Whirlwind

by Joseph R. Garber

  “Turnoff ahead, suh,” said Milksnake.

  “I see it.” San Carlos Do Cabo. 11 M. POP: 318. Schmidt remembered an old soldier’s complaint: It isn’t the end of the world, but you can see it from here. He flicked on his right turn signal, braking down to thirty-five miles per hour. Could an M-Class corner at that speed? He was looking forward to finding out.

  Disappointingly, the top - heavy four-wheeler skidded precariously as it turned. The result tested Schmidt’s competence as a driver, but, of course, he passed the test, and there was little surprise in that.

  “Do you have to do that, sir?” complained Bushmaster. Americans, Schmidt thought. They are born whiners.

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  The terrain flanking San Carlos’s shabby little two-lane access road was tabletop flat farmland furrowed with rows of some low plant, artichoke perhaps, Schmidt was not certain. In the distance, workmen in faded clothing and straw hats stooped at their labors — Mexicans, he supposed, part of the underpaid illegal army that made California’s agriculture the world’s wealthiest. Hard labor for low wages. A pity. I could train those men, make something of them, and with guns in their hands they’d earn more in an hour —

  Bushmaster exclaimed, “Shit! The whole world’s disappeared!”

  Schmidt narrowed his eyes. Less than a mile ahead the road vanished, melting into a fog bank like a snowcapped castle wall.

  “De-DA de-DA,” Bushmaster mouthed the theme music from The Twilight Zone. “You are traveling to a different dimension, a dimension of —”

  “Bushmaster,” Schmidt snapped irritably, “zip your lip.”

  He braked to a halt near a stand of eucalyptus and a drainage ditch filled with Scottish thistle, their purple crowns the only gaiety in a banal landscape.

  “Pit Viper, these trees are as good a cover as anything else. Take up your position.”

  “I’m on it, sir.”

  The Mercedes’ rear door opened, then shut.

  Schmidt glanced out the window. Pit Viper, black and slender, was screwing his earpiece into place. “Radio check.”

  “I read you loud and clear, Cobra.”

  “Report every five minutes. Even if there’s nothing to report, I want to hear your voice.”

  “Yes, sir.” The mercenary brought his rifle to port arms and trotted into the trees. Swinging back onto the road, Johan Schmidt switched on his headlights and drove into steel wool fog. Another four miles to go. Will she be there? Of course she will. There’s no other place she can be.

  “Make another pass up Highway One,” Charlie ordered.

  “It won’t do any good, dad. We’ve been as far south as San Luis and almost back to Monterey. She’s not on that road.”

  Charlie scanned the coast highway with his binoculars — or rather with the pilot’s. You could find a set in every cockpit in every aircraft in the world. These were Nikon ten-powers — adequate, but not as sharp as the Leicas he’d lost in Mitchell Canyon.

  Down below a black Mercedes M-Class turned onto an access road. Charlie was pretty sure he’d marked out that particular intersection before. “Scott, is that the way to San Carlos?”

  “Should be. Why, do you see something?”

  “Guy in an SUV took the corner one hell of a lot faster than he should have.”

  The copilot shook his head, “At this altitude and speed, you can’t judge what’s going on at ground level.”

  “It’s Schmidt. I can smell him.” I’m right. I know I’m right. Don’t ask me how, I just know. He was as confident as he’d ever been — unnervingly so. Irina was somewhere in San Carlos. Schmidt was right behind her. And he, damn me!, was stuck in an airplane sixty miles from the nearest airport. “Take this thing in low over the town. As low as you dare. If Schmidt thinks she’s there, and if I think she’s there, then, by God, that’s where she is!”

  “Sir, with respect…” the copilot again. About fifteen minutes earlier he’d started pretending that he was on Charlie’s side. Charlie played along. He figured he’d get better information that way. “…you’ve got zero ceiling and zero visibility over the coast. Nobody’s seeing anything.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Again with respect, those are words no one in my business wants to hear.”

  “Mine’s the opposite. Scott, take this thing down. Treetop level if you can manage it.”

  Both the pilot and the copilot simultaneously shouted, “No!” Charlie cocked an eyebrow. The pilot, senior man, spoke urgently. “This is a jet, mister, a jet! Do you know how a jet works? You’ve got two big turbos powering this aircraft. They suck air in at the front, and blast it out at the back. Basically this plane is a flying vacuum cleaner with seven tons of thrust! Get low enough, and those engines will suck branches off of trees, shingles off of roofs, and livestock out of pastures. You do not, repeat, do not barnstorm in a jet aircraft!”

  “Suggestions?” Charlie growled.

  “To see what’s at ground level in zero/zero weather? Get out and walk.”

  “Thank you very much, but I think we’ll try it my way. Scott, take us in.”

  And if I find her, then what do I do? How do I get to her? How do I get that disk back? How do I keep my son out of jail? Oh, God, give me some answers here!

  From what Schmidt could see — precious little in this fog — the word “village” was too wide a word for San Carlos do Cabo, consisting as it did of a laughably small commercial district and a scant few blocks of brightly painted Victorian gingerbread homes.

  Downtown, such as it was, was no more than two cafe-style restaurants, a no-name general store, a Texaco gas station, and a handful of civic buildings — a cinder-block schoolhouse, a town hall, a medical clinic, a fire house, but (for which he was duly grateful) no police station, at least none that Schmidt could see.

  Where the devil is the marina? he asked himself.

  The Mercedes crept forward, high beams giving him fifteen yards’ visibility, and often less than that.

  Spooky. Schmidt did not care for that trite adjective, although it seemed peculiarly appropriate for the place. There was not another vehicle on the road. Nor a pedestrian on the street. But for a handful of parked cars, their bodies slick with condensation, the town might well have been abandoned. The Twilight Zone indeed.

  West, due west, on the main street of a tiny township. Soon enough he’d reach the Pacific. Once on the coast, surely he’d find —

  SAN CARLOS DO CABO

  MARINA PARKING

  NO CAMPING

  DEPOSIT $5.00 DAY FEE AT GUARD HOUSE

  He smiled, lips as thin as a nail file.

  The guard was gone for the evening, his shack empty. A miserable half dozen vehicles were scattered around the parking lot. Four of them were hard working pickups, probably commercial fishermen’s trucks. The fifth was an ancient TransAm, vintage 1977, as much Bondo as metal, a once-prideful muscle car come to bad times and low company.

  The sixth, of course, was an aquamarine Toyota Camry, California license 34RCB684.

  Did he feel relieved? No, not at all. His confidence had never wavered, at least not seriously. Nor was self-doubt a sentiment with which he was acquainted. He’d found her as he’d known he would. If he sensed a frisson of pride — a glow, actually — it was merely the anticipation of a profitable mission drawing to its predestined conclusion.

  He parked the M-Class near Kolodenkova’s rented car. “Python, trot back to the guard kiosk at the entrance and take up position inside. In the unlikely event a visitor comes along, send him away. Tell him the parking lot is off-limits because there’s been a toxic spill or something. Use your imagination.”

  Python was the biggest trooper in the team, a Sayeret Matkal Israeli who, if Schmidt’s memory served, had once been a decorated hero in his homeland. His face was broken rock, his eyes impassive obsidian. No civilian interloper would question the word of a man who looked so much like what he was: a proven killer.

/>   “Yes, sir.” Python rolled out of the car, falling into a crouch. Seasoned soldier that he was, he swept the parking lot with his rifle before running, bent at the waist, toward the guard shack.

  Schmidt put his hand on the door latch, then thought better of it. Milksnake, sitting in the passenger seat, was, like Johan himself, slender of frame. Although darker skinned than his superior officer, in the fog, at a distance, he might be mistaken for someone whom he was not.

  Better safe than sorry. “Milksnake, those sunglasses in your shirt pocket — do me a service and put them on.”

  “Uh…why dat, suh?”

  “Because I ordered you to.”

  “Yes, suh.”

  The corner of Schmidt’s lip twitched, almost a smile. “Thank you. Now jog over to that Camry, put your hand on the hood, and tell me if it’s still warm. If you think yourself up to it, give me your best estimate as to how long it has been parked there.”

  The Yemenite answered with a hesitant nod. He suspected something, but was insufficiently quick-witted to deduce what.

  “Don’t forget your weapon.”

  Milksnake slid out of the Mercedes. Instead of employing the routine precautionary measures expected of every trooper, he merely walked — did not even trot — to Kolodenkova’s car. Once there, he strolled quite idly around it before placing the back of his hand over the engine. “She not warm. She hot.” At a distance of four yards his thickly accented voice sounded muffled, as though he was talking through a handkerchief. No echo, Schmidt thought, no reverberation. The fog blankets both sight and sound. “Uh…dere’s no…how you say?…de wet stuff, you know, no dew on her. Dis car been here only —”

  Milksnake’s blood dewed — which was the right word — the Camry’s hood. Hushed by fog, the gunshot’s report sounded faint, distant, and who could tell from what direction it came?

  Schmidt took joy in the moment. An element of challenge made every victory sweeter.

  Scott’s head twitched left. “What the hell was that?”

  “A rooftop,” Charlie whispered hollowly.

  “Jesus, dad! We were below it!”

  The computer’s robot voice bleated, “Ground proximity. Danger. Ground proximity.” Bitching Betty, Charlie thought, that’s what the copilot called the annunciator system. Come on, Betty, tell me something I don’t know.

  The copilot, not as calm as he had been, tried to sound relaxed. “Sir, you are going to hit a house, a hospital, a school. You’re going to crash, and when you do, you’re going to kill a lot of innocent people. I don’t think you want to do that, sir. I really don’t think you want to do that at all.”

  The pure hell of it was that even at treetop altitude Charlie barely could see the ground. Only patches of green every now and then, shrubs and grass. Maybe the hint of a road. The rest was dirty cotton, choking fog above and below and all around the plane.

  “She’s down there. I have to find her. I don’t have a choice.”

  “Sir, you don’t know she’s down there. You made that clear earlier. You only think she may be.”

  More hell: sunset was near. Such light as there was, was low and fading. Scott had flown west before turning back toward San Carlos, descending so low over the Pacific that they could see milky waves. The sun was near the horizon, a watery brightness in the fog, and it seemed to Charlie that he could see it inch lower toward the fall of night.

  “You’re wrong. I know. I know for certain.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I can and do! Damnit, don’t you see?” I’m shouting. Can’t stop myself. “I know her like I know myself! Her mind is as much in mine as mine is in hers! She’s the same as me, and I’m the same as her, and there’s not a bit of difference between the two of us!”

  Well, hell, that sounded certifiably insane. What kind of nuttiness was he going to spew out next? Actually, I’m her guardian angel. Yeah, God hisown-self has assigned me personal responsibility. Pleased to meet you, I’m Saint Charlie of the seraphim.

  “Dad?” Scott asked, sounding worried. “Are you all right?”

  No, I’m nutty as a fruitcake. He started to reply, suddenly couldn’t, felt the breath sucked from his lungs, wanted to fall limp to the cockpit floor. Doc Howard’s painkillers were wearing off. An express train of unalloyed agony roared up his leg, through his stomach, next station stop: the brain. Crystalline and pure, he’d never known hurt that hurt like this. His vision blanked, and for a dizzy moment he truly feared he’d fainted.

  But he held. His old man’s old body held, and after a moment it passed, and he was back to where he’d been. Pulling himself straight, praying that no one noticed, he bit back a groan. “Okay, look…I mean, look…” He took a deep breath before continuing softly, almost in reminiscence. “Not so long ago Death gave your mother his black rose. There wasn’t a goddamned thing I could do about it. Nothing. It was totally beyond my power to influence. Do you know what that felt like? What it felt like for a guy like me? I never met a problem I couldn’t finagle my way around or bull my way through. Not ever. Me, I’m the guy who gets the job done. One way or another, that’s what I do, and I do it very well.” He wiped a hand across his clammy forehead. “Only not that time. That time I was impotent. All I could do was wait helplessly for the end. Do you understand how I felt, Scott? Do you understand, Major? Colonel?”

  The two officers exchanged glances.

  “I failed my wife. That’s what it felt like. It felt like there had to be something I could have done. The thought that there might have been will haunt me ’til the day I die. No way in hell am I letting it happen this time because this time there is something I can do, and I’ll fight to get it done as long as I have a breath left in my body, and ten minutes after I stop breathing I’ll still be fighting. Have you got that, Major? Colonel, do you read me? At the moment, that girl down there in San Carlos is what my life is about — the only thing it’s about — so just shut to hell up and let me get on with my job.”

  The copilot gave him a psychiatric ward look. “I think I understand, sir.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Whether I do or I don’t isn’t the issue. The issue is whether or not you want to live long enough to help your lady friend. Or would you prefer to die?”

  “Maybe later. Not just now.”

  “Then,” the major shouted, “I respectfully recommend that your son get — this — GODDAMNED — PLANE — INTO — THE — SKY!”

  He’s losing it. Any minute now and all that Right Stuff veneer is going to flake right off of him, and he’s going to go postal. “Take her up a bit, Scott.”

  The copilot blew a breath between tightly compressed teeth. “What I don’t understand is what you hope to accomplish. Even if you spot her — and in this weather the odds of that are nil — the nearest airport is sixty miles away.”

  The man has a point. Damn me, but he has a point. I still haven’t got a clue as to what to do. “Signal her. At a minimum I can let her know I’m here. Wiggle the wings or something. Somehow or another tell her to get out of that town, get back to the highway. We could land on Route 1, couldn’t we? If she knows I’ve come for her, we could touch down and —”

  Total disgust: “That is such an exceptionally bad idea.”

  He’s right. “Traffic. Yeah.” The coastal road was packed. High summer, and vacationers taking the scenic drive up and down Big Sur — cars, vans, campers, you name it, it was rolling on Route 1, daddy driving, and mommy pointing the camcorder at everything that looked interesting. “Okay, Major, I’m open to suggestions. There’s a young woman in that village who is in deadly danger. As of noon today, there’s a price on her head and a lot of people wanting to collect. If I…if we don’t extract her, she will be killed. I repeat: killed. It is a certainty. Equally certain, she will be tortured in ways you don’t want to know about. If I told you, you’d puke. The thugs who are after her want information, and cutting it out of her is just one of the ways they’ll get their jollies.
So, Major — and you too, Colonel — give me some ideas. Help me out here. Do that, and you have my word, once I get that young woman out of trouble, I’ll surrender.”

  “I wish I could believe that, sir.”

  Charlie laid his hand on the copilot’s shoulder — a gentle squeeze of sincerity, then words calculated to convince: “You can. On my honor, as soon as she’s safe, the cuffs come off you. I’ll lay down my gun. You can tie me up and turn me in. Hell, you can shoot me where I stand. I honestly don’t care. Just as long as we save that lady’s life, I don’t give a good goddamn about anything else.”

  Well, that was a lie. He gave a good goddamn about much more than Irina. Top priority: seeing to it that his son wasn’t punished for his father’s mis-deeds. Then too, there was a computer disk that could not be allowed out of the country. Add to that Sam, still pinioned to his seat; Charlie wanted the truth, and if he had to carve it out with a knife, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

  Plus Schmidt. His bill was overdue. It was time to collect.

  Surrender? In your dreams, Major!

  “You have my word,” he lied piously, “as soon as we get Irina to safety, I’m your prisoner.”

  Some men were rattled when they saw a comrade take a bullet. Those men were weaker men than Johan Schmidt. Calm and collected, he whispered into his radio, “Pit Viper, do you read me?”

  “Roger, Cobra. What’s your status?”

  “Kolodenkova is in my ops zone. Pass the word up and down the line. I want all units converging on this town.”