Parallax View (7 page)

Wilczynski
laughed. “No apology is necessary, believe me. In fact, I should be thanking
you. I need to maintain flight proficiency in this big beast, so instead of
commanding a boring training mission next week, I get to fly across the pond
and make a quick trip home.  Besides,” he added conspiratorially, “like I said
before, if there’s one thing we all love to do, it’s drink.” The comment took
Tracie by surprise and she laughed. “But since we can’t be doing that, the
next-best thing for us is flying. We love it, and believe me when I say this is
not work for us.”

He lowered his
voice, as Captain Berenger had done. “Even for Major Sourpuss in there,” he
said with a wink. “Now that the introductions are over,” he said, “feel free to
check out the rest of the aircraft. Try not to get lost back there, though.
I’ll let you know when it’s time to buckle in for departure.”

12

May 30, 1987

10:30 p.m. EST

Somewhere over the North
Atlantic

The B-52 floated across the sky
nearly five miles above the vast, empty expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. The air
was smooth, with only the occasional light bump of turbulence—like a city bus
driving over a pothole—and the roar of the eight jet engines had been muted in
level flight to a steady thrumming that was felt more than heard inside the
cabin.

At the controls,
Tom Mitchell felt as though his stomach might launch its contents all over the
instruments at any moment. The gentle rocking of a large aircraft in flight had
never affected him in this way before. But then he had never been about to
murder four people—including himself—before, either.

He could barely
think straight. He was a traitor, although no one would ever discover that
devastating fact. Crashing the BUFF into the Atlantic after killing everyone
aboard would eliminate any evidence of foul play, satisfying the Russians and
sparing his family. There was no radar coverage hundreds of miles off the
United States’ coast, so by the time air traffic controllers realized the B-52
was missing, most of the aircraft and debris would already be beneath the
water’s surface, well on their way to the ocean floor.

Add to that the
fact that the area to be searched would be massive, thousands of square miles
of uninterrupted watery desolation, and Tom Mitchell knew the odds of his
treachery being discovered were astronomically long.

So that was the
plan. Crash the airplane into the ocean.

The problem was
that Tom was having a hard time executing the plan, not to mention everyone aboard
the aircraft. It wasn’t that he was afraid of dying—not exactly. Anyone making
a career out of military service eventually found a way to reconcile the
possibility of sudden violent death. Not to do so was to risk a mental
breakdown. Tom had long ago made peace with that concept.

Murdering three
innocent people, though, had never been part of those calculations. There was a
world of difference between being blown out of the sky by an enemy missile
during a bombing run and placing his service weapon inside his mouth and
pulling the trigger after first shooting everyone else aboard an airplane. So
he delayed the inevitable, stomach jumping and rolling while he desperately
searched for another way out.

Working with the
KGB had been simple at first. A Godsend. He had raked in some serious cash—two
grand a month was a lot of money for a United States Air Force officer—in
return for passing along what often seemed like relatively harmless minutia:
aircraft specs or division personnel rosters or armament information.

Tom wasn’t stupid—he
had known he was crossing a line from which he could never return when he
relayed that first bit of intel to the Russians, but keeping a German mistress
was damned expensive. Besides, serving in the USAF was boring as hell. Acting
as a go-between—he refused to consider himself a spy, although late at night,
unable to sleep, tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling, he had to
acknowledge that was exactly what he was—brought a bit of excitement into his
life.

But that was before,
when Soviet expectations were low. Last night’s phone call had hammered home
with crystal clarity the horrible mistake he had made. He had been tempted to
tell Boris Badanov with the thick Russian accent to go to hell, had done
exactly that, in fact. The KGB could come and take him out if they wanted; he’d
probably never see it coming, and death would at least be a way out of the
corner he had painted himself into.

But the implied
threat to his family had changed everything. Tom hadn’t even realized the
Russians knew he was married until last night. He knew now how foolishly blind
he had been—of
course
the KGB would learn all they could about their new
employee, of
course
they would keep that information close to the vest,
pulling it out only when needed—but Roberta and Sarah were thousands of miles
away, safe and anonymous in Herndon, Virginia, well out of range of the KGB.

That was what he
had thought. How wrong he had been. Kopalev knew way too much about his family,
tossing the information out casually, like it was no big deal. Tom’s blood had
frozen in his veins last night with Kopalev’s threat to snuff out the lives of
his wife and child, and in the most agonizing way possible.

He thought hard,
his eyes alternating between the B-52’s instruments and the endless blaze of
impossibly bright stars outside the wind screen. Maybe he could question the
CIA agent currently dozing in the rear of the aircraft. No one besides his
Soviet contact had confirmed that she was CIA, but then, no one had needed to.
It was obvious. A civilian woman, appearing at Ramstein out of nowhere carrying
Top Secret paperwork, with instructions from the highest levels of government
for a priority lift across the pond?

CIA.

As a CIA spook,
she might be able to use her connections to protect Tom’s family. But she
certainly would ask the obvious question of
why
the family of an Air
Force nobody was in need of protection from the KGB, a question he could not
answer. He would be forced to kill her anyway.

Tom shook his head
and cursed under his breath. He knew Wilczynski was looking at him curiously.
He didn’t care. He was fucked. He was well and truly fucked.

As an Air Force
pilot, Tom Mitchell was intimately familiar with the concept of parallax view,
which stated that the angle at which objects are viewed will determine how they
appear to the viewer. Parallax view was one reason why a good pilot learned
early in his career to rely on his instruments when flying, even on a clear,
bright, sunny day. Eyes could be fooled. Instruments could not.

The concept of
parallax view applied to other situations, too. Look at a scenario from one
angle and it can appear completely different than when viewed from another. But
Tom realized this situation was the exception. No parallax view in the world
could change one simple fact: he was going to have to do as he had been ordered
by the KGB, or sentence his own wife and child to death.

And that he could
not do.

So the decision
was easy, but executing that decision was not, and Tom knew he was running out
of time. Soon the giant B-52 would be approaching land, flying over U.S. soil
down the east coast to Andrews Air Force Base, and while he could still carry
out the murders, crashing the jet onto U.S. soil would never satisfy the KGB.
There would be no way to guarantee the item they wanted destroyed had actually
been
destroyed, and his family would remain at risk.

He had to do it
soon. The clock was ticking.

13

May 30, 1987

11:15 p.m. EST

Atlantic Ocean, 150 miles off
the coast of Maine

Tracie tried with little success to
catch a few Zs in the minimally-upholstered seat. It was bolted to the side
wall of the B-52, which had probably flown hundreds, if not thousands, of
missions. The seat-back was rickety and the vinyl upholstery worn and cracked.

The ride was free,
though, and complaining would accomplish nothing, so Tracie stretched out as
well as she could and dozed, unable to manage a deep sleep. Something was
bothering her.

The sense of
unease she had felt upon meeting Major Tom Mitchell back at Ramstein Air Base
had only intensified after departure. Several times during the first couple of
hours of the flight, Mitchell had stepped back from the cockpit and observed
her as she pretended to sleep, her eyes barely open under her thick eyelashes.
In each instance, he had approached stealthily and stood off to the side in an
attempt to remain unobserved.

He was sizing her
up; that much was obvious. The question was, why?

After the first
time, Tracie had debated opening her eyes and asking him directly what his
problem was, but her instincts told her that would be a mistake, and Tracie had
learned years ago not to question those instincts; they were the subconscious
mind’s way of protecting its owner when the conscious mind could not quite wrap
itself around a problem. Following a nagging feeling had saved her life on more
than one occasion, and Tracie was no more likely to ignore her instincts than
she was to jump out of this B-52 with no parachute.

Mitchell hadn’t
appeared at all over the last couple of hours, though, which meant either his
curiosity had been satisfied, or he was flying this leg of the trip and
couldn’t leave the flight deck. She guessed it was the latter—his ongoing
nervousness and desperation were clear to her. The man was obviously operating under
some serious stress.

She opened her
eyes a slit, observing her surroundings without revealing her wakefulness. All
was quiet in the cargo area. Mitchell was nowhere to be seen.

Tracie stretched
and wondered how close the big aircraft was to the North American shoreline.
She had flown from the U.S. to Europe and vice-versa plenty of times and had
developed an innate sense of the trip’s timing. They had to be getting close.
She was thinking about unbuckling her lap restraint and wandering up to the cockpit
when a sharp popping noise erupted from the front of the aircraft. Then
another. It sounded like exploding firecrackers.

Except they
weren’t firecrackers.

Someone was
shooting on the flight deck.

A voice shouted in
surprise and alarm. The B-52 yawed violently to the left and began a steep
dive. Tracie felt her body pull against the seat restraints and she fumbled
with the buckle. Her fingers scrabbled for the metal release and missed. She
tried again and managed to lift the buckle, but the straps would not budge.

She was trapped.
Her heart was racing and she felt a rising sense of panic. She had just seconds
to get to the front of the airplane or likely become a victim. She yanked on
the seat belt release again, as the sound of the jet engines screamed in her
ears, the aircraft still in a diving left turn.

Then she realized
why she could not escape—the tension of her body pulling against the seatbelt
would not allow the mechanism to unhook. She reached for a handhold built into
the side of the plane and pulled hard, grabbing the metal seatbelt release with
her other hand and yanking it upward. Finally it gave and she was free.

She tumbled into
the aisle, sliding into the fuselage and smashing her shoulder against an
aluminum duct, denting the ductwork. Then the aircraft leveled off and she fell
to the floor.

Tracie slipped her
Beretta out of her shoulder holster and sprinted toward the cockpit as a third
shot ripped through the aircraft.

The scene on the
flight deck was chaotic and gruesome. Navigator Nathan Berenger lay on the
floor, partially blocking the narrow entrance to the cockpit. Most of his skull
had been blown off, his head barely recognizable as human. Blood had splattered
everywhere, as had bits of bone matter and human tissue. Tracie’s half-second
glance at Berenger told her all she needed to know. The navigator was dead,
beyond help.

At the controls, Major
Stan Wilczynski was struggling with Tom Mitchell. Wilczynski had been shot at
least once and was bleeding badly from a wound in his shoulder, but fought
grimly for control of Mitchell’s gun. He had somehow managed to level off the
diving B-52 while locked in a life-and-death struggle with his fellow crew
member, and was now screaming obscenities at him.

Tracie dropped to
one knee and sighted down the barrel of the Beretta. “Drop it right now!” she
screamed, knowing Mitchell would never do so, but hoping to at least throw the
crazed officer off guard. She didn’t dare shoot because the angle was
wrong—there was every possibility the slug would strike Wilczynski and she
would end up killing the man she was trying to save.

Mitchell glanced
back in surprise at Tracie, his eyes wild, and Wilczynski took advantage of the
opening, pounding a fist into the side of Mitchell’s face. Tracie could hear
bones crack and she wondered as she waited for Mitchell to fall whether the
broken bones were in Wilczynski’s hand or Mitchell’s face. Or both.

But Mitchell
didn’t fall, and he didn’t drop the gun. He hung on, grappling with Wilczynksi,
the two men jockeying for position. The B-52 again began yawing to the left as
one of the fighting men jostled the yoke. “Dammit,” she muttered under her
breath, itching to put Mitchell down but still without a clear shot.

Then the situation
went from desperate to out of control. Mitchell released his grip on
Wilczynski, taking another fist to the face but slugging Wilczynski in his
wounded shoulder with the butt of his gun. Wilczynski’s eyes rolled up in his
head and he slumped back, but before Tracie could squeeze off a shot, Mitchell pulled
the trigger. The bullet caught Stan Wilczynski on the side of the head and
knocked him sideways, blood misting.