The Ransom of Black Stealth One

TWENTY-EIGHT

Oar Weston found himself shaking as he watched the radar operator, who seemed continually unsatisfied with the yellowish clutter on his scope inside the droning old Neptune. Probably that strong coffee, he told himself, thankful that the borrowed flight suit over his civvies made him too bulky for those shakes to be obvious to the radar operator beside him. Across the narrow aisle from them were the duty stations for the radioman and Ben Ullmer. The electronic consoles inside the craft appeared to be the latest equipment, though the interior smells were strictly World War II.

Ullmer’s flight suit enveloped him comically but there was nothing funny about the chill inside the aircraft. Ullmer blew on his fingers, refusing his gloves because they impeded his use of his own console with its special frequencies.

Dar felt a tug on his sleeve and saw Ullmer motioning toward his headset, which boasted ovoids the size of earmuffs. To be heard over the steady roar of the Wright Cyclone radials, which made the entire airframe buzz with vibration, Ullmer raised his voice. “Elmira on the horn.”

Dar snugged his earpieces tighter. It was Unruh, calling on their special mission frequency. When Dar and Ullmer had both responded, Unruh proceeded, sounding as brisk and fresh as if he had stolen a full night’s sleep though Dar knew better. “FBI just called in from a general store near Lake City, Florida. They’ve got a body and a drunk, and evidence that Black Stealth One was sitting in a garden plot exactly as that F-5 pilot reported, even though the pilot retracted his claim when he came down for a low pass a minute later. It was there, all right, he just couldn’t see it anymore. Indentations of landing casters, and positive makes on prints of both the perpetrator and the hostage inside the store. Those guys are working fast, and—”

“Whose body?” Dar rapped out, his entire body suddenly cold with apprehension.

“Forgive me, Hornet.” Unruh’s voice said he had just realized his gaffe. “White male adult, name Lyndon Baines Beacham. His friend the drunk wasn’t too drunk to reach a telephone operator, but they say he is now; he’s the store owner, name Bobby Clegg. According to him, a regular gorilla of a man tore a door down and shot Beacham dead. Feebs won’t be sure of the details until Bobby sobers up, so they’re shooting him full of B vitamins. Bobby’s idea seems to be that Corbett shot Beacham and tied Bobby up. But the Feebs say Beacham and Clegg were engaged in certain felonious activities. Beacham died of gunshot wounds at close range, probably over twelve hours ago.”

“So Corbett stayed there all night?” Dar clamped down on his visions of Petra in the hands of a vengeful murderer, at night in an isolated store.

“From the F-5 pilot’s sighting, he must have, Hornet. We show an envelope here that could put him below Tampa, possibly nearing the Everglades by now. Isn’t that roughly your position?”

“That’s a roger,” said Ullmer, “crossing from Vero Beach to Sarasota at twenty-three thousand feet. Our other X-Band aircraft is patrolling the Gulf between Tampa and Tallahassee, as, uh, Killer Bee wanted,” he added, invoking Sheppard’s code name. “We’ll orbit farther south until we’re over the Keys, and hope Corbett won’t be able to sneak through all the pickets we have flying around there now.”

“Stand by,” Unruh said. After a moment he went on: “Killer Bee wants to know how the aircraft got from West Virginia to Lake City without refueling.”

“Probably did refuel somewhere,” Ullmer replied.

Dar: “See if you can get an open line so you can tape the drunk—Bobby?—when the Feebs interrogate him again. You never know what you might hear. Pentothal might help.”

“Roger, Hornet. Don’t get your hopes up, the word on Bobby is that if IQ were octane, he couldn’t run a lawnmower.”

“Do what you can; I have all confidence in you,”

Dar replied, noticing the radioman’s bid for attention. “Stand by.”

The radioman’s signal, crossing two fingers followed by those fingers upraised and separated, meant an incoming call from their sister aircraft, dubbed “Cyclops Two” for the mission. With only one set of the special NSA frequency hardware in Ullmer’s possession for Cyclops One, they had decided to use standard frequencies between the two aircraft, although Dar and Ben Ullmer could also talk directly to Elmira.

Ullmer switched, and Dar heard the Neptune pilot acknowledge its sister ship to the northwest. “Go ahead, Cyclops Two,” Ullmer said tightly.

“We have a blip proceeding due west at eighty-four degrees fifty minutes by twenty-nine degrees twenty minutes,” said the pilot in carefully noncommittal tones, “but no visual sighting. And we should have one unless it’s invisible. Our magician says it’s a big blip, but not a dense one.”

“Try to duck into clouds if you have any,” said Ullmer. “He may know how to lock his IR scanner onto you, but that should unlock him.”

“Negative, Cyclops One, it’s CAVU here but there’s a mass of low stuff to the west. I’ll nip over there without making any sharp course corrections and make a return run.”

“How fast is your blip?” Ullmer asked.

“Hundred knots or so. Too big to be invisible to the eye, but it is.”

“Stand by,” said Ullmer, and looked toward Dar. “Why would he come this far south and then turn toward New Orleans?” he asked.

“Maybe all the sorties have done it,” Dar said, groping, “or maybe that F-5 changed his mind. Maybe he’s low on fuel.”

Ullmer switched channels. “Elmira, do the Feebs at that store know whether Corbett was able to refuel?”

“Damn, I should’ve asked,” said Terry Unruh. “I’ve got an open line; wait one.”

Dar, to Ullmer: “Aircraft fuel at a grocery store?”

Ullmer: “Just covering all the bases.”

Unruh came back on-line with, “They sell gas there. He might have refueled, if he could use ordinary gas.”

“Fucking Corbett,” Ullmer snarled. “I’ll bet you my gout pills he’s carrying additives; it’s what I’d do. Have ‘em check the pump for prints, and get back to—”

“Excuse me, Wasp,” said Unruh. “FBI chopper has spotted a metal gas can in a field less than a mile from the store. They’ll check that out, too.”

“Let us know,” said Ullmer. “Wasp out.” He switched channels again. “Cyclops One to Cyclops Two, we have reason to believe the aircraft may be fully fueled, so there’s less reason to think your blip is the one we’re after. If you can—”

“Cyclops Two to Cyclops One, I have our ghost blip on visual,” said the voice, no longer dry or bored. “And he’s for real. Dropping toward low cloud cover but it’s a flying wing, all right. Short fuselage bulge, big intake scoops, paint job like ocean waves. That’s really something for the books; he’s still hard to see.”

Dar and Ben Ullmer shared a half-second stare. “Turn this thing around,” Dar shouted, letting protocol go to hell, and snatched at the wrinkled chart that lay clipped to a writing surface near him.

“That’s him,” said Ullmer into his microphone. “You know what to do, Cyclops Two. But listen: don’t drop your live rounds until you’ve tried to snare him with the others. You know you’ve got a hostage there.”

“Wilco, Cyclops One, banking now for a run. He’s trying to get under cloud cover but he hasn’t made a course deviation since we picked him up. We’ll try to snag him.”

“They could wait for us,” Dar said, his face tortured.

“No they can’t,” Ben Ullmer replied, suddenly looking very old, “and we both know it.”

The lurch of the big Neptune as it banked was a heavy drag at Dar’s shoulders. “Ben, put the word out,” he said. “We’ll want all those picket aircraft pulled back toward Tallahassee.”

“I’m going to alert Air-Sea Rescue too,” said Ullmer. “The hellbug should float like a cork, Dar. There’s still hope for the girl.”

Ullmer was redirecting the aerial armada off the tip of Florida when the radioman, monitoring the standard frequencies, called it out for all to hear: “Commander Openshaw in Cyclops Two reports munitions away!”