The Ransom of Black Stealth One

by Dean Ing

  The shed was no bigger than a one-car garage, separated from the store with only a rickety roof to connect them. Petra's hopes fell because she could see no light from the shed. Her optimism swelled again as she moved nearer, because now she could hear another voice faintly, under the ballad, and it was not singing but talking. Now two voices.

  Of course; couple of mechanics putting in overtime with the damned radio on so loud they wouldn't hear it if somebody dragged the store away on skids, she told herself. She walked up to the door and banged on it with the heel of her hand, shouting, "Hey," as loud as she could. And then the cardboard slid crazily down from the inside of the door and she could see through the small panes very clearly.

  Two young men were in the process of dropping out of sight behind a heavy worktable, lit by a bank of overhead fluorescents. On the table was a printer's paper shear, and near it lay a sheaf of paper pages, each sheet containing rows of some delicate imprint in red. Petra's shout was imperious: "Come on, it's important!"

  She figured they must have pulled the radio's plug, the way it fell silent. "Hurry," she insisted, banging on the door again.

  "You go first," she heard a querulous voice say.

  "And don't blame me if there's black widders down there."

  "Shut up, Bobby," came the reply in a deeper voice, and a sound of wood dragging on wood. "That's a woman."

  "Ah seen her. What you waitin' for?"

  "They don't use women, use your fuckin' head. Or go on throo the hole if you'd ruther."

  Petra, almost dancing in her impatience, hit the door again. "Please hurry," she began, and then thought of a phrase that might galvanize them, "it's a matter of national security!"

  "Bullshit," said the deep voice as its owner stood up. He was in his thirties, thickset with dark curly hair, in dirty overalls and T-shirt, and he stared hard at Petra as he moved quickly toward the door. His show of teeth at her as he twisted the door's lock was probably intended as a welcome, but he stepped past her, peering around. If he had washed recently, he had forgotten to include those overalls.

  "I need a telephone right away," Petra explained.

  "Who you with, little lady?" The stocky man showed his teeth again like a robot, still looking around, holding the door open for her.

  "Nobody, I mean there's a man who kidnapped me but I got away," she said breathlessly, stepping inside, her eyes darting in search of a telephone. "He's in a stolen airplane and—look, can I please use a phone?" It occurred to her that some people might find her story hard to believe, and that she had stumbled onto a couple of those people.

  Now another young man was standing behind the table, very tall and slender in tan work clothes, blinking sheepishly at her through cornshuck hair as he gathered the imprinted papers and turned them over. "Hey, Elbee, why not?" He did not seem to know what to do with his hands, and Petra saw that they were shaking. He looked at her, looked away. "Let 'er in front. No problem. Raght?" His tone was hopeful.

  "C'mere, Bobby," said Elbee, clarifying it by waving two hairy fingers toward himself as he stepped inside and shut the door. To Petra he said, "You just stay raght there, little lady, everthang's gonna be oooh-kay." He spoke softly, soothingly, the way one might speak to a skittish horse.

  "You're wasting time," said Petra, starting around Elbee toward the door without knowing exactly why.

  "Raght there," he repeated, gripping her upper arm, shoving her back roughly, reacting to her stare of disbelief with still another display of dental work, though he did not really have the teeth for it. He watched Bobby approach, moving only his eyes until both men stood between Petra and the one door. Then Elbee said, "Bobby, she says she's by her lonesome. You better hope so. Now you stay here whal ah take a looksee. She don't get out, Bobby. She seen us."

  "What the hell is this?" Petra put hands on hips and stared Elbee down. "Sure I see you, so what? You're not supposed to be here? Go away then, but I've got to get to a telephone! I swear to you, it's government business."

  "Ah bet it is," Elbee said, and nodded. "She seen us, Bobby. Now keep her here, ah'll be back."

  With that, Elbee slid out the door. The interior lock was a good one, a heavy side-mounted brass fixture at chin height, and it latched with a click of terrifying finality. Petra waited for a count of ten, trading stares with Bobby who might have been her own age and was clearly unhappy with his role. In most circumstances, she decided, probably shy. "You don't want to get in trouble, Bobby," she said at last, and walked toward the door bearing a load of false confidence.

  It was the wrong thing to say. "Durn raght," said Bobby, putting his back against the door. "And you seen us."

  Petra turned on a smile that should have warmed the brass lock behind him. "Anybody can see anybody," she said. "What's the harm in that, Bobby?"

  "Them fake revenue stamps," he explained.

  She glanced over to the table, mystified. "Stamps?"

  Bobby said, "They go on whiskey bottles; lordy, you don't know much. They get you on that, you ain't got a good lawyer, send you over to Gainesville fahv years or so."

  God, I've done it again. "Bobby, I don't care about that, I didn't even see what you were doing." She took a deep breath and moved near him, making her face tragic, gazing gently up into his face. "I've been kidnapped by a man who is stealing a secret airplane. If you help me catch him, you can be a hero."

  "A hero," he said, his eyes roaming her face.

  I must look like hell but he doesn't seem to care. "To the whole country. And to me, too," she added. Got him. You're such a bitch, she told herself smugly.

  "You go with me to the phone, so you can listen," she said, keeping the flow mellow as she brushed against him, reaching for the lock, nodding and smiling as he moved aside. "Come on, it's all right, you'll see," she said, and stepped outside. And heard the angry bellow of Elbee, saw him pounding toward her from the semidarkness, and then she gave in to her fear and ran.

  The open plot behind the shed was only an acre of clearing with spindly corn and less identifiable plants fighting for survival. She pelted toward the darker gloom at the treeline, knowing that once into that ferocious tangle she was as good as gone, but she could hear other steps behind her, and other breath whistling close, and then she was screaming in the grasp of Bobby's long arms, flailing with her nails and feet, and she might have made it if not for Elbee, who jerked her upright and cuffed her half unconscious with his open hand.

  It was Elbee who carried her over his shoulder to the shed, dropping her onto a cane-bottomed chair with no back.

  "She was alone, awraght," Elbee said, puffing, wiping sweat from his face, and the look he turned on Petra made prickly heat slide up the nape of her neck. "Now ah don't know about you, Bobby, but ah cain't see lettin' this little lady loose, all this goop about guvment work, who knows what she's up to, not you and not me. Least that'll happen is strange folks with ties and forty-dollar shoes hangin' round here. You wanta sell out, move? Who'd buy the place?"

  "We could be heroes," Bobby said, as if testing the sound of it.

  "Who said that? Her? Shit for brains, she'd promise to suck your cock. Maybe she did." Elbee looked from Bobby to Petra and this time his slow smile was genuine, and chilling. "Maybe she will, 'fore this naght is out."

  Petra stood up and began backing toward the opposite end of the shed, feeling rough shelves against her arm, trying to identify something, anything, that she could swing as a weapon. Crossing his arms, the smile broadening, Elbee followed.

  "Ah don't lahk it," Bobby said, rubbing a red welt across his forehead. "Ah got a sister her age, Elbee."

  "So do ah," Elbee said.

  "Ah know what you done to her, too," Bobby insisted.

  "Well shit, so did you," Elbee said, watching Petra, leaping forward as she grabbed for the scissors that lay on the table. "Look at her blush, Bobby. Wonder which one of us she'd ruther have git 'er first."

  Petra struggled, speechless, nearly overcome by the stench of
the man who hugged her face against those coveralls.

  Bobby moved nearer. "You thought about what she's gonna say later?"

  "She ain't gonna say nuthin', Bobby. That's why you can do whatever you want." He held Petra away, his hands gripping her arms, smiling at her. "Get it? Now then: why don't you go first? Raght up on the table, whal ah hold her."

  "Ah don't know," Bobby said, but he moved nearer, indecision in his voice, and Petra quit trying to control her stomach, trying instead to provoke the vomiting that seemed so near. She remembered that some women claimed they had stopped a rapist by vomiting, fouling themselves in any way they could. She tried, but nothing in her past had ever trained her to urinate while struggling against two strong males, and when she felt the thick pitiless grasp of Elbee's hands holding her ankles apart, and when Bobby at last got one of her hands forced behind her back, she began the wordless, mindless screaming.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Corbett had wasted no time bringing the engine up to speed after the girl fled, levitating the hellbug gradually until he could see above the tree-line. The sun lay dying on his horizon as he lifted another hundred feet, putting the infrared sensors on full gain. He did not see the vague pinkish blot that was Petra until she had reached the blacktop road, which registered faintly with its residual heat.

  He hovered before bringing the nose up, urging the craft backward as he spotted a light-colored pickup truck that slowly accelerated from sight, its exhaust a fading red dot on the scanner. From time to time he could see the girl through treetops, still making an athlete's time toward that little store. "Boy, she's a pistol," he said to the scanner, grinning.

  He circled around then, gaining altitude gradually, increasing his distance so that he could barely see her above the trees. When she reached the store he had a good five hundred feet under him. He flipped a mock salute in her direction as he turned the hellbug's nose to the west and advanced the throttle.

  Something's missing, his cautionary demon whispered. "Yeah, a hundred and twenty pounds of trouble," he told it and kept going until he identified the missing item: the lights in that tacky little sign. It was nearly dark now, and those two crackers running the store could have been in the pickup. If so, Petra would be alone in strange surroundings. Shell make out. Why wouldn't she?

  He delayed his decision another few moments, cursing himself when he banked his great bird and began to retrace. He maintained a good margin of safety over the trees, using the scanner again, and as he swept toward the garden plot his scanner picked up two pink blots, one stationary and large enough to be two people, the smaller one closing on it. He engaged the waste gates, pivoting the craft on its left wingtip, staring down into the gathering dusk. What he saw in the garden enraged him beyond curses.

  Corn could damage the skin; well, avoid it, stupid! Get this heap down and kill all systems. Not so fast, you could crack this thing like an egg. One of the men, the ape he had seen lashing Petra with his hand, disappeared into a shed carrying her. Following them was the lanky dimwit who had sold Corbett the gas can, or his twin, and there was simply no way to speed up a landing without a crash, one that might put Corbett himself out of action. In less than two minutes he slipped the craft beyond the last row of corn and felt the jolt of landing, his hands doing the right things of their own volition. He could hear the impeller spooling down as he vaulted from the cockpit, and nearly whacked himself senseless against the wing's leading edge as he began to run the hundred yards to the shed.

  The screams began when he was still twenty yards away, and he could see through a triangular patch of windowpane when he was still three paces from the door, and found absolutely no reason to use its knob. His body slam laid his left arm and shoulder on the door face with a splintering crash. The lock held but the upper hinge flew into the room, and his kicks flung the door flat.

  The tall one straddled Petra's thighs, one hand gripping the open top of her jeans. He jerked his head around, his jaw dropping, and saw Corbett's right hand come up. "Gawdamighty," he bawled, and fell from the table as Corbett snapped off his first shaky round, a clean miss, from the automatic. The muzzle blast was concussive in such close quarters.

  The heavy man with the pale muscular arms had already released Petra's feet, backing away as he fumbled in a pocket, his big yellow teeth bared, blinking in dust that fell from the ceiling. "Get the fuck outa," he bellowed, interrupted by the second explosion. He stumbled, dropped an open switchblade, clutched his belly and fell on his side, his mouth working silently.

  Corbett stalked forward, trembling, his face alight with a kind of madness. He saw that the other man had been scrabbling at a trapdoor behind the table, gasping in falsetto, flinging the wooden rectangle aside, and Corbett lifted the pistol again.

  The tall man writhed onto his back, hyperventilating, clutching his chest, and what he saw in this stranger's face made him close his eyes as tightly as he could. Petra had drawn herself into a fetal crouch on the table, still sobbing. The tall man was crying too, now. Corbett wheeled, dropped to one knee, and placed his free hand palm-out just above his weapon as a splash guard, pulling the trigger when the muzzle was six inches from the wounded man's ear. Somehow it seemed right; not because the heavy man was the only one not crying, but because he was the one who had stood in that garden and repeatedly backhanded Petra.

  Corbett blinked hot tears away, his ears ringing from the muzzle blasts, drawing deep, ragged breaths as his rage began to dwindle. The tall man, little more than a youth, clasped his hands together, perhaps begging, perhaps praying, his legs apart. When he opened his eyes, Corbett said, in almost a whisper, "Go on into the hole. I can't miss then." The sufferer only shook his head, narrow chest still heaving. "Roll onto your belly. If you look up, you'll see a bullet. Now, "Corbett said with a devastating kick.

  Corbett had to roll the youth over, finally. He reseated the pistol and carefully, tenderly, placed his fingertips on the heaving shoulder of Petra Leigh. She gasped and screamed. "Petra," he said, his mouth near her ear. "It's okay," and touched her again. Another flinch, but no scream. He patted her shoulder, his gaze straying to the tall man, wanting to empty his magazine into the halfwit, seeing the ruin of the stocky man's head in a kind of wonderment. I did that? Yes. Damned shame he could only feel it once.

  "It's okay," he said to her again, spotting the radio with its loose cord. He moved away, retrieving the switchblade from the floor, and cut the radio's power cord. It was easy to rip it lengthwise into two rubber-sheathed cables, and the tall man did not object when Corbett bound his hands and feet.

  When Corbett stood, Petra was sitting up facing away from him, heartbreakingly small with her legs dangling from the table, snapping her jeans. He moved nearer. "It's okay, kid," he said.

  "Don't call me 'kid,' " she said, no longer quite sobbing.

  "You'll live," he replied with a half smile.

  "Are they dead? Did you kill them?"

  "One is," he said. "Don't look if you're squeamish."

  She stepped down, holding herself erect with her hands, and saw the dead man. "Not about him," she said, and surveyed the tall one. "Why not that one?"

  "Because I missed the fucker from twenty feet is why," Corbett said, shaking his head. He drew the pistol and offered it to her, butt-first. "You can do it. Or I will if you like."

  She started to shake her head, then put her hands to her face, her head shaking faster and faster until he put the weapon away and cradled her shoulders in his hands. She leaned into his chest, moaning, gulping hard. They remained there until her shudders passed.

  He knew that Petra was truly resilient when, once her breathing had become steady, she mumbled against his shirt, "Oh, you son of a bitch, Corbett." She moved away, not abruptly but with renewed strength, and looked him up and down. "There's nothing wrong with your leg."

  "Well, I sure thought it was broken," he said.

  "You seem to have found your pistol, too."

  "Funny thing; put
it in my pocket and forgot."

  "Sure you did." She gnawed her lip, squinting at him. "You are weird, mister."

  "And he," Corbett said, nodding toward the tall youth, "is listening. Want me to put him in that hole?"

  "There's black widders down there," said a muffled voice.

  "Sounds good to me," Corbett said easily, with one lingering pat on Petra's arm as he moved to squat near his captive. "Tell you what, old-timer: we're going out for a while. You don't make a sound, or try to get loose, and I don't dump you down there gut-shot. If you do, I do."

  A nod. "You wanta put the trapdoor back?"

  "Don't," Petra spoke up. "Leave it open as a reminder."

  Corbett got up and headed for the doorway. "Teach you not to screw around, old-timer," he called back. "A woman will keep you terrified all your life. All I'll do is kill you." He made an after-you-Alfonse gesture, and Petra walked out ahead of him toward the back door of the little store, which was not even locked. The place was silent but for the tick of a big, old spring-wound Westclox that squatted beside the cash register—the kind of clock that more or less keeps time but will do it until the blast of Gabriel.

  By common consent, they found the toilet first, Petra cursing as she cleaned the filthy thing before she would park her rump on it. Then he used it, knowing that when he opened the door he might be alone. He heard a car go by on the blacktop, its tires sizzling a tone that rose and fell familiarly with its passing. So she didn't flag it down, he thought, only half surprised. He found her opening two cans of beer from the old refrigerator that squatted near the sales counter.

  They gulped for a few moments. "You let me go, back there in the melon field," she said at last.

  "No I didn't. You ran. I came looking for you, that's all." A devilish smile. "You sorry I did?"