The Ransom of Black Stealth One

TWENTY-SIX

A night in Mazatlan had not improved the temper of Raoul Medina. He braced himself as Aleman, the driver of the Chevette, dodged another chuckhole on the winding road to Regocijo. The long bag with the tanks and flight helmet in Medina’s side of the footwell slid again until he clamped it between his feet. To fly five thousand miles in a day and then trudge from a lagoon to a town at the end of the day lugging SCUBA tanks, only to be balked by want of a lousy car! “They should have known the rental places in Mazatlan wouldn’t be open at night,” he fumed. His Spanish was fluent, though a little rusty.

Rodrigues, sitting in back with his long legs stretched at a slant, flicked the butt of his Delicado still smoldering from the open window. “I might have told them if anyone had asked me,” he said.

“Aleman, can’t you punch this thing harder?”

“Not if we expect to get there on four wheels,” said Aleman with a trace of brusqueness. On such a road, forty miles an hour was good time; fifty, suicidal. They had turned south from El Salto a half hour earlier and after that the road had become worse, the pounding on the Chevette’s suspension more fierce than Medina remembered— but then, old Julio’s grandson had not been driving as hard as Aleman. Then, “Iglesia,” said Medina, spotting the superstructure of the ancient church through the lacy shade of trees. “We’re nearly there.”

He directed Aleman through the dusty whitewashed town of Regocijo even though the village was not the kind a sober man could get himself lost in, taking it slowly enough to avoid the dogs and barefooted children, then urged the driver on to the south. “Fifteen kilometers or so now,” he said.

“I understand miles, seńor,” said Aleman, easily wounded.

“Certainly; my regrets, Aleman.” After a night with these two, Medina knew that Aleman was older than he seemed, college-trained and insufferably proud of it. The lank Rodrigues claimed he had got his training in the jungles of Honduras and was well disposed toward the yanquis who had schooled him. Even better disposed toward the money, Medina thought, having known mercenaries in other countries. Rodrigues seemed typical of most of the breed, essentially a lazy man but tireless when he had to be, and he knew how to hide an Ingram submachine gun under his windbreaker by a sling.

Aleman’s similar weapon, as well as Medina’s, lay beneath the hood, wrapped in oilcloth and strapped to the engine oil filter with the ubiquitous black electrical tape. Half of all Mexican transport was literally held together with the stuff, Aleman had said. “I don’t think we need to go waving our Mac Tens under old Julio’s nose,” Medina said now, beginning to recognize landmarks near the airstrip. “He’s a good guy.”

“Mac Elevens,” Rodrigues said. “Ingram Mac Eleven, seńor.” He snapped his weapon loose and popped its narrow, boxlike magazine down, displaying them separately as Medina craned his head to see.

“Jesu Christo,” Medina breathed, “don’t tell me they’re different. I haven’t fired one in years.”

Rodrigues gazed fondly at the squarish, gray lines of the stubby weapon, with its wire stock folded so closely over its receiver that the entire murderous little brute could be slung between arm and rib cage with hardly a bulge. “This weighs less than a Ten, a little shorter. Less recoil. Safeties are the same.”

“That’s good,” Medina said.

“It is unless you want to stop a man with one round,” Aleman put in, always happy to show his technical expertise. “These are little short cartridges. Less energy.”

Rodrigues shoved the magazine home and resnapped the weapon, grinning as he caught Medina’s eye, and raised his voice. “Ever shoot anybody with one, Aleman?”

“I am happy to say I have not found it necessary,” Aleman said, looking straight ahead.

“Relax,” Medina cautioned. “It won’t be necessary today either,” he added, proving himself tragically lacking in the gift of prophecy.

“We should not linger here long,” Rodrigues said. “It will take us hours to get to Llano Mojado. I do not think you want to arrive there before we do, Seńor Medina.”

“I won’t. If I’m delayed here, just wait there. I’ll be along when I can.” I can’t hang around here waiting for Corbett more than two nights. I don’t dare collect those gas canisters until he shows, either. If he doesn’t show by tomorrow, I’ll have to go without him. Ullmer and that cold-warrior Weston think I have to sell the Sovs a fake in a hurry, and I’ll bet my ass they think the real Black Stealth One is on the way to the same rendezvous, Medina told himself. What bothered him was that, the last time he’d talked with Ben Ullmer in San Diego, Ullmer was in a Learjet over Georgia—or said he was. And Ben wouldn’t be there unless he had a good idea which direction to go. Was Corbett really bent on hiding the hellbug in Mexico? He seemed to be headed for the Gulf. It was a long watery way across, unless a man fueled up in southern Florida. Still a lot of miles—what, five hundred, six?—to the Yucatan. Kyle, you solitary self-willed bastard, why didn’t you tell me you intended to steal the hellbug?

And where would Corbett get his fuel? Medina could almost hear the gravelly voice say, as it had so many times during design forums, “A secondary concern. The primary question is, can it be done?” Well, can it? With luck, maybe. I could do it if tailwinds were with me. And if I could do it, that hardnosed old fucker could do it too…

Which raised a spectre that Raoul Medina loathed and feared. What if Kyle Corbett really did intend to sell Black Stealth One to the Other Side? Maybe you couldn’t much blame him, but you couldn’t let him, either. It had not occurred to Medina, when he got himself into this fucking mess, that Corbett was actually capable of such a thing; or, worse, that Corbett might already have the KGB as a steady source of income. It was occurring to him now. Take the hellbug to Mexico and fiddle with it; crash it, burn it, fly it into the Langley parking lot, but don’t let me down, Corbett.

Medina realized that Aleman was repeating a question. “Oh, uh, if I get there first I can loiter overhead. Just tie a sleeve of your windbreaker on your radio antenna, and park where I can see the car from above,” Medina advised the driver. “I’ll be swimming in, maybe an hour after I ditch. And I’ll walk north. Don’t go within two miles of that landing strip.”

Aleman nodded. Medina looked back and saw Rodrigues nod as he lit another Delicado. He’s starting to chain-smoke now, Medina thought. Not as cool as he acts. I’ll have to watch him with that goddamn Ingram of his, until they leave.

Presently Medina placed a hand out, patting the air. “Slow down, now, and watch for ruts toward the left.” Aleman found them soon, shifting into low, growling along for nearly a mile before they rounded a hill and saw the airfield.

“Why are we stopping?” Medina asked.

“The guns, seńor,” said Aleman.

Medina sighed. “You really think we need them for a friendly old caretaker?”

“I only think it is the thing we are paid to do,” was Aleman’s reply. “If I am your backup,” he added, using the English word, “then I must do it properly.”

“I suppose so,” Medina said. He watched Aleman stop and pull his gloves on, precise and careful as he maneuvered the cloth-wrapped bundle from the engine compartment, and Medina accepted his own weapon without comment. Then they were lurching forward again toward the disused blacktop strip with tufts of grass that sprouted from surface cracks, and the wooden hangar that had not been painted in fifteen years. With a souped-up airchine and a nice girl in the next town, a man could live in a place like this, he thought idly. It was warm, peaceful; Corbett probably lived in some place like this. But if you sell my country out, Kyle, I’ll find you, he said silently, if it takes me the rest of my life.

Medina stepped from the Chevette and glanced at the small personnel door at one end of the hangar, wondering why it and the hangar doors were partly open, shaking the kinks from his legs, hauling his helmet from the bag and waiting for the others. He slung the stubby Ingram so that it hung at his back and realized that, of his two backups, Rodrigues seemed much the more threatening. “Aleman, you come with me,” he said. “Rodrigues can keep watch, he’s very experienced at surveillance in the wild.” Rodrigues made an “if you say so” face, satisfied with the reason, and leaned against a fender, scanning the open spaces as he lit up another cigarette.

Medina went through first, getting a nice little buzz of elation as he saw Blue Sky Three crouched in its three-wheeled stance, the same way he and Julio had left it, noticing the coat of dust with mild dismay. No wonder the door was ajar—it was stiflingly hot and a faint acrid tang stung his nostrils. Well, the old man had a trickle-charge going on the battery, at least, and it wouldn’t take long to wipe the bird down. Aleman was looking around him, his Mac Eleven slung but near to hand, and his eyes kept straying to the aircraft with its slender wings and sinister charcoal-black paint job.

“Julio,” Medina called, making echoes. “Hola, mi viejo, old friend,” he said, smiling, striding toward the set of small office rooms that lined the rear of the building. He remembered it was cooler there.

“Hola, amigo,” responded from the second office, the one Medina recalled with its windows intact. But the voice was not Julio’s, nor the face, alertly smiling as the man stepped from the office. Medium height, late thirties, in good gabardines and a sportshirt with a bright print pattern in reds and yellows. Recent haircut, plastered neatly with goo; something of a dandy, Medina decided, one who carried himself as though he was worth carrying. “You must be hunting elephants,” the man said, still smiling, with a nod toward Aleman’s weapon.

“My apologies,” Medina said. “I expected my friend Julio, who understands these necessities.”

“He is indisposed,” said the man, and stuck his hand out in the yanqui fashion. “I am Comal, cousin of Julio. He wished me to stay here, I cannot say why. We have waited a long time.”

A cousin, thirty years younger? Fairly common around here, I guess. But who is ‘we’? Medina shook the hand briefly. “A thousand thanks, Comal, you do not have to say why. I am the pilot who flew this aircraft. I must take it away now, if you will help us open the hangar.”

But Comal was turning away, beckoning. That damned smile was beginning to look like a permanent fixture. “Come and share my tequila, then. If you are the pilot, I must tell you why the aircraft cannot be flown.”

“Ahh, shit,” Medina said, wondering what it could be, whether it meant going for fuel or another battery. If it was a stuck hangar door they would rip the fucking thing off. He stepped forward into the doorway and then the man turned, still smiling, and Medina never quite figured out where that revolver came from but suddenly it was sticking into his belly as he stood in the doorway, blocking Aleman’s view.

“Tell your man to put his weapon down, or we will kill you both,” said Comal.

Medina swallowed. “Aleman, did you hear him?”

“Oh, Mother of God,” Aleman said softly. Medina dared not turn his head but it sounded as if Aleman had shuffled off to one side.

Comal’s smile had, mercifully, come unglued and slipped away now, but Medina did not much like the nervous glances that replaced it. “Tell him,” Comal insisted, shoving with the barrel of the revolver.

“I don’t think he will, whatever I say,” Medina said. It seemed that Comal was a man who wanted talk, and Raoul Medina was happy to comply. “He’s not my man, I’m, uh, only a pilot, as I said. But you’re not Julio’s cousin.”

“Hands up, but first lower that strange gun to the floor. Do not move from the doorway.” As Medina obeyed, he kept hearing Aleman’s breathing behind him. Comal, or whoever he really was, had not been smart to stand so close. Medina had seen men who could actually disarm a gunman positioned this way—but Medina was not one of them, at least not today. Too far from a hospital, and a terrible risk even for fucking Bruce Lee.

“I am a man who takes great interest in strange happenings,” said Comal, still nervous, using one foot to scrape the Mac Eleven to one side. “I can fly an airplane. I heard about the old man who guarded something wonderfully strange here,” he said, the smile threatening to reappear. “And so I asked my friend, ‘Why, if this strange thing is on my land, should I not investigate it, perhaps fly it?’ And so we investigated. Imagine my surprise when the place filled with mist that makes one breathless and took two days to clear.”

“It’s not your land,” Medina bluffed. Aleman’s breathing was no longer audible. Standing in the doorway, Medina could hear things that Comal might not; and it sounded as if Aleman was easing into the next room but the wall facing that room was piled with metal bins and spare lumber.

“Perhaps it might be,” said Comal, shrugging, “given enough money.”

“Who’s going to give it to you? I haven’t got it. Look, take our car, take the damned gun if you want to,” Medina said, and heard a foot scrape echo faintly in the hangar. He spoke louder now. “You think you can fly this airplane away?”

“I have studied it carefully. It is no heavier than the Piper and the Aeronca I have flown, and it has two seats so that you could teach me its manners. Yes, with a teacher I think I can. I have told my friend that I can. And so I will,” said Comal, with the finality of a man who will fulfill a boast or go to hell trying.

Though Raoul Medina’s mouth was dry as Melba toast, he had to keep talking to cover the sounds he heard behind him. “I’m telling you, this isn’t an ordinary airplane.”

“That was my thought,” said Comal judiciously. “By the way, tell your man that if he keeps his weapon, my friend will kill him instantly.”

“I’ll do that,” said Medina, realizing that it was probably another bluff but, all the same, something for Aleman to keep in mind. And maybe if he said it loudly enough, Rodrigues would hear. He started to shout the warning, but Comal silenced him with a backhand across the face. “Quietly. He can hear you. Did you think we did not see the three of you approaching?”

Medina called out more softly then, wondering why Rodrigues hadn’t become suspicious of the long silence. Licking blood from the edge of his lip, he said, exasperated, “You would kill yourself in that airplane the first time you tried to land it,” and then he realized that the truth was more awesome than any lie. “It’s a chingada CIA airplane! I fly it for the CIA,” he burst out, jerking a thumb downward at himself. “You take this airplane and they’ll get you, they’ll get your family, they’ll get your friends, they’ll get your whole damn town!” He saw a shadow of credulity in Comal’s face as he broadened the exaggeration, realizing that to many latinos the Company was synonymous with Satan and perhaps more powerful as a bogeyman of the here and now.

“Where do you think we get weapons and airplanes like these, Comal? We’re big, the biggest thing you ever saw! We’re so big, we could erase your town so nobody would ever know it had existed.”

Then a sort of disappointment crossed Comal’s features. Whatever belief he had entertained, he was discarding it as he spoke. “They are big. Yet here you are, only three men, not in three helicopters but in a small Chevrolet. Not to fly an airplane of steel but one of wood. Not guarded by an army in a new building, but by stinking smoke and an old fool in a firetrap.” He snarled, perhaps infuriated by his moment of obvious indecision, and moved to pistol-whip this liar claiming to be CIA, but to do it he turned the revolver sideways.

Medina grabbed for the pistol with both hands and kicked Comal as hard as he could, aiming for the kneecap but connecting with a shin. Comal was already twisting, snatching the pistol out of reach, and the kick whirled him around so that he fell on his face away from Medina, whose sense of timing said that Comal would shoot him before he could grab the Ingram and cycle a round into its firing chamber.

Medina leaped out into the hangar and ducked behind a low-slung rudder of Blue Sky Three. “Aleman,” he shouted, “get him as he comes out!” Then, with every decibel at his command: “Rodrigues! Help me!” He began to back away farther, realizing that he might get shot by his own man if he made it through that side door. The man who trotted from the next small room was not Aleman but an unkempt stranger in the shabby garb of a farmer. He carried a machete in one hand and a shotgun in the other, and the machete glistened with fresh blood.

Comal, limping into the hangar with both revolver and Ingram, saw the other man too. “Where is your man?” he barked.

“He did not put down his gun, so I carried out your promise,” said the farmer, showing the blade of the machete. “He never saw me.”

At that moment, Medina saw a shadow fill the rectangle of light at the side door. “Take them, Rodrigues, they got Aleman,” he called, but the farmer’s machete clattered to the concrete, and as Rodrigues showed his head for a fast glimpse inside, the shotgun bellowed. A portion of the door’s upper half disintegrated, leaving a hole the size of a kitchen sink. Medina, who had reached the seam between the big hangar doors and was trying to slide one of them open, could see the farmer sliding the shotgun’s pump but could not hear it among the echoes. Comal stuck the revolver in his belt and swung the Ingram up, aiming toward the side door, and then began to shake the weapon in a frenzy when it refused to fire. It had been Medina’s idea to dart outside to safety but that big half-open door moved easily and Comal obviously did not know how to cycle the Ingram’s bolt. Medina kept hauling the hangar door wider, watching the men inside, ready to plaster himself against the outside of the doorframe.

Rodrigues, who knew better than to stand guard without a round in the chamber, had no problem with his own Mac Eleven. His first spray, a half-dozen rounds, ricocheted from the concrete in front of Comal who bent double and dropped the useless weapon. Another blast from the shotgun ripped the doorframe near Rodrigues as Medina hurled himself against the opposite hangar door in the effort to slide it wide open. Reeling from a wall, Comal ducked into the office in time to avoid the next stuttering burst from Rodrigues.

The farmer spun to face Medina as sunlight flooded the hangar, and knelt to get a clear shot beneath the nose of Blue Sky Three. Medina stumbled and fell, and wood splintered over his head as shotgun pellets perforated the hangar door.

“I need that one; he is harmless,” Comal shouted, squatting near the doorway, and risked a shot with the revolver as he peered around the office door. The long burst from Rodrigues sent hunks of old wood flying in the doorway, and Comal rolled into the hangar, his head thudding against concrete as his body twitched.

The farmer sent another of his thunderous rounds in the direction of Rodrigues, then ran in a crouch toward the room where he had dispatched Aleman, and Medina did not pause to think it out but dashed to the open battery panel near the cockpit of Blue Sky Three. I spent too many months helping build this bird to let some fucking bandit destroy her, he told himself, and flung the battery charger clips aside with one thought: she’s not that heavy, I can roll her outside before that maniac blows her full of holes. Filled with this suicidal optimism, he began to hope that the shotgunner had fled through the broken back windows.

Rodrigues stepped into the hangar. “Aleman! Medina! Let me hear you,” he barked.

“Aleman’s dead,” Medina called, slapping the battery panel closed as he ducked under the wing to kick a wheel chock aside. Then, because his view opened directly into the little rooms and sunlight had replaced shadows, Medina saw the shotgunner finish reloading. “I’m here under the,” he said, and dived for the other wheel as the man aimed directly toward him.

The blast of buckshot shredded the wing skin of Blue Sky Three and carried away most of the wing’s main spar, and the next round tore through the landing gear mount, and it was the failure of the mount that sealed Medina’s fate. Raoul Medina still had his hand on a wheel chock in a heroic effort to salvage his mission when the landing gear collapsed on him, the wing smashing him against concrete, spearing him with jagged ends of spruce as the damaged main spar failed. Fuel was already running from a punctured tank when the battery charger clips, still energized and side-swiped by debris, clicked together.

Rodrigues heard the chuff of ignition, sidestepped fast around the aircraft still facing his enemy, emptied his magazine into the little room. Though four seconds are good time for reloading an Ingram, Rodrigues managed it in three, and snapped off more rounds before he squatted next to Medina, whose inert head and shoulders protruded pathetically from beneath the shattered wing.

When Rodrigues saw the flow of viscous crimson from under Medina, and felt the heat of the blaze from the fuselage, he staggered back and set his weapon for semiautomatic fire, sending his single rounds into the open door of the room in a maneuver the yanquis called “suppression fire.” It seemed to be working because he could no longer see the shotgunner, but he found no good reason to remain. What did one more bandit matter to him, with pilot and compatriot both dead and the aircraft ablaze? Still pumping single rounds into that little room, Rodrigues sidled out the ruined door and ran for the Chevette.

Five minutes later, Rodrigues parked near the ruts of the Regocijo road and squinted back toward the hangar. He saw smoke, but no actual flames. He could stow his weapon as poor Aleman had done, but if Mexican federal agents stopped him they would find it sooner or later. Better to remove all traces of his employment and report this savagely failed mission from the safety of Mazatlan. He hurled the little Ingram as far into the grass as he could, dumped the now-useless SCUBA gear in a ditch, and used Aleman’s oilcloth to wipe down the car. The Chevette was rented in his own name, so he would not have to abandon it, but Aleman and the foolishly unprepared Medina had left fingerprints all over it. Those prints had to be removed before anyone stopped him.

When at last Rodrigues stood up after wiping down the front passenger’s seat and windowsill, he glanced again toward the distant hangar. He swore because the flames now rose higher than the hangar roof and a tendril of smoke arrowed straight into the sky, a signal of disaster that would soon be visible for many kilometers. He leaped back into the Chevette and turned it toward Regocijo. He saw no telephone lines flanking the road; it was still possible that he might outrun detection.