The Wiz Biz II: Cursed & Consulted (24 page)

Instantly, the rider rolled the dragon right and ducked into the clouds. As the misty gray swallowed them up, Patrol Two had a quick glimpse of the thing rolling into a turn to follow them.

So stiff, Patrol Two thought. Its wings don't move even in a turn and the rest of the body stays rigid as well. Whatever the things were, they weren't dragons.

Senior Lieutenant Abrin spent the next ten minutes dodging in and out of the clouds looking for the thing again. Although his plane did not have a video imaging system like the F-15s and it had all happened so quickly he hadn't had time to turn on his gun cameras, he had gotten a good look at the object before it disappeared.

Lieutenant Abrin had no doubts about what he had just seen. His most prized possessions were a Japanese VCR and a bunch of bootlegged American movies. The more he thought about it the more obvious it was to him what was going on.

"Comrades. Do we have any information on Spielberg making a movie in this area?"

Warm!
Mick Gilligan thought as he spluttered his way to the surface.
The water's warm.
 

By rights it ought to be nearly freezing. But it was nearly as tepid as the Caribbean.

Nothing but surprises,
he thought as he pulled his seat pack to the surface with the cord attached to his leg.
At least this one is pleasant.
He unsnapped the cover on the top half and inflated his raft.

Wait a minute! There are sharks in the Caribbean. He redoubled his struggles to get into the raft.

It wasn't easy. An Air Force survival raft is about the size of a child's wading pool and it is designed to be stable once the pilot is in it, not to be easy to get into. Gilligan was encumbered by his arctic survival suit, his G-suit and his flight suit. He wanted to hurry for fear of sharks, but he didn't want to splash too much for fear of attracting them. If there had been anyone to watch, it might have been fairly amusing. But there wasn't and Gilligan himself wasn't at all amused.

Once he had flopped into the raft he tried to orient himself. The one thing that hadn't changed was the fog. It was dense and thick everywhere. The air was a good deal colder than the water, so that wasn't astonishing, but it didn't explain
why
the water was so warm.

He pulled the seat pack into the raft and set it on his lap while he undid the catches on the bottom. Inside was a standard Air Force survival kit, including food, medical supplies and a lot of other necessities. Right now he was most interested in the radio and the emergency transponder.

The radio was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Eagerly Gilligan extended the antenna and trailed the ground wire over the side into the water. Then he tried the radio. Only a hiss and crackle of static came out of the speaker.

Grimacing, Gilligan carefully clipped the radio to the breast pocket of his flight suit. Next he pulled out the transponder and examined it.

The transponder was bigger than the survival radio, but it did more. When it received a signal indicating an aircraft was in the area it transmitted a powerful homing signal. Just now it was silent as the grave.

Gilligan punched the self-test button on the receiver and watched the LED indicator light up. Then he studied the other indicator for a few minutes and his expression got grimmer and grimmer.

Every military aircraft and almost all airliners and business aircraft carry beacons which would trigger his transponder. Gilligan knew for a fact that an AWACS and several other aircraft should have been within range. If even one plane was above the horizon, the device should have been screaming its little electronic heart out. Yet the self-test said it was working.

Either the self-test was lying or there were no planes above the horizon. Considering what the rest of this business had been like, Gilligan didn't think the transponder was broken.

He pulled out his compass. He didn't expect it to work this far north and he wasn't disappointed.

There was one very non-standard item in Major Michael Francis Xavier Gilligan's survival kit. A 9mm Beretta automatic with three fourteen-round magazines and a black nylon Bianchi shoulder holster to match. He inspected the pistol, slammed one of the magazines home and jacked back the slide. Then he struggled into the shoulder holster's harness.

Then he felt a lot better.

Back at the base the people were feeling worse as the minutes ticked by.

The general wasn't happy, Ozzie Sharp wasn't happy, the squadron commander wasn't happy and unhappiest of all was the young captain who ran the base's rescue operation.

"We got on his last known position quickly and flew an expanding spiral search," the captain explained. "Then we did it again with a different aircraft and crew. We have had aircraft on top almost constantly. There is no voice communication and no transponder signal."

"What about the Russians?"

"They say they haven't seen any sign of him."

"And you believe them?"

"It's credible," Ozzie Sharp said. "The Russians returned to their base with all their missiles still on their wings." No one bothered to ask how he knew.

The general grunted. Then his head snapped up and he transfixed the young captain with a steely-eyed stare.

"Why the bloody hell can't you even find the area where he went down?"

"Sir, this is a very unusual situation. He had sent his wingman back, so we don't have as much information as we normally do." The captain thought about explaining how well they were doing to have gotten this far in the few hours since the missing pilot's wingman had broken out of the dead zone. Then he caught the general's eye again and decided not to.

"Have your crews found anything unusual?" Sharp asked. "Any unusual readings or problems with your instruments?"

"None, sir. As far as we can tell, there's nothing in that fog but more fog."

The expression on Sharp's face made the general seem mild by comparison.

"We're going over the area again," the captain offered quickly. "But so far there's no sign of Major Gilligan or his plane."

"Nothing on the transponder?" the general asked.

"Nossir," the officer said.

"Captain, I thought this sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen."

"It isn't,
sir."

It's as if he dropped off the face of the earth,
the captain thought. But it was bad form to say something like that.

Major Gilligan drifted through the fog and tried to figure out what the hell had happened to him. He didn't have the faintest idea where he was, but increasingly he doubted it was anywhere near Alaska. There was still fog all around him, but when the sun broke through it was bright, warm and too high in the sky, totally unlike anything he had experienced in Alaska.

He could hear the sound of surf off to his left. Surf usually meant land of some kind, so that was as good a direction as any. Besides, the fog seemed to be marginally thinner that way.

Major Michael Francis Xavier Gilligan began paddling grimly toward the sound of the waves.

Gilligan saw the land almost as soon as he broke out of the fog bank. One minute he was paddling along surrounded by whiteness and the next he was out under sunny skies with only an occasional puff of fleecy white clouds. Behind him the fog looked like a wall.

Ahead of him he could see a shore fringed with trees, and hills behind. Between him and that shore waves beat on a reef, making the noise that had drawn him here.

Gilligan studied the situation as best he could sitting in his raft. Fortunately the current wasn't strong here and the tide was high. He thought about trying to find a channel, but he decided that would cost him more energy than he could afford. So he picked the best-looking spot and paddled toward it.

It took perhaps an hour for Gilligan to negotiate the reef and another forty-five minutes or so to cross the lagoon behind it. As he crossed the lagoon, Gilligan had a chance to admire "his" island. It was worth admiring, he had to admit. The black sand beach was smooth and unmarred. The trees behind it were tall and tropic green. The place looked like a travel poster.

A travel poster for a deserted island,
he thought. There was no sign of footprints, tire tracks, roads or trails. The detritus along the tide line included not one beer can, plastic jug or bottle.

Reflexively he scanned the sky for contrails. There were very few places in the world where you could not see jet tracks in the sky, but apparently this was one of them. Except for the clouds and the fog on the water behind him there was nothing in the sky but the bright tropical sun.

Wherever I am, with scenery like this there's sure to be a Club Med or something close by. 
 

After pulling his raft up on the beach above the tide line, Gilligan stripped off his life vest, arctic survival suit and G-suit, stowed his gear, checked his radios again and started off down the beach. Either this place was as deserted as it looked or it wasn't and he stood a better chance of finding either people or food if he stayed on the beach.

After almost an hour of walking he found nothing to show that the place was or ever had been inhabited. He had stopped twice to empty the sand out of his boots. Finally he tied the laces together and slung them around his neck so he could walk barefoot through the fine black sand.

Crabs skittered across the beach, gulls wheeled over the water and an occasional brightly colored bird flashed through the trees. But there was not a single sign of human life.

Damn it, he thought, scanning the sky again. Places like this just don't exist anymore. He looked down the long, pristine stretch of beach. And if they do, I want to retire here! 

He had been walking perhaps half a mile barefoot when he found a place where a boat had pulled up.
Not a boat,
he corrected,
an amphibious tractor.
The signs were clear enough. The place where it had come out of the water had been washed away by the tide, but he could clearly see where it had pulled up above the tide line and then the tread marks where it had churned over the soft sand and in among the trees between the tread marks was a furrow as if the vehicle had not retracted its rudder. Following the line he could even see where several branches had been broken off in its passage.

Gilligan paused and considered. An amphtrack implied military. Even in backwaters like this civilians didn't own them. That meant there was an element of risk in meeting the tractor and its crew. On the other hand, there was also the possibility of rescue.

He studied the marks carefully. Although he was no expert, he knew that the amphibious tractors of the U.S. Marines drove through the water on special treads with extra-deep cleats. Soviet equipment used regular treads and either propellers or water jets. But the sand was much too fine and soft to give him any clue. He could only see that something big and not wheeled had come this way.

What the hell, this is the era of glasnost. We're all supposed to be friends these days. He sat down on a tree root and put his boots on. Then he checked his pistol. Still, it never hurts to be careful. 

Cautiously, Major Mick Gilligan set off into the forest in pursuit of the vehicle.

The trail was surprisingly difficult to follow. The amphtrack had not torn up the forest floor as much as he expected. There were no clear tread marks and in many places broken branches offered clearer indications than the tracks. Still, you can't move something that big through a wooded area without leaving a plain trail.

Except for the breeze in the trees and an occasional bird or animal call, the woods were silent. There was no sound of an engine, which made Gilligan even more cautious. But there were no voices, either. Perhaps they were too far ahead for him to hear.

Gilligan was a pilot, not a woodsman. He had to divide his attention between trying to follow the trail, trying not to walk into a tree and trying to scout ahead. So it wasn't surprising he stepped into the clearing without seeing Patrol Two standing in the trees on the other side.

Then the dragon rider shifted. Gilligan caught the motion and looked up. Then he stared—first at the weapon and then at the wielder.

The bow was nearly as tall as she was and the limbs were of unequal length. Gilligan remembered seeing something like that when he had been stationed in Japan and he had gone to a demonstration of traditional Japanese archery. But the person carrying it was anything but Japanese.

To Gilligan she looked like something out of a Robin Hood movie. She wore thigh-high boots of soft brown leather, tight breeches that bloused out at the thigh and a fleece-lined vest over a close-fitting tunic. She was tall, nearly as tall as he was, and slender. Her hair was cornsilk blonde and freckles dusted her nose. The eyes were pure, pale blue and very, very serious. The arrow in her bow was aimed straight at his midriff.

"Uh, hi," Gilligan said.

Karin studied the stranger carefully without shifting the aim of the arrow. He was a big man, broad shouldered and apparently well muscled, although it was hard to tell through his clothing. He wore a drab green coverall with straps, pockets and strange black runes scattered over it. The thing in his hand was black and shiny and he handled it like a weapon, although Karin had never seen its like.

In all their patrolling, the dragon riders had never seen a human in this place. Indeed, they had been told there were only two humans among the enemy and they never left their castle. Where did this one come from?

He didn't act like one of the enemy, she thought. In fact he seemed more confused than hostile. Still better to be safe, so she simply nodded to him without moving the bow.

"I'm Major Michael Gilligan, United States Air Force. I, ah, had a little trouble back there and I need to contact my unit." He stopped, as if expecting a response. "Um, I don't suppose there's a phone around here anywhere?"