by Rick Cook
Sculley shifted in his chair. "Ah, Your Honor:"
"Mr. Sculley, you are trying my patience. That is the second time today and no one has ever done it a third time. Now get back out there, all of you, and let’s get this farce over with."
They were still in the traffic pattern when Charlie got a radio call that obviously displeased him. He reached over to the microphone jack and wiggled it firmly. "Say again tower, you’re breaking up. Over." Thanks to Charlie’s fiddling the transmission was nicely garbled.
The old pilot chewed his mustache for an instant as he listened to the transmission, then he reached down and switched off the radio. "Pissants," Charlie yelled to Mick.
Charlie did not waste a lot of time gathering altitude. While they were in the tower’s control zone he made a pretense of staying above the FAA minimums. As soon as they were beyond visual range of the tower and over the open desert he pushed the wheel forward.
As an ex-fighter jock, Mick Gilligan was a member of the high-and-fast school of flying. Charlie, on the other hand, belonged to the "low and slow" school. Gilligan had no objection to flying low-within reason. But he considered having to pull up to get over barbed wire fences decidedly unreasonable. A couple of times Gilligan saw puffs of dust where the Colt’s wheels had touched the ground. After that he tried not to look.
Back in the cabin the other passengers had their own problems. Flying sideways is unsettling, the noise and vibration were terrible, and the humans were sharing the space with a dragon who’d never been in an airplane before. Fluffy didn’t get airsick, but he wasn’t a very good traveling companion. Although he was too young to fly the dragon had the reflexes of a flying creature, which meant he kept trying to use his body to control his "flight." Moira tried valiantly to keep the body under control, but with very mixed success. Every time the plane lurched, Fluffy instinctively tried to spread his wings. After being smacked in the face a couple of times, the occupants of the seats learned to duck when the plane lurched.
"They’re not responding," the air traffic control supervisor told his visitors. Lake most air traffic controllers, the supervisor had a strong sense of what was proper. In his book having a bunch of police and other gawkers invade his control center was highly improper. However, as an ex-Air Force controller he was disinclined to argue. The best he could do was keep them out of his people’s hair, be civil to them and hope they would get out of his control center soon.
"Isn’t that illegal? Ignoring air traffic control?" asked one of his visitors, a blocky middle-aged man in an expensive suit. The supervisor had already sized him up as the one who was running this show. The police captain and other officers, as well as the gaggle of civil servants from federal and state agencies, didn’t seem to count for much.
"Maybe their radios are out," the supervisor said, more to annoy his unwanted guests than out of any belief. Charlie had only been in town for a couple of weeks on this visit, but already the controllers knew him and his plane.
"Where are they going?"
The supervisor glanced over a controller’s shoulder. "North and a little east."
"Didn’t they file a flight plan?"
"Yeah, but they’ve already deviated from it. Besides, according to the plan they’re coming back here."
"Well, stop them," the suit snapped. The supervisor just looked at him until he realized now stupid that was and reddened.
It’s easier dealing with the DEA, the supervisor thought.
"I mean, can you alert the airports within range and have them report when it lands?" the suit asked in a lame attempt to cover himself.
"If they land at an airport. From the looks of that plane it can set down on any strip of flat desert from here to Idaho."
The suit clearly didn’t like that. The police captain, on the other hand, seemed less concerned. Clearly he was just glad to get the problem out of his jurisdiction.
"Well," said the civilian, obviously trying to control his temper, "can you follow them on radar?"
"For a while. But they’re descending rapidly. If they get right down on the deck we’ll lose them in the clutter."
"How fast can you get a plane after them?" one of the lesser suits asked. The supervisor shrugged. "Ask the police, or maybe the DEA. Or you may have to rent something."
The suit turned to look at the police captain.
"We’ve got an air unit that can follow them for a while," the cop said.
"Don’t worry about following them too far," the supervisor told the visitors.
"They’re headed into restricted airspace. If they don’t change course pretty soon the Air Force will take care of them."
"What will they do?" the suit asked.
"If they don’t break off? Then they’re going to overfly Area Fifty-One. The Air Force is real touchy about uninvited visitors there."
The suit looked apprehensive. "But what will they do about it?"
"Intercept them. Try to get them to land." The supervisor shrugged. "In the worst case they’ll blow them out of the sky."
"We are getting close," Kuznetsov yelled in Mick Gilligan’s ear.
Mick didn’t recognize the terrain, but he didn’t need the Russian to tell him where they were. They’d crossed the highway some time back, pulling up so they didn’t collide with any cars or trucks and scaring the heck out of a couple of tourists. By now they had to be inside the restricted airspace that surrounded the base and soon they’d be over the line on the base itself.
The Russian leaned over Mick’s shoulder and pointed at a nondescript building on top of a nearby mountain.
"Radar station," Kuznetzov shouted over the noise of the engine. "Normally would have been eliminated by speznatzм, but no speznatzм, so:" He shrugged. Gilligan turned in his seat to look at him closely. "What in the hell are you?" he yelled.
"I told you," Kuznetsov shouted back, "I am a businessman."
"Yeah, but what did you used to be?"
"Used to be businessmen were parasites and enemies of people. So I was good Communist like everybody else."
"Heads up!" Charlie called. "Here comes company."
It only took Mick an instant to pick up the two dots headed toward them. They quickly grew and resolved into the gray shark shapes of a pair of F-16s. This is a nightmare, Mick thought I’m going to wake up soon and find out this whole thing is just a nightmare. But the F-16s kept coming.
I should have gotten out back in 1978 when I was still a captain, Major General Paul Manley thought as he stared at the radar plot. Outwardly everyone in the command center was cool and professional, but you could feel the tension rising. Right now the tensest place in the room was the pit of General Manley’s stomach. Unusually for the Air Force, General Manley was not an experienced combat pilot. Even his tour in Vietnam had been spent pulling pilots out of the jungle with Air Rescue rather than dropping bombs. For the first time in his career as an Air Force officer he was probably going to have to kill someone.
"Break off, you damn fools," he muttered at the dot on the scope. But the point of green light kept coming straight for the smear of the mountain range and the base beyond.
One of the problems with running the most highly secret military base in the United States was the tourists. Groom Lake was so secret it was regularly written up in national magazines. So naturally it drew military buffs, peace protesters, flying saucer fanatics and assorted religious cranks, crazies and general-issue looney-toons like a magnet draws iron filings.
That in fact was one of Groom Lake’s functions. While there was some very secret work done here, the focus of developing the next-generation aircraft had shifted elsewhere. General Manley knew that the next generation was really being developed in an industrial park in Los Angeles by a weird mix of civilian engineers, "retired" military officers and science fiction fans, most of whom thought they were working for a private foundation running on a shoestring. There was also the "agricultural experiment station" up in northern Idaho where the really sec
ret work was done. That was so highly classified the general could hardly bear to think about it. While the work went on there, all the flak came to Groom Lake, and it was part of General Manley’s job to catch it. The most dangerous of the groups were the military buffs who prided themselves on collecting every scrap of information about programs they were supposed to know nothing about. By combining everything from chance sightings to seismic records of sonic booms they had pieced together remarkably detailed pictures of several of the craft that actually existed at Area 51, as well as equally detailed pictures of several that had never existed, including one that had started out as a practical joke in the Nellis AFB officer’s club.
Those people the general could almost sympathize with. The most irritating ones, and the most persistent, were the space nuts who kept insisting that the government had a flying saucer hidden in one of the hangars. Their latest tactic had been to file a lawsuit claiming the saucer’s force fields were making people sick for miles around. Lawyers for the saucerians had been combing the sparsely populated desert around the base seeking people with illnesses, real or imaginary, that they could blame on the presence of the alien spaceship. The next step would be a class action suit against the government with all kinds of discovery motions.
Was this more saucer folk, General Manley wondered, or was it another camera crew from a tabloid TV show? Using a Russian airplane would appeal to those bozos.
Whoever it was was in for a big disappointment even if they lived to get here. The truth was there was nothing to see. The plane was so slow the base had plenty of time to get anything sensitive under cover-a well-practiced maneuver because of Russian spy satellites. Besides, nothing interesting happened outdoors in the daytime.
Off in the background a phone rang. The general gritted his teeth and wished he hadn’t quit smoking.
If he thought that plane represented a threat to his command he would have ordered it shot out of the air without hesitation. But unless there was a nuclear weapon on board there wasn’t a damn thing it could be carrying that would seriously hurt this base. He knew it, everyone in the command center knew it and the one also knew the standing orders. The fact was he’d need a damn good reason not to shoot that plane down.
"General," the lieutenant holding the phone said hesitantly. She was young, fresh-faced and buxom even through her flight suit. She reminded the general of his daughter, who was also a lieutenant training at fighter school at Luke Air Force Base.
"Sir, it’s the XO."
General Manley glared. "Sir, he says it’s urgent," the lieutenant offered. The general sighed and extended a hand for the phone. "Sir," the XO said, "I’ve got a lawyer on the phone. And I’ve got the Pentagon on the other line telling us to cooperate with him ’to the maximum extent feasible.’"
Oh Jesus, the general thought, what now?
Wiz was still wondering about it when the scenery changed again. This section of tunnel was neatly floored and walled with blocks of worked stone. Columns stood along the walls supporting groined vaulting overhead. After all the different kinds of tunnels they had seen, Wiz wasn’t particularly surprised, but he was reminded of pictures of the crypts under a Gothic cathedral.
Just to be sure he motioned to Danny. The younger programmer swept his magic detector back and forth across their path and then shook his head. No magic before them.
Wiz took three steps before Malkin grabbed his arm.
"Freeze," she commanded
"What’s wrong?"
"Your trusting nature, for a start," the tall thief said.
"But there’s no magic here."
Malkin looked amused. "Do you think that’s the only danger we face? Look at this place. Why do you think it’s built like this?"
To hold the roof up?"
"Perhaps. But why here and nowhere else we have seen? Give me more light, if you can." With that she picked her way ahead, studying the floor before her intently and occasionally poking and prodding with her rapier.
She got perhaps a dozen steps beyond Wiz before she stopped dead and looked around. Finally she reached into her pack and pulled out a rock the size of her fist. She tossed it underhand at a perfectly unremarkable section of stone floor a couple of steps ahead of her.
As soon as the rock struck there was a creak and a section of the floor swung downward, leaving a gaping blackness beneath. Far below Wiz thought he heard the sound of rushing water, but he heard no splash from the stone. Then there was another creak and the stones swung back into place, leaving the floor looking as perfect as before. Malkin looked smug.
"How did you know that was there?"
The stonework was too regular," she told him, leaving Wiz to try to determine why that section of the paving was any more regular than any other.
"Now listen," she said. "I’m going to go ahead to find the traps. I’ll mark the safe path and then you come through one at a time. No more. We want as little weight on this floor as we can."
As Wiz and the others watched, Malkin picked her way over the stone floor. Twice more she marked hidden traps with a bit of charcoal stuck on the point of her rapier, and once she skipped neatly out of the way as a blade swung down from the ceiling on a long rod.
"All right," she called back as the blade slowed. "The place is so big we’ll have to do this in stages. The first one of you follow my path to here. The next one come to that white stone just in front of the second trap." Wiz picked his way forward and Danny followed. By the time he had reached the now-still blade, Malkin was up ahead, dodging in and out of the forest of columns.
They watched intently as she spotted another trap, then she stepped behind a pillar and they couldn’t see her anymore.
"Hey!" they heard her yell. "What:"
With that Wiz and Danny were off and running. They stayed on the safe path Malkin had marked for them but they were almost side by side when they reached her.
They gasped when Malkin stepped out in the light. Her entire right side was splattered with blood. Gore was matted in her hair and dripped down one side of her face. But she strode toward them strongly, rapier in hand, apparently unaware of the extent of her injuries.
"We," she announced, "have got to do something about that lobster." Shock, thought Wiz numbly. She’s in shock. He and Danny rushed to meet her and half-carried her back to the others. Malkin was apparently too dazed to appreciate their help. She struggled and protested all the way back.
"Will you to let go of me!" she demanded as they laid her down on a cloak. Danny managed to get her rapier and Wiz tried to hold her down so June could work on her. Malkin was having none of it. She pushed and shoved and tried to knee Wiz in the groin.
"Have you run mad?" she demanded.
"Take it easy, you’ve lost a lot of blood."
"What blood? The thing never touched me. I’m fine I tell you."
Wiz looked more closely. In spite of the amount of clotted red all up and down her side there was no sign of fresh blood. He dropped his arms to his sides and stood up.
"You’re all right?"
"Of course I’m all right. I came around the corner and the damn bug squirted me with something."
"But it’s red, and it’s:" Wiz extended a finger to touch Malkin’s gory torso. He drew it back, rubbed the red substance between his thumb and forefinger and sniffed it. "Cocktail sauce," he concluded.
Wordlessly, June produced a hand mirror and held it up before Malkin.
"Oh Fortuna!" the thief exclaimed at what she saw in the mirror. "And you thought I:" She broke up laughing and Wiz, Danny and June all joined in.
"I’m going to kill that lobster!" Malkin growled. Try to serve me up with cocktail sauce, will he?"
"I never did like lobster," Wiz said. "Always gave me gas."
June handed Malkin a cloth and she began wiping the sauce off her face. "I think I’m developing a taste for lobster." She looked down at the red-smeared cloth.
"If I can watch him boil," she added savagely.
"That was honey," Malkin said with some dignity. "And it was completely different. Besides, it was Jerrys idea."
"You what?" General Paul Manley roared into the receiver.
The lawyer on the other end was unperturbed by Manley’s rank or his command bellow.
"That aircraft is carrying a member of an endangered species," he repeated. "We have a federal court order protecting it. Under the terms of that order you cannot harm it."
"What?"
"Specifically," the lawyer went on, "you can’t shoot it down."
That’s the biggest goddamn load of bullshit I’ve ever heard in my lifer General Manley roared. He went on in that vein for several minutes. Then he slammed down the phone.
"Order the CAP not to fire," he said to the controllers. "We’ve got orders from Washington not to down that plane." The controller turned back to her radio to relay the message and General Manley grinned. Then he caught the lieutenant looking at him and scowled again.
"Get the ready squad loaded and in the air," he growled. "If that turkey lands I want him surrounded and arrested."
The Colt roared over the mountains so close Gilligan could have reached out and touched the rocks. Ahead lay a flat tan plain dotted with occasional greasewood bushes. Almost lost in the distance and the dark backdrop of mountains was a cluster of low buildings including several hangars and a control tower. As soon as they were over the ridge line Charlie pushed the wheel forward and sent the plane into a sickening swoop, sticking so close to the mountainside that, for an instant, Mick thought he was going to set down on the slope. Gilligan decided to look up instead but the view wasn’t any less menacing. The F-16s came flashing over the mountain at a much more reasonable altitude, then banked sharply to come around toward them.
General Manley studied the approaching speck through his binoculars. That was a bit of an affectation since he could have gotten a much better view from the optical sensor displays on the console. Heedless of the F-16s buzzing about, the lumbering biplane droned on like a bumblebee on a summer’s day.