot of little towns are getting ruined because those factory people are moving in to get nonunion help," Bolan said when Reardon returned.

  "Not around here. The closest thing we got to a factory here is the pottery works on the Indian reservation north of town, and they been there about as long as the town has."

  "Nothing much new coming in, then?"

  Reardon laughed and went over to draw a beer for himself. "You're the newest thing since I moved here."

  Just then the door slammed open and a small figure strode in. "Whiskey!" the man yelled loudly. Everyone in the bar laughed and called out to him.

  "I'm here!" the little man yelled again. "And I'm thirsty!"

  Reardon pulled a dusty bottle out from under the bar and held it up. "Here you go, Tater!" he said.

  The man stumbled to the bar, trying to see his way in the dark, the same as Bolan and Julie had. "Drinks on me as long as I'm standing!" he yelled, and everyone applauded.

  The old man moved right up beside Bolan and took the bottle. He smelled of sweat, and a cloud of dust seemed to follow him around. He grabbed the bottle without bothering with a glass and made his way to one of the tables where the locals were calling out to him.

  "Well, this is your lucky day," Reardon said to Bolan. "Tater's monthly trip to town."

  "Who is he?" Bolan asked, watching the man make his way across the room.

  "Strangest story you've ever heard. God only knows what his real name is. As long as I've been around they just called him 'Tater.' He's a prospector, has been all his life. Looked for gold, silver... he even spent time looking for uranium back when that was the big thing. Always poor as a church mouse, you know, the town joke. But he seemed content enough, and I've learned that being content is really something."

  "Touché," Julie said, holding up her beer.

  "Anyway," Reardon continued, "a couple of years ago, ol' Tater come up with something new. It seems he had talked a bunch of fellas into going in with him to look for Pancho Villa's treasure."