Track of the Scorpion

by R. R. Irvine

  Bullshit. He would do it again if he had to, pick up the phone, say a few words, and order men dead. No big deal, not considering the stakes. Besides, there’d been a war on.

  He sighed deeply. It was so easy when you were young.

  Leaving his desk, Hatch plucked a volume of Freud from one of the shelves of his vast library and ran his fingers over the leather binding. Men crave wealth, Freud wrote somewhere. Wealth, power, fame, and the love of beautiful women.

  He held the book at arm’s length, talking to it as if addressing Freud personally. “Well, by God, I’ve had them, you old bastard. To get them, I did what had to be done. Conscience be damned. You said it yourself. Conscience, morality, whatever you call it, was something dreamed up by priests to keep their flock in line. Scare them with God and conscience and they toe the line, you said. There is no God, no right or wrong. No hell, no punishment. But what about the dreams, Sigmund? They got your attention, didn’t they?”

  Hatch crossed the room to the two-hundred-year-old gold-leafed Florentine mirror that was a memento of his second wife’s Italian period. He winked at himself. Blemishes in the glass muted his age spots and wrinkles, and made it easier for him to recognize the man he’d once been.

  He held Freud up to the mirror. You and your dreams. Give me the light of day, by God. Keep me from those old sins that cast long shadows in the night.

  With a snort, he tossed the book onto a Louis XIV sofa that had come from his wife’s French period. You didn’t get it completely right, Sigmund. Men crave more than you thought. We crave immortality.

  God, to be young again. No thought of dying. No thought of God except maybe a little lip service on Sundays. That was the cost of doing business. Belief, subservience, that was for fools. But wouldn’t it be nice if there was an afterlife, if you could take your fame, power, wealth, and women with you?

  The knock on the door was his wife’s. He could tell by the time, 11:45 P.M.

  He used the remote control to disengage the lock. With the light behind her, Adela could have been mistaken for a young Elizabeth Taylor. Her black nightgown, one of his gifts, left nothing to the imagination. Which was just the way he liked it. The same went for her street clothes. He loved taking her out, seeing other men drool over her, yet afraid to make a move because of who he was. Not a man to be messed with.

  She kissed him, mouth open the way he liked it. “Time to come to bed, Leland.”

  For an instant he hesitated. The Scorpion weighed on his mind. Yet it was late, not the best time to mobilize men into action. And maybe, with luck, it wouldn’t come to that.

  Seeing the look in his wife’s eyes, he allowed himself to be led. Money was one hell of an aphrodisiac. Add power, real power, and women lined up to get a piece of it the best way they could. Adela, of course, wanted a child, someone to inherit. But Hatch had one son already, Leland Jr. The crown prince, people called him.

  One prince was quite enough. Add a second and God only knew what might happen, probably civil war when the time came to divide the kingdom.

  Tonight, however, no matter what Adela’s desires, she’d have to be content with a pat on the ass. He needed sleep; he needed a clear head, because tomorrow decisions would have to be made.

  But once under the covers, even with the electric blanket providing a cocoon of warmth, sleep was a long time coming. Memories kept intruding. The past, though growing ever more distant, cast longer and longer shadows. To escape them, he forced his mind to business, the contracts coming up with the Israelis, CMI’s nuclear power subsidiary that was under attack from environmentalists, the nasty job he had in mind for General Walters. He lingered over the problem of selling a cost overrun to the air force. The profits would be funneled into the president’s reelection campaign. CMI would own more than ex-generals.

  The shadows caught up with him at the moment of sleep. Their touch carried grainy black-and-white images, gun-camera film, flickering and shaking as the tracers reached out, missing the B-17at first, but gradually adjusting until they were on target, striking the wing, then the fuselage.

  The angle changed, another gun camera. At each tracer’s touch, aluminum debris erupted from the bomber. Smoke streamed from one of the engines; its prop slowed, then stopped.

  Hatch felt himself diving at the bomber head-on. His finger pressed the cannon button on the control yoke. The Plexiglas nose shattered.

  He changed planes, attacking from above. His bullet streams moved along the fuselage until they reached the upper turret, exploding it. A starboard engine flamed. The B-17 nosed down, shuddering with each new cannon strike. A figure dropped away, body and parachute smoking.

  Hatch jerked up in bed, sweat-soaked, heart pounding, gasping for air. That dream would kill him one day. Christ, maybe he was having a heart attack right now.

  Adela sat up, too, switched on her bedside lamp, and touched him gently. “What’s wrong?”

  “A dream, one I thought I’d gotten over. It’s not important.”

  “My analyst says dreams don’t keep coming back if they’re not important.”

  Hatch slowed his breathing and forced himself to sound lighthearted. “For the money I pay him, I hope he has more to say than that.”

  She snuggled against him. “He says a wife has to understand her husband’s needs and keep him satisfied.”

  She went to work, doing her best to arouse him, but without success.

  “I think I’ll get up for a while,” he said finally.

  He rose and slipped on his robe. “You go back to sleep, Delia. I’ll be fine.”

  Just before she turned out her light, an odd look crossed Adela’s face. Disappointment, no doubt. Well, that was the trouble with marrying a younger woman. They wanted more from a man than he could supply.

  At times like this, he longed to call his first wife. With her, at least, he could talk over shared memories, old radio shows and the like, things Adela had never heard of. Only he couldn’t make the call; he couldn’t bring himself to expose such weakness.

  But what about his son, Lee? An executive vice president of CMI ought to expect an occasional midnight call. But what would Hatch say? Hi, son. Sorry to wake you, but I just wanted to get a few murders off my chest.

  Hatch snorted. Lee would have to know the truth one day, but this wasn’t the time.

  In the library, Hatch switched on his movie-size television set and scanned the shelf containing videotaped movies too new to have been released to the general public. Surely he could find something to distract him. When nothing new caught his eye, he selected one of his old favorites, The Maltese Falcon. Adela hated it. She said Humphrey Bogart didn’t have sex appeal, not like Tom Selleck or Bruce Willis. Maybe he’d talk it over with Lee the next time he got the chance.

  Nodding, Hatch fed the tape into the VCR, punched a button, and there was Sam Spade telling Effie to send in Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Hatch settled onto the sofa and marveled at the ease of today’s technology, much of it thanks to his own company. Not like the old days. Back then it had been sheer hell threading a film projector, especially if your hands were shaking.

  There it was again, the past creeping in. To avoid unnecessary witnesses, Hatch had threaded the gun-camera results personally. Seeing the film that first time had been as exciting as sex. A confirmed kill. His kill. And all he’d had to do was pick up a phone, say a few words, and men died. It had been necessary, essential, not just to him, but to so many others. To this country, even.

  Then why the dreams?

  Because you’ve grown an old man’s conscience, you fool.

  But he wasn’t fool enough to think there was more than one plane buried in that godforsaken desert.

  Despite the hour, he picked up the phone. Conscience or no conscience, additional precautions would have to be taken in New Mexico. If things went badly, the lawyers would have to step aside. People would have to die again.

  CHAPTER 11

  In her room at the Seven Cities, Nick cr
anked the already overworked air conditioner to maximum, then kicked off her desert boots and lay on the floor rather than spread sand and grit on the bedspread. The air conditioner shifted gears, rattling the window frame, and finally managed to produce a stale breeze that reminded her of New York City subway air.

  With a sigh, Nick closed her eyes and considered her options. It was now Friday evening, too late to start calling government agencies in Washington, D.C. That meant she’d have no access until Monday, though her diggers were prepared to work right on through the weekend.

  Option number two involved imposing on an old friend and colleague, Ken Drysdale. Only the last time they’d worked together in New Guinea, he’d ended up asking her to marry him. The look on his face when he realized she only wanted him as a friend still haunted her, so did his attempt to diffuse the tension by then passing his proposal off as a joke. She’d done her best to go along with the pretense, but their parting had been strained.

  Sighing, Nick dragged the phone off the nightstand and used her credit card code to call Honolulu, which was three hours behind her time.

  Despite being retired from the army, Ken still barked out, “Drysdale speaking,” as if he were coming to attention.

  “It’s time to re-up,” she said.

  “Damn, Nick, it’s good to hear your voice.”

  “I’m not kidding, Ken. I’ve found another airplane.”

  He snorted. “Now I realize my problem. If I’d had wings and a propeller, you would have married me. So tell me about this new love in your life.”

  Quickly, she summarized her work so far, describing the site, the weather conditions, and the B-17“s state of preservation. She concluded by saying, “It’s full of bullet holes and the dead crew is still on board.”

  “You need your old Fifty-seven Foxtrot, don’t you?”

  “I need more than that. I need your years of experience in the military to cut through the red tape.”

  Strictly speaking, Fifty-seven Foxtrot (57-F) was the designation of Drysdale’s military specialty, graves registration. In Ken’s particular case, he’d worked at the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, which handled the bodies coming out of Vietnam. He’d been a master sergeant when Nick first met him and he was assigned to her search team when they went looking for the B-24 bomber in the jungles of New Guinea.

  “I’ve got the B-17“s tail number,” Nick went on, “but it’s too late to call Washington.”

  “I’m your man, then. I’ll drive over to the CIL and use one of their computers.”

  “It’s after hours,” she reminded him.

  “The net’s always awake, you know that. Besides, us top sergeants run the military, even when we’re retired. I taught my replacement everything he knows.”

  “I’ve got nose art, too,” she said, and described the scorpion in detail.

  “That makes it a piece of cake. I’ll be into the National Archives and back to you before you know it.”

  “How soon will I hear from you?”

  “Why the hurry, Nick?”

  “I’ve got a reporter breathing down my neck and the locals are out for publicity. One look at the bullet holes and the bodies and we’re talking front-page headlines, probably by tomorrow morning.”

  “Give me your phone number and I’ll get back to you tonight. Hell, I’ll hop a plane and join you there if you want.”

  “There’s no funding for this one,” she said.

  “Give me some credit. Have you ever known a top sergeant to pay when the military has perfectly good airplanes?”

  When Nick hesitated, Drysdale added, “Hey, we’re friends, right? That’s good enough for me.”

  She closed her eyes and pictured him as she’d seen him last. A big man, as big as her father, with close-cropped sandy hair, he was ten years her senior, a career military man who, but for lack of formal education, could have been a top forensic archaeologist. A good man, too, she thought, but maybe too much like her father to consider as a lover.

  “Let’s see what you find out first,” she said, “before we start making plane reservations.”

  Drysdale chuckled. “That’s lady archaeologists for you. I’ll call by midnight, your time. Count on it.”

  Something must be wrong with me, Drysdale thought as he approached the CIL building. Just the sight of the place, designed with all the military charm of a concrete bunker, eased the sense of loneliness he’d felt ever since talking to Nick. Entering an army base was like coming home.

  The MP, known to him by sight, passed Drysdale through the security barrier with only a glance at the sergeant’s ID. Drysdale grimaced. According to regulations, his particular ID required him to have an escort at all times. Had he still been on active duty the MP would have had a combat boot up his ass by now.

  Smiling at the image, Drysdale headed for the computer center. His footsteps echoed as he marched along the empty linoleumed hall. Not like the old days, he thought, when a steady stream of casualties was coming out of Vietnam, all to be processed and identified by the lab. Back then, there’d been full shifts twenty-four hours a day. The army had made him an expert in death and its aftermath, and the worst part of it was he missed the excitement.

  As soon as he entered the computer room, the duty sergeant waved him over to a workstation that was connected to the Cray mainframe computer. The center was practically deserted. Only two among a long line of workstations were occupied.

  “Ain’t technology great?” the sergeant said, nodding at the full-color, graphically enhanced hand of solitaire on his computer screen. “What brings an MIA like you among the living?”

  “I need some time on the net and I’m too cheap to pay the phone charges on my home computer,” Drysdale said, stretching the truth.

  “Take your pick. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee when you’re finished.”

  Nodding, Drysdale selected a workstation as far away from kibitzers as possible. Once he’d logged on, he queried the computer files at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., punching in Nick’s B-17 ID number, 44-4013.

  The answer came back quickly: NOT FOUND.

  Drysdale tried again, with the same result.

  Goddammit, that was the trouble with computers. They didn’t give you a reason, they just dumped on you.

  He rechecked his procedures and code entries. He was in the National Archives, sure enough. So what was the problem?

  He hated to ask advice from the duty sergeant, since what Drysdale was doing was against regulations. As a civilian using the military net, he was breaking a federal law, although a minor one since security clearances didn’t come into it when you were searching for a fifty-year-old aircraft.

  So think. Maybe there was a hang-up with the particular file that contained B-17 identification numbers.

  He tried another ID number, the next one up: 44-4014. This time the computer coughed up the information: 44-4014 was built at the Boeing plant in Seattle and lost in combat early in 1945. Crew references and combat statistics were available elsewhere.

  Once again he typed in 44-4013.

  NOT FOUND

  He tried 44-4012.

  That, too, was a Seattle-built bomber, mothballed in the Arizona desert after the war. For all Drysdale knew it was still there.

  So what happened to 44-4013?

  He snapped his fingers. Maybe the builders hadn’t used the number 13, figuring someone along the line, like a crew member, might be superstitious. If that was the case, Nick had made a mistake, which seemed unlikely knowing her. No doubt he’d written down the number incorrectly.

  Taking a deep breath, Drysdale dropped a hundred numbers and typed in 44- 3913. Again, the computer obliged by providing the airplane’s history.

  Resisting the temptation to kick the machine, he logged off the military network and onto the hacker’s delight, the Internet, and sent a message to one of his former CIL buddies, Cliff Sawicki, now assigned to the Pentagon. Via computer, they exchanged chitchat un
til Drysdale got down to business and asked for Sawicki’s help tracing a B- 17, old 44-4013.

  Sawicki promised quick action. The phone rang five minutes after Drysdale returned home.

  “I got flagged when I tried searching for your serial number,” Sawicki said without preamble. “A goddamned security notice.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. We’re talking about ancient history here.”

  “I’m telling you, the information is classified. By Monday morning the counterintelligence boys are going to be picking my bones. You’d better tell me why you want the information.”

  “We’ve found a B-17 in the desert in New Mexico.”

  “Don’t give me that we shit. You’re in Honolulu, which means you’re still doing grunt work and pining away for that lady archaeologist of yours.”

  “She likes fifty-year-old airplanes, so why not a wreck like me?”

  “You’d better hope I don’t get my ass in a sling.”

  “Why would something that old be classified?” Drysdale asked.

  “Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe there’s some kind of security flap on, like the time those German cyber-punks tapped into the Star Wars files. Remember how the shit hit the fan? We were ass deep in CIC and FBI agents, crawling over everything and everyone for months.”

  “Is there any other way to check that ID number for me?”

  “Not without going through the records by hand.”

  Drysdale thought that over for a moment. Today was Friday, so Sawicki wouldn’t be able to get at the files until Monday morning at the earliest, and by then he’d be on duty with his own job to worry about.

  “You’d better drop the whole thing,” Drysdale said.

  “I’m sorry to ruin your sex life,” Sawicki said, trying to make a joke out of it, but he sounded more relieved than anything else.

  “Don’t I wish.” Drysdale hung up and was about to dial Nick’s number when someone knocked on the door.

  Even seen through the peephole and the distortion of its wide-angle lens, the two young men in suits were unmistakable: only Mormon missionaries and counterintelligence agents looked like that.