by T. E. Cruise
“Tell me about it,” Gold couldn’t resist wisecracking.
Don, blushing, ducked his head. “Okay, myself included, engineers can be temperamental. They’re—we’re—creative artists as well as scientists. In any case, I’ve endorsed Otto’s intention to run a very discreet counterespionage investigation, even if in this sort of work, discreet is synonymous with slow.”
Gold nodded. “I suppose that is best. The last thing we want to do is alienate more of our people by conducting a witch hunt in order to smoke out Icarus.”
“A mass exodus of engineering talent coming on top of the embarrassing leaks concerning the GC-600 would also shake investor confidence in GAT,” Don added. “And that would lead to a sharp dip in the price of our stock.”
“And leave management—namely us—open to a challenge,” Gold said darkly. “It’s no secret that industry opinion of our leadership of the company is on shaky ground as it is. It’s a fact that World-Bird and the GC-600 are the first projects GAT has initiated without Herman Gold.”
“Your father had a guiding hand in both the Stiletto fighter and the Skytrain Pont projects,” Don admitted. “That’s why the leaks are so punishing to us. Every new airplane project has it’s share of glitches and gremlins, but the industry is watching GAT extra closely these days to see if we can persevere in our attempt to move the company out of Herman Gold’s shadow. We got off to a mixed start with the Pont and managed to come out of it okay, but the sharks on Wall Street who remember the scent of our blood in the water are waiting and watching for our next misstep.”
“And for GAT to have a spy in its midst just now further compromises our image,” Gold said. “The industry has got to wonder what’s wrong within our house if one of our own is telling tales.” He paused. “And with all this going on, you still feel we should push to meet the external deadline of the Paris Air Show just eight months from now, as opposed to wheeling out our GC-600 prototype according to our own schedule?”
“I think we have no choice but to debut in Paris,” Don replied. “We must move quickly to squelch the rumors circulating about the 600 and the company. Consider World-Bird’s place in all this. World-Bird is costing us a mint. It will eventually prove to be a gold mine for us, but not for years, and World-Bird won’t survive if GAT is not perceived as being on top of things.”
“I agree with that,” Gold said. “It’s precisely why I’m questioning the wisdom of your announcement at this point in time. How will it look if June rolls around and the GC-600 is not ready?”
“It must be ready!” Don said forcefully. “It will be ready!”
“It’s a gamble,” Gold pointed out. “And I’ve never known Don Harrison to be a gambling man.”
Don smiled. “Sometimes you have to go with a roll of the dice. In this case, I feel that circumstances warrant it. For one thing, the Paris Air Show gives our engineers a finite deadline to shoot for; it will serve as a rallying point; it will represent the light at the end of the tunnel for them concerning the GC-600.”
“I hear you,” Gold said, aware that many of the company’s engineers were suffering the knowledge that a turncoat among them was questioning their abilities in public.
“For another thing,” Don continued, “the announcement I made in today’s issue of Aviation Weekly shows the industry that despite the leaks, GAT’s management has confidence in the company’s ability to produce the jetliner. I guarantee you that GAT’s stock price will rise on the back of this announcement.”
“I hope you’re right,” Gold sighed.
“I hope so too,” Don said. “Anyway, we had to do something to combat the leaks. Otherwise, the GC-600 will be the first airplane to be branded a lemon before the initial prototype is even built.”
“Well it was a balls-out move,” Gold admitted. “I don’t fault you for making it.” He chuckled. “In a way, I’m proud of you. But next time, run it past me before you run up the colors, okay?”
“Yeah, I promise,” Don said softly. “Christ, I hope everything turns out okay.”
“Me too,” Gold said. “Because come June if the GC-600 prototype isn’t ready for the Paris Air Show, we are going to look worse than ever.”
(Three)
In the sky above the California desert, east of Los
Angeles
17 October, 1977
“We should be there in a few minutes, Mr. Layten,” the pilot said.
“Yes, thanks,” Turner Layten nodded, thinking that the annoying whup! whup! of the Bell Jetranger’s rotors was only slightly muffled by the radio headset he wore in order to communicate with the chopper’s pilot.
Layten studied the arid desert terrain through the helicopter’s bubble canopy. The landscape baking under the blazing sun resembled nearby Death Valley. Everything was burnt brown, or the rusty color of a scabbed-over wound, or purple, like an old bruise. Here and there the ground was furred over with pale-green scrub and studded with leathery green cactus, but mostly everything was as dead-looking and dry as a bone left out to bleach in the sun.
“There’s Chopper One!” said the pilot through the cockpit intercom.
Layten looked to where the pilot was pointing and saw the big, twin-rotor helicopter, which was painted green and yellow, just like this much smaller Jetranger. Amalgamated-Landis kept a fleet of several helicopters and private planes for executive use at the El Segundo facility, but the twin rotor bird named Chopper One was reserved exclusively for Tim Campbell. Chopper One had the interior room of a full-size trailer and had everything inside it: a fully equipped office, a media/communications center, a sleeping area/lounge, even kitchen facilities. Just now. Chopper One looked like some monstrous insect drying its wings in the sun. A tent or awning of some sort had gone up alongside the copter, and several jeeps, trucks, and other off-road vehicles were parked nearby.
“I’m setting her down, Mr. Layten.”
“Yes, that’s fine.” Layten instinctively looked himself over, as he did whenever he was about to meet his superior. He was wearing tan chinos and a matching, short-sleeved safari jacket, an Aussie-style bush hat with one side of the brim pinned up, and wire-rimmed aviator sunglasses. His trouser bottoms were tucked into thick leather boots that covered his legs up to his knees.
Snakebite-proof boots, Layten thought, shuddering, and reached beneath the bush jacket to adjust the reassuring heft of the snub-nosed .38 riding on his hip. He’d been practicing with his gun—unloaded, of course—by drawing on himself in his bedroom mirror. Nobody, especially not Steve Gold, was going to take his gun away from him again.
The Jetranger set down about fifty yards from the bigger chopper. “You wait,” Layten told the pilot. “I won’t be long.” He unbuckled his seat belt, pushed open the door, and hopped out.
The desert heat hit him like a sledgehammer after the air-conditioned cockpit. Hell of a place to conduct a business meeting, he thought as he bent low, holding on to to his hat, wincing against the storm of sand and grit churned up by the Jetranger’s slowing rotor wash.
He hurried toward Tim Campbell’s chopper, where deck chairs and a luncheon table had been laid out beneath the tent awning. Standing by the table was the serving staff, wearing crisp-looking white coats, and a tanned young woman in a black bikini and high-heeled sandals. She walked beneath the awning to one of the deck chairs, where she began oiling herself with suntan lotion.
The woman had her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was beautiful, and as Layten got closer he tried not to stare at her, but it was hard. Her black thong bikini bottom only delineated and emphasized the heartstoppingly perfect curves of her flawless ass, while her bikini top barely covered her luscious breasts. Layten could see the suntan lotion sheening her cleavage. How slippery it would be to the touch…
She must have seen him approaching. She smiled at him, then lanquidly stretched her arms above her head. Her breasts rose, and her wonderful nipples so clearly outlined beneath the thin black fabric seemed to beckon
to Layten.
Oh, God, Layten thought. Oh, God. His hard-on was raging. He had an instant, elaborate fantasy in which he regaled the blonde with stories concerning his mysterious past as a CIA operative, seducing her into making love right here in the desert. Hidden from prying eyes by the sand dunes, they would become naked, carnal animals basking like lizards in the sun as they rolled in each other’s sweating, passionate embrace….
Layten averted his gaze. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the blonde shrug, then turn away, to settle into a deck chair. Layten was hugely relieved, excepting his still throbbing erection. You couldn’t be too careful; Tim Campbell could be highly possessive of his toys.
Layten gave the woman reclining beneath the awning a wide berth as he approached one of the chopper’s crew members. The man, wearing a tan uniform with a green and yellow stripe down the sides of his trousers, and matching epaulettes on his shoulders, was standing beside the humming portable generators hooked up to supply power to the chopper’s air-conditioning and refrigeration units.
“Hi, there, Mr. Layten,” the crew member said, touching the visor of his baseball cap as Layten approached. “You looking for Mr. Campbell? The boss is still out hunting. You just follow that trail that starts over yonder.”
Layten glanced distastefully at the winding trail that disappeared into the desert wilderness. “Maybe you’d better take me,” he told the crewman.
“No can do, Mr. Layten. The boss told me to stay here and keep an eye on these generators. He’s got some kind of fancy caviar to go with his champagne for lunch. Wants it icy cold, he said.”
“Damn.”
“Don’t you worry, Mr. Layten,” the crew member assured him. “You just follow the trail and listen for the shots. You can’t miss him.” He paused. “Just keep to the center of the trail. The boss and his boys have really stirred up the wildlife hereabouts.”
“Wonderful.” Layten walked away muttering curses to himself, desperately not wanting to leave behind the relative comfort of the Chopper One campsite as he picked his way around the rocks and clumps of scrub. The sun was beating down on him. His safari jacket was already soaked through with sweat. And he hadn’t even reached the damn trail.
Gnats, or wasps, or some such nasty things were buzzing and whining in his ears. He hunched his shoulders and turned up his collar as he stalked along, trying to breathe in the blast-furnace heat as he started down the trail, which rose as it twisted its way into the hills. His heart was pounding like a jackhammer as he reached a switchback turnoff and kept going, steadfastly staring down at his boots, doing his best to ignore the rustlings and skittering movements in the rust-colored rocks and low, thorny bramble. He tried not to think about hairy, jumping tarantulas and glistening darting scorpions; but most of all, God help him, he tried not to think about snakes.
He huffed and puffed his way to the top of a low rise and saw Tim Campbell down at the bottom, standing in the center of a small clearing ringed with boulders. When you’re rich they call you eccentric. Layten thought, studying Campbell. And when you’re poor, they just call you crazy.
Well, in Tim Campbell’s case, they’d call him very eccentric indeed. Campbell looked like an old desert rat, or maybe Howard Hughes or somebody like that, Layten thought as he took in his employer’s leathery, tanned skin and Campbell’s absurd dress. Campbell was wearing a white tee shirt, cut-off denim shorts, fingerless leather gloves, and a pair of the same kind of knee-high anti-snake bite boots that Layten had on. Campbell was also wearing a bright-pink baseball cap on his head, gold-rimmed, green-lensed, aviator sunglasses over his eyes, a red bandanna tied loosely around his neck, and a brace of elaborately tooled, light-tan leather cow-boy holsters strapped around his waist. In each holster was a pearl-handled revolver.
Layten, remembering to stick to the middle of the trail, hurried down the sandy slope to where Campbell was standing with his hands resting lightly on the butts of his guns. About fifty feet beyond Campbell, some tough-looking men dressed in denim and protective leather were beating the brush. The men were looking for something; they hurriedly prodded into holes and beneath rocks with long, hooked sticks.
“Get a move on, you assholes!” Campbell yelled at the men. “Find me something, or else it’ll be your asses I’ll shoot!”
“Sir,” Layten called out, coming up behind Campbell.
“Yeah, what?” Campbell gruffly began, turning. “Oh, it’s you, Turner.” He sounded more bored than surprised. “What brings you out here, son?”
“Mr. Campbell!” shouted one of the men out beating the brush. The guy sounded excited and a little scared. “I got you a big one here!”
“I’ll be the judge of that, son!” Campbell growled. “Come on, then! Throw it over, and we’ll see.”
Layten watched as the man raised his hooked stick with something coiled around it and then hurled that something twisting and turning through the air toward the clearing. It hit the dirt about twenty feet from where Layten and Campbell were standing, and then coiled, ready to strike as it emitted a dry, rasping, rattling that sounded incredibly loud in the still desert.
“Oh, yeah, that’s a big’un, all right,” Campbell murmured.
Layten couldn’t reply. He felt like throwing up, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the rattlesnake. He’d always been afraid of snakes. Always. This one was at least five feet long and as thick around as a man’s wrist. Its skin was a diamond variegation of brown the color of dead grass, and yellow the color of urine. As Layten stared at the snake it began to elegantly, silently slither toward him. Its flat, black eyes the color of onyx seemed to fix on Layten, making him weak in the knees. He began to shiver uncontrollably as the rattlesnake’s tongue flicked out to taste the air
Campbell drew his nickel-plated, elaborately engraved guns. They were custom-decorated, .22-caliber, six-inch-barrel Colt Peacemakers.
“Ain’t that snake a beauty,” Campbell breathed in admiration as he thumbed back the hammers on his single-action weapons and tired two shots at the rattler, which was now less than ten feet away.
The .22-caliber six-guns’ reports sounded more like the snapping of twigs than, say, the loud crack of the .38 Smith & Wesson Layten wore. One of Campbell’s shots missed, kicking up a spout of dirt, but the other hit the rattler square in the head, blowing its skull to bloody bits.
Layten sagged in relief as the decapitated reptile writhed in death, its tail rhythmically beating the blood-soaked sand.
“Yeah.” Campbell nodded, sounding satisfied as he holstered his guns. “These .22 Magnums do the job. Find me another, boys!” he shouted to his beaters, who’d been watching the show. He then glanced at Layten. “That makes twenty I shot this afternoon,” he confided.
“Yes, sir.”
“Last time I was here, some environmentalist types got wind of what I was doing and complained ‘bout how I was fucking with the ecology or some such cowpie by shooting up all these rattlers.” Campbell shrugged. “So I paid off some of the local pols, and I ain’t heard a peep from nobody about it since.” He winked. “Take it from me. son. With enough money, you can kill anything.”
Layten reached inside his safari jacket for the copy of Aviation Weekly. He turned to the page with the GAT announcement concerning the GC-600’s debut at the Paris Air Show, and handed it to Campbell.
“This is just out today, Tim. As soon as the copy reached my office, I figured I’d better get out here to apprise you of the situation.”
Campbell nodded. “Hold off on them snakes!” he yelled to his men as he quickly scanned the page. “Well, well, well…”He handed back the magazine to Layten. “Turner, you’ve done real well. I have to admit I didn’t think you could do it when you suggested placing a spy inside GAT.”
“I didn’t place a spy, Tim,” Layten respectfully corrected. “I turned one of their own people by bribing him to do our bidding.”
“Cost us a pretty penny, too,” Campbell said mildly.
“I
’m sorry about that,” Layten apologized. “But our expenditures concerning Icarus are about to end.”
“How’s that?”
Layten savored the moment: It happened so rarely that he was in a position to explain things to Tim Campbell. “Now that Icarus has been working for us long enough to establish a record of duplicity against GAT, we no longer have to pay him, but merely threaten to leak his identity, effectively destroying his career and his life, if he doesn’t continue to cooperate.”
“That’s very good. Turner,” Campbell complimented him. “But, in retrospect, I’m not surprised that an old ex-CIA spook like you could so easily switch over to industrial espionage.”
Layten smiled thinly, clenching his teeth. “Spook” was what Steven Gold had always called him.
“Yep, you just keep running your little spy or informer or whatever,” Campbell murmured. “And keep me posted.”
“Tim, I still don’t understand the point of this,” Layten said. “I mean, where is it going?”
“Well, now. Turner,” Campbell mused. “I don’t rightly know. It’s like when you throw a rock into the center of a still pond and the ripples start spreading. For now, it’s enough that we’ve railroaded GAT into making that announcement. Once again, we’re acting and they’re reacting. GAT is on the defensive while we’re on the offensive.” He thumbed back his cap to wipe his brow with the bandanna around his neck. “There’s times I think GAT has more lives than a cat, but that’s all right with me. Turner, because I have patience. I’ll just keep forcing GAT to use up its lives, and eventually they’ll be down to scratch.”
“Yes, Tim, it’s just that…” Layten trailed off hesitantly.
“Speak up. Turner,” Campbell ordered. “Say what’s on your mind.”
“Well, sir,” Layten worried, “it’s just that this is the first time since we’ve worked together going after GAT that we” ve actually crossed the line.”
“What line?”
“Tim, we’re breaking the law.”
“Fuck the law!” Campbell said sharply, but he must have seen Layten flinch, because he immediately softened his tone. “Turner, you listen to me. Take them rattlers out there. Them snakes are fierce, implacable, cold as ice, and yet you give an old man like me the right assets—anti-snake bite boots and a gun—and that rattler is going to lose every time.”
