Jake knifed through the falling debris and tried to right his machine. Fuel was boiling out the left wing and the left engine was unwinding. He shut it down. A big red light on the left side of the bombsight was illuminated — fire. He needed a lot of right rudder to control his plane.
Now he was level. And alive.
For how long?
That depended on the fire warning light. It flickered several times, then went out. Maybe he had a chance after all.
He glanced at the compass. He was heading east. He dropped the right wing into a gentle turn and let the nose drift down as he juggled the rudder to maintain balanced flight. He had to get low again, avoid the radar that was probing this sky.
He steadied up heading south, descending. One of the Russian’s cannon shells had impacted the second weapons pylon on the left wing, shattering it and twisting it so badly fuel was coming out of the wing. Even as Jake stared at the damaged pylon the last of the wing fuel rushed away into the slipstream. Primary hydraulic pressure was on its way to zero. If that was the primary system gauge.
The warning lights seemed predictable. The damaged engine hadn’t blown up — if it did there was nothing he could do but die. His heart was still beating, thud, thud, thud. He was still alive!
That Russian must have been low on fuel. In a hurry. Too bad for him.
Jack Yocke tapped aimlessly on his laptop computer and from time to time glanced at Toad Tarkington sitting in the big chair. Toad had a pistol in his hand and kept looking at it, turning it this way and that, wrapping his fist around the grip and hefting it.
Herb Tenney lay on the couch with his hands taped together behind his back, his ankles taped together, and a strip of tape over his mouth. Herb seemed calm.
Jack Yocke had done the taping with a roll from the first aid kit when Toad brought him into the room at gunpoint.
Now the three of them sat — Herb calm, Yocke full of questions, Toad playing with that goddamn pistol.
“Did he come willingly?” Jack asked, breaking the silence.
“Uh-huh.”
“Where did you find him?”
“In the cafeteria. Waited until he had finished his coffee and followed him out.”
“Would you have shot him if he didn’t come along?”
Toad merely glanced at Yocke, then turned his gaze back to the pistol in his hand. The reporter saw the same thing that Herb Tenney must have seen fifteen minutes ago. Toad would have pulled the trigger with all the remorse he would have had swatting a fly.
Jack Yocke had another question, but he didn’t ask it. Did Jake Grafton tell you to corral Tenney? Toad didn’t do anything unless Jake Grafton told him to, Yocke told himself, and once told, Toad would do literally anything. The asshole was like a Doberman, ready to rip the throat out of the first man his master sicced him on.
Yocke sighed and went back to tapping. He was listing what he knew about Nigel Keren, about the Mossad bribing Russians to get Jews out of the country and assassinating Russian politicians, about the KGB blowing up the Serdobsk reactor, about a hangarful of nuclear-armed mobile missiles and warheads that were going south into Iraq a planeload at a time. He was sitting on at least four huge stories, any one of which would win him a Pulitzer prize, and all he could do was tap on this frigging keyboard and pray that someday soon he could telephone something to the Post. If he still had a job!
He felt a little like the prospector who has spent his whole life looking for traces of color when he finally stumbles onto the mother lode. And doesn’t know where the vein leads.
All he really had were pieces of stories. Jack Yocke had spent five years chasing stories and he knew that he didn’t have all of any one of them. Oh, he had some great pieces, but he didn’t know where the roots led.
Jake Grafton knew. Of that he was convinced.
Damn, he was getting as goofy as Tarkington. Toad sat there playing with his pistol and if you asked, he would tell you that Jake Grafton knows everything. What’s your problem? Grafton will tell you what he wants you to know when he wants you to know it. If that time ever comes. And if it doesn’t, then you shouldn’t know.
Jack Yocke didn’t think Jake Grafton knew all the answers. He thought Jake was feeling his way along, examining the trees, trying to size up the forest. Jack Yocke didn’t have Toad’s faith.
The truth, he decided, was probably somewhere in the middle.
He jabbed the button to save what he had written and then turned off the computer. He closed the screen over the keyboard and pulled the plug out.
“You done?” Toad asked.
“What’s it look like?” Yocke snarled. He was extremely frustrated, and Toad marching in a big CIA weenie at gunpoint hadn’t helped.
“Would you like to help me?”
“Do what?” Jack asked suspiciously.
“Well, you gotta sit here with this pistol and watch our boy Herb. I have an errand. If Herb twitches, blow his fucking head off. If anybody comes through that door besides me, blow their fucking head off. Think you can handle it?”
“No.”
“You ought to be the pro-choice poster child, Jack. If your mother only knew how you were going to turn out she would have grabbed a rusty old coat hanger and done it herself.”
“Any time you get the itch, Tarkington, you can kiss my rosy red ass. I am not about to get mixed up in the middle of a war or shoot anybody. And no more goddamn cracks about—”
Toad tossed the gun at him. Yocke snagged it to prevent it from hitting him in the face.
Toad stood up. He looked over the items from Herb’s pockets that were spread on the low coffee table and selected a ring of keys, then faced Yocke. “Anyone besides me comes through that door, they’ll kill you if you don’t kill them first. And you can bet your puny little dick that Herb would cheerfully do the job if he had his hands free. Think about it.”
With that Toad went to the door and carefully opened it. He looked out. Now he checked to ensure the door would lock behind him, passed through and pulled it closed.
Jack Yocke looked at Herb Tenney to see if he had any big ideas. Apparently not. He then examined the pistol in his hand. This thingy on the left side looked like the safety. Is it on? Yocke kept his finger well away from the trigger, just in case.
He had had a journalism professor who once told the class that the problem with the profession was the company a reporter had to keep to get his stories. Truer words were never spoken, Jack told himself ruefully.
“If I get out of this alive,” he informed Herb Tenney, “I’m going to get a job washing beer mugs in a bikers’ saloon. Associate with a better class of people. Keep better hours. Make more money. Get laid more.”
Out in the hallway Toad slowed to talk to the marine sergeant sitting at the head of the stairs with an M-16 across his knees. He also wore a pistol in a holster on a web belt around his middle. “Everything okay?”
“Yessir. Not a soul’s been around.”
Toad glanced down the hall at the marine on the other end, who was looking his way.
Satisfied, Toad said, “He’s in there with Jack Yocke. If he comes out shoot him in the legs. Whatever you do, don’t kill him.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
When he was inside Herb’s room, Toad scanned it, then went straight to the bathroom and Herb’s shaving kit above the sink. Yep, the shit still had that plastic pill bottle with the child-proof cap. Toad glanced at them to ensure they were what he wanted, then pocketed them. He considered taking Herb his toothbrush. Naw. His fucking teeth could just rot.
Out in the bedroom Toad got Herb’s suitcase and opened it. Well, ol’ Herb was a neat packer. His mother would be proud.