The Ransom of Black Stealth One

TWENTY-NINE

They had lost hundreds of feet in altitude before Corbett found the cure for the downward spiral: he brought the aircraft to a stop with the waste gates, steering with the nose jet, and hovered. “Okay, I’ve got it,” he said, hoping to calm Petra. “I can’t see your wingtip, but something’s fouling that elevon. Can you describe it?”

Petra, whose features were pinched with fright, swallowed hard and twisted her body, loosening her harness with reluctance. “I can’t see through the wing. There’s a wire hanging down from the tip.”

“The tip?”

“Well, six or eight feet from it. Two wires, actually. One hangs straight down; the other one slants a little.”

“Makes a big difference,” he said sharply.

“Wire’s got to be caught at the inboard hinge of the elevon. I think there’s a little drag chute on one end of the wire; a breeze must be pulling it. Christ knows what’s on the other end. Look, this is going to take muscle. See the pin clipped to the control stick down between your feet? Slip it in so your stick is engaged.”

She did so, with a glance at him that reeked of doubt.

“Now,” he said, “we know the right elevon is stuck in the ‘up’ position because the control sticks are stuck sloping to the right.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, her eyes shut in concentration. “Okay, I can see it. In here,” she tapped her forehead. “Also because we were sort of spinning down to the right before you got it stabilized.”

“Don’t try to understand it all, for God’s sake, there could be another skyful of those things coming down any minute.” A sigh, as he wrapped himself with intense calm. “Now, we’re going to try and force the elevon the other way, but with both of us horsing on it too hard, we could snap a filament cable.”

“In which case?”

“Don’t ask. Just lean into it, that’s right, I want you to preload it before I put my shoulders into it. Okay, I can feel it,” he said, and felt the control stick begin to come upright when he had put half of his power behind it.

“OH GOD, KYLE,” she screamed, staring ahead, recoiling.

The Neptune had turned after its pass, dropping down beneath the clouds, and some sharp-eyed aviator must have seen Black Stealth One immediately because the heavy reconnaissance plane thundered in, boring straight toward them, the twin scythes of its props perfect blurred circles, closing a gap of less than a quarter mile at a hundred yards a second. Corbett had no option save one: he firewalled the throttle and levitated Black Stealth One straight up, seeking the clouds that he knew he could not reach in time.

He bared his teeth as he saw the Neptune respond, realizing that the naval pilot could shred a wingtip with his propellers or simply slice through it with the far stronger wing of the Neptune. But, though the hellbug’s downblast of air lacked the great power of a true jet engine, it did accelerate the gossamer craft and in an eyeblink the big Neptune had passed scant yards beneath them, with a shattering roar and two distinctly separate results on Black Stealth One. Corbett felt a faint tug from the right wing, then a tremendous buffet as the Neptune’s slipstream tossed them, sucked them down, spun them in almost a half circle as the bonded structure of the hellbug groaned and creaked.

“It’s free,” he exulted, realizing that the P2V had somehow torn the wire clear. A whirling prop could have wound that wire up, or cut it; but no matter. The hellbug was floundering but apparently still intact, trying to right itself as Corbett sought the clouds again. He did not look back at Petra until they were surrounded in grayness, moving ahead under maximum power. Some half-perceived cog in his mental clock reminded him that every minute, at this pace, brought them two miles closer to the Texas coast.

She breathed long shaky breaths as she watched him. “I’m sorry I screamed,” she said, rubbing her cheek.

“You know why I didn’t? Too damn scared,” he said.

“If you grin and wink I will get out and walk,” she said, her mouth trembling into a shape that imitated a smile.

“There’s blood on your teeth, honey,” he said.

“Too late for sweet talk now,” she muttered to the video console, and explored her mouth with her tongue. “Wow, the side of my face is numb; I wasn’t cinched up tight when we did that whirligig-”

“It could happen again,” he warned, easing ever upward until they soared atop the cloud layer. The sky was innocent of any other aircraft. Blinking in the sunlight, he asked, “What’re you doing?”

“Running an IR scan,” she said as if surprised that he needed to ask. “I don’t want one of those big bozos to surprise us again. And what’s so damned funny?”

“The way you adapt, I guess,” he said. “If everybody your age learns as fast as you do, Petra, old farts like me might as well pack it in right now.”

The girl seemed unwilling to believe him, though he had been perfectly candid. Most experienced copilots would have adapted faster to the physical part of flying this craft but few, he decided, could have picked up utterly new and abstract techniques any more quickly than Petra Leigh. He began toying with different frequencies again, while mentally reviewing the attack of that P2V.

It had been no fluke; they were ready with some kind of aerial tripwire that he had never heard of.

That recon plane had somehow penetrated their chameleon disguise from afar, picking them out of an otherwise empty sky. But how could they pick us up at all? Maybe something’s wrong with the pixel skin, but it was okay this morning. If Ullmer’s guys had buried some kind of transceiver in this crate, they’d have nailed me last night. Even the harness attachments are glass-filled nylon, there’s not ten pounds of metal in the hellbug. Except for the fat, five-gallon steel gas can at my elbow! “Oh, lord, but I can be stupid,” he said, and checked the fuel tank readout. “Petra, take the cap off the gas can and feed the end of that hose into it. Just squeeze the bulb, like you were milking a cow, and keep pumping as fast as you can ‘til I tell you to stop.”

According to the readout, they had used up nearly four gallons from the main tank. When Petra had refilled the tank, roughly a gallon would have to go over the side with that can, which had probably quintupled their signature on any kind of search radar, even X Band. He cudgeled his memory on C Band, X Band, side-looking, doppler, every kind of radar he could remember. Some radars were particularly good against low-flying aircraft, but he remembered an NSA memo from Sheppard to the effect that Black Stealth One would be all but invisible to that stuff. Trying still another radio frequency, he felt gooseflesh flood his limbs.

“…rendezvous in four-zero minutes,” rumbled a southern-fried voice in his ear. He had known and liked and, yes, sometimes feared that voice, once. Ben Ullmer, or someone who could fool Ben’s wife. “Will you make a second run, Cyclops Two?”

A soft, almost boyish reply: “Not without a visual sighting, but we’ve scrambled everything from Pensacola to Keesler and this airspace ought to be popping any minute.”

That’s all I need: those bases are right over there on the Gulf coast, practically on our right-hand horizon, Corbett fumed. He checked the fuel readout again, reached over to take the bulb from Petra. “Just giving you a rest,” he told her, unwilling to mention his eavesdropping until he knew what to do about it. He squeezed hard and repeatedly on the bulb and continued listening.

“…certain he was tangled in your munition, Cyclops Two?”

“Affirmative, my copilot tells me we probably cut the wire when we tried to nibble at him with a head-on pass. You should’ve told me he could jink straight up.”

And now Corbett’s eyes slitted because the next voice was one he knew even better. “You attempted a midair collision? That’s foolhardy with a hostage onboard,” said Dar Weston.

“Our orders are pretty clear, sir,” countered the younger man in Cyclops Two. “That thing is supposed to come down, and in our briefing you said a little damage could do it. The aircraft was going down in a tight spiral when we banked for our next pass, so I’d say we did something right. Sir.”

Ben Ullmer again: “Any sign of wreckage in the water? Have you sent the coordinates to Air-Sea Rescue?”

“We’re searching now, sir, in a tight orbit; and affirmative, the choppers are coming. Everything is coming.”

“So are we,” said Ullmer. “Cyclops One out.”

Corbett saw that the main tank registered full. Well, Cyclops One, alias Uncle’s puzzle palace and spook show, let’s see if we can give you something to puzzle over when you get here, he thought, starting a brisk descent through the clouds as he checked his heading. “Petra, as soon as we break out of this stuff I want you to set the IR scan behind us. That guy who tried to ram us should be a few miles back, and you’ve got to lock onto him so he can’t possibly spot us when we come down.”

She began to punch the keyboard. “Exactly what do you mean by ‘come down’?”

“Enough to hover and drop something into the water,” he said, chuckling. He moved the hose from the gas can to the full plastic bladder, lifted the metal can by its homely baling-wire handle and shook it, satisfied with the slosh.

They broke clear of the clouds with small, even whitecaps perhaps a mile below. Almost immediately Petra said, “Locked on. How’d you know he’d be there?”

“Tell you later,” he said, spotting contrails far to the right as jet interceptors rocketed high, much too high to be a threat, up from the Gulf coast. He watched the airspeed indicator climb as Black Stealth One neared one hundred and eighty knots, a speed possible only because he had it in a shallow dive toward the water and an ambitious gamble. “Find me a piece of cloth I can use to plug the spout on this can. A sock; anything. In fact, take out a dress, or shirt, a whatchacallit…”

“Blouse?”

“You choose,” he waved a hand helplessly. “Something else you don’t mind dropping in the water. And, ah, if your mouth is still bleeding, chew on the blouse a little. Won’t hurt at all if it has a little blood on it.”

“My mother gave me this yellow silk blouse. I thought I’d be seeing her this weekend. It wrinkles like tinfoil and I’ve waited for years for a reason to ditch it,” she said, with a spiteful look at the bright garment. “I look pale as a vampire in yellow.”

“Another time, all right?”

“My, but we’re touchy,” she said. Corbett rocked with déjŕ vu; he had heard Andrea Leigh use that phrase when Petra was no more than a waist-high pixie. Maybe foster parents are as real as any, he thought. I hope so. Phil Leigh sure raised a pistol. Ten minutes ago she was yelling her head off, and no wonder…

As she rummaged through her little overnight bag for a sock, he considered the engineering problems involved, and their solutions. “Damn I hate this, but my stuffs probably helping give us a radar echo too. Take my tools out of my bag, all the metal things. Wait! Not the clock or those little cardboard tubes; they stay. What’ll go into this gas can, put it in for ballast. What won’t, tape it to the bottom of the can.” He fumbled into his pocket, wondering if he had managed to lose his cigarette lighter.

“What about your gun?”

“Like hell. A Glock is mostly plastic anyway. I’ll keep it.”

Dropping an expensive adjustable socket wrench into the gas can, she said, “I wish I knew what I’m doing.”

“Later,” he replied. “For now, just do it.”