The Ransom of Black Stealth One

by Dean Ing

  Why doesn't the bastard shoot, if he's lying? Because I'd kill him too. But he's right about one thing, I don't have a prayer out here in the open. Still Corbett cudgeled his mind for another option, the seconds ticking away.

  As if to endorse Corbett's thoughts: "I could have fired already, if that were my intent," said the blond. "I am going to tell my men to hold their fire," he added, the little revolver with the big muzzle unwavering on Corbett's breast. He raised his free hand; waved it, still not turning from Corbett. "Do not fire unless he fires first," he called. "This is the man who must take the money!"

  It was the sight of the approaching men that made Corbett's decision for him; that, and a feeling that the blond truly wanted to hand the money over for reasons that might become clear, if he lived long enough to hear them. Die right now in the next thirty seconds, taking a Russian with me, or live from moment to moment and hope they fumble worse than I do. Either way, they aren't getting the hellbug. "Tell them if anybody fires, you get it," he said, his mouth dry.

  "You are not a man for panic," said the blond, with a nod that was almost admiring. "Well, do we shoot each other after all?"

  Corbett knew that he had just come as near to panic as he ever would. "The time for that is past, and you know it," he said, and lowered the Uzi.

  As the two latinos approached Corbett stood up, hands at his sides, and watched the blond reseat his revolver in its astonishingly small ankle holster. The blond stood, then, and retrieved the Uzi, with a perfunctory glance at its receiver. He looked into Corbett's face as he reached into the jacket and withdrew the Glock pistol, sticking it into his belt. Then he hefted the Uzi. "This is yours, Mateo," he said, and exchanged weapons with the taller of the two men. "I see he did not take it without a fight."

  The lean man stared hard at Corbett, a vein pulsing in his forehead next to a fat blue bruise. "An ambush, Lobo," said Mateo, and swept the barrel of his weapon in a slashing blow toward Corbett's head.

  "Stop that," commanded the blond. "He is necessary!"

  Corbett, who had ducked away from the full force of the blow, reached up to feel the torn cartilage at his earlobe. The third man shook his head as if to distance himself from such things.

  At a gesture from the blond they called Lobo, the men fell in behind Corbett, the four of them walking toward the shed, Mateo grumbling in boots that flopped without laces. Lobo turned his attention to the small man: "What of the fire, Jorge? Did you find an aircraft?"

  "No aircraft," said the little man, evidently surprised at the question. "Greasewood and that relic of a car. And when I circled back through the brush, our friend Mateo grunting and flopping like a trussed pig. He made enough noise for ten."

  "You did not have to cut my laces, you son of a whore," Mateo grated in return.

  Despite the blond's pointed disapproval of their wrangling, the two were still at it when they reached the shed. The lank Mateo strode away from the shed, unzipping his pants as he went. "I will want that shoulder holster now," said the blond wolf; "it pleases me. You will not need it when you take us to the aircraft. We could find the aircraft anyway, of course, because it cannot be far away."

  Corbett removed his jacket, dropped it atop a pile of trash, and shrugged out of his holster straps, handing the leather rig over. "You'll find the airplane booby-trapped if you ever find it at all."

  That, I believe. You have done much for a man alone," said the wolf, pulling keys from a pocket. "But after you have counted what is here, you may wish to disarm your handiwork."

  What I'll do is try to stay alive until dark, Corbett decided, as little Jorge slung his Uzi over a shoulder. If I can't get away within a couple of hours, there'll be a real explosion for them to deal with. Christ, maybe I can swim to the hellbug in the dark, he was thinking, furiously working on some vestige of a new and workable scenario, unwilling to embrace utter failure, when the blond lifted the trunk lid.

  The man stood perfectly still for a count of two and then, with motions so fluid they seemed almost unhurried, pointed his Uzi at little Jorge's stomach. "Put down your weapon, Jorge," he said calmly.

  Jorge frowned, glanced at the open trunk, and Corbett thought the man's eyes seemed to glaze. He leaned his weapon against a tire and the blond kicked it under the car. "Sit facing the wall," he said in a soft snarl. "Both of you. If either of you moves or speaks I will kill you here and now."

  The little man met Corbett's gaze, shrugged, and lowered himself to the dirt, Corbett imitating him. A long moment later, Corbett heard the flop of loose boots, then a rapid command in Spanish and a burst of curses from Mateo. Blessed with a fighter pilot's peripheral vision, Corbett watched as the blond used his weapon to prod the man forward. In a voice tight with contained rage, the blond rasped, "Which of you ladrones took the money?"

  "Hijo de puta, "Mateo hissed, and without an instant's hesitation fell on the little man at Corbett's side, beginning with a kick that must have broken a few ribs.

  In an instant the two latinos were grappling, the smaller man already in obvious pain as they fell against Corbett, who scrambled aside, coming to his feet with his hands in the air.

  The blond stepped forward, grasped Corbett's collar, hauled him aside, then fired a burst through the shed wall just over the heads of the struggling pair. Corbett rolled and came to his feet, then backed against the wall of the tin shed. One of the combatants made a sound that seemed less than human, half bleat, half sigh. Their leader snarled, "Stop it, Mateo! How will we know where he put it?" He began to lash at the lean Mateo with the barrel of his weapon.

  "Ay, caray, "said Mateo, still holding onto the little man's hair with one hand as his other hand appeared holding a thin-bladed knife. As Mateo's gaze fixed on Corbett's face, his eyes grew round and unfocused, a man filled with furies suddenly unleashed toward all comers.

  Corbett grabbed his leather jacket by one sleeve; used it as a flail to whip the maddened Mateo away, without effect. The man simply lowered his head and charged, snatching at the jacket with one hand, slashing with the knife in the other. The warning shouts of the blond seemed to go unheard as Mateo bore Corbett backward, slamming him against a corner post.

  Corbett caught the knife hand, not at the wrist but with his own left fist literally covering the other man's right, going down beneath the cursing latino, feeling the blade flick like a tongue through his shirt collar. With his free right hand he found Mateo's coarse hair, hauled back, then snapped his own wrist forward, the top of his head pounding against Mateo's nose. He felt the thin blade against the edge of his chin and arched his back, then put his entire left shoulder into a single, short upward blow of his left fist, still holding Mateo's knife hand in it.

  The latino's wrist failed, his hand twisting to the side, and Corbett saw the razorlike blade make its brief passage through the straining throat of Mateo. For an eyeblink of time, only the pink and darker than pink of a sudden incision showed, and then a warm cascade of crimson flooded onto Corbett's arm.

  Someone was shouting, pummeling the shoulders of Mateo, who now began to slide away, jerking and gasping, Corbett still holding on to that knife hand as long as it quivered. The slashing blow of an Uzi's metal stock caught him at the juncture of neck and shoulder, driving him once more against the wooden post.

  "Get up," commanded the blond, taking two paces back, his weapon aimed point-blank at Corbett's torso.

  It took Corbett two swallows before he could say, as he struggled away from the gory mess, "The bastard would have killed me."

  The blond cursed again. "Yes. Hotheaded fool, it may have been he who took the money after all. Now we will have a devil of a time finding it." Motioning Corbett further away, the man felt for pulses in both his men. He did not seem pleased at his findings, but with more plain disgust than sadness.

  Corbett felt his chin and realized for the first time that it had been punctured. "So one of those guys stole the cash?"

  "It cannot be far away," said the blond lobo. "I
am sure it was Mateo, now. Jorge was not the kind of man who would learn to pick a lock."

  A late splash of direct sunlight, penetrating far into the shed, highlighted the body of the little man, who lay with legs drawn up, his head lying in trash, one hand clutching the side of his chest where blood had seeped from between the dead fingers. His lifeless eyes seemed to be studying the sand in fixed concentration. "Mateo fooled me," said the blond, once more taking keys from his pocket. "He killed Jorge to make me believe he was furious at another man's treachery."

  "Why did he come at me, then? I sure as hell wasn't a suspect," Corbett fumed, trying to wipe blood from his chin.

  "Who justifies a madman?" For a moment the blond held the Uzi indecisively, then pulled Corbett's weapon from his belt and dropped the larger weapon onto an old fragment of doped fabric.

  That shit would burn like wildfire, Corbett thought. That's the time to go for this guy. "You wouldn't have a cigarette."

  "No. Get in the car. You will take me to the airplane before dark."

  "Why not wait until tomor—" Corbett began, but grunted as the blond drove a fist into his face.

  "Because of you, everything has changed," the blond growled as Corbett sagged against the nearest car. "You want me to delay and delay, but I will not. I know my people can find Black Stealth One, no matter how well you have hidden it. But if you show it to me—" He seemed lost in thought, chewing his lip, then nodding as if to himself. "I can and will let you go. It is expected."

  "With the money." Corbett's tone was rich with insinuation.

  A backhand slapped Corbett's head against the car, leaving a bloody smear. "Yes! Shut your mouth and get in the car."

  "Only you don't have the money anymore," said Corbett, rising unsteadily on knees that did not want to straighten. "And Black Stealth One has intruder systems, pal. Very high-tech. It goes up like an ammo dump if I don't give the right password."

  "Then you will give it," said the blond, breathing through his nose now, and no longer steadily. "Or I will kill you out of hand. Now, today, as the sun sets."

  "Go fuck yourself," Corbett replied. "Money or no money, you borscht-swilling asshole, I'd never let you lay a hand on—"

  The man moved as if to pistol-whip Corbett and then, as Corbett threw up his hands, kicked him in the groin with appalling accuracy.

  Corbett staggered back and fell into a two-foot mound of trash with the gasp of a child with croup, doubled over in agony.

  "I will simply have to do without you," said the blond wolf, raising Corbett's own handgun.

  The burst of gunfire spun the man half around, flung him backward as he fell. He lay on his side, firing aimlessly until Corbett, on hands and knees, managed to stop that flailing arm.

  The blond, wheezing through sucking wounds in his chest, licked his lips and stared up at Corbett, their faces two feet apart, lit by a saffron sunset. "One man? One damned American?" His eyes seemed to be begging for a denial, or for absolution.

  Corbett gave it: "No. Your luck just ran out, that's all." He took his pistol from the dying hand. "There's some honor in you, mister," he added, trying to get to his feet, and only then did Corbett fully understand that a man had risen from the pile of corrugated cardboard between the noses of the two automobiles, holding a mud-ugly automatic weapon in his hands.

  Corbett's arms failed; he fell back on his rump, staring at the man with the Ingram. He managed only to say, "I guess I owe you one, Speedy."

  FORTY-FOUR

  Corbett needed his friend's help to rise. He sat sideways, doubled over in the driver's seat of the little Escort. "So it was you I took for a Russian sniper out in the brush," he said, his voice still husky with pain.

  "I hope so," said Raoul Medina, glancing off toward the shrubbery. "I hot-wired a dead Mexican's old VW to get here from Regocijo, left it a mile or two out in the boondocks."

  "I saw it," Corbett said, unable to keep his hands from massaging his groin, though it only hurt worse when he did.

  "Looks like a wreck, and it is," Medina muttered, holding the Ingram ready. "You too."

  Corbett looked up, saw behind Medina's dry commentary, into his sympathetic gaze. Corbett fingered the ragged edge of his earlobe. It too was beginning to hurt, now. "I flew over Regocijo today. What happened out there?"

  Medina outlined the Regocijo disaster, adding, "Fucking frito bandidos severed a hydraulic line when the main landing gear collapsed. Damn red hydraulic fluid all over me, I looked worse than you do. Cancel that, nothin' looks worse than you do, man. I'm a little beat myself, still got some spruce splinters in my shoulder. By the time I came to and crawled out from beneath the wing there were three bodies lying around, the place was an inferno, and my only help had taken off in his car. Probably thought I was dead. All I salvaged was this little Ingram. And the VW at poor old Julio's, a mile away."

  "You knew I was coming," Corbett said, staring at Medina. "Why didn't you just wait?"

  It was Medina who looked away first. "I didn't know if you'd make it. And if you did, I wasn't sure you'd come to Regocijo. That's the long and short of it, Kyle."

  Corbett shifted against the pain still radiating from his groin, tugged at the crotch of his trousers, then managed a smile. "You really think I'd hand the hellbug over for money, Speedy?"

  "Not after I took the stuff out of the trunk while those assholes were beating the bushes," Medina replied, saying volumes by what he had not said. "That little fucker in the corner? He nearly caught me out there. I watched this Russki hotshot, or whatever he was, lug the money back after your last pass, and I heard the trunk slam. They went out on recon again when you didn't come back, so I nipped inside. I hit the trunk release down there under your busted balls, but I didn't have time to scoot back into the brush. Had to stuff the cash in that garbage in front of the other car."

  "So you had a ringside seat for all this."

  "No choice," Medina shrugged. "That Russki would've seen me for sure, so I burrowed under the crap in front of the cars and tried not to breathe." He fell silent for a moment, gazing at the body of Karel Vins. "You know what I think?"

  "I've given up trying," Corbett grunted, supporting himself on an open door as he tried to stand erect. "Oh, man; this has been one rough trip on the family jewels."

  "I think those guys didn't know about the inside trunk release on an Escort. Not even the Russki," Medina said. "He sure didn't trust 'em. Listen, Kyle, we've got to clean up this mess and clear out of here fast. Are you in shape to bring the hellbug here?"

  Corbett's grin was wry. "Yeah, and I'd rather you didn't see just how primitive my booby trap really is. You sure you trust me not to just keep going?"

  "With the hand I'm holding, I'd bet millions on it," Medina cracked. "I'm wearing gloves, but you aren't, man. I can wipe down the car, remove your prints. Make this look like a falling out of thieves."

  Corbett essayed a step, then another. "That means we'll have to hide one body." He interpreted Medina's frown as perplexity. "One guy has to be missing, Speedy; he's the one they'll be looking for in every whorehouse in Acapulco."

  Medina's headshake was a tribute. "I'm too goddamn new at this, man," he said. "You know I can't go back, don't you." Not a question; a flat statement.

  "Yeah. They'd turn you inside out," Corbett agreed. "They already think you're dead, you said. Look, we gotta talk this out, Speedy, and I can help. It'll cost you half that bundle. You earned the rest."

  "Damned decent of you, man, seeing as how I stole it fair and square already." Medina moved around the nearest Escort, kicking corrugated debris aside, lifting the bags of money with a grunting effort. He dropped it all into the dirt at Corbett's feet, toeing it roughly, and grinned. "Ain't that a bitch, treating our spookers so rough?"

  Corbett nodded. "I'll give odds the stuff is marked, or bugged somehow. That's one of the things we have to check before we leave here. And I don't know where we can go."

  Pause. Then, suddenly: "I do," from Medina
. "That old guy, Julio, had a little place on a creek, a mile from the Regocijo hangar. He got zapped; that's his VW I drove. The Russki seemed to think the guy you killed was the sneaky type, so he's the one we should hide."

  "Yeah?" Corbett's heavy shoulders shook faintly with amusement. "Yeah? Try this: we hide the Russian. Somebody was depending on him, Speedy, and so on up the line. Fuck 'em all," he said, and winked.

  "All the way back to the Kremlin," Medina nodded, his eyes alight. "Jesus, I'm glad you're on my side." He saw Corbett turning his hand over in a "maybe yes, maybe no" gesture, and laughed. "You fly him to Regocijo and I'll drive the VW there."

  "You and the money," Corbett said.

  "Fuckin' A," Medina said. "And it's only fifty miles by air but if you don't get your ass in gear, it'll be dark before you could make Regocijo. Don't land at the strip; look for a thatch-roof place a mile to the north, by the creek. It's got a pasture big enough for you." Then, with a sigh: "Shit, I'll be driving half the night. But at least I know the way, and you'd never make it with your balls the size of punching bags."

  Corbett picked up his pistol, wiped it down and thrust it into his jacket, took a half-dozen steps, then turned. "You still have that modified airchine you were building?"

  "The Imp? Sure, hangared under false ID outside Binghamton. I'm not holding out on you, man."

  "Didn't think you were, Speedy. I'm just reminding you: you've got your airchine. I've got mine. I won't object to a little trading around now and then, but—"

  Medina drew a long breath. A muscle twitched in his cheek. "Yeah, what's mine is mine, and what belongs to the fucking NSA is yours. Is that all? You through setting terms and conditions, ole buddy? Maybe you'd rather just take the money and let me lug that fucking deader in a VW that might conk out on the streets of Mazatlan when I'm halfway to Regocijo, huh? Seems I heard you say you owed me one, and that was damn straight, Kyle; you do."