He flicked switches, watched the fuel counter, and grunted his satisfaction before running his fingers experimentally along the tape on her left wrist. “Pretty good stuff,” he said, climbing out again, lifting that fuel bag for stowage in the cockpit. It had perhaps two gallons of fuel in it. As if to himself he said, “I don’t think I can risk another trip over there for a lousy three gallons,” nodding absently to the rear of the aircraft. A sigh: “So near and yet so far; I don’t relish falling around in those creepers again.”
Laying the bag of food and tools between their seats, he moved to her side and released her ankles, then her right wrist. “You can take the other one off,” he said. “I’m bushed.” While she stripped off the offending stuff, he circled around the cockpit and removed his jacket, cramming it behind his seat. “Time for dinner. I can whale your ass for dessert,” he promised. Not until he was climbing in did Petra, rubbing her wrists and glaring silently at him, notice that the shoulder holster was empty. She averted her gaze too quickly.
Poised halfway inside, he squinted at her, then slapped his right hand at his armpit. It put him off balance. “Oh, Christ,” he said softly, and then lost his balance, the aircraft rocking as he fell backward into the melon field.
Petra heard him hit the ground heavily, heard him cry out, and scrambled into action without taking time to think about it. Her legs seemed half asleep but that did not prevent her from dropping to the ground, rolling away. She leaped up, sidling off, remembering he had gone north each time, not daring to run until she saw that Corbett could only stand on one leg.
“God damn you, don’t you try to run from me,” he shouted in sudden fury, hobbling toward her, falling again, stifling another cry of pain.
Petra turned her back on him then and sprinted, stepping high, scanning the shadowed furrows because she could easily slide off one of those hard melons and break an ankle herself. She did not look back until she plunged into the trees, ducking past vines the size of hawsers. By that time Corbett was dragging himself into the cockpit of Black Stealth One.
She simply could not take the time to be frightened of this damp and shadowed jungle, ducking vines, scrambling on hands and knees when necessary. Her first thought was to put as much distance as possible between herself and Corbett; but then, as she burst into a clearing, she realized the predicament Corbett must be facing. She trotted up the perimeter road which was hardly more than a pair of ruts, and thrust both arms aloft, howling her triumph: “Allll riiiight!”
To engage the waste gates for vertical takeoff, Corbett needed two good ankles. And even if he got the hellbug aloft, he could not menace her without his pistol. With any luck she could find help fast enough to catch this overaged spy still trying to take off. “My turn now,” she exulted, trotting steadily up the ruts toward a broad break in the trees. “Let’s see who whales the hell out of who, asshole!”
Petra took care to pace herself as she would on a bike tour, easing off to catch her breath and to scan the gathering dusk for any sight of the hellbug. She felt like capering in circles to demonstrate her freedom, but every second counted if Corbett was to be taken while he was this vulnerable.
She trotted past a low ditch and found the blacktop road. Barely visible in the dusk to her left, less than a mile distant, winks of light throbbed among the trees lining the road. Petra ran a hundred steps, walked another hundred, ran again. Gradually the little store came into view. A dented yellow pickup truck stood near the two gas pumps, and from behind the edge of the white clapboard store protruded the prow of something dark that looked like a Firebird. Just below the roof corrugations and over a screen door stretched a weathered sign announcing “Olustee Gas, Grocery & Bait.” All of it defied the gathering gloom with the help of a smaller sign, “BEER,” surrounded by winking, low-wattage bulbs. The bulbs winked their last when Petra was still a quarter of a mile away.
She quickened her pace. When the driver of the pickup climbed into its cab, she shouted and waved her arms, hoping the vehicle would turn in her direction. Instead, it picked up momentum with the stately pace of a dowager and thrummed away.
She strode onto limestone gravel and up to the door of the place, breathing easily but deeply. Those little bulbs had given the place an air of cheer, of welcome. She heard no welcome in the scrunch of her shoes through gravel, and no response to her knock. The screen door was latched; the half-windowed wooden door behind it sported bars hammered from reinforcing rod. Squinting through screen and glass, she saw a single hooded overhead light above a wooden counter, a pendulum that moved less as she watched. Minutes before, someone had been inside. “Damn,” she said aloud. Could the driver of that pickup have been the owner?
Somewhere near, but not near enough to be felt, a breeze hushed its way through the trees. Petra knocked again, harder, then walked back to stand on the blacktop. She might try breaking in; a telephone line swung down from a nearby pole to the roof. Or she might wait for the next car. Surely she would not need to wait long. As she stood on the cooling blacktop, listening to the self-pity of a whippoorwill and wishing for lights to appear in the distance, she heard something else. An animal noise, a clean tone rising and then falling, yet somehow familiar, and she knew it had been made by a human voice.
Petra held her breath. Presently she heard it again, and laughed aloud. It had to be a radio somewhere behind the store, playing that stupid “Oooooh, new Moxie” soft drink commercial. The Moxie people must have lured Yma Sumac out of retirement, she decided, just for that dumb commercial. She picked her way through the shadows, stepping over a stripped engine block, calling twice more. Nothingexcept that now she could hear that radio a little better. It was playing some rockabilly ballad. Playing it loudly, she realized as she emerged behind the store.
The shed was no bigger than a one-car garage, separated from the store with only a rickety roof to connect them. Petra’s hopes fell because she could see no light from the shed. Her optimism swelled again as she moved nearer, because now she could hear another voice faintly, under the ballad, and it was not singing but talking. Now two voices.
Of course; couple of mechanics putting in overtime with the damned radio on so loud they wouldn’t hear it if somebody dragged the store away on skids, she told herself. She walked up to the door and banged on it with the heel of her hand, shouting, “Hey,” as loud as she could. And then the cardboard slid crazily down from the inside of the door and she could see through the small panes very clearly.
Two young men were in the process of dropping out of sight behind a heavy worktable, lit by a bank of overhead fluorescents. On the table was a printer’s paper shear, and near it lay a sheaf of paper pages, each sheet containing rows of some delicate imprint in red. Petra’s shout was imperious: “Come on, it’s important!”
She figured they must have pulled the radio’s plug, the way it fell silent. “Hurry,” she insisted, banging on the door again.
“You go first,” she heard a querulous voice say.
“And don’t blame me if there’s black widders down there.”
“Shut up, Bobby,” came the reply in a deeper voice, and a sound of wood dragging on wood. “That’s a woman.”
“Ah seen her. What you waitin’ for?”