According to the readout, they had used up nearly four gallons from the main tank. When Petra had refilled the tank, roughly a gallon would have to go over the side with that can, which had probably quintupled their signature on any kind of search radar, even X Band. He cudgeled his memory on C Band, X Band, side-looking, doppler, every kind of radar he could remember. Some radars were particularly good against low-flying aircraft, but he remembered an NSA memo from Sheppard to the effect that Black Stealth One would be all but invisible to that stuff. Trying still another radio frequency, he felt gooseflesh flood his limbs.
“…rendezvous in four-zero minutes,” rumbled a southern-fried voice in his ear. He had known and liked and, yes, sometimes feared that voice, once. Ben Ullmer, or someone who could fool Ben’s wife. “Will you make a second run, Cyclops Two?”
A soft, almost boyish reply: “Not without a visual sighting, but we’ve scrambled everything from Pensacola to Keesler and this airspace ought to be popping any minute.”
That’s all I need: those bases are right over there on the Gulf coast, practically on our right-hand horizon, Corbett fumed. He checked the fuel readout again, reached over to take the bulb from Petra. “Just giving you a rest,” he told her, unwilling to mention his eavesdropping until he knew what to do about it. He squeezed hard and repeatedly on the bulb and continued listening.
“…certain he was tangled in your munition, Cyclops Two?”
“Affirmative, my copilot tells me we probably cut the wire when we tried to nibble at him with a head-on pass. You should’ve told me he could jink straight up.”
And now Corbett’s eyes slitted because the next voice was one he knew even better. “You attempted a midair collision? That’s foolhardy with a hostage onboard,” said Dar Weston.
“Our orders are pretty clear, sir,” countered the younger man in Cyclops Two. “That thing is supposed to come down, and in our briefing you said a little damage could do it. The aircraft was going down in a tight spiral when we banked for our next pass, so I’d say we did something right. Sir.”
Ben Ullmer again: “Any sign of wreckage in the water? Have you sent the coordinates to Air-Sea Rescue?”
“We’re searching now, sir, in a tight orbit; and affirmative, the choppers are coming. Everything is coming.”
“So are we,” said Ullmer. “Cyclops One out.”
Corbett saw that the main tank registered full. Well, Cyclops One, alias Uncle’s puzzle palace and spook show, let’s see if we can give you something to puzzle over when you get here, he thought, starting a brisk descent through the clouds as he checked his heading. “Petra, as soon as we break out of this stuff I want you to set the IR scan behind us. That guy who tried to ram us should be a few miles back, and you’ve got to lock onto him so he can’t possibly spot us when we come down.”
She began to punch the keyboard. “Exactly what do you mean by ‘come down’?”
“Enough to hover and drop something into the water,” he said, chuckling. He moved the hose from the gas can to the full plastic bladder, lifted the metal can by its homely baling-wire handle and shook it, satisfied with the slosh.
They broke clear of the clouds with small, even whitecaps perhaps a mile below. Almost immediately Petra said, “Locked on. How’d you know he’d be there?”
“Tell you later,” he said, spotting contrails far to the right as jet interceptors rocketed high, much too high to be a threat, up from the Gulf coast. He watched the airspeed indicator climb as Black Stealth One neared one hundred and eighty knots, a speed possible only because he had it in a shallow dive toward the water and an ambitious gamble. “Find me a piece of cloth I can use to plug the spout on this can. A sock; anything. In fact, take out a dress, or shirt, a whatchacallit…”
“Blouse?”
“You choose,” he waved a hand helplessly. “Something else you don’t mind dropping in the water. And, ah, if your mouth is still bleeding, chew on the blouse a little. Won’t hurt at all if it has a little blood on it.”
“My mother gave me this yellow silk blouse. I thought I’d be seeing her this weekend. It wrinkles like tinfoil and I’ve waited for years for a reason to ditch it,” she said, with a spiteful look at the bright garment. “I look pale as a vampire in yellow.”
“Another time, all right?”
“My, but we’re touchy,” she said. Corbett rocked with déjŕ vu; he had heard Andrea Leigh use that phrase when Petra was no more than a waist-high pixie. Maybe foster parents are as real as any, he thought. I hope so. Phil Leigh sure raised a pistol. Ten minutes ago she was yelling her head off, and no wonder…
As she rummaged through her little overnight bag for a sock, he considered the engineering problems involved, and their solutions. “Damn I hate this, but my stuffs probably helping give us a radar echo too. Take my tools out of my bag, all the metal things. Wait! Not the clock or those little cardboard tubes; they stay. What’ll go into this gas can, put it in for ballast. What won’t, tape it to the bottom of the can.” He fumbled into his pocket, wondering if he had managed to lose his cigarette lighter.
“What about your gun?”
“Like hell. A Glock is mostly plastic anyway. I’ll keep it.”
Dropping an expensive adjustable socket wrench into the gas can, she said, “I wish I knew what I’m doing.”
“Later,” he replied. “For now, just do it.”
THIRTY
Cyclops one loitered three thousand feet over Gulf waters as the big Sikorsky Sea King helicopter, two miles away and hovering just above the water, winched the last wetsuited man aboard. Dar Weston, his forehead pressed against Plexiglas, continued to scan the waves for any sign of debris that would mark, without question, the end of Black Stealth One. A badly scorched five-gallon canister and a woman’s bright blouse floating close together were, as proofs, highly suspect.
Because you don’t want to believe it, he argued silently. You’d rather believe Kyle is still alive? He knew the answer. No irony could be more complete, more against the principles he had held inviolate throughout his career, than this: better to have Corbett alive than Petra dead. So much for the man I thought I was; the man my father thought I was.
But if Black Stealth One was still aloft, it was still his job to help track and bring it down. There was a pedant’s word for that, he mused, still alert for floating wreckage he did not want to see. The word was “antinomy,” a naming of opposites; two equally valid principles locked in combat.
Dar felt the tap on his shoulder and turned. “You’re going to love this,” said Ben Ullmer, lowering his headset around his throat like a necklace. “That fuel canister had mechanic’s tools inside, and more taped under it. A piece of a burnt sock came out of it. Pretty clear evidence to me.”
“A decoy, you mean?”
“Sure.” Ben Ullmer’s face held animation, almost glee. “Corbett set it on fire and dropped it on purpose. With a little smoke and a hard IR signature, he knew there was a good chance someone would spot it. The blouse too, to make us think they’d sunk. An old submariner’s trick, setting their clothes afloat to fake a sinking.” Ullmer squinted out of the portal, gnawing his lip. “He’s still up here, Dar, somewhere. We have to believe thatnot just on a personal level, but at the mission level.”
“All right.” Dar replied without vigor, lost for the moment in a waking dream. He imagined for a harrowing instant that Petra, exhausted and in shark-infested waters, lay somewhere below, seeing them, swallowing salt water as she screamed for help. “Look, we have to leave a couple of those choppers here for a while, just in case, while we take up the search again.”