The Ransom of Black Stealth One

EIGHT

It had been a bitch of a week for Medina, a bitch for two months in fact, what with the trouble he’d had finding a hangar for the Imp’s final assembly, not to mention trailering the goddamn thing at night. And a few blisters on his eardrums from Ben Ullmer when test patches of the hellbug’s wing sealant showed serious “accidental” contamination, as Medina knew they would. It had set back the wet-wing mod for Black Stealth One at least ten days.

Medina had earmarked this Friday evening for a scouring of the garage, removing all traces of the project he’d begun with Corbett so long ago. He wondered, while stoking his fireplace with precious drawings, if someone was noting the smoke. Well, better for them to wonder than to know. If they did find out, they might not care much. Or they might blacklist him, or worse. They already had him on a tether with this fucking fake class ring, a real Captain Midnight gizmo that could record both ends of a phone call as long as he held the receiver right. He’d already used it twice for the Bulgarian connection, which seemed to be coming down as planned. The recorder’s limitation was the tiny battery, they said, which was why he had to turn the bezel as an “on-off” switch. And if they were lying about that, if it was on all the time—but probably they weren’t. Raoul Medina knew his energy cells as well as the next techie.

In fact, Medina grew more antsy as this operation progressed because knowing he was one of the few technical types who had worked for CIA and NSA, they had to know he could put two and two together. And because it kept adding up to exactly four, he was starting to wonder if he was missing something. He’d been over the scenario until it was leaking out his ears. The first part, flying Black Stealth One to a site in New Mexico and then continuing to Regocijo in a Cessna, hardly seemed worth worrying about. Or so CIA had implied, which made Medina think hard about it, though, try as he might, he could find no flaw.

CIA’s worry was with the final exchange site, a useless stretch of coastal scrub called Llano Mojado. CIA had taken one good look at that site and said, flatly, they could not protect him there in a face-to-face against an unknown force of Russians without a full military squad, which would certainly have queered the exchange.

The alternative, they said, was simple: he must not show up for the money. He must make a low pass to demonstrate that heat-sensitive paint job; screw up his mixture control to make a convincing show of an emergency; and then sweep out beyond the scrub to crash, a thousand yards offshore. Ullmer had agreed: even in pieces, Blue Sky Three would not sink and the water was shallow enough for free diving. The recovery team could gather up the wreckage and would simply have to wonder whether sharks had got Medina’s body, if indeed they cared much when they still had their money and enough of the aircraft to gladden Muscovite hearts.

Medina’s tough moment would come when trying to stall the bird into a breeze so it would pancake nicely. After that he would go over the side with that nifty compact SCUBA rig before anyone got close enough to see him do it. His own recovery team would be a pair of Mexican deniables, waiting a few miles up the coast.

On the face of it, CIA seemed to be saying Medina was worth more than the money. Medina had said “yes” to that face—and then found himself saying “yes, but” to himself. Ullmer had bought it. Sheppard had bought it. Neither of them had ever been CIA, themselves. Perhaps it was simply that, deep down, Raoul Medina knew you could never tell what those bastards really wanted until after they got it.

And still no reply to that ad, two weeks after the new issue of Sport Aviation showed up in his mailbox. Maybe there wouldn’t be any. One thing for damn sure, he would never again deliberately botch a piece of work in the Snake Pit. Sure, that junketeering high-level spook Weston from Langley made him nervous, but it went deeper than that. Funny how a man’s cojones could measure how deep he was in shit. Arlene had jumped to the predictable, and wrong, conclusions. He was tired of her; he had another girl; he was scared that George would find out. And calming her fears only added to his shitload.

His trip to Mexico in Blue Sky Three had been his only real enjoyment since April, and he still smiled to recall the expressions on faces when he taxied the bird after dark into Air Force hangars alerted for him. At Scott, east of St. Louis, they’d seemed almost afraid of him; no questions, not even good honest curious stares. At Laughlin, near Del Rio, the two maintenance officers had been just the opposite, plying him with sourmash at the OC, trying to steer his war stories toward that repainted velvet-black two-seater they’d locked up in an alert hangar. He stuck to his cover story—that he was testing the craft for drug interdiction along the border—and eased off after three drinks. It was roughly an even bet, those two spiffy blue-suiters were CIA, DIA, or some other bit of spookdom’s alphabet soup, testing him in Air Force uniforms.

That last leg had been the real bastard, ghosting across Mexico to Culiacan over country that looked as hospitable as broken glass. In a U-2, a man could glide hundreds of miles on a dead engine from 80,000 feet. His bird couldn’t get above the weather, and it was dead slow, and if he’d had to land short of his goal his orders had been to destroy it. Weston, his case officer, had used some doubletalk phrase about the climate of accommodation with Mexico at present. What it boiled down to was that the Mexicans were pissed about something else and would just love to catch an NSA spookship in an overflight. That meant the Mex government still didn’t know about the Regocijo strip, either. And Julio, the old caretaker at the reactivated strip, had seemed every inch a Mexican national, but Dar Weston had said he was a Company man. One more wedge between the two countries, if it became known.

When the kitchen phone shrilled, he jumped six inches, then decided it was probably Arlene. He was wrong.

The connection was lousy, but from the first few words he knew who it was. And he wasn’t entirely sure his phone was secure.

“Medina here,” he said.

From far away, years away: “Get me Speedy Gonzales,” in that unforgettable dry, gruff whiskey baritone. Absolutely no doubt about it. Corbett, and only Corbett, had dared call him that at the Snake Pit because the insult underlined the antagonism they wanted to maintain in public. Kyle Corbett, HolyMarymotherofGod …

Medina switched hands, shoving the one with the ring into a hip pocket. ” ‘E’s not ‘ere, seńor, I theenk.” Not for any other man on earth had Raoul Medina ever played the pocho fool this way, but it was as if he’d opened an old book, fondly remembered, a book from whose faded pages he could still quote at length.

“You write a cute ad, Speedy. Talk to me.”

“Just trying to sell a homebuilt,” Medina said. “Call you back from a pay phone.” If they were listening, he could show them the Imp; admit a little, hide a lot.

The silence was not true silence, but tiny squeals and white noise for a five-second eternity, the kind of delay a dead man might employ while deciding whether he trusted this spirit medium named Medina. Then, “You’ll need a shitload of quarters. And if you can’t call in fifteen minutes, don’t bother.”

“You wasteeng time,” Medina said in his singsong fool voice. He took down the numbers, a string beginning with “011-52-491,” and then another string. Not CONUS, continental U.S., for sure. Then, his voice husky, Medina said, “I knew it, I fucking knew it!” But he was talking into a dead phone.

Three miles away and thirteen minutes later, Medina ducked out of the Mart into the twilight with four rolls of quarters and sprinted for the phones that nested against the Mart’s outside wall inside tiny shrines to Mammon. He knew he was cutting it close and a gangling youth with the complexion of a pizza slouched next to one phone, oblivious of the swarthy man who slammed a quarter into the other machine.

Nothing; out of service. “God DAMN,” said Medina, and jerked the boy upright. “Life or death, young man. Hang up. Please!” He knew it didn’t sound much like “please,” it sounded more like “or else.”

The boy wrenched himself loose, looking down at this slit-eyed latino, donning a mask of youthful outrage. “What the fuck, man; what the fuck,” he said, and turned away to resume talking.

The youth felt himself spun completely around, dropping the receiver, this time registering true shock at this sudden attack on a Friday evening by a madman in public. Medina cradled the boy’s throat with his left hand, his right fist drawn back.

“This,” he said, letting his fist vibrate, “or this.” And he offered the roll of quarters. The boy blinked twice. Ten seconds later Medina was alone, stammering to the operator because his alloted fifteen minutes were up. And even after he got the international operator it took him twenty-six bongs, at three seconds per bong, to feed the damned machine.

But when he heard the connection go through, there was hardly any buzz at all. “Digame, seńor,” said the voice he had already despaired of hearing again.

“JesusMary, I had to mug a fucking kid for this phone,” Medina said shakily. “Sounds like amateur night, wherever you are.”

“Cantina. Speedy, just one thing. If somebody’s running you, remember: I won’t get mad. You do remember?”

“Fuck you, Mr. Depew,” Medina replied, letting the flash of anger steady him. “I’m not calling for anybody, but I feel a cold breeze blowing up my personal tailpipe. Something’s coming down, and I checked out Mr. Depew’s box a long time ago so I figured you might still be suckin’ wind, and I don’t know who else to turn to.”

Laughter from Kyle Corbett, from the far distance and the distant past. “You seem to have something for sale. Something humongous.”

Black Stealth One had spawned several pet names among the men who had designed and built her. Between Medina and Corbett, the word was “humongous” because of its great wingspan. Since both men were NSA, they knew that the agency’s equipment was incredibly sophisticated and had been for years. Voice-coded, word identifier machines could monitor hundreds of thousands of telephone lines at once, especially those that used international trunk lines. A word like “stealth,” or “CIA,” or even “hellbug” could flag a conversation for recording—even tagging the locations of both phones. With this shared knowledge, they resorted to their own jargon. “The sale isn’t kosher, but the bird is flying, and, man, it does everything we hoped.”

Corbett: “You don’t mean the Imp?”

Medina: “Oh hell, no. That’s all assembled. Main ingredient of my own, uh, Depew kit, if I can ever get it flight-tested. I’m talking humongous, man. We made the target weight, it’s stable as a table, and I’m the only one checked out to test it. But somehow, word has got out, and there’s a buyer.”

“Who’s the buyer?”

“Nice people; they make flashlights that backfire.” The NATO designations for Soviet aircraft included the MiG “Flashlight” and the “Backfire” bomber.

“If you think I’d help you sell, you can get stuffed.”

“Not me, JesusChristno! It’s from the very top, a scam to sell, uh, Number Three, and pass it off as humongous.”

Another laugh, full-gutted and now more relaxed. “Sounds cute to me. Might even work.”

“Yeah? Listen, it’s already working for somebody, but I’m not sure it’s us. The drill is for me to ferry Number Three and hide it near, uh, let’s say Mazatlan. Then snatch our humongous bird when its wings are wet and while everybody in the country goes nuts to make it look good, I stash humongous in New Mexico, fly down and pick up the fake, and then—you’ll love this—ditch the fake offshore where they can see it and pick up the pieces. That way I don’t have to face ‘em, but I have a long swim. And I leave without even getting to see what five million worth of Swiss tickets looks like.”

“Mazatlan, you said?” Corbett’s tone was not pleasant.

“Please deposit five dollars and twenty-five cents for the next three minutes,” said a disinterested female voice.

Medina told her to count the bongs and fed the quarters in. Then he spelled out “Regocijo” using the standard phonetic alphabet, “Romeo-Echo-Golf-Oscar-Charlie-India-Juliet-Oscar” because he could think of no other way to do it. “It doesn’t smell right. It’s not our turf.”

“Plus, you could get popped, Speedy.”

“That’s crossed my mind,” Medina admitted.

“What do you want from me, a backup?”

“Honest to God, I’m not sure what I want, or what you can give. Just advice, maybe.”

“I’ll tell you what doesn’t smell right. It’s too neat a coincidence, making the switch so near where I am already. And I don’t believe in coincidence. What I do believe in is my hide. And I’m wondering whether somebody’s running you without your knowledge, to get to me. Maybe they don’t intend you to ferry Number Three down here.”

“Wrong. I’ve already done it.”

“No shit! Well, you can’t blame me for a few suspicions,” Corbett grumbled. “Right now I’m thinking the high-techs who could be listening in will already have figured out exactly where I am, but this isn’t their turf and I’ll be long gone before they could get here, so I’ll tell you. I’m in Aguascalientes. See why I might worry about the coincidence? But if you’ve already stashed one bird, all I’d have to do is verify that. Maybe take it myself,” he chuckled.

“I wouldn’t. Old guy named Julio might just put some holes in you. And I’d kiss him for it. That’s all I need, you fucking me over from that end and heavy brass from our old employer trying to run me from this end.”

Medina wondered at the pause, because it was a long one. Then Corbett said, “Our previous employer, you mean?”

“You got it. They’re coordinating this. Hell, my briefings are with a guy who’d probably love to know you’re still mean as ever. Initials Delta Whiskey; is that enough?”

“Enough. I wish you could tell him, Speedy, but you can’t. Guys like him absolutely cannot afford to take chances on guys like me. Neither can you, but it sounds like you’re hung out to dry already.”

“Feels that way, too. By the way, why did you fake that accident?”

“You mean, was I turned or just greedy? Neither. Maybe we can puzzle it out one day. Not now. Right now I need to get a feel for timing. When are you slated to start the real shitstorm blowing?”

“About a week, ten days. I’m already dealing with the buyers—and as soon as we wet down the humongous wings, I’m supposed to haul ass. That’s the holdup, and I can’t delay it.” He wanted to say, My God, I’ve already done sabotage on Black Stealth One to buy this much time, what do you want from me. But if they were being monitored, that admission would have bought him twenty years in the slammer.

As if they were telepathically linked: “We’ve talked long enough,” said Corbett, “but I have to know more, with exact map coordinates. I want you to call me in an hour from somewhere else. I won’t be here but I’ve already got my alternate number. Only the last five digits are different. Got it?”

“On an open line? I’m not sure you should—”

“Just listen,” said Corbett, maddeningly calm. “We take the last digit of Mr. Depew’s old address number, if you remember it.”

That post office box! “Ri-i-ight,” said Medina, grinning in spite of himself. The number had been “six.”

“I’m gonna give you some simple arithmetic using that last digit as a baseline. First number: subtract one. Second number: add three. What the hell are you laughing at?”

“This is so goddamn amateurish, man,” Medina cackled, “I swear it’s almost fun.”

“Hold that thought,” growled the dead man in Aguascalientes, and continued before the operator could cut them off. When the lank youth returned with a carload of friends a few minutes later, they found the telephone abandoned.

Medina had to write a check and talk like hell, but an hour later his jacket swayed with its load of quarters as he bought a ticket to see the only local movie that wasn’t besieged by Friday night crowds. There would be no background noises around the pay phone in there, and the place had four exits. As he stuffed the first quarter in, he began to laugh. The reason the movie wasn’t mobbed was because the place showed old classics. Tonight’s feature, with Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte, was The Odds Against Tomorrow. If he believed in omens, Medina thought, he’d be running for the exit.

Medina did not believe in omens. He believed in Swiss francs; he believed that the element of surprise might work very well for a dead man who placed himself properly while other men watched an airplane crash in the ocean; and he was starting to believe it could be wonderfully profitable to meet Kyle Corbett at Regocijo.