Flight of the Serpent

by R. R. Irvine writing as Val Davis

  “They weren’t that accurate, except for saturation bombing.”

  “Maybe not from twenty-five thousand feet, but at low altitude Vic and his Norden won’t miss.”

  Paula sighed. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”

  “Did I mention the cobra gunships that guard the mesa?”

  “Jesus,” Paula murmured. “You’ll never make it.”

  Nick spoke up. “You’re not really going to help him, are you?”

  “Nick. Do you really think either of us can stop him?”

  “We could turn him in,” Nick said, but the look on Gault’s face said he knew she was bluffing. Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted to stop him. Part of her wanted to volunteer to go with him.

  Paula said, “I’ll call you when I’ve set something up with Sawicki. Sergeants being what they are around officers, I won’t go with you. The fact is, you’ll be better off sending Nick. Sawicki likes women, and in case you haven’t noticed Nick’s got great legs.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “So will Sawicki.”

  Chapter 48

  They’d argued half the night and Nick wasn’t sure whether she’d won or lost. John Gault had been outraged that Paula would suggest that Nick involve herself in arms dealing. She had quickly become annoyed with his overprotective attitude and found herself arguing against him. Everything she was doing was against her better judgment, but Paula had been adamant. Their best bet lay with enticement.

  Nick ran her tongue along the inside of her incisors, hoping they’d withstand the acidity of Sawicki’s coffee. For his part, the supply sergeant was eyeing her like a tiger after a six-day fast.

  She’d played up to her part, hating herself. She’d ruined a perfectly good pair of jeans by cutting off the legs and converting them to short-shorts. She’d also undone the top button of her blouse and was flaunting herself. She felt like a complete idiot, but she had the supply sergeant’s tongue practically hanging out. She also felt stupid for allowing herself to be talked into this. Procuring arms would make her an accomplice, for God’s sake. Still, there was always the hope that Gault and his crew would come to their senses before anyone else got killed.

  Sawicki’s desk stood inside a chain-link security cage at the back of one of the National Guard hangars. There, he’d created an office of sorts by arranging eight-foot shelving around three sides of his desk. Parts, mostly electronic gear, along with hundreds of boxes marked with military nomenclature, crammed the shelves.

  Sawicki set aside his coffee cup, put his feet up on the desk, and squinted at Nick between the toes of his spit-shined shoes. He was a short, wiry man, whose summer uniform had creases sharp enough to draw blood.

  “Captain Latham tells me you’re here speaking for John Gault.”

  Nodding, she leaned back in a pose she hoped he found seductive.

  “The captain vouches for you,” the sergeant continued, “or we wouldn’t be here talking. She said you and Gault are interested in making some kind of trade.” He raised an eyebrow. “Are you the merchandise?”

  Nick had a panicky feeling that he might come over the top of the desk and wondered if she could use the desk lamp as a weapon. She gave him her best steely-eyed stare and replied, “You can’t afford me.”

  Sawicki snorted. “The captain gave me your shopping list, but I can tell you, she’s got me wrong. But that’s officers for you.” He looked Nick up and down. “No offense, but a good-looking woman is one thing, business is another. Hell, the moment I got your list I remembered Christmas when I was a kid. I always used to ask for everything. What I got was another matter.”

  Inwardly Nick cursed herself and felt a fool. Obviously, he’d been stringing her along, and Paula had certainly misread the man.

  Nick forced a smile. “Are you saying you can’t deliver?”

  The supply sergeant smiled back. “I asked Santa for an airplane once.”

  “What kind?”

  “I understand Gault Aviation runs Cessnas. Four of them, I think.”

  “You’ve done your homework,” Nick said. Thank God Paula was correct about one thing—the extent of his greed, if not his libido.

  “My folks didn’t have much money when I was growing up,” he went on, “so I always knew better than to ask for the top of the line.”

  The bottom, Nick knew from Gault’s briefing, was the Cessna 150. It was a small two-seat trainer with a replacement value of about twenty thousand dollars.

  “You’re in luck. Mr. Gault has given me carte blanche. That means Christmas is early this year. A Cessna 150 is yours if we make a deal.”

  The sergeant grinned. “I like a woman who can make decisions.”

  “And our Christmas presents?” she asked.

  “Talk about the holidays coming early. We were on a desert-warfare gig this spring, bombing the hell out of the salt flats west of here. Afterwards, I got stuck with some leftovers, not that they show on the books. Hell, that’s expected. How else would us sergeants keep our units running, if we didn’t have trading material?”

  Sawicki opened his desk drawer and held out a manual, dog-eared to the appropriate page. Nick took it gingerly. One passage had been highlighted in advance. The cluster bomb, type BL755, yields a high kill probability against a range of hard and soft targets encountered on the battlefield and immediate tactical areas.

  “I’ve got half a dozen.” Sawicki retrieved a sheet of paper from his desk. “I’ve worked it out for you. Each bomb contains one hundred and forty-seven bomblets. Each bomblet produces two thousand fragments of shrapnel, bringing the grand total per bomb to ninety-four thousand. Multiply that by a kill factor of six, and you’re in business.”

  Nick gritted her teeth. “That sounds like antipersonnel weaponry. Do you have anything that’s designed to destroy buildings?”

  “You want to shake ’n’ bake, do you? Well, you haven’t heard anything yet. Here’s something called Hunting Area Denial Systems. HADES for short. Each one delivers one hundred and fifty bomblets. Whatever they touch burns—concrete, anything. So mix and match, that’s what I say. A few HADES bombs along with your BL755s, and your target will be nothing but a barbecue.”

  Nick’s stomach knotted at the thought of dropping such things. “There were a couple of other items on our list.”

  “No can do on the .50-calibers,” Sawicki said. “One M-60 machine gun is all I’ve got. I can throw in an M-16 rifle, too.”

  “Ammunition?”

  “Seven hundred and fifty rounds for the M-60. A little more than a minute’s firing time. A dozen clips for the M-16.”

  “Tracers?”

  “Sure.”

  “It will have to do. If you want to come to Gault Aviation with me, John will sign the 150 over to you right now.”

  “Hell,” Sawicki said. “I like your style. For an extra five thousand dollars cash, I’ll throw in a Stinger rocket. They’re easy to use. All you have to do is point this sucker and pull the trigger.”

  Nick thought that over for a moment. “What about back-blast?”

  “You’re flying the old B-24, aren’t you?” The sergeant scratched a closely shaven sideburn. “On second thought, scratch the Stinger. Chances are, firing it inside an airplane would blow you apart.”

  She took a deep breath. There was just enough money left in the kitty. “We’ll take it anyway.”

  “It’s your funeral, lady. But take it from me,” he said, leering, “a nifty little number like you shouldn’t let it all go to waste.”

  Nick felt the sudden need for a long, hot shower.

  Chapter 49

  Frank Odell had been ordered off the mesa for an emergency meeting. After being helicoptered to a waiting Range Rover, he followed the directions provided. He drove north on a dirt road that led him deeper into the desert badlands. The only vegetation was the occasional prickly pear, cholla, and barrel cactus. There was no sign of animal life. Even a shot-up road sign would have been a welcome si
ght.

  Finally, after what seemed like miles, he saw sun glinting on metal directly ahead. A quarter of a mile later he was looking at one of those aluminum-bodied, self-propelled mobile homes, forty feet long if it was an inch. Why the hell would it be out here in the middle of nowhere?

  Because, Odell answered himself, that’s the way the Chairman wanted it. He stopped the Range Rover twenty yards short of the trailer. He looked around for other signs of life. Nothing.

  He was about to get out of the Range Rover when men appeared, apparently out of nowhere, one on each side of his car. They both wore short-sleeve shirts and shoulder holsters.

  One of them knocked on Odell’s window. “You’re expected inside,” the man said, jerking a thumb at the mobile home.

  Christ, Odell thought. What a way to earn a living. Maybe it was time to change occupations. Actually, he’d have to change lives first, using one of the new identities he kept stashed in safe-deposit boxes in Phoenix and Tucson, among other places. He thought of them as back doors to oblivion.

  The men escorted him to the door. “Go on in,” he was told. “It’s all yours. We’ll wait out here.”

  The inside of the mobile home was filled with television monitors, computers, and equipment totally unfamiliar to Odell. An innocuous-looking Bob Smith smiled from one of the screens.

  “Take a seat, Frank.”

  With a sigh of relief at the efficient air-conditioning, he collapsed into a waiting chair and looked into the remote camera mounted on top of the TV monitor.

  “You’re sweating, Frank,” Smith said.

  “It’s a hundred and ten outside.”

  “That’s the desert for you. Turn up the air-conditioning if you’d like. Everything’s there at your fingertips, computer controlled.”

  It was only then that Odell realized the mobile home’s engine was turning over, providing power for all the equipment.

  “I’m fine,” Odell said.

  “Let’s get to it, then. I called you here to be doubly safe. The system is entirely scrambled and there sure as hell isn’t any chance of eavesdroppers out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  Smith made a rumbling sound, a kind of mutant chuckle. “Now, give me your assessment of the Director and his security measures on the mesa.”

  Warnings sounded inside Odell’s head. What the hell did the Chairman mean? What kind of assessment? In what context exactly?

  Careful, Odell told himself. This had to be some kind of loyalty test. Thank god, he had back doors.

  He cleared his throat. “He’s very efficient.”

  “That goes without saying. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been tolerated this long.”

  “We’ve only had one actual breach of security,” Odell offered.

  “The Cessna pilot, you mean?”

  Odell nodded at the TV screen.

  “I call that a disaster. Besides, you’re forgetting the archaeologist who got close enough to talk to the old man.”

  “Who’s to say that she wasn’t imagining things?” Odell ventured.

  “No witnesses, eh, Frank. That’s your solution to our problems?”

  “It’s always an option.”

  “Like that botched attempt at Ophir?”

  “I knew nothing about that,” Odell protested.

  “Let me show you something,” Smith said. “Keep an eye on monitor number three, there to your right.”

  Monitor 3 steadied on a videotaped scene of the Director’s office. The camera—positioned high up and at an angle to get both the Director and the man he was talking to, Odell—was obviously well concealed, because Odell had never noticed it.

  “Progress always comes down to a matter of sacrifices,” the Director was saying. “Think of how history will honor us if we come up with a cure. Think of what would have happened at Chernobyl if we’d had a cure for radiation poisoning. A Chernobyl could happen in this country, too, Frank. Then people would pay anything, do anything for a cure. If a few have to die here to save millions, wouldn’t you say that’s a cheap enough price to pay?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  “That reporter was no different. He had to be interrogated. We had to know what he knew. After that, it would have been a waste not to use him in our work. Wouldn’t you agree, Frank?”

  “Of course.”

  The videotape stopped.

  Smith cleared his throat. “Do you know what I call that, Frank? Evidence. It makes you a bona fide accomplice. Naturally, it shouldn’t come to that if you work with me.”

  Odell nodded, wondering if it was too late to disappear through one of his back doors. Maybe not. There were only two men outside. If they didn’t have orders to kill him already, he might be able to catch them by surprise. But he wouldn’t make his move yet, not until he heard Smith out and knew all the options open to him.

  “Let’s get to the point,” Smith said. “Do you have any indication that the Director is making progress on his project?”

  “At the last staff meeting he said he was on the verge of a breakthrough.”

  “I’ve seen the tape, Frank. The Director’s been saying the same thing for a year. So what I’m asking is, have you seen any evidence of a breakthrough?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. And my other people agree with you. So, Frank, let’s get to the heart of the matter. Is there anyone on the mesa who would side with the Director against me?”

  Odell hesitated. The implication was that Smith had other spies on the mesa.

  “Stop worrying, Frank. I know you’re too smart to back a loser. Just tell me who is loyal to the Director and not to me.”

  “The Blackbirds.”

  Smith nodded. “Voss and Wiley, you mean. You can leave them to me. Anyone else?”

  “The Director’s tight with his two chopper pilots. Some of the crazier security guards are with him too, I’d say.”

  “Is that it, Frank? The rest are ours?”

  “You know scientists, sir. With them, the project is everything.”

  On screen, Smith steepled his fingers under his chin. “It’s too bad the way things have worked out. The Scott woman has turned out to be much more resourceful than any of us could have imagined. That man, Gault, surprised me too. He’s all but bankrupted himself getting that antique bomber of his into the air. And you know what that gives him, Frank, a weapon. The thing is, can we afford to let him use it?”

  Odell was still thinking that over when Smith continued. “There are those of us who think that Director Maitland has become a liability. In that case, why not give Mr. Gault his head? I respect his grief. Losing a grandson is a terrible thing. So why not let him solve our problem?”

  “That seems like a long shot,” Odell said.

  “Maybe so, but I want you ready with an evacuation plan for those loyal to me and the project. It’s a contingency only at this stage, you understand.”

  Odell nodded, figuring maybe he wouldn’t open those back doors just yet.

  “Any questions?”

  “How long do I have to get ready?”

  “It all depends on those Blackbirds you mentioned.” Smith raised his hand into camera range and tapped the face of his wristwatch. “About now, they’re making their move. If they’re successful, this conversation will have been moot. Otherwise”—Smith shook his head—“you’d better be ready to move in two hours.”

  Chapter 50

  Wiley ordered coffee and pie, paying the waitress as soon as she served him. That left him free to leave the truck stop whenever his target made a move.

  He took his time with the pie, toying with the crust and pretending to sip coffee while studying himself in the mirror behind the counter. The image he’d created was perfect. Just another unshaven trucker. His boots, jeans, and T-shirt exposing press-on tattoos were well used and grimy.

  His target, a size 40 regular by the looks of him, dropped money on the counter, joked with the waitress, then spun off his stool and started for t
he door. Wiley followed, hanging back a few feet until the target reached his truck.

  “Excuse me,” Wiley said, holding up a road map that hid the .22 automatic in the palm of his hand. “Could you give me some directions? This is my first run through Salt Lake, and this God damn map of mine is useless.”

  “Sure thing.” The target beckoned him over. “I’ve got a good street guide in my cab.” He turned away to open the door and lean inside.

  Right behind him, Wiley vaulted onto the metal running board. From a distance, Wiley knew it would look like all he’d done was touch the driver’s head. The shot was no more than a popping sound. No fuss at all.

  Voss, who’d been waiting in the car, arrived to help cram the body into the foot-well on the passenger’s side.

  That done, they hopped out and looked around. No one was looking their way; no one had noticed a thing.

  Voss went back to the car, while Wiley climbed into the cab and drove out of the truck stop. A mile down the highway, he turned onto a side road they’d scouted in advance. There, he changed into the driver’s uniform, dumped the body, and headed for the airport.

  Once there, Wiley followed the driver’s route and routine, delivering fuel to the small aviation companies in proper order. He didn’t look for Voss. He didn’t have to; he knew his partner would be close by, covering his back.

  At Gault Aviation, procedure called for the driver to check in at the office before making his delivery. It was the moment of truth for Wiley’s disguise, but no one paid any attention to him as he approached the counter. All seven photo subjects, as specified in the ISA packet, were assembled. A target-rich environment, if he’d ever seen one.

  Wiley ID’d them as the Scott woman, Gault and his copilot, Roberts, all of whom he and Voss had been following for days. Also present were two of Gault’s old crew buddies, Campbell and Yarbrough, plus his mechanic, Christensen, and Paula Latham, the Air Force pilot. Christensen was at the counter, while everyone else was clustered around a desk at the back of the office. They’d tried to look casual when Wiley entered, but he knew what they were up to. He didn’t have to see the maps to know they were deciding on a flight plan. So much wasted effort, he thought. They’d never get off the ground. Probably they’d never know what hit them.