High Flight

by David Hagberg

  “What progress have you made?”

  “The woman refuses to cooperate. Now Portland and Gales Creek are untenable because of the upcoming flight. Their security measures are extensive. Will the signal be sent tomorrow?”

  “No,” Kamiya replied, his tone sharp. “In a few days, perhaps. First your situation must be resolved, Yamagata-san. In this you may not fail.”

  “I will not.”

  “You must not. There are other considerations, other situations developing at this moment, that are crucial to our mission. Everything has been foreseen. But everything must be perfectly in place to guarantee our success.”

  The dark thought that Kamiya was insane passed through Yamagata’s thoughts, but he pushed it aside. If the master were mad, what then of his disciples?

  “Hai, Kamiya-san. It will be as you wish.” Yamagata hung up, walked out of the study, and went upstairs to the bedroom where they were keeping Chance Kennedy.

  The others were in the city. For the next few hours he would be alone with her. He stood at the end of the bed watching her sleep. They’d tapered off her drugs so she would be coming out of her stupor soon.

  Such a naive woman, Yamagata thought. Little girl, actually, as most Western women he’d met were. Prudish beyond belief. Yet they all wanted adventure, and they all thought that a small bit of anatomy gave them nearly absolute control over every man.

  He drew back the covers from her body and gently removed her nightshirt. The problem was they needed her undrugged cooperation. They needed her to telephone her husband and convince him to cooperate. They needed information. Who did the company think was coming after it? Why had it hired Kirk MeGarvey, and where was he?

  Yamagata tied Chance’s wrists and ankles to the bedposts with rubber straps, leaving her spread-eagle and vulnerable. Her eyes began to flutter. The room was cool. Already she had goose bumps and her nipples were inverted.

  The Western mind did not understand pain. In America, especially, people looked for instant gratification. Comfort. Pleasure. Absence of confrontation.

  He plugged an electrical cord into an outlet at the head of the bed and carefully placed the bare probes of the wires on the sheet between Chance’s legs. Moist tissue conducted electricity better than dry tissue. The junction between pain and pleasure could be infinitesimal.

  “Chance,” he said softly. “It is time to wake up. Time to talk.”

  The airport terminal at Eugene’s Mahlon Sweet Field was nearly deserted at midnight. The twenty people who deplaned with McGarvey shuffled tiredly downstairs to get their bags. As soon as the jetliner was unloaded it would continue to Portland where it would stay the night, not flying until morning back to Des Moines via Eugene.

  McGarvey rented a Ford Probe from Hertz and twenty minutes later was heading north on State Highway 99W, which paralleled Interstate 5. Security surrounding Portland would of necessity be concentrated on the main routes, including the interstate highways. The FBI and local cops did not have the manpower to effectively watch every state and county road.

  Kennedy said that America would remain in Gales Creek until just before the Honolulu flight, when it would be moved the twenty-five miles to Portland for the ceremonies and to board the VIP passengers. It was a weak spot in the security measures.

  McGarvey stopped at an all-night diner north of Corvallis, and while he waited for his bacon and eggs to come he studied a highway map, working out the route to Guerin’s prototype assembly facility that would least likely be patrolled tonight.

  Whatever was going to happen would affect America, and he was going to be aboard to stop it.

  David Kennedy stood at the tall windows in the darkened living room, watching the lights across Lake Oswego as he held the telephone to his ear.

  Dominique had called him from the East Coast. “Have you heard anything from the police?”

  “Not a thing. They’re not even sure that she was kidnapped. I guess they talked to some of the neighbors and some of Chance’s friends. They told them about the troubles we’ve been having. So the Bureau thinks she may have just run off. I don’t believe it.”

  “What does Mac say?”

  Kennedy closed his eyes. “He thinks the Japanese took her. But I haven’t heard a thing. No one has called.”

  “Jeez, will you look at all this shit,” Baltimore Police Sergeant of Detectives Frank Gentilli said, peering at the electronic equipment jammed in the back of the van.

  The coroner’s people had bagged the two bodies and had taken them to the morgue. One had a knife wound through his throat, front to back, probably severing his spinal cord. The other man had been killed by a narrow chest wound, probably a thin-bladed knife, which most likely pierced his heart. Gentilli’s partner, Jerry Kozlowski, found the two wallets stuffed between the front seats. He removed them and stepped out into the light to examine the IDs. He almost dropped them.

  “What the hell?” he said, half to himself.

  “Government-issue plates,” Gentilli said, coming around to the front.

  The van had been left in an airport self-storage garage just off Poplar Avenue. It might not have been discovered for months except that two juveniles had been caught breaking into the storage units. The one with the van was the last they’d jimmied.

  “Frank, keep everyone the hell out of here. I gotta call this one in,” Kozlowski said.

  “What’ve you got?”

  Kozlowski showed him Carrara’s CIA identification card. “I want to talk to those two punks who broke in, and I want the manager down here on the double. Somebody paid for the rental, and it wasn’t very long ago.”

  John Whitman got the call at home from the night watch commander. It took him several seconds to come fully awake. “Say that again?”

  “Sir, we have a flag on that Langley VIP—Phillip Carrara. Baltimore police found him and another CIA officer both dead, stuffed in the back of what appeared to be a surveillance van, parked in a self-storage garage by the airport.”

  It was as if someone had injected a liter of ice water into his gut. “How long have they been dead?”

  “Not more than two days. The coroner has the bodies now.”

  “How were they killed. Did Baltimore say?”

  “Yes, Sir. Mr. Carrara was killed by a knife wound to his neck. Mr. Ulland, by a puncture wound to his heart.”

  “The van was found near the airport?” Whitman asked, getting out of bed and taking the phone into the bathroom.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, this is important. I want the crime site secured. Get our forensics people up there within the hour. I want the place down pat. And send someone up with Colonel Mueller’s photograph. Hit the manager, and the airport staff.” They had canvassed Dulles without luck, but so far as Whitman knew no one had thought to include Baltimore.

  “Shall we inform someone at Langley?”

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll be at my desk within the hour. Whatever you get, send it up to me.”

  McGarvey left his car in a thicket of trees off the highway a couple of miles southwest of Guerin Test Facility One’s western perimeter fence at five in the morning. The sun had not come up yet, and the sky was darkly overcast, a bitterly cold wind slicing through the valley. Some snow had fallen in the night and more threatened.

  He checked the action of his pistol, then reholstered it at the small of his back and headed northeast away from the highway through the woods. It was very quiet. From time to time he could hear the wind in the treetops, but nothing else.

  He walked for nearly forty-five minutes before he came to the tall, chain-link fence. A clearing had been cut for a perimeter road, and there were fresh tire tracks in the snow. Saul Edwards had taken him seriously when he’d told them to beef up their security here.

  Beyond the fence was a sloping field of tall grass that led to the end of the fifteen-thousand-foot runway. In the distance the hangars and assem
bly halls were lit up. The ILS system towers were off to the right, and to the left the fence followed a rock-strewn hill that rose a couple of hundred feet.

  Keeping back well into the woods he worked his way up the ridge line parallel to the fence. Near the top he found what he was looking for.

  They’d had trouble maintaining some sections of the sixty-seven miles of perimeter fence because of water runoff during the fall rains and the spring meltoff. Drainage ditches had been dug, and where they crossed under the fence, concrete drainpipes had been installed and blocked with wire mesh. But in several such spots, because of the rugged terrain, the perimeter road was thirty or forty yards away from the fence. He crouched behind a boulder directly across from one of the pipes.

  From his vantage point, McGarvey could look down across the runway toward the complex of brightly spotlighted buildings, the biggest of which housed America. There was a lot of activity over there.

  Twenty minutes later his patience was rewarded when a four-wheel-drive Jimmy passed below on the perimeter road.

  When it was gone he scrambled down to the drainage pipe and, using a large rock, hammered the wire mesh away and crawled through to the other side.

  He walked back down the hill toward the end of the runway, keeping as low as possible in the tall grass, and watching for other headlights moving along the perimeter road. Sooner or later another patrol would pass by. He wanted to be in place before that happened.

  “Are we ready to fly?” Air Force Two Pilot Lieutenant Colonel Bob Wheeler asked.

  “We’re running the final diagnostics now,” Chief Master Sergeant Mazorsky replied.

  The food service people and stewards had not been allowed aboard, and their liftoff time was less than four hours away. But nobody messed with Mazorsky’s Raiders. When the chief said the bird was ready to fly, they flew. Not until then.

  “We’re ready to button it up,” Delta Crew Chief Henry Verbeke said. “And we’ve got time to spare.”

  “Run a ground test, and then I’ll sign off,” Neidlinger instructed. “I want to make sure the anti-lock works this time.”

  The White House was like a magnet to Mueller. He had come often to Lafayette Square across Pennsylvania Avenue to stare at the building and grounds. If the city were ancient Rome, a place of grand monuments and institutions from which emanated political, economic, and military power, then the White House was Caesar’s palace.

  If America were to fall, it would have to decay from within. No foreign enemy would ever defeat the country. And now, after more than two weeks in the U.S., he did not believe the nation would decay, or would in any lasting way be hurt by what Reid had set in motion.

  “It’s wonderful,” a woman standing beside him said. Mueller looked at her. She was plainly dressed, possibly in her mid- to late fifties, with the smile of a Sunday-school teacher. “Yes, isn’t it?” he said, and he turned and went looking for a restaurant to wait in until it was time.

  It was 6:30 by the time McGarvey reached the new airplane development complex. Most of the activity seemed to be concentrated toward the front of the prototype assembly hangar.

  The sun was due to rise in forty-eight minutes, and it was essential that he be inside before then. Without the proper lapel badges he wouldn’t get far in daylight.

  He ran to the back of the assembly hall and looked around the corner. A Mercedes station wagon with two people inside headed across to security. A service vehicle, its bed on scissor jacks, came around the corner and backed into a service bay at the rear of the prototype hangar. The driver got out and went inside.

  McGarvey walked to the far end of the assembly hall and held up long enough to make certain that no one was coming. Then he sprinted across the twenty or thirty yards between buildings, concealing himself behind the truck.

  The VIPs would not be boarding the airplane until it was moved to Portland in a few hours. With any luck the FBI would be concentrating its security there. But the advantage was theirs. Under the proper circumstances they would not hesitate to shoot him, whereas no matter what happened he could not return fire.

  But he had to be aboard that airplane.

  He went around to the back of the truck and flattened himself against the wall next to the service door. He could hear the sounds of machinery and power tools, and somebody’s voice raised in anger or frustration.

  McGarvey eased around the corner and looked inside. The rear of the hangar was in darkness. Out in the open bay America was bathed in strong lights and was still crawling with technicians and engineers getting her ready for her flight. The truck driver stood about thirty feet away, talking with a man dressed in white coveralls. Their backs were to the door.

  McGarvey slipped inside the building and, keeping to the shadows, reached the back stairs to the engineering galley above and hurried up. At the head of the stairs he turned the corner just as George Socrates and Saul Edwards came out of the drafting offices.

  “Good Lord Almighty,” Socrates said.

  McGarvey forced himself not to overreact. To remain calm. Both men looked worn out, to the point of collapse. In their state there was no telling what they would do. “David is expecting me.”

  “How did you get in here?” Edwards asked, keeping his voice low. “The place is crawling with cops.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’ve got to get aboard, and the crew has to be alerted to what’s going on.”

  Socrates glanced over the rail to the big hypersonic jetliner on the floor. “We can get you aboard, but I can’t guarantee Portland. They might turn the airplane inside out before they let any of the VIPs board.”

  “I’ll have to hide somewhere, and the crew will have to keep them away from me.”

  “Have you found something?”

  “Maybe. The Japanese company that’s been targeting you controls one of your subcontractors.”

  “That’s it,” Socrates said. “Which company?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “There’re hundreds of them,” Socrates said. “Impossible to check.”

  “I have someone in Washington trying to find out for us. Can you cancel the flight? A last-minute technical problem?”

  “No,” Socrates said, tiredly. “It’s still all just speculation.”

  “Where’s David?”

  “Portland. He’ll meet us there,” Edwards said.

  “That’s it then?” Socrates asked. “It’s come down to the wire, and despite what the authorities say, you still believe that we’re in danger?”

  “I hope I’m wrong, George.”

  Socrates shook his head and glanced again at America rising like a Star Wars model from the hangar floor. “Why are they doing it? They want us to build them an airplane, we’ll be happy to. Then they can take it apart and improve on our technology. That’s how it’s done.”

  “There may be more at stake than Guerin.”

  Socrates looked at McGarvey. “Get him a security pass and a set of coveralls,” he told Edwards. “We’ll wait in engineering.”

  Nancy Nebel took the call. At first she had trouble understanding what the obviously troubled woman was trying to say. But then she realized it was Chance Kennedy, and for a moment she froze.

  Security had installed the Caller-ID system on their phones. She switched it on. “Mrs. Kennedy, do you wish to speak with your husband?”

  “Yes, yes, please,” Chance mumbled.

  Kennedy came to the office door.

  “It’s your wife,” Nancy said.

  Kennedy came out of his office and snatched the phone from her. “Chance? Chance, where are you?”

  “David, it’s Yamagata. They’re planning something, but they’re worried that someone else is …”

  The phone line went dead.

  “I’ll call the FBI,” Nancy said. “I got the number.”

  “No,” Kennedy told her. “I’ll make the call.”

  America’s pilot, Pete Reiner, wasn’t happy about McGarvey’s presence ab
oard, but when everything was explained to him he accepted it. “Cancel the flight.”

  “Can’t,” Socrates said.

  McGarvey had ridden with the crew up from Gales Creek, and now he watched from a cockpit window as the ceremonies began in front of a terminal at Portland International Airport. Security would not be as strict because the Vice President had canceled at the last minute, sending instead the assistant director of the Federal Aviation Administration. There were media everywhere, their remote satellite up-link trucks parked along the apron to the west, their cameras trained on America and on the grandstand where the VIPs and a substantial crowd of onlookers had gathered to hear remarks by the governor and others, including Al Vasilanti. McGarvey was unable to pick Kennedy out of the crowd, however.

  Making sure the flight-deck door was latched, he plugged into the aircraft’s public correspondence communications system and called Yemlin’s Washington number. It was answered on the tenth ring.

  “InterTech,” Yemlin said, and the connection was immediately broken.

  A few minutes after 2:30, Vice President Cross, his wife Sally, his advisers, his secretary, his Secret Service contingent, a White House photographer, and a dozen White House correspondents arrived at Andrews Air Force Base and boarded Air Force Two. The plane would return to Washington within twenty-four hours so it could be redesignated Air Force One and be made ready for the President’s Wednesday flight to Tokyo. The weather was overcast, but the winds were light.

  “Ground control, this is Delta seven-five-six, we’re ready with Baker to push away from the gate at this time,” Delta Senior Pilot Bob Rodwell radioed.