by Cap Daniels
“He’s at UAB in Birmingham. It’s one of the best cardiac units in the country.”
“Can you get me a flight out of Miami? I can be there by morning.”
“There are no flights, Chase. Because of the hijacking, all air traffic is grounded with very few exceptions, and getting you on a plane to Birmingham isn’t going to fall into one of those areas of exception. You’ll have to get a car in Miami and drive up.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon. Can I talk to him?”
“No, I’m sorry. He’s in the cardiovascular ICU, and I only get to see him for a few minutes every day. Chase, it’s serious.”
“I’m on my way.”
I hopped from my bed and noticed something lying on the sill beneath the portlight. It was the old, battered machete that had taken the lives of my family’s killers—the machete my father held when he died. I lifted the weapon and sent up a silent prayer for David Ruiz—devil or not.
I grabbed a stack of cash and my go bag packed and stowed in a locker by my bed, and I headed up the stairs.
“Guys, I have to get to Miami. Dr. Richter is in the ICU at UAB. There are no flights because of the hijacking, so I have to find a boat tonight that’ll take me across to Miami so I can rent a car.”
In a matter-of-fact tone, Penny said, “I’m going with you.”
“There’s no time. I have to go now.”
She was already on her way down the stairs to my cabin, then emerged seconds later with a backpack of her own. “You’re not the only one who keeps a go bag packed. Now let’s find a boat. Do you have some cash?”
I smiled and took her hand. “Yeah, I’ve got everything we’ll need. Clark can you—”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I’ve got this. You go. Call as soon as you know anything.”
“Thanks,” I said, and we stepped from the boat to the dock.
“Wait!” yelled Ginger. “Chase, you’ve got an airplane, right?”
“Yeah, sort of, but there’s no way to get a clearance after the hijackings.”
“That’d be true for most normal people, but we’re not most people, and we certainly aren’t normal,” she said.
“Spit it out. I don’t have any time to waste.”
“Give me the tail number of your airplane and five minutes. Surely you’ve got five minutes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to trade the best collection of Chinese surveillance intelligence we’ve ever seen to the NSA for an air traffic control clearance from Bimini to Birmingham.”
“But we gave the plane to the customs agents,” Clark said.
“No, they believe we gave it to them, but I don’t remember any such transaction. Do you, Diablo?”
“No, I was there the whole time, and there was no transaction. They just welcomed us to Bimini and stamped your passports.”
“Give me the information. Who’s the PIC? You or Clark?”
“Clark has to be the pilot in command. I’m not type rated in the DC-3 yet,” I said, and I gave her the numbers.
We climbed back aboard, and Ginger soon returned with a piece of paper in her hand. “Here’s your prior permission required number and your flight plan. Call Miami Center as soon as you’re airborne, and give them the PPR. They’ll clear you direct to BHM. It’s seven hundred miles. Do you have the fuel for that?”
Clark hung up the phone. “She’ll be fully fueled when we get there. Let’s roll.”
“Ginger, you’re the best. Thank you. Diablo, do something nice for her as soon as possible, will you?”
He winked at me. “Oh, I plan to.”
“I’m still coming,” said Penny.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said, and we leapt to the dock. “Oh, I almost forgot. You guys will probably want to sail up to Freeport and check in with immigration or sail back to Florida. I don’t think the local customs officers are going to be too happy in the morning.”
We hailed a taxi at the marina entrance and were airborne in no time after reaching the airport.
Clark was on the controls, and I was trying to convince my underwater GPS that we could swim to Birmingham at two hundred knots. As we climbed through four thousand feet headed northwest, I tuned the radio and prayed it would work.
“Miami Center, this is November-seven-six-one-November-Alpha. We’re a Douglas DC-3 off Bimini for Birmingham Shuttlesworth, Bravo Hotel Mike with a PPR.”
I waited somewhat impatiently for the controller to answer. I’d spent a lot of time flying in Miami Center’s airspace, and I’d never heard the radio silent. It was eerie.
Finally, a controller came on. “Calling off Bimini with a PPR, say again.”
I repeated my request and read him my PPR number.
“November-one-November-Alpha, squawk-zero-six-four-one.”
I dialed the code into the aged transponder, and the little yellow light flickered every time the radar signal bounced off the antenna beneath the plane.
“November-one-November-Alpha, you’re radar contact one seven northwest of Bimini, and you’re cleared direct Birmingham. Climb and maintain one zero thousand.”
I read back the clearance and reported out of seven thousand for ten. It had worked. Ginger had pulled it off. If Skipper could learn to do that, there would be no limit to what we could accomplish.
On the flight, I left Clark in the cockpit and sat with Penny in one of the uncomfortable cargo net seats.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m okay. There are just some things you need to know before we get to the hospital.”
“Okay. You can tell me anything.”
I spent forty-five minutes explaining how Dr. Richter had been my favorite psychology professor at UGA and how he’d recruited me into American covert ops. That was the easy part. Telling her about Anya was tough.
“So, this Russian agent lied about being your psych professor’s daughter and pretended to be in love with you?”
“Yes, but it’s more complicated than that.”
Penny chewed on her lip. “But she’s dead now, right?”
“Well, I thought so, but maybe not.” I tried to make it make sense for her, but it didn’t even make sense to me.
“Chase . . . are you still in love with her?”
That question hit me like a sledgehammer, and I tensed.
Penny hung her head. “You are.”
I took her hand. “No. I was never in love with her. I was in love with the character she played. The person I thought I loved didn’t exist. It was all a convoluted play to worm her way into U.S. covert ops. None of it was real.”
“It was real to you when it was happening,” she said.
“Yes,” I admitted. “It was real to me back then, but not now.”
“Okay. This is all pretty hard to swallow, but I’m going to trust you since I’m on what I assume is a stolen seventy-five-year-old airplane, in the middle of the night, going to see your dying spymaster who may also be the father of your former lover, who was, or maybe still is a Russian spy.”
“Sixty,” I said.
“Um. . . .”
“The plane is only sixty years old. Not seventy-five.”
She broke into laughter and wrapped her arms around me. “You know, I don’t just love that you come home to me. I also love—”
“Hey, Chase! Get up here. I need you. We’re starting our descent into Birmingham.”
I turned to Penny. “I know. Me, too.”
The old DC-3 was a handful in the daytime with wind on the nose, but she turned out to be a bear at night in a crosswind. We touched down at three on Friday morning and finally wrestled the old girl to the ramp.
I pulled into the University of Alabama Birmingham cardiovascular unit parking garage just after four. There was no way they were going to let me see Dr. Richter before the morning visiting hours, but I wasn’t going to miss my window of opportunity. Clark dropped us by the door and said he’d meet us
inside. I suspected the truth was that he was going to go sleep in the back seat of the rental car until the sun came up. He had to be exhausted.
Penny and I passed through the glass doors of the hospital.
“You know, if your dead Russian girl shows up here, I’ll scratch her eyes out.”
I wanted to warn her that not even James Bond could protect her if she tried to scratch Anya’s eyes out. Instead, I said, “I think that’s pretty sexy that you’d fight for me, but let’s not go to jail in Birmingham tonight, okay?”
She squeezed my arm. “No promises, remember?”
We found an abandoned information desk and waited for what felt like hours for an attendant, but it never happened. Finally, Penny vaulted across the locked half-door and settled in behind the computer. “What’s his first name?”
“Robert,” I said. “Robert Richter.”
“He’s in cardiovascular ICU, second floor, room two-one-one-four.”
An angry, overweight, middle-aged guy in a rent-a-cop uniform waddled down the hall. “Hey! You can’t be back there. What are you doing?”
“We waited for half an hour, and no one showed up. We couldn’t wait any longer. My dad is in the CICU.”
“Damn that Lois. She does this crap every night. She thinks because she brings me pound cake that I won’t rat her out, but the pound cake isn’t that good anyway. Okay, okay, just get out from behind there and go on up. Morning visiting hours start at seven. There’s coffee in the waiting room up there.” The guard unlocked the half-door and let Penny out.
Penny kissed the guard on the cheek. “I think it’s cute that you call it pound cake. Thanks, officer.”
He blushed. “Get out of here, you two.”
We rode the elevator to the second floor and found the CICU waiting room. Dominic Fontana was asleep on the overstuffed sofa, and there was an infomercial trying to sell tape that could hold a boat together after they’d cut it in half.
I could use a roll or two of that.
I settled into a surprisingly comfortable chair, and Penny went to work brewing a fresh pot of coffee.
She giggled. “Maybe I should take some down to the guard so he can have it with his pound cake.”
Dominic started to stir. “Hey, Chase. How did you get here so fast?”
“We found a flight. It’s a long story. How’s he doing, Dominic?”
“A flight? How’d you get a flight?”
“The NSA sort of owed us a favor. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. How’s Dr. Richter?”
He sat up and pointed toward the coffee pot. “Is that fresh?”
“Yeah, I just made it. I’m Penny, by the way.”
“Dom,” he said. “Dominic Fontana. It’s nice to meet you, Penny. Would you mind pouring me a cup?”
She handed him a paper cup with a little foldout paper handle.
“Who uses these?” he said. “Why can’t we get a real coffee cup?”
“Dominic,” I said, “how’s Dr. Richter?”
“They let me see him last night right after I got off the phone with you. It doesn’t look good, Chase. I told him you were coming, and he said he wanted to see you as soon as you got here.”
“Did he have a heart attack?”
“Yeah, they think so. He’s getting old, you know.”
I nodded and took a paper cup from Penny.
“I’ll let you two talk,” she said. “I’m going for a walk.”
I gave her a weak smile as she left the room. “Tell me what’s going on, Dominic.”
He looked down the hall. “Close the door and turn off the TV, will you?”
I did as he asked and then sat across from him.
“Let’s hear it, Dominic. I’m tired. I’ve spent the last two days in the cockpit of a raggedy old DC-3, and the two days before that in a recompression chamber after getting blown out of the water. I’ve got no patience for this.”
He squinted and shook his head. I could tell he wanted details, but so did I.
“It’s this whole Norikova ordeal, Chase. It’s done a number on him. When he was overseas in the seventies, that Katerina woman really got under his skin. He’s spent the last three decades trying to get over her. He was never married. Did you know that?”
“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, he was hung up on Katerina. Anyway, when Norikova showed up pretending to be his daughter, he was twenty-one again and over the moon. To see that girl who looked so much like Katerina screwed him up. It’s spooky how much they look alike, you know?”
“Yeah, I know. Colonel Tornovich picked precisely the right girl to play the part. If he couldn’t have found their actual daughter, she was as close as anyone could ever be.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s just spooky.” He took a long drink of coffee from the paper cup. “This is ridiculous. I’m bringing my own cup tomorrow.”
“You can go to the hotel and get some real sleep now. I’ll stay here as long as necessary.”
“I could use a shower and a shave. I may take you up on that after we see him in the morning. What time is it anyway?”
I glanced at my watch and couldn’t even remember which time zone I was in. “I think it’s almost five, but maybe it’s almost four.”
On a small table, a telephone’s LED screen flashed four-fifty-seven. “I guess it’s almost five.”
“Visiting hours start at seven, but sometimes they let me in before that if he’s awake. He’s going to be happy to see you.”
“It’ll be good to see him, too,” I said. “Dominic, is he going to make it?”
He drank the last of his coffee and crushed the paper cup in his palm. “I don’t think so.”
Penny came back with a pair of ceramic coffee mugs with “Waffle House” stenciled on the side of each. She poured both of us another cup and set them on the table in front of us.
Dominic smiled and inspected the mug. “Thank you, Penny. I didn’t know you could buy these.”
“You can’t,” she said, “but it turns out they’ll give them to you to get you to stop telling the customers that the cook has gonorrhea and isn’t wearing gloves.”
Dominic looked at me. “I like her. Where’d you find her?”
“Ah, I picked her up about thirty miles east of Charleston.”
“That’s in the Atlantic Ocean,” he said.
I smiled. “We all need a mermaid in our lives sometimes.”
He raised his mug. “Here’s to mermaids who can score Waffle House coffee cups at five in the morning.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said. “So, Clark is sleeping in the car. He’ll be in after he wakes up if you want to wait for him. Otherwise, you’re welcome to grab a hotel. I’ll call you if anything happens here.”
“I think I’ll wait until we get to see him at seven. I’ll see Clark for a few minutes, and then I’ll get some rest.”
At twenty past six, a nurse stuck her head in the waiting room. “Old grouchpuss is awake if you want to go in.”
“He’s developed quite a reputation around here already,” Dominick said.
“That’s our Rocket.” I reached for Penny’s hand. “Are you coming? I’d like for you to meet Dr. Richter.”
“I’ll wait here this time and go in later if that’s okay. I think you two probably have a lot to talk about, and it would be easier without me.”
I nodded and kissed her cheek.
We walked into his room, and it was all I could do to keep from falling apart. He’d always been thin with sunken eyes, but he looked like a skeleton with leathery skin stretched across his bones. I tried to smile, but couldn’t, so I bit my lip and sat on the edge of his bed.
He reached for my hand, and I could swear he was trying to smile, too. I didn’t know what to say, so I said the dumbest thing I could. “How are you?”
He actually did smile then. “Never better. Did you bring me any good scotch?”
“I’m sure I could round up a
bottle.”
“Thanks for coming. I’m glad you’re here.” The words came on a raspy, breathy voice that I never would’ve recognized as his.
He turned his hollowed eyes to Dominic. “Can you give us the room, Dom? We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
“Sure,” he said as he got up to leave. “I’m going to get some rest, and I’ll see you this afternoon.”
“Son, I’m serious about the scotch,” he hissed. “I’m never leaving this hospital alive, and I’d like to have one last drink with you—and a cigar if you think you could pull it off.”
I choked back the wall of tears threatening to flood my eyes. “When are the next visiting hours?”
“Who gives a damn what time visiting hours are? I’m an old man, and I’m going to be dead soon. You’re a spy, for God’s sake. You come and go as you please and put a bullet in anyone who tries to stop you.”
He started coughing and wheezing. I poured him a cup of water from a plastic pitcher on the side table. He drank most of it, while the rest dribbled down his chin.
“I don’t like you seeing me like this, son, but I’m glad you came. Did you hear about the damned Arabs flying into the Twin Towers?”
“Yes, sir, I heard.”
“Cut the sir crap. We’re the same now—just sixty years apart. That’s the only difference.”
He wheezed until he finally caught his breath. An oxygen cannula dangled from the rail of his bed.
“Why don’t you wear your oxygen?”
“I hate that thing,” he said. “It makes me feel like an invalid.”
“It didn’t make you feel like an invalid when you were breathing oxygen in the Mustang,” I said.
Dr. Richter had been a P-51 Mustang pilot over Brittan in World War Two, and he still owned a D-model Mustang named Katerina’s Heart. I’d flown with him in the old warbird the weekend he and his friends recruited me into covert ops. I’d never seen him more alive than when he was at the controls of that Mustang.
“Humph. You’re a pretty good psychologist. You must have had a good teacher.”
He pulled the cannula from the bed rail and laced it across his ears and beneath his nose. The wheezing stopped, and the color returned to his cheeks.
“So, what have you been up to, son?”
I told him about the op in the Panama Canal.