She resolved to follow Jay’s directions without thinking. Her plane was a ridiculously easy target. She would never be allowed to recharge anywhere outside of Canada. The augmented power cell might get her across Montana, but these jets would not wait that long. If they’d just wanted to stop and talk they wouldn’t have burned Toad Hall. Ruth clung to that thought. Jay had said it clearly enough. “Sometimes it’s ditch or die. Just remember: the whole procedure is automated.”
Just before she left her seat for the last time, Ruth ordered a contour printout of her location. The surrounding 20 square miles showed as an inset in a much larger map. She cursed the creakiness that went with age. But in just five minutes she had slipped the chute harness around her shoulders, pulling the straps between her legs. She was almost ready.
She stuffed the maps in her flight jacket, again cursing her body because her hands shook. She cursed the insulated jump coveralls because they snagged on the safety harness as she refastened it. “It’s time,” she said to herself. “Damn it.”
A five-digit code activated the program that would bring the Cessna to stalling speed in two minutes; then it would blow the door in another forty-five seconds. Ruth leaned over the empty pilot’s seat and started the sequence: a recorded voice began tolling the passing seconds. Crap! Have I forgotten something? Her hands were still shaking as she climbed over the single rear seat and positioned herself next to the commode in the tiny luggage area.
Get control! A deep breath. Another. She began moving methodically, mechanically, letting Jay Robertson’s relentless training take over, knowing that any hesitation could lead to panic and paralysis. But she hovered at the exit. A furtive glance outside the rear window revealed nothing but darkness. Panic surged.
“Stall imminent…repeat. Stall imminent.” The recorded voice was irritatingly dispassionate. Slowly, deliberately, Ruth released the safety block on the door’s emergency release. In seconds, the door would explode outwards. In theory, she would plant her feet in the doorway and kick firmly away from the plane. In theory, her exit over the left wing would allow her to fly clear. There was, of course, the outside chance that a sudden shift in attitude would divert her path to the tail; a broken back was not her worst-case scenario.
A bright series of numbers appeared, blinking above the door lock. She adjusted her goggles. The emergency release relay clicked.
The door parted explosively, unleashing a tornado. The next moment Ruth was outside in a 100 kph blizzard. The plane yawed as it picked up turbulence. It “fell up”, vanishing in the howling grayness.
Was that a seat cushion flying by or the dog Toto?
Then she lost contact with time. In Ruth’s return to awareness, she noticed that ice had formed on her face and that she was falling through a winter night filled with swirling fog. Then she surged with the realization that she had been unconscious for a time, and that her hands had lost nearly all sensation. Ruth tried to hold her gloved fingers in front of her mouth, but the wind was as strong as running ice water. Through foggy goggles she was just able to see the cloud cover part near the horizon; below that she saw a ribbon of headlights that marked the Interstate. She tried to memorize her position.
The chute deployed automatically; its black shape snaked overhead like a river of smoke. When it caught, the shock of deceleration bruised her rib cage, robbing her of breath. As the abrasive velocity of the wind eased, her breathing came easier and easier. Her chute was a giant delta wing; it tracked her overhead like the shadow of a predator. Ruth began to tremble uncontrollably.
Then she saw the Cessna Sparrow shrieking out of the fog, powering itself straight into the ground, as it had been programmed to do. The plane splashed orange and white in the sage. The event was silent in the distance, followed by the remote muffled sound of an explosion.
The ground rushed toward her; her body tensed and her confidence departed. Ruth faced certain injury. Surely that little tiny chute will not mitigate the impact. At the last possible moment, a dull silver balloon spilled out of her shoulder pack, filling rapidly with gas. Her harness tugged and Ruth drifted the remaining hundred feet to the ground. The final impact was as light as a step from an escalator. The remaining shrouds parted, releasing chute and balloon.
She was free.
For a moment Ruth simply stood in the snow, savoring the firm, if freezing, support of ice and dirt under her feet. Seconds later a double sonic boom broke the spell. She dropped into a crouch amid the snow-covered sagebrush. Then she heard the unmistakable thunder of jets as they Dopplered away from her position. After a few minutes, just when it seemed safe, the Sharks shot over the wreckage of her Sparrow at an altitude of less than a thousand feet. Then they really were gone.
She looked around. Now what?
Her shoulder pack contained heavy mittens, large enough to cover her gloves, and insulated shoe covers, equally generous. Instructions identified a thermostat control on her left cuff, advising her that the miniature power cell was good for two hours at maximum charge. With luck, the Interstate would be less than a twenty minute walk on foot. She paused, looking across the desert and turned on the heat…
Finnegan, all this trouble had better be damn well worth it!
Montana, two hours later
Blue searchlights played over the wreckage of the Sparrow as three hovering military Tri-Fans stirred up clouds of soot and snow. They were artifacts from an almost forgotten high-tech war, moving across the gray landscape in a rapidly expanding perimeter. Ruth watched from the truck passenger window as the three black beetle things hovered above the moving lights, indistinct menacing shapes.
“What do you think they’re after?” the truck driver asked. They want me. Ruth was shivering in the passenger seat of the cab after having flagged down the rig.
“Who knows?” she said. “Where the hell were they, when I needed a tow?” The driver chuckled as the Truck-Canada van hummed across the Montana Interstate. Ruth’s jumpsuit steamed in the heat from under the dash. The driver was a young man with a stubble beard, jeans, T-shirt and insulated vest. “What’s the closest place along your route with accommodations?” she asked.
“Billings. I’m going to fuel up there anyway.”
“Isn’t there a commercial airport there?”
“Dunno. Don’t fly much myself.”
“How much longer?”
“Two hours.” Ruth slouched down in her seat and closed her eyes. “Appreciate the lift,” she murmured.
“Sure, lady. But I was just wondering: if your car broke down, why would you need a plane?”
“Got a deadline to make. It was a rental car anyway.”
Time passed in silence. Ruth awoke. The truck was slowing; she opened her eyes, disoriented.
“Billings?” she murmured.
“Didn’t you hear the sirens?”
Adrenaline brought her sharply awake. She leaned forward, straining to see out the side mirror, feeling the bracing cold of the glass against her face. It was snowing lightly. Flashing red lights and blocky vehicles were following close behind the truck.
“Speeding?” she asked.
“No way.”
“Keep going then. I’ll pay you well.”
“Do I look an idiot, lady?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“There are two state police cars and at least one military rig behind me. I’m stoppin’. What kind of trouble you in, lady?” Without answering, Ruth had opened the door to the cab as the truck slowed further. When it had almost stopped she dropped to the pavement.
Mistake! She had underestimated the distance and the speed of the truck. She fell heavily, her right foot slipping on the pavement, twisting her ankle. Ironic, she thought, after jumping from a frigging plane. She got up and limped to the shoulder of the highway. A few feet away she could hear distorted male voices on portable radios. The bright spot of a flashlight beam moved along the asphalt at the end of the truck.
“Hold it right there, la
dy!” The male voice spoke from directly behind her. Numb, she turned, glaring lights in her face.
“Let me see your identification, please,” the voice said.
A secure out-of-sight location
Ruth slept fitfully. Her waking moments consisted of movements from place to place, and humiliations inflicted in the cool style of the functionary whose bureaucratic mind no longer recognizes the object processed as another human being.
She first awoke fully in the back seat of a moving car. A succession of images passed through her mind as she reviewed her situation: male voices arguing outside the patrol car window; a strip search conducted in a Billings motel by a dour faced matron, for whom the experience, Ruth surmised, was probably the high water mark of her day. She was stripped to the skin, wearing only her anti-pent bracelet, a warning that chemical interrogation would be fatal. Then she had experienced the humiliation of a blindfold, being dressed like a child in paper coveralls, cuffed, and then being led to a seat in the rear of a large aircraft. Hours later, still blindfolded, she felt the thrum of a large sedan, the gentle rocking motion that had lulled her briefly to sleep.
From this stream of impressions, she had concluded that the entire operation was conducted outside the normal channels. There had been a noticeable tension between the local officials whose cooperation was needed and the agents who had taken her on this ride. Her abduction was, without doubt, the work of the Gael’s enemies in the government. Marius Torque.
“Pull into the building and leave her in the car.” It was a male voice she had not heard before.
Another male voice, more distant: “Come on, we’re done here. Move it.”
The car stopped. Doors slammed. A full minute went by while the steel bands about her wrists kept throbbing. Then the front door of the car opened and closed. Footsteps echoed in a large enclosed area. Another door closed. Silence.
“Take off the blindfold and get out of the car slowly.” This was a new voice. It projected confidence and elaborate boredom. She heard an electronic beep and the steel bands around her wrists parted spontaneously. Ruth pulled off the heavy plastic blindfold.
She and the car were inside a very large, otherwise empty, corrugated steel building. Several antique incandescent bulbs hung from above, one of them directly over a slender, albino male with a very hard face. He held a police stunner, only but the handle of a large caliber revolver was conspicuous in his belt.
“Get out, please,” he said. “My name is Thorander Keen.” Ruth framed a caustic reply, but restrained herself while she got unsteadily to her feet.
“You announce your name as intimidation,” she said. “You expect me to recognize your name, and you are telling me indirectly, that you are working under the authority of someone very important. You could have saved the trouble. Your stunner and firearm, sir, I recognize. They require obedience of everyone except a damn fool.” Keen responded by motioning toward the corner of the warehouse.
“You will please walk to the corner over there and stand under the red light.”
The area was poorly lit. The dim red bulb cast an almost undetectable roseate glow on the concrete floor and metal walls, which faced an oversized wooden door. The door, slightly ajar, blocked a source of painfully brilliant illumination.
“Go in, please,” Keen said. Ruth found the feigned politeness as irritating as she did everything else about this man. She stepped in, squinting against the piercing blue-white light, which lanced off stainless steel and glass. A sharp, pungent odor filled the air, the sound of bubbling liquid; then these sensations faded away. Ruth’s head was swimming. As she fell, she was gripped firmly on either side…
Somewhere very far away, three days later
Ruth awoke in a bed. The room was dark and empty of other furniture, save a single straight-backed chair occupied by the man who called himself Keen. Ruth felt like vomiting. Bright, hot points of light danced in her field of vision. Unable to sit up, she inclined her head. The image of the man moved. Thorander Keen was smiling.
“You were tough, but we learned a lot”. Surely he was lying on both counts.
“I doubt that very much,” she managed to say. Ruth allowed her head to fall back against the pillow. “I’m sick from the anesthetic but I’m alive.”
“You mean the interrogation block? Well, we could have learned a bit more, but it would have killed you. Did they tell you that about a block? My own agents use cyanide. Reliable. Efficient. You can’t interrogate a corpse.”
“Be my guest.”
“No thank you.”
“So why haven’t you killed me?”
“These things take time, Ms. Rosenbaum.”
“That’s nice,” she mumbled, struggling to clear her mind. Her penta-antagonist had done its work. Any of the standard interrogation drugs would have triggered a violent reaction, incapacitating her, even stopping her heart in seconds. Because the antagonist also made most anesthetics equally hazardous, she and others who took regular AntiPent doses wore a wrist bracelet. As Jack always said, “life is risk.”
“Does this place have a bathroom?”
“Of course, but you’ll never make it there. Use the catheter.”
“You use the catheter, jerk. Might I suggest a place?”
Ruth forced her right foot over the edge of the bed, propping herself up on her elbows. This sure as crap isn’t going to be easy. She summoned a burst of anger – it was never far from the surface recently, and removed the catheter, throwing her other leg over the side in the process. With another furious effort, she sat up. This effort, and the change of position of her head relative to her body mass, immediately caused her vision to black out. She lowered her head between her knees until the room stopped spinning.
“This is how I’ll always remember you,” Keen said.
“Good for you,” she replied. The exchange released enough anger-driven adrenaline to bring her briefly to her feet before she sat again on the edge of the bed, trembling.
“Don’t urinate on the floor,” Keen said.
“Maybe I’ll just vomit on your suit,” she snarled, then placed her feet on the carpeted floor and stood.
Step. Step. The door to the bathroom was impossibly far. This is ridiculous, she thought, I won’t have the energy left to kill this bully, after I throw up. She chuckled involuntarily. Giddy and light headed, she continued. Step. Step. Step. She opened the door…and screamed.
The ugly alien sat in the doorway; it was a horror under glass…like an immense uncooked egg with several yolks, floating in a translucent bag, on a bed of intestines. The creature was mounted in a heavy-duty life-support module, a servomechanism the size of a squat office refrigerator, equipped with articulated wheels, and grasping appliances.
“You find me unattractive?” The alien voice was computer generated. “Imagine my reaction to the first human I met.” When Ruth vomited, she managed to get most of the glass case and part of the speaker grill directly under it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - CRIME SCENE
En Route
Jay Robertson sat in the passenger compartment of Elf 4, one of several Boeing Spanners owned by Gael-Falstaff Enterprises. He was squinting at an 18-centimeter screen. The single engine jet was traveling over the Atlantic coast, headed to Quebec and the scene of the destruction of Toad Hall.
“Jay, have they found anyone’s body yet?” The image on Jay’s screen was Donald Wu who was on GFE’s floating headquarters, the Citisle.
“Unknown, Donald,” Jay Robertson replied. “I’ll be there soon enough.” Robertson’s image, a lean, grim face, with a fine scar under the right eye, salt and pepper hair, appeared in Wu’s console on the Citisle. Other staff watched the conversation from GFE’s operations center in the Australian desert region called Lake Disappointment. The links were by tight laser beam relayed through two private satellites in complementary geosynchronous orbits over the Pacific and Atlantic. Although encrypted, the line was not totally secure, a fact both men had electe
d to risk. “I got telemetry from the Snark. Gael and Falstaff made orbit.”
“That’s a relief,” Jay said.
“Do you know anything about damage to the residence?”
“My Quebec contacts have done a fly-over. They say that Toad Hall was cut to pieces, ransacked, burned right to the dirt. Torque’s agents are on the way, but our Quebec allies are holding them at bay. At our request, the media lid is clamped down.”
“Donald…We need to take this up later.” There was another pause, while Robertson looked off screen. “It looks like we have picked up some hostile traffic.” He turned to address Joe Dixon, the pilot. “Joe, do you see that?”
“Yes, sir. Two G-21 Sharks, probably from Elgin base. I am being directed to turn about or they will put us down without further ceremony. What’s our next move, Boss?”
“One minute…Donald?” Robertson’s tone was elaborately calm, “I assume you heard that. It appears that Torque is playing all his cards. Shall I call their bluff?”
“After what ‘someone’ just did to the Toad Hall, this is probably no bluff. We can’t afford to lose you or Joe, and you can’t fight this in the air. Stall. I’ll see what I can do. Out.”
Jay tapped the “pilot only” band on his screen. “Joe, I assume you heard the boss. We are to play along for now.”
The next transmission was from the cockpit in Joe Dixon’s laconic voice:
“One niner five. This is GFE zero seven niner three. We are changing course, following you to base. Do you copy? Over…”
On the Ship Citisle, Gulf of Mexico At the same moment
Donald Wu’s screen momentarily showed the aft view from Robertson’s Elf 4: a dawn sky streaked with three contrails. Then he saw a titanium wing flash dully in the wan winter sun, and the picture turned to confetti. Wu stood up disgustedly from the communications console and walked to the window. The sky over the Gulf was clear and intensely blue.
“Get me Washington, D. C., optimum secure line,” he said to a staff operator. “I want to talk to Hanford Grant.”
The Stranded Ones Page 13
