The Ransom of Black Stealth One

by Dean Ing

  "Why, sure. Who gives a damn about checking the weather that could shred this thing like Kleenex? Or the guard channel that might be full of our descriptions." His glance was jaundiced. "I told you to bring a book."

  "I did. You borrowed it." No recriminations, just the facts.

  Attending to the keyboard once again, he opened his mouth to swear, then glanced her way. "I don't suppose you're a computer whiz. I never was much good with 'em," he sighed.

  "I'm not a real hacker, but I can find my way around a menu," she admitted. "You sure aren't breaking into anything that way. You are trying to break in." It was not a question.

  "A while back, you said you'd try to save your hide if you could. Well, maybe you can. I'm looking for a password, Petra. If I can find it, I should be able to paint this bird so that it can't be seen— or recognized, at any rate." He saw the look that passed across her face and showed his teeth in a broad grin. "Forget paint brushes or gallon cans of lacquer. You know who I am, it can't hurt. Yeah, I helped design the hellbug and believe it or not, you can paint an airplane's skin electronically. Can't do that on something that flies at Mach two, but this slow bird has a plastic skin. The paint program is in that black box somewhere," he added, flicking a finger against the monitor.

  Her first response was to fold her arms, hunch her shoulders, and stare out of the canopy. Her lower lip, he decided, was fetchingly prominent though she probably had no idea how like a pouting child she looked with the sun highlighting the freckles that bridged her nose. Right; a hell of a cute little number who's not through blossoming. And she'd wield the hammer at your crucifixion, he told himself. He gave her time, switching channels on the radios which only he could hear. He was picking up some commercial air and, of course, the vortac signals from navigation beacons which made his charts work so nicely.

  What he was not picking up was any suggestion that the search had begun. It was downright eerie, until a suspicion struck him so hard he grunted. What if they'd known all along that he was still alive? Just what if this entire scam had been mounted, yes, with Medina in it too, so that good ol' capable, dead Kyle Corbett would surface after all this time and fly Black Stealth One to Mexico, taking all the risks and maybe finding a shallow grave near Regocijo?

  He knew the girl was speaking, but did not really hear her, so intent was he on this stunning surmise. He only shook his head, tapping the minitel at his right ear as if listening to some message. But they couldn't have known I'd steal the hellbug and take the girl with me, Medina didn't know that either. So the operation would already be balls-up and they'd be mounting a search anyway. They would have put in those long-distance fuel tanks before letting Medina contact me. And ol' Speedy must be wondering, about now, if I'm really going to show at Regocijo, now that I have the hellbug instead of a rented car. He'll be pissed that I didn't warn him I'd take the hellbug, but he can't admit to anyone that we've got plans of our own—if those anti-theft riot gas cartridges are really in the Regocijo hangar.

  Medina had claimed those cartridges could fill an entire hangar with malonitrile gas, nasty stuff that could flatten a man for a half-hour. If so, the stuff should be able to zap a few guys who were too busy watching Medina crash to see a cloud of gas moving in on them from upwind. Corbett just hadn't bothered mentioning that he would do it from the air. The hellbug made it perfect because one good man with a sidearm could take on the bad guys while they were down; and if the money were really there it should make a sizable bundle, easy to find and just as easy to fly off with.

  The plan he'd worked out with Medina was, moreover, exactly the kind CIA would run from, no matter how much they wanted Corbett. That meant, in all probability, Medina was trustworthy. And besides, there was that final factor, the gut feeling. Speedy? Sell him out like that? He said aloud, "Naah. Crazy."

  Without looking at him she shot back, "Not from where I sit."

  "Not what from where you sit?"

  "What I said."

  "I was busy."

  "You were talking to yourself," she said, making a shallow vee with her mouth, the sort of deliberately false, prim smile that Andrea Leigh might have made. "I said, I want us to be seen, I just don't want to get killed."

  He lifted his gaze and moved his head as if searching for a fly in the cockpit, and spoke as if to that fly. "Well isn't that swell, isn't that just cute as pie? She wants the candy, but not the zits." Then, gazing full at the girl, he said, "Read my lips: if they see us, they'll try to take us down."

  He saw her swallow hard, heard the uncertainty in her, "You don't really think so."

  "I don't think they'll shoot us down, until they find out I can make this thing dance. I think they'll try to force us down first; that's what I'm counting on, it gives us more of a chance than if they just see us and jump our ass. You know how much this airchine weighs?" She was shaking her head as he bored in with, "Half a ton loaded—we're sitting in cotton candy. You know how much a jet interceptor weighs? Twenty or thirty tons, and those titanium wings wouldn't even know it if they snipped off a few feet of us. And they'll fly ten times our top speed. Force equals mass times velocity squared, you're a goddamn engineer, you figure it out."

  There were other ways they might use to force him down, ways more likely than the one he had shown her, but to guess them herself, Petra Leigh would have to know the flight envelopes of everything that flew. He saw her blinking and waited.

  "On first approximation, I'd say we need five thousand times more inertia before we tangle ass with 'em," she said, trying her best to smile.

  And when he began to laugh, great bellows that made his gut surge against the restraint strap, she laughed too. "Okay," he said at last, wiping his eyes. "You'll probably graduate. But barring all that magical inertia, if we get bounced, first of all you realize you're going through the wildest carnival ride you ever saw or heard of, and if I'm as good as I used to be, you'll be doing it for a long time because they aren't gonna quit and I sure won't. No king's X, no time out to wipe your barf off your back. Second, Petra, I am not going to be taken alive; accept that as an axiom. They don't want it much, and neither do I."

  She seemed to be puzzling over something and finally said, with a grimace, "Barf off my back?'

  "Negative g forces can slosh it around. Trust me."

  "Trust you," she said, eyes half closed with comical mistrust. "And what else will this paint job do for you?"

  "Uh—hell, what else you want? All it does is make it hard to spot us, ki—Petra. It's not an offensive weapon, if that's what you mean. This thing doesn't have a popgun on it."

  "But you do."

  "That's exactly what I do have. Lot of help that's gonna be in aerial combat, I can tell you."

  "All right," she said at last, "I'll try. And if I try, I want a promise from you. Not if I succeed; if I try." He was careful to avoid showing any response until she shrugged and went on: "You let me go before you land this thing at wherever you're taking it."

  He turned the video monitor's swivel so that monitor and keyboard were accessible to them both. "Fair enough. You won't believe this, but I never intended to hand you over to anybody. That wasn't part of the plan," he said. "But of course you don't believe that, I'm just a, a—" His hand churned the air for inspiration.

  "Terrorist," she supplied.

  "What?"

  "Well—kidnapper. Scuzzball, spy, traitor, crotchsniff, thief, asshole, con man—"

  "Enough, already!"

  "Cradle-robber, dirty old man." She uttered the last without evident malice, merely two more phrases that she was donating as she became interested in the keyboard.

  "I think I may have enough to hold me awhile," he said, faintly outraged. "Crotchsniff? Asshole? You're an engineer, all right. You talk like a grad student."

  "I haven't neglected the liberal arts," she made her false, shallow-vee smile for him again. "Look, I understand you're free to break a promise. But I'm not. Whatever you do with me, you'll have to live with tha
t."

  " 'Guilt is the mother of insomnia,' is how Dar used to put it," he said. "I sleep like a log; trust me."

  "Yeah, you said that before. Just don't imagine for a minute that I won't love it when Uncle Dar gets his hands on you, Corbett. Because I think he will, one way or another, and if there's anything left afterward maybe he'll turn the pieces over to my dad."

  Corbett saw the flash in those eyes, and knew that every word had been plain truth as she knew it. Which meant that she was still living someone else's lie; perhaps would continue to live it forever. It was not Kyle Corbett's place to tell her, now or ever, that she was not the niece of Dar Weston.

  She was Weston's only child.

  SIXTEEN

  Briefing the director of Central Intelligence on the scrambler line, Dar had a channel as secure as NSA could make it. He retained enough awareness of his surroundings to circle a thumb and forefinger for Terry Unruh, who was manhandling a color copier into their jury-rigged ops center. "Just myself and Terry. Yes, he and Ullmer both know she's my niece, I wouldn't have been smart to hide it .... No, FBI is treading very gently; I'm a little surprised. I suppose we have you to thank for that, Abe .... I see. Well, a foreign perpetrator is still plausible, but I don't think it's true. Witnesses all claim he sounded beer-and-Rambo American."

  Although domestic cases of this sort would ordinarily be covered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Randolph obviously had his own reasons for wanting CIA to handle it. In a sense it was fortunate that the operation had involved a deal by foreign nationals, and was expected to cross national borders, because now it was not entirely a domestic matter for the FBI. Using that as his wedge, Randolph had obtained White House approval for his agency's involvement. Foy's NSA was deeply involved because Black Stealth One was, after all, their bird. Now all three of the nation's biggest intelligence agencies would be working "together," though always, always in competition. And Abraham Randolph's neck was out a mile, Dar thought, and Abe knew it. If CIA could not get that airplane back, someone very senior would be in for a long fall.

  Dar moved aside as Unruh, doing scutwork ordinarily handled by lesser people, patched in two more telephone lines near him, and turned away to speak. It was rare that a top-level conversation proceeded in such chaos. But then, it was equally rare for top-level men to take such an active role as Dar's. That role was permitted to him only because he was playing it inside CONUS, the national borders.

  "There's Ullmer, of course, and his man Medina; and I expect Sheppard will be landing here any minute. Ullmer insists on being in on the chase with me... . How can I, Abe? Besides, the man knows what Black Stealth One can do. I'll be glad to have him.... Negative, the less Medina knows, the better, since he'll be running pretty much in the open and he's in a very burnable position. Medina would never get it into his head that—well, Ben Ullmer himself says the Blue Sky craft is obsolete. If the Sovs already have Black Stealth One, the older aircraft is beside the point and no great loss to us. But if they don't have Black Stealth One, then maybe they'll grab Medina's crashed offering and run off with the pieces, and that at least buys us more time.

  "But we're not talking policy with Medina. Besides, he's scheduled out on a McDonnell almost anytime now. I think they'll get in-flight refueling between here and San Diego, then Marine Harriers will set the team down in Mexico before dark .... Only Medina plus two deniables, Mexican nationals he'll pick up in San Diego."

  This time, Dar waited patiently for a long minute. Then, "I thought we'd settled that, Abe. Just one little push right now, with relations as touchy as they are, and Mexico could be another Iran. If their Federal Bureau of Security gets wind of this and sends plainclothes Federales into Regocijo, the main thing that'll matter is whether our people can evade. Our Mexicans are plausible and Medina claims he could pass and make it out alone. More people just might tempt a firefight on Mexican soil .... No, actually it was Unruh's argument, but I'm backing him."

  Dar looked up as Unruh ushered in a newcomer. "Wup; Bill Sheppard just walked in. I'm sure he'll know what Foy wants to do about the—the hostage situation." He could not say, "my niece"; he wanted to say, "the daughter I have plausibly denied for twenty-two years," but that would have reversed Abe Randolph's decision instantly, to say nothing of the repercussions later. "I simply don't know how, Abe. Somebody on the other side did his homework, that's all.... I'll call her parents myself later, when I know what spin to put on the news."

  "Spin" was a grotesque way to put it, he realized. The decision was not yet firm whether the United States Government would decide to send Petra spinning to her death as an expendable casualty the moment it got the chance. Abe Randolph had made his choice clear the instant he got Dar on the phone: regardless of the hostage's identity, he'd said, she was not a prime consideration. Thanks to the predictable reaction of the popular media, she was the prime consideration. CIA had taken its lumps for a certain callousness in the past—"its formerly sanguinary views," in Abe's dry parlance.

  In one compartment of his mind, Dar was wondering whether the Director of Central Intelligence would have made the same decision had he not been flashed the news of Petra's identity. That was the kind of question he must never ask; it was prying at the teeth of a gift horse. Randolph had given him the option of continuing to ramrod this thing, and Dar had chosen to stay. Though Dar had always felt the highest respect for Abraham Randolph, never before had he felt like hugging the man.

  Dar put the phone down, sighed, and shook hands with the wiry little scholar, Bill Sheppard. "You've met Unruh," he said, trying to maintain a pose of briskness when he felt like bursting into tears.

  Sheppard, looking a bit rumpled in shirtsleeves with his tie askew, was trying not to stare. "You're handling this directly? Under the circumstances I'm, ah, sure it can't be easy for you." Of course Sheppard would know about Petra already. It had been foolish to hope otherwise.

  "I'm just following policy on this, Bill, not making it." He realized how edgy that had sounded, when he needed all the diplomacy at his command. He forced a smile and indicated the coffee bar with its pile of doughnuts nearby. "You and I get to chew over the tactics, and you can start by chewing on a glazed old-fashioned if you like. Oh, and an APB you may want to edit. We've just finished it," he said, handing over the printout. Some version of that all-points bulletin would soon be issuing from laser printers in several states. That APB would have been out already were it not for the need to coordinate everything this way, face-to-face, with a sister agency. All this complication was buying time for the other side.

  Dar noted that Bill Sheppard continued to eye him quietly as the NSA deputy strayed toward the doughnuts and coffee, studying Dar over the top of the APB. Certainly it wasn't going to be easy, but perhaps easier than going back to his office in Langley and ramming his head against the wall. The hardest part might be having to tell Phil and Andrea to be ready for the worst. He would say that in any case, but there were ways to imply good reason to hope, and ways to deny much hope. It occurred to him suddenly that he had no real choice on that call; whatever the decision here in Blue Hangar, he would have to shore up Andrea's courage until the last shred of his own hope was gone. Until, in fact, he had seen Petra's body, so near an exact copy of her mother's...

  Moments later, the door from the offices flew open as Medina entered with Ben Ullmer in tow.

  "...unless you have to. Listen to me, Medina: we don't give a shit about the fuckin' airchine. It's a gift; bust it up, but not so much that you lose your hide for it. Oh hi, Bill, with you in a minute." Medina carried a leather one-suiter over one shoulder and a bulky sport equipment bag at his side, saying nothing, nodding frequently as he swivel-hipped his flamenco dancer's rump between folding chairs and into the hangar proper, merely using the place as a shortcut toward the runway with Ullmer hurrying after. Ullmer continued until they were out of earshot: "Recheck the pressure in those scuba tanks. If we had a KH-12 available, I could get us a steady satellite
link but that's out...."

  Dar met Sheppard's gaze, and both men smiled sadly. "Ben wants to go himself," Dar said.

  "Wouldn't that be a picture? High blood pressure, corns the size of manhole covers, and a Georgia accent thick as candlewax. But that's not why he's so anxious," Sheppard replied slowly, making a scientific experiment of dunking his doughnut. "Ben loves his people. He wants to empty his entire brain into Medina's, give his man the benefit of every scintilla of knowledge he's accumulated in over sixty years."

  "But he can't."

  "Of course he can't. But he can't stop himself from rattling on, thinking out loud, hoping some drop of that"—he was chuckling now—"that tsunami of words will help Medina. Whereas you and I know better."

  Dar tried to make it light. "Refresh me."

  Sheppard took a sopping bite, shrugged, and wiped his chin. "Nothing can help Medina but what he's already internalized over the years, plus whatever his adrenal medulla can pump out for him in the very millisecond he needs it." Sheppard's owlish gaze was mild, his stand unassailable. Almost.

  "Plus luck," said Dar Weston in a choked voice, turning away so that the NSA deputy would not see the sudden upwelling of tears. He might have tried to prepare Petra for such barbarous possibilities as this, urged martial arts training, everything it took to make his daughter more than the equal of a kidnapper. Because he had not done any such thing, he had nothing left to hope for except her luck. If Sheppard tries to lecture me on the statistical foolishness of luck I will throttle him with my bare hands.

  "Oh yes, that's a given," said Sheppard around another soggy mouthful. "Problem is, it's given randomly on all sides."

  A distant surge of white noise, accompanied by keening whistles, suggested something very much more potent than a Learjet taxiing into the distance. Ben Ullmer hurried in with that sore-footed stride moments later, scratching his bald pate and muttering.

  Sheppard: "How is Medina taking it, Ben?"