McKenna studied her for a moment, then said, “That’s us, then, Tony. Get suited up.”
Haggar thought Pearson was going to protest for some reason, then decided to keep her mouth shut.
Which was usually the best course.
McKenna had Benny Shalbot install a passenger module in the aft bay of Delta Blue, and by the time he was finished, Pearson appeared, all dolled up in a unisex environmental suit and helmet.
Shalbot helped her get settled in the module while McKenna and Munoz pulled themselves down into their cockpits and began to strap in and hook up.
“Hey, compadre?”
“Yeah, Tony.”
“There’s somethin’ I’ve been meanin’ to ask you. What the hell…?”
“Don’t ask, Tony. Put your helmet on.”
He locked his own helmet in place and then secured his shoulder restraints and connected the environmental and communications lines. He powered up the instrument panel and computers.
Shalbot, rising from below, appeared alongside him. “You can close the bay doors, Colonel.”
He did so. “Thanks, Benny.”
“Have a good trip,” Shalbot said and pushed off for the hatchway.
“You on the line, Amy?” Munoz asked on the intercom.
“I’m here.”
She wasn’t going to be very talkative, McKenna thought, and didn’t blame her. He was assuming she had permission from Overton to go to Wet Country, but he wasn’t going to ask her about it. He was a trifle leery of the temper that came with the red hair.
Polly Tang worked them out of the hangar, and Munoz and his computer came up with the reentry solution. They had a sixteen minute wait for the window.
Sixteen minutes of silence.
Munoz offered to put Silence of the Lambs or Raise the Titanic on her video screen.
“No, thank you, Tony.”
“Geez,” Munoz said.
The reentry was exceptionally smooth, except for burning the nose cone off of a Wasp II, and the landing at Merlin Air Base was accomplished at 0712 hours, Borneo time.
Once they were towed inside Hangar One, and the passenger module opened, Pearson climbed down the short ladder and stretched muscles that hadn’t been subjected to gravity for some time.
It was a nice stretchy despite the environmental suit, McKenna thought.
She had all the help she needed from a half-dozen technicians in getting her helmet off.
“Are you going to fly the Lear, Colonel?”
“Of course, Amy. Where are we going?”
“Phnom Penh.”
“Damn,” Tony Munoz said. “I’ve gotta go check my log and see if that’s one of the cities I’ve been told not to come back to.”
Chapter Twelve
“Take it, Tiger”
“Uno momento, amigo. They didn’t make me a pilot, remember?”
“They made you an electronics watcher. Watch the autopilot.”
“Ah!”
The Gates Learjet was at twenty thousand feet above the South China Sea, purring like a kitten, and even if she turned into a wildcat, McKenna had faith in Munoz’s ability to handle an emergency.
He crawled out of the left seat, pushed through the curtain separating the cockpit from the cabin, and crouched as he made his way back to Pearson.
He sat in the rear-facing seat opposite her. The small table between the seats was raised, and she had a dozen files spread over it.
She watched him with grave green eyes.
“Not now, Kevin.”
He tried a smile. “Now’s a good time.”
“No.”
“Look, Amy, it’s my fault.”
“I’d like to blame you,” she said, “but I can’t. I’m like a damned schoolgirl when I get near you. So stay away”
“Look, hon, we’ve got a nice chemistry…”
“No longer.”
She was right. This wasn’t a good time to discuss themselves. Her mouth was frozen into a straight, grim line, and her pale eyes were opaque.
“All right, we’ll talk about it later.”
“Not now, not later.”
McKenna sighed. He liked her even better.
“How about business then?”
“What business?”
“Why are we going to Phnom Penh?”
“That’s where Shelepin and Pavel are,” she said.
“We’re going into the spy business? I thought that’s why Uncle paid the guys in the CIA.”
“We’re not going anywhere together. You’re the pilot, you wait at the airport for me.”
“That’s not going to happen, Amy”
“It sure as hell is.”
“Are you trying to prove yourself to Overton and Brackman? Overcome the little lapse? Is that it?”
“Of course not,” she said, but her voice faltered.
“Okay, you do what you want to do, but plan on having me with you.”
“No. You don’t outrank me anymore, Colonel McKenna.”
“But my date of rank precedes yours,” he said. “All that means is that I don’t let you do something foolish.”
“Go fly the airplane.”
He went back to the cockpit to fly the airplane.
“Little spat, compadre?”
“Go to hell, Tony.”
Munoz grinned at him. “She’ll get over it.”
McKenna started his letdown when he saw the southern tip of Vietnam, the Pointe de Ca Mau. He passed well south of it, staying out of Vietnamese airspace, then turned north toward Kampuchea.
He crossed the coast at twelve thousand feet.
“Feet dry,” Munoz said.
“Let’s try to keep them that way, Tiger.”
Despite her earlier protestation, Pearson was glad to have McKenna and Munoz with her. Even dressed in civilian slacks and horribly flowered sport shirts, they looked tough enough to scare off muggers or other thugs.
The streets of Phnom Penh were a maelstrom of pedestrians, bicycles, minibuses, smoke-belching trucks, and randomly aimed automobiles. Munoz drove their rented Renault with dedication, irreverence for any international driving regulations, and a creative vocabulary. There was also a sign language that she thought was generally obscene.
The turmoil of decades of revolving governments, ranging from socialist to communist to anarchist to professed democratic, was evident in the faces of the shoppers and the shopkeepers. Their faces were stoic masks, afraid that the next interrogation would be from another resurgence of the Khmer Rouge who, in 1975, seized control of the government. They corralled all of the noted members of the previous regimes, hostile Cambodians, and pro-Vietnamese citizens and executed them all. Renamed from Cambodia to the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, the government? was composed of various political factions which maintained an uneasy coalition and frequently charged that Vietnam had left troops behind disguised as soldiers of Kampuchea.
The economy was in chaos. Under Pol Pot in 1975, banks had been closed and currency abolished. Foreign trade vanished. Now, after the drawn-out Vietnamese with drawal, the economy was undergoing refurbishment, and help was accepted anywhere it was offered. From the expatriot Shelepin and his colleagues, for example.
Foreigners with money to invest in business and industry were readily accepted, and close looks at their backgrounds were forsaken.
Pearson had researched that much. Now, she was going to take a close look at the reality.
Munoz dodged a bicycle that shot out of an alley, and the car slammed into a chuckhole. Pearson bounced high off the backseat, hitting her head on the roof.