The Hind’s wing sharpened as they drew closer, poking up from the thick brush where the rest of its corpse must have been scattered in the crash. Strange there was no smoke, the leader reckoned, nor any evidence of explosion or smell of fuel. It was not until he came upon the wing that he realized why.
“Por Dios,” he muttered, touching it. “It’s made of wood!”
It had been nearly an hour since Blaine had passed over the Ditch Point after issuing the report of his own demise. The static had been the touch that clinched the authenticity of his words, he figured, managed through a means no more elaborate than crumpling sections of navigational maps one after the other. Johnny Wareagle had planted the fake wing at the Ditch Point, the idea being that in case of an emergency, the wing would distract pursuers long enough to allow Blaine to reach the border. Things hadn’t gone exactly as planned, but they had gone well enough.
McCracken didn’t need any of his crumpled maps to tell him he was coming up on Honduras and the landing site just west of Bocay where the rest of his team had established a small camp and had a Hercules transport waiting. He landed the Hind next to the Hercules without further incident and waited for Johnny, who would be making his way here by jeep from the Ditch Point.
Two hours later, a huge figure appeared in the opening of the small tent where Blaine was resting. He gazed up into the eyes of the giant Indian.
“Musta drove pretty damn fast, Indian.”
“Speed is relative, Blainey. For some a mile is the same as a step. For others …”
Blaine nodded his understanding, still gazing up. Wareagle admitted to seven feet and might have easily exceeded that by an inch or two. His hair was tied in a ponytail, and his flesh was baked bronze by years of living in the outdoors following four tours of duty in Nam in Captain Blaine McCracken’s commando unit. For the first time since those years, Wareagle was garbed in a set of camouflage fatigues.
“The uniform suits you, Johnny.”
“A reminder of the hellfire. In the jungle today it tried to come back to me until the spirits chased it away.”
“I figure those same spirits moved the Honduras border a bit to make life easy for me in the end.”
“It would not be beyond them.”
McCracken nodded at that. He had seen Johnny’s mystical powers at work too often to challenge them, first in Nam and then much later on a snow-swept night in Maine when the fate of the country had hung in the balance.
“What next, Blainey?” the big Indian wondered.
“First off, I’m going to make sure that Hind-D gets delivered safely to Ben Metcalf in Colorado Springs. I didn’t spend two months of my life preparing for this to see it get fucked up somehow. I like seeing things through to the end.”
Wareagle nodded knowingly. “Sometimes the ends are not ours to control, Blainey. Man is a creature of constant beginnings. Your constant obsession with finishing leads you on an empty journey that can never end. We are nothing more than creatures of our destinies unless the spirits guide us.”
“You sound like a travel agent for the soul.”
“The spirits are the agents. I am just the interpreter.”
“They furnish your words concerning me this time?”
“They furnish all.” Wareagle hesitated. “I worry for you still, Blainey. So restless is your manitou. So driven are you to pursue that which you cannot identify.”
“But we have identified it, Indian; it’s what lured you out of your retirement villa up in Maine and got me away from sorting paper clips in France: the world’s gone nuts. Innocent people are dropping dead all the time. The madmen are taking over and there are only a few of us left to keep the balance straight.”
“You did not throw it off by yourself, Blainey,” Wareagle told him. “And yet that is how you seek to restore it. Ever since the hellfire …”
“The real hellfire was the five years I was out, Indian. Now I’m back but I’m doing things my way, on my terms. Ben wanted a Hind. I owed him. Straight and simple.” He paused. “Hope I didn’t forget to tell you how great it is working with you again. No one else could have pulled off that trick with the fake wing.”
“Men see what they expect to. The trick is to give it to them.”
“The trick is to stay alive, Indian. Where you off to from here, back to the wilds of Maine?”
“A national convention of Sioux in Oklahoma, Blainey. The time has come to accept my heritage once more, to accept myself as Wanblee-Isnala.”
“Wan what?”
“My Sioux name as christened by Chief Silver Cloud.”
“And what’s his Sioux name?”
“Unah Tah Seh Deh Koni-Sehgehwagin.”
“Give him my best.”
Chapter 2
President Lyman Scott didn’t stop to remove his overcoat upon reaching the White House. Instead he made straight for the elevator, located ten yards from his private entrance, that would whisk him down to the secret conference room, deep underground. Scott was a big, raw-boned, athletic man, and even his exceptionally fit Secret Service guards had to struggle to keep up with him.
Especially today.
A man with thick glasses and thinning hair was waiting for him at the elevator.
“Are they all here, Ben?” the President asked.
“Yes, Mr. President.”
The aide waited until the three Secret Service men had entered the compartment after the President before pressing the down arrow. The elevator had only two stops, one underground and another at ground level where they had just entered.
Lyman Scott stripped off his overcoat and scarf. He had been president for just over two years and for a portion of that period seemed well in control of his duties. He had run on a platform of sanity and sense, especially when dealing with the Soviets. Upon taking office he initiated a series of summits with a progressive Soviet leader who felt, as he did, that a constant dialogue was the most efficient way of ensuring future peace. The country rallied behind him, a long-sought-after goal at last to be achieved. But there were costs. As a show of good faith, Scott kept his campaign pledge to drastically cut back on defense spending and reorganize the military community. There was grumbling and resistance, but the process nonetheless was underway.
Then came firm evidence of an active Soviet presence in Central America, Syria, and Iran. While claiming to bargain in good faith, the Soviets had been building up foreign divisions throughout the entire duration of the peace talks. Russian leaders insisted they were even then pulling back, but the damage had already been done. When Scott refused to respond strongly, even militarily, the polls came up squarely against him. The country believed its President had been played for a fool, and men Scott should have been able to trust failed him at every turn, feeling betrayed themselves by his earlier policies. He was labeled weak. A cartoon picturing a chicken cowering from a bullying bear made the op-ed pages of several major newspapers. For the past two months, Scott had weathered a storm which showed no signs of letting up.
The elevator doors slid open. The President left his aide and guards out in the corridor and passed through a high-security door into the Tomb.
The four men already present immediately stood.
“Forget the formality, gentlemen,” Scott said by way of greeting. He tossed his overcoat and scarf onto a couch and moved to his customary seat at the head of the conference table. It was built to accommodate up to twenty, but today only five chairs were taken, the occupants of the other ones having disappeared one at a time over the past few weeks with the evaporation of the President’s trust in his own advisers. It had been paranoia, in fact, that had led him to convene this meeting here in the Tomb instead of in the usual briefing room. The isolation was devastatingly apparent; each word spoken seemed to echo through the narrow emptiness of the chamber. The Tomb was barren but for the maps that hung on the walls and for the single red phone perched on the conference table within the President’s reach. The light came harsh and bright from the recessed ceiling; for some unknown reason there was no dimmer switch.