by Alex Archer
"That's an airplane?" Annja asked.
"Sure is," Tex said with satisfaction. He was holding his Stetson on his head against the brisk salt wind with one hand. "An ultralight. Hand-built with love. And no small measure of genius."
"Uh-huh," she said, shading her eyes against the morning glare. "Just one question."
"What's that?"
"Where do you put the key to wind it up?"
The aircraft – Annja had a hard time thinking of it as an airplane – whined past them down the narrow strip. It didn't look much like an airplane. It had a big pod-shaped cockpit enclosed in wraparound glass, a single fuselage and a high wing. But where it parted company with real airplanes, to Annja's mind, apart from being the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, was that it kept its propeller at the rear of its high-mounted wing. That, she thought, was just wrong.
She could see it well deserved its moniker of ultralight, and suspected that was why, after a very short landing run, it slowed and turned to taxi back toward them at the pace of a brisk walk. Annja noted the landing strip was very short indeed. For all its picturesque desolateness and quaint sense of ends-of-the-earth isolation, on the northerly Orkney Island of Papa Westray there wasn't room for anything else.
"How you feelin'?" Tex asked.
"I feel as if I'm filled with ants," she told him, "and an earthquake just hit the mound."
He nodded. "I hear you. We got plenty to do," he said. "It'll take your mind off worrying."
"Did I ever tell you how much I hate positive thinking?" Annja said. He only laughed at her.
The little craft came whining up to them. Annja tried hard not to think about mosquitoes. It stopped as a young woman in coveralls and a ball cap came dashing out from the airfield shack to stick fat wooden wedges under its tricycle landing gear. A door opened beneath the wing and a short man with short white hair, a snowy mustache and aviator shades popped out.
"Tex!" he exclaimed. He strutted forward, sticking out his hand.
"Leo!" Tex shook, and then they embraced briefly. Either the little English aviator was accustomed to such typically American intimacy or he faked it well.
He turned to the young woman. "Thank you much, my dear," he said. She nodded, grinned and scampered back inside.
"Annja," Tex said, "I'd like you to meet my old buddy, Leo." He smiled and spoke with great enthusiasm, as if reunited with his very best friend after decades. From spending a couple of days in his company Annja guessed he'd display the same enthusiasm if he was meeting a stranger for the first time. And it would be, so far as she could tell, entirely genuine, each and every time. "Leo, Annja Creed."
"A pleasure," she said, shaking his dry hand. It felt as if he could crack walnuts with it, although his touch was no more than a firm, quick squeeze.
"My pleasure, Ms. Creed."
He turned away with a look close to genuine alarm on his face. "My soul, who are these people? Did a caravan of travelers somehow make their way out here to Papa Westray?"
"These people" were Phil Dirt, Vicious Suze, Lightnin' Rod and Ob Noxious. "Travelers," Annja knew, was what the British called Gypsies. The motley bunch were trotting out from the little cluster of low structures beside the airfield toting bulging knapsacks and rolls of blue groundsheets. Despite the punk names, they were dressed more in the fashion of long-leftover hippies. Annja surmised that punk had in the end just been a phase for them. Their rest state was perpetually the Summer of Love.
"So you're the intrepid aviator," Phil Dirt boomed in his best Shakespearean baritone, rolling forward with hand extended.
Leo shook his hand with good if bewildered grace. "I say," he said, "what are your people doing?"
"Let's go inside," Tex said, taking the pilot by the shoulder and tugging him gently toward the buildings. "Leo designed and built this aircraft himself, Annja. He's a wizard that way. Total legend in the aviation world. Test-flew England's first supersonic bomber in the early sixties. Even did a stint at Edwards."
"But my Ariel – " Leo said.
Rod and Ob were unrolling the shiny blue tarps around the aircraft and weighting them down with head-sized chunks of rock. Kneeling, Suze was unpacking big rolls of masking tape and cans of spray paint. Phil's job seemed to be to shake the cans to make sure they rattled properly.
"She'll be fine, Leo, just fine. The paint'll wash right off. And if it doesn't, my show will pay for a nice new paint job. The old girl could use a fresh coat, couldn't she?"
As he towed the little Englishman away he winked at Annja over his shoulder. Annja wondered exactly what it indicated. Either that he was actually footing the bill himself, she guessed, or that he already had a plan in mind to get some kind of Past Master episode out of this escapade. He had displayed himself abundantly ready to bend or even break regulations and laws in what he thought was a good cause.
"I've used her on the show a few times," Tex said to Annja. " Ariel and I go way back."
"There isn't any risk to her, is there, Tex?" Leo asked plaintively.
"I'll take as good care of her as I do my own precious hide," Tex said. "I'm not a stuntman, after all, Leo. You know that. I don't get paid to take foolish risks. Now, come on. There's a fresh-brewed pot of coffee waiting for you inside. Oh, and if memory serves, a bottle of thirty-year-old single malt with your name on it."
"Claidheamh MÓR B is a pretty standard fixed offshore drilling platform, as you can see here, kiddies," Gannet said, pointing to the screen of a notebook computer that was so wide Annja could hardly think of it as portable. It gave a big, beautiful picture of the platform from above, Annja had to admit.
The radio nerd had ridden the Zodiac with them over twenty miles or so of North Sea to the north-ernmost island of the Orkney group from Gannet C, where Annja and Tex had spent the night on air mattresses in adjoining dank metal cells.
"Here's a night shot," Gannet said. The image twinkled with points of light.
"It's pretty," Annja said abstractedly. She was having trouble focusing, even though this briefing was vital.
The extension Jadzia's captors had conceded, in their cleverly coded e-mails, was due to run out at sunset. The plan called for Annja and Tex to infiltrate Claidheamh Mór B in the dark. And the real-time satellite weather image, currently resident in a small but readily discernible window in the lower left-hand corner of Gannet's screen, showed a nasty roiling mass of storm – a typical North Sea blow. Despite the clarity of the day, the storm was due to hit the platform about the same time they were.
It was a good thing the diminutive pilot was in the airfield office in an adjoining building, getting expansive on venerable whiskey with the aging airplane buffs who ran the strip, Annja thought. Indeed, a small crowd had gathered, moving somewhat slowly and smelling of wool. Pretty much the island's entire collection of aviation fans had gotten wind of the unusual craft's arrival and turned up to look on in awe and be regaled.
"And here's another overhead from daytime," Gannet said. "Notice here on the southwest corner of the platform."
Annja squinted. A little white tadpole shape was visible in the middle of a big yellow circle. It hadn't been visible in the previous images.
"That's from this morning," Gannet said.
"Shit," Tex said. "Pardon my French."
"That would be 'merde,' Tex," Annja said.
"I knew that."
As Gannet zoomed in on the image the tadpole grew into an unmistakable helicopter. "That looks just like the helicopter that we – saw in Italy," Annja exclaimed. She stopped herself just short of blurting "attacked." They had not told the Black Bart crew any details of just what they were doing, and they had not pressed. For all the air of make-believe about the radio pirates, they really were outlaws of a sort. They knew the value of discretion.
The coverall-clad airfield girl stuck her head in the door. Without the ball cap, she had blond hair tied in pigtails and a wide face full of freckles. She didn't really look like Jadzia, but her appearance still gave An
nja a brief twinge.
"Your golf gear's here, Mr. Tex!" she chirped.
"Thanks a bundle, Maggie," Tex said.
"Golf gear?" Annja said, a beat out of sync with Gannet.
Tex shrugged. "Hey, you never know when I might fancy a round, as you Brits would say. Addiction's like that."
The youth gave him a dubious look. He transferred it to Annja, who shrugged.
"I doubt it's the same chopper you saw in Italy," Tex said. "Be a long, slow trip."
Gannet clicked again. The chopper grew to fill the screen. Annja studied it.
"I'm pretty sure it's the same model, though," she said. "Same paint scheme, too. Blue with white trim."
"Which might mean it belongs to the same people." Tex shrugged. "Or it may not. Pretty common color scheme."
"Agusta Westland A109," said Gannet. "Fairly common design, that. But what we can do is read the registration number off the tail boom." He typed some more. "And here we see the machine is registered to EP Great Britain, operating out of their Edinburgh facility."
"Which pretty much confirms what we know already, doesn't it?" Annja asked.
"Suggests EP still owns the rig, anyway," Tex said.
She frowned. "What would an oil company want with a tapped-out drilling platform?"
"Well," Gannet said, sitting back and lacing his fingers behind his head, "I can't speak for them, but we find ours right handy for illicit activities."
"Storm's coming in fast," Annja said from the doorway. "Poor Jadzia." The two sentences weren't exactly related. Poor Jadzia was based on the imminent expiration of the kidnappers' deadline. Then again, it was looking more and more likely the storm would hit Claidheamh Mór B before they did. Each second it delayed them made the captive girl's survival less likely. And if the terrible North Sea swallowed them in its fury...
The multiple metallic clack from behind her in the airfield's little maintenance shop made the hairs on Annja's nape rise. Not because it was unfamiliar, or for that matter that she was afraid of it. She knew perfectly well what made a sound like that. Nothing else on Earth did. The unexpectedness of hearing it here was what shocked her.
"You know how to use one of these?" Tex sat on a plastic crate with his hat pushed way back on his head. He was holding up a black shotgun with a rear pistol grip. "Benelli M4 semiauto combat shotgun, 12-gauge. The very latest thing in social work – auto regulating, gas operated, with two stainless-steel self-cleaning pistons. The Marines use 'em, but they're good weapons in spite of that."
"I've used a shotgun a few times, yes," Annja said guardedly. "Never a Benelli before."
"Nothing to it. Loads here. Ghost-ring sight, just the thing for rapid target acquisition." He cycled the charging handle. "Point and shoot. I'd recommend something a little lighter on the recoil – truth to tell, 12-gauge is a bit much for most men to use efficiently. But all your work with that sword of yours gives you a little bit of an edge when it comes to strength, don't you think?"
He looked up and saw her expression. "What?"
Annja glanced around. Tex had cheerfully chased everyone out of the shop before opening up his long, heavy "golf bags." Leo had headed back to the mainland by motorboat-taxi to spend the night. Gannet and crew were out admiring their handiwork repainting the ultralight.
"One question," she said. "Aren't the Orkney Islands still part of the United Kingdom?"
"Last I checked," Tex said, laying the shotgun on a bench beside him and fishing out a pair of black autopistols.
"Don't they have gun control here?"
"Sure do. Along with a skyrocketing rate of violent home invasions. No connection, I'm sure. Why?"
She looked at him.
"Oh. These?" He laughed and laid them down on a cloth spread on the tabletop, being careful, she observed, not to point them at her.
"As for these, well – they're legal. As to how legal it is for us to have them – " he shrugged " – don't ask, don't tell, as the saying goes."
He grinned at her persistently dubious look. "I told you I had contacts."
She laughed a bit feebly. "Whatever you say." It occurred to her she didn't really need to know the whole truth. And, thinking about it, she didn't really want to.
He tossed her a cardboard box of fifty 9 mm cartridges and poured a cloth bag of empty black magazines onto the table. "We've got an hour or so before our flight leaves for Claymore B. Hope your thumb's up for a workout."
Chapter 14
"Dang," Tex said. He didn't say it loud. Annja was surprised she could hear it over the reverberations of that last thunder crack. Her ears literally rang.
"What? What 'dang'? 'Dang' does not sound good."
"Depends on your definition of 'not good.'"
"Try me."
"Just lost GPS."
"The lightning bolt did that? I didn't know lightning could knock it out."
He shrugged despite the sheer physical effort of keeping the little airplane under control in the brutal winds. Annja suddenly realized just how difficult that must have been with no power assist on a plane that size. "Might just be the storm blocks the signal. One way or another we're flying by dead reckoning now."
"It never occurred to me until now," Annja said, "just how ominous that phrase is. Can you really find the platform without it?"
The rig, which had seemed so huge and intimidating when she and Tex had worked out their tactics for infiltrating it, shrank in her mind to the dimensions of a Matchbox model in this vast and hateful sea.
"Well," Tex said, drawing it way out, "I can give it the old college try."
"What if we miss it in the storm? This rain is like lead curtains at times."
"Lemme put it this way – got a hankerin' to see the Arctic up close and personal?"
"We can make it all the way to the ice pack?"
"Oh, shoot, no. I'm just funnin' you, ma'am. We'll run out of fuel and ditch in the sea long before that. The good news is, it's a short-enough hop from Papa Westray to the platform. We don't see it in the next five minutes, we've got plenty of leeway to double back and try a quartering search."
"What if we still can't find it?"
"Then we'll be well and truly lost. As opposed to just lost."
"I love a man who knows how to show a girl a good time."
"We aim to please, ma'am."
The big man sat in a chair, oblivious to the spray the wind lashed against the window of the commissary. A generator-run space heater blasted away, turning a far corner of the room into a localized furnace. He was out of its baleful radiance, but cushioned by layers of clothing, fat and a genuine indifference to his own comfort, he ignored the chill that inevitably seeped in from the storm outside.
Sulin stood by the window, as far as possible from his coleader, with his hands clasped behind the back of his high-collared jacket, gazing out into the storm.
For some reason, both turned and looked at Jadzia. The girl sat eating a bar of jerky, tearing at the tough strip with sharp white teeth. She had been semicovertly admiring Sulin. She almost regretted that Annja Creed would inevitably kill him.
Something in her manner seemed to irk Marshall. "Time is running out for you, girl," he rumbled.
Sulin stiffened slightly. "It's true that the ultimatum has expired," he said. "But we are to wait for further orders from above before we take any action, my friend."
"I'm not your friend, pretty boy," Marshall said without looking at him. His small gray eyes gazed intently at Jadzia, who ostentatiously crossed her long bare legs.
"Your little gal pal must not really care about you," he told her. "She's gone to ground to protect her own precious hide. But we'll find her and dig her out. And we'll get the scrolls."
"Don't hector her," Sulin said. "It's doubtful she knows anything of real use, to us or our superiors."
"What about what they've read from the scrolls so far?"
"Presumably all the truly sensational revelations they have come across are contained in
what they posted on the Net," Sulin said. "If they found more, it died with the rest of the dig team."
He glanced over his shoulder at Marshall. A flash of lightning lit his beautifully sculpted face in harsh purple-white radiance. "Beware of asking questions that might have dangerous answers," he said with contempt ringing through his voice. "If she did happen to know something more, something...controversial – would it be healthy for you or for me to hear it? This whole operation is about keeping these things secret."
"You threatening me?" Marshall laughed.
Sulin's violet eyes narrowed. "Do not delude yourself," he said in a voice of oiled silk. "We are tools, purchased by our employers. Will they think twice about discarding us if they deem our usefulness has come to an end?"
Marshall stretched and sighed. "Shit, Lucy," he said. "You figure anybody leaves this world alive?"
"Louis," Sulin hissed.
Jadzia rose. Her mood had shifted. She didn't take Marshall's menace particularly seriously. He was a sadistic thing, certainly. But Jadzia was the star of this adventure.
She was the heroine of this saga, she decided. And the heroine never dies.
Without a word she walked from the room.
Glancing out the port side of the wraparound canopy, Annja saw a great gray monster of a wave crest above the level of their tiny aircraft. She understood intellectually the need to fly so low – so that the ocean's surface effect would hide them from the radar rig Gannet's satellite imaging had clearly shown rotating high up in Claidheamh Mór B's superstructure.
But the sight of those menacing waves filled her with terror. The North Sea was not known for its mercies.
It took all her will to control the fear. But she did. She held on to self. To focus.
She formed a picture in her mind – a young, pretty face, framed by blond pigtails. Jadzia. The innocent whose destiny she had cradled in her own two hands. And dropped. She would not let herself fail Jadzia again. If she died trying – well, she would die trying her very damned best.
