Shifting his body slightly, McCracken checked his watch: eight hours to go. He swept his binoculars through the small center of Pamosa Springs, and his eyes locked through the lenses on the short and cocky figure of Guillermo Paz.
Paz’s reputation alone had nearly led Blaine to cancel his recent Nicaraguan mission to hijack the Hind-D. And now the little man was here, fingers toying with his mustache as always, linked obviously to Raskowski and forced to prove his mettle yet again. Challenging the same man twice in so short a time was not something Blaine looked forward to. One of the things that had kept him alive this long was not tempting the law of averages.
In this case, however, Paz seemed the least of his problems. He had counted ninety soldiers and enough firepower to hold off ten times that many. He had only an Uzi Vasquez had given him and the nearly full tank of gas in the rented compact he’d driven in from Durango.
What he needed was a miracle. And it was just a few minutes later that it occurred to him where one was waiting for him.
Sheriff Junk and the mayor hadn’t gone very far into the San Juans at all. The concentration of Paz’s forces searching for them would have prevented it, even if a bullet wound in Dog-ear’s leg hadn’t. At first he pleaded with Heep to go on without him but the sheriff was hearing none of that. He cut down a great pile of thick branches and used them to camouflage a sheltered space between three large rocks. This hideout kept them dry and safe. They had to move their shelter only once in the hours since their escape, but on several occasions they had actually held their breath while Paz’s troops searched close by.
Before the pursuit began, they had buried Clara in a makeshift grave of rocks and branches. Her efforts had saved them and they said their own silent prayers for both her and Isaac T. Hall before pressing on. Further up the trail, Dog-ear’s leg stiffening, they had found a spot to conceal the crates of rockets and grenades which were too bulky to carry. As time went on, McCluskey’s wound grew more and more painful and swollen, and Sheriff Junk had to carry him most of the way to the place where he built their shelter.
They didn’t talk much because there wasn’t much to say. They had escaped but done their town no good in the process. They may even have made matters worse. With two men free now to tell the world what was happening in Pamosa Springs, Paz was capable of anything.
What they needed, Sheriff Junk supposed, was a doctor to set Dog-ear’s leg just right. Then they could take the rest of the grenades and rockets back down the pass and wage their own private war on Paz’s troops.
But what they really needed was a miracle.
Three hours after leaving Pamosa Springs, Blaine pulled up to the gate of the Air Force Research and Testing station in Colorado Springs. He had no clearance to enter, but he managed to convince the guards at the front gate to put in a call to Lieutenant Colonel Ben Metcalf who, thankfully, was listed as present on the base. After learning his visitor was McCracken, Metcalf instructed that he be immediately passed through.
The base was generally simple in design, composed as near as Blaine could tell of little more than several barracks, a dozen hangars, numerous runways and assorted stations for drilling.
Metcalf met him outside the tri-level office building and pumped his hand happily when he climbed out of his grimy compact.
“Have you switched to the economy model?”
“My Porsche is in the shop. You know how it is.”
“Sure do. Temperamental engines are what I deal with all day.” They stood facing each other. “So what the hell brings you back here so soon?” Metcalf asked him.
“I need a favor.”
“God knows we owe you. Just name it.”
“Don’t say that until you hear what it is.”
“I’m listening.”
“Let’s go into your office.”
When Metcalf had closed the door behind him, Blaine picked up again. “Tell me about the Hind-D.”
“Not much to tell. We haven’t done a hell of a lot with it yet besides pasting American instructions over the Russian ones. Apparently there’s been a jurisdictional snafu. Everyone in the armed forces is claiming it belongs to them.”
“Then you haven’t disassembled it yet.”
“Hell no. The only thing we’ve done since you dropped it off was give it a fresh fill of fuel for testing that hasn’t been conducted yet.”
“That’s just what I needed to hear.”
“Why, Blaine?”
McCracken hesitated. “Now comes the favor I told you about. I need you to lend me the Hind … just for the afternoon.”
Metcalf’s face turned serious for the first time. “Blaine, what’s going on?”
“I won’t bother with explanations because they wouldn’t make any sense to you. Can I have the bird or not?”
Metcalf shrugged. “Everything else aside, I’d love to help you. Problem is, I haven’t got the authority to check the Hind out to anyone; nobody does until this jurisdictional dispute gets settled. I’d like to help you but I can’t. Christ, Blaine, I know you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have a damn good reason to be, but I just don’t have the authority to fill your request.”
Blaine pulled out his gun. “That’s what I figured.”
“You don’t need that,” Metcalf told him calmly.
“It’s for your own good that I brought it along. This way, all the cooperation you’re going to give me can take place under coercion. Might save your career.”
“And fuck yours royally.”
“Mine doesn’t exist anymore. Less so now than ever, believe me.”
Metcalf started with him to the door, then stopped. “Whatever you’re going up against, you’re obviously going to need help. Let me—”
“No offense, Ben,” McCracken interrupted, “but you’re just a bureaucrat now and I haven’t got time to go through channels. The country hasn’t got time.”
“That bad?”
“Oh yeah.”
“At least tell me where you’re headed. I might get lucky and—”
“No, can’t do that either, but thanks just the same. That kind of exchange would make you an accomplice for no good reason I can see. The wheels spin too slowly to take the risk. This one’s mine.”
“Then put your gun away and follow me.”
“I’ll keep it out, Ben, just for show.”
Every day this time of year, Cleb Turner, Sergeant Major in the United States Army, took a stroll around lunchtime to the first hot dog vendor he could find. Turner would take a pair of dogs and a can of diet Coke into the shade and linger over them lavishly before returning to his stale office in the Pentagon and the start of equally stale afternoon meetings.
Cleb Turner was never meant to be a bureaucrat. Damn business was too confining, especially for a man who’d served in both Korea and Vietnam. Just as bad, Cleb knew that as the first black sergeant major in army history, his appointment had been earned on the political battlefields as much as the real ones. But what the hell? He’d earned the appointment on his own merit; he just didn’t like the job, kept at it mostly because he figured that having more real soldiers behind the desks might help avoid future debacles.
It was the bullshit he had to go through en route to this goal that made lunch outside the Pentagon his favorite part of the day. Since the morning had been relatively quiet, he allowed himself relish along with the usual mustard on his pair of hotdogs. He was trying to balance them in one hand and handle his soda in the other, when he turned smack-dab into a huge figure whose chest was even with his head.