When he had checked the aircraft over, he stood for a moment with folded arms staring at the thing he had helped to create. They didn’t have to change much. Battery location moved aft to counterbalance all that computer stuff; little wing strakes added. Hats off to you, Ullmerand you too, Speedy. It was not merely the Rolls Royce of aircraft: it was the Chaparral, the Ferrari prototype, the Le Mans winner of aircraft.
He felt gooseflesh then, knowing that Black Stealth One was the sole object in all his remaining life that he would risk dying forand that it was his. Some people felt that way about homes or cars; a few, about certain boats. It was probably those few who could sail around the world alone, visit any exotic port, who might come nearest to understanding his affection for the hellbug. For him, however, there would be no port authorities or border police to hinder his comings and goings. His could be a godlike freedom unknown to any other person on earth. That was the entire point; not to smuggle this or that, but to wish himself at a place, and know that he could go there.
He’d need to install some wing tanks for that, which implied several bases of operations. The very idea would have been solitary fantasy without the prospect of money. I don’t know where I’ll keep the hellbug, but I do know I’ll need enough money for hangars. And Speedy’s going to help me surprise some folks who are holding a bundle of that. Without that money, I can’t keep the hellbug. No choice but to take the risk. One thing sure: I’ll destroy this beauty before I let anyone else have it. It’s mine; it’s my price, they owe it to me and when this is over we’ll all be even.
Or I’ll be dead.
He stepped up into the cockpit and flicked switches, moving the throttle gently, hearing a hollow click and a sound that was almost the low growl of a big animal. “Oh, Christ,” he said, flicking the switches again.
He did not look up until she was striding through the furrows toward him, calling. “Kyle, come quick! It’s on TV.”
He shuffled back to the store and followed her to the bedroom which smelled of sour sweat, a room no Mexican peasant would have allowed into such a scabrous condition. Two empty quart bottles of Old Sunny Brookor perhaps a local product masquerading as Old Sunny Brooklay beside a bedside table, and a nearly full bottle sat by a snuff glass that might, once upon a time, have been clean. At the moment it looked as if bait had escaped from it. Petra leaned against one wall because it was preferable to the bed, nodding toward the big color set with its audio subdued.
“…released this morning,” said a handsome, blow-dried gentleman holding a sheaf of pages in a studio. “National Security Agency spokesmen would not comment on the skyjacker’s identity, but sources say military and state law enforcement agencies are in close cooperation in a manhunt stretching from the Canadian border to Florida. More on this story now from Ynga Lindermann in Monroe, Georgia.”
Cut to a statuesque blonde holding a cordless mike while a breeze flickered in her hair. Behind her stood a small commercial hangar. A wind sock nodded near a runway, and Corbett recognized a Schweizer sailplane in the background. “The stealth aircraft stolen from NSA near Elmira, night before last, may have landed here yesterday afternoon outside Monroe. If it did, airport manager Mel Ryder says he did not see it. Neither did any of several sailplane enthusiasts at”
Corbett laughed aloud. “I dug a hole and buried it,” he informed the reporter.
“Shh!” Petra’s glance was formidable.
“…was positively identified eight thousand feet over Monroe by a Georgia state trooper, a sharp-eyed ‘bear in the air’ whose small Cessna could not keep pace with the supersecret military plane. Chase planes crisscrossed airspace near here for hours afterward, and at least two armed, propeller-driven assault aircraft made emergency landings for fuel at small civilian fields near Athens and Vidalia, both in Georgia.”
The photogenic blonde pointed toward her horizon, giving millions a view of her profile, and continued: “Later in the evening, another reported sighting placed the stolen aircraft in northern Florida, but a trucker who watched this sighting with a highway patrolman claimed, in his words, ‘I know a bird when I see one, and I saw one.’ Federal authorities clamped down on further details, but at this hour it’s common knowledge that airspace over the entire southeastern United States is filled with military aircraft of every possible description, including AWACS in-flight refueling tankers. Whatever they’re looking for, they do not seem to have found it. Ynga Lindermann, in Monroe, Georgia, for CBS. Back to you, Chris.”
Again, the unruffled gent in the studio: “And still no word on the identity of the hostage, pending certain identification by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In other news, talks on reduction of tensions with the Mexican government are underway, although drug-enforcement agents …”
Corbett walked out, chuckling, leaving Petra to follow. “AWACS my ass,” he chuckled. “KC one thirty-fives are for in-flight refueling, not radar surveillance. And the Feebs know who you are, for sure. Why don’t TV people get things right?”
“They got one thing right. I heard several airplanes go over in the night,” Petra said. “I went out and set the pixel program for you.”
“I know you did,” Corbett said. “It took a lot more out of the battery than I thought it would.”
“Any problem with that?” Perhaps too defensively.
“Noexcept that there’s not enough power to start the fucking engine.”
She gasped; put a fist to her mouth, chewing at a knuckle. Then, accusingly: “You were going to leave withoutwithout saying good-bye?”
He put his hands out, shaking them as though holding a two-foot cocktail shaker, and burst out, “All right: good-bye! Bon voyage, adios, ciao, for God’s sake, I know you were trying to help. I’m sure you did, in fact, but pretty soon there won’t be enough juice to keep the computer program going, or some friend of the guy I shot will come poking around, and,” he caught himself, sighed, and went on more softly, “I’ve got to find some way to fire the hellbug up.”
“Can you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, if I can find a pair of car batteries. The hellbug uses twenty-eight volts, one car battery won’t do it.”
“How about the car outside?”
“That’s one, if it works. I’ll see. You could scout around, see if there’s another one anywhere on the premises.” With that, he hurried out to the rusting Pontiac and checked under its hood.
When he returned, she showed him empty hands. “Never mind, the battery’s all but dead out there,” he said.
“What if I hitched a ride and bought a pair of good ones? I’ve got fifty-seven bucks,” she said brightly.
“Of all the dumb ideas you ever had,” he began, and sighed. “You have any idea what they’d do to you for that?”