The Devil on Chardonnay

by Ed Baldwin

  “Yes, sir, a Blackhawk is a handy thing to have,” Digby said with a laugh, his gnarled hands holding to the side of the aircraft as he gingerly stepped down. “I’ve been working on helicopters since Vietnam. The army retired me 20 years ago and still, there’s always somebody needing a good mechanic to keep their rotors up.”

  “And we are grateful for Davann and Raybon, two fine American patriots who have decided to help us,” Ajak said, slapping Davann Goodman on the back.

  The four of them walked to the open hangar door and stood watching the activity at this once sleepy backwater airport. It was now transformed into the major front-line airfield for the South Sudan defense holding off the assault of hundreds of sick and dying jihadists from dozens of Arab countries trying to fight their way south, up the White Nile from Sudan. Five Blackhawk helicopters were in various stages of refueling and re-arming, their Kenyan pilots lounging in the shade of the terminal. Fifty laborers were busy unloading barrels of Malathion from the back of an unmarked C-130, which had just landed.

  At that moment, three large trucks pulled up towing 105 mm howitzers. They were followed by a dozen trucks filled with men in uniform.

  “Ah, my artillery is here, I must go,” Gen. Ajak said, stepping back into the hangar to a map on the wall. “We will set up five miles from the river, here. Just at dusk, we will lay down a brief barrage of artillery. That will keep their heads down. The mosquitoes will just be coming out. You run down the river at 100 feet and spray the Malathion.”

  “Sounds like a party,” Davann said, looking at the map.

  “We’ll have about 20 minutes of spray, and I’m hoping it will spread a quarter mile on either side of the plane. Once up and once back, and we should cover five miles of river,” Rabon said, not feeling as confident as Davann.

  Flying down the Nile at a hundred feet with a hose hanging out the back of his aircraft and hundreds of crazed Arabs below with automatic weapons didn’t sound like a party to him. Still, Uncle Sam owned the aircraft, and this new adventure had been an occasion for a contract renegotiation. He and Davann were planning to open a Tiki bar and restaurant in Juba. Mariam Ajak, Davann’s fiancé, was now part of the team.

  “Good, we’ll do it again at dawn,” Ajak said. “We’ll start the barrage when you take off.”

  Ajak strode out into the sun and climbed into his Humvee and pointed up the road to the north. The trucks rumbled after him, stirring up a great cloud of dust.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Corvo, Azores

  “Chailland! Chailland!” Ferreira’s face appeared at the top of the hill.

  “Here,” Boyd said weakly and struggled to stand. He emerged from beneath the bush and brushed himself off, conscious of every scrape and bruise on a thoroughly scraped and bruised body. He pulled at the bush above and began to work toward the top.

  “I thought you were dead,” Boyd said, accepting Ferreira’s hand for the last pull over the ledge. “What was that explosion?”

  “He threw a hand grenade down the stairs, just to clear out the first floor. Didn’t matter to him if one of his men or I was still standing,” Ferreira said with a grin.

  “It must have been you still standing.”

  Boyd felt around his back to see if something was sticking out of him there. It felt like it.

  “Yes, in the front yard. I know that trick well. I have used it myself.”

  Ferreira was obviously very happy.

  “Did you get 'em all?” Boyd asked, looking up at the window he’d just leaped out of.

  “There were three.”

  “Been upstairs?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t go.” Boyd felt nothing protruding from his body and started toward the kitchen. “I need some water.”

  “I hear her crying.”

  “Don’t go up there.” They re-entered the kitchen, and Boyd found a liter bottle of water, draining it as fast as it would flow. Ferreira did the same. He opened another and took a drink, carrying it into the living room.

  “Grenades are hard on houses,” Boyd said, surveying the damage.

  The wall across the foyer from where the grenade had detonated was splattered with shrapnel, the front window was blown out and the walls near the foyer were blackened from smoke. He took another drink of water as he walked to the window.

  “Our navy,” Ferreira said proudly. The frigate was still at flank speed circling to the west of the island to cut off an escape into the North Atlantic.

  Boyd stepped out into the front yard through the window, stepped over the bodies of two Azorean sailors and walked to the edge of the yard. He looked to the east.

  “And there’s Constantine.”

  The tuna boat, throwing spray 30 feet out from its bow, was booking around the east side of the island headed back into the archipelago.

  “Call Lajes on the radio,” Boyd said. “Tell them to load up some police or whatever they have and get over to Pico. Even at 35 knots, it’ll take him three and a half hours to get there. At least now we know where he’s going.”

  Ferreira hurried inside through the door, which was hanging from one hinge, and retrieved his radio. They stood together on the hill watching Constantine’s boat crash through the 4-foot swells while Ferreira made the call.

  “We’ll get that son of a bitch,” Boyd said, turning back to the two dead sailors in the front yard.

  He walked over and turned one over. It was a man in his late teens or early 20s. His shirttail was out and, without bending down, Boyd hooked his boot under it and ripped open the front. There were three bullet holes in the chest and two more in the abdomen. There was also a fine red rash, visible even in death, and several blotches.

  “See that?” He pointed with his boot. “That’s Ebola. I saw it on the guy who first captured this beast, and it’s gotten everyone who’s touched it so far, including Mikki up there,” he said, nodded toward the second floor.

  “That’s what we want to keep here, on this island till we can kill it,” Boyd said, the emotion rising in his voice as he got mad.

  Ferreira looked somberly down, then made another call on his radio. He talked for several minutes and got heated himself.

  “They understand now,” he said. “We will have men with guns on the shore at Pico in two hours. Your Special Operations C-130 is in radio range, three hours out.”

  “Not close enough,” Boyd replied, disinterested as he watched Constantine’s boat.

  The breeze was pleasant, and they stood looking at the view, then walked over to the back and watched the frigate finally get the message and turn back toward the islands.

  “Look, the sheep are out,” Ferreira said, pointing to the ocean.

  “Sheep?”

  “The waves are capped with the wind. Azoreans say the sheep are out when they see that, because it looks like sheep grazing in the sea.”

  The whitecaps did scatter about the darkening Atlantic like sheep in a field. It meant the swells were up, too.

  “I thought you said there were three more sailors?” Boyd asked after finishing his second water bottle.

  “The third one didn’t have a gun, or it would have been him standing in the hallway when the grenade exploded.”

  They walked back into the house and Ferreira led the way into the darkened parlor. They switched on the light.

  “Her,” Boyd corrected as he turned over the body sprawled on the hand woven rug, staining it crimson with blood from a dozen stab wounds in the front and a gaping slit throat. A long stiletto knife was by her open hand. A slender young black woman, she was clad in an expensive silk blouse and jeans snug on her long legs.

  “She came from behind me, in the dark,” Ferreira pulled up his shirt to show a stab wound on his back, and another on his right hand. “We fought for several minutes, she was very strong. It was the hardest fight I ever had to kill a man … a person.”

  His hands shook as he lit another cigarette.

  “She looks tough,” Boyd sa
id, having another look. She was tall, athletic. Blood dribbled from her nose.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Boyd said suddenly and walked out the front door, looking up to find Constantine’s boat.

  “Whoa! Where’s that slippery son of a bitch going?”

  Constantine’s boat wasn’t headed southeast, but southwest, toward Flores.

  “The plane,” Ferreira said softly.

  Boyd’s mind raced, calculating speeds and distances. He turned toward the house.

  “Give me your 9 millimeter, and one of those long guns. Got any more clips?” He took the web belt from Ferreira and picked up a Kalashnikov. “He’ll get there before me, but maybe he’ll take a long downwind leg.”

  Boyd sprinted for the gate and the road down the hill. Just outside was a bicycle leaning against the fence. He leaped on it and careened down the hill.

  Bouncing across the grass, still at breakneck speed from the hill, Boyd was upon a small group gathered around the Waco before they knew of his approach. The sight of the tall American with the pistol belt around his middle and the Kalashnikov over his shoulder was enough to scatter them. He jumped into the back seat of the Waco, where the radio was located, donned the leather cap and goggles, and cranked the engine. It started right up, and he turned into the 20-knot breeze from the southwest and was airborne before he even got to the asphalt runway.

  The bicycle was a lucky break. It had given him a jump, and he was airborne before Constantine. He climbed to a thousand feet and pulled out the binoculars to watch for the Cessna. It climbed out from takeoff and headed southeast, toward Pico. Boyd followed it up to 5,000 feet. The Cessna pulled slowly away from the Waco, which was shaking loudly at its maximum speed of 115 knots. Boyd knew the Cessna was rated around 120 knots, so he couldn’t catch it, and he had half an hour to figure out how to stop it from landing.

  Pico popped out of the ocean after 20 minutes. The late afternoon air wasn’t as clear as the morning had been, with whitecaps dotting the area before him. Soon, Faial and Sao Jorge were also visible, the volcano appearing to be in the middle of the group from this direction. Constantine didn’t appear to be in any hurry as he descended toward the runway on the island Pico, he crossed the runway at the departure end, just over the waiting Falcon and turned east, descending on a downwind leg. Constantine was turning back into the wind for final descent two miles from the end of the runway as Boyd arrived over the center of the runway. He put the old Waco into a dive right over the Falcon and, hurtling down at 120 knots, the rattles and wind turbulence louder than the engine, stowed the Kalashnikov as too unwieldy and chambered a round in the 9 millimeter.

  At the end of the runway and only 50 feet off the ground, Constantine was confronted with the Waco pulling out of a dive and headed right at him, only closer to the ground. Instinctively he pulled up, aborting his landing. The Waco howled beneath him.

  Maintaining level flight with his left hand, Boyd turned and fired three shots into the Cessna as it passed. That was for the shock value of having bullets actually hitting the Cessna so Constantine wouldn’t have sense enough to just cut the engine and land on the remainder of the runway. It worked. Constantine powered up and was ascending from the departure end of the runway as Boyd turned into the mountain, still with some speed from the dive, and climbed out after him.

  Constantine headed out across the 5-mile-wide straight between Pico and Faial. Boyd wasn’t fooled. With a slower aircraft, his only hope of preventing the handoff of Ebola to whoever was there in the Falcon was to stay between them. He climbed but circled back toward the runway. Constantine turned to circle around the south side of the island.

  Boyd cut inside his circle and intercepted the Cessna halfway up the side of the volcano Pico on the south side. This time, Constantine shot first, and his plane veered as he turned rearward with one hand to fire a volley from his Kalashnikov out the door. Boyd passed over him and rolled upside down, pushing the nose down to give him time to empty a full clip at the Cessna, which maintained a course around Pico.

  Boyd flashed back toward the mountain beneath Constantine and replaced the empty clip with a fresh one, then cut beneath Constantine quickly to avoid another chance for him to shoot, rolled inverted above and outside the circle and emptied that clip into the Cessna. It blew out part of the windshield. Falling behind again, Boyd pulled into the mountain again to catch up. The Cessna’s door opened wider this time, and Constantine gave him a full clip with both hands, shots hitting the engine and wings. He’d put the Cessna on autopilot so its course was away from the mountain. Boyd scooted quickly behind the Cessna, and when Constantine returned to hands on control, Boyd cut inside and caught up again. Now they were close to the dirt.

  Pico is 7,053 feet high and composed of ash, settled back from a long-smoking volcano that cooled over millennia to produce a smooth, symmetrical, picturesque peak. The two planes raced around it 1,500 feet below the top. Boyd’s wing tip was at times only feet from the surface, black as asphalt, hard as a cinder block. Constantine wouldn’t get that close, his inexperience forcing a wider circle, thus, Boyd pulled ahead with a slower craft. They were nearing the eastern side of the mountain, and the point at which Constantine could pull away from the mountain and glide down to land, leaving the Waco behind.

  Just as Constantine came to the eastern edge of Pico, Boyd dropped beneath him and, from the outside, rolled up over the Cessna, the two aircraft now straight and level. Boyd pushed the Waco down on top of the Cessna, carefully locking his landing gear in front of the Cessna’s wing. Then he cut the throttle and pushed the nose down. The sudden drag slowed both aircraft and pushed the Cessna’s nose down. No amount of strength from Constantine could overcome the control surface of the Waco’s two huge wings as their noses pointed down and their airspeed dropped. The Cessna reached stall speed first, lost lift and control from its wings and began to fall. Boyd pushed the throttle forward just as the Waco reached stall and felt his landing gear release from the Cessna’s wing. He dropped his right wing and fell off down the mountain, gaining speed. He pulled the nose up and looked back.

  “Practice stall recovery much?” Boyd called out as the Cessna spiraled down the face of Pico and crashed into its side. A moment later the wreckage exploded in a ball of flame.

  Boyd rolled away from the fireball out toward the sea. His chest thudded as he looked back to make sure Constantine didn’t rise again. The fire burned brightly, sending black smoke up from the side of the old volcano. He throttled back and coasted down the side of the mountain toward the airport. The Falcon was moving already, and by the time he crossed the runway it was airborne, accelerating quickly out of sight.

  CHAPTER SIXTY ONE

  “Orion is with us”

  Boyd pointed the Waco back toward Corvo. He hoped he had enough gas to make the trip. The whole purpose of this mission was to stop Ebola, and if he brought it to another island by stopping for gas, he’d have failed.

  Mikki’s blood was on his back and smeared around the cuts and abrasions he’d gotten jumping into the crater. He’d been nose to nose with Constantine during the fight and breathed his adversary’s breath while still hot and moist. If Ebola was contagious, he would have it.

  The engine drone and rush of the wind faded out for a moment, and Boyd looked down into the sea at the whitecaps, now topping every swell, and remembered Ferreira’s description of the sheep. Faces appeared as he looked down: Wolf; Neville; Constantine, looking strangely benign now; and then finally, Ferreira. Was there a special section in eternity for warriors? After death, did you, your compatriots and your enemies spend eternity together, away from the rest of humanity, or were you just alone?

  Shaking his head to recover concentration, Boyd used the radio to call the tower at Horta and report Constantine’s crash. He asked them to call the command post at Lajes and asked them to track the Falcon on radar, at least far enough to see which continent it was headed for. In 10 minutes, he was out of radio range and stil
l out of sight of Corvo. The sun’s rim touched the western horizon, and the late afternoon haze made the ocean and the sky merge ahead of him. He kept a careful eye on the compass and attitude indicator, because missing the island entirely in the haze would have him drone on into the empty North Atlantic, exhaust fuel and fall silently into the ocean. The thought was appealing, but then he saw the beacon at Flores, then Corvo.

  In the gathering gloom, Boyd landed the Waco, though there were no runway lights. He didn’t see the C-130 until he was safely on the ground. Troops walked in groups around the airport, and a flashlight beckoned for him to follow to a parking spot. He shut down the engine and removed his goggles and leather helmet.

  “Hands up, Pancho!”

  Boyd’s head snapped around to see a U.S. soldier, in full battle regalia, hand grenades attached to his Kevlar vest, face blackened, rifle pointed at him. He raised his hands. He was too tired to be annoyed.

  “I’m American!” Boyd shouted, climbing down to the wing.

  “Could be,” the man said, not impressed. “Keep 'em up anyway.”

  “I’m Capt. Chailland,” Boyd said, turning when he reached the ground.

  “Face down! Now!”

  “It’s over! There’s no threat here. I hope you guys haven’t shot anybody,” Boyd said, dropping to the ground to lie face down.

  “It’s over when Capt. Peabody says it’s over, and he ain’t,” the man said, showing no sign of letting up.

  “Look, I’m tired and thirsty. If you’ll just call Gen. Ferguson at the STRATCOM Command Post …” Boyd was nauseated now, with fatigue, thirst and hunger.

  “I’m just a sergeant, sir. I don’t know no generals. I take my orders from Capt. Peabody,” the man said, accentuating his Southern drawl.

  A Humvee approached from behind him.

  “Let him up, Sanders,” a voice from the Humvee said as it stopped behind the soldier, its lights blinding Boyd in the darkness. “Who are you?”