He waited while the chopper swung out over the inlet to the atoll and danced its lights over the downed Covert. When it circled back a third time and came in at a lower altitude, he loaded the flare gun just in case it started to go away. Either way, he was ready.
The tiny Defender slipped in over the craggy shore of the island and Le put it down less than thirty feet from the water.
Bogner opened the access door and jumped out. Even before Le had brought the Allison engine to a waffling idle, he had jerked the RAM door open, grabbed the ReC gear, and begun inflating the raft.
Le opened the scanner switch for monitor, then jumped down out of the Defender. "The meter's running. You've got fifteen minutes at the most. Any longer than that and we're pressing our luck. No telling what's out there that we haven't picked up."
Bogner pushed the raft into the water, threw in the mask and scuba gear, and began rowing toward the Covert. By the time he reached it, he had stripped off his shirt and shoes and was donning the tanks. Thirty feet from the Covert, he dropped the small five-pound anchor and slipped overboard.
In the darkness he swam to the Covert, groped his way forward from the DLIR sensors along the top of the fuselage, and grabbed hold of the windscreen. At that point he estimated he was working approximately four feet below the surface. He turned on his halogen and worked the beam up and over the rim of the cockpit.
For Bogner, it was a scene straight out of a grade-B horror movie. Milo Schubatis's body had worked out of the area behind the commander's seat and was floating faceup in the cockpit. The gag was still in the little man's mouth, but the eyes were empty sockets and most of the fleshy part of the mouth had been eaten away. Bogner recoiled and swallowed hard. Colchin would have a hard time selling Aprihinen on the fact that his people had done a good job of taking care of his prized aircraft builder.
He spent the next few minutes looking for Driver's body. Either he had ejected or his body had been washed away by the tide. Finally, he swam back to the cockpit and looked for the flight recorder. There was evidence pointing to the possibility that there had been a flash electrical fire in the cockpit. The recorder housing was shattered and the B panel was lodged against it. It would take a Herculean effort to pry it out, and Bogner knew he was running short of time.
From the cockpit, he worked his way around the rest of the downed airplane, past the twin stabilizers, and around to the wing area, surveying the damage. All the while he was trying to make mental notes about the Covert's equipment.
Finally he came to the nose of the craft. The grid was smashed and the inlets had been ripped open. All things considered, Quan's prize had sustained no more than minimal damage. If Quan wanted to take the time and make the effort, it could be salvaged. That being the case, Bogner decided to go ahead with the second part of the plan. He swam back to the raft and slipped the small package of explosives out of the paraffin jacket, attached the primer and the timer, swam back to the Covert, and stuffed the charge in the suck-in doors on the fuselage above the inlet ducts. Then he set the timer.
Bogner had already started back to the raft when he saw the second body. The ebb and flow of the currents in the inlet had worked the body under the nose of the plane and wedged it into the rocks. There was no way of knowing what had motivated Driver, but Bogner had what they had come for: confirmation that both Schubatis and Driver had died in the crash. And in a few minutes, he would be able to assure the brass back in Washington that there was no way Quan could salvage the Covert.
He returned to the raft, crawled in, shed his scuba gear, and began rowing toward shore. He had burned twelve of his allotted fifteen minutes. If one of Quan's Komiskos or gunboats was in the area, Le had not given him the signal.
He pulled the raft up on the beach, ditched the scuba gear, ran across the clearing to the chopper, and opened the door.
Driver's foot caught him in the face. Bogner reeled backward and saw the figure leap from the plane. "I gotta hand it to you, swabbie. You got more goddamn lives than a cat," Driver snarled as he buried his shoulder into Bogner's midsection. Driver grabbed his head, jerked it forward and brought both knees up, and flipped Driver up and over his head. He heard him land on his back, roll over, and scramble to his feet.
Suddenly the effect of Driver's first blow took hold and Bogner's world went all fuzzy with pain.
Driver, shorter and heavier, and fighting with one arm, landed two more blows before Bogner managed to get his arm up to fend off the third. There was a burning behind his eyes and no way to breathe. He gasped for air and caught another blow in the pit of his stomach. When he managed to get his eyes open, Driver was standing over him with the flare gun pointed at him.
For Bogner it was a bewildering world of pieces and fragments. Driver was dead. He had seen himout there at the Covertfloating facedown. Intermingled with the pain and jumble of sensations was an equation that defied logic.
"How'd you make it out of that hangar, swabbie. I left your sorry ass in that" Driver's labored breathing caught up with him. The words broke off.
Bogner, still flat on his back, tried to push himself up on his elbows. He head was spinning and there was the feeling of drowningof not being able to breathe, of looking up through a cloudy, undefined kind of liquid world. He tried to clear his head, but couldn't.
"I almost made it," Driver declared. "I almost got away with it."
"Why?" Bogner finally managed to spit out. It came out broken and funny sounding, but Driver understood him.
"You still don't get it, do you, swabbie?" Driver caught his breath and weighed his words. "While you were risking your life for fuckin' peanuts, I found a way to make a decent livin'. Those damn Russians poor-mouth it, but they had enough money to make me comfortable. All I had to do was slip them an occasional drawing and tell them what I was learnin' about that damned F-117."
Driver bent over with the muzzle of the flare gun six inches from Bogner's face. The hammer was cocked and his finger was coiled around the trigger. "I almost made it in that damn plane of theirs. If it hadn't been for Quan's goons runnin' my ass down, I'd have made it to Haiphong, turned over that weasel, Schubatis, and been a fuckin' heronot to mention a whole lot richer."
Bogner shifted in the sand, and Driver pressed the barrel of the flare gun against his forehead.
"You got any idea what a gun like this does to a man, swabbie? Let me tell ya, it blows shit all over the place. I know, I seen it. Them fuckin' Vietnamese guards came into the POW compound one night and did it to my copilot. They beat the shit out of him and then they stuck a flare gun in his mouth. Did you ever see a man's head explode, swabbie? After six months of torture and some of the goddamndest things a man ever had to endure, I caved, swabbieI sold out. I knew they was just lookin' for an excuse to give me one of their head jobsthey woulda done it to me, too, but I was smart enough to cut a deal. When they found out I had been a test pilot on those damned F-16s, I took on a whole lot of importancethey started treatin' me with some dignity. Hey, better that than gettin' my damn head blown off."
Driver paused to catch his breath before he continued.
"But you know when the deal really got sweet? It got really sweet when I was assigned to Tonopah and the Have Blue tests. That's when the Russians moved in."
Bogner tried to move, and Driver pressed harder.
"Now you know all this shitit's too bad you ain't gonna live to tell about it. That's okay, it'll be our little secret what happened out here…"