The Ransom of Black Stealth One

THIRTY-FOUR

After Corbett returned afoot, complaining of sore feet, they had feasted under starlight, belching Coca Cola fumes tinged with cheese. Now they lay on the pallets she had placed together under a wing of Black Stealth One, feeling residual warmth of the dome on their backs through the thin blankets. “You know,” she said dreamily, “even if I told the truth about this experience, my family would absolutely not believe it. My uncle, maybe; probably not even him.”

Corbett yawned and put his hands under his head, feeling her arm against his, comfortable with it. “Why not?” You’re just putting off what you have to tell her. But you’re assuming she wants to keep going and she just might have had an attack of good sense after today…

“They wouldn’t be able to reconcile it with what they think I am.”

He asked it in all seriousness: “And what are you?”

“Oh—I want it all. Pleasure without consequences, I guess. And don’t think you can’t, if you’re little and cute, and never forget anything or admit anything.”

“Sounds like a real sandbagging little shit. I hope I never meet you,” he chuckled.

“You already have,” she said darkly, “but I’ll turn your question back to you. What are you, Kyle? All I know about you are the most important things.”

He sighed and shifted position. “I won’t give you that crap about there not being much to tell. Let’s see: I grew up in Manhattan Beach, California; surfed a lot, got into things that fly because my dad was an engineer with North American—Rockwell, to you. He helped me make boomerangs, kites, gliders, all that stuff. I got through high school without cracking a book but nobody told me how bone lazy I was until I damned near washed out of cadet training.”

“Gee, I always enjoyed studying,” she said, turning over, her face so near that he could feel the warmth of her breath.

“Yeah, but you’re a natural nerd.”

“You know what a nerd is,” she said, “a nerd is the guy you make fun of all the way through college, and he owns your whole town when he’s thirty-five.”

“There’s something in that,” he laughed. “But all I ever wanted to own was the sky. Did a tour of duty in F-104’s, took a bunch of engineering courses because I wanted to build better airplanes, married a girl who thought I was going to be a nice, steady, rich airline pilot.”

“Lord, I know better than that already. Why would she get that idea?”

“Because I told her so,” he shrugged. “But I was wrong. I got a chance at something really wild and woolly to fly so I stayed in, and that’s when she started packing. Then in ‘sixty-five I climbed into a Blackbird, an SR-71, at Beale Air Force Base.” He sighed. “That’s where all the engineering paid off; I figured it would. Boy, that thing is—well, the only thing I’d rather have is parked right here. It’s a different kind of freedom. Found out, a year later, that I could resign from the service and still fly a Blackbird. Of course, I flew ‘em for CIA, but I had some freedom too. Stationed in a place called Tak Le in Thailand, sometimes flying out of Kadena in Okinawa. I met Dar Weston over there; flew recon during the Tet Offensive in ‘sixty-eight in another kind of plane, a Lockheed Quietship. The Q-ship could be hairy as a bear. The hellbug is kind of like a Q-ship gone to heaven.

“Eventually I picked up a fungus over there, practically grew moss in my ear. Inner ear infection can put you right out of the flying business. But Dar pulled a string or two for me with another spook agency: NSA. I thought it was just a fill-in job, until I realized I might be building things that fly. With some, uh, occasional test flights, I was pretty happy there until one weekend when I went on a fishing trip with an old buddy. And you know how that turned out. I can’t tell you what I’ve done since then. Mostly soak up desert sun,” he said. He had said “Nevada” to her once; twice would be overkill.

For a moment, from her regular breathing, he thought that she had fallen asleep. But, “What was she like?” Petra asked suddenly.

Somehow he knew instantly, as a gazelle knows in open country, that he was being stalked. To his own surprise, he enjoyed it, perhaps because Petra Leigh did a very nice job of stalking. Or maybe just because she was such a spectacular little stalker. “My wife, you mean.”

“No, your ear infection; yes, your wife,” she said, the tone making her sarcasm unmistakable.

He knew that she would resent him if he laughed. “Blond, tall as I am in heels,” he said, “and dynamite in a garter belt.”

“Stop it,” she said, low in her throat. “Not how she looked; what was she like?”

“That’s what she was like,” he said, “image was everything for Peggy. What she could see reflected in other people’s eyes was all that counted.”

Petra surprised him again with her giggle. “I thought she’d be smart, but I’m losing interest already.”

“She was valedictorian at Torrance,” he objected.

“Sure, if that was all that counted for her at the time. At Brown we call it ‘barfback’; she can feed back what she’s been given. Trained memory but retarded at the analytical level. I’ll bet you a really good kiss I can tell you something about her that you haven’t mentioned.”

“You’re on,” he said without thinking.

“She never, ever once did anything inventive or original,” she said. “And she probably never will.”

He fell silent a moment, then began to laugh. “That’s right.”

“Well, didn’t that bother you?”

Her tone became more urgent, almost pleading. “Didn’t you ever wish she’d come up with something new, something uncanny and maybe useful?”

“I may have,” he said. Yes. Sure, a hundred times, but then she wouldn’t have been Peggy. “It was a long time ago, Petra. She could be a gray-haired old woman by now.”

“Barfbacks are born old,” she said.

Rolling onto his side toward her, his head propped on one hand, he said, “Sounds like you’ve given it a lot of thought.”

“You bet I have. And it may be too soon to tell, but I’m developing some very definite ideas about you.”

He reached a hand out, felt the softness of her hair, caressed it down to her chin and left it there. “I know that, Petra; I’m not a completely insensitive clod. But you’re probably wrong about me, and there’s something I must…”

“Why don’t you just shut up and kiss me as if you meant it, and let me decide whether I’m right or wrong,” she urged, turning toward him.

He found her mouth with his own, gently, and tasted Classic Coke and felt the firm softness of her lips, parted in acceptance and, gradually, with increasing desire. Then her hand was in his hair in a gentle caress, more sensual than insistent, and now he tasted only her femaleness, and they moved together until she was lying supine, her breasts swelling wonderfully beneath his arm, his tongue evidently with a mind of its own, she accepting that too and responding in kind, and her breath filled his lungs, an almost-forgotten sense of sharing for him. He lifted his head then, knowing she must feel his erection growing against her hip, and rolled away with a manful attempt to quell his impulses.

She moved again to face him and uttered a sigh that was almost a moan. “Marvelous,” she whispered, her fingers blindly tracing down his arm. “For such a muscular devil you can be awfully tender, Kyle.”

He had his breathing under control, enough to say, “To think I’ve been calling you ‘kid.’”

A giggle. “We’re even, then; I started out thinking of you as a hardened old bastard.” She eased an arm around his chest and placed her face in the hollow of his throat and then murmured, “Well, listen, old bastard, we were both wrong.”

He put a hand up to her hair, stroking lightly, turning to kiss her forehead, and then she lifted her face and initiated a kiss that began in tenderness but soon became a long, lingering wonderment for him as he flung his caution aside, his tongue tracing her lips, kissing her throat as she held his head cradled in her arms.

And when he lifted his head again, she was unbuttoning her blouse for him, and for herself. “Must I tell you ‘yes,’ Kyle? This is why yesses were invented.”

“No,” he said, suddenly, almost truculently, sitting up, leaning forearms on knees, staring into the starlit sky. “This is fucking crazy,” he muttered.

“Sounds good to me,” she teased, sitting up too, her chin on her knees.

“Stop it,” he growled, and faced her. “Listen, you: I didn’t think a woman could bother me, let alone get me questioning my own motives, anymore. I like you, Petra, a hell of a lot, but—”

“I could get to be almost lovable,” she murmured.

He laughed helplessly, and snapped his fingers. “Like that,” he agreed. “That’s why I won’t make love to you for the wrong reason. You said vengeance was my worst quality, and you were right.”

“Ah,” she said, and fell silent. After a long pause she said, “And you’ve only been making me fall in love with you for revenge. On my uncle,” she accused.

He raised his hands and shook them. “Don’t— make it sound like I’ve done it on purpose. But revenge is the last passion remaining to old men, and it has crossed my mind that nothing could possibly even my score with that uncle of yours more than for him to know I raped you before I let you go.”

“I can think of something worse,” she said. “If I told him I raped you! Wouldn’t be far off the mark, either.”

He began to chuckle, his shoulders shaking with it. Then, “God, it’s ingenious. You’d do that?”

“No. I could say ‘yes’ if all I wanted was to get laid tonight, but, Kyle, I think we feel the same. I’m not certain I could fall in love with anyone on such short acquaintance, but I like you, I really, really do,” she said, massaging his upper arm with gentle fingers. “I know you’re twice my age, I know when I’m forty you’ll be Methuselah. But that’s a long time from now. Maybe I wouldn’t care then, either.”

He did not move away from her fingers because, simply, it felt so damned good. “Born thirty years too soon! I need reading glasses already, and I can’t see in the dark anymore,” he grouched. “But it’s more than that. There’s a thing that often happens to people after they’re captured, taken over. They flip their allegiances inside out, find a kind of glamor in giving themselves to their captors. A week from now, you’ll be realizing this self-control on my part is the only unselfish thing I’ve—”

“Unselfish. I’m glad you told me that,” she said with tenderness he could not fathom. “Do you truly imagine that I’m another Patty Hearst?”

“I doubt it, but I don’t know. She went for the outlaw glamor.”

He could not tell whether anger or determination was foremost in her reply. “It would take me a lot longer than a couple of days to snap like that, mister. As for glamor—have you taken a look at yourself lately? You’re overweight, your whiskers are sandpapering my goddamn sunburn, and you smell like gasoline! I hate to burst your bubble, Kyle, but I’m not just gaga over your glamor.”

After a moment she said, more gently, “On the other hand, this incredible airplane is glamor. But I don’t feel like making love to it. By and large, glamor sucks.”

He grunted softly; she was massaging his shoulders now from behind, her feet touching his thighs, her position more companionable than sexual. “But for Black Stealth One, you’ll make an exception,” he said.

“Sure. If you have any glamor, Kyle, any social status in my eyes, it’s in this airplane and what you did to get it. Not so much because you have it; but because you helped create it. Any muttonhead with money can have a nice house or car or airplane, but how many can build one?”

He sighed in contentment, leaning back, letting her rest her chin on his shoulder. I’ve been waiting all my life for a woman who understood that, but I didn’t know it until this moment. And if I don’t tell her the bad news now, I might weaken. “Petra, you’ll have a lot of time to consider what we’ve said before you hear from me again. I can’t take you any farther now.”

Quickly, as if she’d been expecting something of the sort: “Don’t say that.”

“It’s said, all the same. I just can’t do it.”

“Of course you can; you mean you don’t want to.”

He could feel the tension in her body and knew that she still hoped, with all the naiveté of youth, to somehow argue her way through. “Have it your way, then,” he said, implacable. “I don’t want to, and I damned well don’t intend to, least of all now that I care what happens to you. Period, end of argument.”

“But you promised—”

“Consider it broken. I’d break any promise rather than put you at risks you have no conception of. You wouldn’t be a help, you’d probably get me killed, and I can’t tell you why. I’m going alone tomorrow. Period.”

She sat up straight and breathed very slowly and deeply, several times, before sliding her arms around his chest from behind him, her chin snug against his cheek. “But I will hear from you again. I’ll hold you to that,” she murmured.

“If I’m still in one piece,” he said gruffly. “If you don’t hear from me in, oh, say when the leaves turn this fall, you can figure you’re not going to.”

She shivered against him, despite the warm breeze. “Could we just hold one another?”

He turned, straightened his pallet, then lay with her, fingers linked, faces nearly touching. “I should go at first light,” he said, very softly.

“God, I’m going to miss you,” she whispered. “I think we’d be good for each other. And if it turned out otherwise—call it a no-fault love affair.”

“Don’t say that”—he chuckled—“until you know what kind of lover I am.”

“I was working on it. I—I guess I knew you’d leave me tomorrow.” And with a simple earnestness that held no sexuality she added, “I just wanted you to leave knowing I’m really a terrific lay, Kyle.”

“I suppose I’m so-so,” he rumbled grudgingly.

“I’ve felt your so-so,” she said, giggling again, and touched her forehead to his, and then she snuggled down against him, her hands cupped together as if she were protecting something of great value, and slept, bathing his face in the candid scents of woman. For a time, he entertained an idea he would have thought laughable only days before. It was, he knew, unworkable. He had committed himself to his original plan, and if Medina was still willing when they met at Regocijo, they would use both aircraft to complete that plan.

Content in his ignorance of the Regocijo disaster, Kyle Corbett kissed his captive gently, and then he slept.