Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 10 - Midnight Come Again

by Midnight Come Again(lit)

  Kamyanka got to his feet shakily, looked down at Jim, prone on the floor between four other men. He said something uncomplimentary in Russian and kicked Jim in the ribs, hard.

  "He's a pilot!" Kate shouted. "Shut up, Mutt!" she yelled over her shoulder.

  The pistol, shaking slightly, raising slowly until it was trained on Jim's head.

  "He's npilotl" Kate shouted again, and cursed the scar that made her voice so rough and so low.

  Kamyanka looked up at her, the pistol held where it was. "What?"

  She nodded at Jim. "He is a pilot. Yours is dead."

  Kamyanka swiveled to look. The rest of Ziven's head was leaning out of the window of the Here.

  "You need him to fly you out of here," Kate said. "You need him."

  "That's right," Jim said, picking up on her cue. "I'll fly you out of here. Let's get on board and go."

  Mutt, snarling, snapping, whining, sidled toward them in her best wolf imitation. "No, Mutt!" Kate said desperately.

  Kamyanka looked from her, to the enraged dog, to the prone man. For a moment nothing was heard but the sound of the Here's engines, vah-wah-wah, a bu/zing bass voice that at this proximity jarred the marrow in their bones.

  The pistol moved, one quick gesture. Kamyanka said something and Jim was jerked to his feet. His eyes met Kate's for a brief moment before he was jerked toward the plane. Behind them two men were freeing the dead pilot from his seat belt and pulling him out of the left seat.

  Kamyanka strolled forward and used the muzzle of the pistol to raise Kate's chin. "And what do we do with you, hmmm?"

  Mutt snarled.

  Kamyanka looked at her.

  "She won't go for you unless I tell her to."

  "She won't go for anyone if I shoot her."

  "Leave me," Kate said. "You don't need the excess baggage."

  "A good point," Kamyanka admitted. "Where's Yuri?"

  "Isn't he with you?" she said, but there was a flicker at the back of her eyes and, quick as a snake, he caught it.

  "Let's take her with us," Glukhov said, licking his lips. "We can toss her out once we're in the air. That way, no witnesses."

  Kamyanka considered. "A good thought, my general. Alaska is a very big place. They will never find her body. Quick, clean, no mess." He smiled, but it was not the type of smile to encourage an answering smile from anyone else, and added lightly, "We will do Yuri's job for him."

  They hustled her into the plane, and as the ramp came up Kate saw Mutt shake off her invisible leash and bound forward. She raced next to them as they taxied, jumping and snapping at the fuselage, all the way down the apron, onto the taxiway, and all the way down the runway. They could hear her howling her rage even over the roar of all four engines.

  Carroll was in equally full cry in Zarr's office. "Come on, let's get a move on, we need a boat! They're probably meeting someone at the mouth of the river--a bigger boat, or an amphibious plane! We don't have any time to mess around, let's hop to it!"

  Zarr was on her desk phone, Casanare was on his cell, the chief of police was removing the live round from the chamber of his shotgun and Carroll was so loud that when the knock at the door came they almost missed it. When the knock came the second time, Casanare opened it and discovered a small girl standing there, one arm clutching a large red model airplane and the other clasping a videotape. "Hi," Casanare said.

  "Can I help you?"

  Carroll, catching sight of the girl over Casanare's shoulder, said, "We don't have time for this, All"

  The little girl, maybe ten, maybe younger, looked as determined as she did frightened and did not budge from the doorstep.

  "I've got to go," Zarr said into the phone. She got to her feet and said, "This is the little Chevak girl. Stephanie, isn't it? Honey, we're kind of busy right now--" She caught herself when she realized that one of the things she could be busy on was finding out who killed Stephanie's mother. "I'm sorry, Stephanie. What can I do for you?" She came forward and crouched down.

  Stephanie held out the videotape. "I made this."

  Zarr took it. "I--thank you, Stephanie."

  The girl whispered something at the floor.

  "What?"

  The girl made what seemed like a tremendous effort. She even raised her eyes, meeting Zarr's bravely. "You have to watch it."

  "Oh for Christ's sake," Casanare said, disgusted. "We really don't have time for this, Zarr."

  Zarr examined the tape. It was unlabeled, and was run about halfway through. Depending on the tape speed, that could mean anywhere from one to three hours. "Stephanie," Zarr said, "I promise you, we're going to find the person who hurt your mom, but we've got something really important to do first, and--"

  Stephanie took the tape away from Zarr and walked around her, heading for the cart that stood in one corner with a television and a VCR on it.

  "Great," Carroll said, throwing up her hands, "let's all settle in for an episode of Mr. Rogers'Neighborhood."

  Zarr followed and removed the tape from Stephanie's hand. "Look, honey, I--" Stephanie said something in a small voice.

  "What?"

  "What did she say?" Casanare said quickly.

  Even Carroll paused to listen.

  "The big man," Stephanie said, more strongly. "And my mom's friend." She pointed at the tape. "They're on it."

  "Oh goody," Carroll said, "not Mr. Rogers, Mr. Robinson."

  Awkwardly, as she hadn't put down the model airplane, Stephanie jumped up to grab the tape from Zarr's hand. "This happened this morning," she said strongly. "You have to watch."

  She put the tape in the VCR and switched on the television, and such was her dogged determination, no one tried to stop her.

  Jim sat in the left seat, the blood from its last occupant seeping through his jeans.

  He was petrified with fear. Most comfortable on the stick of his Bell Jet Ranger, the largest fixed-wing aircraft he'd ever flown was a Cessna

  180, a bird with a wingspan of thirty-five feet and a payload of twelve hundred pounds. The Lockheed C-130 aircraft had a wingspan of one hundred thirty-two feet and laughed at loads of twenty tons. The Cessna had one engine with a standard two hundred thirty horsepower; the Here had four, Allison turboprops at four thousand horsepower each.

  You could fit six people into a 180, with one ditty bag per person in the tiny cargo area behind the third row of seats, or you could take out the seats and transport six bodies, as Jim had had occasion to discover in the course of his professional life.

  You could fit sixty-four fully equipped paratroopers into a Here, shoulder-held rocket launchers, backpack bombs and all.

  He felt like he was riding a dragon, a large, loud dragon with attitude and no tolerance for harness or bit.

  There were too many dials and gauges and they were all in the wrong places, and he didn't know what any of the switches or knobs did. He'd only found the flaps by trial and error. The throttles, thank god, were clearly marked. Also there were four of them, which kind of made them stand out. His takeoff had left him with no confidence that he was going to be able to set the plane down in one piece; he was still in shock that he'd managed to get them up into the air in the first place, and he'd fumbled around enough that he'd needed all the runway there was in Bering to generate enough speed for lift. A pilot watching from the ground would have wondered how any owner in their right mind would have allowed him up the ramp.

  In the air, he felt marginally safer, with control of the ailerons by the yoke in his hands and of the rudder by the pedals beneath his feet.

  He grabbed for altitude, as much as he could get as fast as he could get it, and tried to remember every lie he'd ever heard about a Here in bull sessions around the bar.

  One thing he knew for sure: The Cessna flew with one pilot. The Here had seats for a crew of five. Baird had adapted this Here for a single pilot on short hops, but Ma ciarello had flown Hercs in the service. This flight, Jim was it, which did not contribute to his peace of mind.
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  It didn't help that he had a very intense Russian sitting in the right seat with a gun aimed at him, "Could you put that thing down?" he said, as politely as he could under the circumstances. "It's not exactly helping my powers of concentration."

  "Shut up, fucking American cop," the man said. He'd already said it twice in response to Jim's other attempts at conversation. It seemed to be the only English he knew.

  They climbed through five thousand feet and Jim still had no idea where they were going. After concentrated effort he located the airspeed indicator. Jesus god. Three hundred and sixty miles per hour. A ISO's top speed was a hundred and forty. If they stayed on their present course, they'd be in Anchorage in an hour. If no one in Bering alerted the authorities at the other end, they could land without occasioning remark at Merrill or International. Unless they had the tower controller in the bag, he didn't think they could land at Elmendorf Air Force Base, but at this point he wasn't ruling anything out.

  What had that Here pilot said at Bernie's that night? That a Here with a full load could make Seattle from Anchorage without stopping to refuel, and that one could make it to Las Vegas if it didn't have a pay load? It was twenty-three hundred miles from Anchorage to Seattle and, what, four, maybe five thousand Anchorage to Las Vegas. If that was true, they could be going anywhere. No one had come forward to make him alter course for Russia, the one bright spot in this morning so far.

  He tried to think ahead, but there were so many airstrips along the way.

  They were all gravel strips, but then the Here was designed to land on rough strips, the rougher the better, combat zones being best of all. He had no idea of the minimum amount of runway a Here needed to land, or how much weight they had on board even if he did know how to make some kind of guess. He estimated maybe twenty, twenty-five men in back from the quick glimpse he'd had as they hustled him forward. Overestimate, say they weighed two hundred each, that was still only five thousand pounds. A Here could fly forever with all four tanks full of fuel and a piddly little five-thousand- pound payload. Planet Earth was only twenty-five thousand miles around. They could be going to Greenland. No, too cold, Russians wouldn't want to go to Greenland. They could be going to Mexico--sun, sand, girls, what could be better? Hell, maybe he'd ride along.

  The plane shifted in flight, an odd motion not anything like turbulence or dropping the flaps or hitting an aileron or a rudder. "What the hell?"

  "Shut up, fucking American cop," the Russian in the left seat said.

  He looked down at the panel for inspiration, heart thudding in his throat. A light blinked up at him. A door was open, or opening. Not the ramp, but a door, a door in the back. He looked over his shoulder, but the flight station was separate from the cargo bay. He couldn't see what was going on back there.

  The general's words came back to him. We can toss her out once we're in the air.

  The portside hatch was open, air screaming past. Glukhov had Kate by one arm, her erstwhile drinking buddy Danya had her by the other, and they were slowly forcing her, one step at a time, toward the opening. They were in no hurry. Glukhov was laughing, and none of the other men volunteered to come to her aid. She never had been that much fun at a party.

  She fought. She used her fingernails, her teeth, her feet, kicking, struggling, fighting with every part and fiber of her being.

  She wasn't fighting because of the betrayal of her erstwhile party mates. She wasn't fighting to contradict the expression in Kamyanka's eyes, the one that said she, Kate Shugak, had ceased to exist. She wasn't even fighting because of Glukhov's laughter.

  She was fighting because she wanted to live.

  She wanted to go home. She wanted to swim in the little pool in the creek out back of her cabin. She wanted to read late into the night by the mellow light of a kerosene lamp. She wanted to sit at the bar of the Roadhouse and watch the belly dancers shimmy out of the back room. She wanted to go to Bobby and Dinah's and see how much her namesake had grown. She wanted to sit once more at the feet of the Quilaks, on the banks of the Kanuyaq, on the swells of Prince William Sound.

  She wanted to live. She fought for it, with every ounce of strength she had.

  It was not enough. She was losing the battle, but she would not give up, she would not surrender. She made them work for it.

  Work they did. Slowly, inexorably, they forced her to the hatch. She kicked up her feet and planted the soles on either side of the hatch.

  Glukhov, still laughing, reached for her knee.

  Jim's first thought was to jump the guy with the gun. In a Cessna 180 he might have gotten away with it, but in a Here the cockpit was too wide, it would take too much time to launch himself the necessary distance, the guy would get off at least one shot, maybe two.

  The Russian sitting sideways in the seat next to him had not wavered, the pistol still pointed straight at his chest.

  Wait. Sitting sideways. Not wearing his seat belt.

  No one in back was, either, as he recalled from the quick hustle on board. And why bother, this wasn't exactly your FAA approved flight. He was wearing his seat belt. Like any good pilot, strapping it on was the first thing he'd done when he sat down in the left seat.

  A steep dive? A power climb? A snap roll? Yeah, put everybody in back on the goddamn ceiling, that sounded like a plan.

  But he didn't know enough about the Here's tolerances. A snap roll at this velocity with this kind of surface area and he'd probably rip the wings off the aircraft.

  Something else then.

  Suddenly, he knew what else, and with the knowledge came calm. His heart rate slowed, his breath came back. A flat spin. Centripetal force would slam everyone up against the opposite wall. Always assuming he could bring the plane out of the spin again. He had no idea how a multiengine plane would handle a flat spin. Come to that, he had no idea how a single-engine airplane would handle a flat spin, it wasn't a maneuver he practiced on a regular basis. Or ever.

  He felt for the pedals. Better pick the correct rudder to push. Don't want to hurl Kate headfirst out of the open hatch.

  The indicator said the open door was on the left side of the plane. The altimeter said they were at nine thousand feet. He had no way to know how much altitude he would lose during the maneuver but he didn't have a choice. Nine thousand feet would have to do. He stretched out his legs, testing the temper of the rudders. He eased the throttles back a little.

  Nobody said anything; why should they, they weren't pilots. He eased them back a little more.

  He grabbed the yoke tightly in both hands. "I'm sorry, baby," he said to the plane, and kicked the right rudder as hard as he could.

  Air going three hundred ninety miles an hour struck the right surface of the rudder. The Here's nose jerked around to the right, its tail around to the left and centripetal force slammed the man with the gun hard against the right seat's window. His head connected with the glass with a nice, solid smack, and better yet, he dropped the gun.

  There were yells and screams and thuds from the back as everyone piled up against the right bulkhead, one after the other. The Here lost forward motion, lost lift, spun clockwise, tail going around like the big hand, nose going around like the little hand, the engines screaming a protest almost as loud as the wind. They were losing altitude fast, too fast, falling from the sky like a big black brick. His body strained at the belt that was all that was holding him in his seat. His spine felt like it was going to shake into separate vertebrae. The vibration was worse than what you got at the epicenter of a seven-point earthquake, and he had cause to compare. The engines protested. Loudly, vociferously, angrily.

  He tried not to watch the altimeter, and with grim determination kept the Here in its flat spin until all thumping and screaming and yelling from the cargo bay ceased.

  He began pushing the left rudder then, as he eased off on power to the portside engines and increased power to the starboard engines, praying that all the cables would hold, praying the electronics wouldn't fail, pra
ying the hydraulics would continue to function, praying the rudder wouldn't tear off, praying most fervently that they wouldn't run out of altitude. The muscles in his arms and in the leg holding left rudder quivered with the strain. The spin seemed to have taken on a life of its own, the Here helpless in its grasp.

  Come on, baby, he thought. "Come on, baby," he said. "Come on, girl, you can do it, you know you can, come on!"

  She responded as only a craft that was as well maintained and as well-loved as any of the airplanes owned and operated by Jacob Baird could. She came out of it. Slowly, shuddering a protest, she came out of it. The prop began to bite into the air, to pull the craft forward, the wings slowly ceased to be dead weight and began again to manufacture lift.

  The tail began slowly to swing left and Jim hastily straightened out the rudder. With a last groaning protest, she leveled out. Once again they were flying straight and forward and, by a miracle, on a course only slightly off for back to Bering.