Labyrinth (40 page)

“Some of them will certainly interpret it that way.”

“Then let's hope they got bad aim.”

Dogan was still awake when the sun came up Sunday morning. He wasn't hungry or thirsty. He just lay there hoping the phone would ring, because if it didn't he would be helpless.

The route he had taken into Washington had been long and tiring, for he had taken a number of precautions to avoid identification and capture. There had been several plane changes and brief trips by train and bus along the way. The worst stretch of the journey came in Lisbon, where a fogged-in airport stranded him for six maddening hours. Only a bribe assured him of passage on the first plane out. But it still took him until late Saturday afternoon to arrive in Washington.

The fact that Locke was alone again bothered Dogan only slightly. After all, by now the college professor would have linked up with Masvidal, and their raid on Mandala's Keysar Flats airfield was only hours away at most. Masvidal was supposed to contact Vaslov with confirmation of the rendezvous, and Vaslov, in turn, would contact Dogan. So far no call had come and Dogan found himself increasingly uneasy.

He had spent Saturday night on the phone tracing down old contacts and making new ones, channeling each call through sterile exchanges but keeping them short in case the ciphers had been changed. The end result was to gain him a series of meetings with government officials starting with the Department of Agriculture and moving on to Brian Charney's State Department bureau. He needed allies as well as evidence for the strategy he would implement later today even as Masvidal—and Locke—set out to destroy the canisters in Keysar Flats. If all went according to plan, Dogan would then be free to deal with Mandala personally at San Sebastian. Audra St. Clair's words had confirmed that another phase of Mandala's plan would begin there, one that would destroy South America's farmland as well. It would end where it had started, and Dogan would be the one to end it.

The phone rang, startling him. Only Vaslov knew where to reach him. The Russian's call had come at last.

“Yes?”

“Sorry for the delay in reaching you, comrade,” Vaslov said, voice flatter than usual. “But there has been a complication and it has taken me this long to sort everything out.”

Dogan felt his stomach sink. “What happened?”

“The Sanii Corporation's plant in Liechtenstein has been destroyed by several well-placed bombs. Many people were killed or injured. Everything is gone.”

“It makes sense. Mandala's covering more of the Committee's tracks. He doesn't want the crop genetics research to fall into anyone else's hands and disrupt his plans.”

“There is more, comrade. The perpetrators of the explosion have already been arrested. Officials are calling it a major breakthrough in the assault on terrorism.”

Dogan knew the rest before Vaslov continued.

“Our friend Masvidal and over fifty of his troops were apprehended in Spain after a gun battle that claimed many lives. That final bit is right off the Associated Press wire… . Are you there, comrade?”

“Give me a few minutes to sort things out,” Dogan managed.

“I'll call you back in a half hour, comrade.”

Dogan hung up the phone dazed. Masvidal had not made the rendezvous in Keysar Flats. Locke was there alone.

But he didn't have to be. It was time to forget about precautions and procedures. None of that mattered any longer. He would make more calls and demand the meetings begin at once. He would keep calling until somebody listened and sent the marines into Keysar Flats.

Dogan had lifted the receiver from its hook again when the door to his room burst open and a flood of bodies poured through. He was in motion immediately toward the pistol hanging from the back of a chair, but he knew he'd never make it. The men charged forward, guns all black and steel, promising death.

It had been seven o'clock Saturday evening when Locke had given up waiting for Masvidal at the Ramrod Roadside Motel. He might have given up much earlier, when the messenger did not arrive as promised by five, but had no idea of what to do next. So he had stayed, hoping against hope Masvidal would materialize. He had no way of contacting Dogan, Nikki was gone, and now something had stopped Masvidal from coming.

It had been drizzling all day and by seven, when Locke finally returned to his room, the heavier rain had finally started, subsiding back to a drizzle around midnight.

The trip there had been long and unsettling. The man with the porkpie hat had reminded him to trust no one. Every person he passed was a potential assassin. Chris had spent much of the flight from Madrid to New York scrutinizing the half-filled cabin. He changed seats twice to avoid being near any one person too long.

Returning to the States made him think sadly of his family. He could only hope the real Burgess had been right about the government protecting the rest of them after Greg had been kidnapped. But the Committee could reach anybody. If he failed in Keysar Flats, what would become of his loved ones?

It hurt too much to think about, so Chris made himself stop. His mind swung back to Masvidal and a hundred possible explanations for what might have gone wrong. None of them mattered, though, because the one overriding fact was that he wasn't coming and neither were his people. That left Chris with two choices: Either he could sit and sulk or he could go out and do something on his own. Keysar Flats was a big place but he had lots of time, a whole night to drive his rental car around every road he could find. He was looking for cropdusters and plenty of them. They'd be well protected and that might make them stand out.

Of course, Locke had no idea what he would do if he found the planes, but he had to make the effort. He was well rested, having slept a full dozen hours since arriving at the Ramrod. And he had a full tank of gas in the car he had rented in Dallas.

Chris started for the door, the absurdity of the situation almost making him smile: if the Gods themselves had imprisoned Tantalus, how could he possibly hope to free him?

Pop Keller sat in the corner of the Lonesome Horn Bar and Grill drinking his second special of the young day, a sweet concoction that tasted like sugared prairie dust. Yesterday's special had been Jack Daniels straight up with a twist, and that had been much more to his liking. The day before that …

Pop Keller scratched his head. He couldn't remember what the special had been day before yesterday. Amazing what advancing age could do for you… .

Pop sipped his special and blessed the thin mist in the skies above the Lonesome Horn because it saved him the trouble of spending the day looking for a new site for his Flying Devils air show. The engagement had been scheduled to begin a week ago but then the rains came and on top of that they lost the only site in the Flats worth a damn. So Pop had sent his people out to enjoy the sights of Texas, hid himself in the Lonesome Horn, and started on the specials. Today was the sixth, seventh maybe. They were all starting to taste alike.

He might have stayed with his sugared prairie dust all day, except he was supposed to meet his people at their roadside camp at noon sharp. All this waiting around had the boys getting restless. Most had regular jobs they had already taken too much time away from.

The Flying Devils had once been the best in the business. They barnstormed the country with their World War II fighters, putting on mock air battles that thrilled their audiences. No jet-powered engines, no gymnastic circles in the air. Just plain old gutsy flying in reconditioned fighters.

The planes carried live ammunition in their front-mounted machine guns and real rockets under their wings. The highlight of the exhibition had often been Pop Keller himself putting on an amazing display of target practice at a thousand feet. He'd been able to shoot the horns off a bull … until his eyes went, that is.

He should have gotten glasses but they looked lousy under his leather flying goggles. Seven years back he had been squinting to focus when his fighter made a sudden dip and scraped the wing of another. At least it felt like a scrape. In fact, the collision tore the wing off his buddy's plane and a moderate crowd of 1,200 watched him crash and die in a nearby field.

Pop Keller escaped jail but not scandal. The insurance company laid into him heavy and there were so many lawsuits, he figured he might as well move a cot into the Superior Court. The Devils started to come apart. Pop's best fliers, the young ones, left for the Confederate Air Force or the Valiant Air Command and took their planes with them, leaving him with a ragtag unit of mostly old men who napped before and after performances. But flying was an important part of their lives and they didn't want to quit. And their pension checks took some of the strain off Pop Keller's barely solvent operation.

He had weathered the storm of the scandal, steeled himself even against the pranksters who changed the first “e” in his name to an “i” on billboards, proclaiming him Pop “Killer.” And the Flying Devils had managed to hang together, keep their live ammunition, and change their show to include more mock air battles, which were strangely the most rehearsed and safest segments of their show. The younger fliers started coming back and the Flying Devils again became as good as any of their competitors.

But not many people seemed to care anymore. They had done only six gigs in the past nine months and no crowd had reached a thousand. They collected far less money at the gate than it took for repairs and reconditioned parts for the ancient fighters which, like Pop Keller, didn't know enough to give up. Pop was down to thirty-seven fighters, and there was seldom a day when more than twenty of them were able to take the air. Parts had been traded around so much that it was impossible to tell which had started where. Pop kept hiring mechanics to patch his fleet together with Scotch tape, Elmer's Glue, or whatever else it took. He was living off a dozen loans now. Before too much longer, though, he'd have to sell all his beautiful fighters just to get out of debt.

Pop had gotten in the World War II air show business early, before the Warbird craze caught on. He bought most of his fighters in the fifties and sixties at rock-bottom prices that didn't even approach their value today. But as they appreciated, so did his insurance costs until he had to sell off a few every six months just to stay above water. He started taking on pilots just to get their planes in the show, agreeing to pay upkeep, maintenance, and insurance on them just so long as they were ready to go at showtime. The compromises made his flesh crawl. Doctors, pharmacists, cesspool technicians—for a while the civilians had outnumbered the true fliers in the Devils. Bad times had forced most of them out now, leaving Pop with a nucleus of hardcore Warbirds who had lasted through a week of rain and a cancellation here in Keysar Flats.

Pop still owned a majority of his fleet, twenty-one of the thirty-seven planes. Regardless of ownership, they were all beautiful: six one-man Piper L-4s, eight T-6 Texas trainers, five P-51 Mustangs and the same number of P-40 Warhawks; four Corsairs, three F8F Bearcats, and a pair each of Spitfires, Trojans, and German Messerschmitts. He pampered them like children, taking great pride in the fact that several had been lifted literally off the scrap heap and reconditioned with his own hands.

Pop drained the rest of his special and watched the mist starting to break outside. He didn't have the spare parts anymore to make planes fly, and the men flying them were living out ancient fantasies in skies that didn't scorn them. It was nice when you thought of it that way. Pop could see the bitterness and despair disappear every time they took to the air. They would have been much happier in a real battle.

Keysar Flats, he figured, might be the end. Having their site yanked right out was a crippler, a total loss on the money he'd spent getting his fleet there. Looking for another site had started as a pain in the ass and then the weather fucked him sideways, so it probably didn't matter anyway.

Not surprisingly, then, Pop Keller could recognize a man in trouble because one looked back at him in the mirror every day. He knew he was seeing one in the nervous man swallowing coffee at the bar. They had the Lonesome Horn all to themselves, and Pop Keller didn't feel like being alone.

He pushed his ragged, arthritic bones from his table and slid onto the stool next to the stranger's.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Be my guest,” Christopher Locke told him.

Pop Keller ordered another special and looked the man over. His eyes were drawn and bloodshot, his hair matted down by the morning rain.

“You look like hell, friend.”

Locke almost smiled. “Believe it or not, that's the nicest thing anybody's said to me in quite a while.”

“Been up all night?”

“Yeah.”

“I figured as much. I knew I recognized that look… . Can I buy you a drink?”

“Just coffee.”

“Some food?”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Gotta eat, friend. I turned sixty-six last week and I ain't lost my appetite yet.”

Locke stared down into his coffee, wishing the old man would go away. He was depressed and frustrated, and wanted very much to be alone with his misery. He had been up the entire night driving the roads of Keysar Flats, losing his way enough times to lose track of which roads he had been on and which ones he'd missed. It was no use. The airfield sheltering the cropdusters was too well hidden. It was over and he had lost. There wasn't a single soul in the world he could turn to for help.

“Sometimes it helps to talk things out, friend,” the old man suggested.

“Not this time.”

“Friend, I've had a load of trouble in my life and finding a sympathetic ear always seems to ease it. Let me try and help you.”

Locke looked into the wizened, liver-spotted face beneath a sparse crop of white hair. “Unless you've got an army regiment or air force squadron waiting close by, there's not a damn thing you can do.”