Sea of Fire (43 page)

“Call him. Then I’ll have to explain why I was here.” Herbert stopped moving forward. He pressed down on the brake to lock his wheels. There was no wind. He could hear Darling breathing as he approached.

“Your delusions don’t interest me,” Darling said as he stopped in front of Herbert.

“My ‘delusions’ will interest the police,” Herbert said.

“Let’s see,” Darling said. He took out his cell phone.

“Why don’t you start talking, Mr. Darling? It’ll save us a lot of time.”

Darling speed-dialed a number.

“Even if I am removed, you’re not going anywhere,” Herbert said. “The helicopter will see to that. You’re not leaving here, and if you’re planning on going to your cove, the helicopter will get there before you do. And you can’t afford to wait. That’s why you were leaving now.”

Darling turned his back on Herbert. He began walking away, the phone to his ear.

“The reason you didn’t hear from John Hawke is because we rescued him from the yacht,” Herbert went on. “He told us everything he knew about the operation. I’m sure I’ll get more from your nephew. The Singaporean navy scooped him and several others from the Coral Sea. Probably an underachiever, right? I’m willing to bet he’ll finger you to buy leniency for himself. That’s what sycophants do.”

Darling stopped. He closed the phone. He turned.

“What do you want, Mr. Herbert?” Darling asked. “I don’t mean to leave the airfield but to go away. To leave me alone.”

“You can start with the location of the nuclear materials you’ve been shuffling around.”

“They’re in your
mind!
” Darling said angrily. “We’re not going to talk about your fantasies. Only about the reality of this moment. I’ll ask one more time. What do you want?”

“I just told you.”

Darling shook his head. “Mr. Herbert, I’ve tried to be reasonable with you. I’ve failed. Now I hope you’ll get off the tarmac. Because I can fly that jet, and I intend to take off.”

“You’d run over me?”

“Mr. Herbert, if everything you’ve intimated is true, one more criminal act would not make things worse,” Darling pointed out.

The Australian turned and left. Herbert had one more round in the chamber. It was his silver bullet.

“I did not accuse you of murder,” Herbert shouted. “But only a man who had already committed one would say that he has nothing to lose.”

“I suggest you move!” Darling yelled over his shoulder.

“How will your daughter feel when she learns you had her mother murdered?” Herbert said.

Darling kept walking, but only for a moment. He turned and threw the cell phone at Herbert. It fell short, exploding on the tarmac. The Australian stalked back toward Herbert.

The kill shot had hit its target. Now Herbert needed one more very specific result.

“You
shit!
” Darling yelled. “You deformed
shit!”

There was the verbal abuse. That was the start of the final phase, like Hitler shouting orders in the bunker as his world burned. If Herbert did this right, the rest was inevitable.

“Your ambition is as limited as your mobility!” Darling went on. “You have no eyes, no soul to dream,
nothing!”

“You want to talk about a soul? I lost my legs in a terrorist attack,” Herbert said. “I lost my wife then, too. I would give anything to have her back. But you had your wife killed out of vanity. Because it was convenient. Who’s the deformed
shit?
”

“You don’t know
anything
about my life!” Darling yelled.

“This may come as a shock, but the world is not Darling-centric,” Herbert said. He was pushing. He needed one more thing.

He got it.

The Australian reached Herbert’s side and threw a hard right backhand across his face. Herbert took the hit.

“You don’t know anything about life itself!” Darling went on angrily. “Go back to your grim little cubbyhole and review reports and study the activities of individuals who make history! But don’t be a spoiler. You have no idea what you’re doing!”

“I do,” Herbert said. “I just got a lunatic to slug me. The tower saw it. My people are calling your friend the constable right now from the helicopter. You’re going to be arrested for assault. Then your government and mine are going to stop you from slipping radioactive material into subways and office buildings around the world.”

Darling shook his head violently. “I was trying to
help
the world! Why should history be written by America or China? What happens to the rest of us? Where is our place in history?”

“Some of us would have been happy building an international empire and having a couple of jets to tool around in,” Herbert said.

“Which is why you
don’t
have those things!” Darling replied. “You settle. You dream small!”

“Really?” Herbert said. “I just sank you with a few words. That, Mr. Darling, is not small.”

The sun cleared the horizon, and Jervis Darling seemed to shrink in it. In a moment, his shadow was taller than he was. The billionaire’s arms went slack, and his chin fell.

“Where I come from, everything isn’t about changing the world on an epic, historic scale,” Herbert said. “Some of it is about improving ourselves, becoming better people. Better spouses. Better parents. That is not small either, Mr. Darling. It’s a very big dream and an even bigger project. You ought to try it sometime.”

The Australian looked at the yellow-orange sun. His face was lined, older in the stark light. Head cocked oddly to one side, he turned and began walking slowly toward the aircraft.

“Mr. Darling, where are you going? I need you to stick around,” Herbert said.

“You need to leave.”

“That isn’t going to make the problem go away,” Herbert said. “Too many people know.”

He continued to walk toward the airplane.

“Mr. Darling!”

“One thing you still have to learn,” Darling said, “is that people know what you tell them. I am not finished.”

Herbert frowned. Something was up. Something unsettling.

And Herbert had an idea what it was.

“The tower saw the attack on Mr. Herbert,” the pilot said to Jelbart. “They’ve called the police, as you requested.”

“Good,” Jelbart said. His own headset was off.

“Now they want to know why Mr. Herbert and Mr. Darling are on the tarmac at all,” the pilot went on.

“I think that should be obvious,” Warrant Officer Jelbart replied. He was watching the two dark figures on the slowly brightening airfield. “They’re having a conversation.”

“The tower recognizes that,” the pilot said. “They want to know why.”

“I took my headset off so I didn’t have to listen to their spew,” he said.

“I understand,” the pilot said. “But the controller has already remarked on the number of Commonwealth Department of Transport safety violations this action embraces. This includes the fact that the Cairns airfield is an emergency landing strip for the region. And that is the only runway.”

“Tell them this
is
a bloody emergency,” Jelbart replied impatiently.

“Look!” Loh said suddenly. “Darling’s going back!”

The urgency in the female naval officer’s tone was not matched by the billionaire’s slow gait. A moment later, Herbert pointed toward the jet. He began wheeling after Darling.

“Tower, please hold,” the pilot said. He turned to Jelbart. “What are we supposed to do?”

“Block him from taking off,” Jelbart said.

“No, wait,” Loh said. “I don’t think that’s what Bob wants us to do.”

“What are you talking about?” Jelbart said. “That was the plan.”

“I know,” she said. “But it looks as though Bob is pointing to Darling. Give me a minute. I’m getting out.”

“To do what?” Jelbart asked.

“Please, just wait,” she said.

FNO Loh opened the door. She ducked from the helicopter and jogged toward Herbert. The roar of the rotors was like the bellowing of the sea. The tang of burning jet fuel permeated the air. It dominated the smell of the ocean blowing in from the east. In all, it was like the familiar sound and smell of the main deck of her patrol boat, a call to arms.

Herbert saw Loh approach. He motioned toward the billionaire, then grabbed his own wrist.

She was right. He wanted Loh to try to stop Darling.

The naval officer turned toward the jet. She was running hard now. Darling had reached the steps and looked back. He saw her and, without expression, climbed into the cabin. She was not going to get there before he shut the door. Still racing, she turned toward the helicopter. She gestured upward and then toward the nose of the Learjet. The pilot obviously understood. The helicopter took off and rapidly overtook her. The pilot circled wide of FNO Loh to keep the prop wash from knocking her down. He stopped about two hundred meters in front of the jet, some twenty meters above the tarmac. The Bell hovered there. The Learjet was not going anywhere. If it started to taxi, the helicopter pilot could stop it by placing a landing strut on the windshield.

Loh passed the cockpit and reached the wide door. It was just forward the wing on the port side. She could hear the door being locked as she arrived. She pounded on it.

“Mr. Darling, come out!” the Singaporean shouted. “You will not be able to take off!”

The combination of the helicopter rotor and jet engines generated a great deal of noise. Loh was not sure he heard her. She stepped away from the aircraft and peered into the cockpit. The sunlight was glinting off the windshield, making it difficult to see. She shielded her eyes. The Singaporean had intended to signal the pilot to let her in.

But that would not be possible.

The cockpit was empty.

When Darling reentered the aircraft, he asked pilot Shawn Daniels to join him in the cabin. The captain exited the flight deck.

“Is everything all right, sir?” Daniels asked as he slipped on his cap and made sure his tie was straight. “Are
you
all right?”

“I am . . .” he said, but then his voice trailed off. How could he explain to this man what he had just lost? His empire. His dreams. His self-respect.

Copilot Kristin Bedard was already in the cabin. She was sitting with Jessica-Ann. The young girl was awake now and talking to the copilot. They were making up voices for the two prehistoric animals that made up the Darling Enterprises logo. The flying pterosaur and seagoing ichthyosaurus were painted on the bulkhead wall of the Learjet. It had always been Darling’s notion that if you mastered the air and sea, you controlled the land.

Copilot Bedard rose when Jervis Darling arrived. He sat in the seat beside his daughter. Daniels and Bedard moved several feet away. They stood with their backs to the two. Darling touched the tip of his daughter’s nose. He used to do that when she was a baby. He smiled as she twitched.

“Daddy?”

“I’m here,” Darling said. “Did you have a nice sleep?”

The girl nodded. She gently scratched her nose with her forearm.

“I want to ask you something,” Darling said. “I want to know if you are happy, sweetie.”

The girl nodded again.

“What are you happiest about?” her father asked. His voice was soft, hardly more than a whisper.

She was silent. He could not tell if she was thinking or falling back to sleep. Then she suddenly said, “Frenchie.”

“Your pony?” That was not what Darling had meant, but he went with her lead. “Frenchie is nice, isn’t she?”

Jessica-Ann nodded once.

“And the thing that I’m least happy about are the dinosaurs,” she added before her father could rephrase the question.

“Why?” Darling asked.

“They scare me,” Jessica-Ann replied.

“They shouldn’t,” Darling said.

“They do.”

“I told you that a lot of them were very peaceable. Do you remember which ones?”

“The plant eaters,” she said.

“Right,” he smiled.

“But they could step on you by accident,” Jessica-Ann said. She was more animated now.

“They would never have done that,” Darling said. “They had young ones all around. They were very smart, and they were very careful.”

And they are all gone,
he thought. They were so successful for so long. Many were large and powerful. Yet they were annihilated. It was an inevitability of nature.

Darling touched his daughter’s cheek with the back of a finger. “I’m glad you like your pony, Jess. But I guess what I really want to know is if you have a happy life.”

“You mean everything?”

“Yes,” he smiled.

The young girl nodded vigorously.

“I’m glad,” he said.

“Now can you tell me something?” she asked, looking up at him.

“Of course,” he replied.

“Where are we going?”

Darling felt tears pressure the backs of his eyes. Tears crept around to the front. He nonchalantly touched them away with his fingertips.

“Actually, sweetie, I’m going somewhere,” Darling told her. “I’ve got a big job for you.”

“Okay.” She made a face. Her brows dipped. “Daddy, I think someone’s knocking on the door.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Darling said. “What I need you to do right now is go home with Shawn and Kristin.”

“Go home? That’s not a job,” she said.

“It is,” Darling said. “A very important one. You’re to go home with them and tell Andrew something. Tell him that Daddy has to go somewhere, and you could not go.”

“Where are you going?”

“Where do you think?” he asked.

Jessica-Ann thought for a moment. “To visit Mommy?”

Darling started slightly. That caught him off guard. The young girl looked up at him.