Midnight come again (34 page)

One thing he knew for sure: The Cessna flew with one pilot. The Here had seats for a crew of five. Baird had adapted this Here for a single pilot on short hops, but Ma ciarello had flown Hercs in the service. This flight, Jim was it, which did not contribute to his peace of mind.

It didn't help that he had a very intense Russian sitting in the right seat with a gun aimed at him, "Could you put that thing down?" he said, as politely as he could under the circumstances. "It's not exactly helping my powers of concentration."

"Shut up, fucking American cop," the man said. He'd already said it twice in response to Jim's other attempts at conversation. It seemed to be the only English he knew.

They climbed through five thousand feet and Jim still had no idea where they were going. After concentrated effort he located the airspeed indicator. Jesus god. Three hundred and sixty miles per hour. A ISO's top speed was a hundred and forty. If they stayed on their present course, they'd be in Anchorage in an hour. If no one in Bering alerted the authorities at the other end, they could land without occasioning remark at Merrill or International. Unless they had the tower controller in the bag, he didn't think they could land at Elmendorf Air Force Base, but at this point he wasn't ruling anything out.

What had that Here pilot said at Bernie's that night? That a Here with a full load could make Seattle from Anchorage without stopping to refuel, and that one could make it to Las Vegas if it didn't have a pay load? It was twenty-three hundred miles from Anchorage to Seattle and, what, four, maybe five thousand Anchorage to Las Vegas. If that was true, they could be going anywhere. No one had come forward to make him alter course for Russia, the one bright spot in this morning so far.

He tried to think ahead, but there were so many airstrips along the way.

They were all gravel strips, but then the Here was designed to land on rough strips, the rougher the better, combat zones being best of all. He had no idea of the minimum amount of runway a Here needed to land, or how much weight they had on board even if he did know how to make some kind of guess. He estimated maybe twenty, twenty-five men in back from the quick glimpse he'd had as they hustled him forward. Overestimate, say they weighed two hundred each, that was still only five thousand pounds. A Here could fly forever with all four tanks full of fuel and a piddly little five-thousand- pound payload. Planet Earth was only twenty-five thousand miles around. They could be going to Greenland. No, too cold, Russians wouldn't want to go to Greenland. They could be going to Mexico--sun, sand, girls, what could be better? Hell, maybe he'd ride along.

The plane shifted in flight, an odd motion not anything like turbulence or dropping the flaps or hitting an aileron or a rudder. "What the hell?"

"Shut up, fucking American cop," the Russian in the left seat said.

He looked down at the panel for inspiration, heart thudding in his throat. A light blinked up at him. A door was open, or opening. Not the ramp, but a door, a door in the back. He looked over his shoulder, but the flight station was separate from the cargo bay. He couldn't see what was going on back there.

The general's words came back to him. We can toss her out once we're in the air.

The portside hatch was open, air screaming past. Glukhov had Kate by one arm, her erstwhile drinking buddy Danya had her by the other, and they were slowly forcing her, one step at a time, toward the opening. They were in no hurry. Glukhov was laughing, and none of the other men volunteered to come to her aid. She never had been that much fun at a party.

She fought. She used her fingernails, her teeth, her feet, kicking, struggling, fighting with every part and fiber of her being.

She wasn't fighting because of the betrayal of her erstwhile party mates. She wasn't fighting to contradict the expression in Kamyanka's eyes, the one that said she, Kate Shugak, had ceased to exist. She wasn't even fighting because of Glukhov's laughter.

She was fighting because she wanted to live.

She wanted to go home. She wanted to swim in the little pool in the creek out back of her cabin. She wanted to read late into the night by the mellow light of a kerosene lamp. She wanted to sit at the bar of the Roadhouse and watch the belly dancers shimmy out of the back room. She wanted to go to Bobby and Dinah's and see how much her namesake had grown. She wanted to sit once more at the feet of the Quilaks, on the banks of the Kanuyaq, on the swells of Prince William Sound.

She wanted to live. She fought for it, with every ounce of strength she had.

It was not enough. She was losing the battle, but she would not give up, she would not surrender. She made them work for it.

Work they did. Slowly, inexorably, they forced her to the hatch. She kicked up her feet and planted the soles on either side of the hatch.

Glukhov, still laughing, reached for her knee.

Jim's first thought was to jump the guy with the gun. In a Cessna 180 he might have gotten away with it, but in a Here the cockpit was too wide, it would take too much time to launch himself the necessary distance, the guy would get off at least one shot, maybe two.

The Russian sitting sideways in the seat next to him had not wavered, the pistol still pointed straight at his chest.

Wait. Sitting sideways. Not wearing his seat belt.

No one in back was, either, as he recalled from the quick hustle on board. And why bother, this wasn't exactly your FAA approved flight. He was wearing his seat belt. Like any good pilot, strapping it on was the first thing he'd done when he sat down in the left seat.

A steep dive? A power climb? A snap roll? Yeah, put everybody in back on the goddamn ceiling, that sounded like a plan.

But he didn't know enough about the Here's tolerances. A snap roll at this velocity with this kind of surface area and he'd probably rip the wings off the aircraft.

Something else then.

Suddenly, he knew what else, and with the knowledge came calm. His heart rate slowed, his breath came back. A flat spin. Centripetal force would slam everyone up against the opposite wall. Always assuming he could bring the plane out of the spin again. He had no idea how a multiengine plane would handle a flat spin. Come to that, he had no idea how a single-engine airplane would handle a flat spin, it wasn't a maneuver he practiced on a regular basis. Or ever.

He felt for the pedals. Better pick the correct rudder to push. Don't want to hurl Kate headfirst out of the open hatch.

The indicator said the open door was on the left side of the plane. The altimeter said they were at nine thousand feet. He had no way to know how much altitude he would lose during the maneuver but he didn't have a choice. Nine thousand feet would have to do. He stretched out his legs, testing the temper of the rudders. He eased the throttles back a little.

Nobody said anything; why should they, they weren't pilots. He eased them back a little more.

He grabbed the yoke tightly in both hands. "I'm sorry, baby," he said to the plane, and kicked the right rudder as hard as he could.

Air going three hundred ninety miles an hour struck the right surface of the rudder. The Here's nose jerked around to the right, its tail around to the left and centripetal force slammed the man with the gun hard against the right seat's window. His head connected with the glass with a nice, solid smack, and better yet, he dropped the gun.

There were yells and screams and thuds from the back as everyone piled up against the right bulkhead, one after the other. The Here lost forward motion, lost lift, spun clockwise, tail going around like the big hand, nose going around like the little hand, the engines screaming a protest almost as loud as the wind. They were losing altitude fast, too fast, falling from the sky like a big black brick. His body strained at the belt that was all that was holding him in his seat. His spine felt like it was going to shake into separate vertebrae. The vibration was worse than what you got at the epicenter of a seven-point earthquake, and he had cause to compare. The engines protested. Loudly, vociferously, angrily.

He tried not to watch the altimeter, and with grim determination kept the Here in its flat spin until all thumping and screaming and yelling from the cargo bay ceased.

He began pushing the left rudder then, as he eased off on power to the portside engines and increased power to the starboard engines, praying that all the cables would hold, praying the electronics wouldn't fail, praying the hydraulics would continue to function, praying the rudder wouldn't tear off, praying most fervently that they wouldn't run out of altitude. The muscles in his arms and in the leg holding left rudder quivered with the strain. The spin seemed to have taken on a life of its own, the Here helpless in its grasp.

Come on, baby, he thought. "Come on, baby," he said. "Come on, girl, you can do it, you know you can, come on!"

She responded as only a craft that was as well maintained and as well-loved as any of the airplanes owned and operated by Jacob Baird could. She came out of it. Slowly, shuddering a protest, she came out of it. The prop began to bite into the air, to pull the craft forward, the wings slowly ceased to be dead weight and began again to manufacture lift.

The tail began slowly to swing left and Jim hastily straightened out the rudder. With a last groaning protest, she leveled out. Once again they were flying straight and forward and, by a miracle, on a course only slightly off for back to Bering.

He looked at the altimeter, which read a little less than two hundred feet. He looked out. The belly of the Here seemed to skim the vegetation of the Delta. He pulled back on the yoke to put some space between them and the ground, and tried not to think of how close they'd come to augering in. For the first time since he'd arrived in Bering, he could appreciate the lack of mountains, the flat, featureless topography of the Delta. If he'd tried a flat spin at home, he and the Here and everybody on board would have found a cloud full of rocks almost immediately.

They bounced three times on landing, the third time so hard he thought the nose gear was coming up through the fuselage. But she held together.

She was one sweet craft, powerful and forgiving, and he decided he was in love for life. If he ever met Mr. Lockheed in person, he would kiss him on the mouth.

They had barely rolled to a stop when he was up and out of his seat and moving back, pulling at the pile of bodies lying crumpled against the right bulkhead of the cavernous cargo bay.

Kate was the fourth one he came to. "Kate," he said. "Kate? Come on, baby, come on, come out of it, you know you can do it, you know you can.

Get your ass back here, Shugak!" Her eyelids fluttered.

"Kate," he said, unable to keep from shaking her. He didn't care what was broken, he wanted her conscious, he wanted her alive and awake and yelling at him, he wanted the world back the way it was, the way it never would be again.

She blinked up at him. "Jim?"

An immense wave of relief swept over him. He had to check himself from scooping her up into his arms. "Yeah. Yeah, it's Jim."

She raised her head and looked around at the pile of bodies surrounding them, some of them beginning to stir and groan. "What happened?" She looked back at him, and said accusingly, "What the hell did you do?"

He started to laugh, and this time he didn't try to fight it. He hugged her hard, ignoring the protest muffled against his shoulder, the hands trying to shove him away.

There was a thudding against the outside of the plane. Others were beginning to stir, and Jim got to his feet and fumbled around until he found the ramp control. Somewhat to his surprise, it still worked. The first person he saw was Carroll, who came on board at a quick pace, pistol drawn and held in the government-certified two-hand grip.

She ignored Jim and Kate, heading straight for Kamyanka. "He's not dead is he, damn it?" She nudged Kamyanka ungently with one toe.

Kamyanka groaned and opened his eyes.

Carroll smiled down at him. "Hello, Ivanov. At last we meet. Now, just where the hell is that plutonium?"

He stared up at her. "I don't know what you're talking about. Who is this Ivanov?"

She turned her head. "Al?"

Casanare came up the ramp holding the arm of a man whose hair was just beginning to grow back over a shaved scalp, not enough to hide the scar left behind when they cracked his skull open and got the bullet out. He moved slowly but steadily, his color was good and he looked like he had a long life in front of him.

"Is this the man who held up your armored truck?" Carroll asked him.

"Yes," Kiril Davidovitch said, staring down at Kamyanka with a bright, triumphant expression. "This the man who shoot the girl. This the man who shoot me. This the man."

Kamyanka closed his eyes.

When does your mouth say goodbye to your heart?

--There Is No Word For Goodbye She walked into the bunkhouse at noon the next day and found Jim packing. "I'm taking the jet out this afternoon," he said.

"Yeah," she said, sitting on her bunk and watching him stuff balled-up dirty shirts into his duffel.

"You know where that goddamn plutonium is that Boris and Natasha were chasing? Pakistan, is where. Or some of it, anyway. Turns out Kamyanka shipped it out the day after he bought it from Glukhov."