“Don’t feel bad,” Ventura said. “Trained cops miss at this range. Ever see the video of the state cops who stopped a couple of guys in a truck for an expired license? Guys were guilty of other crimes, so they came out with guns. The truck passenger and one cop faced each other from twelve feet, each fired five or six times, nobody hit anything. If somebody is pointing a gun at you, it’s a lot worse than shooting at a target that won’t shoot back. Adrenaline makes your hand muscles twitch funny.”
Morrison shook his head.
“Try this one. Smith and Wesson Model 317, an Air-light.”
He handed the gun to Morrison.
“It’s not very heavy.”
“Aluminum, mostly. Just under ten ounces. Holds eight rounds of.22 caliber.”
Morrison took another deep breath, indexed the little gun, pulled the trigger, one, two! The revolver jumped a little, but not much, and when he looked at the target, there were two small holes in the center, no more than an inch or two apart. Hey!
“Again. This time, keep pulling the trigger until the gun stops shooting.”
Morrison obeyed.
This time, he was able to see the holes as they appeared in the cardboard. They weren’t very big, but all of them were clustered in the center, except for one, and it was only a few inches above the others. The clicking of the hammer on empty came as a surprise.
“Very good. This is your weapon,” Ventura said. “It’s light, simple to operate, almost no recoil. It doesn’t have any real stopping power, but a solid hit from a small-caliber round is a lot better than a miss from a hand cannon.”
Morrison looked at the gun.
“Here is how to reload it, though I don’t expect you’ll get that far if you need it. If it’s one guy, point and shoot until he falls down or goes away. If it’s more than one, give them two rounds each, then repeat. We’ll practice that, double-taps.”
But they didn’t get to double-tap practice. The sound of Morrison’s cell phone ringing was clearly audible through the electronic sound suppressors.
That would be the Chinese calling.
Morrison removed the earphones and thumbed the receive button on the phone.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hey, Pat! What say we take that car of yours for a test drive? I know just the place.”
As Morrison listened to Wu, Ventura reloaded the Air-light, then handed it to him. With a cell phone in one hand and a gun in the other, it suddenly seemed to Morrison that the summer evening’s warmth had just turned to winter.
19
The helicopter pilot pointed. “Plinck Field!” he yelled over the copter’s racket.
Ventura nodded. They were two thousand feet up and easing in for the landing. He looked at his watch. Though it wasn’t that far, the hop to the private airfield via chopper had taken forty-five minutes; part of that was for a couple of changes of direction, just in case. And it was farther away from Smith’s compound than the commercial airport at Coeur d’Alene. Ventura had arranged for the helicopter before they’d arrived, knowing they’d need it once the game was fully engaged. Inside the militia’s base, they’d be safe, but once they left, the odds shifted. Even Morrison understood this, once it had been pointed out to him.
“But why a helicopter?” he’d asked.
“Because they know you’re leaving. They also know where you are going — unless you can conduct your test by remote control, you have to go back to Alaska to play the tune on your HAARP. I’ve got people in place there, and anybody who shows up for hunting or birdwatching is going to be considered armed and dangerous. But if I were the Chinese and interested in grabbing you, I’d give it a try here, first. There is only one road leading to this place, and a couple of half-wits in camo with binoculars can cover it. Half my people will convoy out in two of the rental cars an hour before the copter arrives, heading for the airport at Coeur d’Alene. That’ll give them something to look at if they are out there. They’ll probably expect some kind of subterfuge, so the third car will leave fifteen minutes after the first two, going the other way. Probably this will draw any fire teams that might have been set up. Forty-five minutes later, we take off. They won’t be able to follow us in the air without us seeing them, and I don’t think they’ll expect that anyhow. Even if they manage to footprint us with one of their spysats, we won’t stay in range long, so they’ll lose us while we’re still heading the wrong way. If they have that much going for them, they’ll probably figure out we’re going to a private airfield, but by the time they can figure out which strip and get people there, we’ll be gone. We have a chartered plane waiting for us when the copter touches down.”
“What if they’ve anticipated this and already have people at the private airfield?”
Ventura grinned. The man was beginning to catch on. “If they’re that smart, then I’ll just have to shoot them.”
He digested that for a moment. “This must be costing a fortune.”
“Not even a drop in your bucket, if you pull it off. Besides, I haven’t even run out of your retainer yet.”
Morrison hadn’t spoken to that, but Ventura could see the man was scared. Well he should be, dealing with these kinds of players. But at this level of the game, if Morrison got deleted, it was likely that Ventura would be crossing that bridge with him, and he wasn’t quite ready to do that yet. He only had to keep the Chinese hopping long enough for the deal to get done. Once the money was transferred and the information was in hand, Morrison would have to disappear, go into hiding permanently, though he didn’t know that yet. With enough money, you could vanish completely and live out your life in comfort and security, provided you knew how. Ventura knew the drill and he would advise Morrison, but that wasn’t in his own future.
Morrison was probably rationalizing that the Chinese would figure he wasn’t going to be telling anybody he’d sold them American secrets, and that once the deal was done, he was no threat. He was only partially right. The Chinese would have the software, but in order to make it work, they’d need the hardware, and that wasn’t something you could hide under a tarp. If the intelligence service of any major country suddenly had citizens run amok, killing one another, it would be cause for no small concern. If they could figure out the cause, finding the smoking gun would be relatively easy, big as the gun would have to be, and a couple of Stealth bombers could clean that clock nicely and be home in time to see the results on CNN.
The helicopter landed on the pad, the rotorwash kicking up fierce wind. Ventura slapped Morrison on the shoulder. “Stay behind me.”
They alighted from the craft, and Ventura pulled his cocked-and-locked pistol and held it down along the side of his leg. He moved quickly toward an ancient DC-3 parked a hundred yards away. As they moved, the elderly gooney bird cranked its port engine, a chuff of white exhaust smoke erupting from the engine.
Ventura smiled. He had fondness for these old planes; he had flown in them all over the world. The DC-3, sometimes called the Dakota, had been around since the mid-thirties. They were noisy, slow, and wouldn’t go all that far without refueling, but they were as dependable as sunshine in Hawaii. Ventura, whose piloting skills were emergency-level-only, had always thought that if he ever got around to buying a plane, this was the one he’d get. No bells, no whistles, but it would get you and your cargo there. It was still the best prop plane in the air, for his money.