The Devil's Footprint (63 page)

"Is this
really a good idea?" he said to Cochrane.

"NO!"
said Lee Cochrane, the chief of staff of the Congressional Task Force on
Terrorism, whose enthusiasm for
Washington
and all its intrigues had suddenly been revived.
 
I should be on the Hill, he thought.
 
What the hell am I doing here!
 
This stuff is dangerous!

It was a vain
thought and ventured upon somewhat late in the day.
 
The engine roar was magnified by the confines
of the valley.
 
It was going to happen.

It was happening — and it was unbelievable!

Suddenly, it
was directly over them and all they could hear was this terrible throbbing roar
and then they were airborne — whipped up into the air with less shock than a
parachute opening — and the ground was receding and they were climbing higher
and they were through the narrow end of the Funnel and over the abandoned
airstrip and they were going higher and higher as the aircraft climbed to avoid
mountains ahead and the slipstream whipped at them and it was much colder and
Fitzduane realized the reason for the bulky suits.

Skyhook
worked.

Instinct
suggested that they should have been jerked half to death or sliced into
segments by the sudden pull of the line, but the reality was that initially
they were pulled up rather than forward, and only slowly — relatively speaking
— brought up to the speed of the roaring aircraft.
 
Though hard to grasp by the uninitiated, it
was a simple matter of geometry.

Quietly and
consistently, Skyhook had worked for nearly fifty years, from the North Pole to
Southeast Asia, ever since Robert Edison Fulton had invented it and tested it
at his home in
Connecticut
.

The front of
the line was secured by the retrieval mechanism in the nose of the aircraft,
and the balance of the line now stretched under the fuselage and for several
hundred feet behind.

They were
being towed like water skiers, except that the medium that was supporting them
was air.
 
Soon they would be winched in.

Al Lonsdale,
braced between Fitzduane and Cochrane, groaned as the flow of chill air revived
him
.
Still disoriented, he opened his eyes and all he
could see was an impression of the ground rushing below at impossible speeds as
he flew through the night air.

Shock and
disbelief hit him.

Holy
shit!
 
Everything his mother had said was
true.
 
He had died and gone to heaven and
now he was an angel and he could fly!
 
It
was terrifying and it was incredible and it was unbelievably exciting.
 
Well, who would have guessed!

He could see a
light up ahead, and slowly they approached it.
 
It was strange.
 
Somehow it all
looked familiar.
 
And then there was the
engine noise.
 
How many hours had he
spent listening to that noise on the way to or from a mission?

His feet
touched the ramp and he was pulled in by the winch crew and the ramp was
raised.

He looked
around, and beside him he could see Fitzduane and Cochrane, and they were
grinning with relief and clapping each other on the back and the
crew were
smiling and there were the familiar smells of the
cargo bay of a Lockheed Hercules C130 Combat Talon.

He felt
confused.
 
He had enjoyed being an angel,
albeit surprised that some of his more exotic physical peccadilloes had not
counted against him.
 
For instance, there
had been those two...

He glared at
Fitzduane.

"Boss,
this isn't Heaven," he said indignantly.

Fitzduane gave
the Bear a high five and then turned to Al.

"Well,"
he said tiredly, but with a smile playing about his lips, "it will do for
me."

Book Three

The Devils

23

She was
sleeping.

The blinds and
drapes were drawn and only a dim sidelight illuminated the hospital room.
 
He could see a drip feeding into her arm, and
she was connected to a monitor.
 
For a
moment, despite what he had been told, he felt a spasm of dread.

Who knows what
they did to her when she was a captive.

I can still lose her
.

He closed the
door gently and the hospital noises were muted.
 
Carefully, he lifted a chair from the corner and placed it close to one
side facing the bed so that he could look at her and be there for her when she
awoke.
 
He longed to touch her and hold
her, but for now sleep was what she needed most.

He could hear
her breathing, and the sound was deep and regular and so reassuringly
familiar.
 
Emotion welled up in him and
quiet tears coursed down his cheeks.
 
My wife.
 
Kathleen.
 
I have never seen you look more
beautiful.
 
I have never loved you more.

She was thin
and malnourished.
 
Her face was pale and
scratched, and there were bruises around her neck and throat.
 
Her hair looked as if it had been hacked off.
 
There were more bruises on her arms, and as
his gaze took in her bandaged hand where her finger had been severed, anger and
horror and pity gripped him and left him shaken.

But you are back, my love.
 
We found you and brought you back and every
last effort was worth it
.

Images of the
carnage in the Devil's Footprint flashed through his mind.
 
The guards outside the main camp, struck down
without warning.
 
Bodies
spasming and falling in the sleeping area as rounds cut into them.
 
Armored vehicles exploding
and the screams of burning men.

So many dead.
 
So high a price.
 
But
there were some situations where you had to fight.
 
Evil was not some abstract notion.
 
It existed, and you fought it without
compromise until that battle was won.
 
And you kept on fighting because the war, as such, never ended.
 
Conflicting values.
 
Those who wanted to build against those who
were determined to destroy.
 
It was the
human condition.
 
Reasonable people
tended to rest up and drop their guard after a major struggle, but peace was an
illusion.
 
At best there was a lull in
the fighting.

But while
there was a lull you made the most of it.
 
You loved and nurtured and regained your strength.
 
And a few, a very few, kept watch.
 
They did not rest.
 
They stayed alert.
 
Ordinary people with human
strengths and failings who put their lives on the line to buy time for their
fellows.
 
People like Lee Cochrane
and Maury and Warner.
 
Men like Al
Lonsdale.
 
Women like Chifune.
 
Unsung and unacknowledged
except occasionally in time of open war.
 
But mostly not just unrecognized, but unwanted.

The paradox of peace.
 
The very people who made it possible were an unpleasant reminder of the
alternative.
 
They were starved of
resources.
 
Often they were shunned.
 
Until the next time.

He dozed, his
thoughts a fatigue-induced jumble.
 
Great
happiness and fear intermingled.
 
Then
one image began to dominate.

Oshima!
 
She was still alive!

Fitzduane gave
a start and rubbed his eyes.
 
His
unshaven chin itched, and the sand of Tecuno was still on his hair and skin and
in his clothes.

The thought
occurred to him that he had not slept in a bed for about a week.
 
Catnapping on the web seating of a C130 went
just so far.
 
No wonder the gremlins were
crowding his mind.
 
Twelve hours' decent
sleep in a proper bed followed by a long hot tub would restore his sense of
proportion.

Kathleen was
back.
 
She was here with him.
 
She was alive and soon she would be well, and
that was what counted.

Fitzduane
gazed at his wife, and without conscious thought his hand reached out and stroked
her fingers and then her eyes opened.

For a moment,
her eyes were those of a stranger.
 
Terror and suffering kept in check only by force of will stared out at
him, and nothing else so conveyed the horror of what she had gone through than
that split second when he seemed to be able to look into her mind.

Then relief
and joy came into her eyes.
 
She
stretched out her arms, then stopped and looked with wonder at her bandaged
wrists.
 
"No chains," she
whispered.
 
"No chains.
 
They hurt so."

Fitzduane lay
beside her and took her in his arms.
 
"Never again, my love," he said quietly.

Her fingers
touched his cheek.
 
"You're all
bristly, Hugo," she said sleepily.
 
Her eyes were closed again.
 
Soon
her breathing was relaxed and regular.

A feeling of
contentment and happiness so complete that he wanted to cry out — except he was
too tired and certainly did not want to wake Kathleen — swept over him.

Memories of
the mission were banished from his mind.
 
Kathleen was safe in his arms, and that was what mattered.

Even better,
Romeo and Julietta had survived the ordeal.
 
The medical staff had warned Fitzduane not to have his hopes set high,
but the examination had revealed that Kathleen, despite her ordeal, was still
healthily pregnant.
 
The doctor had given
away the secret.
 
Romeo and Julietta
would be a girl.
 
No penis could be
detected.

"Sounds
reasonable," Fitzduane had remarked gravely.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Rheiman
shuffled into the interrogation room and blinked in the harsh fluorescent
light.

His right
handcuff was removed and then locked to an eyebolt in the interrogation
table.
 
The table itself was secured to
the floor.
 
A large mirror took up much
of one wall.
 
One-way glass, he knew with
certainty,
and behind it a select audience.
 
An audience he had to win over if he was to
live.

Two men faced
him.
 
Not policemen, he thought.
 
The street left its mark after a while; a
certain look about the eyes.
 
These
people had
Langley
written all over them.
 
Different
pressures, different body language.
 
Though again you never quite knew.
 
The CIA was only one player in the intelligence community these
days.
 
Anyway, these were intelligence
types, possibly with military backgrounds.

"Cigarette?"
said the younger man.
 
He had closely
cropped blond hair and wore a tan suit.

Rheiman shook
his head.
 
"I don't smoke," he
said.
 
"I guess you know that."

The older man
smiled.
 
"There's a lot of good shit
to smoke in Tecuno," he said, "and not a whole lot else to do.
 
Or so I hear."

"I'm
Olsen," said the younger man.
 
He
indicated his companion.
 
"And this
is Mr. Steele."

Steele
consulted the screen of his notebook computer.
 
"The convenient thing about you, Edgar," he said, "is
that we don't have to charge you with anything.
 
You've already been tried and sentenced.
 
You're a fugitive from justice.
 
All we've go tot do is ship you back home and they're going to strap you
in the chair and pull the switch.
 
No new
trial needed.
 
Just the
formality of an execution."

"A messy
business," said Olsen.
 
"Or so
they say.
 
And
slow
.
 
Of course, I've never
seen an actual execution.
 
Yours will be
the first, Edgar.
 
For that I'm going to
get a front seat.
 
I'm told that you
literally cook to death."

"You're a
multiple murderer and a rapist, Edgar," said Steele, "and worse than
that, you're a traitor.
 
Personally, I
think the chair is too good for you."

Rheiman shook
his head.
 
"I'll serve time,"
he said, "but I won't be executed.
 
The governor remits every sentence where I come from."
 
He smiled.
 
"Good liberal values."