The truck is stopped, no more than a quarter of a mile away. The driver is getting out. He goes in the back to the open bed of the truck and lifts out a cardboard box. He carries it over and sets it down on the field. Then he walks back to the pickup.
“I don’t think he’s seen us,” I tell them.
This time he reaches inside the cab. He steps back and closes the door. He has two items, one in each hand. The one in his right hand looks like a laptop. I can’t make out what the other one is. It’s too small.
“What’s he doing?” says Herman.
“I don’t know.” I have the field glasses fixed on his face at the moment. “I think that’s our man.”
“Let me see,” says Joselyn.
I hand her the glasses.
She raises them to her eyes. “How do you adjust them?”
“The toggle on top.” I show her.
She focuses in. Then suddenly takes a deep breath. “Yes. That’s him. I would know that face anywhere,” she says. When she passes the glasses back to me, her hand is trembling.
By the time I refocus and acquire his image once more, Thorn is down on one knee in the field. He is working on something, but I can’t see it. His back is to me, shielding whatever it is that he has on the ground. He reaches into the cardboard box with one hand and takes out two wires. They look like leads connected to something in the box.
A few seconds later he stands and flings something into the air. He does it almost casually, backhanded, with a flick of his wrist. Whatever it is, it doesn’t fall to the ground. Instead it flies off, like a bird, silent and fast into the distance, where I lose it.
“What the hell was that?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” says Herman. “I saw it too, then it just disappeared.”
“What’s he doing?” I ask.
“He’s flying it,” says Joselyn. “What you just saw is an MAV.”
“What the hell’s an MAV?” I ask.
“Micro air vehicle,” she says. “It’s military hardware. Latest cutting edge. Like a model airplane, only smaller.”
“I don’t hear any motor,” I tell her.
“It’s electric. High speed. They use them for surveillance, but use your imagination. With the advances in miniaturization, almost anything’s possible.”
“How do you know about this stuff?” I ask.
“Part of the new generation of weapons systems,” she says. “Designers, kids from Stanford, get hung up on it because it’s novel and looks cute and the military tells them it’s harmless. But the range of possible applications is insidious. I think we should be going.”
“Why?” says Herman.
“Because we can’t see that thing,” says Joselyn, “but if it’s what I think it is, it can probably see us.”
“You mean it’s got a camera?” I say.
“A camera, infrared sensors, I don’t know, but look at him.” She gestures toward Thorn out in the field.
I train the glasses back on him. He’s standing up, holding the laptop in one hand while he manipulates what looks like a small joystick with the other.
“He’s not looking up in the air, is he?” she says.
“No. He’s looking down at the computer screen.”
“So?” says Herman.
“So he’s flying whatever it is using the eye that’s on board that little devil,” she says. “Which means he can see everything on the ground as he flies over it.”
It’s hard to know where it is because we can’t follow Thorn’s line of sight to track the small model in the air. Then suddenly Thorn turns and looks across the field.
“I got it.” In the sunlight with the glasses I pick up the glint off one of the wings. The only reason I can see it is because it’s almost stationary in the sky, doing a tight circle, hovering over an area on the other side of the field.
“Where?” says Herman.
“There.” I point. “See the little metal shed over there? Looks like a pump house?”
“Yeah.”
“Look directly above it.”
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Looks like a little dot.”
Suddenly the little plane darts away. It moves off just a bit and then drops down quickly and starts to fly in a slow, lazy circle at rooftop height around the corrugated-steel pump house. The building is more of a box, perhaps four feet square and eight feet high, with a slanted shed roof that pitches this way. The metal is all rusted, as if it’s been there for a hundred years.
The model turns, heading toward the building. I expect it to fly over the shed roof but it doesn’t. Instead, the model noses up just as it gets there and stalls. Suddenly it falls like a rock, hits the roof, and slides off and hits the ground.
“So much for that,” I say.
Thorn grabs the box, gets in the pickup, and races across the field. He parks close to the pump house, then retrieves the little plane. He checks it out.
“Maybe he broke it,” says Herman.
“I don’t know. It looks like he’s adjusting something under the wings,” I tell them. “That’s got to be the smallest model plane I’ve ever seen. It’s not much bigger than his hand. It looks like four bent wires coming out underneath. They look like the legs on an insect.”
“Let me see,” says Joselyn.
I hand her the glasses. She focuses and looks. “Climbing, perching, and jumping,” she says. “It’s what they’re working on.”
“What?” I say.
“There’re like feet or something attached to the ends of the wires.”
Within seconds he flings it into the air again, opens the computer, and starts all over.
“What’s he doing, playing?” I ask.
“I don’t think so,” says Joselyn.
Thorn flies the model around the shed twice and then approaches from the same direction, straight in toward the roof. At the last second he noses up and the little plane falls from the air once more. Only this time it doesn’t slide off the roof. It stays there, upright, as if there is something holding it in place.
“Son of a gun. He did it,” she says.
“Did what?” says Herman.
“He perched it on the roof,” she says. “From everything I’ve read, they haven’t been able to do that yet.”
“What?” I ask.
“The military has been putting out RFPs, requests for proposals, to contractors for several years. They’re looking for somebody who can design a micro air vehicle that can perch on the side of a building.”
“Why would they want to do that?” says Herman.
“Because if you can attach enough things to the side of a building and equip them with listening devices, you can pick up everything going on inside. The power to recharge the batteries you get from a photoelectric cell. A fly on the wall could stay there for years,” she says.
“You work with some very insidious people,” I tell her.
“I don’t work with them. I just know about them.”
“You think that’s what he’s doing, trying to pick up surveillance?” says Herman.
“I don’t know,” says Joselyn. “I know they have stuff that can fly and climb. And they’re working on weapons systems, some of them no bigger than the tip of your finger. They say within a few years they’ll have robotic insects the size of a grasshopper armed with lethal toxins and heat sensors to home in on the human body. They could release them by the millions using missiles tipped with cluster bombs. If they can do that, they can do anything.”
“Where do you guys get this stuff?” I ask.
“It’s not science fiction,” says Joselyn. The second she says it I hear a high-speed whirring sound. It comes from behind us, sounds like the wings of a hummingbird, and races over our heads. It’s gone before we can even see it.
“Son of a bitch,” says Herman.
When I look out at the field, Thorn is standing there holding the computer, looking down at the screen. The little model is no longer perched on the roof.
> “Let’s get out of here,” says Joselyn.
“It’s too late. He’s seen us,” says Herman, who is already halfway to the car.
I lift the binoculars up to my eyes with one hand. “What the hell is that?” I am looking back at the jet under the camouflage netting. The rear ramp is now down. The man who was doing the welding is testing the motor that lifts the ramp up and down. As I look at it I realize why. The ramp was never designed to carry the kind of weight represented by the bomb. Resting on a steel cradle just above the stairs is the massive casing of a torpedo-shaped device.
“I gotta call Thorpe,” I tell her.
“Later,” she says.
I pull out my cell phone.
“Not now,” she says.
“Just a second.” I fumble with the applications until I find the camera. I look at the screen on the phone and wait for the ramp to come down again. It won’t be a great picture but it’s better than nothing.
“We don’t have enough time,” she says.
Thorn is down on one knee out in the field with the open cardboard box next to him.
The ramp starts to come down.
Thorn is charging up the little bird for another look. He finishes and then slowly stands, turns around, and looks up. Like a flashbulb going off in his head, he suddenly realizes what’s on display under the belly of the big plane. He spins around and looks up toward where Joselyn and I are standing. I don’t think he can see us, but he knows we’re here.
I wait until the end of the ramp reaches the ground, like a yawning mouth, and then I snap the picture.
It’s a footrace for the car, with Joselyn out in front. Herman is already behind the wheel, with the engine running.
We jump in the back and Joselyn yells, “Move!”
“Do you think he saw us?” I ask.
“I don’t, but I think we better find another way out of here,” she says.
THIRTY-NINE
There’s a map in the glove compartment,” says Herman.
He is ripping along the dirt road doing at least fifty miles an hour, fishtailing in the sandy soil. Joselyn and I are bouncing around in the backseat. My head hits the ceiling of the car.
“Get the map,” he says.
“I’m trying. Slow down or you’re going to kill us. We won’t have to worry about Thorn,” I tell him.
“Where does this road lead?” says Joselyn.
Herman is driving farther into the brushy hillside, away from the pavement we came in on.
“It’ll take us back to the highway,” says Herman. “There’s a turn, but I’m not sure where.”
“How do you know?” I ask.
“’Cause I checked the map to make sure I had a way out before I parked,” he says. “But I don’t want to make a wrong turn.”
He slows for a few seconds and I reach over from the backseat, into the glove compartment, and pull out a folded single-page Avis map.
Herman glances over. “No, not that one. The one underneath.”
I fish around inside and find another, thicker map. As soon as I slump into the backseat I unfold it and it opens up like an accordion, enough paper to seal off the backseat. It’s a geodetic survey map showing the island in sections. “Did this come with the car?”
“No. Bought it yesterday while you guys were napping,” says Herman. “One of the little shops next to the hotel. Look for the exit off the highway you came in on and find the dirt road.”
Joselyn and I search for it until we find the right quarter section and then home in. “Here it is.” She points with her finger. “Let me have it.” She plucks it out of my hands.
We are climbing higher on the hillside, well above the trees at the end of the airfield. The plane is no longer visible down below, lost in the morass of foliage and the camouflage. But in the distance behind us I can see a trail of dust in the air. “Somebody’s on our tail,” I tell him.
“I see him,” says Herman.
“I hope you’re right about there being a way out of here.”
“He is,” says Joselyn. “There’s a fork up ahead, take it to the right.”
“Good girl,” says Herman. He gooses the engine and we start to slide around in the backseat.
“There’s another turn to the right about a quarter of a mile beyond that,” she tells him. “Then it looks like it turns to pavement. You take it all the way to the highway.”
“That’s the one,” says Herman. “It’s Thorn behind us. I got a glimpse of the pickup when he rounded one of the bends back there.”
I turn and look. I see the dust, maybe half a mile behind us and closing fast, like a cyclone.
Herman takes the fork to the right and a quarter of a mile beyond it takes a sharp right, nearly lifting the car up on two wheels.
“Maybe he’ll take the wrong cut at the fork,” I tell them.
“No,” says Herman. “He’s still behind us.”
I turn to take a peek. Herman’s right. The looming dust devil is still behind us and getting closer.
A hundred feet beyond the turn, the wheels grind over gravel and onto solid pavement. The road smooths out and Herman pushes the pedal to the floor. The midsize four-cylinder picks up speed, but we’ll never make it to the highway. The minute Thorn hits the pavement, the big Ford V-8 will run us down in less than a mile. And I am guessing that Thorn is probably armed to the teeth.
We swing around a curve, coming down the hillside. I can see the highway in the distance, maybe two miles off. The road we are on rolls over the hillocks like a ribbon leading right to it.
“Hang on,” says Herman. Suddenly the car swings to the right, skids on the pavement, and rolls onto a gravel road.
“Where are you going? It’s a dead end,” I tell him.
“I know,” says Herman. He pulls up about fifty feet and turns to the left into some heavy brush, then slams on the brakes and turns off the engine. “Get out of the car.” Herman grabs the field glasses and opens his door.
Joselyn and I follow him over the rough ground into the brush.
“Come on,” says Herman. He leads us toward a small rock outcropping, kneels down, and sets up with the glasses.
Joselyn and I really don’t need them, we can see the ribbon of paved road leading down to the highway just off to our left.
“Shhh…” Herman holds a finger to his lips and listens.
I hear the high-speed rush of rubber on the road, and a second later the rush of air as a vehicle races past the gravel turnoff. An instant later I see the Ford pickup as it blasts into the open and races down the road toward the highway. I’m guessing that he’s doing close to a hundred miles an hour. It takes Thorn less than a minute to reach the intersection on this side of the highway. You can see the truck’s tail end lift up as the brake lights come on. Thorn screeches to a complete stop right in the middle of the road.
There’s a little chuckle next to me. Herman is looking through the field glasses. “That’s the problem with the dust when you’re chasing somebody. You can’t be sure how far behind you are. It’s not like being out in front. That’s why I pulled off,” he says. “The curve back there. Once he rounded it we were dead. He woulda seen us and run us down before we got to the highway. Now he’s sitting there getting whiplash, lookin’ both ways ’cause he can’t be sure which way we went, right toward Ponce or left toward San Juan. Wanna look?” He hands me the glasses.
“I’ll take your word for it. I’m still trying to keep my breakfast down,” I tell him.
“You got a bad inner ear. There he goes.” Herman is back looking through the field glasses.
As I look toward the highway, I see the pickup truck speed across the double lanes and turn left, heading north.
“He figures we’re running for the big city and the airport,” says Herman.
“Aren’t we?” says Joselyn.
“Not till we make a phone call,” says Herman.
Part of what Thorn was being paid for was to think on his feet, and
to do it quickly. He’d raced no more than three miles north on the highway before he realized that he’d lost them.
He turned around and sped back to the airfield. Thorn knew that by now the trio on the hillside would be calling the cops.
He and the two Mahdi pilots loaded the jet with four empty fifty-gallon paint drums, along with two others that were half full of the diesel fuel used to run the compressor. They strapped everything down so it wouldn’t move.
They grabbed as much of the large brown masking paper as they could and tossed it on board, and then ripped off what was left on the side of the plane.
Most of the painting was done, though not all of it. They would have to finish the rest when they got where they were going. They threw the air hoses and spray guns inside the plane. Thorn grabbed the large attaché case containing the little brown bat and the laptop that controlled it as well as the battery-charging unit that was in the cardboard box. He put it all on board the plane. The only thing he couldn’t get was his luggage at the Hotel Belgica. He would have to take care of that later by phone. He was confident there was no way the authorities could connect the mysterious missing jetliner to the Charles Johnston who checked out of the Hotel Belgica by telephone.
All the heavy work on the plane was done. The bomb in the tail section was strapped down and concealed inside the closed airstairs. Anyone looking at the plane from the outside would conclude that the rear ramp that once existed was now sealed up and no longer functional. This was the fate of many of the ramps on the old planes, most notably those that weren’t equipped with a Cooper Vane.
The two pylons were problematic, but they were relatively small, designed for jet fighters. They were lost under the large wings of the big airliner. On the ground, especially without attached ordnance, no one would notice them.
The two small air-to-air missiles were still in crates in the back of the plane. They had been easy to obtain, and relatively cheap. Whereas a shoulder-fired ground-to-air missile could cost upward of two hundred thousand dollars on the black market, an air-to-air missile like the two old French Magic heat seekers, which were now considered obsolete, could be picked up for a few thousand dollars. They weighed less than two hundred pounds each and required no sophisticated target-tracking system to use them.
The Rule of Nine Page 27
