“Well, we’re all going to be damned busy chasing Black Stealth One, Ben. God knows where I’ll be by this time tomorrow.”
“I’ll be with you. Wife’s already packed my bag.” Ullmer saw doubt in the CIA man’s face and flushed. “I’m no older than you are, Weston, and nobody knows what that airplane can do better than me. Who the fuck else is better qualified to hunt it down?”
Dar held his palms up and out as if warming them with the heat of Ullmer’s objection. “Point taken, Ben. But pretty soon, your runway is going to look like Dulles International and we’re going to have to start looking like a team with a plan. I’m open for ideas.”
“Hell, that’s easy. First thing we do is put the Air Force and ever’body else with a clearance in the air flying tight grid patterns. Also, keep light civilian air traffic on the ground, however we do it. Searchers will need a three-view of the hellbug, something that doesn’t give too much away.” Ben allowed some glum satisfaction to creep into his voice: “Marie’s already putting it together upstairs. Next thing is, we send Raoul Medina by fastest possible means to fly Blue Sky Three to Llano Majado. If the Sovs are busy stealing the fake, they may not be looking for the real one. Of course, if this is a big Sov operation, they may already have both of ‘em. That’s something we need to know, and Medina will have to be ready for an ambush.”
Dar Weston rubbed bristles on his chin, gazing at the wall map. “If it’s a big operation, they may have fuel dumps waiting for a long flight in stages. Make sense?” He saw the NSA man nod and continued: “That’s something we could release under a cover story to state police. Give the Feebs something to do, too. But what if it isn’t? What if this is a singleton, some American or Canadian? Don’t ask me how, I don’t know! We know the man speaks unaccented American English, and the guards seem to think he’s not a young man. It wouldn’t be the first time a freelance thief played for big stakes.”
“I can’t believe a singleton, out there by himself without a support organization,” Ben said, and paused. “Only guy I can imagine who’d have a prayer of flying it like this has been dead for years.” He shrugged as if slipping from under a cloak of memory and turned to face the taller man. “But one thing I do know: anybody who spots the hellbug must take it out right then and there. The longer that fucker flies it, the more likely he is to learn all its stealth systems. No simple close passes, no fuckin’ around. Fly through a wingtip or something, shit, it isn’t armed and it’ll only do a hundred and fifty knots flat-out. You could take it out with a fast chopper.”
Dar Weston was nodding, thinking it over, as he saw Terry Unruh pacing toward them. “There’s the hostage to think about,” Dar said. “But here’s a scenario you might like: it’s not a woman, it’s a copilot in drag. Or in any case, the hostage is on the other side; a fake.” He watched Ullmer chew that cigar, trading gazes with him. “If we take that tack, it might play better when the press gets hold of thisand they will, sooner or later. If we destroy the plane in flight and the hostage turns out to be genuine, we don’t look like uncaring butchers.”
“But that’s what we will be,” Ben Ullmer muttered, shaking his head. “I forgot about the hostage and I’m having second thoughts about this. I know, Job One is to make the bird unflyable. Maybe it can be done without dicing it up in midair. What d’you think, Dar? Fuck the press, I’m not into ordering an innocent woman killed.” He turned, hearing footsteps.
Unruh carried a large sealed bag in one hand, holding it up for inspection. Through the plastic film they could see a slender hardbound book, the color of dried blood, and a stiff card that might have been a credit card. “Had to promise to hold it this way, and give it right back,” he apologized. “They’ve already dusted the stuff and checked the prints by digital link. These were left in the passenger seat of the Ford,” he added, “evidently genuine; they tally with the woman’s ID here. An FBI forensics tech tells me they get faint traces of model airplane cement from the car and other stuff the guy touched. He probably left these to prove he had the woman. Hardly more than a girl, actually. Driver’s license says she’s twenty-two.”
Ben Ullmer stared at the bag, then snorted. “Formulas for Stress and Strain, “he remarked. “Funny kind of book for a girl to be carrying.”
Dar squinted, remembering. “Model cement; we used to rub it into our fingers to fill fingerprint whorls. This guy is using old-fashioned tradecraft but I’ll bet they didn’t get any usable prints from him.”
“Just the woman,” Unruh agreed. “The book has her name in it and an address in Providence, Rhode Island.”
Dar Weston felt a sudden jolt, as if his stomach had been pierced by a meteorite as cold as deep space. Taking his work seriously, he never discussed his family with colleagues except, of course, those few he had known for most of his lifetime. What’s in a name? Terry Unruh had no way of knowing. With unwilling fingers, Dar grasped the bag and stared at the card inside, a Rhode Island driver’s license, and his world narrowed suddenly to a single image, an image of Petra Leigh falling forever in a cloud of debris.
THIRTEEN
Sugar Grove, West Virginia, population 56, lies sequestered between steep, heavily wooded ridges that loom like eyebrows over the townsfolk. The village harbors a fine old Appalachian dialect and a postal drop. It is possible to get kerosene there in the shadows of those steep mountain ridges, or an illegal, equally flammable product sold in Mason jars to fuel the lamps of the inner man; but not much in the way of FM broadcasting. Locals do not bother twiddling knobs on FM portables because line-of-sight transmissions do not penetrate there through rocky ridges. This natural shielding runs for some distance beyond the town, and a few miles north of Sugar Grove the casual hiker must retrace or climb a mountain because the signs make very clear that trespassing beyond that chain-link fence is a federal crime.
This isolation from stray radio frequencies is precisely why the NSA, and later the U.S. Navy, chose to build secret listening posts including a huge dish antenna fifty yards across and a submerged communications center. Now and then, NSA officials pass through Sugar Grove. Occasionally, special maintenance teams drive out to the remote antennas in a flatbed or a pickup truck to work on the Big Ear or the twin Wullenwebers which form essential parts of what is probably the world’s most sophisticated communication network. Rarely, the chop of helicopter blades echoes through the long hollow. Fuel drums of three kinds are stocked on-site by the U.S. Navy for those rare occasions, choppers being such sots for fuel.
The simplest way to appreciate all that technology hidden in a West Virginia hollow is to look straight down on it and, thanks to Soviet satellites, Sugar Grove is a popular subject for photography from orbit. The main operations building, of white cinder block, has no windows because its occupants are not supposed to be thinking about all that splendid mountainous isolation. Nor would they be likely to suspect the damnedest-looking airplane on earth touching down on grassy stubble shortly after dawn, a mile from that windowless building.
Petra’s first impression, on waking, was of the dull ache at the base of her neck. She started to reach out, and to yawn, and found that she could do neither because her wrists were tied to an immovable posther ankles as welland something that smelled like Wrigley’s Spearmint was pasted over her mouth. She could even hear the hiss of air through small holes that someone had cut in the tape so that she could breathe through her mouth. For an instant, as long as it took for her to whimper while her vision made sense of her surroundings, she was terrified with the nameless dread of a child. And then she remembered; not everything, but too much, enough so that she kept from wetting herself only through great effort. And that made her mad enough to quell panic.