Blackout

CHAPTER 21

“Where are you, Kat?” Jake Rhoades asked over the satellite phone.

“Standing near the Air Vietnam counter at the airport. I’ve already bought my ticket to Ho Chi Minh City — Saigon, by any other name,” Kat reported. “I’m leaving in about an hour, if it’s on time. I’ve still got to book a flight on to Da Nang.”

“Okay,” Jake replied. “You’re formally assigned to this case as on-scene commander. That title won’t last more than a day, but it will get us started. But you said you’re leaving in an hour?”

“Yes. Maybe. They won’t confirm they’re on time.”

“Kat, I’m not sure an hour gives us enough time for the diplomatic clearances. We’ve requested help from the State Department on getting you into ’Nam, but so far the Southeast Asia desk hasn’t come through.”

Kat hesitated for a second, letting the name of the State Department merge with the image of Jordan James, her father’s lifelong friend and the newly appointed acting Secretary of State.

“I think I know who to call. Don’t ask me who. I’ll call you right back.”

Arlin Schoen turned his eyes from the passing beauty of the Vietnamese coastal mountains below and looked at one of his men in the back of the Huey. He was leaning over the bloody remains of Rick Barnes and holding something up.

“WHAT?” Schoen yelled, trying to be heard over the noise of the helicopter.

“I FOUND A KEY CASE ON THIS GUY, WITH A NAME INSIDE,” the man yelled back.

Schoen moved to him quickly and took the key case, looking carefully at an identification card with the name of the owner: Rick Barnes, CEO, Meridian Airlines.

“What the hell is this?” Schoen mumbled to himself. “WHO IS RICK BARNES?”

The subordinate pointed to the body. “HIM.”

Schoen shook his head. “NO! WE CHECKED…” Schoen leaned toward his subordinate so they could stop shouting. “We checked his coat pockets. He had business cards and receipts and all of them said MacCabe!”

Schoen knelt and inspected the pockets of the man’s blood-soaked sport coat. There were two more receipts, one an American Express charge slip with MacCabe’s name on it, which he handed to the other man.

“See?” Schoen proclaimed. “I told you. This guy was Robert MacCabe, and…” His eye caught a difference between the sport coat and the pants, and he peered more closely, realizing with a start that they didn’t match.

“Oh, Jesus H. Christ!”

Schoen examined the right pants pocket, turning it inside and finding two more charge receipts. Each bore the name of Rick Barnes.

Arlin Schoen got to his feet in disgust. “Godammit! We’ve blown it!” Schoen held on to the door frame and took a deep breath, shaking his head and trying to think. He had killed the wrong man and let an innocent woman fall to her death for nothing, not to mention losing one more of his team. Somehow the man named Barnes had been wearing MacCabe’s coat.

Schoen’s assistant was at his side, looking worried. “What are we going to do, Arlin?”

“Just a second. I’m thinking,” Arlin snapped, and turned to the pilot. “Land this damn thing in the nearest clearing. Make sure no one’s anywhere close.”

The pilot nodded and banked the Huey to the right to find a spot. Schoen turned to the other man. “We’ll dump the bodies, clean out this interior, and get back to the crash site to search for the bastard.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think? MacCabe. The only reason we penetrated this stinking place was to make sure MacCabe was silenced.”

“So he’s probably dead in the wreckage back there, and this guy just used his coat. We need to get out of here before that pipsqueak commander in Da Nang decides to double-cross us and impound the jet. We don’t have much time.”

Schoen was shaking his head, his mouth a thin line. “That guy was wearing MacCabe’s coat because MacCabe survived. We know he was assigned a seat in the upper-deck section and our search proved his computer was not there. If he has his computer with him and gets back to civilization with that disk drive intact, we’re toast. We’ve got to find him. They’re out there trying to walk to the coast.”

Schoen could see the sudden panicked look on his assistant’s face.

“What?” Schoen demanded.

“I… was just thinking. We got there pretty quick after the crash. If that was me trying to walk out, and I heard a helicopter arriving on the scene, I’d turn around and go back, figuring it was a rescue force. They could have seen us dump the woman.”

Arlin Schoen looked back out the door, an old fear gripping his spine: the fear that a loose end could suddenly whip around and snare him in his own trap. His man was right. There could be witnesses to two cold-blooded murders.

Schoen turned back to his subordinate. “We’ve got to kill anyone who might have seen us back there. We don’t have a choice.”

“What if we’re talking about twenty or thirty people, Arlin? We can’t just shoot all the survivors.”

The Huey was thirty feet off the ground and settling toward a small clearing.

“Yes, we can. For Chrissake, man, we just blew away a seven-forty-seven full of people. We don’t have the luxury of quibbling over a few more. And may I remind you what’s at stake? A couple of billion dollars and our lives.”

The warm rumble of the familiar voice on the other end of the satellite phone brought back a lifetime of happy memories.

“Katherine, how are you?”

“Just fine, Uncle Jordan, but a bit pressed for time and in need of a favor.”

“Where are you? Not that your dad and I ever knew where you were.”

“Hong Kong, and in immediate need of diplomatic clearance into Vietnam.” She briefed him quickly on the mission and the problem. “This one has me spooked. I was pulled off that very flight to do an FBI favor for the Consulate here.”

“Good heavens, really?” Jordan replied, shock evident in his tone. “My God, Kat, that’s too close. I had no idea State was involved with anything you were doing.”

“Well, you promised Dad you’d look after me, and you did this time, too.”

“Indirectly, perhaps, but thank God. You said you’re leaving in a half hour, so I’d better get busy. What number do I use to call you back?”

She gave him the satellite phone number.

“Uncle Jordan, are you going to get the permanent appointment as Secretary of State?” For decades he’d been known as the quintessential Presidential Adviser.

“I don’t want it, Kat. I didn’t want this acting position, but when your President calls, you come. Give me ten minutes.”

“Thanks, Uncle Jordan.”

Robert MacCabe stood at the edge of the clearing, still clutching his computer case, his eyes wild as he begged the other five survivors to run before the helicopter came back. He explained his suspicions about Walter Carnegie and the possible connection to the SeaAir crash and the attempted Hong Kong kidnapping, and finally convinced them that he could be right.

With Graham Tash all but catatonic, the rest of them looted the remains of the upper deck of first-aid kits, blankets, food, water, and various bags to carry them in, while Steve Delaney managed to find the backpack he’d left outside the cockpit. The helicopter had been gone less than ten minutes when they assembled back at the edge of the clearing, ready to go.

“Question is, which way?” Britta asked.

“Back to the coast as fast as possible, kids,” Dallas said.

“No!” Robert replied, breathing hard. “No. They’ll be expecting just that. They’ll look along that pathway, and there isn’t enough jungle vegetation to hide under on that eastern slope. You saw it.”

“Where do you want to go, then?” Dallas asked, her hands on her hips.

“West. As fast as we can. More vegetation, more hiding places, and they wouldn’t start the search there.”

“So what’s to the west, Robert?” Dallas replied.

Dan’s voice reached them before Robert could speak. “West from here goes through a number of miles of this type of jungle, but empties to a flat valley five or six miles away. On the ridge going down to the valley, if we need them, are a lot of very deep caves that the Vietcong used to use. There’s a highway around here, too, which runs from Da Nang to the valley, and there’re probably some airfields in the valley.”

“So we want to stay away from highways, right?” Dallas asked.

Robert pointed west. “We need to stop debating and move. Let’s go!”

Dallas looked at the reporter with undisguised irritation, wondering when he’d been elected to take over. The fact that he was still clutching his computer case was irritating as well. But what he said made some sense, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the men in the Huey were killers uninterested in leaving witnesses.

“I saw all I needed to convince me,” Dallas said, looking at Britta, Dan, Steve, and Graham in turn. She looked down at the silk pantsuit, knee-length brocade vest, and soft pumps she was wearing, then glanced at the others. “We may not have the right clothes or shoes for this little hike, but I hear my momma’s voice saying, ‘Girl, get your tail out of there now!’ and I always listen to my momma. Let’s move!”

The makeshift backpacks were shouldered quickly as Britta leaned down to help Graham to his feet.

“I’m not going,” Graham said. His eyes were swollen and red and his face bore the ravages of a man thirty years older.

“You have to go,” Britta said.

He shook his head slowly. “My life died with Susan. Go. I’ll tell them I’m MacCabe.”

“You don’t look anything like Robert MacCabe, and I’ll not lose another passenger. Now, come on, Doctor.”

Robert retraced his steps to their side and heard the exchange.

“Doctor, either you get up, or I’ll pick you up myself.”

Graham sat completely still, his eyes focused on the wreckage. There was a faint sound to the east, and Robert looked eastward with growing fright.

“Doctor, for God’s sake, you’re going to get us all killed if you…”

“I said, go on without me!” Graham snapped, not looking up.

Britta knelt beside him, speaking urgently in his ear. “Doctor, we can’t leave you, which means our lives are in your hands. And we’ve got a badly hurt pilot who is going to need your help through this ordeal. But there’s more. If Susan could materialize right now, from what I saw and heard of her, I’m absolutely sure she’d tell you to get up and get out of here. She’d want you to live, not follow her in a suicidal refusal to keep trying.”

Graham looked up at Britta. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but…”

“That’s it!” Robert said suddenly, putting his computer case on the ground and leaning down to thread his hands beneath Graham’s arms and yank him up. He turned the doctor around to face him, a maneuver Tash did not resist.

“Look!” Robert said, his words coming in terse, urgent packets. “I can’t… begin to… know how you feel… but… I swear I’ll slug you into a coma and drag you if you don’t come voluntarily. Please! PLEASE!”

Graham sighed and looked down. With tears pouring down his face again, he turned to Britta, catching her eye.

“You’re right about Susan, you know.”

They moved rapidly into the brush and trees bordering the western end of the crash site just as the thumping noises in the distance rose significantly in volume and definition until the rotors of a rapidly advancing helicopter could be clearly heard.

“Come on, y’all! Hurry! Hurry!” Dallas shouted, breaking everyone into a jog. She held the doctor’s hand and pulled him along.

A brushy landscape of low-growing banana trees mixed with palms and sporadic taller trees lay before them, little of it conducive to evading a helicopter — and the one they were hearing was approaching rapidly, now little more than a mile away.

Robert turned, walking backward for a moment as he yelled, “Over here!” He motioned to them to hurry, pointing to a thicket of trees surrounded by dense ferns which formed a low-hanging canopy over the ground. “Down! Just get in there and sit.” Robert pulled Dallas and Steve in as Britta guided both Graham and Dan under the canopy.

The distinctive whap-whap-whap of a Bell UH-1 Huey grew to thunderous proportions behind them, then suddenly diminished.

“He’s landing,” Dan explained.

“What do we do now, Robert?” Dallas asked in a loud whisper. “We don’t have any guns. Shouldn’t we keep moving?”

“I expected them to come our way,” Robert explained, still breathing hard from his exertion. “We don’t want to be spotted from the air.”

“But if they come looking for us on foot?” Dallas added.

“They’re still on the ground back there,” Dan said. “I think… we’re in more danger from a ground party, especially since they can follow our footprints.”

There was a sudden rustling to one side and Robert looked over, startled to see Dallas scrambling to her feet and clawing her way out from under the brush. “Dallas!”

“Dallas yourself!” she shot back. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Britta hesitated, watching Robert MacCabe’s face in the partial shadows and wondering what to do. Suddenly he was in motion as well, pulling them out of the hiding place. He checked a small compass as they resumed walking as fast as possible to the west and into deeper jungle, with the vivid memory of Susan Tash’s long fall from the helicopter filling everyone’s mind.

Behind them, at the crash site, a Vietnamese search-and-rescue helicopter was touching down.

Kat folded the antenna on the satellite phone and turned toward the departure gate for the flight to Ho Chi Minh City. Jordan James had sliced through all the red tape to arrange her entry into Vietnam and promised to relay the word to Jake.

Kat hesitated at the podium and turned, spotting a tall, sandy-haired Caucasian male in a business suit a hundred feet away pretending not to be watching her. But he had been, and Kat suppressed the feeling of apprehension, the feeling that she was missing something very significant, and very dangerous.

She looked again, but the man had gone.