Whirlwind (44 page)

One tree limb hanging over the road, one motorist in either lane, one stray cow, one anything, and this, dear God, is a winged hearse.

“… blessed art thou among women …” Braking so hard that the plane’s nose tilted sickeningly, the major was a copilot on autopilot. Years of training and experience commanded his every move. He didn’t think about what he was doing but simply did what his exquisitely honed reflexes knew was right. Two engines changed pitch as the Gulfstream’s squat switch automatically deployed the spoilers. Simultaneously, deflectors like enormous clamshells closed behind the engine vents, channelling two turbines’ thrust ahead rather than behind the plane. Now throttle up seven thousand tons of blistering thrust blown forward to slow the Gulfstream. Brakes applied, hands hard on the control yoke, eyes scanning the infrared display for the merest hint of an obstacle. Ground speed declining. “… and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…” Ninety miles an hour, eighty-five, eighty, and something different displayed on the EVS, a change in the outlines, infrared blurred beyond interpretation by a towering fire, and, in the wink of an eye, electronic blindness, the sensors unable to adapt to a light too bright for any computer to make sense of.

“… Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for oh HELL!”

Silhouetted against a wall of flame, unmistakable in outline, the fully recognizable shadow of a human being. A man was running on the roadway. He whirled and saw exploding from the fog behind him a jet plane moving at Charlie glanced at the Heads Up Display seventy-four miles an hour, and the poor bastard was a deer in the headlights, no time to move out of the way, roadkill on the highway, and another death on Charlie’s conscience.

No, not on my conscience. Die, you son of a whorel

He was one of Schmidt’s punks, and he was lifting his weapon. Before its butt touched his shoulder, he took wing and flew.

Engines reversed. How many tons of thrust did the major say this thing puts out?

He wasn’t dead. That was the horrifying thing. He was alive and, for the moment, in good health. With his mouth open in a silent scream, he spun up high, higher than Charlie would have believed. Once, decades earlier, Char lie had seen a pedestrian struck by a speeding car. It had been in Bangkok, and Charlie just happened to be at the intersection when it happened. Some poor Thailander got hit head-on, and up he went, just like this, but Charlie knew he was dead by then. He’d been hit hard enough to kill, and probably died without knowing he was dead.

Not this time.

Schmidt’s flunky, whoever he was, knew exactly what was going on, and knew it long enough to know how his life would end: thrown through the air like a ragdoll, slammed down on asphalt with his back snapped and his neck broken, and his limbs like shattered twigs. He slid. His body slid. What transpired with his soul could only be guessed. As the plane raced forward, a corpse skidded limply in front of it, and the one was faster than the other, and there was nothing the pilot could do about it.

The bump was barely noticeable.

Thirty miles an hour, and Charlie could see everything that was to be seen. The heat of a monstrous conflagration boiled away the fog. What had been a marina was hell now come to a quiet seaside village.

The major braked furiously, prayers forgotten, curses under his breath, and it wasn’t quite enough because the plane’s momentum was going to take it straight past the end of the road, over a low drop, and into a wall of flame.

He twisted hard on the steering harness. Kicking up muddy divots, the Gulfstream’s left wing plowed wet earth as it skidded into a sharp left turn, and skidded more because its wheels were just oversized rollers, no powertrain driving them, and an aircraft does not, repeat, does not handle like an automobile.

Newton’s laws of physics hurled the plane toward the ocean. A pair of BMW Rolls-Royce engines propelled it toward the parking lot. The Gulfstream slid sideways to a full stop, and an Air Force pilot, reflexively, not thoughtfully, retracted his deflectors and powered down his engines to standby while murmuring, “Thank you, God, thank you, thank you.”

Charlie laid a hand on the major’s shoulder. “You’re the best, flyboy. I owe you one. If you ever need a hand, just give me a thumbs-up. That’s all it’ll take. Thumbs up and I’m there for you. Understand?”

The major twitched a nod, and kept on praying. Charlie understood. He felt like praying himself.

Instead, he turned and left the cockpit. Seconds later he had a Browning nine millimeter in his right hand, and Sam’s throat in his left. “If I don’t get what I want, I’ll kill you. Hold on to that thought.”

Sam tried to spit. Charlie slapped him.

When he pulled the knives out, Sam shrieked. Charlie didn’t especially care. Wrenching a bloody hand up behind Sam’s back, Charlie hustled him to the plane’s door. “Tell me about the cover-up, Sam, tell me about Whirlwind.”

“Fuck you,” a predictable answer. Charlie thumbed back his Browning’s hammer. Sam snarled at the click.

“You paid off the Chinese, slime boy You bought Sangin Wing back from them. Come on, let’s hear it. What was the price?”

“Nothing! Not one fucking cent!”

He threw Sam face forward against the bulkhead. Jerking the hatch open with one hand, using the other to screw his pistol barrel into Sam’s neck, “Pay attention, bonehead, if I don’t get the truth, I’m painting this plane with your blood.”

“You dumb dipshit,” Sam roared in brute rage. “It is the truth. Don’t you get it, asshole?” No question, Charlie had finally gotten what he wanted a man so maniacally enraged that he couldn’t control himself, couldn’t keep from speaking honestly. “I didn’t pay them, they paid me.”

Charlie blinked at the words. It was true, had to be true, and it explained everything he hadn’t understood. “You’d better clarify that, Sam.”

It all came out in a single rush. “Campaign money! Squeaky clean cash! To get me elected!”

It made sense, God, did it make sense. He’d been wrong all along, misreading the evidence, off on a wild-goose chase, and he cursed himself for not even thinking about how obviously the puzzle pieces fitted together.

“After a lifetime in this business, I thought I knew everything there is to know about how low a man can sink. But you, Sam… you’ve taught me something new. I do not thank you for it.”

“Live and learn, asshole.”

The hatch gaped wide, searing heat gusting into the cabin. The marina had become a furnace, burning off the fog, illuminating the parking lot with lurid hell-light. Charlie thought it a landscape by Hieronymus Bosch, night and crimson cloud over the Pacific, red fire on the water, two dozen boats boiling in an inferno so hot that their fiberglass hulls melted like wax, and their proud masts sagged limply in the heat, sails unfurling in flame, sheeted fire fluttering, the shores of Hades and these all were Charon’s ferryboats. Odysseus had come at last to the Isle of the Dead.

“Tell me,” Charlie whispered because he was incapable of shouting. “Tell me what they get for their money?”

Sam sneered. “Their own man in the White House! Jesus, do I have to draw you a picture?”

No, Sam did not have to draw a picture. “A free hand in Asia?”

“Christ, yes!”

“They’ll invade Taiwan. Overrun Vietnam. Occupy Singapore.”

“So what? The voters won’t give a shit.”

Charlie would have given a lot to wipe the smug sneer off Sam’s face. “Domestic cooperation, too, I suppose?”

“Whatever they want. Technology transfer, trade preference, denial of asylum to dissidents. Plus they want me to shut up the human rights loons and Free Tibet nuts. Bunch of dumb-ass actors, so who cares?”

I do. Me and everyone who hears what you’re saying straight into my digital recorder. “And what does your boss have to say about it, Sam? Or does he even know?”

“If he does know, he doesn’t give a flying fuck. It won’t happen on his watch.”

Not on yours, either. Charlie threw him out the hatch. It wasn’t far, eight feet maybe. When he hit the pavement Sam exploded in monstrous obscenity.

Doubling over, Charlie gripped the hatchway with both hands, swung down, and dropped. He landed hard enough to wake up all the tortured places Schmidt had left him with the day before. The stitches in his leg popped with an audible snap, blood warm as urine ran down his thigh, he felt like barbed wire was being pulled through his veins. Dizzy with pain and fighting to remain conscious, he hissed, “Up!” as he jerked Sam under the arm. Charlie wasn’t angry anymore. He was beyond anger now, moved on to a harsher place. “You worthless piece of shit, you’ve been on their payroll since the president put you in charge of Chinese diplomatic relations.”

“Longer than that, shithead. The Chinese and I, we’re old friends.”

Pushing his resistant prisoner toward the rear of the plane, Charlie hissed, “Explain to me why I shouldn’t kill you on the spot.”

“Don’t you get it, McKenzie? I’m going to be president, and when I am

“

“I don’t want a pardon, Sam. I don’t need a pardon. Forget about it.”

“Already have. My point, my point, you sanctimonious dickhead, is that I’ve done what no diplomat dreamt possible. I’ve put China on our side. When I’m president, they’ll be our closest ally. When they fucked up and arrested Wing’s son “

Charlie was stunned at how wrong he’d gotten it, how wrong he’d been every step of the way. Less speaking to Sam than to himself, he whispered, “You’re saying arresting the Wing kid really was a bureaucratic mistake?”

“Of course it was! Christ, you still don’t see it, do you? You’re old, Charlie, way too old. Back in your salad days you worked it out in a New York minute.”

“Worked what out?”

“Wing and I, we’re on the same team. The winning team.”

Hell, Charlie thought, you’re right: I should have known that the moment that DefCon guy, Henkes, told me you recommended Wing for the job. So, yeah, Sam, yeah, I’m over the hill, should be put out to pasture, another burnt-out case. But not until I finish this, Sam, not until I settle things with you and your pet pit bull.

“You amoral sonofabitch, you’re the Chinese’s hired whore, bought and sold, and what’s good for this nation and all it stands for just doesn’t mean a thing to you.”

Sam exploded. “Want to know what means something to me? Sitting in the big chair, the buck stops here, numero uno, President of the United States, most powerful man in the world! That’s the only thing that matters! It’s all that counts. The rest is bullshit. The game, Charlie, the fucking game is about winning, and that is all the game is about.”

Rounding the Gulfstream’s tail section, Charlie answered, “Game over, Sam. Game over.”

“Indeed it is,” said Johan Schmidt.

Red by firelight, he stood atop a rusted Trans Am using Irina for his shield.

She was unconscious, slumped in his grasp, he with his hand twisted in her long hair, holding her bleeding head against his shoulder. Bright blood, fresh blood flowed freely; Charlie prayed it was only a scalp wound.

Fifty feet away and five feet above the ground, Schmidt twisted the muzzle of a long-barreled pistol into Irina’s rib cage. Charlie recognized it for a target gun, high tech, infallibly accurate. He ducked behind Sam, a shield of his own.

Opening his mouth, Schmidt made a show of obscenely lolling his tongue before licking the blood from Irina’s forehead. He smacked his lips, and leered, “Turn, yum.”

Johan, now would he a very good time for you to be dead.

“Charles, my load is .22 caliber wad cutters Pathetically weak, I know. But point blank they’ll eviscerate her. If you so much as aim at me, I will put a minimum of three slugs into her.”

Mute in a circle of flickering light, the two of them held their hostages. Charlie was beneath the Gulfstream’s tail, Schmidt a few yards in front of the right engine pod. Both were in the open, both vulnerable, no place to hide, each a fine target for the other’s marksmanship.

Mexican standoff. If I try to nail him, I’ll hit Irina. If he shoots at me, he has to kill Sam first.

The marina burned, fire roaring, boats groaning in the flames. The Gulfstream’s engines, still on standby, hummed low, the wind from their turbines passing over Charlie’s head. Fog surrounded the parking lot but did not encroach. Scorching heat drove it back, and this open square of asphalt had become a gladiators’ arena illuminated by a mighty burning.

I win, Charlie told himself. All I have to do is persuade Schmidt of that little fact.

“Johan, put down your gun. You know I’m holding the high cards here.”

“Not so, Charles. I have a queen. You have a jack. Or rather a jackass.”

Spittle flew from Sam’s lips, “For fuck’s sake, Johan, do something!”

Charlie kicked Sam’s leg. Sam tried to pull away. Charlie wrenched him back, a wave of agony rippling through his muscles at the effort.

“Wrong, Johan. Sam’s the most important guy in your world the customer who pays your bills. You aren’t going to let anything happen to him.”

“How astute of you, Charles. You are quite correct, professional ethics demand that no client comes to harm.”

“Then let Irina go. Give it up, and let her go.”

“Sadly for you, my client that is to say the man who signed the contract for my services and is therefore obliged to pay my duly submitted invoice is Mr. Maximilian Henkes, Chief Executive Officer of DefCon Enterprises.” Schmidt’s hand moved too fast for the eye to see. It was a damned good shot,

straight through Sam’s left eye and into the brain. Charlie knew Sam was dead, knew Schmidt didn’t have to take a second shot, and Sam’s deadweight was dragging him down.

Schmidt burrowed his gun back into Irina’s chest. Charlie followed Sam to the ground, painfully taking cover behind such little protection as the man’s corpse offered.

“Practice makes perfect,” Schmidt coldly lectured. “Even the lowly wad-cutter is lethal in the hands of a trained professional. Do try to bear that in mind.”

Prone behind Sam’s limp corpse, Charlie spoke a single word: “Why?”

“Why what? Oh, you mean Samuel? I should have thought that was self-evident. You see, Charles, you see, the thing is this: as long as that irritating little fat boy was alive, you were safe. He would never permit me to do what I want to do so very, very badly. Those incriminating videos you have hidden on the Internet saw to that. But behold! Such a simple and, I frankly admit, pleasing solution: no Samuel, no problem.”