Parallax View

by Leverone, Allan

  Standing directly in front of—and far below—the nose of the huge aircraft was an officer, probably late-thirties, handsome in a grizzled, seen-it-all way. He had obviously been awaiting her arrival, and he smiled at her reaction to the B-52. “May I see your ID, ma’am?” he asked.

  Tracie handed it over, shaking her head in mute admiration of the aircraft.

  The officer said, “We get that a lot from people who have never been up close to a BUFF before. It’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?”

  “That’s an understatement,” Tracie answered.

  The officer handed Tracie’s ID back and said, “I’m Major Stan Wilczynski, and I’ll be Pilot in Command for today’s flight. I’ll introduce you to the rest of the crew shortly.”

  She returned the Major’s smile. “I’ll bite,” she said. “What’s ‘BUFF’?” Other than you, she wanted to add, wondering how long it had been since she had enjoyed any male companionship outside of official duty status and realizing she couldn’t remember. She kept her remark to herself, though, noting the Major’s wedding ring.

  He chuckled. “BUFF’s our nickname for the B-52. Stands for ‘Big Ugly Fat Fuckers.’ And they are all of that, but these babies have served with distinction for a quarter-century, with plenty more years to come. Some say the new B-1 will make the BUFF obsolete, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  Tracie nodded, noting the reverence in the pilot’s voice as he talked about the plane. “How long have you flown the B-52, Major?”

  “It’s Stan to my friends, Miss Tanner. And I’ve been involved with these Big Ugly Fuckers almost since my first day in the Air Force. Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent my whole life inside one of these beasts. Can’t imagine a better way to serve my country, to be honest.”

  Tracie grinned. The man’s enthusiasm was infectious, and went a long way toward breaking down her caution, a trait she came by naturally and one that had served her well over the course of her seven-year CIA career. But there was no need for it now; it was clear she was among friends.

  “Anyway,” Wilczynki continued, “I’ve bored you long enough. I just can’t help bragging when the subject is my baby.” He gestured affectionately toward the aircraft’s nose. “Whaddaya say we climb aboard and get ready to leave this continent behind?” The Major turned and indicated a metal ladder hanging from an open hatch in the bottom of the aircraft.

  “I’m not bored at all,” Tracie answered, starting up the ladder. “I love hearing a professional discuss his passion.”

  Major Wilczynski paused. “You know, I’ve never really thought about it in those terms before, but you’re right, I do have a passion for these old birds.” He started up the ladder behind Tracie and they disappeared into the B-52.

  11

  May 30, 1987

  10:50 p.m.

  Ramstein Air Base, West Germany

  A maze of equipment ran the otherwise mostly empty length of the aircraft’s interior, wires and cables seemingly placed in random locations, performing tasks Tracie could not imagine. The cockpit featured two seats placed side by side, each with a yoke where the steering wheel would be in a car. Avionics clogged the area below the windshield and the console between the two seats, gauges and dials and switches and levers that somehow allowed the flight crew to manage the almost mystical task of lifting the B-52 into the air and keeping it there.

  She gazed into the empty cockpit, marveling at the engineering prowess involved in the production of such a complex aircraft. Tracie felt as though she would rattle around inside the vast interior of the aircraft like an elderly widow inside an otherwise deserted mansion, regardless of how many other passengers were aboard. This BUFF made her feel tiny and insignificant.

  She turned left, away from the cockpit and toward the rear of the aircraft, and ran straight into Major Wilczynski. His body was solid and muscled; the body of a man who welcomed physical labor. She stumbled and he grabbed her arm, and she chuckled. “Sorry about that,” she said, not really sorry at all, again reminded how long it had been since she had spent any time with a man not involved in some way in the espionage game. Any personal time.

  “Not a problem,” Wilczynski answered. “I apologize for sneaking up on you. I just wanted to take a moment to introduce you to the rest of the team.” He nodded to a pair of airmen who had climbed up the ladder and now stood next to them. “This isn’t my normal flight crew—we’re mixing and matching personnel thanks to other commitments and the unscheduled nature of the trip. Not that we mind, of course. If there’s one thing an airman loves to do, it’s fly.

  “Anyway, our copilot for today’s mission is Major Tom Mitchell. Tom needs to get stateside as quickly as you do, due to a family emergency, but I can tell you he’s a solid aviator.”

  A pasty-faced officer, doughy and lumpy, stuck his hand out without a word and Tracie shook it. Mitchell’s skin felt hot and sweaty and he seemed preoccupied to Tracie, who in her work as a CIA field operative was accustomed to sizing up strangers immediately. Often the success of a mission—not to mention whether or not she would continue breathing—came down to her ability to effectively gauge who could be trusted and who could not.

  And this man set off alarm bells. Mitchell’s eyes shifted continually, like they were following an invisible ping pong ball bouncing back and forth across an invisible table. He barely met her eyes before sliding his gaze restlessly over her left shoulder. He shuffled his feet and rocked side to side like he would rather be anyplace else in the world but here.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Tracie said, attempting to prolong the handshake for a moment and failing, as he withdrew his moist grip from hers almost immediately.

  Major Mitchell said nothing. He smiled reluctantly, the gesture making him look more ill than welcoming, and then turned and walked away. He brushed past Tracie and Major Wilczynski and disappeared into the cockpit. Wilczynski watched Mitchell go, his eyebrows raised in mild surprise.

  He shook his head and turned his gaze back to Tracie. “And this young man,” he indicated an officer standing next to the spot Mitchell had just left, “is Captain Nathan Berenger. Nathan is a long-time member of my crew, having served as our navigator for almost five years. I can guarantee that with Nathan on the job, we won’t have to worry about getting lost on our way back to Andrews.”

  Captain Berenger offered his hand, as Mitchell had done before him. In contrast to the copilot, however, Tracie felt a welcoming vibe emanating from the navigator that was almost as strong as Wilczynski’s. She took his hand and a smile creased his tanned face. “Try to ignore Tom,” he said softly. “I don’t know what’s bugging him, but he’s been pretty preoccupied lately. Family troubles or something, I guess. But Major Wilczynski and I will take good care of you.” He raised his voice to a normal level. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, and if you need anything, you let me know.”

  Berenger’s grip felt as strong and competent and Mitchell’s had weak and indecisive. Tracie returned Berenger’s handshake—and his smile—enthusiastically. Something was off about Major Mitchell, that was for sure, but these two crew members struck her as competent to a T. Besides, she was standing in the middle of a U.S. air base, aboard an Air Force jet, surrounded by a professional military flight crew. What could possibly go wrong?

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Berenger said, “I’ve got to get busy doing all the real work so this guy,” he nodded at Major Wilczynski, “can play aviator and soak up all the glory on today’s flight.” He smiled at Tracie and clambered down a metal stairway to the navigator’s position below the cockpit.

  “Berenger’s the best,” Wilczynski told her. “On a typical combat mission we would feature at least two more crew members, a bombardier and an electronic warfare officer. Since this is a peacetime noncombat mission, it’s been determined that these positions can remain unfilled for today. The rest of my guys are enjoying a little R and R.”

  “I’m sorry to add to your workload and take you aw
ay from your own R and R,” Tracie said. “I certainly didn’t need this much transportation.” She opened her arms, indicating the gigantic interior of the B-52.

  Wilczynski laughed. “No apology is necessary, believe me. In fact, I should be thanking you. I need to maintain flight proficiency in this big beast, so instead of commanding a boring training mission next week, I get to fly across the pond and make a quick trip home. Besides,” he added conspiratorially, “like I said before, if there’s one thing we all love to do, it’s drink.” The comment took Tracie by surprise and she laughed. “But since we can’t be doing that, the next-best thing for us is flying. We love it, and believe me when I say this is not work for us.”

  He lowered his voice, as Captain Berenger had done. “Even for Major Sourpuss in there,” he said with a wink. “Now that the introductions are over,” he said, “feel free to check out the rest of the aircraft. Try not to get lost back there, though. I’ll let you know when it’s time to buckle in for departure.”

  12

  May 30, 1987

  10:30 p.m. EST

  Somewhere over the North Atlantic

  The B-52 floated across the sky nearly five miles above the vast, empty expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. The air was smooth, with only the occasional light bump of turbulence—like a city bus driving over a pothole—and the roar of the eight jet engines had been muted in level flight to a steady thrumming that was felt more than heard inside the cabin.

  At the controls, Tom Mitchell felt as though his stomach might launch its contents all over the instruments at any moment. The gentle rocking of a large aircraft in flight had never affected him in this way before. But then he had never been about to murder four people—including himself—before, either.

  He could barely think straight. He was a traitor, although no one would ever discover that devastating fact. Crashing the BUFF into the Atlantic after killing everyone aboard would eliminate any evidence of foul play, satisfying the Russians and sparing his family. There was no radar coverage hundreds of miles off the United States’ coast, so by the time air traffic controllers realized the B-52 was missing, most of the aircraft and debris would already be beneath the water’s surface, well on their way to the ocean floor.

  Add to that the fact that the area to be searched would be massive, thousands of square miles of uninterrupted watery desolation, and Tom Mitchell knew the odds of his treachery being discovered were astronomically long.

  So that was the plan. Crash the airplane into the ocean.

  The problem was that Tom was having a hard time executing the plan, not to mention everyone aboard the aircraft. It wasn’t that he was afraid of dying—not exactly. Anyone making a career out of military service eventually found a way to reconcile the possibility of sudden violent death. Not to do so was to risk a mental breakdown. Tom had long ago made peace with that concept.

  Murdering three innocent people, though, had never been part of those calculations. There was a world of difference between being blown out of the sky by an enemy missile during a bombing run and placing his service weapon inside his mouth and pulling the trigger after first shooting everyone else aboard an airplane. So he delayed the inevitable, stomach jumping and rolling while he desperately searched for another way out.

  Working with the KGB had been simple at first. A Godsend. He had raked in some serious cash—two grand a month was a lot of money for a United States Air Force officer—in return for passing along what often seemed like relatively harmless minutia: aircraft specs or division personnel rosters or armament information.

  Tom wasn’t stupid—he had known he was crossing a line from which he could never return when he relayed that first bit of intel to the Russians, but keeping a German mistress was damned expensive. Besides, serving in the USAF was boring as hell. Acting as a go-between—he refused to consider himself a spy, although late at night, unable to sleep, tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling, he had to acknowledge that was exactly what he was—brought a bit of excitement into his life.

  But that was before, when Soviet expectations were low. Last night’s phone call had hammered home with crystal clarity the horrible mistake he had made. He had been tempted to tell Boris Badanov with the thick Russian accent to go to hell, had done exactly that, in fact. The KGB could come and take him out if they wanted; he’d probably never see it coming, and death would at least be a way out of the corner he had painted himself into.

  But the implied threat to his family had changed everything. Tom hadn’t even realized the Russians knew he was married until last night. He knew now how foolishly blind he had been—of course the KGB would learn all they could about their new employee, of course they would keep that information close to the vest, pulling it out only when needed—but Roberta and Sarah were thousands of miles away, safe and anonymous in Herndon, Virginia, well out of range of the KGB.

  That was what he had thought. How wrong he had been. Kopalev knew way too much about his family, tossing the information out casually, like it was no big deal. Tom’s blood had frozen in his veins last night with Kopalev’s threat to snuff out the lives of his wife and child, and in the most agonizing way possible.

  He thought hard, his eyes alternating between the B-52’s instruments and the endless blaze of impossibly bright stars outside the wind screen. Maybe he could question the CIA agent currently dozing in the rear of the aircraft. No one besides his Soviet contact had confirmed that she was CIA, but then, no one had needed to. It was obvious. A civilian woman, appearing at Ramstein out of nowhere carrying Top Secret paperwork, with instructions from the highest levels of government for a priority lift across the pond?

  CIA.

  As a CIA spook, she might be able to use her connections to protect Tom’s family. But she certainly would ask the obvious question of why the family of an Air Force nobody was in need of protection from the KGB, a question he could not answer. He would be forced to kill her anyway.

  Tom shook his head and cursed under his breath. He knew Wilczynski was looking at him curiously. He didn’t care. He was fucked. He was well and truly fucked.

  As an Air Force pilot, Tom Mitchell was intimately familiar with the concept of parallax view, which stated that the angle at which objects are viewed will determine how they appear to the viewer. Parallax view was one reason why a good pilot learned early in his career to rely on his instruments when flying, even on a clear, bright, sunny day. Eyes could be fooled. Instruments could not.

  The concept of parallax view applied to other situations, too. Look at a scenario from one angle and it can appear completely different than when viewed from another. But Tom realized this situation was the exception. No parallax view in the world could change one simple fact: he was going to have to do as he had been ordered by the KGB, or sentence his own wife and child to death.

  And that he could not do.

  So the decision was easy, but executing that decision was not, and Tom knew he was running out of time. Soon the giant B-52 would be approaching land, flying over U.S. soil down the east coast to Andrews Air Force Base, and while he could still carry out the murders, crashing the jet onto U.S. soil would never satisfy the KGB. There would be no way to guarantee the item they wanted destroyed had actually been destroyed, and his family would remain at risk.

  He had to do it soon. The clock was ticking.

  13

  May 30, 1987

  11:15 p.m. EST

  Atlantic Ocean, 150 miles off the coast of Maine

  Tracie tried with little success to catch a few Zs in the minimally-upholstered seat. It was bolted to the side wall of the B-52, which had probably flown hundreds, if not thousands, of missions. The seat-back was rickety and the vinyl upholstery worn and cracked.

  The ride was free, though, and complaining would accomplish nothing, so Tracie stretched out as well as she could and dozed, unable to manage a deep sleep. Something was bothering her.

  The sense of unease she had felt upon meeting Major Tom M
itchell back at Ramstein Air Base had only intensified after departure. Several times during the first couple of hours of the flight, Mitchell had stepped back from the cockpit and observed her as she pretended to sleep, her eyes barely open under her thick eyelashes. In each instance, he had approached stealthily and stood off to the side in an attempt to remain unobserved.

  He was sizing her up; that much was obvious. The question was, why?

  After the first time, Tracie had debated opening her eyes and asking him directly what his problem was, but her instincts told her that would be a mistake, and Tracie had learned years ago not to question those instincts; they were the subconscious mind’s way of protecting its owner when the conscious mind could not quite wrap itself around a problem. Following a nagging feeling had saved her life on more than one occasion, and Tracie was no more likely to ignore her instincts than she was to jump out of this B-52 with no parachute.

  Mitchell hadn’t appeared at all over the last couple of hours, though, which meant either his curiosity had been satisfied, or he was flying this leg of the trip and couldn’t leave the flight deck. She guessed it was the latter—his ongoing nervousness and desperation were clear to her. The man was obviously operating under some serious stress.

  She opened her eyes a slit, observing her surroundings without revealing her wakefulness. All was quiet in the cargo area. Mitchell was nowhere to be seen.

  Tracie stretched and wondered how close the big aircraft was to the North American shoreline. She had flown from the U.S. to Europe and vice-versa plenty of times and had developed an innate sense of the trip’s timing. They had to be getting close. She was thinking about unbuckling her lap restraint and wandering up to the cockpit when a sharp popping noise erupted from the front of the aircraft. Then another. It sounded like exploding firecrackers.

  Except they weren’t firecrackers.