Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 5 - Red Horseman

by Red Horseman (lit)

  The mirror was in his pocket. Inside the hot suit.

  Well, there was no other way. He gingerly unzipped the suit enough to admit his hand, reached inside and snagged the mirror. Then he zipped the suit closed.

  The mirror was rectangular, about two inches by four inches, with a hole in the middle. Jake looked above him for the jet, then raised the mirror and tried to get the refracted spot of sunlight to come into the crosshair. Then he realized that a cloud had drifted between him and the sun. He put the mirror down and studied the clouds.

  A few minutes.

  "Those people were murdered." Jack Yocke was beside him.

  "Everyone southeast of Serdobsk was murdered," Jake Grafton said. "Those folks in there just happened to be shot." "Why?" Jake flipped a hand at the empty transporters.

  "Somebody stole some missiles?" "Looks that way, doesn't it?" "How are we going to get this helicopter started?" "I don't know that we can." Then the sun came out. And there was the jet, still high up there against the blue. Jake raised the mirror to his eye and moved it carefully to focus the light.

  Yocke began to understand. "Is that Rita up there?" "Maybe. I hope so." "Goddamn it, Grafton," Yocke began.

  "Why didn't-was "We'll get out of this or we won't, Jack.

  That's the whole story." He was working the mirror.

  The sunspot was right on the crosshair. "Those people in there look like they are at peace." "That's a peace I'm not ready for yet." "They probably weren't ready either, but it came regardless. The one thing I can promise you-this is going to be one of the most peaceful spots on this planet for a couple hundred thousand years." Jake removed the mirror from his eye and turned to face the reporter. "The peace that death brings is all any of us can count on." Yocke was watching the jet high in the sky above.

  "I think maybe she saw you," he said.

  One of the transporters rumbled into life. With diesel smoke pouring from the exhaust pipe, it slowly rolled toward the helicopter. "There's a set of jumper cables in it," Toad told Jake when he got down from the cab, "but no tools. The fucking Russians stole "em or never put them in." "Try to hook the cables up and get that power cart started. Rita's coming but we may still need this chopper." The jet was a three-holer, a Tupolev 154 with Aeroflot markings, a Russian ripoff of the Boeing 727 design. It wasn't until it turned off the runway that Jake realized there was no hot gas coming from the center engine exhaust.

  Rita taxied up and gestured to him from the cockpit.

  "Everyone, we're taking the jet," Jake roared. "Help Captain Collins with his gear.

  Then get on the back of the transporter. Toad, when everyone's on it, back that thing up to the door of the jet." Two U.s. marines opened the door for them and they scrambled aboard.

  Toad came in last. "Do we need to move the transporter?" Rita was standing there. "No," she told him.

  "I'll back us out with thrust reversers. Close the door and let's go." They took off the hot suits and threw them into the back of the passenger cabin. Jake made his way to the cockpit and dropped into the copilot's seat.

  "You got an engine out?" "Yessir. It was overheating. Maybe a bad thermocouple, but I don't know. We got a heck of a takeoff roll without it, but I think we can make it." "How much runway we got?" "About nine thousand feet. We're light, nowhere near max gross weight.

  We'll make it if the tires don't blow.

  There's no tread left and I could see cord in a couple places." Jake Grafton looked down the runway at the trees beyond. Relatively flat terrain, thank the Lord! "Well, I guess we'll find out soon enough." Toad stuck his head in. "Rita, you get more beautiful every time I see you." She flashed him a wide grin.

  "Did you see the mirror okay?" Jake asked.

  "Yessir. I had a little trouble finding this place. Most of the Russian nav aids don't work. I circled for about a half hour and had about decided you were going out on the chopper." She was all business, relating it crisply, a matter Of factjust to be reported.

  "There's the gear handle and the flaps." She touched each lever. "We'll begin our takeoff roll with the flaps up so we'll accelerate a little faster. I'll call for takeoff flaps at about a hundred eighty kilometers per hour-the airspeed is calculated in clicks so don't get excited. You put them down to the first detent, takeoff. When we're airborne I'll call for the gear, then the flaps." "Let's do it." She taxied to the very end of the runway and held the brakes while she ran her two good engines up to full power.

  Then she released the brakes.

  The jet accelerated slowly. Jake could hear the thumping as the wheels passed over the expansion joints.

  Rita Moravia made no attempt to rotate, merely sat monitoring the engine instruments and the airspeed indicator between glances at the end of the runway, which they were stampeding toward at an ever increasing pace.

  "Flaps," she called.

  Jake moved the handle to takeoff. The indicator moved.

  "They're coming!" The airspeed needle kept rising, but oh so slowly. The end of the runway came closer, closer.

  Jake was reaching for the control wheel to rotate the plane when Rita eased it back and the nose came off, then the main wheels just as the end of the runway flashed by.

  "Gear up," she called, and Jake Grafton raised the handle.

  When the gear was fully retracted the plane accelerated better. Still Rita kept the nose down and let the airspeed increase. "Flaps up," she said at last, and Jake moved the handle.

  When they were climbing through three thousand meters-the altimeter was calibrated in meters-Rita told Jake, "This is the biggest plane I've flown.

  Handles better than I thought it would.

  V VHEN THE AIRLINER WAS LEVEL AT CRUISING ALTITUDE, Captain Collins checked everyone for radiation. Jake had to part with his shirt.

  Colonel Rheinhart lost his trousers.

  "As soon as we get to Moscow," Collins told them, "I want each of you to take a long shower. Wash your hair thoroughly. The stuff you want to get rid of is radioactive dust and dirt. Stay in the shower as long as you can stand it and don't come out until you're as clean as a new penny." When Jake had settled into a seat, Yocke came over and sat beside him.

  "Where'd you guys get this airliner?" "Aeroflot." "Who'd you have to kill?" "Nobody. Toad told them we wanted to charter an airfiner and waved American money. He got this one full of gas for seventeen hundred dollars cash and two bottles of mediocre whiskey that he stole out of Spaso House on the Fourth of July. The Aeroflot man insisted a Russian pilot come along, but he came down with something and got off when Rita gave him a hundred. She flew it out of Sheremetyevo." "What about air traffic control?" "One of the enlisted marines speaks tolerable Russian.

  He's up in the cockpit with Rita now." Yocke shook his head. "It's amazing what real money will buy." "Ain't it, now." "Think that's what happened to those missiles?" "Your guess is as good as mine." "Now, Jake! Don't start that crap! I've risked my butt this afternoon right along with you and Rita and all these other military heroes. It wouldn't hurt an iota for you to come clean and tell me the whole truth.

  For once." Jack Yocke got the gray eyes full face. There was no warmth in them.

  "That's the second time you've called me Jake.

  You aren't old enough or wise enough. Don't do it again.

  "Yessir. No offense. But I mean it about leveling with me. I feet like a kid in a haunted Halloween house. I've paid my buck and I keep getting the shit scared out of me even after it ceases to be fun. How about telling me what you know?" "I don't know what happened to those weapons. I was as surprised as you were when I saw those empty transporters and the bodies." "The story I heard that got me over to this country was that the Iraqis were trying to buy some nuke weapons. I I heard they had three billion to spend for the right toys." "Where'd you hear that?" Jack Yocke scratched his nose, then rubbed his face good. It went against the grain to reveal a source but he didn't see any way out of it.

  Finally he said, "One of the ICB execu
tives told me, off the record. He was sitting in a New York jail awaiting trial when I interviewed him." The International Commerce Bank had recently been shut down worldwide for money laundering on a stupendous scale, that and a garden variety of other financial crimes.

  "Did you believe him?" This was the crucial question. A professional reporter hears a lot of stories, every now and then a true one. The good reporters can smell a lie a block away. "I thought he was telling the truth," Yocke told the admiral. "Or what he believed to be the truth. It had the right feel." "I don't mean to insult you, but did you get that feel when Judith Farrell told you her Soviet Square tale?" "Yeah, I did. I've been thinking about that. In the first place she was a professional liar and damn good, and second, most of the story was true, in fact all of it except who was ultimately responsible. So it played well. There was nothing fancy or hyped. I bought it." He shrugged.

  Jake Grafton visibly relaxed. "Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. I bought one of her stories one time too." Jack Yocke got the feeling he had just passed some kind of test. "Well, the ICB tip didn't pan out over here. I had the names of two former lCB execs who had run to earth in Moscow that my source swore knew the ins and outsif they could be persuaded to talk. These two birds supposedly shuffled the money every which way to Sunday to make it impossible to trace. That made sense, so I looked for them for four straight days but couldn't get a sniff. Not that I'm any great shakes at finding people in Moscow, but still..." "I heard about the money going through ICB too," Jake said softly.

  "Maybe from Iraq. Maybe from an Iraqi working for Iran." "Heard any names? Which Russian might have gotten the dough?" "A name or two. That much money, it's impossible to keep it secret. Oh, they've tried. But that much money... was He had repeated the rumors to Richard Harper in the hope that he could find the trail. Did he?

  He heard the power being reduced. "I'd better go talk to Rita," Jake said. "We'll land at another airport and Toad can call Aeroflot.

  No use letting the manager see who was on his chartered airplane." Yocke got out of his seat, then Jake maneuvered himself into the aisle and walked forward to the cockpit.

  Three billion dollars. That wasn't pocket change anywhere, but in Russia it was a stupendous amount of money.

  Too much, really. Jack Yocke moved to the window seat and sat staring out, wondering where the money could be, what a Russian could use it for. In Russia there were no stocks to buy, no bonds, no office buildings to invest in, no art masterpieces for sale, no private oil syndicates setting out to drill up Siberia or the Gulf of Mexico. It was amazing, really. Here was a whole nation with not a goddamn thing to invest money in, unless you were looking to throw your bucks into worn-out factories producing obsolete, shoddy goods that no one on the planet except starving, penniless Russians wanted.

  However, one possibility did come to mind. He looked toward the cockpit, started to get out of the seat and go that way, then decided against it. If he thought of it, the idea must have already occurred to Jake Grafton.

  He sighed and scratched himself and turned his attention back to the window.

  It was dark when the Tupolev 154 landed at Dornodedovo, a huge field for domestic airliners thirty miles southeast of Moscow.

  Rita taxied to the corner of the air-port most remote from the terminal and shut down the engines.

  Jake went back to find Captain Collins.

  He wiggled a finger at Iron Mike McElroy, the marine captain, who came over.

  "I want this airplane washed before we call Aeroflot. I don't want any radioactivity overdoses on my conscience." McElroy agreed to use his people to find some tank trucks and hoses and to do the washing, and Collins agreed to use his equipment to ensure they got the hot spots and diluted the runoff as much as possible.

  "Do the best you can," Jake told them, and left it at that.

  An hour later Jake was in Ambassador Lancaster's office in the embassy complex.

  His. Hempstead sat on the couch with a notepad on her lap.

  "Yeltsin refused to resign," Lancaster said.

  "The antiallyeltsin forces have forced a no-confidence vote in the Congress of People's Deputies.

  The best Yeltsin could do was get it delayed until Friday." This was Monday evening. Jake glanced at the calendar on the ambassador's desk to make sure. Three days.

  "Yakolev and Shmarov have been on television," the ambassador continued.

  "They and the rest of the junta seem to have a lot of support. People are hungry, unemployed, the factories don't have raw materials or markets, this Serdobsk disaster may have been the last straw." "Yeltsin was popularly elected. I didn't know the legislature could throw him out." "Technically they can't. But over here they're still making up the rules as they go along. If he loses on the noconfidence vote he can either call for a new election of deputies or resign and let the congress choose a successor.

  The problem is that his support is melting away." "What's the American position?" "We've got to let the Russians sort it out for themselves.

  We'll recognize any government that gets in without resort to violence." "How about blowing up the Serdobsk reactor?

  Would Washington classify that as a violent act?" Lancaster goggled. Hempstead came off the couch and floated toward the desk. "Blew it up? Who?" "I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I'm merely asking a question." "This isn't the time for soaring hypotheticals, Admiral," Hempstead said acidly, "or cute questions about when someone stopped beating his wife." She stalked back to the couch and snatched up her notepad.

  "I assume you do have some basis for your question," Owen Lancaster said uneasily. "Exactly what did you find out on your helicopter trip to Serdobsk?" "The reactor and containment vessel are gone, sir, nothing left but a crater and some rubble.

  The entire control budding was destroyed. A storage building a hundred yards or so from the reactor was severely damaged and the plutonium containers that were inside ruptured." Lancaster merely nodded. Like most people, he had only n was or what the physithe vaguest idea of what a meltdow cal effects might be. He expected something terrible of course, but just what was rather hazy.

  This description sounded properly catastrophic, so he murmured "horrible" and shook his head.

  "Nobody survived, I supposeThat "No, sir," Jake Grafton said, and paused for a few seconds to gape at the va/s of the great man's ignorance.

  Then he continued: "The fallout zone is huge and extraordinarily hot.

  Collins will have some numbers in a few hours.

  We won't know the exact dimensions of the fallout zone until aerial surveys are conducted. But to return to my question-I guess I didn't phrase it right. Please excuse me. I'm just curious about how willing the United States government might be to get into a shooting scrape over here if the junta looks like it might be coming out on top." "That's a decision for the president," Hempstead piped from her ringside seat, her tone suggesting Grafton was a few cards short of a full deck.

  Lancaster spoke more slowly. "I seriously doubt if anyone in Washington will be very enthusiastic about a military adventure in Russia, Admiral, even if Yakolev himself personally blew up a dozen reactors and CBS News has a videotape of him pushing the plunger.

  Speaking hypothetically, of course." Jake Grafton wondered what the administration's reaction would be to medium-range ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads in Iran or Iraq. He didn't ask the diplomats though. He wanted to talk to Hayden Land before he set Lancaster's pants on fire.

  While Senior Chief Holley was checking the navy's minuscule office for bugs and rigging the telephone scrambler, Jake went to find Jack Yocke.

  "I want you to write a story about what you saw today. Get the radiation numbers and isotopes and all that from Collins when he gets back. Write an eyewitness account, just what you saw.

  Leave out the bit about the transporters and the missiles. And let me see the story before you call it in.

  Jack Yocke had just completed his shower. He was tired and looked long
ingly at the couch in the small apartment that Grafton and Tarkington shared. Now Grafton was ordering up journalism like a fried-to-order hamburger. Yet he barely paused before he said, "Yessir.

  I'll have the story for you in about an hour. When Collins gets back I can just insert a few paragraphs." "I'll be down in the office." Back in the office Holley was still looking for electromagnetic fields that shouldn't be there.

  "What did Herb Tenney do today?" Jake asked.

  "He left the embassy about eleven, sir, and returned in time for dinner." The admiral grunted and began to think about what he was going to say to Hayden Land. When Holley pronounced the office clean, Jake punched his code into the scrambler and placed his call. It took seven minutes before the Pentagon operator got them connected.