Deep Ice (18 page)

“If you’re going to take a flight, Mr President,” said Grimes, “Rob is your pilot. Rob, could you see to the refuelling?”

“Roger that, sir.” Walters walked off to the rear of the chopper, where a crew was beginning a preflight checkout.

Grimes turned back to President Frei. “As a matter of fact, sir, we were going to take her up again on a full tank. We want to get her above the Andes so we can check out the peaks.”

Frei smiled. “It would be no imposition if I were to ride with you, I trust?”

Grimes looked to Halsey for confirmation. The captain nodded.

Walters came back and waited to be recognized before speaking.

“What’s up, Rob?” said Grimes.

“The weight, sir,” the pilot said. “We’ll be climbing with a full load of fuel.”

Grimes frowned. “He’s right, Captain Halsey. We might not make it to the top with more than two on board.”

A man had quietly moved into a position behind President Frei’s right shoulder. Over six feet tall, he was likewise wearing a flight suit and carrying a black helmet.

Grimes pointed to him. “Were you thinking of bringing him along too, sir?”

Frei smiled and glanced over his shoulder. “This is my security guard, Alberto Mendosa. He is assigned to be with me at all times.”

“Commander Grimes is correct, Mr President,” said Halsey. “We can take you up, sir, but not to the top. For that kind of flight, with a full load of fuel, we can carry only two personnel. Helicopters don’t generally fly over 20,000 feet, you know.”

“Even this remarkable machine?” said Frei. “I must admit I am surprised.”

From the expression on the security guard’s face, he’d understood what they were saying and didn’t like it.

“Yes, sir, Mr President,” said Grimes, looking at Halsey. “With your permission, sir.”

Halsey nodded, and Grimes gazed into the President’s eyes. “Even with just one additional passenger our test might be compromised, but with two. . .”

Frei turned his head slightly to the right so his bodyguard knew he was being addressed as well. “I feel most secure with you and your pilot, Commander.”

“Thanks, sir,” said Grimes. “I’d
like
to try it with four on board, but Rob says it wouldn’t make the peaks.

Sooner or later we’ll have to try it with a full load, just in case of an anti-terrorist strike at high altitude – though I doubt that’ll ever become a reality.”

The President waited for him to explain further.

“I mean, sir, what the heck would a bunch of terrorists be doing camped out on a mountain peak? It’s not the friendliest of places. Cold, no air, real hard to get to. Our guess is that they – the terrorists – mountaineer to a high spot to set up a remote radio station. But they’re not there now.”

Frei nodded. “Your Captain Halsey has explained that to me, Commander. I understand. Our mountains, they are very beautiful but they are also very treacherous. Even the Moche – our native Indians – are not easily willing to climb them.”

Halsey laughed. “Then it’s settled, Commander?”

Grimes nodded. “Yes, sir, except that this is a test flight, not a routine mission, and any additional weight changes the parameters. What I mean, sir, is that there’s an additional element of risk.”

Grimes turned to face Walters, who was standing near the Gadfly, looking the craft over, flashlight in hand. “Did you hear that, Rob? Is that right?”

“Aye, sir.”

Halsey addressed the President. “You understand that two of those aboard have to be experienced pilots, in case. . .”

“Certainly, Captain. I understand most full y,” said Frei, smiling at Grimes.

A voice called from behind the Gadfly. “Fuel ed up.”

“Pile in, sir,” said Walters.

Grimes shrugged. “You have your choice, Mr President, the left or the right rear seat. I recommend the seat behind the copilot – the right. The view’s better.”

“View?” asked the President. “Will we see anything at nighttime?”

Halsey held his hand out to the chopper’s open door.

“I think you’ll be surprised by what you see, Mr President. Have a good flight.”

A minute later the two helicopters lifted off again, this time with their extra rotor vanes already extended for maximum lift. To impress the President, Grimes told Walters to switch to Stealth mode.

Walters could feel the additional weight dragging at the Gadfly. Only his mental calculations and his sense of decorum kept him from cursing aloud. He had but to turn his head to see the President of Chile.

Beside Walters, Grimes found himself in the unenviable position, as highest-ranking officer aboard the tiny craft, of being both diplomat and spokesman. What mattered more was that he was going to have to face questions whose answers not even the KGB and a set of dental tools could pry out of him. And he was utterly alone in this situation, cut off from even normal radio chatter. While Walters’s mind was buzzing with data, Grimes’s was conjuring expletives he hadn’t thought of in years.

Meanwhile President Frei was wondering why he’d ever agreed to this. It was nothing like he’d expected. Even laden with a full load of fuel, the chopper seemed to lift in the breeze of thermal updrafts rising from the remaining heat that had that day baked the valley below them. He could feel in the pit of his stomach uneasy memories of amusement parks and pony rides. He tried to get his mind off his innards by staring through his visor at the artificial scenery floating past the Gadfly’s long-range IR imager. The panorama it painted seemed to him like a religious vision, something a saint might see when rising to meet the Maker above. Frei had brought a rosary for good luck; now, his right hand thrust deep inside his pocket, he clutched it tightly. His left hand gripped a back strap of the pilot’s seat brace like a vice. The tiny Stealth bird rose steadily into the night. Finally they started to see big dark patches on the mountainside through the IR imager.

“Is that snow?” asked the President.

“Very good, sir,” said Grimes. “Are you comfortable?”

“A little bit,” answered Frei as he tried to adjust to the eerie sound of the cockpit intercom, the resonance of his own voice, and the thrumming of the chopper’s muffled engines. The sound of the Gadfly, added to the unearthly view that was passing before him and the unsettled feeling in his gut, was pushing him to a limit of experience he’d never imagined. He reminded himself that this was glorious technology in action. Blessing the privacy offered by the dark visor over his eyes, he shut them tightly.

“You will tell me, Commander, when we are over the top?”

“You’ll be able to see for yourself, sir.”

Grimes was hearing exactly what he hadn’t expected. Their passenger was experiencing sheer terror, and they were only halfway to the top.

“Pretty strange-looking display, Mr President. It took me a long time to get used to it. Well, actually, I’m
not
used to it. I just think of it as a day at Disneyland.”

Walters chuckled heartily. “G-2 is already alongside, sir.”

Grimes could see the second Gadfly rising to their left. It had taken off at least thirty seconds after G-1, to avoid the downdraught, but with its lighter load it had easily caught up with the leader.

“Do you see the other copter over to your left, sir?” he asked the President. “Quite a sight.”

“
Si
,” said Frei faintly.

Grimes listened to Frei’s breathing. What he heard scared him, and he wished he’d brought along a tranquilliser gun so he could put the President out of his misery.

A gust of wind lifted them rudely, and Frei let out a slight moan.

“Balls,” said Grimes softly as Walters struggled a moment with the stick. “Hold it as steady as you can, Rob. We don’t want to scramble any eggs.”

“Windy out there, sir,” said Walters cheerful y.

Finally the President asked the question Grimes had been dreading.

“How long before we land, Commander?”

“Not for forty minutes at least, sir,” said Grimes through clenched teeth.

Next came the second question he’d been dreading.

“Is there a. . . a receptacle. . . a bag. . .?”

“In the pouch on the back of my seat, sir,” said Grimes.

#

Henry showed Sarah the Southern Cross that night from an open palm-covered veranda at a bed-and-breakfast they’d spotted during their travels with Enrique. The evening was particularly clear, and the moon shone brightly above them. In this lovely place they were able to relax and forget the problems of the present. For Sarah it was unlike any happiness she’d ever known. For the first time in many years Henry was able to remember feelings long suppressed and forgotten. Now he found himself able to allow the memories to flood over him as he told Sarah about his children, his wife and his parents, memories hitherto lost in a mire of dark emotions as deep as the ocean that claimed his loved ones.

“I guess I feel saddest about my kids,” he said, studying the twinkling lights on the horizon. “It’s so unfair they had to go too.”

Sarah didn’t reply; she just squeezed his hand a bit harder.

“I helped them build the boat,” he said. “Did I ever tel you that?”

“No.”

“The rescue services never found it,” he said. “Not even a life preserver.”

He sighed. He should have been crying by now. But the tears wouldn’t come.

“I’m being a bummer,” he said, looking at Sarah.

“No. I think you’re just catching up on your backlog.”

She stood up and walked slowly into the darkened bedroom. His eyes had no choice but to follow the well defined curve of her back beneath her transparent nightgown. The sight called to him as it vanished into the shadows.

A moment later, he saw her light a candle; she was sitting on the bed, waiting there, looking at him. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he knew what they were saying.

#

Fifty-six minutes after Gadfly 1 had lifted off it settled back onto its landing pad. It was followed swiftly by Gadfly 2. When the hatch snapped open, Halsey was standing there with Frei’s bodyguard to help the President down from the chopper. Grimes hopped out first and lent them a hand.

The President swung his leg out and stood up, loosening the straps of his helmet. As Frei took his first breath of unfiltered air, Halsey could see he had had a rough trip. His face matched the colour of the airstrip they were standing on.

“Well, sir,” said Halsey, “how’d we do?”

Grimes helped the President steady himself. “We did fine, Captain, in spite of the rough winds at the top.”

Halsey pretended not to notice the President’s pallor. Instead he looked at Grimes. “Did you make it to the top?”

The bodyguard surreptitiously lent Frei a supporting hand as they began to walk away from the helicopter.

“Yes, we did, sir. We even topped it. . .” Grimes spoke loudly and enthusiastically. “Even with the extra weight. And the President was a trooper – in spite of the rough ride.”

Unfortunately, the President was by now too far away to hear the SEAL’s compliment.

“What did you do to him?” whispered Halsey.

“A day at Disneyland,” said Grimes. “The President did just fine – for a first-timer.”

The two men stood by the Gadfly and watched Frei get into his limo and drive off into the night.

“Did he ask for any state secrets?”

“As a matter of fact, sir,” said Grimes, “not a single one.”

It wasn’t long before the Gadflies had refuelled and taken off for the return trip to the
Enterprise
, where the 204 postflight boys would go over them meticulously before they would be recertified flight-ready.

#

September 24, and there was still nothing to do but readiness exercises while they waited for the Pentagon to try to locate Rudolfo Suarez.

They had no way of knowing that Suarez and his men were travelling in their van on the road only a half- day away from Santiago, where they planned to relax while he prepared the final instructions he would issue to the United Nations and the world. Soon Suarez would up the ante to five billion US dollars in securities, bonds, gold and precious commodities and begin the process of shuffling a bewildering flow of riches from exchange to exchange around the world, all managed by a financial program he controlled from his little laptop. The program had been encrypted into its hard drive in a way only he knew how to access. Even if the impossible happened – the loss of his laptop to US federal agents – the program would, if downloaded, dissolve into a meaningless string of binary gibberish. Best of all, he’d worked it so that only the central program could identify him as the genius behind the greatest blackmailing in history.

To pass the time today, as Remo guided the van expertly, Suarez switched on his laptop and began running simulations. His computer would take minutes to untangle and analyse these; while he waited he watched the rocky landscape and scrub trees pass by.

Occasionally an adobe farmhouse with a red tiled roof would move past them and disappear behind. These little homes always reminded him of his own childhood home, of his humble beginnings.

He idly wondered if the world would ever know of the little boy who had grown up to be a man who would bring it to its knees. His mind drifted back over the years of planning he’d dedicated to this. Had he overlooked anything that might link him to the crime?
Crime,
he thought.
Is that with a capital “C” or a small “c”?
He remembered his grandfather’s words: “Crime depends on who’s rich.”

Suarez had become
very
rich, especial y for a man who’d only just reached forty. But this was only a beginning. He had tasted his destiny when the first spoils of his aspirations had bought him the death of one of his family’s enemies. He had found out then that riches were only as secure as one’s ability to hold onto them. Without competitors, there is no loss. Nothing brilliant or astute about it. These were old laws, older than his ancestors. Older than mankind. Not laws, even, but divine truth. Only the losers called them crimes; only the vanquished recognized martyrs.

The van passed a road sign: “Santiago 200km.”

Suarez’s eyes moved to the large rearview mirror next to where his arm rested on the opened window. Red dust swirled behind the van. The sun was hot but the air was cool, and felt good as it eddied around the inside of the van.
Would I have been better to have taken the plane?
he wondered.
No – better to keep the profile low. Better to take it slow, at least for now.