The Blackbird

Twenty-One

Gunfire.

Grofield had been dozing, warm and comfortable inside his cocoon of blankets, his stomach working away contentedly on another can of cold beef stew, and only gradually did he become aware of the faint sounds, rattle and chatter and brief bark.

He sat up, frowning, listening. The sound was far away, and it came in spurts, with uneasy silences in between. A battle of some kind, an honest-to-God battle.

Where else but at the lodge?

Grofield pushed away the blankets and got to his feet, and now he could see a murky red smudge on the horizon, far away in the direction from which he’d come.

What now? Were they burning the place down?

Could it be Ken? Rescue? Had the sons of bitches put a transmitter inside his body after all?

He didn’t know, under the circumstances, if the idea was repulsive or not.

In any case, he had to know what was going on. It might be nothing more than a falling-out among the members of that charming bunch back there, but whatever it was there was just a chance there was advantage for him in it.

He folded up the blankets, tied everything onto the skimobile again, slung the machine gun over his shoulder, started the engine and headed toward the flickering red glow on the horizon.

After he’d traveled a couple of minutes he came up over the top of a snow dune and all at once could see the fire. It was huge, one entire building was aflame, one of the two dormitory buildings, and in the red light Grofield could see confused activity around the other buildings, rushing about, savage but incomprehensible motion.

He steered to the right, angling around the buildings, trying to see without being seen. It turned out he had been directly opposite the lake where their plane had landed yesterday afternoon, and when he’d circled far enough to see the lake there was another plane there now, its single floodlight glaring toward the front of the lodge, outlining it in white light, with the red flames behind it and to its left.

Was it really Ken? There was no one at all in the floodlit area in front of the lodge, all the activity taking place behind it, in the uncertain red light of the fire. The plane, in the darkness behind its light, was just a black blur with no legible markings. But if it wasn’t Ken, or some of Ken’s associates, it was surely somebody who’d attacked Rahgos and Pozos and Company, and Grofield’s feeling right now was that any enemy of that bunch was a friend of his.

Maybe. There was no point being foolhardy about it. Grofield therefore didn’t approach the plane directly but angled off behind it, the skimobile chugging away across the snow-covered ice on a long curve that would bring him to the plane from the rear.

The skimobile wasn’t exactly silent, its engine being perhaps a little more quiet than a power mower, but the racket from behind the lodge more than covered the noise of Grofield’s approach. Aside from the roar of the flames back there, a surprisingly loud and threatening sound, there was the intermittent crackle of gunfire, and occasional shouts and yelps and screams from the people involved. Under all that noise Grofield made his wide circle out across the lake and came in from behind the plane, seeing it now silhouetted against the spotlit shore. It was either the same two-engine cargo plane he’d come up here in or another one just like it. If it was the same one, what would that mean? Intramural combat, maybe.

He was almost to the tail of the plane when two men came running around the corner of the lodge, pistols in their hands. They ran toward the plane, bent low, though no one pursued them so far as Grofield could see, and as they neared the plane another man swung down from the open door midway in the fuselage and hurried forward to meet them.

That one was familiar, the one who’d been in the plane. The silhouette rang some sort of bell with Grofield, he wasn’t sure why. The three men stopped near the wingtip and conversed quickly with one another, shouting to be heard, waving their arms. The language wasn’t English. Grofield was no expert, but it seemed to him the language was at least similar to the one spoken by the man who’d killed Henry Carlson.

Why was that one guy familiar? Who the hell was he? Grofield got off the skimobile and trotted forward to the plane, then moved cautiously along beside it, coming up the opposite side from where the three men were talking. When he reached the wing he bent and looked under the fuselage at them gesticulating away over there, and the familiar one was the doctor who’d helped kidnap him. Bushy mustache and everything. Shouting in a language that wasn’t English and wasn’t French.

Le Quebecois? This was a hell of a place to start an armed revolt. There had to be another explanation.

And a better time to look for it. Grofield unshipped his machine gun and trotted back toward the skimobile, checking over his shoulder as he ran, but no one saw him. He got onto the skimobile and steered it away from there, out over the lake away from the noise and light.

He didn’t know what the fight was about, but he did know now that both sides meant trouble for him, so the best thing for him to do was get way off on the sidelines and wait for it to be over, rooting for both teams to score a knockout. In the morning he’d see if there was anything useful to him left in the shambles. Like a compass, for instance, a compass would be nice.

He was thinking about compasses, and traveling south, and hot showers, when he saw the muzzle flash ahead of him and a second later felt something burn the top of his left shoulder. He dropped off the seat at once, onto the ice, and rolled so he was on his stomach, with the machine gun in his hands. The skimobile traveled a few yards farther, losing momentum, then stopped and stalled.

Grofield lay unmoving, knowing he was silhouetted against the light behind him. He stared into the darkness in front of him, but the light source was too far away, there was nothing to be seen.

Footsteps, crunching on the snow. Grofield kept his head down, listened to them coming closer. He held tight to the gun.

He was just about to roll over and start firing when he saw the green ski pants, no more than six feet away. He hesitated, and she came another step forward, and instead of firing he lunged upward all at once, swinging the butt of the machine gun around at her knees, hearing and feeling it hit, and she screamed and toppled over as though a rug had been pulled out from underneath her. Grofield leaped forward and swept the automatic from her hand, while his other hand reached for her throat. She was all done up in fur coat, fur collar, fur hat with fur straps under the chin, he couldn’t get through all that hair to her neck. She squirmed and wriggled and punched at him with gloved fists, and finally all he could think of to do was grab the fur hat and thump her head a couple of times against the ice.

The fight went out of her at once, her arms dropping to her sides, and a glazed look came into her eyes. Grofield got his machine gun, stood up, found the automatic in the snow. He tapped it against his side to shake off the snow, and put it in his mackinaw pocket, then turned and walked over to the skimobile. He was getting onto it when she called his name. He looked over and could barely make out the shape of her, sitting up now. Bitterly she was saying, “Why don’t you finish the job? Are you going to let your friends kill me?”

“They aren’t my friends,” Grofield said. “If you mean that bunch that’s attacking your bunch, they’re not my friends at all.”

There was a little silence. He couldn’t see her face, so after a few seconds he shrugged and turned to start the engine again, but then she said, “I don’t believe you.”

“I always run away from my friends,” he said, and started the engine.

“Wait! Please, wait!”

He turned in irritation, looking in her general direction. “Wait for what?”

“I thought they were your people, that’s why I shot at you. I wouldn’t have shot at you if I’d known.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Grofield said, and prepared to shift into forward.

“Don’t! Listen to me, please!”

Why didn’t he just leave her here? Hadn’t she shot at him? Hadn’t she turned that tin-star Colonel against him? But he remembered that look of doubt in her face just before he’d gone out the window, and the frantic shooing gestures she’d made when he was down below in the snow, and he hesitated. And then he thought, if she was really in bad straits, with no one left to turn to but him, it was possible he could exchange protection for information, and find out at last just what all of this had been about. And wouldn’t that make Ken happy, assuming he ever saw Ken or civilization or anything at all ever again.

So he switched off the engine and said, “All right, I’ll listen.”

She had gotten to her feet, and limped now over to him, favoring the leg he’d hit with the gun barrel. She said, “I need your help. And it isn’t just me, it’s everybody.”

“Not too close,” Grofield warned her. “That’s close enough right there. I can see you, and you can’t touch me.”

“I won’t try anything,” she said. “I thought those were your people attacking us, or I never would have shot at you.”

“You said that.”

“I couldn’t understand the Americans behaving like that,” she said. “Just shooting and killing and setting the place on fire. I couldn’t understand it.”

“They aren’t Americans,” Grofield told her. “I don’t know who they are.”

“They can’t get their hands on... ” She stopped, moving her head back and forth in urgency and frustration. “We’ve got to stop them,” she said. “You’ve got to help me.”

“You mean, considering all I owe you?”

She said, “I didn’t mean for you to be killed, not ever. I thought you’d be locked up again. You did that yourself, you refused to be locked up, you forced the Colonel to decide to kill you. All I wanted was for you to be locked away somewhere.”

“Thanks.”

“Because I didn’t trust you,” she said. “And be fair, be honest, I had a right not to trust you. You wanted to go poking your nose around, that’s why you were so set against being locked up. Isn’t it?”

“I could have been kept from seeing things I shouldn’t,” Grofield said.

“You’re too sneaky,” she said. “I’m trying to be honest with you now. I’m sorry for the way it worked out, I didn’t know you’d be silly enough to give the Colonel an ultimatum like that, but I was right to argue against letting you go free.”

Grofield shook his head and grinned. “You’re such a sweet-talker,” he said. “I swear you’re turning my head.”

She said, “But I didn’t want you to die. At the end there, I wanted to say something, but it was just impossible. You had put the Colonel into a position where he had no choice, not without feeling humiliated.”

Grofield nodded. “I admit I misjudged that situation,” he said. “I thought a respectful but egalitarian approach would do the job.”

“You argued with him,” she said, and she sounded faintly shocked still at the memory of it.

“What I should have done was tug my forelock, huh?”

“What you should have done,” she said, “was admit that you were lost without his protection and beg him to help you. Everyone likes to be in a position to do magnanimous favors, the Colonel’s just as human as anybody else.”

“Is he? We just pretend he’s divine, is that it?”

“For someone who ignores his country,” she said, “you’re far too American for your own good.”

“Maybe.” He glanced back at the lodge and the plane and the battle, the sounds of which seemed now to be fading somewhat. He looked at the girl again and said, “Is that what you wanted to tell me? About the national traits embedded in my behavior patterns?”

She suddenly remembered the urgency she was feeling, and said quickly, ‘We have to do something to stop them. If they’re not Americans, God knows who they are or who hired them. They can’t take... ” She stopped, seemed to cast around for another way to say it, started again: “There are four metal canisters somewhere in the lodge,” she said. “They must not get their hands on them, those people, they must not get them away from here.”

“Why? What’s in them?”

“I... I can’t tell you exactly. It’s a weapon, it’s a very dangerous thing. We can’t let it fall into the wrong hands.”

“If it’s a dangerous weapon,” Grofield said, “it was already in the wrong hands. What is this weapon?”

“I honestly can’t tell you.”

“Then I honestly can’t help you,” Grofield said. “Good-bye, Vivian, it’s been varied.”

“Wait!”

He waited, watching her. He could see the indecision on her face, despite the darkness. He didn’t help, he just waited, and finally she said, “It’s germs.”

“It’s what?”

“Disease germs,” she said. “Laboratory produced disease germs.”

“You mean like in germ warfare?”

“Yes,” she said.

“For God’s sake! What kind of—”

“Look!”

He looked. The plane was turning around. Way back there it was ponderously wheeling about, and as he watched, the floodlight hit him square in the eye.