The Minotaur

by Stephen Coonts

  “Aw, Toad, you’re gonna get that bird goo all over the seat.” He glanced at the car. Smoke was still leaking out. It was junk. “Keys are in it. But be careful—it’s government property.”

  Amazingly enough, the car engine actually started after Toad ground on it awhile. Jake had driven about forty miles at full throttle, about a hundred miles per hour, so he shook his head in wonder when the transmission engaged with a thunk and Toad drove away trailing smoke.

  15

  The base dispensary contained an emergency room, but no other hospital facilities. After Rita Moravia was cut out of her flight gear, cleaned up and examined by a doctor, she was taken to a hospital in Reno, seventy miles away. Toad Tarkington arrived at the dispensary as the ambulance was driving away.

  “Oh, Doctor,” the corpsman called when he saw Toad coming through the door, “here comes the other one.”

  The doctor was only a year or two out of med school, but he had already acquired the nuances of military practice. “In here.” He gestured to an examining room. A corpsman followed them in and closed the door. “Strip to the skin,” the doctor said. “How do you feel?” He grasped Toad’s wrist and glanced at his watch.

  “Okay, Doc. The pilot took the bird hit. I just got splattered.”

  “Did you become hypoxic, pass out, inhale any feathers or anything like that?”

  “No, sir. I just peed my pants.”

  The doctor checked his watch again, then looked at Toad with raised eyebrows.

  “Not really,” Toad said, suddenly aware that he was no longer in the company of his peers. “Sorry. How’s Moravia?”

  The doctor was still all business. “Blurred vision in her left eye, some bruises and cuts, nothing serious. But she’s an excellent candidate for a major-league infection. I gave her a large dose of penicillin and sent her to the hospital in Reno for X rays and observation. She can stay there until we’re sure she’s okay.”

  “And her eye?”

  “I think it’ll be okay. They’ll look at that in Reno.”

  The doctor spent the next five minutes examining Toad. He peed in a bottle and gave a blood sample. The corpsman gathered up his flight gear. Toad insisted it all be put in a duffel bag. He stood holding his flight suit, which already had a hen-house smell. “What am I going to do for clothes?”

  “Got any money?”

  He dug his wallet from the chest pocket. “Fifty-three dollars.”

  The doctor added fifty dollars of his own money to Toad’s fortune and sent the corpsman to the exchange for underwear, trousers, shirt, and tennis shoes. “Should be open until nineteen hundred hours. You can make it if you hurry.” Toad gave the enlisted man his sizes and expressed a few opinions about color and style. The corpsman flashed Toad a wicked grin as he headed for the door.

  An hour later Tarkington had talked the doctor into loaning him one of the navy sedans belonging to the dispensary. He was on his way to the parking lot in his new duds when he met Jake Grafton coming in.

  “You okay?” the captain said.

  “Yessir. Just fine. Thought I’d grab a little liberty.” Toad gave Jake back the keys to the sedan he had used to get to the dispensary, and displayed the keys to his borrowed vehicle. “I think your car’s had it. Want to come with me?”

  “Where you going?”

  “Reno. That’s where they took Rita.” He told Jake what the doctor had said.

  Jake begged off. He still had security arrangements and phone calls to make. “Call me from the hospital and tell me how she is. I’ll be at the BOQ. Leave a message at the desk if I’m not there.”

  Jake watched Toad drive away toward the main gate, then went into the dispensary to see what the doctor really thought about Rita’s left eye. She needed two great eyes to fly. Better than the doctor or even Toad, Jake Grafton knew what flying meant to Lieutenant Rita Moravia, U.S. Naval Aviator.

  They had her in a semi-private room with a beautiful white-haired lady who was fast asleep. Toad spent ten minutes talking to the floor nurse and the internist before he went in. “They say you’re gonna be okay,” he told Rita with a grin. She had a patch over her left eye. Scratches and small cuts were visible on her cheek.

  She raised a finger to her lips. “Mrs. Douglas went to sleep a few minutes ago,” she whispered. Toad stood at the end of the bed glancing uneasily at the shiny, stark hospital equipment. Just being in a hospital made his leg ache.

  “Here,” she said, still whispering, “pull this chair over and sit down. Have you had any dinner?” It was almost 10 P.M.

  “Uh-uh. How you doin’?” He sat gingerly on the forward portion of the seat.

  She shrugged. “Thanks for saving my bacon.”

  He waved it away. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked, glancing at the sleeping Mrs. Douglas.

  “Broken hip. She fell in her kitchen this morning. They’re going to pin it tomorrow evening. She’s been in a lot of pain today.”

  Toad nodded vaguely and examined the sheets that covered Rita. Hospital sheets always looked so perfect, even with a body between them. Her hair was a mess. They had cleaned it and made no attempt to pretty it up. That’s what’s wrong with hospitals— your dignity is left at the front door on the way in.

  “That shirt you’re wearing is the most horrid garment I have—What are those colors? Chartreuse and mauve?”

  “Beats me,” Toad muttered, glancing at his torso with distaste. “One of the corpsmen picked it out at the exchange. He thought I would cut a dashing figure in it, I guess.”

  “Dashing is not the word I would use.”

  They sat for a while, each trying to think of something to say. “Guess your helmet visor saved your eyes,” he said at last. “Cushioned the impact.”

  “It’s amazing, when you stop to think about it. I thought about it all the way over here in the ambulance. The ambulance only goes ten miles over the speed limit, so everything on the road passes it. Lights flashing, and everyone whizzing by. So I had plenty of time to think about the odds. It’s amazing.”

  “What is?”

  “How with the whole wide sky to fly in, all those thousands of cubic miles, that bird and I tried to fly in exactly the same little piece of it. A foot further left, that bird would have missed the cockpit, a foot to the right and it would have hit the nose, a foot higher—”

  “Life’s like that. No guarantees. You never know.”

  “Is that what combat is like?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Weren’t you and Captain Grafton—over the Med?”

  Toad shrugged and slid further back into the chair. He crossed his leg with the pin in it over the good one and massaged it gently. “One flight. A couple minutes of being scared stiff and too busy to even sweat it. That wasn’t combat. Combat is day in and day out knowing they’re going to be shooting and being scared before you go and going anyway. I’ve never done that. Hope I never have to.” He grinned wryly and cocked his head to better match the angle of hers against the pillow. “I’m a peacetime drugstore cowboy. Didn’t you know? Make love not war.”

  “The Silver Star fooled me.”

  “Medals don’t mean shit. Over the Med CAG had the guts and determination, enough for him and me both with a lot left over. He’s a balls-out fighter. Those Arab fighter jocks were hopelessly outclassed—at least that’s what I kept telling myself then. Still tell myself that on nights when I wake up thinking about it. I’m even beginning to believe it.”

  She smoothed the sheets with her right hand

  “How’s your left shoulder?”

  “Just bruised. Hurts now. If this eye clears up…”

  “It will.”

  “Got some cuts on the eyeball. Lots of bird flesh and even the stem of a little feather.”

  “It’ll be okay.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You’ll fly again. Just wait and see. You’re too good to stay on the ground. A person with your talent belongs in a cockpit”
/>   “Ummm.”

  He put his feet on the floor, leaned forward and captured a hand. “Listen, Rita—Ginger—I know how you feel. The fickle finger of fate just reached out and zinged you a little one and reminded you that you’re mortal clay. We all are. But—you know all this— you’ve got to live every day the best you can, put the throttles against the stops and fly. Flying is what it’s all about. And when that final flight comes, that last day, as come it will, then look the Man straight in the eye and tell Him it’s been a hell of a great ride. And thank Him. That’s the way you have to live it. That’s the only way it can be done.”

  She took her hand from his and touched his cheek.

  “Get a good night’s sleep. Get well. You got a lot of flying left to do.” He stood. “I’ll look in on you tomorrow afternoon. Hang tough.”

  “Thanks for coming by.”

  He paused at the door and winked. “We fly together. Remember?”

  “Kiss me, lover.”

  He glanced at Mrs. Douglas. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be asleep. He bent over Rita and gave her his best effort.

  It was 1 P.M. the next day when Luis Camacho pulled into his driveway in Silver Spring and let himself into his house. His wife was at work and his son was in school. The house felt strange on a weekday with both of them gone. He walked slowly through the downstairs, looking it over, listening to the refrigerator hum, looking out the windows.

  He found his leather driving gloves in the hall closet, the pigskin ones his parents had given him two Christmases ago that he never wore because they were too nice. The batteries in the flashlight stowed in the catchall drawer in the kitchen still had some juice, amazingly enough. He tucked the light into his hip pocket and let himself out the kitchen door into the backyard. The wooden fence between his house and Albright’s had a gate with a rusty latch, no lock. The Labrador wanted to come with him, but he shooed it back and latched the gate behind him.

  He opened his packet of lock picks on Harlan Albright’s picnic table. He stared at them a moment, trying to decide. It had been a while. Let’s see, the lock is a Yale.

  Opening it took ten minutes. The Lab finally quit whining next door. Probably he went back to his favorite spot in the sun and lay down. Camacho was beginning to think he wasn’t going to get this lock when it clicked.

  Albright had no fancy alarms, or none that Camacho had ever seen. Service manager at a local garage, he couldn’t afford the visibility that a Fort Knox security system would give him. But no doubt he had some little doodads here and there to let him know if he had any unwanted visitors.

  Luis Camacho stood in the door and carefully examined the interior. It looked precisely as he remembered it, exactly the way he had seen it for years. He stepped inside, eased the door shut and listened.

  Albright’s house was similar to his, one of four variations on the same basic floor plan the tract builder had used in half the houses in this subdivision. Other than minor interior adjustments, most of the differences were in the front façades.

  As he stood there the faint hum of the refrigerator shut off. Albright’s fridge was quieter than his. Probably newer too. He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to shut out the faint sound of a car passing on the side street. Only a few creaks and groans as the house continued to warm in the early afternoon sun.

  He moved slowly through the kitchen and into the family room. A bachelor, Albright spent his evenings here, watching TV or reading. Camacho moved slowly, checking the walls and looking behind pictures—O’Keeffe prints—and tugging at the carpet edges. He inspected the books in the built-in bookcase, then randomly removed a few and checked the integrity of the wall behind by rapping with a knuckle. He didn’t know what he hoped to find, but he would recognize it when he saw it. If there was anything to find, which was doubtful.

  The garage was next, then the basement. It was still unfinished, no ceiling or drywall to cover the unpainted cinder blocks. Damp. Only two naked bulbs overhead, plus the one on the stairs. He glanced at the accumulated junk and the layers of dust and grime, and decided Albright cleaned his basement on the same schedule used by every other bachelor who owned one—never. There were some tools piled carelessly in one corner: a drill, a saber saw, a hammer, a box of hand tools. They were covered with the same thickness of dirt that covered everything else. Some cans of paint that looked like they had never been opened. Perhaps he had had a fit of enthusiasm which had waned on the way home from the hardware store. Camacho went back upstairs, consciously reminding himself to flip off the light switch at the head of the stairs.

  He stopped dead in the kitchen. He turned and went back to the basement door. He opened it. Light switch on. What was that? Was it a noise? Lights off. Yes, there was a noise, some kind of faint grinding, just for a half second or so. He repeated the procedure. He wasn’t imagining things. He could hear something.

  In the slanted ceiling of the stairway, down about three feet from the bulb, was a dusty screen. Several of the strands had been pushed aside, perhaps by a careless jab from a broom handle, leaving a hole. He flipped the light several more times. He could just barely hear it, the most minute of noises, hard to recognize.

  The screen was held on with four screws. Bare metal could be seen on the screw slots. When he got them out and lowered the screen he could see the camera lens. Rubber padding held on with rubber bands covered the camera body. A wire led to it. He stood on the stairs and examined it with his flashlight, then reached up and removed the camera, excess wire following along.

  The wire was connected to a gadget on top with a small alligator clip. With the stairwell light off, he unclipped it and carried the camera to the kitchen table. Unwrapping the rubber padding with gloves on was difficult, so he took them off.

  The gadget on top was some kind of an electromagnetic doohickey with a lever. When the current was turned on by flipping the light switch, the magnet was energized and caused this steel pin to push the camera shutter button, tripping the shutter. When the current ceased, a spring reset the lever, which released the shutter button and allowed the film to be automatically advanced by the camera.

  It was a nice camera, a Canon. The little window said that it was on its ninth exposure. How many times had he turned that light on and off. He tried to count them. Six. No, five. So the film counter should be on four.

  He opened the camera and removed the film, then pulled the celluloid completely from its cartridge and held it up to the window. Rewinding the film back onto the cartridge was a chore, but he managed, and after wiping the cartridge carefully, he reinstalled it in the camera. He used a dry dishcloth on the camera and wrapped it carefully. Working by feel with the overhead stair light off, he returned the device to its hole and screwed the screen back on. He flipped the light switch three times and was rewarded each time with that faint noise.

  There were three bedrooms upstairs, exactly the same floor plan here as in his house next door, but only two of them were furnished. The largest was obviously lived in, but the middle-sized room was ready for a guest. Luis Camacho tried to remember if Harlan Albright had ever had an overnight guest that he knew about. No.

  He checked the carpet. Albright might have some kind of pressure device under there, or perhaps heat-sensitive paper. Nope. Another camera? Apparently not.

  There was a little trapdoor in the hall ceiling that led to the unfinished attic. An upholstered chair sat just inside the guest bedroom. He put his nose almost to the seat and scrutinized it carefully. Yes, a few smudges of dirt were visible.

  Luis Camacho pulled the chair under the trapdoor, took his shoes off and stood on it. He eased the door up. It was dark up there. A few flakes of dust drifted down. He stood on tiptoe and used the flash. He felt between the joists.

  Several items. One was a soft leather baglike thing, a zippered pistol rug. The other was a large, heavy metal toolbox that just fit through the trapdoor. He almost dropped the toolbox getting it down.

  The pi
stol rug contained a Ruger .22 autopistol with black plastic grips and a partially full box of Remington ammunition. Bluing was worn off the pistol in places. The front sight and its sleeve were amputated, and threads were machined into the outside of the barrel to take the silencer, which was also in the rug. This was strictly a close-range weapon: with no front sight, it would be useless at any distance.

  He sniffed the barrel of the pistol. Cleaned since last use. He pushed the catch and the magazine dropped out of the grip into his hand. It was full. He shoved it back in until it clicked. No doubt the cleaning rod and patches and gun oil were up there in the joists somewhere. He replaced the items in the rug and zipped it closed.

  The toolbox wasn’t locked. Neatly packed in and padded to prevent damage were fuses, a roll of wire and a two-channel Futaba radio transmitter for radio-controlled models. Lots of servos, ten of them. A little bag containing crystals to change the frequency of the transmitter. Four miniature radio receivers, also made by Futaba. A bunch of nickel-cadmium batteries and a charging unit. Four six-cell batteries wrapped with black plastic. There was even a manual alarm clock.

  But the pièce de résistance, the item that impressed Luis Camacho, was a radio receiver with a frequency-adjustment knob, volume knob, earpiece and spike meter. This device would allow the careful craftsman to check for possible radio interference in the area in which he intended to do his bit to improve the human species, before he armed his own device. Better safe than sorry.

  All in all, it was an impressive kit. Everything recommended by Gentleman’s Quarterly for the well-heeled professional bomber was in there, including a case containing a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers and wrenches.

  Camacho repacked the items carefully, trying to put everything back exactly as he found it. After much straining he got the toolbox back through the trapdoor into the attic.

  He checked carefully in the joists as far as he could reach and see, then replaced the pistol rug. He was meticulous in restoring everything to its proper place, wiping a few flecks of dust from the chair arms and retrieving a larger piece from the carpet. When he had given everything a last look, he went down to the kitchen and seated himself at the table.