At the Merest Glance

by M. L. Buchman

  Which meant if Ricardo said it was time to move, then it was time to move.

  “So, what’s the next play?”

  Ricardo looked out to sea. “He’s out there somewhere. Gibson is trying for some satellite time, but the Senegalese coast isn’t exactly a hotspot we watch closely. A boat, maybe a couple of them?”

  Jesse had dropped onto the sand with Hannah sitting between his knees. He was giving her a shoulder massage.

  Anton had to remember to try that on Katie and see how it went. Hannah was sure looking happy.

  “Be nice if we had a helo,” Jesse sighed.

  “Damn. That’s why you made it to the Night Stalkers. You’re so damn smart. Okay, genius. Where do we get one in Senegal?”

  “Yellow pages?”

  Hannah pulled out her phone, ran a quick search, then shook her head.

  “There are two airports,” Katie said softly.

  “I’m listening.”

  “You know how new the commercial airport is, the one we just came through?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, before that, commercial flights shared an airport with the military.”

  He exchanged a grin with Jesse. Military helos? Now they were talking. “Where is this old airport? Is the military still there?”

  “I spotted the end of the runway when you sent Hannah driving in the wrong direction. It’s a couple hundred meters that way,” she pointed to the north.

  Anton simply couldn’t believe how amazing she was.

  “And people ask why I love this woman.” He swept her into his lap, and whispered, “I’m just plumb crazy about you.” And ignoring Ricardo’s groan of impatience, he kissed the crap out of Katie.

  Katie wanted to resist.

  Wanted to push back from Anton.

  Take even a moment to consider his words. To wonder if he was even conscious of what he’d just said.

  But his effortless strength had swept her up as if she was a fox kit. And his kiss was a toe-curler that allowed no other thoughts. All she could do was hold on and enjoy.

  In moments, her head was spinning and she considered pushing him down to the sand right now no matter who was watching. Which wasn’t like her at all.

  She was just deciding that she didn’t care who it was like, when Anton broke off the kiss. He crushed her to his chest and spoke to the others.

  “So, how do we get a military bird?”

  Katie couldn’t even make sense of the words. They were closer to making love sitting clothed on a beach than she usually managed naked in a bed with a man. She liked sex, but with Anton, mere sex was already behind them. Even if they hadn’t done it yet. He was— They were— She was—going insane!

  “Can’t get their help. If this gets ugly, Senegal needs to have complete deniability,” Ricardo announced.

  “Then we’ll just borrow one,” Anton sounded as if stealing a military helicopter from a friendly foreign power was going to be fun.

  It should be the most ridiculous thing Katie had heard in the last forty-eight hours, but it wasn’t. Instead, it made a strange sense.

  “We need to get me and Jesse aboard. Be stupid if we don’t have Ricardo and maybe Hannah with us.”

  “At least with your looks, you can pass,” Michelle told Anton. “What about the other three?”

  “Anton is giving some visiting American forces a military tour?” Isobel asked.

  Katie wasn’t the only one who looked at her in surprise.

  “What? It would work as a movie plot. We just need some military uniforms and valid ID.” To prove her point, she pulled out her phone and was soon talking to Colonel Gibson.

  “Only see one problem, dim-demi-brother.”

  “What’s that, Missy?”

  “You don’t speak Wolof or French.”

  “Well, you’re not going, even if you do speak French. No way could we pass off five-ten of beautiful redhead as military.”

  Michelle slapped both hands to her chest and flopped onto the sand. “Oh my God! Anton called me beautiful. I can die happily now.”

  “Twit,” Anton grumbled out.

  “Jerk,” Michelle replied, still prone on the sand.

  “Love you too, Missy.”

  She sat up and kissed him on the shoulder before asking, “Who else speaks French?”

  Katie was the only one who raised her hand.

  “That doesn’t help. We need the leader to speak the language.”

  That earned a glum silence.

  Isobel finished her arrangements with Gibson and gave them a thumbs up.

  But that still didn’t solve the language problem.

  None of them spoke Wolof.

  Only she and Michelle spoke French.

  The only other language the locals spoke was…

  She started laughing. She’d finally found an idea that was crazy even by today’s standards.

  Chapter 19

  Anton sat in the “borrowed” car at the rear security gate of Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport. They’d borrowed it from a French ex-pat that the American embassy happened to know was presently in France.

  “This had better work,” he mumbled to Ricardo as the guard came over to check their IDs. If he spent the rest of his life in some Senegalese prison, it was going to be damned hard to make love with Katie.

  “Katie’s smart. I’m betting she’s right. We’ll know soon enough.”

  The guard came up and saluted sharply. The HK G3 battle rifle over his shoulder might be ancient, but it looked well maintained and well used.

  Anton did his best to return the salute in an identical gesture.

  The guard babbled something. The only word he could pick out was a French roll on colonel. He’d just go with assuming it was a greeting, as that was the rank on his “borrowed” uniform. In this case borrowed from a secret stash at the American embassy.

  “Do you speak English, soldier?”

  “Yes. A little.”

  “Good. Keep practicing. I will help you today by only using English. I’m Colonel Anton…” he hadn’t been able to use Bowman on his fake ID. Some spook at the embassy had chosen a name for him, but what was it? Then he spotted the sign on the front gate and remembered. “…Senghor.”

  The guard snapped to attention. Senghor had been the first president after independence and—as the spook had promised—his extended family made it still a name to conjure respect with. For once the CIA had gotten it right.

  “I’m giving these three American officers a tour. They’re part of a surprise military aid investigation team. So don’t warn anybody. They want to see with their own eyes how prepared we are.”

  The guard had enough English that he nodded his head in agreement. But he did inspect everyone else’s phony IDs carefully. No surprise at having Hannah along.

  Then Anton spotted the backup guard watching them from the far side of the barrier and it made sense. The Senegalese Army was integrated already. Hannah would be a surprise for her light skin and blonde hair, but no more than Jesse would be. Her gender didn’t enter into the equation.

  In moments they were rolling through the gates.

  “Well, that’s a start.”

  Coming in the southern gate had placed them close by the helo hangars. The few Senegalese jets and cargo planes were on the other side of the field.

  They rolled along the hangars and the sight was disappointing. Three small training helos didn’t even have their rotors mounted. Two others had the rotors, but the flat tires said that they hadn’t flown in some time.

  Approaching the hangars was more promising.

  A Bell 206 JetRanger would do.

  A bulbous-nosed French Alouette III looked serviceable despite being at least forty years old. Better than one of the little prehistoric Russian Mi-2 Hoplites.

  At the end of the row, there was—

  “Oh, baby! Jesse, buddy, tell me we can figure out how to fly that sweet thing.”

  Jesse’s slow sm
ile was very promising.

  It was an Mi-35 “Monsoon”, the export version of the Russian Mi-24 “Hind” gunship.

  It was big, damn big. Sixty-five feet of death.

  Actually, it was almost exactly the same length as the Black Hawk that he’d flown for the Army, but there the similarities ended.

  Instead of the solid utilitarian look of the UH-60, it was more like an Apache attack helo on steroids—lean and nasty. It could carry half the troops of the Black Hawk, but more weaponry than even a Night Stalkers DAP Hawk. The two stub wings to either side could have missiles, machine guns, or rocket launchers hanging from them, though they were bare at the moment.

  Rather than side by side, the pilot and gunner sat front to back. The pilot perched beneath a small bubble canopy in the very bow, no wider than a cockpit seat and the controls. Behind and half a meter higher, the gunner perched under a canopy of his own.

  Under the pilot’s feet hung a chin-mounted 12.7 mm four-barrel Gatling gun. The jutting gun gave the already nasty machine a vicious-looking lower nose—like it was part scorpion.

  No one was around. Anton checked his watch and decided that it must be time for the midday meal.

  Anton looked longingly at the heavy weaponry stored along the hangar’s walls, but remounting it was something they didn’t have the skills for, or time to figure out. He did figure out how to check the bow gun and see that it had rounds. There were additional guns integrated into the fuselage, but he didn’t bother checking them out. If he needed to fire them, he’d find out then if they were loaded. If they weren’t, there was nothing he could do about it now.

  “We’ve got fuel,” Jesse reported as he climbed into the pilot’s seat.

  Anton climbed in as copilot behind him. He wasn’t sure how, but Jesse had the rotors spinning in under a minute and up to a hard thrum in two despite all of the instrument markings being in French.

  Anton got the intercom working as much by luck as guessing. Ricardo reported that he and Hannah were both aboard.

  As Jesse was taking them aloft, a mechanic came out of a shadowed hangar and inspected them curiously. Anton saluted, and the man saluted back.

  So far so good.

  Then he turned and raced away, apparently calling the alarm.

  The radio squawked with something. It must have been left on the tower frequency.

  “Do something about that,” Jesse called over the intercom.

  “Don’t bother. Ground crew are already raising the alarm.”

  “Try.”

  Anton tapped a thumb on the Mic button. Apparently the word “microphone” had come out of the French.

  “Senegal Tower, this is Colonel Anton Senghor. I’m taking a…Canadian inspection team on a brief flight. Acknowledge.”

  Another spate of French came back at him.

  “As a courtesy to our guests, I am only using English today.”

  “You have no filed flight plan. You have no flight authorization,” the tower official sounded more frustrated than upset. That was a good sign.

  “We’ll be back shortly. We’ll stay low and out over the water so there is no need to worry about interference with other flights.”

  “But—”

  “Over and out, Tower.” He tried for the command voice that his old flight leader used.

  Only silence followed.

  “Well, that’s right peaceable, now, isn’t it?” Jesse asked calmly.

  “I guess. Unless they’re scrambling fighters aloft to shoot our asses.” Just to save himself any future pain, he shut down the Tower frequency.

  “Can’t say as I saw much in the way of fighters. Those are a luxury to most small African countries.”

  “Here’s hoping. Any signs of the trawler?”

  “I see a lot of small fishing boats, but not much else. It’s been hours, he could be anywhere in hundreds of square kilometers of ocean. This could take some time.”

  Anton found the fuel gauges. They had fuel, just not a lot of it. Time wasn’t a luxury they could afford.

  “Ricardo? You still online?”

  “Yes.”

  “A man of many words. Use that telepathy of yours to ask around and see if anyone has any brilliant ideas on how we can find this bastard fast.”

  He started trying to figure out the weapons systems.

  His first observation was there were a lot of them. He had sighting scopes, selectors, and triggers galore. But the only word he recognized on anything was “missile” which must be the same in French. It was a pity that he already knew there were none of those aboard.

  “Shit! You’d think that Spanish and English would be enough for anyone.”

  “Texan is the real English,” Jesse had them out to sea and was starting to sweep a long arc around the peninsula. “None of y’all speak a language that sounds like proper English a’tall.”

  “I’ll see your Texan and raise you one Katie. That sweet accent of hers is how English is supposed to be.”

  “I may have to give you that point, pard. She does make it sound jes’ fine. Not like my Hannah’s ever-so-smooth Tennessee, but still fine.”

  There was a click-thunk over his headset as Hannah must have keyed her mic switch in response. Sounded just like a quick kiss the way she did it.

  “We have a suggestion,” Ricardo reported.

  The back of Anton’s gunner seat had a small alleyway behind it. He didn’t know what use it could be, his seat’s back almost completely blocked the area, but it did lead into the cargo bay.

  From that alleyway, Ricardo reached forward around either side of Anton’s seat back, and clamped a hand on both of Anton’s shoulders.

  “That’s an idea?”

  Ricardo spoke to Jesse, “Fly us over Anton’s underwater trail. Not too fast.”

  Anton still didn’t know what to think as Jesse headed them that way.

  “This is strange,” Katie said for about the tenth time. The late afternoon light was driving straight on the beach. She, Michelle, and Isobel had returned there, below the cable house, for a lack of anywhere better to go.

  “Just hush.” She and Michelle sat hip to hip with their arms around each other.

  A group of drummers had taken over one of the thatched huts back along the beach. The music and occasional laughter filtered their way. In the other direction, the area in front of the resort was also coming to life. Speakers blared out what seemed to be French rap. A buffet line had been set up and the guests were making use of it then returning to their loungers to eat and watch the sunset.

  No sign of the thin man and his “attacking” wet dog.

  “Why are we doing this again?”

  “A while back, Ricardo and I used this for Hannah and Jesse. You know how one of them is the sound amplifier for the other?”

  Katie nodded careful assent; she still hadn’t seen that demonstrated.

  “Well, they have to be touching to make that work. We were on a mission where they were apart and lives depended on them being together. Ricardo held Hannah and I hung onto that big old cowboy—which was a real hardship, I can assure you.” Michelle winked broadly. “We kinda made some sort of weird conduit for them to connect. We’re wondering if the same thing could work for you and Anton.”

  Isobel pointed aloft at where the big helicopter came pounding into view around the western point of Dakar.

  “That is the most dangerous looking helicopter I’ve ever seen.” Katie wanted to ask if that was really Anton and Jesse up their flying such a machine, but felt too foolish to ask.

  The massive bird slid down until it was flying less than ten meters above the waves.

  The fear caught in her throat. “Does he have to fly so low?” He was skimming the water like a petrel.

  “According to Anton, that’s Jesse’s ‘nervous’ height. Once he gets used to it, then you’ll see him fly seriously low.”

  Katie tried to see if Michelle was teasing her or not when she felt a jolt.

  “T
here. That was Chas’ track.”

  Michelle was silent for a moment, then said, “We have a winner,” in a tone so like Anton’s that she must be transferring the message from Ricardo.

  It was very different guiding the helicopter than guiding Anton. At first she sent it zig-zagging across the sky like a drunken pinball machine. But she soon had a feel for it—and the helo headed out to sea.

  “What happens if they get too far away?”

  “Oh, Ricardo and I can do this anywhere. The first time I ever heard him I was in San Antonio and he was in Honduras.” Her sudden shiver said that it hadn’t been a good memory.

  They tweaked the guidance to the helo a little as it faded to a black dot. Then between one eyeblink and the next it seemed to merge with the bright horizon.

  Katie could easily imagine in her future years, retelling her first meeting with Anton, her first in-person meeting. Chas Thorstad abruptly dangling half a meter in the air would open the story of “How mommy and daddy met.” It would—

  “Oh my God.”

  “What?” Michelle and Isobel asked in alarm.

  “Nothing. Nothing. Nothing!”

  “She’s repeating herself,” Michelle announced happily, sitting on her bottom and stomping her feet in the sand.

  Isobel hugged her from the side opposite Michelle.

  “No! No! No! I didn’t just think that.”

  “Still repeating herself,” Michelle was entirely too pleased.

  Isobel was grinning like a fool. “Was it a wedding thought? Or a family one? Kids?”

  “Kids. Bloody hell! I didn’t just say that. Why don’t you already know that?”

  “I have empathy, not telepathy. So I can detect emotion, not thoughts.”

  “I did not—”

  “Classic denial,” Michelle practically crowed. “That cements it. Woo-hoo! There’s gonna be a wedding soon! I’ll fight Isobel to be your maid of honor.”

  “I think you’ll have to fight Hannah.” Again the world spun around Katie, but the words slid out anyway.

  “Oh. She’s a former Delta operator. I could put Isobel in the dirt—”

  “Dare you to try,” Isobel growled out.

  “—but Hannah is tough.”