The Ransom of Black Stealth One

FIFTEEN

“Corbett? Doesn’t ring a bell,” said Corbett, certain that his denial was pointless but trying it for luck. He frowned at his video display, pretending that it held most of his attention as he continued to try access codes. He wore a tiny earpiece in his left ear with a microphone boom and a slender cable that snaked across to a radio unit on the console. A similar unit protruded from the console on the girl’s side. From time to time, he punched a different channel.

“Kyle Corbett,” said the girl, enunciating the “r” in a way her down-east accent normally did not. “I remember the alliteration, Corbett. If you don’t know your own name we’re really in trouble. Oh, you’re a lot older now—God, you must be a fossil, I couldn’t have been more than five or six at the time, but I remember you. Two helpings of eggs Benedict, heavy on the sauce; I resented you for that. Wouldn’t shoot off a bottle rocket for me, but you showed me how to do it. Did you know I got grounded for a week for setting a handful of those things off by myself after you left?”

He chewed his upper lip to stop the corner of his mouth from lifting as he recalled that carefree weekend. She’d been a tomboyish little fart, curious about everything. “Served you right. Whoever said a little learning is a dangerous thing was talking about kids,” he said, glancing back at the video. “Damn,” he whispered, clearing the keyboard again.

“You cut the phone wires to my apartment, Corbett,” she said matter-of-factly.

“To the whole house. Sue me.” He was now punching in new codes and booting the computer rapidly.

“The waiting line to sue you must stretch over the horizon by now,” she said, and paused. “The See’s candy, my nickname—you don’t forget much, do you?”

“Not where double-crossing is concerned. You’re proof of that.”

“But you don’t really want me hurt.”

Her voice held its cadence, but something was missing in its timbre: the aggressiveness, he decided. She wasn’t entirely certain, bluffing her way. He called it. “You’re not a little kid anymore,” he said, giving her the kind of look that earned him breathing room in a cantina.

She took her time responding, thinking it over, in a way that reminded him of Dar Weston. “Oh, I think you could kill somebody, Corbett. But you’re the only person Uncle Dar ever brought to Lyme. And he’s a great judge of character. He would never have chosen a friend who could kill an innocent hostage.”

“Thank you, Dr. Freud,” Corbett said, scanning the skies and fighting off a yawn. “Try this one: if it came to a choice between his country and his family, which one would he choose?”

No hesitation this time. “Country first, family second,” she said. “That’s been a sore point between him and my dad.”

Corbett’s glance was sudden, only long enough to assess that open, freckled face. She seemed to be holding nothing back, taking her world as her elders had described it. “Tell you what, Petra: hope and pray that you’re wrong. The only reason you’re here is that the feds just might not try to knock this thing down if Dar Weston’s niece is in it.” He tried to bite off a yawn but failed, checking his wristwatch, then selecting a map from the sheaf that fanned from a cloth pocket near his left thigh. “It was just your bad luck that Weston doesn’t have a daughter of his own.” He could see her face without a direct glance. It reflected no sudden concern or suspicion.

“Nothing lucky about it,” she said, surprising him as she grasped an edge of the nav chart to help unfold it. “He couldn’t do justice to kids and his career.”

“He told you that?”

“He’s said it to my mother often enough. I hear them, sometimes. I—that’s none of your business,” she ended brusquely.

Now he was studying the terrain, matching its features to the chart. As if to himself he said, “It was my business, once upon a time.”

That’s a hoot,” she said.

“When he’s half a world away from his family, Petra, even a man like Dar might need to talk to somebody. I knew everything about you long before I met you. And if Dar really thinks he’d sacrifice you to get this airplane back in pieces, I’m betting I know him better than he knows himself. Stuff like that is easy to say when your back’s not against the wall.”

“Paper empiricism,” she nodded sagely.

“Say what?”

“That’s why psychology isn’t a real science,” she recited briskly, as if removed somehow to a classroom in Providence. “A lot of researchers ask people what they’d do if, and take the paper answers as gospel. Paper empiricism; but Uncle Dar has always put his country first. That’s as close to a sure thing as you could hope for.”

He pointed toward the western horizon, where a contrail was slowly dissipating high in the stratosphere. Parallel to it, farther to the south, a steely glint no larger than a pinpoint steadily drew a hard white line across a turquoise background. They were obviously on a heading that would cross beneath it, but several minutes and many miles ahead. “There’s your lab hardware, Petra,” he said. They just may be setting up a graph and hoping we’re a point on it. Not likely those guys will see us, and they damned sure can’t pick us up on ordinary radar or IR sensors. But if they do spot us, we’ll sure find out which of us is right about Dar. Assuming the decision isn’t out of his hands, which it may well be.”

“Intervening variables,” Petra said, still following the progress of the turbojet across the heavens.

Corbett, exasperated, burst out, “Jesus Christ! Are you taking this seriously, kid? Your own life’s on the line; those jets up there could slice and dice us with an easy pass like a machete through a dandelion; and here you sit, lecturing me on scientific method. Jesus,” he said again, trying to regain his concentration on the chart.

The girl held her palms up, eyebrows elevated. “What the hell d’you want me to do, get out and push? I’m trying to keep from thinking about what happens if I’m right, and they catch us up here. There’s nothing I can do to save my own life, you old fossil! I would if I could.”

“Quit shouting in this fishbowl,” he commanded, all the more irritated because the girl was perfectly right. Better to have her chattering like a cageful of magpies about anything, hell, Paris fashions or rock music, than out of her mind with fear. And why hadn’t he thought of that himself? A night without sleep was one reason.

There’d been a time when he could party all night and then strap into an aircraft at dawn and, with a few minutes on 100 percent oxygen to blow out the cobwebs, do a morning of precision aerobatics without an instant of brain-fade. But on Black Stealth One, they’d never accepted the weight penalty of an OBOG, an onboard oxygen generator, so he could not even fly the hellbug at its own design ceiling. She’s right, I’m a fossil right out of a fucking museum, he admitted silently, and I’m not operating at a hundred percent. “One thing you can do is hold the chart steady, kid. Your fossil pilot needs to figure out where to park this thing for some fossil fuel.”

She steadied her wrist on the video cabinet.

“One thing you can do, too: stop calling me ‘kid.’ You know my name.”

He nodded, noting the slow unwinding of the altimeter that told him his thermal current had played out, wondering if the girl was beginning to exhibit the classic behavior patterns of many hostages. Sooner or later, with no power to affect the course of their lives, many would turn to their own captors for closeness, cooperating, even imagining for the moment that captor and captive were colleagues. Some more than others; some sooner, some later. And some, never. Petra Leigh did not seem like the kind of young woman who would succumb quickly to such a malady. Could be sandbagging me, he reminded himself.

But it might not matter if she were sandbagging, if she were also cooperating in the meantime. A little friendlier interaction on his part might pay off in the long run. He tapped the chart and, thinking about cooperation, said, “Here’s where we are, Petra, over North Carolina. Asheville is off to our right, near the horizon, and I don’t see any signs of more thermals. Now let’s hope I can get a restart.” With that, he refolded the chart and attended to his instruments.

“I hope you can’t,” she said. “Whoever you’re doing this for, I don’t want to meet them.”

The faint whisper of huge impeller blades wind-milling behind them became lost now in a sputtering hiss that reverberated in the cockpit, then steadied. He grinned, watching the tachometer, moving the throttle gently. “Saved us a bucket of avgas. That means we might really make it across the Gulf.”

“We’re going to Cuba,” she said accusingly.

“Well—my route depends on whether I can find the right access code in there,” he nodded at the video terminal. “Those guys in Cuba would nail us faster than our own people, if they spotted us.”

“Our own?”

“Shit; your own. One point for you, Petra; I’m too old for flags, and you may as well know it. Here, hand me that minitel,” he went on, pointing toward the tiny headset that hung from its Velcro loop near her radio.

She handed him the twin of the one he wore, different only in that the earpieces fitted opposite ears, and saw that he could operate two radio units simultaneously. “I don’t suppose you could find us some new-age music,” she said.

“Why, sure. Who gives a damn about checking the weather that could shred this thing like Kleenex? Or the guard channel that might be full of our descriptions.” His glance was jaundiced. “I told you to bring a book.”

“I did. You borrowed it.” No recriminations, just the facts.

Attending to the keyboard once again, he opened his mouth to swear, then glanced her way. “I don’t suppose you’re a computer whiz. I never was much good with ‘em,” he sighed.

“I’m not a real hacker, but I can find my way around a menu,” she admitted. “You sure aren’t breaking into anything that way. You are trying to break in.” It was not a question.

“A while back, you said you’d try to save your hide if you could. Well, maybe you can. I’m looking for a password, Petra. If I can find it, I should be able to paint this bird so that it can’t be seen— or recognized, at any rate.” He saw the look that passed across her face and showed his teeth in a broad grin. “Forget paint brushes or gallon cans of lacquer. You know who I am, it can’t hurt. Yeah, I helped design the hellbug and believe it or not, you can paint an airplane’s skin electronically. Can’t do that on something that flies at Mach two, but this slow bird has a plastic skin. The paint program is in that black box somewhere,” he added, flicking a finger against the monitor.

Her first response was to fold her arms, hunch her shoulders, and stare out of the canopy. Her lower lip, he decided, was fetchingly prominent though she probably had no idea how like a pouting child she looked with the sun highlighting the freckles that bridged her nose. Right; a hell of a cute little number who’s not through blossoming. And she’d wield the hammer at your crucifixion, he told himself. He gave her time, switching channels on the radios which only he could hear. He was picking up some commercial air and, of course, the vortac signals from navigation beacons which made his charts work so nicely.

What he was not picking up was any suggestion that the search had begun. It was downright eerie, until a suspicion struck him so hard he grunted. What if they’d known all along that he was still alive? Just what if this entire scam had been mounted, yes, with Medina in it too, so that good ol’ capable, dead Kyle Corbett would surface after all this time and fly Black Stealth One to Mexico, taking all the risks and maybe finding a shallow grave near Regocijo?

He knew the girl was speaking, but did not really hear her, so intent was he on this stunning surmise. He only shook his head, tapping the minitel at his right ear as if listening to some message. But they couldn’t have known I’d steal the hellbug and take the girl with me, Medina didn’t know that either. So the operation would already be balls-up and they’d be mounting a search anyway. They would have put in those long-distance fuel tanks before letting Medina contact me. And ol’ Speedy must be wondering, about now, if I’m really going to show at Regocijo, now that I have the hellbug instead of a rented car. He’ll be pissed that I didn’t warn him I’d take the hellbug, but he can’t admit to anyone that we’ve got plans of our own—if those anti-theft riot gas cartridges are really in the Regocijo hangar.

Medina had claimed those cartridges could fill an entire hangar with malonitrile gas, nasty stuff that could flatten a man for a half-hour. If so, the stuff should be able to zap a few guys who were too busy watching Medina crash to see a cloud of gas moving in on them from upwind. Corbett just hadn’t bothered mentioning that he would do it from the air. The hellbug made it perfect because one good man with a sidearm could take on the bad guys while they were down; and if the money were really there it should make a sizable bundle, easy to find and just as easy to fly off with.

The plan he’d worked out with Medina was, moreover, exactly the kind CIA would run from, no matter how much they wanted Corbett. That meant, in all probability, Medina was trustworthy. And besides, there was that final factor, the gut feeling. Speedy? Sell him out like that? He said aloud, “Naah. Crazy.”

Without looking at him she shot back, “Not from where I sit.”

“Not what from where you sit?”

“What I said.”

“I was busy.”

“You were talking to yourself,” she said, making a shallow vee with her mouth, the sort of deliberately false, prim smile that Andrea Leigh might have made. “I said, I want us to be seen, I just don’t want to get killed.”

He lifted his gaze and moved his head as if searching for a fly in the cockpit, and spoke as if to that fly. “Well isn’t that swell, isn’t that just cute as pie? She wants the candy, but not the zits.” Then, gazing full at the girl, he said, “Read my lips: if they see us, they’ll try to take us down.”

He saw her swallow hard, heard the uncertainty in her, “You don’t really think so.”

“I don’t think they’ll shoot us down, until they find out I can make this thing dance. I think they’ll try to force us down first; that’s what I’m counting on, it gives us more of a chance than if they just see us and jump our ass. You know how much this airchine weighs?” She was shaking her head as he bored in with, “Half a ton loaded—we’re sitting in cotton candy. You know how much a jet interceptor weighs? Twenty or thirty tons, and those titanium wings wouldn’t even know it if they snipped off a few feet of us. And they’ll fly ten times our top speed. Force equals mass times velocity squared, you’re a goddamn engineer, you figure it out.”

There were other ways they might use to force him down, ways more likely than the one he had shown her, but to guess them herself, Petra Leigh would have to know the flight envelopes of everything that flew. He saw her blinking and waited.

“On first approximation, I’d say we need five thousand times more inertia before we tangle ass with ‘em,” she said, trying her best to smile.

And when he began to laugh, great bellows that made his gut surge against the restraint strap, she laughed too. “Okay,” he said at last, wiping his eyes. “You’ll probably graduate. But barring all that magical inertia, if we get bounced, first of all you realize you’re going through the wildest carnival ride you ever saw or heard of, and if I’m as good as I used to be, you’ll be doing it for a long time because they aren’t gonna quit and I sure won’t. No king’s X, no time out to wipe your barf off your back. Second, Petra, I am not going to be taken alive; accept that as an axiom. They don’t want it much, and neither do I.”

She seemed to be puzzling over something and finally said, with a grimace, “Barf off my back?’

“Negative g forces can slosh it around. Trust me.”

“Trust you,” she said, eyes half closed with comical mistrust. “And what else will this paint job do for you?”

“Uh—hell, what else you want? All it does is make it hard to spot us, ki—Petra. It’s not an offensive weapon, if that’s what you mean. This thing doesn’t have a popgun on it.”

“But you do.”

“That’s exactly what I do have. Lot of help that’s gonna be in aerial combat, I can tell you.”

“All right,” she said at last, “I’ll try. And if I try, I want a promise from you. Not if I succeed; if I try.” He was careful to avoid showing any response until she shrugged and went on: “You let me go before you land this thing at wherever you’re taking it.”

He turned the video monitor’s swivel so that monitor and keyboard were accessible to them both. “Fair enough. You won’t believe this, but I never intended to hand you over to anybody. That wasn’t part of the plan,” he said. “But of course you don’t believe that, I’m just a, a—” His hand churned the air for inspiration.

“Terrorist,” she supplied.

“What?”

“Well—kidnapper. Scuzzball, spy, traitor, crotchsniff, thief, asshole, con man—”

“Enough, already!”

“Cradle-robber, dirty old man.” She uttered the last without evident malice, merely two more phrases that she was donating as she became interested in the keyboard.

“I think I may have enough to hold me awhile,” he said, faintly outraged. “Crotchsniff? Asshole? You’re an engineer, all right. You talk like a grad student.”

“I haven’t neglected the liberal arts,” she made her false, shallow-vee smile for him again. “Look, I understand you’re free to break a promise. But I’m not. Whatever you do with me, you’ll have to live with that.”

” ‘Guilt is the mother of insomnia,’ is how Dar used to put it,” he said. “I sleep like a log; trust me.”

“Yeah, you said that before. Just don’t imagine for a minute that I won’t love it when Uncle Dar gets his hands on you, Corbett. Because I think he will, one way or another, and if there’s anything left afterward maybe he’ll turn the pieces over to my dad.”

Corbett saw the flash in those eyes, and knew that every word had been plain truth as she knew it. Which meant that she was still living someone else’s lie; perhaps would continue to live it forever. It was not Kyle Corbett’s place to tell her, now or ever, that she was not the niece of Dar Weston.

She was Weston’s only child.