“Yo, Major,” Jordan replied.
“Can we use afterburner?” Barr begged.
“No afterburners. We’re not showing off just yet. Let’s hit it.”
Wyatt ran his throttles forward, released the brakes, and felt nearly thirty thousand pounds of thrust immediately. It shoved him back satisfyingly in his seat. By the time he passed the operations tower, his airspeed was showing 160 knots. A quick glance to his right confirmed that Barr and Jordan were right with him, demonstrating the discipline and ability taught them by seven thousand hours of flight time.
He eased the stick back a notch and the long, narrow nose ahead of him rose. He felt the lift take over, and, a minute later, the wheels quit rumbling. The Phantoms crossed the Davis-Monthan boundary fence at a thousand feet of altitude and banked into a right turn.
Wyatt retracted flaps and landing gear and got green lights.
“Phantom eight-seven, Davis Air Control.”
“Go ahead, Davis.”
“Eight-seven, you are cleared to thirty thousand feet, heading zero-zero-five.”
“Roger, Davis, confirm angels thirty, zero-zero-five. Eight-seven out.”
Barr’s baritone sounded in his earphones. “Now?”
“Now, Bucky.”
Wyatt shoved his throttles outboard and past the detents into afterburner, pulling back on the stick at the same time.
The three Phantoms leapt upward, climbing almost vertically, airspeed reaching past the five hundred-knot mark, looking for the rarified freedom of thirty thousand feet.
Jesus, I love this.
The Excelsior Hotel on Bath Road was convenient to Heathrow Airport for the German, or Formsby would not have agreed to it as a meeting place. He did not like to hold such meetings in ostentatious surroundings.
Neil Formsby got out of his cab in front of the main entrance to the hotel at 6:30 P.M. in the evening. He tipped the doorman just enough to remain unremarkable and pushed his way into the ornate lobby. He stood inside the doors for a moment and looked around.
Formsby was in evening dress for he had to meet Pamela at D’Artagnan in Regent’s Park immediately after seeing the man from Bonn. In fact, Muenster’s telephone call had almost upset his entire evening. He did not care for unexpected disruptions in his schedule.
He was a tall man at six-feet, two-inches and always tailored in the latest of immaculate fashion. His dark blond hair was crisply styled to his aristocratic head. Set widely on either side of an aquiline nose, his eyes were hazel and very direct. People who spoke with Formsby thought he was either extremely interested in them or obnoxiously intrusive. Those who thought him impolite also thought that his wide shoulders were padded and his slim torso girdled. They were incorrect.
Spotting the man who must be his quarry standing near the entrance to the bar, Formsby crossed the deep pile carpet of the lobby toward him. He walked with an obvious limp. The bones of his left ankle were nearly solidified with aluminium pins, and there was almost no flexibility left in the joint.
“Herr Ernst Muenster?”
“Yes. Mr. Carrington-Smyth?” The German spoke almost unaccented English.
“Correct. Shall we?” Formsby lifted a hand toward the lounge.
“By all means.”
Seated at a table near the back, after ordering a
cognac for the German and a single malt scotch for himself, Formsby said, “I appreciate your responding so quickly, Herr Muenster.”
“Please. It is Ernst.”
“And Malcolm, if you will. Do you frequently conduct your business face-to-face?”
“Always. It assures that I will do more business.” Formsby nodded, but remained silent as their drinks were delivered and placed in front of them with a flourish.
Muenster spent the diversion examining Formsby closely, but then that was the very point of the personal meeting, Formsby thought.
Muenster appeared to be nearly sixty years of age. What was left of his hair — a fringe that was trimmed close to his skull — was snowy white. His jowls sagged some, an accompaniment to his massive girth. Formsby guessed that he would tip the scales at better than three hundred pounds. His tailors had much to work with, but performed a credible job. The man wore a summer-weight wool worth a thousand U.S. dollars. He also wore a constant half-smile, as if the circumstances he found himself in bordered on the humorous.
He was not in an amusing business. Herr Ernst Muenster was an arms dealer, but to be honest, an arms dealer of the highest calibre and reputation. Formsby managed to keep the pun to himself.
When the waiter moved away, Formsby raised his glass, and his eyebrow, in a toast. “To the point?” Muenster sipped from his crystal glass, then ran his tongue lightly across his upper lip. “I appreciate a man who comes right to the point.”
“Very well.” Formsby withdrew the single sheet of yellow notepaper from his inside breast pocket and passed it across the table.
The German scanned it, his eyes hesitating over a couple of the entries. He nodded. “It can be done.”
“I am encouraged.”
“Delivery included?”
“Please.”
“And End-User Certificates?”
Formsby shrugged. “Quite up to you, I’m sure.” Muenster nodded. “Expensive, but manageable. The destination will have a bearing. Might I know where that will be?”
“To be determined at a later date, but certainly on the African continent.”
“Yes. I see.”
“How about a price?” Formsby asked.
“To be determined at a later date,” the German told him with a slight increase in the grin. “I will need to check on several items. Demand and supply, you understand?”
“I do understand. I will ring you the first of the week next.” Lacking a true name and a telephone number for Formsby, the German could not telephone Formsby.
“Thursday may be a better day,” Muenster said. “I will have to travel some.”
“Thursday it is,” Formsby agreed.
They finished their drinks, and Formsby got up and made his way back across the lobby and out the entrance. While the doorman whistled a cab forward, he reviewed the meeting and thought that it had gone well.
Soon, he would be armed again.
The brown and tan Nebraska plains stretched from one horizon to the other, seemingly endless at Wyatt’s altitude of fifteen thousand feet, about 12,500 feet AGL — above ground level — at Ainsworth. A few blue dots that were the remains of lakes in July were scattered about. Fifty miles ahead was the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
“Trees seem to be in short supply,” Barr told him over the radio.
“We don’t have to build a homestead.”
Cliff Jordan broke in, “Tally ho, there we go. Eleven o’clock.”
Wyatt saw the airfield just as Jordan reported it. The long, straight runways broke up the terrain.
“My God!” Barr said. “What’s that doing here?” Turning slightly left to align himself with the airport, Wyatt touched the transmit button and said, “It was a bomber training base during War Two, Bucky.”
“Well, it was a big son of a bitch.”
The concrete runways were wide enough that small aircraft could take off crosswise. Each of the three runways looked to be about ten thousand feet long. Spaced along the north side of the field was a row of massive hangars, their corrugated roofs streaky with rust and dirt. From two miles away, it looked deserted.
Jordan clicked on, “Can you imagine that place with B-17s, B-25s, and B-36s lining the aprons?”
“Yeah, Cliff, I sure as hell can,” Barr said, his voice a little awed. He had a soft spot for 1940’s era warbirds.
Wyatt took them down to five thousand feet and made a pass down the northern runway so they could check conditions. One corner of one hangar, near the dilapidated tower, contained a local flight service. A couple Aeronicas, a Mooney, a Cessna light-twin, and a Beechcraft were parked in a row out in front. In the middle of all that concrete, they looked like exquisite miniatures. A wind sock high on the hangar hung limp. As the three Phantoms shot down the runway in formation, seven or eight figures abruptly burst out of the flight service and peered up at them.