Flight of the Serpent

by R. R. Irvine writing as Val Davis

  After a while, Voss sighed contentedly and said, “We’re the professionals, by God. Odell and the Director should get out of the way and let us do our job.”

  With a nod, Wiley picked up the litany. “First they’re in a hurry to blow up that damn cliff, then they decide to wait and watch and pussyfoot around. Well, look what that’s got us, a congressman, for Christ’s sake.”

  “And what was all the chitchat about fifty-four forty?”

  “You heard them. It’s the plane’s number or some damned thing.”

  “Maybe they’re onto our bug and are trying to confuse us,” Voss suggested.

  Wiley thought that over. Discovery seemed unlikely, especially by amateurs. “You know something, Voss, that woman is starting to piss me off.”

  Voss pumped his fist. “That’s what I like to hear. Let’s rig for satellite transmission to the mesa. Maybe when they hear what’s going on, they’ll get off the dime.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Wiley said as he began aligning the satellite dish. “Knowing Maitland’s name doesn’t prove anything. And even if it did, what are they going to do about it?”

  Voss looked crestfallen.

  Wiley relented. “I’ll tell you what. If they recall us before you have your fun, I’ll give you the archaeologist. After all, who’s to know. One accident looks much like another.”

  Chapter 39

  Congressman Hanlan opened the door to the VIP suite, took one look at Nick, grinned, and said, “I can read your mind, Ms. Scott. ’Your tax dollars at work.’ Am I right?”

  Her response was to critically eye the lavish room. It was large enough for two back-to-back desks, a massive conference table, and an extravagantly appointed wet bar. “Close,” she said.

  “The airline keeps this available for a few select friends. Thank God, I’m not on the Transportation Committee, or there might be a conflict of interest.”

  The conference table, she noticed, held nothing but a speakerphone.

  Hanlan nodded at his aide, who was hovering nearby. “Ken, stand guard for us outside in the hall, will you? No interruptions.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Hanlan motioned Nick and Gault to sit down at the table. Once they were all clustered around the phone, the congressman got down to business. “After you spoke with me, I contacted a friend at the Justice Department. Even he got the runaround because of the black money funding. I was about to drop the matter when I remembered that somebody at the INS owed me a favor. They agreed to send in a team on the pretext that they’d been tipped off about illegal aliens in the area.”

  “And?” Gault said.

  “There’s someone I want you to talk to. After you do, you’d better walk away, John. Because that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t have any choice.”

  Hanlan laid a hand on the phone. “You have my word that you’ll be speaking to a federal agent whom I trust, but he has to remain anonymous. So, if you’re ready, he’s waiting at an outside phone right now. He’ll sound strange, but that’s a necessity to avoid voice printing.”

  Gault glanced at Nick. She looked as impressed as he was.

  The congressman pressed the redial button. The moment the call was answered, he said, “This is Hanlan. The friends I told you about are here with me now. Why don’t you tell them what you told me?”

  “At your request a team was sent to the area at the base of Mesa d’Oro in Arizona,” the agent said, sounding more like Donald Duck than a human being. “The place was deserted. But there was no doubt that it had been used as a detention center. Unfortunately, the entire area was sanitized before we got there.”

  “Explain,” Hanlan said.

  “It was far too clean to have been abandoned for more than a few days. Even the ground inside the fenced compound had been raked.”

  “Did you speak with anyone on the mesa? Were any reasons given?”

  “It never got that far. Another agency arrived on the scene and intervened. Officially, the mesa doesn’t exist. Neither do the barracks, nor anything else in the area. As of now, everything has been sanitized, including me.”

  “That sounds like they knew you were coming,” Gault said.

  “They could be listening right now,” the agent replied.

  Nick tensed. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She felt short of breath. Another question had to be asked, though she was afraid of the answer and the personal guilt that it would carry, “Why would they rake the compound?” she said.

  “If there were people being held there against their will,” the agent replied, “then killing them would be one way of getting rid of the evidence. It would also require an extensive cleanup.”

  Dear God, Nick thought. Had she been responsible for the old man’s death, just by talking to him?

  “Somebody has to pay for this,” she muttered, as much to herself as anyone else.

  “I didn’t hear that,” the agent said. “As of now, Congressman, we’ve never met. And I’ve never heard of Mesa d’Oro either.”

  The phone went dead.

  Hanlan stood up. “That’s the end of it, then. Some things are better left unknown. I’m sorry, John.”

  As he reached out to shake Gault’s hand, Hanlan froze. His eyes, like Nick’s, had locked on Gault’s face. Never before had Nick seen such a look. It was pure anger, yet worse, because there was something inevitable about it, like a force of nature. Then suddenly it was gone, replaced by a calm resolve.

  “Matt was onto something important,” Gault said. “I think you know that as well as I do.”

  “I don’t know anything, John. I may suspect things. I may have hunches, but I can’t afford to act on such things.”

  “I can,” he said in a self-possessed tone that was even more chilling than his anger.

  The congressman took Nick’s hand. “Do me a favor, Ms. Scott. Look after this old buzzard. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  Chapter 40

  As Nick watched Gault climb into the Lady-A’s bomb bay and disappear, she had the sense that he was being swallowed by the past. It was the one place she could never join him. Only his crew had that privilege.

  What was he thinking? she wondered. Was he reliving the war, or the telephone conversation with an agent so concerned with his own security that he’d disguised his voice electronically?

  She couldn’t get the conversation out of her mind. Maybe she never would. Maybe it would haunt her like one of Elaine’s demons. For Nick, her demon would be the old man behind the chain-link fence.

  The trouble was, the congressman had been right. There was nothing they could do. They had no answers, only suspicions. She’d said as much to Gault on the walk back from the passenger terminal. And she thought he agreed until they’d reached the hangar. It was then he said, “Let’s see what Annie has to say before we decide anything.”

  She crossed the hangar floor to stare up at the B-24’s cockpit. Gault was already in the pilot’s seat. Beside him sat Theron Christensen.

  Gault slid open the side window. “Stand clear, Nick, we’re going to start one of the engines.”

  She answered with a thumbs-up and backed away. So it hadn’t been the past Gault was reliving after all.

  An inboard propeller turned, slowly at first, then picked up speed as the engine caught hold. The entire hangar vibrated with the roar.

  After less than a minute, the power was cut and Christensen and Gault dropped out of the bomb bay. Together, they pushed a roll-away ladder against the nacelle and climbed high enough to check for oil or coolant leaks.

  The phone on the hangar wall rang.

  “Get that for me, will you?” Gault called down to her.

  “Sure.” She caught it on the next ring. “Hello.”

  “Nick, is that you?”

  “Elliot, how did you track me here?”

  “Where else would a bomber-obsessed daughter of mine be hanging out?” he said, reproach in h
is voice.

  For Gault’s benefit, she shouted, “It’s for me, my father.”

  “People will think I’m checking up on you if you say things like that,” Elliot said.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I’ve been doing sums, Nick. That plane’s over fifty years old. You’re not thinking of flying in it, are you?”

  “Its engines are being overhauled even as we speak.”

  “And the rest of it?”

  Nick laughed. She knew her father only too well. “I’m fine, Elliot. You don’t have to worry about me. I don’t need babysitting. So stay home and take care of your broken arm.”

  “Listen to me, Nick. Airplanes are fine as a hobby. I encouraged you as a child because I knew you needed something to help you cope with your mother’s moods.”

  “You’re damn right I did.”

  “I should have been there more often.”

  Nick said nothing. When Elliot wasn’t teaching, he’d been off on one of his digs. At the time, she hadn’t understood that he was only doing his job. Yet even now, that knowledge didn’t help much. The feelings of abandonment were still painful. Probably, they always would be.

  “Do you know why I built model planes?” Nick ventured.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Because I dreamed of flying away in one of them.”

  “You were never that gullible as a child,” Elliot said. “You knew reality from fantasy.”

  “That didn’t stop me from running away.”

  “A lot of children go through that stage.”

  She’d run to Elliot that first time, a seven-year-old fleeing one of her mother’s impenetrable moods. By day, when Elliot was at work, Elaine had refused to leave her bed. Making lunch, cleaning up, everything fell on Nick’s shoulders. She even tried to vacuum the house, mimicking Elaine on her better days, but Nick was too small. Finally, in desperation, she’d hoped to motivate Elaine by grabbing the blankets from her bed and dragging them into the living room. Elaine had followed, but only far enough to curl up next to a heat register behind the sofa, which was too heavy for Nick to move.

  “I’m running away,” Nick had told her.

  No answer came from the darkness behind the sofa.

  “I’m not coming back, ever.”

  “Hide for me,” Elaine managed to say.

  Nick had packed a sandwich and started walking toward the university where her father taught. She remembered the way, because Elliot had driven her there several times.

  Nick shook her head at the memory and spoke into the phone. “You found me that first time I ran away,” she reminded Elliot.

  “You’d fallen asleep outside the archaeology museum. God knows how you made it that far. Sometimes, Nick, I think you’re still trying to run away.”

  “I suppose that’s a reference to the Lady-A?”

  “Just promise me one thing,” he said.

  “Stop worrying, Elliot. John Gault’s no fool. He won’t fly an unsafe plane, and his mechanic sure as hell wouldn’t let him take off in one either.”

  Elliot groaned for effect. “Just call me when you land and tell me you’re safe. That’s all I ask.”

  “It’s a good thing your students don’t know you like I do, Elliot. You’re a softy and all bluff.”

  “Stop the flattery and tell me about your plane before I flunk you.”

  By the time she’d hung up, Gault was descending the ladder. Christensen was right behind him, wiping his hands on a grimy cloth.

  “Well?” Nick said.

  “That engine’s tip-top,” Christensen told her, “and clean enough to eat off. Not so much as a leak, even under full throttle.”

  “So why the long face?”

  “I ran into a problem earlier. While you two were talking to the congressman, I was running tests. The bomb bay doors stuck halfway open during one of them.”

  Nick looked for herself. The bomb doors were open, as they always were when a Liberator was on the ground.

  “Sure, they look fine now,” he said. “That’s the trouble. They worked four times in a row before hanging up on me. Then I toggled a couple of switches and bang, they opened right up again. At the moment they’re working like new.”

  “Does it matter?” Nick asked.

  “In an emergency, the bomb bay’s the best way out,” Theron said.

  “We can always crank them open if we have to,” Gault said.

  Christensen shook his head. “Intermittent failures are a mechanic’s worst nightmare. It could happen again anytime, or never. That’s the problem. It’s like playing Russian roulette. Besides, our crank handle is missing.”

  “Can’t you rig something?” Gault asked.

  Christensen mopped his sweating brow. The temperature inside the corrugated metal hangar had to be well over a hundred degrees. “I’ve tried a socket wrench, but it’s not the same. In a crisis, it would take forever to get those doors open that way. It’s a matter of leverage.” He squinted at the B-24. “I wouldn’t feel right sending the Lady-A out to fly equipped like that.”

  Gault patted his mechanic on the back. “Relax. We’re not going to war.”

  “Maybe so, John. But if I make a mistake, someone dies.”

  Nick nodded sympathetically. Thank God she didn’t have his job. Better to be an archaeologist and deal with the dead. The longer dead the better, her father liked to say. That way no one can question your theories—no matter how stupid they sound.

  “What you both need is a few hours’ sleep,” she said.

  “Maybe you’re right, Nick. But there’s something I want to check first. Ben, one of my freelance mechanics, spotted something he didn’t like. If you don’t mind, I could use both your help.”

  With the three of them working together, they rolled the platform ladder—which could also be used as boarding stairs—into place against the rear of the fuselage. After locking the wheels, Christensen went up first, stopping halfway to get a top view of the elevator planes.

  “They look okay to me,” he said, as if expecting someone to confirm his assessment. “But I think I’ll replace the hinges just to be on the safe side. We can do that first thing tomorrow.”

  At the top of the ladder, with Nick and Gault right behind him, Christensen began shaking his head. “Shit! There goes our timetable. Ben was right. It’s the beginning of a rudder stress fracture.”

  “Can she fly with it?” Gault asked.

  “Sure, until it gives way. The trouble is, there’s no telling when that might happen.”

  Christensen collapsed onto the platform. “This Liberator was built by Consolidated, and they’re long gone. Which means any spare parts needed will have to be handmade, and God knows how long that will take.”

  “What about scrounging a rudder?” Nick said.

  “Where? The closest air museum is the one down in California, and they’re so desperate for spare parts they tried to buy the Lady-A last year. All they wanted her for was scrap.”

  Nick descended the ladder and paced, racking her memory. Where was that collector who’d contacted her after the discovery of a B-24 in New Guinea? Stopping in her tracks, she snapped her fingers. “How far is Malad, Idaho?”

  “A three-hour drive, maybe. Why?”

  “There’s an airplane collector who lives there. His name’s Kitar, if I remember correctly. He tried to buy a chunk of plane from me once, a B-24 that had gone down in New Guinea during the war. But it wasn’t mine to sell, not that I would have anyway.”

  “I know the place,” Christensen said. “Kitar’s not really a collector, more like a poacher. He’s got a tourist trap he calls a museum.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Yep, and I remember one thing distinctly. He’s got a rudder from a Liberator.”

  “So why are we standing here?” Gault said, charging down the ladder with Christensen right behind him.

  Nick stared at Gault. He answered her gaze with a forced smile. Exhaustion had dulle
d his eyes and drained his face of color.

  “Look at you, John. You’re dead on your feet. Theron and I will go.”

  For a moment, she thought he was going to argue. Then he nodded and walked back along the fuselage, disappearing once again into the Lady-A.

  Chapter 41

  Kitar’s combination bar, grill, and air museum was just outside Malad City, about a hundred and twenty miles north of Salt Lake on Interstate 15. From a distance the place looked like a hangar. As Nick got closer, she realized it was a converted barn.

  She pulled into the gravel parking lot next to the yellow shell of an ancient biplane, whose fabric was pocked with fake bullet holes. With a sigh, she switched off the engine of Christensen’s camper-shelled pickup truck and tapped him on the shoulder.

  He twitched. “I wasn’t sleeping, just resting.”

  His snoring had been triggering sympathetic yawns from her for the last fifty miles. Only the potholes’ occasional jarring had kept her alert.

  “I hope this trip is worth it,” she said. “Otherwise we’re going to have to steal a rudder somewhere.”

  “John was right about you,” Christensen said. “You’re both alike when it comes to airplanes.”

  “What else did he say about me?”

  “Not on your life.” Grinning, he got out of the truck. “Women always ask that question. And whatever you answer, it’s always wrong.”

  Nick stopped to admire the biplane, which also had FINE FOOD stenciled along its fuselage. A fake bullet hole dotted the i in FINE.

  “Don’t eat the hamburgers,” Christensen advised. “Or anything else that can spoil.”

  She followed him inside. Stickers and logos from squadrons and bomb groups dating back to World War One covered the front of the bar and the mirror behind it. Pieces of airplanes decorated the walls: the canopy from a P-51 Mustang, a P-38’s wingtip, the snout of a P-47, complete with Flying Tiger teeth. More importantly, the tail section and rudder from a B-24 Liberator hung over the door to the rest rooms.