City of War (53 page)

I gunned the Rocket and hit the scree head-on, pulling up and leaning back as far as I could at the moment of impact. The jolt jammed my teeth together and blurred my vision,
but our momentum took us up the shale and airborne until we dropped tail first into the trough, then rollercoastered again twice more.

Once we cleared the debris, we barreled into a thick stand of trees above and east of Apollonica, and with the moon now hidden by the leaves, I fought to thread the trunks with only my headlight for visibility. I didn’t need to look back for Julien, because I could hear him shouting,
“Merde!”
as he banged through the brush below and behind me.

Suddenly, there was a loud crack, and pellet splatter from the
lupara
cut away tree bark. Some of it flew past my ear so close that I heard it snap the air. Truman and I looked simultaneously and saw that Remi was not only still with us but gaining. His passenger was leaning out with the gun, and he fired again, kicking up dirt and loose stone. He wouldn’t continue to miss, and if he got Truman in the head, he’d get me too.

I downshifted, put my foot down and swung the Triumph left, gunned it into a controlled slide, just missing a tree as thick as a bridge piling, then slammed the throttle wide open, heading back uphill. Before Remi could react, I was passing him in the opposite direction, and by the time he got turned, I was already a quarter mile away and directly above the town. I bore left and headed down. My headlight picked up something white, and as I sped by, I saw Tiziano, apparently heading home. I silently wished him luck.

The dirt street that ran past the artist’s house appeared out of the grass, and instead of easing back on the throttle and allowing the steep downhill to take over, I kicked it even harder, and the bike began picking up the kind of speed that usually ends with someone sweeping what’s left into a dustpan. I felt Truman involuntarily tighten his grip on my waist.

We were about a third of the way down when I saw the speedometer needle pass 117. At this speed, I couldn’t chance looking back, but even if Remi was there, he wasn’t going to let anybody fire a gun next to him. Suddenly, from
a side street on the left, Julien burst back onto the scene and turned downhill—and because he wasn’t carrying an extra 200+ lbs. of asshole, he began pulling away.

With everyone at the river, the town was deserted, and we hit the empty square and passed Napoleon’s bier just as the first fireworks burst in the sky. For some reason, I noticed they were red, white and blue. Julien had slowed enough to let me catch him, and I kept the Triumph wide open and blew by. Then I felt something on my right. Remi had somehow come even with my rear wheel, and he looked over and smiled. The shooter was right-handed, so he had to arc the
lupara
over Remi’s head to fire to the other side, which he was trying to do without impeding his driver.

Up ahead, another rocket went off, illuminating the crush of people lining the cliffs. No one turned toward us. The engines thundering down on them were lost in the explosions.

I had hoped to be able to slow and part the crowd enough to use the access road to get down to the water. And if that failed, to just drop the bike and run. But now, any hesitation would be fatal…maybe to a lot more people than me.

Remi had gained another few inches, and his passenger now had a clear sight line. I saw the barrel of the shotgun gaping at me and expected to see fire spit from it at any moment. At least I’d be dead before I crashed. As the shooter tired to adjust to the bounce of the cobblestone surface, I surveyed the crowd, looking for a spot where I’d kill the fewest citizens. Then I saw a narrow opening on my right. A pie-shaped wedge of cliff face had fallen away, leaving a deep V that spectators had avoided standing too close to. I leaned into the bike as much as I dared and aimed for it.

I don’t know how fast we were going, but our momentum carried us well out over the river. I saw Remi to my right and heard the screams of onlookers just as a volley of fireworks rockets launched, their fiery tales shrieking by us.

But one did not get all the way by. It hit Remi’s bike, shattering the gas tank and turning Mr. Terranova and Mr.
Lupara into Roman candles. Remi wouldn’t be needing any more shaves.

I felt Truman disengage, and I pushed the bike right and tried to fall as far to the other side as possible. As the water rushed up to meet me, I hoped that if I didn’t make it, Truman wouldn’t either. And then I hit the river, and everything went black for a moment. Then strong hands were pulling me aboard an Aquascan.

43

Blue Jungles and Crimson Tents

What was it Julien had said about the patrol boats? Old and slow? Who the fuck had he been kidding? True, we had left a pair of Corsican police vessels far behind, but as we’d hit the open water of the Med, a French Navy coastal launch had jumped on our tail, its prow riding high and a couple of manhole-cover-sized searchlights turning the inky night into high noon.

Eddie and Julien were running a hundred yards to our starboard side and angling away. The French skipper had to make a decision, and he stuck with Truman and me. I did all the jukes I could and still remain upright, but the cruiser was still there with his siren dialed up to ear-split. We were roughly even with the coastline where I’d intended to put in, but that was out of the question with this asshole on me.

“He has a .50 cal,” Truman yelled in my ear, “and there’s a guy racking it.”

There’s such a thing as too much information. I was running flat out, and the wind was kicking up five-foot swells, which meant we were only one off-center smack from cap-sizing, so hearing that a stream of roll-of-nickel-sized slugs might be on the way wasn’t data I could use. Suddenly, we
hit an oversized wave head-on, and the little Aquascan nose-dived into the trough, bringing us almost to a full stop. The machine gun opened up at exactly the same instant, and I saw the tracers pass overhead. If we’d still been running at the speed we had been a moment earlier, we’d have been hamburger. I guess French for warning shots is “Eat this, motherfucker.”

We had about ten seconds before even a blind gunner found the range. I jerked the rudder hard left for a two-count then jammed the throttles all the way forward and wedged the equipment seabag against them. The searchlights momentarily lost us, and the oncoming swells began to beat our bow, lifting it skyward then smashing it down at unnatural angles. One or two more times, and we’d be upside down and dead.

Over the siren, the engines, the wind and the pounding waves, I heard Truman yell, “Are you fucking crazy!!!”

I slipped the second seabag containing my personal effects over my shoulder, turned, took a step and wrapped my passenger in a tackle that took us both over the side. I tried to hit on my back, and almost got there. I saw the wake of the Aquascan go by and felt my legs hit its edge, flipping them over my head.

I was underwater when the cruiser went directly over us, and after being mix-mastered by the twin screws, I surfaced. Truman was ten yards away, choking out seawater but seemingly none the worse for wear. I heard the cruiser’s engines change, and I saw it half a mile beyond come into a hard turn. I grabbed Truman and pointed him toward shore, wondering how much I had left.

We missed the outlaw airstrip on the first pass, then doubled back and saw the Cirrus’s tail sticking over some low brush. Truman and I were both a little chewed up from the scrub, but our clothes had dried considerably. When he saw the plane, Truman started grinning. “Goddamn, whoever you are, you thought of everything.”

I ignored him and paced off the minimum distance I needed to get airborne. Then I took a flare out of my seabag, lit it and dropped it in the grass. There wasn’t much leeway before we’d slam into a copse of pines, and I made a mental note not to try to cheat an extra ten yards.

When I got back to the plane, Truman was standing beside the pilot’s door. “I assume you’ve got a set of keys for this mother,” he said.

“I do, but you’re not driving.”

Not getting it, he looked at me with that special kind of disdain pilots and surgeons reserve for mortals. “Apparently, you don’t know I’m as good a pilot as there is—anywhere.”

I looked at him and smiled. “Oh, I know who you are, Truman. But on this run, you’re just freight.”

While he puzzled that out, I hit him. It wasn’t the best punch I’ve ever thrown, but it was the best since my father and I cleared out the Dragoon Bar in Belfast. I caught him on the button, and he went down, back of the head first. He wasn’t completely out, so I bent over him and said, “From Kim.” I saw his eyes start to focus and my words begin to penetrate. Then I hit him again and felt his teeth give. “From Archer.” He missed the second dedication, but it didn’t matter.

Lying behind me in the Cirrus, Truman York looked like a terrorist on his way to Guantánamo. I’d put a pillowcase over his head and run a loose line of tape around his neck, giving him some ventilation. A considerable amount of blood had seeped through the makeshift hood, but that came under the heading of it couldn’t be enough.

I had also taped his wrists to his thighs and his ankles to each other. Buckled into the backseat on his right side, he was undoubtedly uncomfortable, but so far, quiet. That his daughter had once lain in an almost identical position was an irony not lost on me, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to this dirtbag again for any reason.

From time to time, I checked to make sure the hood was
expanding and contracting, and so far, he didn’t seem to be fighting for breath. But frankly, if he had been, tough shit. I think he sensed that was my attitude, so he reached back into his pilot’s training and avoided hyperventilating.

I held steady at 4,800 feet, high enough to be on everybody’s radar and not be perceived as a threat, but low enough to have plenty of oxygen. We’d refueled once, and before putting down, I’d thrown a blanket over my passenger. He’d flopped around a bit, but if the grimy guy handling the pump noticed, he didn’t say anything. He’d looked at my bandaged hands, then at the hundred-dollar bill I handed him, and evidently decided it was none of his business.

We’d been in and out of rain and wind the whole way, but the autopilot had kept us dead on course. Now as we entered the last leg, I suddenly noticed how stiff and tired I was, and I had to fight off the urge to fall asleep.

Fifteen minutes later, a voice came up in my headset. It was American with a little Alabama thrown in. “FRANCES, BAKER, BAKER, TANGO, ZEBRA…Come in, please.”

“This is F-BBTZ. Go ahead.”

“You are flying into restricted airspace. Authorization to enter is denied. Repeat, authorization denied. Do you copy?”

“Affirmative. Please ask your intelligence officer to come to the tower.”

The voice got more aggressive. “If you are experiencing an emergency, please declare its nature. Otherwise, you must turn around. Repeat, turn around, now. Intercept has commenced.”

“Listen, son, before we ratchet this up any further, let’s agree your balls are bigger than mine and so are your guns. Now, call your intelligence officer and tell him Blue Jungle requests a runway assignment. Got that? Blue Jungle requests an assignment.”

Military pilots and crew, clandestine officers and special operators are issued authenticator codes for emergencies. If
you’re on the run in hostile territory, it’s how a search-and-rescue team knows you are who you say you are and not the enemy sucking them into a trap. And if you’re captured, you try to find ways to get your code out so people know you’re alive.

Some of the Vietnam MIAs actually cut their authenticators into hillsides and rice paddies, and our satellites photographed them. But McCain and Kerry and the rest of their goddamn investigating committee decided that the Defense Department’s analysts were full of shit and left our bravest to the tender mercies of Hanoi’s gulag. Some of them are probably still there. I often wonder what they must be thinking. I hope one day they get a chance to tell the John Boys—personally.

Originally, authenticators were nonsensical combinations of letters and numbers. Then somebody figured out that most people can’t remember their old zip code a month after they move, and they switched to words. Since Delta operators are always subject to recall, our codes are supposed to be “hot” until we go to the big shooting house in the sky. They’re also supposed to act as an unquestioned introduction anywhere in the world. I was about to find out.

I looked over the seat. “If we hit the drink, Tru, try not to float facedown.”

A pair of F-16s showed up a few minutes later and streaked by like a couple of kids on skateboards buzzing a senior citizen. I switched off the autopilot and rode the turbulence by hand. It wasn’t necessary, but when they pulled alongside, I wanted to look like I was doing something.

Shortly, they bracketed the Cirrus and were close enough to read the pilot’s names under their canopies. Captain Brubaker was on my left; Lieutenant Montgomery to the right. I waved, and got a wing waggle from Montgomery. Brubaker apparently didn’t like me. Then my headset got busy again.

“Blue Jungle, this is Bulldog One. We’re going to ride with you while they sort this out downstairs. Copy?”

“Copy.”

“So here’s the drill. On my mark, we’re going to climb to seven thousand and make a one-hundred degree turn to the west.”

“Negative.”

“I don’t think you understand.”

“Look, Captain, I’ve had a rough couple of days, and I’m dead fucking tired. You want to put one between my eyes, be my guest. Otherwise—”

I was interrupted by the tower. “Blue Jungle, this is Major Borden. G-2.”

“Afternoon, Major, sorry to be such a pain in the ass.”

“No problem, Sergeant. What can we do for you?”

Well, at least he knew who I was. “First thing would be to ask the Bulldogs here to back off a thousand yards. I’m sure they’re used to flying this close, but I’m not.”

The major gave the command, and the F-16s dropped out of my line of sight.