The Ransom of Black Stealth One

FORTY-FOUR

Corbett needed his friend’s help to rise. He sat sideways, doubled over in the driver’s seat of the little Escort. “So it was you I took for a Russian sniper out in the brush,” he said, his voice still husky with pain.

“I hope so,” said Raoul Medina, glancing off toward the shrubbery. “I hot-wired a dead Mexican’s old VW to get here from Regocijo, left it a mile or two out in the boondocks.”

“I saw it,” Corbett said, unable to keep his hands from massaging his groin, though it only hurt worse when he did.

“Looks like a wreck, and it is,” Medina muttered, holding the Ingram ready. “You too.”

Corbett looked up, saw behind Medina’s dry commentary, into his sympathetic gaze. Corbett fingered the ragged edge of his earlobe. It too was beginning to hurt, now. “I flew over Regocijo today. What happened out there?”

Medina outlined the Regocijo disaster, adding, “Fucking frito bandidos severed a hydraulic line when the main landing gear collapsed. Damn red hydraulic fluid all over me, I looked worse than you do. Cancel that, nothin’ looks worse than you do, man. I’m a little beat myself, still got some spruce splinters in my shoulder. By the time I came to and crawled out from beneath the wing there were three bodies lying around, the place was an inferno, and my only help had taken off in his car. Probably thought I was dead. All I salvaged was this little Ingram. And the VW at poor old Julio’s, a mile away.”

“You knew I was coming,” Corbett said, staring at Medina. “Why didn’t you just wait?”

It was Medina who looked away first. “I didn’t know if you’d make it. And if you did, I wasn’t sure you’d come to Regocijo. That’s the long and short of it, Kyle.”

Corbett shifted against the pain still radiating from his groin, tugged at the crotch of his trousers, then managed a smile. “You really think I’d hand the hellbug over for money, Speedy?”

“Not after I took the stuff out of the trunk while those assholes were beating the bushes,” Medina replied, saying volumes by what he had not said. “That little fucker in the corner? He nearly caught me out there. I watched this Russki hotshot, or whatever he was, lug the money back after your last pass, and I heard the trunk slam. They went out on recon again when you didn’t come back, so I nipped inside. I hit the trunk release down there under your busted balls, but I didn’t have time to scoot back into the brush. Had to stuff the cash in that garbage in front of the other car.”

“So you had a ringside seat for all this.”

“No choice,” Medina shrugged. “That Russki would’ve seen me for sure, so I burrowed under the crap in front of the cars and tried not to breathe.” He fell silent for a moment, gazing at the body of Karel Vins. “You know what I think?”

“I’ve given up trying,” Corbett grunted, supporting himself on an open door as he tried to stand erect. “Oh, man; this has been one rough trip on the family jewels.”

“I think those guys didn’t know about the inside trunk release on an Escort. Not even the Russki,” Medina said. “He sure didn’t trust ‘em. Listen, Kyle, we’ve got to clean up this mess and clear out of here fast. Are you in shape to bring the hellbug here?”

Corbett’s grin was wry. “Yeah, and I’d rather you didn’t see just how primitive my booby trap really is. You sure you trust me not to just keep going?”

“With the hand I’m holding, I’d bet millions on it,” Medina cracked. “I’m wearing gloves, but you aren’t, man. I can wipe down the car, remove your prints. Make this look like a falling out of thieves.”

Corbett essayed a step, then another. “That means we’ll have to hide one body.” He interpreted Medina’s frown as perplexity. “One guy has to be missing, Speedy; he’s the one they’ll be looking for in every whorehouse in Acapulco.”

Medina’s headshake was a tribute. “I’m too goddamn new at this, man,” he said. “You know I can’t go back, don’t you.” Not a question; a flat statement.

“Yeah. They’d turn you inside out,” Corbett agreed. “They already think you’re dead, you said. Look, we gotta talk this out, Speedy, and I can help. It’ll cost you half that bundle. You earned the rest.”

“Damned decent of you, man, seeing as how I stole it fair and square already.” Medina moved around the nearest Escort, kicking corrugated debris aside, lifting the bags of money with a grunting effort. He dropped it all into the dirt at Corbett’s feet, toeing it roughly, and grinned. “Ain’t that a bitch, treating our spookers so rough?”

Corbett nodded. “I’ll give odds the stuff is marked, or bugged somehow. That’s one of the things we have to check before we leave here. And I don’t know where we can go.”

Pause. Then, suddenly: “I do,” from Medina. “That old guy, Julio, had a little place on a creek, a mile from the Regocijo hangar. He got zapped; that’s his VW I drove. The Russki seemed to think the guy you killed was the sneaky type, so he’s the one we should hide.”

“Yeah?” Corbett’s heavy shoulders shook faintly with amusement. “Yeah? Try this: we hide the Russian. Somebody was depending on him, Speedy, and so on up the line. Fuck ‘em all,” he said, and winked.

“All the way back to the Kremlin,” Medina nodded, his eyes alight. “Jesus, I’m glad you’re on my side.” He saw Corbett turning his hand over in a “maybe yes, maybe no” gesture, and laughed. “You fly him to Regocijo and I’ll drive the VW there.”

“You and the money,” Corbett said.

“Fuckin’ A,” Medina said. “And it’s only fifty miles by air but if you don’t get your ass in gear, it’ll be dark before you could make Regocijo. Don’t land at the strip; look for a thatch-roof place a mile to the north, by the creek. It’s got a pasture big enough for you.” Then, with a sigh: “Shit, I’ll be driving half the night. But at least I know the way, and you’d never make it with your balls the size of punching bags.”

Corbett picked up his pistol, wiped it down and thrust it into his jacket, took a half-dozen steps, then turned. “You still have that modified airchine you were building?”

“The Imp? Sure, hangared under false ID outside Binghamton. I’m not holding out on you, man.”

“Didn’t think you were, Speedy. I’m just reminding you: you’ve got your airchine. I’ve got mine. I won’t object to a little trading around now and then, but—”

Medina drew a long breath. A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Yeah, what’s mine is mine, and what belongs to the fucking NSA is yours. Is that all? You through setting terms and conditions, ole buddy? Maybe you’d rather just take the money and let me lug that fucking deader in a VW that might conk out on the streets of Mazatlan when I’m halfway to Regocijo, huh? Seems I heard you say you owed me one, and that was damn straight, Kyle; you do.”

Corbett raised a conciliatory hand. “Dead right on all counts. I’m just giving all the bad news up front, Speedy. I’m not holding anything out on you either. We have a lot of planning to do. We need to buy spreads from Canada to Chile where we can build hangars, a couple of dead dropout ID changes for you, stuff you may not have worked out. The good news is, I can lay it out for you, step by step.”

“Not if you don’t quit talking and get moving,” Medina said gruffly, reaching into a net bag as if it were full of scorpions. He popped the seal from a bundle of banknotes, dropped the money, and held the paper tape toward the sun which was now within a hand’s breadth of the horizon. “Well, how about that,” he said, “circuitry printed into the tape. We’re not the only high-tech spooks in the game.”

“Nope; just the best,” Corbett replied as Medina began to remove more tape wrappers.