The Ransom of Black Stealth One

TWENTY-TWO

Corbett had wasted no time bringing the engine up to speed after the girl fled, levitating the hellbug gradually until he could see above the treeline. The sun lay dying on his horizon as he lifted another hundred feet, putting the infrared sensors on full gain. He did not see the vague pinkish blot that was Petra until she had reached the blacktop road, which registered faintly with its residual heat.

He hovered before bringing the nose up, urging the craft backward as he spotted a light-colored pickup truck that slowly accelerated from sight, its exhaust a fading red dot on the scanner. From time to time he could see the girl through treetops, still making an athlete’s time toward that little store. “Boy, she’s a pistol,” he said to the scanner, grinning.

He circled around then, gaining altitude gradually, increasing his distance so that he could barely see her above the trees. When she reached the store he had a good five hundred feet under him. He flipped a mock salute in her direction as he turned the hellbug’s nose to the west and advanced the throttle.

Something’s missing, his cautionary demon whispered. “Yeah, a hundred and twenty pounds of trouble,” he told it and kept going until he identified the missing item: the lights in that tacky little sign. It was nearly dark now, and those two crackers running the store could have been in the pickup. If so, Petra would be alone in strange surroundings. Shell make out. Why wouldn’t she?

He delayed his decision another few moments, cursing himself when he banked his great bird and began to retrace. He maintained a good margin of safety over the trees, using the scanner again, and as he swept toward the garden plot his scanner picked up two pink blots, one stationary and large enough to be two people, the smaller one closing on it. He engaged the waste gates, pivoting the craft on its left wingtip, staring down into the gathering dusk. What he saw in the garden enraged him beyond curses.

Corn could damage the skin; well, avoid it, stupid! Get this heap down and kill all systems. Not so fast, you could crack this thing like an egg. One of the men, the ape he had seen lashing Petra with his hand, disappeared into a shed carrying her. Following them was the lanky dimwit who had sold Corbett the gas can, or his twin, and there was simply no way to speed up a landing without a crash, one that might put Corbett himself out of action. In less than two minutes he slipped the craft beyond the last row of corn and felt the jolt of landing, his hands doing the right things of their own volition. He could hear the impeller spooling down as he vaulted from the cockpit, and nearly whacked himself senseless against the wing’s leading edge as he began to run the hundred yards to the shed.

The screams began when he was still twenty yards away, and he could see through a triangular patch of windowpane when he was still three paces from the door, and found absolutely no reason to use its knob. His body slam laid his left arm and shoulder on the door face with a splintering crash. The lock held but the upper hinge flew into the room, and his kicks flung the door flat.

The tall one straddled Petra’s thighs, one hand gripping the open top of her jeans. He jerked his head around, his jaw dropping, and saw Corbett’s right hand come up. “Gawdamighty,” he bawled, and fell from the table as Corbett snapped off his first shaky round, a clean miss, from the automatic. The muzzle blast was concussive in such close quarters.

The heavy man with the pale muscular arms had already released Petra’s feet, backing away as he fumbled in a pocket, his big yellow teeth bared, blinking in dust that fell from the ceiling. “Get the fuck outa,” he bellowed, interrupted by the second explosion. He stumbled, dropped an open switchblade, clutched his belly and fell on his side, his mouth working silently.

Corbett stalked forward, trembling, his face alight with a kind of madness. He saw that the other man had been scrabbling at a trapdoor behind the table, gasping in falsetto, flinging the wooden rectangle aside, and Corbett lifted the pistol again.

The tall man writhed onto his back, hyperventilating, clutching his chest, and what he saw in this stranger’s face made him close his eyes as tightly as he could. Petra had drawn herself into a fetal crouch on the table, still sobbing. The tall man was crying too, now. Corbett wheeled, dropped to one knee, and placed his free hand palm-out just above his weapon as a splash guard, pulling the trigger when the muzzle was six inches from the wounded man’s ear. Somehow it seemed right; not because the heavy man was the only one not crying, but because he was the one who had stood in that garden and repeatedly backhanded Petra.

Corbett blinked hot tears away, his ears ringing from the muzzle blasts, drawing deep, ragged breaths as his rage began to dwindle. The tall man, little more than a youth, clasped his hands together, perhaps begging, perhaps praying, his legs apart. When he opened his eyes, Corbett said, in almost a whisper, “Go on into the hole. I can’t miss then.” The sufferer only shook his head, narrow chest still heaving. “Roll onto your belly. If you look up, you’ll see a bullet. Now, “Corbett said with a devastating kick.

Corbett had to roll the youth over, finally. He reseated the pistol and carefully, tenderly, placed his fingertips on the heaving shoulder of Petra Leigh. She gasped and screamed. “Petra,” he said, his mouth near her ear. “It’s okay,” and touched her again. Another flinch, but no scream. He patted her shoulder, his gaze straying to the tall man, wanting to empty his magazine into the halfwit, seeing the ruin of the stocky man’s head in a kind of wonderment. I did that? Yes. Damned shame he could only feel it once.

“It’s okay,” he said to her again, spotting the radio with its loose cord. He moved away, retrieving the switchblade from the floor, and cut the radio’s power cord. It was easy to rip it lengthwise into two rubber-sheathed cables, and the tall man did not object when Corbett bound his hands and feet.

When Corbett stood, Petra was sitting up facing away from him, heartbreakingly small with her legs dangling from the table, snapping her jeans. He moved nearer. “It’s okay, kid,” he said.

“Don’t call me ‘kid,’ ” she said, no longer quite sobbing.

“You’ll live,” he replied with a half smile.

“Are they dead? Did you kill them?”

“One is,” he said. “Don’t look if you’re squeamish.”

She stepped down, holding herself erect with her hands, and saw the dead man. “Not about him,” she said, and surveyed the tall one. “Why not that one?”

“Because I missed the fucker from twenty feet is why,” Corbett said, shaking his head. He drew the pistol and offered it to her, butt-first. “You can do it. Or I will if you like.”

She started to shake her head, then put her hands to her face, her head shaking faster and faster until he put the weapon away and cradled her shoulders in his hands. She leaned into his chest, moaning, gulping hard. They remained there until her shudders passed.

He knew that Petra was truly resilient when, once her breathing had become steady, she mumbled against his shirt, “Oh, you son of a bitch, Corbett.” She moved away, not abruptly but with renewed strength, and looked him up and down. “There’s nothing wrong with your leg.”

“Well, I sure thought it was broken,” he said.

“You seem to have found your pistol, too.”

“Funny thing; put it in my pocket and forgot.”

“Sure you did.” She gnawed her lip, squinting at him. “You are weird, mister.”

“And he,” Corbett said, nodding toward the tall youth, “is listening. Want me to put him in that hole?”

“There’s black widders down there,” said a muffled voice.

“Sounds good to me,” Corbett said easily, with one lingering pat on Petra’s arm as he moved to squat near his captive. “Tell you what, old-timer: we’re going out for a while. You don’t make a sound, or try to get loose, and I don’t dump you down there gut-shot. If you do, I do.”

A nod. “You wanta put the trapdoor back?”

“Don’t,” Petra spoke up. “Leave it open as a reminder.”

Corbett got up and headed for the doorway. “Teach you not to screw around, old-timer,” he called back. “A woman will keep you terrified all your life. All I’ll do is kill you.” He made an after-you-Alfonse gesture, and Petra walked out ahead of him toward the back door of the little store, which was not even locked. The place was silent but for the tick of a big, old spring-wound Westclox that squatted beside the cash register—the kind of clock that more or less keeps time but will do it until the blast of Gabriel.

By common consent, they found the toilet first, Petra cursing as she cleaned the filthy thing before she would park her rump on it. Then he used it, knowing that when he opened the door he might be alone. He heard a car go by on the blacktop, its tires sizzling a tone that rose and fell familiarly with its passing. So she didn’t flag it down, he thought, only half surprised. He found her opening two cans of beer from the old refrigerator that squatted near the sales counter.

They gulped for a few moments. “You let me go, back there in the melon field,” she said at last.

“No I didn’t. You ran. I came looking for you, that’s all.” A devilish smile. “You sorry I did?”

“Don’t joke about it, Corbett, I— Thanks, just thanks. Look, you were going to beat the daylights out of me. Well, weren’t you?”

After a pause: “Yep. Petra, leave it alone. You’re going to be interrogated in ways you never imagined.” He put down the can, opened another.

“I can imagine hypnosis. I can imagine an injection, uh, what’s that stuff?”

“Sodium pentothal,” he replied, sighing.

“Whatever. And I keep seeing you offering me your little shooter so I could kill that poor peawitted scarecrow who tried to rape me. I’m sorry, Kyle”—she smiled, and he realized that she had done things to freshen her appearance while in that neanderthal bathroom—“but you’ve already blown it.”

“Shit; I did, didn’t I?” He began to laugh, the near-silent uh-uh of near exhaustion. “Well, say I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“I can’t imagine why,” she said, softly now. “You put in a hard day kidnapping big-mouthed society girls yesterday, flew all night, flew all day today. I think,” she said, and now she was laughing too, “I think you should take me to a dance tonight.”

“That and a bicycle ride would kill me right now.”

“I know that old joke,” she said.

“I’m not surprised,” he said, shaking his head ruefully, dragging up a stool he saw in the shadows. She spied a broken couch near the door and claimed it, shoving the tattered cushions onto the floor. When another car sizzled by she did not look up. Its lights swept past her face for a moment and made her, he decided, very beautiful.

It was she who prodded: “And now?”

“Now you make your call, there’s the phone over by the cash register—unless you made it already,” he said in sudden alarm.

“I didn’t. Trust me, as my favorite kidnapper says. Listen, Kyle, are you on uppers? I don’t see how you’re on your feet as it is, let alone fly Black Stealth One to Cuba tonight. That is your idea, isn’t it?”

He paused a long time before saying, “Forget Cuba. Doesn’t matter, I’ll make it. I think. Yeah, I took a pill earlier today. And I’m gonna crash if I don’t take some more.”

“Where are they?”

Longer pause. He laid his cheek on the counter, feeling the first buzz of the beer in his head. “In my bag. Out in the field.” He wanted to add, “in the hellbug,” but somehow it did not seem terribly important. When the girl went out the back door he stood up, knowing he had to stay alert, swung his arms, tried deep-breathing exercises as he rolled a fresh can of cold beer over his forehead and smoked a cigarette. Then he sat down on the couch. He was snoring heavily when Petra returned, the cigarette smoldering at his feet.