Midnight come again (33 page)

"Works for me."

The magistrate proved to be an early riser. The three of them, backed up by six city policemen armed with shotguns, went on board the Kosygin at six a.m. Nobody was home.

The staterooms were empty, save for a few scattered articles of clothing and the pinups on the walls. The coffee pot in the galley was warm, half-filled mugs left sitting on the table. The hold and all its individual compartments were empty, and the device Casanare directed in every direction remained silent, the needle on its gauge motionless.

Two of the lifeboats were missing. the seventh sense develops that we may vibrate to a height

--The Seventh Sense

Jim and Kate got back to the hangar at five-thirty. The sun shone directly into their eyes, which was why they didn't see Baird's body until Kate tripped over it going into the office.

She stared down at him stupidly. He was unconscious but alive if the blood trickling from his mouth was any indication. His right arm looked oddly bent at the elbow, and the knuckles of both hands were cut, bruised and beginning to swell. Otherwise there wasn't a mark on him.

"Baird?" she said. She knelt down next to him. "Baird? Jacob?"

About that time the deep, distinctive wah-wah-wah of the Here's engine sounded from the apron in front of the hangar door.

She heard footsteps and looked up to see that Jim had retraced his steps from the bunkhouse, roll of gauze and alcohol in hand. He saw Baird on the floor and Kate kneeling next to him. He blinked and said, "I thought you were my only patient. What happened here?" "Go get your gun," she said in a low, urgent voice.

"No," a voice drawled from the door into the hangar. "Don't."

The slender blond man Kate had last seen on board the Kosygin, just before she was booted ashore, stood looking at them with the smile on his face that made him look like an archangel. Maybe an archangel named Lucifer, Kate decided now. He held a pistol, dangling negligently at his side, but it came up smartly enough when Jim dropped the alcohol and the gauze and took a step forward.

Kate shot to her feet. "What do you want?"

A warning rumbled out of Mutt's throat.

The pistol swung toward Mutt.

"Mutt! Stay!" To the man in the doorway she said quickly, "What do you want?"

The pistol gestured toward the hangar. "The loan of your plane."

"Go ahead," Kate said. "It's yours. Take it." Mutt heard the tension in Kate's voice and her growl increased in menace if not in volume. Kate's hand dropped to Mutt's ruff and knotted there.

Kamyanka smiled again. He looked less beautiful this time. "And thirty seconds after we take off, you will be on the phone to your police. I don't think so."

"They're already after you, Kamyanka," Jim said. "Or Ivanov, or whatever you're calling yourself lately."

Kamyanka's smile vanished. "And you would be--"

"First Sergeant James Chopin, of the Alaska State Troopers."

On the floor Baird stirred. "They're here in Bering," Kate said loudly.

"The FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Department of Justice, the state police, the local police, they're here in force and they're all looking for you. You haven't got a chance. Give it up now, and they might offer you the opportunity to turn states' evidence."

"Right," Jim said, picking up on her cue, "they've been looking for someone to tell them what's going on with the Russian Mafia ever since it became a power. You could talk about it from the inside. You don't want to do anything that--" Baird reached up an arm, caught the near edge of the coffee table and shoved it forward into Kamyanka's shins with all the force at his command.

It wasn't much, but it was enough to throw the Russian off balance. He flung out his arms to catch himself on the door frame, and Jim went past Kate in a scrambling dive that tumbled them both through the door and into the hangar. There was the sound of a shot, another, sounds Kate had not heard since the year before, sounds she was not sure she was prepared to hear ever again.

Mutt crouched, preparing to leap after Jim. "No!" Kate said, terrified.

"No, Mutt, stay!"

Mutt barked back, long white canines snapping together with a sound eerily like the gunshots from the next room.

Kate jumped back, startled and then angry. "I said stay, goddamn it!" she roared, her bruised throat forgotten, and raced into the hangar.

Jim and Kamyanka were struggling for possession of the pistol. The ramp on the Here was down and there were people standing in the great maw of the plane, most of whom seemed vaguely familiar to her. Her eyes went to the window next to the left seat. It was open, and through it she could see Ziven, the Russian who had dismissed her as of no consequence upon discovering she was not a pilot. He hadn't bothered with headphones, as he probably had no intention of calling the tower for permission to taxi and take off, so Kate had an excellent view of the top of his head coming off when the pistol clutched between Jim and Kamyanka went off for the third time.

One of the men on the ramp shouted and ran back into the plane, followed by several others. Everybody else ran toward the fight on the floor.

Kate scrambled to Jim's aid but there were too many of them and not enough of her and she found herself caught and held, helpless, as the rest of them swarmed over Jim.

Kamyanka got to his feet shakily, looked down at Jim, prone on the floor between four other men. He said something uncomplimentary in Russian and kicked Jim in the ribs, hard.

"He's a pilot!" Kate shouted. "Shut up, Mutt!" she yelled over her shoulder.

The pistol, shaking slightly, raising slowly until it was trained on Jim's head.

"He's npilotl" Kate shouted again, and cursed the scar that made her voice so rough and so low.

Kamyanka looked up at her, the pistol held where it was. "What?"

She nodded at Jim. "He is a pilot. Yours is dead."

Kamyanka swiveled to look. The rest of Ziven's head was leaning out of the window of the Here.

"You need him to fly you out of here," Kate said. "You need him."

"That's right," Jim said, picking up on her cue. "I'll fly you out of here. Let's get on board and go."

Mutt, snarling, snapping, whining, sidled toward them in her best wolf imitation. "No, Mutt!" Kate said desperately.

Kamyanka looked from her, to the enraged dog, to the prone man. For a moment nothing was heard but the sound of the Here's engines, \vah-wah-wah, a bu/zing bass voice that at this proximity jarred the marrow in their bones.

The pistol moved, one quick gesture. Kamyanka said something and Jim was jerked to his feet. His eyes met Kate's for a brief moment before he was jerked toward the plane. Behind them two men were freeing the dead pilot from his seat belt and pulling him out of the left seat.

Kamyanka strolled forward and used the muzzle of the pistol to raise Kate's chin. "And what do we do with you, hmmm?"

Mutt snarled.

Kamyanka looked at her.

"She won't go for you unless I tell her to."

"She won't go for anyone if I shoot her."

"Leave me," Kate said. "You don't need the excess baggage."

"A good point," Kamyanka admitted. "Where's Yuri?"

"Isn't he with you?" she said, but there was a flicker at the back of her eyes and, quick as a snake, he caught it.

"Let's take her with us," Glukhov said, licking his lips. "We can toss her out once we're in the air. That way, no witnesses."

Kamyanka considered. "A good thought, my general. Alaska is a very big place. They will never find her body. Quick, clean, no mess." He smiled, but it was not the type of smile to encourage an answering smile from anyone else, and added lightly, "We will do Yuri's job for him."

They hustled her into the plane, and as the ramp came up Kate saw Mutt shake off her invisible leash and bound forward. She raced next to them as they taxied, jumping and snapping at the fuselage, all the way down the apron, onto the taxiway, and all the way down the runway. They could hear her howling her rage even over the roar of all four engines.

Carroll was in equally full cry in Zarr's office. "Come on, let's get a move on, we need a boat! They're probably meeting someone at the mouth of the river--a bigger boat, or an amphibious plane! We don't have any time to mess around, let's hop to it!"

Zarr was on her desk phone, Casanare was on his cell, the chief of police was removing the live round from the chamber of his shotgun and Carroll was so loud that when the knock at the door came they almost missed it. When the knock came the second time, Casanare opened it and discovered a small girl standing there, one arm clutching a large red model airplane and the other clasping a videotape. "Hi," Casanare said.

"Can I help you?"

Carroll, catching sight of the girl over Casanare's shoulder, said, "We don't have time for this, All"

The little girl, maybe ten, maybe younger, looked as determined as she did frightened and did not budge from the doorstep.

"I've got to go," Zarr said into the phone. She got to her feet and said, "This is the little Chevak girl. Stephanie, isn't it? Honey, we're kind of busy right now--" She caught herself when she realized that one of the things she could be busy on was finding out who killed Stephanie's mother. "I'm sorry, Stephanie. What can I do for you?" She came forward and crouched down.

Stephanie held out the videotape. "I made this."

Zarr took it. "I--thank you, Stephanie."

The girl whispered something at the floor.

"What?"

The girl made what seemed like a tremendous effort. She even raised her eyes, meeting Zarr's bravely. "You have to watch it."

"Oh for Christ's sake," Casanare said, disgusted. "We really don't have time for this, Zarr."

Zarr examined the tape. It was unlabeled, and was run about halfway through. Depending on the tape speed, that could mean anywhere from one to three hours. "Stephanie," Zarr said, "I promise you, we're going to find the person who hurt your mom, but we've got something really important to do first, and--"

Stephanie took the tape away from Zarr and walked around her, heading for the cart that stood in one corner with a television and a VCR on it.

"Great," Carroll said, throwing up her hands, "let's all settle in for an episode of Mr. Rogers'Neighborhood."

Zarr followed and removed the tape from Stephanie's hand. "Look, honey, I--" Stephanie said something in a small voice.

"What?"

"What did she say?" Casanare said quickly.

Even Carroll paused to listen.

"The big man," Stephanie said, more strongly. "And my mom's friend." She pointed at the tape. "They're on it."

"Oh goody," Carroll said, "not Mr. Rogers, Mr. Robinson."

Awkwardly, as she hadn't put down the model airplane, Stephanie jumped up to grab the tape from Zarr's hand. "This happened this morning," she said strongly. "You have to watch."

She put the tape in the VCR and switched on the television, and such was her dogged determination, no one tried to stop her.

Jim sat in the left seat, the blood from its last occupant seeping through his jeans.

He was petrified with fear. Most comfortable on the stick of his Bell Jet Ranger, the largest fixed-wing aircraft he'd ever flown was a Cessna

180, a bird with a wingspan of thirty-five feet and a payload of twelve hundred pounds. The Lockheed C-130 aircraft had a wingspan of one hundred thirty-two feet and laughed at loads of twenty tons. The Cessna had one engine with a standard two hundred thirty horsepower; the Here had four, Allison turboprops at four thousand horsepower each.

You could fit six people into a 180, with one ditty bag per person in the tiny cargo area behind the third row of seats, or you could take out the seats and transport six bodies, as Jim had had occasion to discover in the course of his professional life.

You could fit sixty-four fully equipped paratroopers into a Here, shoulder-held rocket launchers, backpack bombs and all.

He felt like he was riding a dragon, a large, loud dragon with attitude and no tolerance for harness or bit.

There were too many dials and gauges and they were all in the wrong places, and he didn't know what any of the switches or knobs did. He'd only found the flaps by trial and error. The throttles, thank god, were clearly marked. Also there were four of them, which kind of made them stand out. His takeoff had left him with no confidence that he was going to be able to set the plane down in one piece; he was still in shock that he'd managed to get them up into the air in the first place, and he'd fumbled around enough that he'd needed all the runway there was in Bering to generate enough speed for lift. A pilot watching from the ground would have wondered how any owner in their right mind would have allowed him up the ramp.

In the air, he felt marginally safer, with control of the ailerons by the yoke in his hands and of the rudder by the pedals beneath his feet.

He grabbed for altitude, as much as he could get as fast as he could get it, and tried to remember every lie he'd ever heard about a Here in bull sessions around the bar.