LACKING VIRTUES (60 page)

“Forty feet. Thirty five.” He licked his lips. The rain was mixed with the salty taste of sea spray.

“It’s gotta be close,” Warner shouted. “Ten more feet and we go back up.”

“Hey, hold it!” Steven screamed. “Ocean below. There she is. Big waves, mean looking mothers. Can’t you see it?”

Warner shook his head No, then turned around. “Okay, we’ll hold her where she is. My plotting says we should intersect the main shipping lane to Rostock somewhere around here. I’m going to try to pick the lighted buoys. Use the infrared. What do you see if you look up ahead?”

“Water, waves, clouds, mist skimming right above your wings.”

“All right, I’m depending on you. You’re my eyes. Don’t let me run into anything.”

“Got it.”

Ten minutes later, Steven yelled. “Climb! Left turn!”

They barely missed a freighter’s mast, but soon after leveling off, they both spotted the buoys of the shipping lane.

“Good work!” Warner screamed. “Put the camera away. I can see where I’m going.”

During the next hour, the fog thinned and the rain pushed inland. The moon, that same bright harvest moon that had looked down on them the previous night, broke through the clouds, this time to stay.

Still over water, they flew north of Rostock, a rusty port that had once been the center of East German shipbuilding. From Rostock, they continued east along the white sand beaches of the Baltic. At the deserted resort of Graal-Müritz, Warner turned inland. He overflew a broad stretch of heather, crossed an egg-shaped tidal basin and came to the estuary of the Recknitz River. Following his flight plan, he headed due south.

At 2:15 a.m. his path over the sparsely populated marshes, dunes and heather of northern Mecklenburg intersected with the Augraben River. The moon and stars were out now, patches of ground fog gave off a ghostly phosphorescent glow. He hadn’t expected weather conditions this good.

He turned to Steven, who gave him the thumbs up sign. Nicole stuck her foot up behind Steven’s seat in response to his inquiry about her condition. His crew and cargo seemed to be thriving; he turned all thoughts to locating the farmhouse and putting the plane down in a field neither too close nor too far from it.

Twenty minutes later he spotted an ironwork bridge spanning the river. He climbed to 1,000 feet so he could get his bearings. The straight untraveled road that crossed the bridge ran east to the dark village of Altenhagen. He knew it well from the map. It was the first landmark of his final approach.

He circled back downriver, climbing to 2000 feet, then feathered the prop and began retracing his path in a slow glide. Five miles south of the first bridge was a second bridge. The road across it forked just west of the river. One fork ran to the horizon. The other disappeared into a grove of pines and surfaced again not far from a sprawling stucco farmstead. He pointed, then held his hand back toward Steven. From the force of the shake he got in return, he knew his copilot was looking at the same thing.

They passed over a pine forest, its trees precisely stagger-cut. Beyond the forest, a large, level meadow stretched alongside the river. Just beyond was their destination.

Warner floated silently over the house and massive barn at 800 feet. There was no sign of human presence, but he could make out what looked like a gaggle of restless geese patrolling the barnyard.

There was no use restarting the engine, he thought. The old crate glided as well as it flew, and sounds on this crystal night would carry like a gunshots.

“Tell Nicole to brace for landing,” he called back. “We’ll be on the ground in a minute.”

He heard Steven’s command, heard wind whistling through holes in the canvas, heard a nighthawk objecting to their intrusion into its territory. Warner made a steep descending turn and headed back toward the farmhouse.

Fifty feet. God, he’d flown halfway across Europe at this altitude. He was ready to touch solid ground, not  just look at.

The moon slid behind a cloud, the meadow went dark. He didn’t care, this one he could do by feel. The moon came out when he was near touchdown and dropping smoothly as a bird. No turbulence, no wind, just the even sound of air rushing across the wings.

A blur of heather and grass came up to meet them. Almost there.

He touched down, braked gently, hurtled through a dense wall of ground fog and bounced as he slowed beneath a clear, starry night. They were going to make it. By God, they were going to make it.

They weren’t rolling much faster than a bicycle when he saw a narrow ditch. Warner hit the brakes hard. The plane skidded slightly to the right.

Too late. They stopped with an abrupt jolt. Steven’s head banged into Warner’s back like a bowling ball. Warner’s harness restrained him so violently it squeezed the wind from his lungs. For a moment he sat gulping for air.

“Let’s move,” Warner whispered as soon as he had his breath back. He climbed onto the wing and tried to straighten up. He was frozen in the shape of a question mark. He had never in his life been so stiff.

Steven wrenched his seat forward and started talking to Nicole in French.

“Let’s move,” Warner repeated, still trying to straighten his legs. “We’re within a half mile of where we need to be.”

“She’s hurt,” Steven said.

“What?”

“Hurt. Broken ankle. Jesus Christ, Frank, I think I can feel the crack in the bone.”

“Shit.”

“It’s all right,” Nicole sobbed. “I’ll be all right. I’ll wait here for you.”

Warner and Steven both took off their jackets and passed them back to her. Steven spoke in French again.

Warner was about to intervene and ask him to hurry, but Steven jumped down before he could say anything, then held up his hand to assist him. “Come on, old man, I’m ready.”

Warner took the offer of help. He had his own ankles to worry about. “Bad luck,” he said as his feet hit in the soft earth. “I hope she’s all right.”

“Yeah, me too. Will the plane fly when we get back?”

“We’ll have to drag the landing gear out of the ditch but that should be all. We were lucky the prop didn’t break.”

“Okay, Frank. Nice flying. I didn’t see the ditch either. Let’s get this job done and get the fuck out of here. I’d rather be in Connecticut.”

They started across the pasture. Warner, who had been proud of his stamina during the long flight, felt like he had been hit by a train. Every joint seemed locked in the position it had held for the last few hours, every muscle felt as if it had atrophied beyond hope of resurrection.

Steven waited for him several times, then grabbed his arm. They entered the forest. The trail took them near the river. Tiny whirlpools swept silently by, like living creatures washed in moonlight.

Warner was uneasy. He had the feeling the river was watching him, listening.

Chapter Forty-Four

They hadn’t taken more than a few steps toward the house when the geese came toward them in a cackling mob. Steven kicked them out of his path, but this only intensified their attack.

“Goddammit,” he whispered. “What are these things? Watch geese?”

“I think they’re hungry,” Warner said. “Open the barn. Maybe they’ll go in there.”

Steven removed the bar and swung the door open. A huge steel tank loomed in the entryway, mounted on a brick base. There were cables above that looked like part of a primitive pulley system. Through an opening in the brick base he could make out an enormous gas burner, its pilot light a flickering blue flame. A long chute came out the side of the tank and emptied into a conveyor trough. The trough ran to some kind of a large old industrial press.

Nothing high-tech here. He couldn’t see any further into the barn without turning on his flashlight, and his batteries were getting low. The important things would be in the house.

The geese had rushed past him and were pecking violently at large sacks stacked along the walls. Pellets the size of marbles rained down through rips in the paper.

“Dog food,” Warner said. “This is an old dog food plant from the communist days. He must feed this stuff to his geese. Look at them go.”

Steven nudged Warner outside and closed the door on the ravenous birds. “Irritating fuckers,” he said. “That’s a good place for them.”

They walked to the farmhouse, which was about 50 yards away. Steven said, “You think there’s a burglar alarm system, Frank?”

“We’ll find out.”

Warner examined the back door. “A dead bolt. Go ahead and break the window.”

“With what?”

“The butt of your pistol. Hold the safety on.”

“Frank, my gun’s with Nicole. You didn’t think I was going to leave her unprotected out there with a broken ankle, did you? Would have you done that to your wife?”

“I don’t have a wife, I have a girlfriend,” Warner whispered, wrestling the Heckler and Koch from his breast holster. “Yes, I would have left her out there. What do you think’s going to get her? Werewolves.”

“Hey, Warner, this is Germany. You ever read about this place? Skinheads, Nazis, what the hell do I know? Look who lives right here. Break the window.”

Warner did, precisely, thoroughly and without much noise. He cleared the remaining glass from the frame. No alarm sounded, and nothing inside the house stirred. The place was deserted.

Warner pushed his pistol back into its holster. “Give me a boost, will you?”

Steven made a step with his hands and hoisted Warner up on the window sill. He waited for him to drop inside and followed. With the weakening beam of his flashlight, he probed in all directions.

White stucco walls, beautifully finished doors, a kitchen with a black hooded stove and no modern appliances, a stairway. He was about to go upstairs when Warner said, “Let’s finish looking down here. There’s a hallway we haven’t checked.”

“I’ll go up, you stay down.”

“No. We’re staying together.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

***

Nicole’s ankle throbbed. She tried to rest, but the stillness before dawn had an unnerving quality. It had seemed so quiet when Steven and Warner trudged off. Now, gradually, the night began to fill with tiny sounds. A mole in the high grass, a branch cracking under its own weight, a night bird crying from a distant perch. And the river, that was the worst, the river lapping softly and persistently, as if it were trying to find and devour her. Her mind conjured up dark water and swirling moss. She saw a school of eels writhing inside a hollow submerged log, saw her father standing on the bank, his hollow eyes fixed without interest on a drowning child.

She was becoming frightened. She peeked out through a hole in the canvas fuselage, hoping to put the sounds in perspective, to free her mind by returning them to their proper places in the night.

Lights flickered through scrawny pines far, far away. She listened. She heard the sound of a distant car. The sound gave her comfort. It drove off the primal visions and replaced them with images of cities and people, of daytime and health.