“Anyway, our copilot for today’s mission is Major Tom Mitchell. Tom needs to get stateside as quickly as you do, due to a family emergency, but I can tell you he’s a solid aviator.”
A pasty-faced officer, doughy and lumpy, stuck his hand out without a word and Tracie shook it. Mitchell’s skin felt hot and sweaty and he seemed preoccupied to Tracie, who in her work as a CIA field operative was accustomed to sizing up strangers immediately. Often the success of a mission — not to mention whether or not she would continue breathing — came down to her ability to effectively gauge who could be trusted and who could not.
And this man set off alarm bells. Mitchell’s eyes shifted continually, like they were following an invisible ping pong ball bouncing back and forth across an invisible table. He barely met her eyes before sliding his gaze restlessly over her left shoulder. He shuffled his feet and rocked side to side like he would rather be anyplace else in the world but here.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Tracie said, attempting to prolong the handshake for a moment and failing, as he withdrew his moist grip from hers almost immediately.
Major Mitchell said nothing. He smiled reluctantly, the gesture making him look more ill than welcoming, and then turned and walked away. He brushed past Tracie and Major Wilczynski and disappeared into the cockpit. Wilczynski watched Mitchell go, his eyebrows raised in mild surprise.
He shook his head and turned his gaze back to Tracie. “And this young man,” he indicated an officer standing next to the spot Mitchell had just left, “is Captain Nathan Berenger. Nathan is a long-time member of my crew, having served as our navigator for almost five years. I can guarantee that with Nathan on the job, we won’t have to worry about getting lost on our way back to Andrews.”
Captain Berenger offered his hand, as Mitchell had done before him. In contrast to the copilot, however, Tracie felt a welcoming vibe emanating from the navigator that was almost as strong as Wilczynski’s. She took his hand and a smile creased his tanned face. “Try to ignore Tom,” he said softly. “I don’t know what’s bugging him, but he’s been pretty preoccupied lately. Family troubles or something, I guess. But Major Wilczynski and I will take good care of you.” He raised his voice to a normal level. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, and if you need anything, you let me know.”
Berenger’s grip felt as strong and competent and Mitchell’s had weak and indecisive. Tracie returned Berenger’s handshake — and his smile — enthusiastically. Something was off about Major Mitchell, that was for sure, but these two crew members struck her as competent to a T. Besides, she was standing in the middle of a U.S. air base, aboard an Air Force jet, surrounded by a professional military flight crew. What could possibly go wrong?
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Berenger said, “I’ve got to get busy doing all the real work so this guy,” he nodded at Major Wilczynski, “can play aviator and soak up all the glory on today’s flight.” He smiled at Tracie and clambered down a metal stairway to the navigator’s position below the cockpit.
“Berenger’s the best,” Wilczynski told her. “On a typical combat mission we would feature at least two more crew members, a bombardier and an electronic warfare officer. Since this is a peacetime noncombat mission, it’s been determined that these positions can remain unfilled for today. The rest of my guys are enjoying a little R and R.”
“I’m sorry to add to your workload and take you away from your own R and R,” Tracie said. “I certainly didn’t need this much transportation.” She opened her arms, indicating the gigantic interior of the B-52.
Wilczynski laughed. “No apology is necessary, believe me. In fact, I should be thanking you. I need to maintain flight proficiency in this big beast, so instead of commanding a boring training mission next week, I get to fly across the pond and make a quick trip home. Besides,” he added conspiratorially, “like I said before, if there’s one thing we all love to do, it’s drink.” The comment took Tracie by surprise and she laughed. “But since we can’t be doing that, the next-best thing for us is flying. We love it, and believe me when I say this is not work for us.”
He lowered his voice, as Captain Berenger had done. “Even for Major Sourpuss in there,” he said with a wink. “Now that the introductions are over,” he said, “feel free to check out the rest of the aircraft. Try not to get lost back there, though. I’ll let you know when it’s time to buckle in for departure.”
12
The B-52 floated across the sky nearly five miles above the vast, empty expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. The air was smooth, with only the occasional light bump of turbulence — like a city bus driving over a pothole — and the roar of the eight jet engines had been muted in level flight to a steady thrumming that was felt more than heard inside the cabin.
At the controls, Tom Mitchell felt as though his stomach might launch its contents all over the instruments at any moment. The gentle rocking of a large aircraft in flight had never affected him in this way before. But then he had never been about to murder four people — including himself — before, either.
He could barely think straight. He was a traitor, although no one would ever discover that devastating fact. Crashing the BUFF into the Atlantic after killing everyone aboard would eliminate any evidence of foul play, satisfying the Russians and sparing his family. There was no radar coverage hundreds of miles off the United States’ coast, so by the time air traffic controllers realized the B-52 was missing, most of the aircraft and debris would already be beneath the water’s surface, well on their way to the ocean floor.
Add to that the fact that the area to be searched would be massive, thousands of square miles of uninterrupted watery desolation, and Tom Mitchell knew the odds of his treachery being discovered were astronomically long.
So that was the plan. Crash the airplane into the ocean.
The problem was that Tom was having a hard time executing the plan, not to mention everyone aboard the aircraft. It wasn’t that he was afraid of dying — not exactly. Anyone making a career out of military service eventually found a way to reconcile the possibility of sudden violent death. Not to do so was to risk a mental breakdown. Tom had long ago made peace with that concept.
Murdering three innocent people, though, had never been part of those calculations. There was a world of difference between being blown out of the sky by an enemy missile during a bombing run and placing his service weapon inside his mouth and pulling the trigger after first shooting everyone else aboard an airplane. So he delayed the inevitable, stomach jumping and rolling while he desperately searched for another way out.
Working with the KGB had been simple at first. A Godsend. He had raked in some serious cash — two grand a month was a lot of money for a United States Air Force officer — in return for passing along what often seemed like relatively harmless minutia: aircraft specs or division personnel rosters or armament information.
Tom wasn’t stupid — he had known he was crossing a line from which he could never return when he relayed that first bit of intel to the Russians, but keeping a German mistress was damned expensive. Besides, serving in the USAF was boring as hell. Acting as a go-between — he refused to consider himself a spy, although late at night, unable to sleep, tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling, he had to acknowledge that was exactly what he was — brought a bit of excitement into his life.