HIDE AND SEEK
By GSc
Prologue
Tobol, Russia
2230 GMT
The flight had gone smoothly… so far.
Dominic Santini checked the console to his left. All systems were normal. But for how long?
Moffett’s Ghost hadn’t taken over the systems for a while, so String was beginning to think that it was gone. But Santini, like Michael, had a different opinion.
In Michael’s experience, when things didn’t go wrong for a while, it was a sign that something big was waiting to land on you when you least expected it. Santini’s opinion was similar, but he was beginning to think the same way the spy did; especially when it came to Airwolf.
He had originally thought of Michael Coldsmith-Briggs, III, often called ‘Archangel’, as a bit cynical, but after getting to know him and seeing what he was up against on almost a daily basis, he thought differently. Michael worked in Counter Intelligence and was responsible for several hundred agents both in America and abroad. And from time to time, when the matter was of high interest to national security, he would be sent on assignment to do some espionage, sabotage, or just plain murder in the form of an assassination that the police would never be able to solve. He couldn’t help but wonder just how many people Michael had killed over the years.
It was no wonder that the spy never seemed too optimistic. Who could be optimistic when you knew there was a bullet out there with your name on it and no date or time of impact? How could a spy be optimistic when there were, for a fact, people in your own agency who would gladly send you to your death, pull the rug out from underneath you, or hang you out to dry if it meant their promotion or even just a few brownie points? And when said people were doing everything they could to get their hands on Airwolf and you were the only person standing between them and it, life suddenly didn’t seem so cheery and bright. And it didn’t help that you knew that they had the ability as well as the means to do damned near anything to you and/or those you were protecting.
It was no wonder the spy didn’t drink coffee. He was high strung enough as it was.
Santini looked at the monitor to his right when something suddenly disappeared. “What the…”
“What?” Caitlin O’shannessey didn’t look back over her shoulder. She was too busy concentrating on flying the helicopter. It had taken a lot of doing, but she had finally managed to get Santini to let her learn to fly Airwolf. But getting Michael to agree was going to be the nightmare. She couldn’t blame him if he didn’t agree. He was ultimately responsible for Airwolf, so if she crashed or anything happened to the helicopter, it was his neck on the block.
“Do you see a big satellite dish anywhere?”
“Yeah, we just passed it on the left.”
Santini looked at the monitor. It was still showing passing scenery, but the satellite dish was missing. “Turn around real quick. I wanna see if it shows up again.”
“What do you mean ‘shows up again’?”
“It’s not showing on the monitor back here.”
“Okay.” Caitlin turned the helicopter around and made another pass of the area. “See it yet?”
“Nope. Damn. I think there might be something wrong- hang on. What on Earth?”
“What?”
“It’s back.”
Caitlin hazarded a glance at Santini who was busy checking his instruments.
“Take it back, and let’s hang out over the site for a bit.”
“Okay. But won’t we get caught?”
“If they have anything that can pick us up, they can have us.”
“If you say so.” Caitlin brought Airwolf over the satellite and maintained the position.
The satellite remained visible for a while then vanished again.
“What the Hell?” Santini stared at the monitor.
“What’s wrong?”
“You see the satellite?”
“Yeah. It’s right in front of us. It’d be impossible to miss.”
“Well, I’m not seeing it back here.”
“What?”
“One minute it’s on the screen, the next, it’s gone.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.” Santini shook his head. “Let’s hang here for a few more minutes then head back.”
“Are you going to tell Michael about this?”
“Let’s see what’s on the film first. I have a friend who can develop it for us.”
“Okay.”
Santini continued to stare at the monitor all the way back to the Tree Stump. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he had a bad feeling about it. And if it was as bad as he suspected, he was going to have to notify Michael. The sooner the better.
He turned on the transmitter and typed a message. As much as he hated doing it, he clicked ‘send’ and waited for a confirmation signal from the FIRM. When he got one, he turned the transmitter off and sat back. He suddenly wished he hadn’t sent the message so soon. If he was right, it was around two AM in Langley.
When the message was decoded, it would be sent to Michael’s people in C.I. and they would panic. After that, they’d call him in. But then, with the hours that the spy kept anyway, it would be a real shocker if he wasn’t awake.
Part One
Hawke’s Cabin
2030, Saturday
Marella watched Michael sleep. She wondered how long he’d sleep tonight.
Normally, he would wake up every two to three hours, so a good night’s sleep was rare for him.
She knew he didn’t sleep well, and thanks to Helmut Kruger, he didn’t sleep much.
It had taken some doing, but she had finally talked him into sleeping on the couch. She had told him that she was going to be up for a while working, then she and Caitlin were going to have a “girls’ night out”.
She had watched him fight with his shoelaces for a few minutes before he finally just pulled his shoes off, socks and all. He had a bit of trouble with his shirt, but since he hadn’t asked for help, she knew not to offer. She still couldn’t figure out why he regarded asking for help as a sign of weakness. There was no shame in admitting defeat, especially in his condition. He had limited use of his left arm, his left hand was all but useless, and since he was left-handed, doing things with his right hand was a challenge. And doing so with his right hand alone…
She couldn’t imagine being forced to use only her left hand.
He finally lay down, but he didn’t go to sleep right away.
After a while, she checked on him.
He was sleeping peacefully, a rare thing for him lately.
She watched him sleep, and thought about what Caitlin had asked her earlier.
“What’s he like?”
“What’s who like?”
“Michael,” Caitlin nibbled on a wedge of watermelon.
“I’m not sure how to describe him.”
“In one word,” Caitlin challenged lightly.
“In one word?” She lit a cigarette. “That’s a tough one.”
“Why?”
“You can’t describe him in one word. Well, you could, but you’d be using a lot of single words.”
“Oh.” Caitlin looked down at her hands. “Dom and String won’t tell me anything about him, and I see you around him, so I figured maybe…”
“You really want to know what he’s like?”
“Yeah.” Caitlin spat out a seed. “I never get to go with them when they go to wherever Michael’s office is. I always have to stay here and ‘mind the shop’.”
Marella smiled. “Tell you what. Call me sometime this week when you’re not so busy here, and I’ll set up a meeting.”
“Really?” Caitlin’s face lit up.
Marella nodded. “He’s going to find out about you sooner or later, so I’d rather it be on his turf on his terms.”
“That bad?”
“No, he just doesn’t like surprises when it comes to Airwolf.”
One word, Marella smiled faintly as she watched Michael sleep.
Cold, indifferent, aloof, detached, distant, calculating, vicious, stubborn, tough, strong, independent, and- she wasn’t sure if she should go on. She looked at the spy again, looking at him from a different angle. Isolated, alone, scarred, hurt, worried, haunted, gentle, patient, kind, warm, sensitive, compassionate, reasonable, level…She didn’t want to even think the word that fit best. She couldn’t see Michael as vulnerable, but he was. Beneath his hard, cold, aloof exterior was a kind, gentle, easy-going man whose heart was the size of Alaska and softer than a fresh marshmallow.
How he could have become so cold and hard, she had no idea. But she knew him well enough to know that the cold, indifferent, and almost surly demeanor wasn’t who he was. It was just a front, a window dressing to hide the man inside.
Why are you like this? Marella asked him silently. Why are so intent on keeping yourself on the outside looking in? Or are you on the inside, afraid of letting anyone in?
He looked so peaceful and harmless curled up on the sofa like a child who had fallen asleep waiting for Santa Claus. But she knew that like all things in the espionage field, looks were deceiving.
Sure, he looked harmless and peaceful. He was asleep. When he was awake, it was another story altogether.
Asleep, he looked like a kind, gentle, easy-going guy. And to a degree, he was. But when he was awake…
Awake, Michael’s name and codename suited him.
In Hebrew, Michael meant “Like the Lord”. In most religions, namely Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, there were several Angels of the Lord. They were referred to as the Archangels, and were among the most feared of all God’s heavenly servants… Michael being at the top of the list.
Michael and Gabriel were the two most well known of the Archangels and Michael was held to be the stronger, fiercer, and more powerful of the two. While Gabriel was the messenger, Michael was the enforcer. Some Christians and Jews believed that it was Michael whom the Lord sent over Egypt to kill the first-born in all the land.
And like an Archangel, Michael Coldsmith-Briggs III, was a force to be reckoned with.
He was tough, resilient, and when the mood suited him, almost totally obedient. On the flip side, his temper was legendary.
When he was awake, Michael was alert, aware, and ready for whatever might come his way.
One word, Marella frowned. Several words came to mind, but only one stuck. Mercurial.
She knelt beside him and checked his pulse. It wasn’t normal for him to sleep as soundly as he was, and she was a little concerned. The scars on his left wrist spoke volumes. The violence of the explosion at Red Star, the surgery to rebuild the bones in his forearm, and two lines that disturbed her more than anything she had ever seen.
Out of curiosity, she looked at his right wrist. He had matching scars there as well.
The burn scars didn’t do much to cover the scars.
She sat back on her heels. After a moment, she decided that she should check to make sure he was okay.
His pulse was slow, strong, and steady, but the scars still worried her. She watched him for a minute longer before noticing that he was shivering slightly. She stood up and went to the cabinet under the stairs to get a blanket for him.
Santini watched Marella put a blanket over Michael. He waited until she was over by the table before speaking. “You okay?”
“Fine.” Marella looked back at Michael. She hoped she was wrong about Michael. While he didn’t seem the type, she didn’t really know all that much about him. No one did.
Santini watched her for a minute. “Wanna talk?”
“Not in here.”
“He’s a light sleeper?”
“Not really, but there are some things I just don’t want to discuss when there’s the possibility of them being overheard.”
Santini nodded. “You saw his wrists?”
Marella looked up, her surprise barely concealed. “You know about them?”
“No, do you?”
She shook her head. “No. But I hope to God I’m wrong about them.”
“You think he might’ve…”
“I don’t know what to think,” Marella walked out onto the porch and leaned against the rail. She had seen Michael rebuild it, and wondered why he hadn’t decided to become a carpenter instead of a spy. He was incredibly talented at building and making things out of wood. She took a pack of cigarettes out of her purse. “Okay if I smoke?”
“Sure,” Santini nodded. He couldn’t help but notice how good she looked in Michael’s blue, cable-knit sweater. The one the spy had kidnapped and ransomed Roswell to get back. The whole bit with the toy alien still amused him. Roswell had been abducted, ransomed, and abducted so many times that neither Marella nor Michael knew whom the alien belonged to anymore.
“I’m worried about him, Dom.” Marella used Michael’s lighter to light the cigarette. She looked down at it and smiled sadly. It brought back a poignant memory.
“Yo.”
“Yo?” She looked up at the tall man on the horse. He was good looking despite the fact that he was covered with sweat-streaked dust.
“Yeah,” the low, rich voice was smooth and tinged with an accent that she couldn’t quite place.
“Okay.”
“Good,” he smiled and looked back over his left shoulder toward a rapidly approaching cloud of dust.
“Excuse me?”
The tall man in the denim jeans and black T-shirt beneath a faded blue chambray shirt pointed a gloved finger at the sign to right of the road. He pulled his bandanna up over his nose and mouth as the dust approached. “Windows up.”
Not sure what was happening, she rolled her windows up. She looked at the sign to the side of the road. It had a picture of two steers in singe file and a sign beneath that read “Cattle Crossing” She looked up at the man on the fidgeting brown horse.
He tipped his flat-crowned Stetson at her, pulled his sturdy leather work gloves up a bit then motioned for her to back up.
Not sure what to do, she put her car in reverse and backed up until he gave her a thumbs-up.
Seconds later, she heard a loud rumbling and the sound of roughly eighty head of cattle lowing as they crossed the road.
She thought it was funny that cattle would have crossing guards, but she could see the sense in it.
Once the last cow had passed and the dust had settled, she rolled down her window.
The cowhand rode up to her while she tried to light a cigarette. Just her luck, the lighter was out of fluid.
“Need a light?” He took a Zippo out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her.
“Thanks. You do that often?”
“Not really.” He smiled and turned his horse to the right to get the last cow across the road. He whistled sharply, startling the young bull into running to catch up to the safety of the herd. His eyes smiled at her.
The eyes captivated her. She had never seen eyes that color before. They weren’t green, but they weren’t gray, either. They were a kind of greenish-gray that reminded her of fog. It was a color that Crayola called “Sea Green”.
He tipped his hat slightly and rode off.
She looked down at the lighter. He had forgotten it. But not for the first time.
She continued her drive toward Thousand Oaks to her assignment.
She spared a glance at the lighter and wondered what “lla’naya” meant.
She found herself looking at the lighter again. “You know, he never told me what this word means?”
“What word?” Santini looked at the word engraved in the lighter.
“All he said was that it’s pronounced ‘Thla nigh ah’. I asked Talking Stick what it meant, and he just turned red.”
“Stick?” Santini couldn’t imagine Talking Stick blushing. Mitchell Talking Stick was one of the few people that he’d ever met who could curse so coarsely that he offended sailors. “Wow. Why don’t you ask Michael what it means?”
“I tried.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said that it wasn’t something he could say to me.”
“I can’t tell you.” Michael’s tone said that it was something awkward for him to deal with.
“Why?”
“It’s not- it’s one of those words I don’t say in polite company.”
Tall Deer let out a long, loud belch.
She and Michael looked at the Native American who grinned broadly.
“You were saying, sir?”
Santini looked at Marella. He couldn’t think of too many words that Michael wouldn’t use in a woman’s presence. And since Marella could curse worse than he could, it had to be something really offensive. “I’ll ask him when he wakes up.”
“Good luck.”
“So why are you worried about him?”
“Did you see his wrists?”
“Yeah.” Santini looked at the door as if he could see Michael. “You don’t think he tried to, do you?”
“He might have,” Marella sighed. “God knows he’s got plenty of reason, but… there’s nothing in his record that lists him as a suicide risk. Okay, the break up was messy, but it was nothing compared to what his life with Linda was like.”
Santini shook his head. He had never liked Linda, and wondered how Michael could put up with the woman.
Linda was the stereotypical shrew. She was literally the kind of woman that no man in his right mind would want to marry, and the kind of woman that every man claimed his mother-in-law was. It was no wonder that Michael took every unaccompanied assignment he could until he met Rachel Castillo.
“Maybe he did it before the break up?” Santini offered. “Hell, I woulda. God, if I was gonna get married to that witch…”
Marella smiled and shook her head. She had met Linda only once, and that was more than enough for her. After only three minutes in that woman’s presence, Marella could easily understand why Michael worked such late hours and came in so early. “Maybe. All I know is that she gives Lindas everywhere a bad name. And you know what? I doubt she had a miscarriage.”
“Why do you say that?” Santini’s surprise was clear in his voice.
“Think about it.” Marella smiled and knocked a bit of ash off the end of her cigarette. “He was going to break up with her so he could take an assignment overseas, and she just happens to find out she’s pregnant.” Marella leaned back against the rail. “But she never saw a doctor, and as soon as he passed up the assignment and they got engaged, she had a miscarriage. Now, I don’t know about you, but that sounds just a little convenient.”
Santini thought about it for a minute, then agreed. That sounded just like something Linda would do.
“But that’s then and done,” Marella shrugged. “That bitch is getting hers.”
Santini nodded. “How are the kids?”
“Big,” Marella stubbed out the cigarette and tossed it into an empty coffee can that she and Michael used as an ashtray when they were up there. “Zack’s over six feet-”
“Zack’s what?” Santini looked shocked.
“He’s six-two,” Marella leaned back against the railing. “Built like Arnold and he kickboxes.”
Santini stared silently. The last time he’d seen Zack, the kid was barely five feet tall and skinny as a whip. “What about Jessie?”
Marella handed him a picture.
Santini nodded approvingly. When it came to Jessie, a picture said what a thousand words could never adequately describe.
“She’s my height.”
Santini looked up from the picture. “Are you serious?”
“She’s just shy of six feet. And she’s only fourteen.”
Santini handed the picture back.
“How’s Dusty adapting?”
“He’s in a foster home.”
“Mike didn’t keep him?”
“He’s trying, but Dusty’s mother is trying to get custody of him, so he has to stay in a foster home until everything gets straightened out.”
“That sucks.”
“Tell me about it.” Marella looked out over the lake.
“He’s on your mind again.”
“Who, Mike? I guess I’m just worried about him. But you know me…”
“Yeah.” Santini sat down on one of the chairs that Michael had built. “And you’re always right. So what’s wrong?”
“He doesn’t sleep much, and when he does, I wouldn’t call it rest. I can’t remember the last time he’s slept through the night. Hell, if he sleeps for two hours, it’s a miracle. I’m worried about him. He’s in a lot of pain, but he won’t say anything. He struggles with everyday things. Things that you and I take for granted that we’ll be able to do.”
Santini frowned.
“He needs help, Dom, but… He doesn’t ask for it. It’s like he thinks needing help is a sign of weakness.”
“He’s independent, M. You know how much he likes to do things on his own.”
“Yeah, and now he can’t. He’s gone from normal to- well, look at him. He doesn’t eat, he hardly sleeps, he looks like-” she shook her head, not sure how to express what she was thinking. The word ‘haunted’ came to mind.
“He just needs some time off.”
“He needs help. And I’m afraid that if someone doesn’t do something soon, he might just finish the job this time.”
Santini nodded. He looked out over the lake.
“I’m gonna go check on him.” Marella went inside and checked on Michael. He was still sleeping peacefully. She watched him sleep for a minute, wondering how he could handle so much pain. And exactly how was he handling it?
She went back to her work. She looked up when she heard Tet whine softly.
The old hound was sitting next to Michael who was sitting up on the couch.
Marella walked over to the spy.
Michael looked exhausted, but otherwise okay. He shivering slightly and trying to straighten his left leg.
“Are you okay?” Marella knelt beside him.
Michael didn’t reply.
“Michael?”
“It hurts,” Michael said after a moment.
“What hurts?”
“My leg. It hurts.”
“Why don’t you lay down upstairs?” Santini offered.
“And where are you gonna sleep?” Michael asked wearily. He was in too much pain to do much more than sit where he was and not move.
“I can sleep on the couch tonight,” Santini replied. “String won’t be back until Monday, so you go upstairs and lay down.”
“I’m okay,” Michael said softly. In truth, he wasn’t okay. He felt like shit. His entire left side hurt from his collarbone to his wrist and from his hip to his ankle. He also had a throbbing headache. And while the metallic taste was gone, the faint nausea was still there. He wondered how long it would be before that went away. He hated the medication he had to take. The side effects were almost as bad, if not worse than what they were supposed to help.
He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes.
“C’mon.” Santini helped Michael up.
“Where we going?” Michael winced involuntarily as he stood up.
“You’re gonna go upstairs and lay down.”
“No. I’m okay.”
“Sure,” Santini nodded. “Get moving.” He helped Michael up the stairs and across the loft to the bed.
Michael sat on the side of the bed. His hip screamed to be left alone as he did so.
Santini helped Michael take his shirt off. He knew it was bad when the spy didn’t protest. He resisted the urge to say anything when he saw the scars.
Michael’s left arm and side were covered with scars from Red Star and the ensuing surgeries to repair the damage. He also had scars from several interrogation sessions.
Santini put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Do you want something for that?”
Michael shook his head. He hated the painkillers he had to take. Sure, they made the pain bearable, but the side effects were almost as bad as the pain itself. “I’m okay.” He shook his head.
“Do you need some help with your jeans?”
“I got it, thanks.”
“Okay. Yell if you need anything.”
“Okay.” Michael nodded. “Dom?”
“That was quick,” Santini stopped at the top of the stairs.
“Thanks.”
“Anytime,” Santini smiled and went down the stairs. He checked on Michael a while later, and found the spy asleep. He put an extra blanket on the bed and went downstairs to make up the couch.
“How is he?” Marella closed her briefcase.
“Sleeping.”
Marella nodded. She looked at the stairs. “I don’t know, Dom. I don’t know how he does it.”
“I know what you mean,” Santini nodded as he poured a cup of coffee. “I couldn’t live like that.”
“That’s not living,” Marella sighed. “That’s surviving.” She looked down at her briefcase. Michael didn’t look forward to the next day, he just tried to get through the day.
“You’ve had a long day,” Santini smiled gently. “Go crash on the couch.”
“I have-” Marella began to protest, but Santini cut her off.
“Go.”
Without an argument, she changed into her gym clothes and laid down on the couch.
Part Two
Hawke’s Cabin
1130, Sunday
Santini walked in with a bag of groceries and Caitlin in tow.
Marella was busy working on the backlog of paperwork that had landed on Michael’s desk that morning. “Hey. Need some help?” Part Three Sao Paulo, Brazil Helmut Kruger watched at the tall Native American in front of him. He’d heard of Tall Deer, and was mildly surprised by the man’s willingness to do whatever anyone wanted… for a price. Part Four Knight’s Bridge, VA Santini nodded. “Anyway, this is what we pulled from the Lady’s computers.” He handed Michael a set of pictures. Part Five Tobol, Russia Major Sergei Voruskaya looked up from his computer. Part Six Knight’s Bridge, VA Part Seven Michael’s Residence “This is the thermal imaging.” Michael said as Santini picked up a picture that looked like an incomprehensible pattern of colors to Caitlin. “What you’re looking at here,” he pointed to the shape Chee had outlined. The area was noticeably cooler than the rest of the picture. “Is a shadow. Whatever is sending the signal is doing so with enough power to light up L.A. The helicopter deflected the rest. That’s what caused the cool area you see on the picture. That cooler area is called a shadow.” Part Eight Tobol, Russia Part Nine Knight’s Bridge, VA Marella stared at the transmission. It gave her no more information than it had when she had received it. “Fuck.” If I’m right, Comrade Svorsky is Colonel Gregor Svorsky, KGB. “Holy shit.” Marella reread the note. This was like a bad nightmare that just kept getting worse by the minute. If Gregor Svorsky was in on this as well as Tall Deer, she knew there was trouble brewing. Part Ten Michael’s Residence Michael didn’t even put his keys down when he walked in. Part Eleven Tobol, Russia Sergei checked all of the disks to make certain that they hadn’t been tampered with. He knew that he had to get out of Russia as soon as possible. While Dostovitch would watch his back, the political officer would be the first to pull the trigger if he tried to escape the base. He knew better than to trust Svorsky. On top of the man’s violence, what he had heard on the phone was enough to convince him to take everything Svorsky said with a shaker of salt. Part Twelve Knight’s Bridge, VA Marella looked at the wall-to-wall monitor in the situation room. She was worried about Michael. There was something wrong with him, but she couldn’t place what it was. And now she was beginning to wonder if she should have sent him at all. Get tea With a chuckle, she closed the drawer and sat down at his desk. “What a day.” Part Thirteen Knight’s Bridge, VA Michael sat at his desk, staring at the ceiling. ‘The Usual’ for him was a debriefing when he came back from an assignment. He had learned quite a bit about Tobol during his visit and the fact that they were chased halfway back to California said that Sergei was more than just the average scientist. No ordinary scientist would be as heavily guarded as Sergei had been, and when that scientist was abducted by an unknown operative, it didn’t generally cause a general alert of the nation’s armed forces. Part Fourteen Tree Stump Epilogue White Haven, AZ
“No, we got it.” Caitlin set a bag down.
“How is he?” Santini asked.
“Still sleeping.”
“You sound surprised.” Santini put a carton of milk in the refrigerator.
“I am. He slept through the night. You know, this is the first time in I don’t know how long that he’s done that.”
Santini nodded. He was curious how Marella knew that particular fact, but didn’t ask. Rumor had it that she was a lesbian, so she and Michael being bed-buddies didn’t seem likely. Maybe they were room mates.
“Remind me to call Ellen later today,” Marella opened a folder. “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“Is this what you guys were talking about?” Marella looked over the report.
“Yeah.” Santini nodded. He hated to drop something like this on Michael without prior notice, but this could be a big problem.
Marella looked the report over. It was pretty thorough. She was about to ask what happened when Tet began barking.
“What is it, boy?” Caitlin walked over to the hound.
Tet picked up a chewed on, battered sneaker and wagged his tail.
“What, you wanna play?” She took the shoe and tossed it across the room.
Tet stayed where he was, looking up the stairs. He barked again.
“What?” Caitlin looked down at Tet then up the stairs. “Hey. How are you?”
Michael slowly made his way down the stairs, one step at a time. “Hey.”
Caitlin smiled and helped him get down the last few steps.
“Thanks.”
“Sure.”
Tet zipped across the room and picked up the shoe. He walked alongside Michael, wagging his tail every step of the way.
Michael sat down on a stool.
Marella noticed that even when he was half-asleep and wearing denim jeans and a sweatshirt, he was still good looking. God, he’s got a nice ass. She felt her face warm. She couldn’t believe she was thinking about her boss like that.
“You want some breakfast?” Santini asked.
Michael pushed his glasses up slightly. “What?”
“Breakfast.” Santini replied.
“He’s not awake yet,” Marella smiled. “Use small words.”
Michael gave her a slightly sardonic look.
“Want chow?” Santini asked as he poured Michael a glass of juice.
“No, thanks.” Michael stared at the counter.
“Here.” Santini set a glass of juice on the counter for the spy.
“Thanks.” Michael knew he should take something for his leg, but he didn’t feel like spending the day feeling like he had a hang over. He took his thyroid medication instead.
“You should take something for your leg,” Marella said as she read over the report.
“I don’t want to, thanks.”
“You know what Dr. Beeks said.”
“Yeah. And I know how I feel when I take that stuff. I’ll pass.”
Marella gave him a searching look. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. They don’t do much for the pain and they make me feel hung over.”
Marella nodded. “I’m gonna make a call.”
Michael shrugged. “Okay.”
Marella knew the indifference for what it was. Michael always hid behind indifference. Aloofness was his way of dealing with things. It kept people at bay.
She picked up the phone and went out onto the front porch.
Ellen Beeks picked up on the second ring. “Yes?”
The sound of the older woman’s warm, gentle voice always made Marella smile. “It’s me.”
“Hey. How are you?”
“I’m okay, I’m worried about Michael.”
“Why?”
“He isn’t sleeping, he doesn’t eat, and- I need to know if he has a history of suicide attempts.”
Beeks flipped through some papers, making Marella wonder if Beeks had been anticipating her call. “Only one prior attempt. He was thirteen.”
Marella was speechless. She couldn’t imagine anything so horrible that it would drive a teenager that young to suicide. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, but Dr. Ewert, his pediatrician, said that the father had something to do with it.”
“Is there a history of abuse?”
“Probably.” Beeks flipped a few pages. “I’m going with yes because no child is that accident prone, no matter how reckless a daredevil he is.”
Marella nodded. “Just physical?”
“For the most part, but his rugby coach sent him to the team doctor once for what he suspected was gonorrhea.”
“How old was he?”
“Twelve.”
Marella felt faintly sick to her stomach. She couldn’t imagine something like that happening to a child.
“I know. He doesn’t really talk about it, but it was a serious issue when he first signed on.”
“It was?”
“I know he’s got a problem with dark places, but I’m wondering if he clams up for another reason.”
“Yeah. He’s had problems with that in the past as well. He doesn’t communicate well and tends to isolate himself. Particularly when something’s bothering him.”
Marella nodded. That was nothing new to her. “Okay. And what about his meds? He says they make him feel hung over.”
Beeks flipped a few pages. “Wow. What the hell were they thinking?”
“What do you mean?”
“If someone’s on Thyroxine, you never give them anything containing narcotics.”
“Bad reaction?”
“Yeah. Thyroxine is used to treat thyroid deficiency. It’s kind of an upper. If you take speed, the last thing you should do is pop a Quaalude. And that’s pretty much what they’ve got him doing.”
“No wonder he’s so fucked up,” Marella chuckled.
“Honey, I’d be surprised if he wasn’t.” Beeks made a note and paper clipped it to the page she was looking at. “Have him stop taking the pain killers.”
“You sure?”
“Trust me. I’ll see if I can get him something non-narcotic.” Beeks made another note. “Probably a cortisone shot. Anything else?”
“What can he take in the mean time? He’s hurting bad.”
“Some Excedrin or something along those lines. I’ve got him scheduled for an ortho consult Friday. I’ll see what’s going on with him then.”
“Thanks.”
“What else is going on?”
“That’s pretty much it.”
“Okay. Have him take it easy today and if he gives you a problem, call me.”
“Okay. Thanks, Ellie.”
“Any time, honey.”
Marella disconnected and watched Michael toss a tennis ball for Tet. The hound darted after the ball and brought it back. She wondered when she should tell him about Airwolf.
“Jesus, Tet,” Michael pushed the log’s face away. “Quit drooling on me. God, you’re worse than Benson.”
Marella smiled. Benson, Michael’s dog, was a drool machine if ever there was one. Benson slobbered all over everything… Michael in particular. Tet’s long tongue hung out as he waited for the ball to be thrown again.
“How’s it going?”
Michael looked up as she walked over.
“I swiped a cigarette last night.”
“Okay.”
Tet dropped the soggy ball on Michael’s lap.
“Thanks a lot, Tet.” He tossed the ball again.
“I talked to Dr. Beeks.”
“Okay.” Michael watched Tet search for the ball.
“What happened?”
“What happened when?”
“To your wrists?”
Michael looked at his wrists for a moment. “Tried offing myself.”
“Why?”
Michael smiled slightly. “My old man. The bastard ruined the biggest day of my life and made me the laughing stock of the entire school.”
“What’d he do?”
“Long story.” Michael took the ball from Tet and threw it again. “In short, he came to my bat mitzvah.”
“That’s not too bad.”
“You’d think.”
“What’d he do?”
“Long story.”
“I have plenty of time.”
Michael gave her a look that she still couldn’t figure out. “Well, he showed up late, drunk, and in his work clothes. He worked as a mechanic, so he was greasy and he smelled like exhaust. But that wasn’t enough. He sat in the middle of the room and complained loud enough for the staff in the ballroom to hear him.”
Marella nodded slightly. She didn’t know much about Judaism, but she knew enough to know that the bat mitzvah was one of the biggest days in a Jewish boy’s life. “What was he bitching about?”
Michael studied the slobbery tennis ball for a minute before throwing it again. “He was pissed that it cost so much and that it was a waste of money. Not that he laid out a dime for it. My grandparents paid for everything. They even sent me to Hebrew school ‘cause my old man was too cheap to.” He lit a cigarette and offered the pack to her.
“No thanks.”
“Anyway, the thing was held at my grandparents’ house so my grandfather could be there. He had cancer, and he couldn’t really do much of anything anymore, so we had it at his house. My old man kept going on and on about how my grandparents were wasting money on me, and that the money they were wasting on this stupid thing could have been put to better use. They could’ve given it to him so he could pay the rent so his useless bastard of a son could have a place to stay. Not that he felt I earned my room and board. And he wasn’t even sure I was his son because his nasty slut of a wife was probably off screwing everyone and their brother when she claimed she was at work at the diner.”
“Wonderful guy.” He reminded her of her own father, who had decided that as soon as she had breasts, that she would be sent to Port-au-Prince to work as a prostitute to help the family make money. After all, her sisters were prostitutes and her brother was their manager…
“No shit. He just kept going and going. There were a couple of times when he was so loud you couldn’t hear the cantor. Hell, I don’t even think Rabbi Kleiner heard half of my halfthola over my old man, and he was standing right behind me. And that was just the beginning. At the reception afterward… It’s a custom among Russian Jews for the boy’s father to make the first the toast. So what does my father do? He picks up the glass of sacramental wine, breaking the stem of the glass as he did so, and lets out this belch that- shit, Tall Deer has nothing on my old man when it comes to belching. And after he lets out this god-awful belch that I swear to God didn’t think would ever end, he goes and passes out. But even then, he didn’t have the decency to do it in a chair or even on the floor. He has to pass out on the table, sprawled out across everything and knocking the menorah over, causing it to set the tablecloth on fire.”
Marella shook her head slowly. She couldn’t imagine how she would have felt if her father had done that at her Communion. “What happened after that?”
“The next day, when he gets home from work, he takes me out behind the shed and beats me with his belt and tells me that if I ever embarrass him again like I did the day before, he’d kill me. Well, I decided that he was right, so as soon as he passed out in the kitchen, I left a note on his beer bottle, went upstairs, took his razor, and cut my wrists.”
Marella watched Michael stub out his cigarette. She wondered how he could he could be so calm and matter-of-fact about it. His entire attitude said that he might as well have been discussing someone else’s life.
She watched him for a minute longer.
Michael took the tennis ball from Tet and tossed it again. He absently rubbed his left knee just below and to the left of the joint.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Got the munchies, but otherwise okay.”
“Why didn’t you eat breakfast?”
“Have to take my thyroid stuff on empty. You know, I think it was the pain killers that were screwing me up.”
“That’s what Beeks said. She doesn’t want you to take them until after your followup.”
“Works for me,” Michael stood up slowly and stiffly.
Tet walked up the steps and dropped the ball as Michael walked inside.
Santini watched Michael look over the file. The spy’s face was unreadable as he looked over the file.
Michael looked up after a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me when this happened?”
“You weren’t in any shape for it,” Santini replied frankly.
Michael looked up sharply.
“You weren’t,” Santini shrugged. “No kidding, Mike, you were lookin’ like that sneaker Tet likes to chew on.”
Michael closed folder. He decided to overlook being called ‘Mike’. He didn’t generally like people calling him ‘Mike’ any more than he’d liked it when people in high school called him ‘Spanky’. “That bad?”
Santini nodded. “Marella said you don’t usually sleep.”
“You ever tried sleeping when you felt like you had the mother of all hangovers?”
“You feel like that?”
Michael nodded slowly. “Every day, Domino.”
Santini tried not to smile. The spy knew he hated being called ‘Domino’, so it was a good sign that the man was starting to engage in their light banter of barbs. It occurred to him why Michael wasn’t afraid of being captured and possibly killed. He probably dreaded waking up every morning.
Michael looked at the report again. “Any chance we can get a copy of the negatives?”
“You think we doctored the photos?” Caitlin asked.
Michael shook his head. “No. If you say something disappeared from radar, then it disappeared. And I’ll have words with anyone who says otherwise. But I need the negatives to prove to the Committee there’s something wrong with the equipment and not the operator.”
“Do you think they’ll believe you?” Caitlin found herself staring at Michael’s good eye. It was such a strange shade of gray-green that it was captivating.
“They can’t argue photos that their own goons developed.” Michael shrugged.
Santini nodded. He wanted to ask Michael how he felt about being caught in the middle and not having any way to win. He also wondered what it was like to be in so much pain that prescription medication didn’t have any effect.
Michael shifted his weight to his right leg as a near unbearable stab of pain shot through his left knee and up to his hip. He clenched his teeth and did his best to ignore the pain, but that only seemed to make it worse. He sat down at the table and kept his left leg straight.
He went over the report again.
Something didn’t make sense, but he couldn’t figure out what.
Caitlin saw it the entire time, but it seemed to appear and disappear from radar at will.
He sat back and winced as his hip argued the action.
Something wasn’t right. He had worked on radar for eight years while in the Navy, and he had never encountered anything like this.
This was just weird.
1530, Sunday
Tall Deer claimed the Konochine as his people, and dressed in the light shirt, leggings, loincloth, and moccasins that were normal for his people. His long black hair was parted down the center and bound into two tight, clean braids that ended just below his shoulders.
Tall Deer’s deceptively soft brown eyes never wavered. His thin-lipped mouth was expressionless; and his strong, angular face betrayed nothing of the viciousness with which he’d taken out several of Kruger’s best dealers.
Kruger looked Tall Deer over. The man before him was tall, handsome, and the shade of bronze that had earned Native Americans the label of ‘red skin’. After hearing what Tall Deer did to the dealers who encroached on what he felt was his territory, Kruger decided that it was better to have someone like this working for him instead of against him.
Tall Deer looked Kruger over. The man didn’t impress him enough to make him want to commit to any kind of deal. And his men weren’t exactly top-drawer either, if they let themselves be killed so easily. Even the white man’s drugs weren’t good enough to keep his clientele from leaving his dealers for the quality high they could get from Tall Deer for the same price.
Kruger didn’t generally deal in cocaine, but that was very quickly becoming the drug of choice among his more high-class clients. Whatever Tall Deer was adding to his own brand of cocaine, it was potent enough to win other dealers’ clients over and keep them from going back. All he had to do was find out what it was that Tall Deer was using, and get his hands on it. With whatever that little additive was that Tall Deer used mixed into his own cocaine and heroin, he could have a better quality product for better-paying clients. And with the money that the drugs brought in, he could beef up his own arsenal and increase his clout as an arms dealer.
“So, Tall Deer.” Kruger sat back and sipped his brandy. “Would you care for a drink?”
Tall Deer’s mouth smiled slightly. He knew about the firewater that white men used to take advantage of the Native People. North Wind could keep his wits about him when he drank the firewater, but many others couldn’t. But then, North Wind wasn’t really one of the First People. He was the son of a White Man and a Konochine woman. Both of whom had cast him away like a worn out garment. “No, thank you. I do not drink. Thank you, though.”
Kruger nodded, mildly surprised by the Indian’s upper-class grammar and lack of any kind of accent. An educated savage. Interesting. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten my manners. Please, have a seat. Would you care for a soft drink instead? Or perhaps coffee?”
“Again, thank you, but no. I am here to do business, Herr Kruger. I understand that you are interested in the drugs that I sell.”
“Oh, very, yes,” Kruger smiled faintly. “I’m curious, Mr. Deer, just what is it that you add to your product to make it so potent, yet cheap?”
“My ‘product’ is not ‘cheap’, sir. It is affordable. It has to be if I am to keep my clients and win new ones. And I never give away trade secrets until I am sure of those whom I do business with.”
“A very wise policy.” Kruger agreed. “Now, aside from your product, you mentioned a certain item that you thought I would be very interested in.”
“I did. In a few days, I will acquire a device that will render the area around it invisible to both satellite and radar.”
Kruger laughed genially. “I like a man with a sense of humor.”
Tall Deer’s eyes hardened. “I am not joking, Herr Kruger. I have already spoken with the man who has the item, and I take delivery of it this coming Tuesday.”
Kruger’s smile faded. “And this device of yours, does it really do all you claim?”
“I have seen it myself. I saw with my own eyes what the device is capable of.” Tall Deer crossed his legs. “But if you are not interested, I am certain I will have no trouble finding someone who is.”
Kruger was silent. He couldn’t believe that the man before him was so bold. Didn’t he realize whom he was dealing with? “Very well, if you get me this device, we will agree on a price.”
Tall Deer smiled. When you see what this device can do, you will gladly pay any price for it. And if you don’t pay, I will find someone who will. And if you try any tricks, I will kill you in a worse way than even you can imagine. “I hate to cut this so short, but I have a flight back to the States that I must be on. Please excuse me.”
Kruger rose when Tall Deer stood up. He considered having the man followed, but decided against it. He needed to win the man’s trust if he was to get whatever it was that the Native American was putting in his heroin and cocaine. “I do not wish to keep you. You have my numbers?”
“Yes, thank you.” Tall Deer touched the left breast pocket of his shirt. “I will be in touch as soon as I have the item.”
“Thank you. I hope you will also consider my offer to join forces with me in the other matter we discussed.”
“I will consider it.” Tall Deer nodded. He turned around and left as noiselessly as he had entered. He went back to his hotel room and studied the report he had received from Russia. When this business was over, he would have all the nice things that North Wind had and more besides.
He hated North Wind more than he had ever hated anyone in his life. It was North Wind who had been accepted into the Navy even though they both applied. It was North Wind who had succeeded in getting that most prized job in the White Man’s world: a government job. North Wind had also met and married a beautiful woman and had a handsome son and fine daughter with her.
North Wind had everything. And as if that wasn’t enough, it was North Wind who had been the undercover agent that had infiltrated the drug ring and led the team of Drug Enforcement Agency operatives to the safe house.
He had been sentenced to ten years for possession and distribution of narcotics while North Wind had been rewarded with selection to an agency that sent people to spy on other countries in the interest of national security.
Tall Deer smiled. North Wind had begun to pay when his wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer and died a few months ago. His sister, Michelle, had been run off the road on the five/fifty-five interchange and died instantly. North Wind had paid again when Dr. Charles Henry Moffett had received an anonymous offer to buy Airwolf.
What no one knew, was that Tall Deer was behind both incidents. He had personally run Michelle off the road and sped off, letting a drunk driver take the fall for the crime. He had contacted Moffett with an offer to buy Airwolf, and had been very pleased with what had happened afterward. North Wind had nearly died, but he paid for his survival every day. Walking was difficult and extremely painful, and there were days that the pain made doing even the most basic of tasks a challenge.
But North Wind still had a good life. He had friends and family that helped him whenever he needed it, and an employer that had no problems transferring him to an office job until he was able to return to the field.
Life just wasn’t fair.
Tall Deer looked at the scar on his hand with disgust.
North Wind sits next to Tall Deer as they face the fire. North Wind hands Tall Deer his bread and smiles at his cousin.
Tall Deer accepts the bread with thanks. His own pouch had been lost when they fell into the river.
He and North Wind eat in silence, occasionally wincing as their hands sting. They’re blood brothers now. They each swore an oath to the other that no matter what happened, they were brothers and that when something good happened to one, it happened to both. Likewise, when something bad happened, it happened to both of them as well.
They joke about sharing their names, and laugh at the results.
“Tall Wind and North Deer,” North Wind suggests.
“Tall North and Deer Wind,” Tall Deer counters.
They try other people’s names and laugh so hard, tears run down their faces.
Tall Deer wondered what had happened to those times. Why had North Wind gone off to become a White Man?
Sure, North Wind had shared many things with him, but there were things that were North Wind’s alone: a home off the reservation and a job that paid a lot of American money. And then there were the things that the agency North Wind worked for had allowed its agents to keep when they went on a raid.
The anti-drug agents could keep whatever spoils they took in the raid with the exception of drugs, money, weapons, and ammunition. North Wind had taken the title and deed to a one-hundred-acre ranch in Wyoming and all it contained. He had also taken the deed to a large plot of land below the Red Rock Mountains in Sedona, Arizona; a new Suzuki Katana motorcycle; a new Honda Valkyrie; and the ownership of stocks in Microsoft, Macintosh, Sony, and IBM.
Tall Deer had spent that time in jail. And now that he was out, he was going to avenge himself. North Wind was going to suffer far more than physical pain when he was done. North Wind’s life was going to be in shambles by the time he was finished.
He picked up a phone and dialed a number.
Colonel Gregor Svorsky answered on the first ring. “Yes, Comrade?”
“Is the item ready, Mr. Svorsky?”
“I will get it from Sergei tonight. It will only last for four hours at a time, but it works flawlessly. You will not be disappointed, Comrade Tall Deer.”
“Good. Get it ready for shipment. I will pick it up Tuesday as we agreed.” Tall Deer hung up, satisfied that everything was going just as he had planned. Now all he had to do was get even with North Wind. He had to make North Wind hurt the way he had been hurt.
He looked at the pictures he had asked for. He had hired one of his clients to follow and photograph North Wind and anyone he associated with.
One picture in particular looked promising.
A tall, slender young man was standing near a helicopter and talking to North Wind. An attractive woman was standing nearby.
The woman was just someone who worked for North Wind. She was a secretary of some kind, and therefore no one of any consequence. He knew he could easily find the woman called Hounsou.
Marella Hounsou.
Tall Deer smiled at the thought of having Housou. She was tall, slim, and light brown. She was everything a man could want in a woman, and everything Tall Deer knew he would make his. Once he killed North Wind, he would take Hounsou as his own. He had missed his chance before.
He looked down at the picture. The red head in the background was unimportant.
The man, however, held promise. One of his clients worked with the man, and had told him that he had seen a flight suit with a patch bearing a winged wolf on the sleeve. The young man was Stringfellow Hawke.
Further probing revealed that the man was of German descent, and that his name was in no way connected to the First People. That was a good thing. It meant that the pilot was a White Man, and therefore expendable. He was a tool to be used and discarded once he had outlived his usefulness.
The pilot would take him to Russia in Airwolf then fly him to Sao Paulo, Brazil. After that, he would die. He was no longer useful once Helmut Kruger had Airwolf and the device that would make his hideout invisible to the satellites and radar that the White Man used to find people. And once Helmut Kruger paid for the items, he would return to the reservation, take White Feather as his wife, kill that annoying brat Running Bird, and begin his life anew as a wealthy man.
1130, Monday
“Are any missing?”
“Nope.”
Michael looked at the pictures for a minute then handed them to Marella. “What do you think?”
“Are they out of sequence?” Marella looked the pictures over. She felt kind of weird having Michael working on her assignment, but she was glad of the help.
“Can’t be,” Michael shook his head slightly. “In the lower left corner is the time and date they were taken.”
“Maybe the feed was interrupted.”
“If it was, why is the dish present in one-fourteen to one-thirty-four, then gone until two-fourteen, then visible again until two-thirty?” Caitlin sipped her coffee.
Michael thought about that one for a second. “The feed was constant, the pictures are sequential… This is a good one.”
“You’re telling me,” Marella agreed. “May I have a copy of the negatives? I’d like to run them by some of our guys in the photo lab.”
“You think we fudged them,” Santini frowned.
“No, I’m just curious about this. It doesn’t make sense that something this large could just vanish and reappear at will. I’m guessing that maybe the camera was tampered with.”
Caitlin’s eyebrows knitted. “How could we do that? I’m no shutter bug, and Dom here can’t even fix a toaster.”
“We’re not saying any of you did.” Michael shifted his weight to his right leg. “Maybe the camera was defective when it left the factory. You said yourself that it acted up from time to time and that you lost images.”
Santini nodded.
Michael shrugged. “Maybe it was defective. Maybe it was installed wrong. Hell, with all the modifications you and Hawke have done, it’s entirely possible that it you damaged it without realizing it. God knows I’ve fried enough TARPS equipment that way.”
Caitlin looked at the pictures. “I don’t get it. How can the camera break?”
“Things get old. They wear out. Hell, when FLIR first came out, God, I swear, the Navy was seriously considering taking it off the planes and scrapping it.”
“That bad?” Marella’s eyebrows went up.
“That bad. If we got twenty in a day, it was a slow day. Those things had a service life of about one flight before we had to send them in for repairs. And most of them went back to the depot because they were too expensive to repair on station. It was cheaper to get rid of them than repair them. And TARPS… Ask any PH or IS, those things have no business on a Tomcat. I’m not even sure they should be used at all.”
“What are TARPS?”
“Tactical Air Recognizance Pod System. They take pictures of the ground as it goes by under the aircraft. Those things need to go on Hornets, or go away. I don’t care which.”
“What does Airwolf have?” Santini asked.
“Both. But when it was built, FLIR was just coming on line and TARPS were still experimental. I wouldn’t be surprised if the problem was in the system.”
“Moffett’s Ghost?” Marella offered.
“Doubt it. TARPS and FLIR operate independently of the main system. Their feed goes from the sensor or camera straight to the monitor. If there’s any program error, it would be in the rotor system. And that would be a torque differential error, which would keep the mount from rotating normally. That wouldn’t affect what they pickup and transmit to the film or monitor.”
Caitlin looked at Marella and Michael. She had absolutely no clue what they were talking about. “Um, excuse me? I hate to ask a dumb question, but what’s FLIR? And what’s a torque differential error?”
Michael sat back in his chair. “FLIR is Forward Looking Infra Red.”
Caitlin gave him a blank look.
“Do you know what night-vision goggles are?”
“Yeah.”
“FLIR is night-vision goggles for an aircraft.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“And a torque differential error… ask me some other time.”
“Okay.”
“And you know that how?” Santini asked.
Michael smiled slightly. “Before I joined the FIRM I was an I-level AT in the Navy.”
“Intermediate-level Aviation Electronics Technician. I worked on the things that make the stuff you use in your choppers work. If something broke, it came to my shop, and it got fixed. I worked on a lot of FLIR and TARPS equipment.”
“Wow.”
Michael looked at the photos again. “Since we can rule out the servos and the TARPS, the only thing I can think of is that the camera is faulty. That, or the Russians have one-upped our Prowlers.”
“Do you think they could have?” Marella leaned forward.
“Possibly. It’s not unheard of for our technology to be pirated, copied, improved on, modified, and patented.” Michael sipped his tea. “Possible… but not very likely.”
“Great,” Santini shook his head. “So what do we do now?”
“We go with her idea. We run the negatives by the photo lab and see what they come up with. If it’s a camera problem, no big deal. We get you a new camera and off you go. If it’s not, we have a problem.”
“And you want us to bring the bird in for repairs?” Santini could see where this was going.
“Why?” Michael almost smiled. “Dom, I know where you keep Airwolf. I’ve known since you brought it back from Libya.”
Santini stared at Michael in utter shock. “Wh-how- when did- how do you know where we keep it?”
“You hide it in the Tree Stump in the Valley of the gods.” Michael’s tone gave the impression that it was common knowledge that anyone could get their hands on. “You didn’t seriously think you could hide something like that in my back yard and I wouldn’t know about it, did you?”
Santini was speechless.
Michael watched Santini for a moment. “Look, I didn’t follow you and I sure as hell didn’t put any kind of tracking device in it, though God knows I had plenty of time and opportunity, to say nothing of know-how.”
“Then how did you find it?” Caitlin asked.
“Like I said, you can’t hide something in my back yard and not expect me to see it. Though I have to admit, putting it there was a damned good idea. Hell, if I wasn’t investigating a murder, I would never have known to look there. I mean, hell, I see the Tree Stump so often that I don’t even notice it anymore. What the hell makes you think I’d even suspect it? And since most people going by it on the interstate don’t see anything more than a weird-looking mesa, it’s the perfect hiding spot.”
“Then how did you know it was in there?” Caitlin asked.
“It’s five minutes away from the Konochine burial grounds,” Michael shrugged. "And like I said, I was sent to track down a drug that turned up in an autopsy. And since that’s the only area it grows in, I had to check it out and see if that was in fact what had been mixed into the smack that Kino Jabute’s food had been laced with.”
“Smack?” Marella’s eyebrows drew together.
“You don’t know what smack is?” Caitlin asked surprised.
“I grew up picking coca leaves in Haiti. Aside from cocaine, I have no experience and even less knowledge of designer drugs.”
“Smack isn’t a designer drug,” Michael replied. “It’s the street name for heroin. And heroin is an opium derivative that’s usually smuggled in from Asia, although there’s a growing number of poppy farms in parts of California, Florida, and Yucatan peninsula. What I was looking for, however, only grows only in a small area near the Konochine burial grounds, which are near the foot of the Tree Stump where you hide Airwolf.” He wasn’t sure how much he could tell them, so he told them a reasonable cover story. Marella might believe the truth, but the others wouldn’t. Hell, he didn’t even believe how he’d found Airwolf. “My horse had wandered off, so I went to find it. As it happened, Wildfire happened to walk right into the cave that you park Airwolf in.”
Santini and Caitlin stared.
“So you’re going to take it back.” Caitlin’s disappointment was thinly concealed.
“No I’m not.”
“Why?” Santini asked, shocked.
“Lots of reasons.” Michael set his mug on his desk. “But all you need to know is that I’m not taking it back.”
“Why?” Santini insisted.
Michael looked at the far wall absently. “I have my reasons.”
“And they are?”
“None of your business.”
Santini stood up.
“Sit down.”
Something in Michael’s tone prompted the Italian to do as he was told.
Michael looked at his desk. “If you want one reason, fine. I gave my word.”
“For all that means,” Caitlin muttered.
“It means a lot,” Santini replied.
“Thanks,” Michael answered. “Thing is, Cait, I’m one of those really weird people who just- I don’t know. For some reason, I have this really weird habit of keeping my end of a deal. When I say I’m going to do something, I do. When I say I won’t, I don’t.”
Caitlin remained silent.
“Still. Get us a copy of the negatives so we can get this sorted out, okay?”
“Sure.” Santini nodded.
Marella looked at the photos for a minute. “I have two questions. First, does Hawke know about this? And second, where is he?”
Santini shook his head. “If I knew, I’d tell you.”
If Michael was angry, he didn’t show it. He simply nodded slowly and sat back in the chair. “When did you see him last?”
“A coupla days ago,” Caitlin answered. “Before you guys came up. He said he had some stuff to take care of.”
Michael was silent.
“You’re not gonna hunt him down, are you?” Caitlin knew what Michael was capable of and dreaded having that done to Hawke.
“If Airwolf disappears, yes.” Michael pushed his glassed up a bit. He was still getting used to the glass eye, but at least he could wear normal glasses again. “And if I have to, I will take him out.”
Santini fell silent. He knew Michael would do whatever was necessary to protect Airwolf, but the calmness with which the spy had said so unsettled him to say the least.
Marella decided to break the silence. “Where are the negatives? The sooner I get them in, the sooner we get them back.”
Caitlin took a packet out of her purse and handed it to Marella. “These’re the negatives. They’re the originals, so…”
Michael dialed a number. “I know someone who can burn us a copy in case the photo lab ‘loses’ these.”
“They’ll do that?” Santini asked.
“We’ve had a lot of evidence getting- ‘misplaced’- lately.” Marella answered.
“That, and quite a bit of information has somehow managed to- what’s the word? Spread?” Michael stood up and walked away from the group. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Talking Stick, please. Thanks. Hey, Stick, I need your help. Can you do something for me?”
“I will do nothing for you,” Mitchell Talking Stick answered coldly.
“Stick, please. I need your help. It’s important and you’re the only one who can do it.”
“Then it will not get done, llan’aya.”
“What are you so steamed about?”
“You know why, ci’ola.”
Michael was silent for a minute. “Look, I just need you to copy some negatives for me, okay?”
“Why don’t you have those pinda liqoyees you work with do it?”
“I don’t trust pinda liqoyees any more than you do, Stick.”
“You should, you’re one of them.”
Michael considered reminding Talking Stick that he was half Konochine. His father had had an affair with one of the rodeo workers when they came into town for the winter, and had left her newborn son, North Wind, in the care of his father. At least that was his father’s version of what happened.
“Was,” Michael replied flatly. “I got adopted, remember? Will you help me or not?”
“You’re not going to ask Red Bird?” Talking Stick’s voice dripped with resentment and sarcasm.
“I don’t go over anyone’s head, Stick. And I sure as hell won’t go over yours.”
“That’s not what Tall Deer said.”
“Tall Deer has a criminal record longer than my llan’aya.”
“He does?” Talking Stick’s surprise was genuine. “He has a criminal history among the pinda liqoyee as well? I knew he was a horse thief, but I didn’t know what else he’s done.”
“Name it, he’s done it. He’s wanted for drug trafficking in seven states. And some of that cu’allo he sold killed my friend’s daughter.”
“Are you serious?”
“It was cut with ci’apii. I had some of the guys I work with do the drug test, and that’s what they came up with: ci’apii-laced heroin. And we both know that ci’apii is found in only one place under the sky.”
“The- He didn’t. He wouldn’t!”
“He did.” Michael took his lighter out of his pocket and began flipping it end over end over his knuckles. “You know as well as I do that that particular plant only grows on the Sacred Grounds. And you also know that the Konochine are the only ones who know what that plant is and how to use it.”
“He sold poison?”
“Knowingly and willingly. And knowing Tall Deer, possibly even happily. He was selling poison to make money. Now, since we both know who and what he is, do you still believe him when he said I went behind you to get permission to go with you up to the Sacred Grounds?”
“No.” Talking Stick was silent for a long time. When he spoke, it was in Konochine. “He spoke lies with two tongues. I am sorry, North Wind. I listened to his lies and thought them true. I wish to make peace between us.”
“You don’t need to, Stick,” Michael smiled slightly. His answer was in Konochine as well. “There was never anger in my heart when you spoke to me about going to the Sacred Grounds.”
“I accused you of something you never did and would never dream of doing.”
“Talking Stick, you have been my brother and guide all my life. You have never led me into trouble or hung me out to dry. Even Red Bird, the wisest of the elders, was fooled by the false face that Tall Deer wore. If Red Bird can be fooled, how can I blame you for being deceived as well?”
“You speak with the wisdom of the elders, Baby Brother,” Talking Stick said in English.
“I will. Bring them over and I will copy them for you.”
“Thanks. And since you’re in town, come over for dinner.”
Wednesday
On the wall was a movie poster advertising Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. He longed to see the movie, but he knew that it would never be aired in Russia any more than the Hammer and Sickle would fly over Washington, D.C.
He looked at the poster a moment longer then went back to his work. On the radio, government-approved music was playing softly. He wanted to hear American music, but it wasn’t allowed.
He had liked American music from the moment he first heard a band called Van Halen on a pirated radio signal. He had only heard part of the song, and had no idea why the man was telling the listeners to jump, but the song was up beat and catchy. So much better than the music heard throughout Russia. The music in Russia was almost as depressing as the news broadcasts.
He knew it was only Wednesday, but he longed for Saturday morning when he could sneak into the lounge and rig the satellite dish to receive American television channels. For two hours every Saturday, he got to see a little bit of America. Sure, Falcon Crest and Dallas weren’t the best examples of America, and okay, they were prime examples of capitalist corruption for the Party to use, but hey, they were made in Hollywood where a woman could jump twenty feet in the air without running first, so how real could it be? In Hollywood, people could also get in a car and go back in time, a group of men could save a city from the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and a boy who beat a video game could go into space and save an entire galaxy from a villain named Xur.
He wondered what Hollywood was like. Did celebrities really walk the streets like everyone else? Did someone really put the word ‘Hollywood’ on a hill?
Sergei checked his work before going on. He didn’t want to make any mistakes. If he did, he’d be killed. He swiped at a lock of light brown hair and continued typing. He was making good progress so far. The other day, he’d made the base disappear for nearly thirty minutes. What he needed to do now was make it permanent.
Colonel Svorsky had made it clear that the base was to be able to disappear on command and not be seen for a long time. And since it had been done for half an hour, what was to stop the computer genius from making it happen for twenty-four hours? A week? A month? A year?
Sergei typed away at the program and hummed a song he’d heard on a pirated television signal. It was only part of a song, but it was a nice song. He looked out the window a moment later and watched a rainbow form as the clouds parted.
Why are there so many…
…songs about rainbows…
…and what’s on the other side?
He wondered who wrote the song and if he ever wondered why people wrote about rainbows. Whoever he was, he was American and would probably never sing that song in Russia. The Party would never allow it. It was an international scene when the American bands called Bon Jovi, Skid Row, Guns n Roses, a few others came to Russia to perform in Gorky Park just outside the Kremlin. He wasn’t allowed to attend because he had work to do. But he had heard that it was just like what the Americans called ‘one bitchin block party’, whatever that was.
He looked back at the wall near his computer. A poster advertising the American movie The Gambler, starring a man called Kenny Rogers added a splash of color to an otherwise dreary room. He liked Kenny Rogers. He had heard one of the man’s songs when he was watching some pirated television. He liked the song about the men on the train and how one gave the other advice on how to play cards. And after Kenny Rogers had finished singing, a tall, buxom blonde named Dolly Parton sang a song about working nine-to-five.
He wondered if Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers lived in Hollywood. Did Siegfried and Roy live in Hollywood too? And what about Penn and Teller? Where did David Copperfield live? What was it like to live in a town with so many celebrities?
“Well, Major?” Svorsky’s rough voice jolted him out of his thoughts. “How is the program coming?”
“I have to work some bugs out, but it will be ready to test by tonight at the soonest.”
Svorsky laughed; a sound not unlike a walrus barking.
Sergei watched the heavy Russian for a moment before deciding that the men were right. This man probably was Bluto’s twin brother.
“You work too hard, Voruskaya.” Svorsky slapped a big, beefy hand against the back of Sergei’s small shoulder. “You should learn to play a little.”
“Please forgive me, Comrade, but the people of Russia do not pay me to play and have fun. They pay me to make weapon systems that keep them safe from the capitalist swine. And I will work hard to be worthy of their money.” The words left a bad taste in Sergei’s mouth, but he knew that that was what Svorsky needed to hear to keep the man from suspecting him.
Svorsky clapped Sergei on the back again and watched him work.
Sergei did his best to ignore Svorsky’s bad breath and nearness while he worked.
“How long will it work for this time?” Svorsky’s vodka-laced breath made Sergei grimace.
“About three hours if all goes well. I’m just proofing it for errors now.” Sergei deleted a few characters and retyped new ones in their place.
Svorsky nodded. Three hours was impressive. Almost as impressive as the amount of money that would be sent into a Swiss bank account for him when the program was delivered to the buyer. “Let me know when it’s ready for trial.”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel.” Sergei agreed without looking up. He listened as Svorsky’s footsteps left the room and the door closed. He continued working for a few minutes before checking to see that he was indeed alone. He knew that Svorsky would act like he’d left when he had really stayed in a shadowy corner in the hopes of catching his subordinates doing something he could report them for.
He turned his upper body without moving his legs as if he were just stretching his back. What he was really doing, though, was searching the room for Gregor Svorsky. He turned to his right first, then to his left. He stood up and bent over to touch his toes to stretch his upper legs and looked under his bed while doing so.
He had set his room up in such a way that the dark areas of the room were empty, thereby making it difficult to hide in them. His bed was too low for Svorsky to hide under it, but that didn’t mean anything. There were no chairs in the room other than the one at his terminal, and only a footlocker for his clothes that he kept locked at all times. The bed was positioned in such a way that the sunlight could shine underneath it and he could see anything under his bed as soon as he opened the door.
His desk was a desk in title only, and it too was set up so that he could see under the table from any angle of the room. His footlocker was in a corner and set up so that it could be opened, but no one could hide behind it.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone’s not out to get you, Sergei sighed.
Satisfied that there wasn’t anyone or anything in his room, he went back to work. He continued to type for a while, lost in thought until his watch alarm went off. It was time for tea.
He took a tea bag out of his personal stash in the false bottom of his footlocker and replaced everything. Once he was certain the lock was secure, he took his mug out from under his pillow and went to the cafeteria to get hot water.
He had been taking such precautions ever since Victor Doyeski had woken up in the toilet naked and violated, but having no memory of what had happened after he’d had tea. Sergei had a feeling that Victor’s tea had been drugged, but by whom and why, he wasn’t sure. He suspected Svorsky of doing it, but he had no proof and Svorsky had too many witnesses to back his alibi and place him on the far side of the cafeteria when Victor had poured the water and sat down. And more to prove that he was in the lounge when Victor was violated in the toilet in the basement on the far side of the building. And since they had all poured water from the same teapot, the water couldn’t have been tampered with if Doyeski was the only one who got drugged.
Sergei, however, decided that he wasn’t going to be the next victim. When he was in town, he’d secretly bought a box of tea bags. And whenever he went to the cafeteria for breakfast, he would always get a glass of juice in a mug and take that mug back to his room to drink while he worked. No one complained because he always brought the mug back before noon. But what no one knew was that he washed that day’s mug out and stashed it in his room and brought the previous day’s mug to the cafeteria.
Thus far, there had been two more incidents of drugging and violation, but Sergei hadn’t been able to figure who was doing it and how. The why was pretty obvious. Sixty men in an isolated part of Russia and the nearest woman lived nearly one hundred miles away. Add to that the fact that pornography wasn’t allowed and they were there for three years at a time, and you had a group of seriously dangerous men.
Sergei knew just how vulnerable he was, and took every measure he could to avoid being a victim. He was barely five-feet-two-inches tall, boyish looking, and blond. Some people would say that he stepped right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. But beneath his uniform, his small body was as lean and muscular as any athlete’s body. He was strong for his size and fast, but the chances of him fighting off someone like Svorsky were slim at best.
He looked up at the poster of The Gambler and wondered what it was like to be a cowboy in America’s Old West. He wondered what it must’ve been like to be at the O K Corral when Doc Holliday and the Earps shot it out with Ike Clanton and the Cowboys. He looked at the poster for a minute then left the room, careful to lock the door behind himself. He knew that the chances of anyone entering were slim, but still. If the people here couldn’t respect the privacy of another person’s body, what guarantee was there that they’d respect the privacy of a room?
He stood in line behind Tobutin to get a cup and stopped when he noticed a packet in the older Russian’s palm. As soon as he saw that, he began to make the connection. Everyone who had gotten drugged had stood in line behind Tobutin and he had handed them a packet of what everyone assumed was sugar since he was the only one who had any.
Sergei stepped out of the line and began to walk over to Svorsky. He didn’t like the older man, but he knew that Svorsky had no patience for people who were doing what Tobutin was doing.
“Sergei,” Svorsky grinned, showing several bad teeth. “You left the lab. Welcome.”
“Thanks.” Sergei watched Tobutin. “Comrade Colonel, I noticed something.”
“And that is?”
Sergei took a deep breath and nodded toward Tobutin slightly. “Everyone who has been drugged and violated has stood in line behind Tobutin. On top of that, only the people who get drugged receive a packet of what we all think is sugar from him.”
Svorsky’s eyes widened as he made the connection as well. “I will question him and have that ‘sugar’ analyzed. Thank you, Comrade. You truly are loyal to the people of Russia. You are willing to protect them from the subversives in their own society as well as the capitalist dogs in America.”
Sergei watched Svorsky get up and walk over to Tobutin just as the man handed Mikhail Dostovich a packet of sugar.
Svorsky confiscated the packet and had two men take Tobutin into custody.
Sergei smiled slightly and went to get a glass of milk instead. He went back to his lab and went back to work on the program that he hoped to give to the Americans in return for them allowing him to live in their country. He stared at the screen for a minute before turning it on. He had plans for when he went to America.
First, he would see the Hollywood sign. Then he would go to Six Flags, Magic Mountain. After that, he would see the ocean and learn to surf. He would learn to surf and become a professional computer programmer and make lots of money and save it until he had enough to find his father. Once he found his father, he would find a pretty wife and live in Wyoming on a big ranch with lots of horses and he would work on that ranch all day and go horseback riding every day. And during the winters, he would go to Baja California and spend the winter surfing.
If it worked for them, it would work for him, he decided.
He resumed his programming, content that he was going to get the hell out of Russia soon.
After a while, he got up to answer the call of Nature and stopped when he heard Svorsky talking to someone on the phone.
“Yes, yes, Mr. Deer. I will have the program on the date I promised. It’s getting tested tonight, so if it works, you can have it as soon as you like,” Svorsky’s English was heavily accented, but not so bad the man on the other end of the phone couldn’t understand him.
Sergei could also understand, though he never let anyone know that he could speak, read, and write better American English than most Russians and with only the faintest of accents.
“Yes, Mr. Deer.” Svorsky smiled. “Yes, the major is testing it tonight. He is trusting, so if I tell him that the program is safer in my quarters, he’ll hand it over without a problem and I can give it to you… Oh, that’s very kind of you, Mr.Deer. Very kind indeed. I will call you when I have the program.”
Sergei slipped back into his room and stared at his computer. He swallowed a knot in his throat as his mind raced to come up with a plan to keep Svorsky from getting his hands on the data.
He took a disk out of the drawer and saved all of his work on it. He inserted another disk when that one was full and another when the second was full. Once all the data was on disk, he stashed the disks in his shirt and turned off the monitor. He walked out of his room as casually as if he had never heard a thing and went to the toilet at the end of the hall.
He gave Svorsky a quizzical look as he walked by, but showed no indication that he had any idea what was going on.
Once in the privacy of the toilet, Sergei took the jacketed disks out from under his shirt and stashed them in a small space behind a loose brick in the wall behind one of the toilets in the stall nearest the window at the far end of the room. He carefully replaced the brick and went over to a urinal to conduct his business.
Svorsky walked in a moment later and went over to one of the sinks. He took a small vial out of his pocket as Sergei walked over to the other sink and washed his hands. “That was good work noticing the packet that Tobutin was passing around. It was indeed a drug.”
Sergei shrugged. “It was nothing. I was merely doing my duty.”
“Duty?”
“Yes. Is it not the duty of all good Russians to protect their comrades from subversives?” Sergei dried his hands and walked out. He didn’t know what was in the vial that Svorsky had, and he didn’t want to know. In his opinion, that vial held nothing but trouble. And trouble was something he had to avoid at all costs if he was ever to get out of Russia.
As soon as he was back in his shop, Sergei began to work on a different program. This program was a virus that would be activated when or if he didn’t enter a deactivation code. The virus would completely erase the program and the hard drive of the computer it was on. And the best part was that it would be completely untraceable. It was what he called a ‘white rabbit’. White rabbits were programs that hid within the coding of the host program and once activated the white rabbit would release the virus before it erased itself.
Sergei was busily typing away at his computer when Dostovitch walked in. “Sergei.”
Sergei looked up and pushed his glasses up. “Yes, Comrade?”
“Svorsky was calling America. I saw it on the satellite signal. Who was he talking to?”
Sergei looked up at the political officer. Vassili Dostovitch had helped him get this very good, very choice, and highly sought-after position. Vassili was also the only one on the base that knew he spoke English. He let Sergei watch American television, but didn’t let on to anyone that he knew that Sergei was the one who was altering the satellite’s receiver to pick up American broadcast signals. If it wasn’t for Vassili Dostovitch, Sergei knew that he’d still be back in the Kremlin working an administrative job at the help desk until he was eighteen and old enough to be sent off on a ship.
He owed all he had to Dostovitch, but strangely enough, he didn’t feel any particular loyalty. On the other hand, it was Dostovitch who needed to be convinced that he was loyal in order to escape suspicion when he defected and made it look like an ‘accident’ had happened in his shop. He wondered if he should tell the political officer what Svorsky had done. If he did, Svorsky would be in big trouble and his own carefully laid plans would flop.
He pushed his glasses up. Several stories came to mind, but he had a feeling that Dostovitch wouldn’t believe any of them. He opted for the truth, though not all of it. He may yet need Svorsky. “Comrade Svorsky was talking to a man called ‘Deer’. He was talking about something… I didn’t hear all of it. I was walking by so he wouldn’t suspect me. But I did hear him say something about how I’m very trusting and that if he says that ‘it’ will be safe in his room, then I’ll give it to him and he can give to it to Deer.”
“What is this thing he was talking about?”
Sergei shrugged. “I have no idea, Comrade. As I said, I was just walking by. I didn’t hear all of the conversation. But the name Deer is familiar.”
“You know who this ‘Deer’ is? Is he an agent? A spy?”
“I don’t know. I just know that he makes farming equipment and that his first name is John.”
“Do you think it might be a secret contract to buy farming equipment?”
Sergei’s eyebrows went up. He was honestly surprised that Dostovitch would believe him. “Would he do that? Would he buy farming equipment and then sell it to the people here to keep them from getting the best equipment from the Farmers’ Supply?”
Dostovitch looked genuinely shocked. He couldn’t believe that any self-respecting member of the People’s Army would resort to profiteering. And if Svorsky was a profiteer, did he have connections with the elusive Russian Mafia, or was he just a capitalist sympathizer? Or maybe he was a capitalist mole. The implications of each swirled through Dostovitch’s mind. He knew he had to act quickly if he was to prevent Svorsky from spreading his malice. “I will inform Moscow at once.”
“I have a better idea,” Sergei replied as he closed the door to his room. “Since we don’t know for certain what Svorsky’s intentions are, we should watch him. We should monitor him very carefully, but not let him know that he is suspected. He may be innocent. But then again, he may have accomplices. And if we catch him, he’s sure to give up his fellow conspirators.”
“Brilliant! You are Brilliant, Sergei. Moscow was foolish to let you go so far away. They could use men like you in the Party, the KGB, even.”
Sergei looked down at his feet, honestly embarrassed by the compliments and partly ashamed of himself for deliberately misleading someone. “No, please. I’m- I’m just doing my duty. I’m only trying to protect Mother Russia.”
“And you do well, Comrade. I will see you get fresh milk on Fridays instead of that powdered trash,” Dostovitch clapped Sergei on the shoulder.
“No thank you, Comarade. That wouldn’t be fair. If the others don’t get fresh milk, why should I? Who am I to live better than others?”
“Well spoken, my young comrade. Well spoken, indeed. You will make a fine political officer one day.”
Sergei smiled slightly. He didn’t want to be a political officer. He wanted to be an American. He wanted to live in America and wear a cowboy hat and marry Molly Ringwald.
“Get back to your work. I will not delay you any further.” Dostovitch walked out of the room as swiftly as he had entered. He had a lot to do if he was to catch that weasel Svorsky red handed.
1930, Thursday
Michael felt every muscle in his body tense slightly as he entered the control room. The déjà vu was unnerving to say the least, and the fact that the building had been completely restored didn’t help.
The room looked exactly the same as Red Star did that fateful summer afternoon when Dr. Charles Henry Moffett had stolen Airwolf and blown the side of the Red Star building out of existence.
He didn’t show what he was feeling, but the anxiety was slowly gaining hold of him and he knew it wouldn’t be long before it drove him out of the room entirely.
Marella turned around when she saw his reflection in the window. He looked a hell of a lot calmer than she felt. She hated this assignment, and would gladly go anywhere, even what people here referred to as ‘Bored Sick’, Saudi Arabia.
Boroud Siddiq was the kind of outpost that could make even the most desperate, dehydrated, and exhausted lost French Legionnaire run screaming into the desert. She could only wonder how Michael had survived being assigned to a base that was, if the rumors were true, little more than a camel paddock, a communications bunker, and a few tents. She guessed that it was out of sheer boredom that he’d learned to read, write, and speak Arabic as well as anyone in the Middle East.
Michael crossed the room with his usual silence.
No one in the room heard him enter, and no one knew he was there until he spoke. And if she hadn’t seen his reflection in the window, Marella knew that she wouldn’t have known he was there either. The man moved with all the noise of a shadow.
“How you holding up?” Michael looked out the window.
“I’m a wreck, but I think I’ll live. You?”
“Not sure.” Michael continued to watch the overcast sky as it darkened ominously. The distant rumble of thunder sent a chill up his spine. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep his calm, cool, unflappable façade. He knew that he wouldn’t lose his cool, but he definitely wouldn’t be able to focus as well as he normally could. “What did you find out from the photo lab?”
"They're running the film now.” Marella could almost feel Michael’s tension. She was feeling the same way. “How did they get you in here?”
“I came in on my own.” Michael sipped his tea. He glanced at the younger agent. She looked wiped out. “I can handle things here if you want to take a break.”
Marella nodded. “Thanks. Any chance I can bum a cigarette?”
Michael took a pack of Cloves out of his pocket. “They’re filters.”
“As long as they have nicotine, I couldn’t care less. Thanks.”
“Need a lighter?”
“Got one.” Marella watched the spy for a moment. “Yours, actually.”
Michael was young for his job, but he was the best one for it. He also looked a few years older than he really was. She figured it was the demands of his job and the result of years of hard living. It was amazing that he was still alive. And unlike several of his counterparts and even a few of his peers, he hadn’t resorted to drinking or drug use to get by.
He pushed a hand through his shaggy, light, brownish-blond hair. As always, his hair had a mind of its own. And today, it decided that it was going to part itself down the middle regardless of what was done to it.
He was uneasy in that room, but not as much as he was in some rooms. Something he said to her in Red Star a few weeks ago came back to her as she watched him watch the approaching storm. ‘I refuse to be afraid of a room.’
Michael wasn’t afraid of this room, but she knew that there was one room that absolutely terrified him. She had no idea why until she had taken a look around it.
Even with the lights on and the sound off, the Room was still eerie and distinctly disturbing. There was just something wrong about the Room that made her feel uneasy.
The Room was completely red, the walls weren’t entirely straight, and they didn’t meet the ceiling and floor at any normal, sane angel. But despite the fact that the walls threw off her depth perception, she couldn’t see what was so bad about the place… until she happened to look up to see where a drop of water had come from.
Long shards of clear red glass hung down from the ceiling. Surrounding the glass shards were mirrors that created the look of water. Near the mirrors were ducts that let water in across the mirrors and down onto the shards to drip on the floor below.
But even that wasn’t the worst part.
Directly above her was the part that was responsible for Michael’s nightmares and uneasiness in interrogation rooms.
Bolted to the ceiling, were a table, a couple of chairs, a floor lamp, and a few other everyday objects that would normally be found in a room. There was even a door on the other side of the room, but it, too, was on the ceiling.
The whole room looked as though it had been turned upside down.
"What’s with the mirrors?” Marella poured a cup of coffee as Ellen Beeks walked in.
Beeks replied without hesitation. She and Marella always seemed to be able to pick up a conversation right where they’d left off regardless of how long it had been since they’d last spoken. “Water drips down from that. When the lights are on, it looks like there’s a puddle of blood on the floor and that it’s dripping up onto you while you’re on the ceiling.”
Marella looked at her friend. “Are you serious?”
“This room was designed by psychologists to induce disorientation and panic in the subject to make them more pliable to questioning.”
“I know. I was one of them. But damn…”
“After a few minutes in there,” Beeks smiled. “You’ll say, do, or sign anything you’re told.”
“You sure?”
“We broke Michael.”
Marella looked at the older woman in shock.
“Granted, it took us a while, but after a third time through the cycle, we put him in there, and when we took him out…”
“Bad?”
“It took me four hours, a crowbar, and enough sedatives to knock out a football team just to pry him off the ceiling. He wouldn’t speak, so we kept it at yes and no answers, but we got him.”
“Why did you interrogate him?”
“I didn’t.” Beeks sighed. “I was just there to make sure he didn’t get hurt.”
“Who ordered it? He wouldn’t volunteer for something like that.”
“He didn’t.” Beeks sat down with a cup of coffee. “They needed an experienced agent to train the newbies, so they kidnapped him and subjected him to it.”
Marella shook her head slowly. She knew the real reason Michael had been kidnapped and subjected to that horror. “They do that, and then wonder why he’s so dodgy.”
Beeks chuckled. “Stupid, huh? But look at it this way. If he ever gets caught, he can take whatever they can do and he won’t break.”
“Why would he? There’s nothing they can do to him that we haven’t already done. Just between the two of us, I’m thinking that he’s going to pick up and vanish one of these days.”
“Not if he gets killed first.”
“They’d do that?” Marella sat down.
“Yeah. He’s getting about the age where most agents either quit or get transferred to the Pentagon. And since he won’t quit, he’s too young to retire, and too dangerous to transfer, they’ll take him out.”
“How?”
“Trade him, probably. But they’ll wait on that one. Every government in the world would love to get their hands on him, so he’s a very valuable commodity.”
“And if he defects, they’ll kill him.”
“If they’re fast enough, yeah. The trick is catching him before he goes to ground or another government grants him amnesty in return for allegiance.”
Marella nodded. She didn’t think Michael would defect. He wasn’t that type. Sure, he was of Russian descent, but that was only because anyone marrying into the family came from Russia. The exception was his father. But even then, his father was Russian-American, so he was still pure Russian. And while that didn’t sit well with some members of the Committee, Michael was every bit as loyal to America and the flag as any U.S. Marine.
She had to wonder why Michael stayed. As poorly as he was treated and after all that they had done to him, he stayed. Just like a dog stays with an abusive master. Fido just keeps getting meaner and tougher until he’s killed or he turns and kills his master.
Michael had already tried killing Zeus, so the only option was for him to be killed by his master. She knew it would happen eventually, but how, where, and when were all thoughts that chilled her.
She finished her coffee and went outside for a cigarette.
Michael was leaning against a pole watching the rain.
It was clear that he was a million miles away.
Probably thinking again, Marella sighed inwardly as she lit her cigarette. He did that a lot, though what he thought about was as big a mystery as he was. “What’re you thinking about?”
“Stuff.” Michael watched a bolt of lightning strike somewhere.
Marella nodded. She was curious to know what kind of ‘stuff’ and ‘things’ he thought about. Did he think about Jackie? She knew he probably thought about Maria from time to time.
“Of course he likes me,” Maria smiled sweetly.
“Yeah, and why’s that?” She wanted so much to slap the sickeningly sweet smile right off the woman’s attractive face.
“How do you feel about your first?”
“My first what?”
“You know what, honey. Your first man.” Maria went back to watching the traffic in the streets below. “He was so cute. Absolutely clueless, too.” The German woman chuckled softly. “When I took my shirt off, he asked me what I was doing.”
Marella clenched her hands into fists. There were no words to describe how she felt about Maria Von Furster.
“I still can’t believe he was a virgin. I mean, God, how did he do it? I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for him in high school, then in the Navy, then at the academy… Seeing all his friends getting laid all the time and he doesn’t…” Maria shook her head. “Can you believe it? A twenty-nine-year-old virgin?”
Marella knew that if her hands weren’t cuffed behind her back, Von Furster would have been dead before she hit the ground. “He’s not like you, Maria.”
“Really? How so?”
“Unlike you, he’ll never be a notch on someone’s bedpost.”
Michael stared at the clouds. He didn’t wince as the thunder roared loud enough to make most people in the smoking area cringe.
“If you’re thinking about her, she’s not worth it.”
Michael’s quick, sidelong glance told her she’d hit the mark. In the eerie twilight of the thunderstorm, his sea-green eyes were a stark contrast to his light-olive complexion. They were almost captivating. It was easy to see how women could stare into his eyes for hours.
He looked away and shook his head slightly. “I wasn’t really thinking about that, but thanks for the lemon juice. Pass the salt?”
Marella felt that one like a slap.
“Excuse me.” Michael went back inside.
“Good one,” Marella replied quietly. She went inside a few minutes later to find him looking over the pictures that the wiz kids in the photo lab had developed and cleaned up as best they were able.
“Hey, Mikey.” Kevin Chee walked over noiselessly.
"Hey.” Michael glanced up at the Native American.
“Hear from your sister?”
“No, and I don’t really care to. Why, where is she now?”
“Beats me. She checked out of rehab, went to New York, and that was the last time I saw her. How’s the old man and his bimbo?”
“Bimbo.” Michael smiled faintly. “I was thinking ‘gold digger’, but ‘bimbo’ works. Brianna packed out for greener pastures. And my old man…” Michael shook his head. “Let’s just say he’s getting what he deserves.”
“What’d he do?” Chee grinned.
“Let’s get coffee. Something like this doesn’t get discussed in public even though it would be perfect for a daytime talk show. Your pictures are back.” He handed the folder to Marella. “Care to have a look?”
Marella looked them over as she followed them to the coffee room. Michael was technically on leave, so no one questioned him when he left the situation room.
“Did you hear? Scott and Pam got married.”
“Cool.” Michael poured himself a cup of coffee. “I hope she drops her name, though.”
“Why?”
“Would you want to go around as Pam Griest-Butt?”
Chee could barely hold his mug still while he poured the coffee. He looked at the latest edition of The Rumor Mill, a newsletter one of the agent’s husbands made on his home computer. “I’d change my name pronto.” He looked at the newsletter. The back page was where all the good stuff was. It had the announcements and advertisements that people found and submitted because of blatant, often humorous errors or just plain strangeness. “Did you see this week’s special?”
“No, what is it?” Michael sat down with a wince. His leg hurt even more when the weather changed.
“A store in Santa Fe is having a sale on cornered beef.”
“Those poor cows.” Michael shook his head as he picked up a copy. “You know, if someone was paying me several million dollars a year to print ads, I’d make damned sure I didn’t advertise Macaroni and Chess or Beast Foods Mayonnaise.”
Marella smiled as she flipped through the pictures. She still wasn’t sure what she was looking at. One of them was nothing more than a page of various shades of red and blue. “What about the want ads?”
“Someone’s selling a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom hose,” Chee answered lightly.
Michael smiled. “That’s some hose. What’s the P.S.I.?” He sat down at the table across from her after putting the newsletter back. He didn’t really care for gossip, so he only read the Announcements and Advertisements section.
“Going home for the holidays?” Chee asked lightly.
“Not a chance in hell.” Michael handed Chee a card that he’d gotten in the mail. “My old man sent this.”
Chee read the card and started laughing. “At least he’s still got a sense of humor.”
“Yeah,” Michael smiled. “I don’t what was funnier. The ‘Dearest Michael’ or the part about how he wants to ‘make amends’ and ‘be the kind of father he should have been from the start’.”
Marella found herself envying Michael. He at least had a family to resent. Her entire family had been wiped out in a flash flood when she was nine. The ensuing mud slide had nearly claimed her too. And it would have if the people in the Peace Corps that had been assigned to that part of Haiti hadn’t pulled her into their truck in the nick of time. “What about your grandparents?”
“They were the ones who talked my father into signing the papers so I could get adopted. They convinced him that I was just another mouth and a burden on the family, so it was better to get rid of me.”
“What about your mother’s parents?”
Michael smiled slightly. “Grampy died when I was thirteen, and I haven’t really seen Grammy since the funeral.”
“And which grandmother is the one you get along with?”
“My mother’s mother. She was opposed to my father giving me up the way he did, but she likes the family that adopted me, so no complaints.”
Marella wondered what was like to have grandparents that cared.
Chee laughed. “You know, your home life has more drama than any soap.”
"Yeah. I guess that would make us, what, Days of our Immigration?”
“The Bold and the Naturalized,” Chee answered.
“All My Russians.”
Marella shook her head. She missed being in Knight’s Bridge. The conversations like this were one of the few perks to being so far from her few friends. And in a way, Michael had become a sort of big brother to her. He’d always looked out for her while making sure that her career was challenging enough to make her a better agent.
“What’ve we got?” Michael set his coffee on the table.
“Not sure.” Marella looked at the three sets of pictures. She turned the pictures over to look at them from a different angle. “The radar looks just like Santini said, and this one looks like a Technicolor Rorschach.”
Michael picked up a picture. He pushed his glasses up, suddenly aware that he wasn’t wearing any. Now that he was used to the prosthetic eye, he could wear glasses or contacts. And today, he’d opted for contacts since he couldn’t find his glasses. “These’re the regular photos, and the dish is still there the entire time.”
Chee looked at another picture. “Thermal picks up during the time the dish disappeared, and cools when it reappears. And these are the FLIR ones. The dish is there the entire time.”
“It’s there physically,” Michael sat back and stared at the film. “Caitlin saw it the entire time, it’s on the FLIR and video, so we know it’s not the dish itself or the cameras. UV picks up heat, right?”
“Yeah, it’s the primary means of thermal imaging. If the object heats up, it goes red. If it cools off, it gets dark. But check this out.” Chee laid the pictures out. “We know video and FLIR is good. But look at this.” He pointed to the pictures on the table. “The thermal spikes when the scan drops off, and drops when the scan picks up.”
“You think maybe this happened because the satellite was transmitting?” Michael studied the picture. “And what exactly am I looking at, anyway?”
“What you’re looking at is a thermal scan on a satellite dish, and satellite transmissions would distort the scan if they had any effect at all. Transmitting dishes give off an entirely different heat signature. In thermal, the reflector would go to orange, maybe yellow, and the transmitting horn would have a white or light red beam going out from it.”
Michael sipped his coffee. “Do you think the satellite dish was transmitting a signal that could jam Airwolf?”
“Possibly, but that would have to be one hell of a reflection for it to cover an area that large.”
“What do you mean?” Marella asked. She felt completely out of her depth.
“In order blank out a station that large, the jamming signal would have to be bounced off something the size of a hangar bay and picked up by the receiving radar. And even then, there’s no way to make something like that work while guaranteeing that you won’t jam your own dish and blow the system. And the passing aircraft would block part of the reflected signal, causing a kind of echo. When that happens, it’s called a residual shadow or ‘ghost reflection’.”
Marella nodded. She didn’t know much about radar, but she understood the basic principles enough to have some idea of what Chee was saying. “What’s a residual shadow?”
“That’s when two signals are sent from different locations and the incoming, or returning signal on both is blocked. The only incoming or outgoing signals getting through on a wide beam broadcast are the ones that weren’t blocked by the object on their way back, causing a kind of cameo effect on the receiving unit. They sometimes get picked up on aircraft that are flying too close together when the radar signal is sent. The signal is partially blocked by one object, but the remainder of the signal is picked up by the second in a pattern that resembles the blocking object.”
“Kinda like radar in reverse?” Michael offered.
“Something like that, yeah.” Chee looked at the pictures for a moment. “You have a magnifying glass?”
Marella hunted through her purse and handed him the requested item.
“Women keep the weirdest things in their purses,” Chee observed.
“Look who’s talking,” Michael shot back. “Your gym bag looks more like a JAD bag.”
“I have two kids, you never know what you’re going to need. Hell, you’d be amazed at half the crap I kept in Danny’s diaper bag.”
“Everything but diapers?”
“No, I had diapers. And safety pins, a bottle, a staple remover, a pacifier, a rattle, a pair of pliers…”
“Pliers?” Michael’s eyebrows went up.
“Pliers. I had to kid-proof my office one day because I couldn’t find a sitter for Danny.” Chee compared the thermal image that Airwolf had taken with the radar scan. “Right there.”
“Where?”
Chee pointed to a slightly cooler spot on the thermal image. The cooler area was in the faint, yet distinct, shape of a helicopter. “Here.” He looked at the corresponding radar read and found a similar distortion in the exact same place. “And here. You have a pen?”
Marella took a red marker out of her purse. “I don’t see what you’re looking at.”
Chee took the pen and took the cap off. “Have you ever had to look for your keys?”
“Yeah.”
“Ever wonder how they’re right out in the open, waiting to jump up and bite you?”
“Yeah.”
Chee outlined the shape of the distortion on the thermal image. As soon as he did so, Marella stared at it in stunned silence.
“I could be wrong, but that looks like the silhouette of a helicopter to me.”
“It was right there the entire time.” Marella stared at the picture.
Chee nodded. “And this is what I was telling you about. This is a ghost reflection. A distorted radar signal picked up by a secondary receiver. You can see it here on the thermal image because it’s cooler.”
“And if the radar was sending this out, the signal had to have bounced off something and was on its way back to the dish. But at the same time, this signal,” Michael pointed to the radar reading. “Was going out. Whatever this signal is, it’s bouncing off Airwolf and being picked up by the dish. The double image was created when the receiver picked up two nearly identical signals, which meant that a signal was being received from somewhere at almost the same time.”
“How? Radars can’t transmit and receive at the same time,” Marella observed.
“No, but they can switch between transmit and receive modes with incredible speed. But you’re right in that no radar can do so at the pace this one was.” Chee sat down and looked at another picture.
“You think there was a second transmitter?”
“That, or there was another dish or something acting like a dish that was reflecting the signals. But in order for them to be this clear, the dish has to be precisely placed.” Michael sat back and studied the pictures. He was good at radar, but his was beyond his ability.
“How did they do it?”
Michael shook his head. “All I can tell you is what they did. The how is beyond me. They did something, don’t get me wrong, but how they did it… you’re guess is as good as mine.”
“You said once that radars are digital devices.”
“Yeah.”
“If they’re digital,” Marella’s eyebrows drew together slightly. “Doesn’t that mean that they can be programmed?”
“Yeah. They’re controlled by timed switches called flip flops.”
“Can the flip flops be programmed?”
“They have to be.”
“Can the programming be altered?” Chee asked.
“Yeah. That’s how the frequency gets changed.”
“How do they do it?”
“You’re asking me?” Michael almost laughed. “Chee, I can’t even tell you how to turn on a computer. Radar programming is a depot-level thing. I just fix them. I never programmed them.”
Marella nodded and gathered the pictures. She put all but the two marked pictures back in the envelope. “Want me to call Santini?”
“No. Let’s keep as tight a lid on this as possible.” Michael said after a moment. “Is he still here or did he go to back to the cabin?”
“I think he’s still here. I’ll check the landing strips.”
“Thanks.” Michael looked at the two pictures.
Marella watched Michael for a moment. She could almost picture what was going on inside his head. She imagined it was like a computer’s lines of code as they streamed up the screen. He was figuring things out at his usual, eerily fast pace. “I’m thinking this technology would be worth a fortune in the rights hands.”
Michael nodded slightly and sipped his coffee. “Priceless on the black market. How the hell did they do it?”
“Can it be used as a weapon?” Chee asked.
“It doesn’t even have to be used as a weapon,” Michael frowned. “It can be used to disrupt anything. Where was Airwolf when this footage was taken?”
Marella was silent. That was the one piece of information she didn’t have. And since it was her job to have facts on hand when they were needed, she felt a little embarrassed.
Michael looked up.
“I’ll find out.”
“Thanks. I’ll handle this mess. Find Santini and ask him where he was when this satellite incident came up. I’ll take on the who, how, and when of it.”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.” Michael stood up a bit stiffly.
Marella nodded and walked out of the coffee room with the pictures. Michael took the mugs over to the sink and washed them while he worked on the problem of who would be able to develop such a satellite program and how they did it.
The ‘how’ part of it really nagged at him. He had spent eight years repairing radar units and to be faced with a problem like this really irritated him.
2100, Thursday
“So we were jammed?” Caitlin asked.
“Not jammed, overpowered. Your radar picked up what was beneath you. But because of the signal coming from behind you and being reflected off the dish back at you, your radar was fooled into thinking that there was nothing there. However, the radar did pick up this.” Michael pointed to the black and white photo and pointed to the shape outlined in red. “You said you saw a second helicopter?”
Santini nodded.
“There was no second helicopter.” Michael smiled. “What you saw was a ghost reflection. A distorted signal caused by two radars transmitting in close proximity, but only nanoseconds apart.”
“What were they bouncing the signal off of?” Caitlin asked. “I didn’t see any radar dishes other than that one.”
Michael watched Benson gnaw on a chew toy.
He looked at Caitlin just as a clap of thunder roared overhead. “That’s what I can’t figure out, either. If they’re sending out a signal that strong, they have to bounce it off of something in order to receive it. But since that signal is incoming, I have to wonder where the original signal is from.”
Santini and Caitlin looked at the photos while Michael poured soft drinks. “Now what I don’t know is who did it and how.”
“Why would they do it?” Caitlin asked. “I mean, who would want to damage radars?”
“That’s why we call it electronic warfare.” Michael replied. “We take out their radar so they don’t see us coming. And as for why, you can imagine how much people will pay for the ability to take out a rival’s communications or radar systems.”
“Do you think it’s the Russians?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Michael answered. He set the glasses on the table.
“So you think the Russians are doing this?” Santini asked.
“Just out of curiosity, did Hawke say where he was going?” Michael put fresh water in Benson’s water bowl. The Rottweiller zipped over and began slurping the water up.
“Does he ever?” Caitlin bit into an apple.
“True. Still, it would help if I knew where he went. I don’t like the idea of him running loose while he has access to the bird.”
“Ditto. What are we gonna do about that jamming thing? If you don’t know how they’re doing it, how can we disable it?”
“I’ll know tomorrow. I have a friend in the loop in Russia. He said he’d pass on any information he got. And where were you when you started playing hide and seek with the satellite dish?”
“Just south of Siberia in Russia.” Caitlin replied.
“South of Siberia…” Michael sat down at the table. “About how far south?”
"Not too far. It was just south of the mountains.”
“Was there a river?”
“Three of them. They all came together in one place.”
Michael nodded. “Sounds like Tobol. I’ll check that out.”
“Why do you want to know where we were?”
“If I know where you were, I have an idea of where to look. I can narrow down the search to the satellite dishes in that area instead of all the satellite dishes in all of Russia.”
Santini nodded. That made sense.
After a while, Michael looked at Santini. “How’s Tet?”
“As lazy as ever. What’d you do to him? When I was up there, you had him running around like a puppy.”
“I spent time with him. I also gave him dog food instead of raw meat.”
“Dogs are supposed to eat meat.”
“True, but they need more than just the occasional rib eye. I had him on Pedigree while I was up there, and I spent time with him. Still, if this happened in Russia, then there’s a good chance that the KGB are interested in it.”
“Why would they want it?” Caitlin asked.
“The same reason our government would.” Santini sighed.
“If it can be used as a weapon, anyone will want it.” Michael stood up when the phone rang. “Excuse me.”
“Sorry to call you at home, sir, but we’ve just received a message on a satellite signal from Russia.”
“How did they get a message on a satellite signal?”
“I have no idea, sir. The guys in Communication are working on that now. All we got is that a Major Voruskaya wants to make contact with the American government about a new weapon he’s developing for the military.”
Michael began putting facts together. Airwolf was in Russia when a satellite station disappeared and reappeared without warning. Tobol, Russia, was known for its popularity as a proving ground for Soviet weapons as well as a research and development facility for various weapons. The Russian government had sent Major Sergei Voruskaya, one of the world’s most brilliant scientists, to Tobol.
There were too many coincidences, but nothing to connect them to each other in any way. Just because Voruskaya was in Tobol, didn’t mean that he was working on whatever it was that had been used to scramble Airwolf’s radar system. And the fact that it happened over a test site didn’t mean that a weapon had done it. It could very easily have been the effects of a different weapon being detonated or tested in the area.
“Is it me, or are there a lot of coincidences happening all at once?” Marella asked. “I mean, Russia’s top scientist is sent to a known research and development site, something there scrambles Airwolf’s radar system, and yet no one knows anything about it.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Michael replied. “See if you can get hold of Moses and ask him what’s going on. If there’s something in the wind, he’ll know it.”
“Yes, sir. What do you want me to do about the message?”
“See if it’s real. I don’t want to send anyone chasing the wind.”
“You think they’re up to something and Voruskaya’s message might be red herring?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what to think. I know something’s going on, but I can’t prove anything one way or the next. I also know that if whatever was used on the radar wasn’t a weapon then we need to keep as tight a lid on it as possible until we figure it out. And if it is a weapon, we need to get our hands on it or the blueprints pronto.”
Marella nodded. She couldn’t have agreed more. “I’ll get on it.”
“Do you need me to come in?”
“No. I think I can handle this one.” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. If she botched this and the FIRM recalled Michael from leave, there would be hell to pay. Michael wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. In fact, he’d probably just write it off as the kind of mistake anyone could make when given their first real assignment. The Committee, however, wouldn’t be anywhere near as forgiving. Nor would they ever forget. If she blew this job, her career was, for all practical purposes, over.
“Okay.” Michael heard the slight hesitation in her voice. This was her first “real” assignment, and a lot was riding on it. If she succeeded, fine. She would be given another task later on. If she failed, the Committee would make sure she couldn’t even get a graveyard-shift job mopping bathroom floors at a backwater burger joint in the middle of nowhere. “Let me know how it turns out.”
“Yes, sir.” Marella caught the unspoken message. Help is a phone call away. She hung up and stared at the message. She wasn’t sure if she had made the right decision by not having Michael come in. She knew he could handle this situation as easily as she could organize any military evolution, but this assignment had been handed to her, and her mentor was on leave, so she would have to wing it and hope she made the grade. “No pressure.”
2321, Sunday
Sergei pushed a lock of hair out of his face and went back to typing code. Thus far, he had managed to work most of the bugs out of the program, but there were always more.
Svorsky leaned against the doorjamb and watched the small Russian work. “You are working late tonight.”
“The people are paying me to work, so I will work for them,” Sergei shrugged as he deleted a few characters.
“But it is nearly midnight, Comrade.”
“I’m nearly finished, Comrade Colonel. I just have to get the last of the bugs out so it will be ready for testing tomorrow as required.”
Svorsky’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t particularly like Voruskaya. The boy was too loyal to be turned to the KGB, but not so loyal that he wouldn’t turn on the government. “You plan to visit America?”
“Someday, if it is necessary.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go sooner?”
Sergei didn’t look up. He had learned very early in life not show any feelings. “I’m in no rush. What’s there to see but Western opulence and indulgence? Disgusting. But I admit, I would like to see what the Americans think is so great about Star Wars.”
“That movie is nothing but anti-Russian propaganda.” Svorsky huffed.
“How?” Sergei stopped typing and looked at Svorsky. “It’s a movie about people struggling to overthrow a corrupt imperialist society so they can all live in peace and equality.”
Svorsky shook his head. “You are so naive, Sergei. The villain in that movie is Stalin and his government and policy are good for all.”
Sergei didn’t understand, but he didn’t argue the point. He went back to work.
“And what is this ‘Muppet Movie’ you were talking about earlier, eh?”
“That’s a movie about a frog named Kermit who goes to Hollywood to make a movie.”
Svorsky shook his head and frowned. “Why do you fill your head with such nonsense?” He tore the posters off the wall and wadded them up. “And what is this? You listen to American music?”
Sergei continued typing until Svorsky shoved a cassette tape into his face.
“What is this? Eh? Why do you listen to this garbage? Are you a capitalist dog, like the Americans?"
“No,” Sergei sat back. He was used to Svorsky’s ranting and raving. He had seen it all his life.
“Liar!” Svorsky’s beefy hand slammed into the side of Sergei’s face, knocking him off his chair and onto the floor.
Sergei picked himself up. He could taste blood in his mouth.
Svorsky threw the cassette on the floor and stomped on it as hard as he could.
Sergei stood still and watched as his favorite tape was ruined. He looked at the far wall as Svorsky tore the room apart looking for more evidence of the younger Russian’s corruption. Sergei knew that Svorsky wouldn’t find any. Svorsky would never think to look for a few loose bricks in the toilet and by the door beneath the trash can.
Svorsky stopped searching the room and grabbed Sergei by the front of his shirt. He lifted the small Russian up off the floor and shook him violently before throwing him to the floor.
Sergei knew better than to fight back. He was used to getting beaten and it often went easier if he simply allowed Svorsky to tire himself. Once the vodka began to wear off, Svorsky would lose interest in beating him and go in search of more vodka.
Sergei simply took the kicks, punches, and verbal abuse until Svorsky staggered off.
Once he was satisfied that Svorsky was gone, he picked himself up and grabbed his grooming kit and a towel from his footlocker. He was going to have a hard time covering this up, so he started thinking of a good explanation.
He was in the shower when Dostovitch walked in. So much for slipping in the shower.
“What happened to you, Sergei?”
Sergei covered himself with his washcloth and turned toward the wall. He knew that Dostovitch was into young people, and he didn’t want to be the subject of close scrutiny.
Dostovitch glanced at Sergei’s small, lean, muscular body with its liberal sprinkling of scars and bruises. He noted that the vast majority of the scars were on Sergei’s upper legs, lower back, upper back, chest, and upper arms. They ran from beatings to burns to cuts. And if he was right, not one of them had ever been treated by a doctor. “Who is doing this to you?”
“N-no one.” Sergei swallowed hard and hoped that Dostovitch wouldn’t want to get up close and personal with him.
“Don’t lie to me, Sergei.” Dostovitch said gently. “You protect others from deviates and the violent, so now it’s your turn to be protected. Who is doing this?”
Sergei looked at the wall, but remained silent.
“Is someone violating you, Sergei?”
Sergei shook his head. “No. Just beating me. I make him mad. I should not argue with him. He is right. American music will rot my mind and make me a capitalist pig.”
“Says who?” Dostovitch chuckled. “I listen to American music and I am not corrupted.” He wasn’t sure how old Major Sergei Voruskaya was, but he had a feeling that the major wasn’t old enough to consent. But then, he might be, he just didn’t have any hair on his chest yet.
“I cannot tell you.”
“Very well. Wash off and report to Medical first thing in the morning, okay? If anyone harasses or questions you, refer them to me.”
“Yes, Comrade,” Sergei mumbled.
“I will leave you to your washing. I did not mean to intrude.”
“Comrade? May I ask a personal question?”
“You may ask me anything.” Dostovitch kept his back turned to Sergei.
“There are rumors that you like boys. Is this true?”
“Good God, no,” Dostovitch laughed his warm, gentle laugh. “I like men, yes, but not boys.”
“Okay.” Sergei rinsed off and wrapped his towel around his narrow waist. His shower shoes made soft slapping noises as he crossed the room.
>nr?“Good Lord, boy.” Dostovitch stared at Sergei’s chest and stomach. “Let’s go. Get dressed. You are seeing a doctor tonight.”
“They pay for you to work, I know. But they need you healthy if you are to work. Get dressed. Now.”
Sergei did as he was told and followed Dostovitch to the infirmary.
Doctor Cristof Saitsev looked at his young charge. “And what brings you at this hour?”
“I found him in the toilet,” Dostovitch answered. “Someone has assaulted him. And if I’m not mistaken, this isn’t the first time.”
Saitsev shook his head. “Let’s have a look.”
Sergei obediently took his shirt off. He stood at attention as the doctor walked around him, assessing the damage.
Saitsev shook his head. He didn’t know who would beat Sergei or why. Worse, he didn’t know why Sergei never reported it. He gave Sergei aspirin for the pain and examined the bruises to make sure there was no danger of internal injuries. “Go to bed and get some sleep. I want you to take it easy tomorrow. No Physical Training.” He wrote out a light duty slip and handed it to Sergei. “If you have any problems, come and see me immediately.”
“Yes, sir.” Sergei went back to his room and finished his work once he was satisfied that no one had tampered with his computer. Once he had saved the information on a disk, he took the disk out of his computer and hid it in the false bottom of his footlocker.
He stripped to his underwear and slipped into bed, wondering how soon he would be able to get to America.
America was the land of the free. The country that everyone was equal and whether they became rich or poor was their own doing. They could work hard and become rich, or be lazy and become poor. In America you got paid by the hour for what your skills were worth. You didn’t get a fixed salary regardless of how much or how little you worked or how skilled or unskilled you were.
He watched the clouds slide across the sky for a while then fell asleep.
He woke up a while later when shouting in the hall made sleep impossible.
He got up stiffly and winced as the bruises ached and left him feeling like his ribs were going to fall apart. He pulled on his pants and went onto the hall to see what the noise was. “What’s all the noise about?”
“Someone was trying to steal your work,” Saitsev answered plainly.
“Are you sure?” Sergei pushed a hand back through his shaggy blond hair.
“We found disks in the toilet. Someone was hiding them until they could smuggle them out of Russia.”
Sergei was speechless. He stared at Saitsev in shock. Did the doctor suspect him of doing it? He hoped not. “Who would do such a thing?”
“Someone looking to make a profit at the expense of Russia’s safety,” Dostovitch snarled. “When I find that capitalist dog, he will regret the day he was born.”
Sergei looked down at his feet to hide what he was really feeling. They had found his hiding spot in the toilet. Did anyone know about the one in his room? Did they know about the false bottom in his footlocker? He hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary when he put the disk away, but who knew if his room had been searched prior to that?
“We recovered all your work, so don’t worry.” Dostovitch clapped Sergei on the shoulder. “And I will be especially watchful of people around your room.”
“Thank you, Comrade.” Sergei shook his head. “How did they get into my room? I keep the door locked when I’m not there.”
“Locks can be picked.”
“Why don’t you let me keep the disks in my room?” Svorsky offered. This was his big chance. He had the only safe on the entire compound and he alone knew the combination. Who needed to steal the work when it would be handed to him?
“I will consider that.” Dostovitch stroked his goatee thoughtfully. “But for now, I will keep them in a safe place known only to myself and Voruskaya.”
“Thank you, Comrade.” Svorsky hid his disappointment well. He could always get the location from Sergei.
“And Comrade Svorsky,” Dostovitch smiled slightly. “You have been recalled to Moscow. You are to leave Monday morning. Your replacement will arrive tomorrow afternoon.”
“But I am to protect Comrade Voruskaya.” Svorsky was frantic. He had to stay on the base until Tuesday at midnight. His buyer was coming to the base to purchase the disks with the program. If he wasn’t there, how was the transaction to take place?
“And Comrade Rostoff will do likewise.” Dostovitch turned and went back into his office. “Comrade Voruskaya, I will speak with you.”
“Yes Comrade.” Sergei walked into Dostovitch’s office.
“Be seated.”
Sergei sat down across from Dostovitch.
The taller Russian closed the door and went back to his desk. “Sergei, I need to know who has been beating you. You have no need to fear retaliation.”
“It was-” Sergei looked at the far wall. “He will kill me if I tell you.”
“Who? Has he threatened you?”
“Yes. He has said many a time that if I tell anyone he will make me sorry.” Sergei wasn’t sure how much he could tell Dostovitch. But the man seemed to be interested in his safety above all else, so he decided to tell him everything.
“What’s his name? Is it Svorsky? Is he the one beating you?”
Sergei nodded slowly. Nodding didn’t technically qualify as telling, so he figured he was safe.
Dostovitch watched the small Russian before him. Sergei deserved a better life than the one he’d have in Russia. He wondered if Sergei knew it was Svorsky who was trying to steal his work and sell it. “Sergei, I want you to find somewhere in your room to hide the disks.”
“Where? I kept them in my footlocker.”
“Find a place. Be creative. I want these hidden well. And if Svorsky so much as yells at you, I want you to tell me right away.”
“I will.” Sergei made a mental note of all the places in his room that he could hide things. There was the wall box, but every room had one and it was in the same place in every room, so it wasn’t very secret. There was the place in the floor beneath the trash can by the door, but that was suspect in his opinion. The footlocker was out of the question, so he would have to come up with another place to stash the disks.
He looked out the window for a moment. “I have a few ideas, but I don’t know if they will work.”
“Give them a try. Use blank disks. If they disappear, then you will know that place isn’t good.”
Sergei nodded. He had a feeling that the only safe place for information was the only place no one would look for it. No one would dare violate government property, so it might just work.
Once dismissed, he stashed the disks in the leg of his pants and went back to his room.
He closed and locked the door behind himself after making certain the room was empty and began to put his things away. He was almost done when he took his pen knife out of his coat and cut the seams of the mattress.
1130, Friday
“It’s not very lady-like to swear,” Michael commented.
“Jesus.” Marella turned around, caught off guard by Michael’s sudden appearance. “No offense, sir, but I think Hawke was right. We should tie a bell around your neck.”
Michael smiled, slightly amused. “Silence is a spy’s best tool.”
“I thought that was sneakiness.”
“That too.” Michael crossed the room noiselessly despite his flight deck boots “Problem?”
“This is the message I got Thursday. Not one’s been able to trace it and I’m at a complete dead end.” Marella sat down at his desk. She stood up as soon as she realized where she’d sat down.
“Knock your sock off,” Michael sat in one of the chairs facing his desk. “Or would you prefer the Confessional?”
Because of its secluded location, the coffee room was often used for personal conversations and personnel counseling. It was a quiet, safe, private place for people to talk openly, earning it the nickname ‘the Confessional’.
“Thanks.” She looked up when Michael didn’t speak. She half-expected him to have vanished the way he normally did when she least expected it.
“What?”
“I don’t know. It’s just- I guess I was expecting you to just disappear the way you always do.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Not really.”
Michael was silent for a moment. He sat back and crossed his arms. His whole attitude said ‘I’m listening’.
“You’re up to date on the situation, right?”
Michael nodded.
Marella was silent. She wondered why he had come in when he was on leave.
As if reading her mind, he answered her unspoken question. “There’s no shame in asking for help.”
“This from the pot.” She felt her face warm slightly. She had never spoken to him like that before.
Michael smiled. “You’re getting good at that. Been hanging around Santini?”
“No, I just listen to you two.”
Michael nodded. “Anyway, you’re right. I don’t really ask for help.”
“Why?”
“I have you around. Before that…”
“You still never needed help.”
“Now, no. Back when I first started out, God, I called Bruckmeyer twice a week if I called him at all. They took me out of the ADF and slapped me in CI. Talk about being out of my league.”
“Was it hard? Your first assignment?”
“My first assignment? No. No, it wasn’t hard. Weird? Yes. Embarrassing? Definitely. Hard? Not really.” He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket before remembering that smoking indoors was now against regulations. He put them back, but not before Marella noticed that it was the same pack he’d had for about a week. She figured he was a ‘social smoker’ just like he was a ‘social drinker’. Smoking and drinking weren’t habits, but the first was slowly becoming one. She couldn’t ever remember him even finishing a drink, let alone getting buzzed. She hadn’t even heard of him getting blasted.
“What was so bad about it?”
“You don’t know?” Michael smiled. “God, I thought everybody knew by now. It sure as hell made a great cocktail joke for the guys upstairs.”
Marella shook her head. She couldn’t imagine Michael doing anything that his superiors would find amusing. “What happened?”
“I was in the ADF on assignment in San Francisco. We had to snag a Russian arms dealer that was supplying weapons to the Russian Mafia. My job was to keep Valery Borudan ‘entertained’ while the guys went into the other part of the suite and spiked the goods.” Michael straightened his legs and crossed them at the ankle. “All I was told was that Valery liked tanned, athletic, young men from the South. I figured no problem. I just put on my best Hillbilly, Alabama, accent and chat her up. But that’s not what they had in mind. I was to be a male escort.”
Marella tried not to laugh.
“It gets better.” Michael sipped his coffee. “I go in there, and the thug at the door tells me that Valery likes to watch. Watch what? I had no idea, but I figured I could handle it. I was twenty, a Navy SEAL, no big. I go in there, and this voice that, I kid you not, is lower than mine, tells me to take my shirt off.”
Marella smiled into her coffee.
“So I do. Then said person tells me to do it while I’m dancing. But I had to dance sexy while I did it. Valery turns on some stripper music and sits back with a cigar. It wasn’t until I was down to my tightie-whities that the guys decided to make the bust.”
“Oh, my God.” Marella was having a hard time keeping her composure.
“The guys come barging in just as Valery tells me to take my shorts off. And let me tell you, if they had waited any longer, I was going to blow the whole job. So the guys come in, and I’m standing there in my shorts wishing I was anywhere else. And to make matters worse, they thought it was funny as hell that I didn’t know that Valery was a guy.”
“I’d have quit right then,” Marella laughed.
“I damn near did.” Michael sipped his coffee. It tasted like hazel-nut-iron. “But seriously, what’s bothering you?”
“I don’t know where to go on this case. I’m at a dead end.”
Michael nodded. “Okay. Well, let’s see what we know. We know that the Russians are whipping up something that can disable both our radar and satellites. We know that Sergei Voruskaya wants to leave Russia. Did you get hold of Moses?”
“Yeah. He’s in the dark. All he knows is that there’s a lot of special courier traffic going into the Kremlin.”
“Did he say where they’re from?” Marella leaned forward.
“They’re all from Tobol, but he has no idea what they’re doing out there, and access to the couriers is damned near impossible to get.” Marella thought about that one for a minute. What was the connection?
Michael nodded. “Does that tell you anything?”
“They’re up to something. Do you think there’s a link between the couriers, the special project, and Voruskaya?”
“You tell me.” Michael sat back and let Marella figure it out. He was on leave, so he had plenty of time.
“I think Voruskaya is working on something. Now, whether it’s what we’re after or something else, I have no idea. But whatever is getting done out there is pretty hot ticket if they’re so tight-lipped about the whole thing.”
Michael nodded.
“Since they’re doing everything they can to be as sneaky as possible and they’ve sent their biggest brain to a remote area known for its weapons development, I’d have to say that whatever they’re doing is Voruskaya’s brain child.”
“And?” Michael didn’t show any emotion, though he was surprised and a little pleased that she had reached that conclusion so fast.
“And…” Marella sipped her coffee. She was missing something, but she had no idea what. She sat back and looked at the ceiling.
“Get a pen and paper.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Get a pen and paper.”
Completely puzzled, Marella did as she was told. After a few minutes of hunting through Michael’s desk, she gave up and went to get the requested items from her own. She couldn’t figure out that man found anything in his desk. It hit her when she opened a drawer. He was left-handed, so everything would still be on the other side of his desk.
When she went back into the office, Michael was pulling his royal blue and gold Navy sweatshirt off. As he did so, it pulled up the back of his black T-shirt. The scars on his left arm were bad, but nothing she hadn’t seen before. The scars on the left side and lower back, however, made her wince. She looked away, as much out of uneasiness as respect. She knew better than anyone just how self-conscious he was about the scars.
He was a bit more relaxed about his arms since the scars were mainly on his upper arm and therefore mostly hidden by his shirt. But the ones on his chest, leg, side, and back still bothered him. He was so aware of them, that he never went swimming, never took his shirt off, or did anything requiring him to reveal any more of his body than was necessary. And it was a shame, too. He was the kind of guy that women wanted to see without a shirt. He was also one of the few guys who looked good in shorts; particularly the kind that surfers wore. She wondered if she was the only woman to ever imagine him in a Speed-o.
He was naturally muscular, though not body-builder big; lean; blond; just taller than average, but not too tall; and had a light olive cast to his complexion that bespoke a Middle-Eastern Jew or Mediterranean heritage. He was, without question, the kind of man women dreamt of running off into the sunset with.
He was also incredibly shy.
At first, she thought he was standoffish, but then she got to know him. He was easy going, patient, gentle, and honest. His only problem was that he had a hard time going up to people and starting conversations. How much of that was his natural personality and how much was conditioning, she wasn’t sure. But he was just shy enough for women to notice, and just reserved and aloof enough to make them determined to get him.
He was one smooth operator. She idly wondered if he was gay. She didn’t think so, but he didn’t seem too interested in women. But then, after what Maria had done to him, he probably wasn’t ready to take any chances with women. And then there was Jackie.
She walked in, noticing just how good he looked in faded Levi’s and short-sleeved shirt. God, he’s hot. She shook her head, embarrassed that she was thinking of her boss like that.
Bonnie Barstow was wrong when she said that Michael was good looking. He wasn’t good looking; he was downright hot.
He pushed a lock of sandy brown hair out of his face and pushed his glasses up.
He would need a haircut soon, she observed. But there was something about him that said he was probably more comfortable with long hair than he was with short hair.
“Okay,” she sat down across from him.
“Would you rather I put my sweatshirt back on?”
“No.” But I wouldn’t mind if you took your shirt off. She hoped she didn’t sound too eager for him to keep it off. She hoped she sounded indifferent. If only you weren’t my boss…
“Are you okay?” Michael looked up as Marella looked at the far wall.
“Fine.” You’re not fine. He’s fine. Admit it, girlfriend, you’d like to take him home and hang him on your wall… among other things. Amazing that he’s still single. “What’s with the paper?”
“Write down what you know so far.”
Let’s see, you have beautiful eyes, an ass that can crack marble, and shoulders that any straight woman would love to lay her head on. Marella paused just before she wrote down what she was thinking. She wrote down the facts of the investigation and looked up.
“See a pattern?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Read what you have and think about it. If you can’t see a pattern, you need to go back to the academy.”
Marella looked at what she had written. Suddenly, it all made sense. “But how do I prove it?”
“Find out what Voruskaya’s working on.”
“How?”
“Your call.” Michael stood up and walked to the sink to wash his mug out. “I’m just on call.”
“Just don’t recall you.”
“Not unless you have to.”
Marella nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“No big.” Michael walked toward the door, and stopped. “And Marella, when I’m dressed like a normal person, you can call me Mike.”
Marella smiled as Michael walked out. “Thanks. Now, who do I call?” She looked down at the paper, amazed that she hadn’t seen it before. Just figure out who, what, where, and why.
Who: Sergei Voruskaya.
Russia’s top computer programmer.
Develops software and guidance systems for satellites
Never allowed outside of Moscow for any reason.
He wants to defect.
He’s probably working on something that will get him killed.
Where: Tobol, Russia
Proving ground for Russian weapons and weapon systems.
Closed down nearly twenty years ago.
Abandoned for years, why the sudden use?
Airwolf’s radar and thermal scans were scrambled by something there when it flew over.
Misc:
Security in Moscow is beefed up
Security in Tobol is beefed up.
The government is being really hush-hush about what they’re doing. Not even top brass are allowed access to info.
Special couriers go in, few come out.
Marella shook her head. She didn’t know how she couldn’t have seen it earlier. Now all she needed to do was figure out a way to get proof of what was going on. She couldn’t send an agent to investigate a hunch. Not even Michael would do that.
A slight smile crossed her face. He would go on a hunch. But will the Committee approve?
She didn’t think that would be a problem. The Committee, Zeus, in particular, was intent on getting the too-honest agent out of their way. Everyone had an agenda, and Michael was the only one whom anyone in the FIRM trusted to any degree. The Committee trusted him, but that didn’t mean they liked him or wanted him around if his untimely demise could get them to their goals a little faster.
No, the Committee would definitely approve of sending Michael. But they wouldn’t do it on her say so. They would need a respected, reputable source to recommend that he go. And since the only source they would listen to was the one they would send, it was a little hard getting him to do it. But if he was on leave…
It wouldn’t work, she decided. Michael was too big a threat to national security. The government would never allow him out of the country without knowing every single move he made.
She tapped the pen against her palm as she walked into her office. There had to be someone she could send to get proof to warrant sending Michael. But that wouldn’t work. Sending Michael to get information they already had was a redundant waste of time and skill.
She picked up the phone and dialed a number.
She stood by the window waiting for an answer.
“Excuse me?” Tranh Nguyen walked in. “This was just intercepted, Ma’am. Agent Devries thought you should have a look.”
“Thanks, Nguyen.” Marella took the paper and red it as Nguyen walked out. She stared at the message Todd Devries had written at the bottom of the paper with a red felt tip pen.
Call intercept.
Call to: Tobol, Russia
Call from: Sao Paulo, Brazil
Content of message:
Russia: Yes, Comrade?
Brazil: Is the item ready, Mr. Svorsky?
Russia: I will get it from Sergei tonight. It will only last for four hours at a time, but it works flawlessly. You will not be disappointed, Comrade Tall Deer.
Brazil: Good. Get it ready for shipment. I will pick it up Tuesday as we agreed.
End of call.
Duration: 4:38.3398
And if this guy is the same Tall Deer I think it is, we have a BIG problem.
El, I think you better call Archangel on this one.
Devo
Gregor Svorsky was not above using his position in the KGB to make a little money on the side. And if he was in Tobol, then the Sergei he was talking about had to be Sergei Voruskaya and ‘the item’ was, in all likelihood, the device that Voruskaya was working on. And when Tall Deer, a notorious drug and weapons dealer who had connections to the Arelleno-Felix cartel was added to the mix, there was only one solution.
Someone was trying to buy the thing that Voruskaya was working on. Tall Deer was going to get it from Russia and sell it on the black market to the highest bidder.
Who would want it? Marella looked down at the paper as she walked out of the office. It hit her like a two-by-four. There was only on person who would want something like that bad enough to hire Tall Deer to get it. “Jesus Christ. Nguyen, get Archangel back here.”
“But he’s on leave.”
“And you point is?” Marella snapped back. “Get him back here. If he’s already left, catch him. Put an APB out on his bike if you have to.”
“Yes Ma’am.” Nguyen picked up the phone and dialed the number Marella had given him. He had no idea what was going on, but if Archangel was being recalled from leave, it had to be bad.
1400, Friday
Marella was seated on the couch in the living room, flanked by Nguyen and Santini.
“Why do I think you talked them into sending me somewhere?”
Marella stood up and turned around as Michael walked in.
“And how did you get here before I did?”
“Trade secret, sir. You’re being sent to Russia.” Marella handed Michael a folder with “Top Secret” stamped on it.
“Do they still think I’ll defect?”
“You do have family over there.”
Michael shook his head. “Yeah, an ass-load of relatives who won’t have anything to do with me because of my father.”
“What’s so bad about your father?” Santini had never heard Michael use that tone when talking about anyone. It was effective, too. It conveyed anger and resentment mixed with just enough regret to raise questions.
“He’s Russian-American.”
“So?” Nguyen shook his head. What was so bad about Russians and Russian-Americans marrying? Hell, it wasn’t as if he was Vietnamese and his father was Chinese. Or worse, Japanese. If that was the case, then sure, bitterness was to be expected.
"It's all about breeding,” Marella answered with her usual promptness. “Russians in Russia don’t consider the American-born Russians to be truly Russian, and the American- born Russians feel same way about them.”
“At least they’re both white.”
“That’s beside the point.” Michael dropped onto the sofa. “The fact that half my family is pure Russian and the other half is American is just as bad as if one side was Vietnamese and the other side was Thai or Burmese.”
“Wow.” Nguyen couldn’t hide his shock. He had never realized that white people separated themselves into groups the way Asians did.
“So why am I going to Russia?” Michael’s pale, frost-green eyes locked onto Marella.
The tall Haitian woman looked away. She had always felt uneasy around Michael when he looked like that. That was his ‘I’m pissed’ look, and it meant that he was about as predictable as a mud slide.
Michael’s temper reminded her of a tornado. It took a while to set off and there was no guarantee that he would do anything. Like a funnel cloud, he could just walk away and no harm done. Or, like a tornado that had just touched down, his temper could be violent and destructive. Then again, he might just stay clear of people and things until his mood improved. Either way, he was dangerously unpredictable.
And the look in his eyes said that a funnel cloud had formed and was just hanging in the air, somewhere between blowing off into mild irritation and touching down to do God only knew what. While it wasn’t like Michael to lose his temper, he had been known to raise a few roofs and rattle some windows.
“We got another contact from Russia.” Nguyen watched Michael carefully. He’d heard of the spy’s temper and knew that the codename the man had been given fit perfectly. Just like the Angel of the Lord, referred to as the Archangel, that passed over Egypt and killed the firstborn, and the angels in the book of Revelations, also called Archangels, the man in white could do serious damage with or without people knowing about it.
A chill ran up Nguyen’s spine. What bowl of wrath had their name on it, and would it be poured out today? “Major Voruskaya contacted us with information about a man named Tall Deer coming to get an item from someone named Svorsky. We found out that the Svorsky in question is Colonel Gregor Svorsky. He’s known to have contacts with the Russian Mafia. And Tall Deer is a top-notch drug dealer who deals in arms and is being wooed by the Arrellano-Felix drug cartel in Mexico. Tall Deer was also seen in Sao Paulo, Brazil where he’s believed to have made contact with one Helmut Kruger.”
Michael looked up from the folder at the mention of Kruger’s name.
Nguyen resisted the urge to take a step back.
“This just keeps getting better and better,” Michael turned a page in the file and continued to read. “Next, I guess you’re going to tell me Hawke has been abducted.”
Marella and Santini were silent.
Michael looked up, this time not bothering to push his glasses up. He leaned back against the counter and smiled slightly. “How’d I know?”
“Tall Deer flew into Flagstaff last night,” Marella added. “I had him tailed and he went all over the place before we finally traced him to an abandoned barn outside of town.”
“Which town?” He looked at his watch. He had to get Nguyen out of the room before this discussion went any further. “Any chance you could get the kids, Nguyen? Griffin’s car is in the chop shop.”
“Yes sir.” Nguyen stood up and grabbed his jacket. He liked Michael’s kids and was immensely proud of Zack’s accomplishments as a kickboxer, Dusty’s grades, and Jessie’s skill as a singer. He wished his own children were as willing to do something other than play video games.
As soon as he left, Michael asked Marella what town Tall Deer had flown into.
“Sedona.”
“Has he gone near the Tree Stump?”
“No sir. He just runs back and forth between the barn and the local mini-mart.”
Michael nodded. “Just to be safe, let’s get Airwolf out of there.”
“Where do you want us to put it?” Santini sat down. “You can’t just hide it anywhere, you know. And how come you never said you had kids?”
“Security reasons. The less anyone knows about my family, the safer they are.” Michael stood up and closed the folder. “There are quite a few abandoned mines in the area. One of which is on the res. We can stash it there.”
“Are you sure the tribe will allow it?” Santini knew that the Konochine weren’t very friendly toward outsiders.
“We don’t have a choice.” Caitlin set her iced tea down. She hid her surprise well. She had never known that Michael was married. “Just out of curiosity, why did you send Nguyen to get your kids? Why not your wife?”
“She…” Michael looked at a picture on the wall. “She can’t.”
“Divorced?” Caitlin offered.
Michael shook his head slightly. “She-” he couldn’t think of any word to fit what happened. “She died earlier this year.” He took his glasses off. It had been nearly a year, but it still hurt as if it had happened only the day before.
The silence was palpable.
“I’ll ask red Bird if we can hide Airwolf on the res. I’m sure he’ll agree.” Michael put his glasses back on and forced himself to focus on this situation rather than what was going on in his personal life.
“Red Bird?” Marella guessed that Michael wasn’t willing to discuss his wife’s passing, so she changed the subject.
“The tribe’s shaman.” Michael put the file on the kitchen counter. “White Feather and Talking Stick can keep an eye on it.”
“What are you going to do?” Caitlin asked. She couldn’t believe that Michael was married and had children. Sure, he’d taken his nephew in, but it was a complete shock to know that he already had kids.
“Go to Russia and do a little espionage.”
“Dressed like that?”
“Would you rather I wore a white suit?” Michael went into his room and came out a few minutes later with a backpack. “When do you want me to leave?”
“Why are you asking me?” Marella picked the folder up and put it in her briefcase. Ever since she and a few of her friends had formed a mock drill team called the ‘Synchronized Briefcases’, she had become more comfortable with a briefcase than a purse.
“It’s your call. Your assignment, your call.” Michael picked up Santini’s glass and set it down on a coaster. “That’s what coasters are for Dom. By the way, are the S.B’s going to be in this year’s parade?”
“I think so, but I’d have to ask.”
“What parade?” Santini looked at Marella.
“The Doo Dah Parade in Pasadena.”
“You’re in that?”
“Yeah, I’m with the Synchronized Briefcases. I had no idea you even went to those.”
“You kiddin’? I never miss the Doo Dah Parade.”
“What’s a Doo Dah Parade?” Caitlin asked.
“It’s like the Rose Parade, but a lot more fun,” Santini explained.
“It’s one of those ‘we have nothing better to do, so let’s have parade’ things. It’s a becoming a tradition in Pasadena.” Michael leaned against the counter. “So… When do I go and will I be back in time for the parade?”
“You leave tonight and get back pronto.”
“HALO jump?” Michael didn’t look too happy about the idea of a High Altitude, Low Opening jump.
“Not this time. We sneak you in, you grab the goods, get the tech, and we sneak you out.”
“You want me to bring back a Russian? Smuggling people is illegal in both countries.”
“A certain spy once told me that it’s only illegal if you get caught,” Marella countered.
Michael looked at her for a moment, but didn’t say anything. He hated this kind of mission, but if the Committee had approved of sending him, then he was the best one for the job. It shouldn’t be too hard, either. Just go to Russia, grab the programmer, get the device, and get out before you get caught. But there was a chance of being caught. And since there was nothing in the file that guaranteed that he would meet the programmer anywhere, there was a good chance that he was being set up. “What do we know about Sergei Voruskaya?”
“Aside from the obvious?” Marella handed Michael Voruskaya’s dossier. There wasn’t much in there except that Sergei was ten, a child prodigy, and a ward of the Soviet Union. “Less than we know about you.”
Sergei was one of the lucky ones. Most Russian orphans were left on their own. And those that wound up in orphanages usually had it worse than those that lived on the streets. Sergei was a ward of the State. And as such, he was treated a bit better than most orphans.
Marella had a feeling that Sergei was treated so well simply because of his skill with computers. If he wasn’t a prodigy, he wouldn’t have lasted long. “Be at the airfield by midnight.”
“Why don’t we go?” Santini offered. “You said we gotta get Airwolf out anyway, right? Well, we fly it to Russia. You can’t any farther away than that.”
“The Russians want Airwolf,” Michael replied. “And Tobol is a military installation. Why don’t we just gift wrap the bird and stick a bow on my head?”
“You like to jump,” Marella added.
“Not from choppers,” Michael shot back. “I don’t mind jumping, but if you think I’m gonna become FOD, keep thinking.”
“He’s got a point,” Santini agreed. “If he gets pulled up, it won’t be pretty. I say we land somewhere, you grab the scientist and the- whatever it is, and we get outta there faster than a Jan-Michael Vincent movie leaves theaters.”
Michael looked at Marella. “Your call.”
Marella looked at him.
He pushed his glasses up and looked back at her.
“I don’t know. We’ll give it a try.”
Michael smiled slightly.
“Bad call?”
“Why are you asking me? It’s your case. Just do yourself a favor: don’t second-guess yourself. Go with your first hunch. It’s usually right.” He turned to Santini. “When’s the jump?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Michael and Santini looked at Marella.
“Be off,” she smiled slightly.
“If you say so.” Michael picked up his backpack and slung it over one shoulder. “Let’s go, Boss.”
“I’m comin’ too.” Caitlin stood up.
“No room,” Michael replied.
“Hey. Dom’s not that big.”
“Your words,” Michael raised his hands in surrender. “Seriously, I don’t think there’s gonna be room on the way back. There’s gonna be me, Santini, a Russian, and whatever it is he doesn’t want in the hands of his government.”
“Yeah.” Caitlin looked down at her hands.
“Can you keep an eye on Benson and the kids?”
“Sure.” Caitlin nodded.
“And Joaquin comes over after school sometimes. He usually hangs around until Sue comes to get him. He can have an attitude sometimes, so if he starts giving you one, tell him I said he better not be here when I get back.”
“He’s that bad?”
“He can be. Last time he was here, he started beating on Dusty. If he hits someone,” Michael tossed Caitlin a pair of handcuffs. “I’m sure you know how to use these.”
“You use them on him?”
“Yeah. I handcuffed his ass to the kitchen sink once. He settles down real quick when he can’t move.”
Caitlin nodded. “Be careful, okay?”
“I always am.” Michael followed Santini out. He didn’t like being sent off without any prior notice, but the need for espionage was so slim that there was never any real advance notice. You were just sent.
In a way, he was almost scared. The last time he was sent, he had been caught and infected with a highly contagious virus and released in downtown West Berlin. The KGB had decided to use him as a kind of Typhoid Mary to wipe out the population of West Berlin.
He had taken every measure to avoid as many people as possible as long as possible until he was no longer able to walk. He didn’t remember much after falling down a short flight of steps. All he clearly remembered was being hot, the taste of blood in his mouth, the painful sting as small blood vessels in his eyes ruptured, and the smell of blood from the small, but steadily growing pool he was laying in.
He remembered choking on blood and feeling very dirty because he was unable to get away from it. He remembered feeling very helpless as the world faded in and out.
Emergency medics put something over his face.
Darkness.
People talking.
High fever and loss of blood.
They say something about a fever and hemorrhaging and the people in the ambulance…
Darkness.
Rectangles of light flash by from his head down toward his feet.
Darkness.
Moving sideways.
A bright light overhead.
Darkness.
Needles jabbing into his arms. He’s cold. Very cold. Very cold and wet.
Darkness.
A woman in white puts a hand on his shoulder and says something gentle.
Darkness.
He didn’t want to go on assignment in Germany again. He didn’t want to leave America at all.
Santini looked at Michael. He had a feeling that the spy wasn’t too happy about going on assignment. Who could blame him? After all that had been done to him, it was amazing that he was still sane. “You okay?”
“Fine.” Michael kept his eyes on the dashboard. He hated going to Russia. The last time he was there, he’d been sold out by one of the people on the Committee. He had a feeling that he knew who it was, but there was no proof since Hartford had committed suicide shortly after the spy he’d ratted out came back. Michael had the roll of film that he’d been sent to retrieve before the Russians could develop it and see what Project Airwolf was.
After that, he’d gone back and had been handed over to Helmut Kruger.
Upon his return, he was treated like a lab rat for a while before being debriefed. The FIRM’s idea of a debriefing was almost as bad, if not worse than what Kruger had done to him.
They had done a thorough job of interrogating him. So good in fact, that their subject was still afraid of the dark and had a sports watch that displayed both date and time.
The Room, as they called it, was just that. And it was specifically designed to get maximum results with minimal effort. They had taken the idea from James Clavell’s novel, Noble House.
The effect of the Room was that you were on the ceiling and trying to get to the floor. Adding to the disorientation of that was a red strobe light that flashed at random speeds and at random intervals. Water dripped down from the ceiling, giving the illusion that blood was falling up from the floor to land on you where you were on the ceiling, desperately trying to get to the floor. All the while, weird, distorted, inhuman voices moaned, shrieked, and wailed around you.
Michael had been subjected to both phases of the Red Room. The first phase was designed to completely disorient the subject prior to sending them to the Room. The prisoner was subjected to a forced sleep-wake-sleep cycle with drugs that were controlled by the interrogators. Once the subject had completely lost track of date and time, it was on to the Room.
To his shame, he had been broken. He didn’t know how much, if anything, he’d told them, but he had answered their questions.
He had been released, but he had never fully recovered. Not even a thorough debriefing by the psychologists and psychiatrists at White Haven had helped him get back to normal. He was afraid of the dark and always had a night light in his room near his bed that provided enough soft white light to reassure him that the room was properly oriented when he woke up in the middle of the night. His watch also helped. He knew that his watch would never lose track of time the way that he had in Knight’s Bridge.
“Can we stop by the res first? I want to talk to Red Bird.”
“Sure.” Santini turned off the road and went down the dusty road toward the small, narrow opening that led into the Konochine Valley portion of the Gila Bend Konochine Reservation.
The house that Red Bird lived in didn’t look any different than any other pueblo-style house. But there was something about Red Bird that made Santini feel perfectly safe and comfortable.
Santini watched Michael take a paper bag out of the back seat and carry it in. He wasn’t sure why Michael had requested a stop at the local store on the way. But when he saw Red Bird, he understood perfectly. Apparently, the Konochine believed that it was good manners to bring your host a gift when you visited them. And with the living conditions on the reservation, he could see why.
Red Bird, a tall, wizened, gray-haired old man stood by Michael and spoke to him softly in Konochine. “I see you as the rain, North Wind. You are soft and gentle, yet hard as iron and capable of great strength when tested. There is no reason for you to be scared. You will return from this journey whole in body. But your heart is not whole. Even now, it slowly dies within you. Your heart needs to be healed, North Wind."
“How do I do that, Grandfather?”
“You have much fear in you. There is also much pain and sadness and loneliness. You must stop running from those who wish to help you. Do not shy from those who would walk beside you. Let go of your anger and bitterness, North Wind. Turn to your family and friends for comfort and peace. Allow them to return the kindness and compassion you give them.”
Michael looked at his feet and shook his head.
“Why do you disagree? Am I wrong? Are you so strong that you can move a mountain?”
“No. I just- I don’t- weakness is not an option.”
“Is the Deer weak because she travels among friends? Is the Coyote weak because he calls to his family when he is lonely? Is the Wolf weak because he allows his family and friends to stand beside him in times of danger?”
“No.”
“No, they are not. But the wind travels alone. It is lonely and cold. No one knows where it goes or what it feels because it speaks to no one. It has no warmth or joy because it does not seek out friends. It knows no peace because it does not know when should it rest and will not listen when others tell it to be still.”
Michael looked at the far wall. He didn’t know how or why, but he knew that Red Bird was right. Red Bird’s always right.
“The ache in your heart cries out as the winds cry in the canyons.” Red Bird put a gentle, weathered hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Do not let your heart become a cold, empty canyon, North Wind.”
Michael nodded. “How do I heal it?”
“Turn to your friends when you need them. Do not let your pride break your strength.”
Michael nodded. “Will you be here when I get back?”
“If the Great Spirit allows, yes. But North Wind, when you come back, you must make peace with your cousin.”
“Tall Deer.”
“There is anger in your heart for him. And you have turned your face against him. Make peace with him, North Wind.”
“If I can’t? If he does not wish peace?”
“If you have done all you can then you have done what you needed to do.” Red Bird stood up stiffly.
Michael rose as well.
“You must begin your journey. You will find a piece of your heart on the way, North Wind. Take it in and return it to its place.”
“I will. Thank you, Grandfather.” Michael hugged the older man. “I value your council.”
Red Bird smiled and tousled Michael’s light brown hair. “But will you heed it?”
“I will. Thank you, Grandfather.” Michael walked out of the hut in silence.
Santini was seated on a wooden bench beneath a tree, telling a group of wide-eyed children about the adventures he’d had in Korea.
Michael watched the group with a smile. He remembered being that young and listening to his grandmother tell him about how her family had only just escaped the palace during the Bolshevik Revolt. He’d been equally wide-eyed when he was fifteen and watching the men dance during the ceremony in which he’d been reclaimed by his mother’s tribe. He wondered if he’d ever be allowed to join them.
“Hey.” Santini looked up over the kids’ heads.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Michael smiled when a small boy of five ran over and told him about the stories. The boy looked up at him and asked him if he’d fought in Korea. “No. I didn’t go to Korea. I go other places.”
“Ready to go?” Santini almost regretted leaving the valley. It was so different from the main portion of the reservation. “You know, I dunno why we’re so worried about places like India and Ethiopia when we have places like this.”
Michael shook his head. “Good question. Why the hell are we worried about Central America when we have half the damned third world right here in America?”
“You used to live here?”
“Pretty much grew up here.” Michael stopped by the Jeep. “You want to drive?”
“Yeah. How’s your leg?”
“Hurts, but I can’t complain.”
“Why? If it hurts…”
“I was down in Personnel the other day,” Michael fastened his seat belt. “At least I have a leg to keep me awake at night.”
Santini nodded silently. He glanced at Michael. This was one of those times when he wondered what went through Michael’s mind. “You wanna talk about it?”
Michael was about to say that there was nothing to talk about when Red Bird’s words came back to him. The wind travels alone. It is lonely and cold. No one knows where it goes or what it feels because it speaks to no one. “Talk about what?”
“The burr under your saddle, as you like to say.”
“I’m just not too happy about going off again like this.” Michael watched the sun creep toward the horizon. “I hate always going somewhere. I want to stay where I am just once.”
Santini nodded. He was familiar with moving around a lot. God knew he did plenty of that in the Army. After a while, he began to feel like he was living out of his duffel bag.
“I feel like I’m living out of a backpack. It’s worse than when I was in the rodeo. At least then I had a tipi, so home was wherever I put up poles. This…” Michael shook his head. “This sucks.”
“You lived in a tipi?”
“When I rode with the rodeo, yeah.” Michael smiled. Those were the good days. “There was me, Talking Stick, and Tall Deer. The three of us in one tipi…” Michael smiled. “God, it’s amazing Mr. Jacob never smoked us out.”
“What do you mean?”
“We used to have some wild times in that tipi. Nothing gross or risqué, but you get three teenagers in one tipi and no adults…”
“I can imagine.” Santini chuckled. He wondered why String wasn’t like that as a teen. String was always so serious. Always so focused on his cello that nothing else mattered. “So what kind of wild parties did you guys have?”
“No parties, but we certainly lit a stick.”
“You did what?” Santini’s shock was clear in his voice.
“Lit a stick. It’s a Konochine expression that means to make a scene. It comes from one of the old stories.”
“What happened?” Santini always liked hearing Native American stories and always stuck around to hear the stories while String was watching the rodeo or the dancing.
“The Creator sent a bolt of fire out of the sky and it struck a stick with such a loud sound and bright flash that the land around the stick fell in and was scorched.”
“And that’s how you got the Painted Desert?”
“Pretty much,” Michael shrugged.
“Hey, what’s with the dolls that some of those kids had?”
“What kids?”
“There were some school kids with dolls that didn’t have mouths or hands.”
“Oh,” Michael smiled. “That would be Does No Good.”
“What?”
“Does No Good. That’s actually a moral story.”
“How’s it go?”
“Well, a long time ago, before the Creator sent us the Kachina to teach us, there was a young man named Does No Good. Does No Good was a deceitful man who led the Konochine astray with his lies, gossip, and mischief. He seldom spoke or did anything, but when he did, he spoke with such authority and sincerity that Konochine heeded his every word. He also did bad things and caused anger between the Konochine and others. Does No Good’s words and deeds even caused the Konochine to make war on their friends, the Hopi, by doing things to them and blaming it on the Hopi. One day, the Great Spirit came to Does No Good and told him, ‘you must stop telling lies and doing mischief’. Does No Good didn’t listen to the Creator, and went to spread more untruths and cause more trouble. But when he went to speak, he found he couldn’t because he didn’t have a mouth. But that was no problem, he figured. He still had his hands to do his deeds. But when he tried to do something, he saw that Creator had taken his hands as well.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. That’s why we give the kids dolls without mouths and hands. We tell them the story to remind them that they must always be truthful in all things and do only good with their hands.”
“Pretty good thinking.”
“We think so,” Michael looked at the opening of the cave. He stayed where he was while Santini parked and hid the Jeep.
“You comin’?” Santini went into the cave.
“This cave is considered sacred ground.”
“Why?”
“Listen.”
Santini stopped and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Do you hear the wind?”
“Yeah.”
“The Konochine believe it’s the voices of the ancestors praying and singing. They believe that when they’re buried here, they join them in the cave.”
Santini nodded. He’d had enough experience with native superstitions to understand why even Michael, who was about as fearless as a man could get, would approach this place with apprehension and a little awe. After all, he’d been raised to believe that the spirits of his deceased relatives could affect the living world, so why wouldn’t he think that a place that his people held sacred had some kind of power. “This is why you wanted to see- Red Bird, is it?”
Michael nodded. “I wanted to ask his permission before I set foot in here.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t born into the Kachina way.” Michael looked around the cavern as he went in. According to Red Bird, he had been chosen by the Kachina, the tribal gods. That was the reason he’d had what Red Bird and most other Native Americans called a vision. “If I go in without permission, I’m asking to be cursed.”
Santini nodded. He had no idea what way the Kachina were born, or what their way was, but he understood that Michael would be wary of angering the local gods. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“You can ask me anything.” Michael approached Airwolf with all the caution he’d use when going into a minefield.
“Do you actually believe all that stuff?”
“What sh- stuff?” Michael winced. He’d caught himself just in time. “About sacred ground and spirits and the like?”
“Yeah.”
“Sort of.”
“I don’t get it. You swear like a sailor, but you don’t swear in here?”
“Would you swear in the Vatican?”
“Are you nuts?” Santini’s bushy white eyebrows went up. “You don’t swear in the Vatican. Geez, that’s worse than belching after communion.”
“There you go.” Michael replied lightly. “The Vatican is sacred ground for Catholics just like this place is scared to the Konochine. They don’t swear, drink, or do anything that will anger the spirits any more than you would do something like that in a church.”
Santini nodded and opened the pilot-side door. Michael opened the other door and took the back seat.
“What, you don’t trust me?” Santini put a helmet on.
“I don’t think there’s enough room for me up there.” Michael replied with a touch of amusement.
“This from the man who can walk through a harp,” Santini huffed. He smiled. It was good to be able to banter with Michael again. He had a feeling that the spy enjoyed the baiting, barbing, and pot shots as well.
“I’d rather walk through a harp than need a forklift to move my shadow.”
“How would you like to walk?” Santini started the engines. Nothing happened.
“How ‘bout I get out and push?”
“You know, you’re lucky you’re back there.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’m gonna smack you when we get to Russia.”
“I’ll get you a ladder.” Michael smiled.
Santini laughed and started the engine. He glanced back at Michael who was pulling on a flight jacket. “You know, you’re the only man I know who can be cold in here.”
“You’re blocking the all the vents.” Michael answered.
The take off and flight were silent until they reached the West Coast and stopped by Santini Air for fuel.
Santini fueled the aircraft while Michael kept a look out for curious visitors. There was nothing worse than having to explain Airwolf to a group of nosy civilians. He glanced over at the spy. He liked Michael, and wished the spy would stop by the hangar more often. It was always nice to talk to someone who could actually hold an intelligent conversation.
Sure, Caitlin could keep up a conversation, but she didn’t really know much about politics or Frisbee golf. And String didn’t talk much at all. Talking to him was like talking to a statue.
Michael, while a fairly quiet and introspective person, could hold up his end of any conversation unless the topic was women. He seemed to be at a complete loss there. On the bright side, though, he had a sharp, yet subtle wit and knack for taking the sting out of even the sharpest wisecrack before sending it back to its sender.
Better still, was his ability to take a joke. There was nothing enjoyed as much as being the target of a snappy remark or well-timed, well-planned and executed practical joke.
Few people appreciated the art of a well-planned leg jerker.
Michael had an entire inventory of misdeeds he could inflict on someone and he used them at random on Santini. While they were nothing cruel or hurtful, it did get a laugh at the Italian’s expense.
Ten hours later
He went to the satellite dish and removed the disk with that day’s activities on it. He put it in a jacket and labeled it. He inserted another disk and closed the door as soon as the drive’s amber light came on.
The disk he had removed would go to Dostovitch in Communications for analysis and the new one would record the next day’s activities. Or so everyone thought.
The disk that Sergei had inserted into the drive wasn’t blank on one side and storing information on the other. It was programmed with a virus that would kick in at midnight and effectively erase all trace of his existence on the base.
He went into the main building and dropped the first disk off in Dostovitch’s office. He then went back to his room. He wanted to get some sleep before he left the base.
The Americans would be arriving at midnight, so he had to be ready.
He stripped to his briefs and climbed into bed for a nap.
His alarm clock woke him up at nine that night and he dressed quietly. He shuffled to the main building as if going to get a late dinner, but stopped just short of going in. He turned around and looked at the satellite dish as if he noticed something amiss as he had walked by.
He walked over and knelt beside to get a closer look as two soldiers walked by on their patrol. They stopped and watched Sergei for a moment. “Comrade, Are you fixing the dish so we can see American television tonight?”
Sergei looked up at the young soldier.
Alexi Pattyk’s light brown eyebrows inched up slightly. He hoped that he could see the season premiere of Dallas in the morning. Like everyone else, he wondered who shot J.R. Ewing.
“I’m checking to make sure the dish hasn’t been tampered with,” Sergei replied coolly. “I saw footprints near here as I was walking by a moment ago and I want to be sure that whoever was foolish enough to stop here wasn’t foolish enough to tamper with the dish.”
Pattyk nodded, careful to hide his disappointment. “How are you feeling? I heard that you slipped in the shower.”
“I am fine, thank you, Comrade.” Sergei’s ribs hurt, but he wasn’t about to admit to it. “I slipped and fell in the shower. It was stupid of me not to wear my shower sandals.”
Pattyk nodded. “I will put some grip tape down tomorrow. I should have done so yesterday. I apologize, Comrade.”
“It’s not your fault,” Sergei smiled gently. He knew that if he got hurt in any way and word got back to Moscow, everyone here would be sent to Siberia indefinitely. “As I said, it was my own fault. I was foolish not to wear my shower sandals. I knew better, but I didn’t pay attention. If anyone is to blame, Comrade, it’s me.”
Pattyk’s relief showed on his young face. At seventeen, he was young to be in the Army. He was also the first in his family to ever be allowed to serve. He desperately wanted to make his parents proud and getting sent to Siberia in disgrace was not the way to do it. “If you say so, Comrade. But I will put down tape as soon as I am off watch.”
“Thank you for your prompt action, Private. I appreciate it.”
Alexi Pattyk stood a little straighter.
Sergei smiled slightly. He had read in a book that nothing did more for morale or motivated someone as much as a pat on the back. He also knew to praise in public and punish in private. Those beliefs had earned him the respect and loyalty of his subordinates and gotten him promoted to major. “I hate to be rude, Comrade, but I must see to the dish. Please excuse me.”
“Of course, Comrade Major.” Pattyk and Balikov both snapped to attention and saluted.
Sergei stood up and returned the salute.
As soon as the soldiers went on their way, he finished his inspection of the dish and replaced the disk with a clean one. He heard footsteps and sat back on his heels as he examined the disk.
“Something wrong?”
“Yes, Comrade.” Sergei stood up. He handed the disk to Dostovitch. “This is not the disk that I put in there earlier.”
“It’s not?” Dostovitch looked at the disk.
“No. I replaced the full disk with a blank one and went to rest because my ribs hurt. I was on my way to get some tea just now when I noticed footprints near the dish. They are too big to be mine, and they are too small to be yours, so I thought I should investigate. I noticed the drive door was open, so I checked the disk and found that one in the drive.”
Dostovitch frowned and looked at the footprints. They were indeed too big to be Sergei’s, yet too small to be his own. “Finish inspecting the dish. I will send out a team to investigate for clues.”
“Yes Comrade. Who would want to do this?”
Dostovitch shook his head and stroked his gray beard. “I couldn’t say. But I will find out.”
“Yes Comrade.” Sergei resumed his inspection of the satellite dish. He knew whom the prints belonged to and he knew what they meant. The Americans were here and they were ready to do their part. He checked his pockets as if looking for his gloves, but he was really checking to make sure that he had all five disks.
He ‘located’ his gloves in his inner right pocket and pulled them on before resuming his inspection of the drive. He made sure that he let his flashlight beam strike the woods twice.
Michael clicked his own flashlight on and off twice. The lens was covered by a blue disk to hide the light from anyone other than the one it was directed towards. He was ready.
The footprints and the open drive door were the signal that he was there and ready for the signal to ‘kidnap’ the scientist.
He moved through the woods quickly and quietly. His feet were cold, but he knew that when he had to walk across snow-covered pine needles, the best footwear was a sturdy pair of combat boots.
He had changed into white fatigues as soon as Santini landed and vanished into the woods like a shadow.
Santini had seen him step behind some shrubs to change into his white camouflage and put his clothes in the helicopter.
The spy put his .9 mm in a shoulder holster beneath his white fatigue shirt and walked toward the woods.
Santini never saw Michael vanish.
No one ever saw the man leave. He just disappeared.
His usual trick was to stand back a few yards and then simply disappear in the time that it took a bus or large vehicle to pass in front of him.
Just like a ghost, Santini noted. He had never figured out how Michael could simply appear and vanish at will. Sleight of hand, picking pockets, escaping, and simply vanishing into thin air were all standard tricks in the spy’s repertoire. Houdini’s got nothing on you, Michael, not a damned thing.
Michael glided across the open area with all the sound of a ghost and stood behind Sergei. “I’m going to grab you and drag you off into the woods. The guards will be coming around the corner before we get to the woods, so make it convincing.”
“Okay.”
Michael put one arm around Sergei’s chest, pinning the scientist’s small arms and put his hand over the Russian’s mouth. He straightened up and proceeded to carry Sergei into the clearing.
Sergei put up enough of a fight for it to be believable, but not enough to escape.
As Michael had predicted, the guards came around the building just as he and Sergei reached the edge of the woods.
Balikov shouted the alarm while Pattyk ran across the field to rescue his struggling comrade.
As soon as they were in the woods, Michael set Sergei down and told him to run.
Sergei ran as fast as he could and Michael was hot on his heels.
“Fire it up!” Michael ran into the clearing where Santini was waiting.
Santini got into the helicopter and started the engines.
Michael came close to throwing Sergei into the chopper and got in the back just as the first bullets ricocheted off the bulletproof glass.
Sergei put the helmet on and sat still while Santini took off. “They will to cook fighters soon.”
Santini stared at Sergei. “You speak English?”
“Yes. I learn by look at American television.”
Santini gaped and continued flying.
“There is base near. They cannot cook jets, but they will send choppers.”
“What do they have?” Michael was already reviewing Airwolf’s arms. “When do you plan rearming?”
“Huh?” Santini lifted the helicopter off the ground.
“You’re running low on ammo, Santini. Do you plan to reload any time soon?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Does Hawke?”
“He’s a pilot, not an ordie.”
“Fine. Get us back and I’ll rearm.”
They left the area just as helicopters roared to life.
Sergei looked around the helicopter, still not believing that he was in the Airwolf. He looked back at the man in engineer’s seat.
The tall man had greenish-gray eyes and blond hair. Sergei searched his memory for the time and place that he’d seen that man.
Last year in Germany. Sergei didn’t recognize the man because he had two eyes, but he sounded just like the tall American agent that Helmut Kruger had used to demonstrate the effectiveness of his serum.
The KGB had found out that the serum didn’t do all that it should and recommended that the government decline to buy it. They had a better project to fund. A project they had code named “Hide & Seek”.
He stared at the tall man. Was that really the Archangel?
“Are you Archangel?” Sergei could just see over the back of the seat.
“Me?” Michael looked up from the monitor where he was tracking the choppers that were following them.
“Yes. Are you?”
“Why do you ask?” Michael asked in Russian.
“This is the real Airwolf. I thought maybe you were the real Archangel.”
Michael looked at Sergei for a moment. He had a feeling that there was more to the youth’s question than met the eye. “Why?”
Sergei handed him an envelope. “I managed to sneak this out of my service record when no one was looking. It’s my real birth certificate. The one they put in was fake so I could be in the military."
Michael looked at the paper that he’d taken out of the envelope. “How do I know this is genuine?”
Sergei swallowed hard and took something out from under his shirt. He unfastened the clasp on the fine silver chain and handed the necklace to the spy.
Michael recognized the pendant immediately. It had been a gift from his grandfather. Mikhail Anton Voruskaya had given his Star of David and the necklace it was on to his grandson just days before he died. Michael had never taken it off, but had woken up one morning with it missing.
At first, he thought he lost it, but then he noticed that Maria was gone as well.
He hadn’t seen the necklace since his last night with Maria.
“Where did you get this?”
Santini glanced over his shoulder at Michael’s tone.
“They said that my mother gave it to me before she died,” Sergei answered. “They said it belonged to my father.”
Michael looked at the necklace for a moment, then back at the birth certificate. He looked at Sergei.
The boy had eyes very much like his own, but that could be a trick of the light as could the blond hair.
Was it possible that Sergei was his son?
0330
“Ma’am.” A tall, skinny boy who barely looked old enough to shave walked over with a message.
Marella took the message. “Thanks.” She felt weird being in charge, especially here in the situation room. This was Michael’s turf. She closed her eyes for a moment to ease the burning. It was too dark in here for her to see well, but it was just right for the work that had to go on in here.
In her mind, she saw Michael watching the wall monitor while occasionally glancing at what the people in OPS referred to as the “Dart Board”.
The Dart Board was where aircraft and ship paths were traced. The lower half was lined off in a grid to label markings and numbers. The whole thing could tell someone who knew what they were looking at the entire situation of the fleet or squadron in question. In this case, it was the Third Fleet and some Russin MIGs that had decided to engage the USS Carl Vinson.
Marella knew what Naval air craft carriers could do. The newly-commissioned Nimitz-class carrier carried some of the most advanced weapons in the Navy and would give the Russians a real fight if that’s what it came down to.
She closed her eyes and imagined the room as it would normally be under the circumstances.
Michael would have his hands behind his back and a look on his face that was somewhere between total focus and irritation. He would have his feet slightly apart, and be tense, yet at the same time relaxed. He was in total control of the situation most of the time, and when he wasn’t, he never let things get too far out of hand before he stepped in and took over.
When someone walked in, he would look at them over his left shoulder. His wire-framed glasses would have slid down his nose slightly, and a lock of blond hair would have fallen in his face. He would look like a look like a scholarly country boy. He would push his glasses up and go back to what he was doing as if the newcomer wasn’t important enough to notice.
Marella opened her eyes and squinted down at the paper. She knew she should wear glasses, but she didn’t feel like it. She knew there was nothing wrong with glasses. Michael wore glasses, as did many other people, so there was no shame in needing corrective lenses.
The message was good news.
Airwolf had gotten to Tobol, retrieved the scientist, and had made a safe landing on the USS Carl Vinson for fuel and ammo. It was now on its way back to the west coast. She hoped they would make it back before the Russians caught them.
She wanted to check in with them, but they were still out of radio range and would be for another hour at least. When they did get in range, they would most likely check in with COMNAVAIRPAC at Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado, California. The word would be passed to her as soon as it arrived. Until then, she would just have to wait and wonder.
She had a feeling that this was how Michael felt whenever he sent someone on a mission.
“Thor, I’m getting coffee.” She left the room and blinked a few times until her eyes adjusted to the bright light of the hallway. While the hall wasn’t very well lit at this time of day, it was still brighter than the Situation Room.
She made her way down the hall wondering what sadist had invented high heels. It was probably a man, she decided. After all, men had invented the girdle, the garter belt, and the brassiere, so why not the high-heeled shoe?
On the bright side, it was a woman who had perfected them. A woman had come up with the idea that if women were to wear bras, they should be comfortable as well as functional. Thus Victoria’s Secret had begun.
As always, there was no coffee ready when she got there.
“No wonder he drinks tea. Just add water.” Marella hunted around for tea bags, but didn’t find any. With a shake of her head, she decided it was time to pillage Michael’s desk.
His office here was almost identical to the one in New Mexico, so she had no trouble locating where he kept what was referred to as his stash.
She found a pack of Clove cigarettes, the lighter he’d lost nearly a year ago, and a Slinky.
Simple mind, simple pleasures. She searched the rest of his desk but came up empty handed.
“This is re-fucking-diculous. He has got to have some stashed here somewhere.” She opened the drawer to her right where he always kept his stash of tea bags and found a note.
After a few minutes, she confiscated the cigarettes and lighter. While there was no rule saying that he couldn’t have them, it was against regulations to keep them in his desk. She dropped them into her pocket and took Roswell off his desk as she walked out.
Were stores open this late?
She made a mental note to get instant coffee and keep it in her desk.
Once she got back into the Situation Room, she focused on what was going on around her.
She stood in the main walkway, or ‘the runway’. To her left was the Dart Board and ‘bleachers’ where observers could sit and watch the proceedings. Below her on the ground level was ‘the pit’ where intelligence personnel worked, and to her right was the ‘game show’, two rows of desks and monitors that made up the nerve center of the FIRM’s intel branch.
Michael would walk in, look around, and assess the situation within seconds. Once he had a handle on the scene, he would stand back and see what happened next.
“Coffee was a no-go?” Thorson looked up from his monitor.
“As always. Who’s on coffee watch?”
“I think Tranh is.”
“Which Tranh? There are four of them.”
“Tranh Nguyen.”
“Figures.”
“Yeah. That’s like putting a non-smoker in charge of the smoke pit.”
Marella smiled. “What’s the word?”
“So far, our guys have outrun the Russians, but there’s no telling how long that’ll last. Not even Airwolf can outrun a MIG.”
Marella nodded and went back to watching the Dart Board.
“This just came in.” Tranh Nguyen handed her a message.
“Thanks. And Tranh, did you forget something?”
“Coffee?"
“Bingo.”
“I’ll get on it.”
“Thanks.” Marella looked at the note. “Oh, shit.”
“Bad?” Thorson looked up. He was nicknamed Thor for obvious reasons.
“And getting worse. It seems Tall Deer is in cahoots with Kruger. But here’s the best part: Tall Deer has Hawke and wants to talk.”
“We don’t negotiate.”
“I know. And that leaves us with few options. We can’t let Tall Deer have Airwolf, but at the same time, we can’t lose Hawke.”
“I don’t get it,” Thorson scratched his head. “Why is Hawke more important than Airwolf? I mean, Airwolf is useful. Hawke is- well, Hawke’s just there.”
“Hawke’s our best bet.”
“Santini flies better and has more experience.”
“I know. But until I’m told otherwise, we keep Hawke alive.”
“Do you think they’ll red card him?”
“God, I hope so.” Marella answered levelly. Sure, she thought Hawke was cute. He was also talented. But more importantly, he was becoming more and more of a liability. And if that liability wasn’t removed soon, he would jeopardize everyone who knew him… including Michael.
Outside the Committee, Stringfellow Hawke was the biggest threat to Michael. It wouldn’t take much, if anything, for Hawke to blow the spy’s cover and get him killed. He had too much information from Michael’s public profile, and if said information got into the wrong hands, Michael would have to go to ground indefinitely.
She considered recommending Hawke for a Red Card.
As much as she hated to do it, when she looked at the big picture, Hawke was a major fault line that could go at any time and do catastrophic damage. But if the fault line was sealed, there would be no danger at all.
She wondered how much longer the Committee would keep Hawke around. But then, maybe they were keeping him around as a means of keeping Michael in check. How, she had no idea. If the FIRM’s best interrogators couldn’t break Michael, no one could, so there was nothing to worry about if he got caught. In fact, if he got caught, he would be ‘dropped’, or written off as an acceptable loss.
So why was Hawke still around? What was so important about him? Michael knew where Airwolf was so-
Michael knows where Airwolf is. The revelation hit her like a jolt of electricity. That’s why Hawke hasn’t been red carded. No one knows that Michael knows where Airwolf is, so the only way they can locate it is through Hawke. If they find out Michael knows where it is, they’ll expect him to take it back. And if he doesn’t he’ll be executed for treason. Or worse. “As soon as they get back, I want Archangel in here.” She turned to the wall-to-wall monitors that the people in Ops called the “Drive-In”.
“Yes ma’am.” Thorson called the front desk to leave word for Michael when he got in.
She stared at the message again before leaving the room to get coffee. This was going to be a long night. She got to the door when Bagley, ‘Bagel’ to all who knew him, walked in with a folder.
“This is what we have on Sergei Voruskaya.”
Marella took the folder. “Thanks. Is there coffee yet?”
“Fresh pot. I left word that no one was to go near it until you got some.”
“Thanks.”
“You should switch to tea. Archangel did.”
“Yeah, well he’s never liked coffee.” Marella reviewed the file as she walked down the hall.
Name: Sergei Mikhail Voruskaya
Sex: Male
Hair: Blond
Eyes: Green
Height: 5’ 2”
Weight: 106.5 Lbs.
D.O.B: 21 Aug 1974
Born: Moscow, Russia
Mother’s name: Last: Von Furster First: Maria Middle: Annika
Father’s name: Last: Voruskaya First: Mikhail Middle: Anton
In the file was a picture of a boy who looked very much like Michael had at nine. Marella was silent. She wasn’t surprised that Von Furster had done something like that.
She would have a kid and not tell him, Marella sighed. It was just like that slut to do something like that. Have his kid and use it against him later. Oh, shit. Shit, he was married. Holy God. He was married when that happened. No wonder he asked her what she was doing when she took her shirt off. He didn’t want to cheat on his wife.
Maria Von Furster used people like tools, and Marella had no doubt that the woman would use her son, Sergei, the same way she had used his father.
“That bitch.” Marella closed the file and set it on a desk. She had never wanted to hurt someone as much as she wanted to kill Von Furster. Just like her to use him. Make him think you love him, try to get him in bed, and when you can’t seduce him, you drug him. Next, you get yourself in trouble, and when he offers to do the right thing by you, like you know he will, you stage your own kidnapping and leave him hanging. You occasionally send a brief message to him to make him think you’re still alive and in captivity, and somehow escape a while later to fake your own capture by hostile agents. You use yourself as bait lure him into a trap because you know he still feels responsible for you and will go to Hell and back for you.
Maria Von Furster had it all planned out. And she had done it beautifully.
She wondered if Michael’s wife had found out about the affair. While it wasn’t his fault, it still happened.
She poured a cup of coffee. “Thanks, Nguyen.”
Tranh Nguyen froze in his steps. He had no idea how Marella had known he was there. She had her back turned when he walked in, and he hadn’t made a sound as he did so. She was almost as spooky as Michael.
But then, her name is Haitian. It means Mary. Tranh swallowed the knot in his throat. The Virgin Mary and the Archangels are all on the same side, so… “Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you okay?” Marella turned around to face the short Vietnamese agent. “Would you like some coffee?”
“No. No, thank you.” Tranh watched Marella, not sure if she was going to disappear like Archangel would.
“Okay.” Marella nodded and sipped her coffee. It was a bit strong, but she didn’t mind.
“Ma’am.” Thorson poked his head in.
“Yes.”
“They just checked in and left the Vinson.”
“Good.” Marella nodded. She was still trying to be as aloof and seemingly indifferent as Michael always was. “Thank you, Thorson.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Marella followed Thorson into the Situation Room. At the speed Airwolf traveled, it should be within radio range of Knight’s Bridge within the hour. She looked down at the note again.
She suspected that Tall Deer had Hawke. And now the bastard wanted to trade Hawke for Airwolf.
“Ma’am, we have Archangel on the radio.” Kreiger handed Marella a headset.
“Thanks.” She put the headset on. “Airwolf, Knight’s Bridge Control.”
“Hey.” Michael sounded a little tired, but otherwise okay.
“Welcome back. Did you get him?”
“We got him. He’s in the front with Santini.”
“I heard you made a pit stop on the Vinson.”
“Yep. We were running low on fuel and ammo. We also repaired and serviced the gun belts. But that’s not why you’re talking to me, is it?”
Marella picked up the wry amusement in the spy’s voice. “No, actually, it’s not. We have a problem on our hands.”
“We?” Michael looked at the comm panel. He knew that everyone in the helicopter could hear what was being said. “Switch to a secure channel.” He switched to Channel Six.
Marella did likewise before continuing. “I mean me, sorry. I just got a message in from Tall Deer. He wants to trade Hawke for Airwolf.”
“He doesn’t want to trade.”
“Are you sure?”
“He can’t fly Airwolf. What good is it to him without a pilot?”
“He’s using the trade as bait to get us to hand over Airwolf.”
Michael nodded. “Exactly.”
“He figures we give him Airwolf, but he keeps Hawke anyway. Damn.”
“Yeah.” Michael sounded as laid back as ever. “But look on the bright side, the ball’s in our court.”
“It is?”
“Think about it.”
Marella was silent for a minute. “We have Airwolf and you know where it’s kept. I don’t see how that’s to our advantage.”
“Sure.” Marella couldn’t see what Michael was getting at. “Do you want anything when you get here?”
“Yeah. Something for my knee would be good.”
“Anything in particular?”
“The usual.” He switched to the common channel and instructed her to do the same. “What do you guys want?”
Sergei thought about it for a minute. “American food.”
“Some fettucini if you can get it,” Santini added.
“What kind of ‘American Food’?” Marella asked. She wasn’t sure, but the Russian sounded almost as young as Tater Tot.
“Something American,” Sergei replied after a pause.
“Like what?”
“What is good?”
“Lots of things.”
“A hot dog? On a stick and in bread.”
“A corn dog? No problem. You want fries?”
“Fries?”
“French fries.”
Sergei thought for a second. He had seen french fries in the McDonald’s and Burger King commercials during Falcon Crest and Dallas. “Yes, please. And A and W root beer.”
“Thanks,” Michael replied.
“See you soon. Knight’s Bridge out.”
0645
There was something about Sergei Voruskaya and his work that the Russians didn’t want to leave the country.
Marella and Thorson walked in a few minutes later.
Michael looked up and wondered for the millionth time how Marella could manage to look so together after being up all night.
“Tall Deer has Hawke,” Thorson began.
Marella handed Michael a mug of tea and set the file on his desk.
“Have a seat.” Michael looked over the file. “We don’t negotiate.”
Thorson nodded. He still felt a bit weird being in on such a meeting. He had just been transferred up from the Zebra Squad and was still adjusting to the change in scenery as well as conduct. “Yes sir.”
Michael paused when he saw who Sergei’s mother was. Red Bird had been right. He never understood why Maria hadn’t told him about their child. He guessed it was because she was a KGB agent who had neither the time nor the inclination to raise a child.
He had no problems with children, and wouldn’t have given a second thought to raising the child on his own if it came down to it. It bothered him that after ten years, he still hadn’t forgiven her for giving their son to the Russians. But that was then and done. He had Sergei now, and he meant to give the boy as normal a life as possible. He looked at the file for a moment longer before closing it.
Marella was silent for a few minutes. If she was right, Michael was indeed Sergei’s father. “Why were the Russian’s chasing you?”
“Sergei.” Michael set his tea down. “The thing he doesn’t want in the hands of the Russian government is some kind of computer program.”
“Does he have it with him?” Thorson tensed slightly, ready for the interrogation.
“Take five, Thor.” Michael smiled slightly. Thorson was just like he had been at that age: young, determined, and a lot of brawn with very little brain. Thorson had a similar background to his own, but instead of being taken in by a tribe of Native Americans, Thorson had been raised in foster homes until he ran away and joined Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.
Thorson was a workhorse for the circus and they were sad to see him leave. The animal trainer, Gunther Gabel-Williams had seen to it that the lad went to school in the off-season, and had written him a good recommendation when he was ready to join the FIRM. Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn had also helped the aspiring animal trainer get a place at the academy.
Thorson had always regarded Michael as a kind of role model. If someone like Michael could get where he was from working a rodeo, what was his excuse for not succeeding?
“Voruskaya came to America because he’s afraid of the KGB. If we interrogate him, he’ll bail.”
Thorson glanced at Marella. He couldn’t have felt lower had he been rejected by a prostitute.
“She’s right,” Michael agreed. “Voruskaya came here willingly, so I think there’s a good chance that he’ll hand over the disks willingly. In the mean time, he’s a wanted man- boy. The Russians scrambled a set of MIGs to chase us down after we took off.”
“Was there a fight getting him out of the compound?” Marella took her notepad out. Any information Michael could give them on Tobol wouldn’t go to waste.
“Not really. We pretty much had the jump on them. I got Sergei to the woods just as they guards were coming around the corner on a patrol. They chased us and alerted the base, but no shots were fired.”
“I thought Tobol was abandoned?” Thorson looked puzzled.
“So did we,” Marella replied. “But if they had Voruskaya there…”
“The base is active, but they’re using it as a research and development facility.” Michael sipped his tea. For some strange reason, he wanted coffee instead. “Right now, they have between ten and twenty people on the base that I know of. I didn’t get an exact count because we were flying over at high speed.”
“But there were at least twenty?”
“At least ten, but no more than twenty,” Michael answered. “But like I said, that was just what I could see. There may be more.”
“How about the layout?”
“Two large bunkers, but most of it’s underground. I’m guessing the surface buildings are admin, barracks, and other general purpose. I’m sure the real stuff goes on underground.”
Marella nodded and made note of it. “Any idea how they made the base disappear?”
“Not a clue. Sergei was working on the radar dish when I grabbed him, but I have no idea what he was doing. I gotta tell you, though, that was one hell of a dish."
“Big?”
Michael nodded. “I’d say roughly eighty feet in diameter. The thing’s base stood a good forty feet in the air. Jesus, that thing’s bigger than the bathroom at my grandmother’s house.”
Marella’s eyebrows went up. She had spent a week at Anya Voryskaya’s house in Alabama once. Michael hadn’t exaggerated when he said the place was huge. The country mansion was still on the plantation that his family had owned since the French owned that part of the United States.
She couldn’t understand why he picked a room in the servants’ quarters until she saw the room she had been assigned. It made Michael’s office at Knight’s Bridge look like a broom closet by comparison.
He had referred to his room as an auditorium for good reason. Hers reminded her of Carnegie Hall without the chairs. On top of that, the bed was almost as big as a helo pad. But what floored her was the size of the bathroom.
Michael wasn’t joking when he said that the only thing the Coliseum in Rome had that the tub didn’t was bleacher seating. “Just add a diving board and you have your own pool.”
The bathroom alone was bigger than her apartment.
The thought of a satellite dish that big was almost scary. “What would they want with a dish that big?”
“I don’t know, but I think it might have something to do with the way they were messing with Airwolf’s radar systems. The real question is: where was the original signal coming from?”
“Maybe the signal was coming from the dish,” Thorson offered.
“Then what was reflecting it?” Marella asked.
“That’s not important just yet,” Michael answered. “What is important is that we get the program before someone else does.”
“I’ll get the Russian.” Thorson stood up.
“Be careful,” Marella cautioned. “He’s a kid.”
Michael nodded in agreement. “Question him, but don’t terrorize him.” He stood up slowly, his knee hurting more than ever before. He looked at the calendar on his desk. Only three more days until his cortisone shot. He could last that long… he hoped.
“Calling it a night?” Marella stood up.
Michael nodded. “Yeah. I’m done. Why? Need me here?”
“No. If I do, I know where I can find you.”
Michael nodded and left for the locker room. He was trying to walk as normally as possible, but he couldn’t completely hide the limp.
Marella watched him leave and wondered if sending him to Russia was the best thing. He had been sent on leave because he was getting burned out. He didn’t miss work unless it was for official business, and he hadn’t had any time away from it for nearly three years.
Dr. Beeks in Medical had recommended he go on leave, and he was sent off that Friday.
After a few minutes, Marella went to the cafeteria to check on Sergei.
The small Russian was tired, but still as alert as ever. He pushed his glasses up and looked at Marella as she approached. There was no doubt about it. He was Michael’s son. There was no mistaking the family resemblance.
“Major, we need to debrief you.”
Sergei’s eyes widened. What could they possibly want with his underwear? They weren’t going to take them by force… were they?
As if guessing what Sergei was thinking, Marella smiled and reassured him that they weren’t going to take his underwear.
Santini tried not to laugh.
“Really, Major, I’m not going to take your underwear.”
“You tell you are to debrief me.” Sergei watched Marella closely.
“No. I mean we’re going to interrogate you.”
Sergei looked at her blankly.
“Thorson, find Michael.”
Now it was Santini’s turn to look puzzled. “Why?”
“He speaks Russian. We need him to explain what’s going to happen. The major seems to think we’re going to take his underwear.”
Santini smiled. He guessed that while Sergei’s vocabulary and understanding of English was excellent, it wasn’t that big. “Let me try. Sergei, they want to ask you some questions.”
“They will not to take my briefs?” Sergei didn’t look convinced.
“Why would they?” Santini smiled. “They have their own. They just want to ask you a few things, that’s all.”
“I will to keep my briefs?”
“Yes, you will keep your briefs,” Marella tried not to laugh.
“If you do not want my things, why are you to debrief me?” Sergei was more puzzled now than anything else.
Marella thought about that for a second, then made the connection. Sergei thought that debriefing meant that his underwear would be taken. He misunderstood the word’s meaning. “When you debrief someone, you ask them questions. It doesn’t mean that you’ll take their underwear.”
“Oh. Okay.” Sergei stood up. “Where do you want to ask me questions?”
“This way.” Marella led Sergei to Michael’s office. “Have a seat.”
Sergei sat down on one of the chairs facing her and waited for her to begin.
“Ma’am, Tall Deer is on line one,” Nguyen poked his head in. “He wants to talk to someone named North Wind.”
“I got it, thanks.” Marella picked up the phone as soon as Nguyen closed the door. “Yes.”
“You aren’t North Wind.”
“He’s not available at the moment. May I take a message?”
“Get him on the phone.”
“I said he’s not available.”
Tall Deer hung up without a word.
Marella looked at the phone as she hung up. “Okay.”
“He wants to buy the program,” Sergei commented.
“Excuse me?” Marella looked at Sergei in shock.
“Tall Deer is to buy program from Comrade Svorsky and sell it.”
Marella stared at Sergei in shock. Sergei had just given her the last piece of the puzzle. Gregor Svorsky was going to steal the program from Sergei Voruskaya and sell it to Tall Deer. Tall Deer, in turn, would sell it to the highest bidder. Namely, Helmut Kruger.
“Oh, Jesus.” She picked up the phone and called the front desk. If she was lucky, she’d be able to stop Michael at the front desk and get him back in. “Kevin, if you see Archangel, tell him to get back in here. I’m in his office. Locate Santini as well and have him stand by.”
“Yes ma’am.” Kevin Mollerty nodded and kept a sharp eye out for anyone leaving the building. Unless Archangel was in white, there was no way of locating him.
“What’s up?” Michael walked in a few minutes later. He was in denim jeans and a red T-shirt that had a winged helium atom emblazoned on it, and the phrase ‘ATs do it with test equipment ’. He was pulling on his blue sweater. Jackie Kendricks followed him a moment later.
“Svorsky was going to sell the program to Tall Deer.” Marella began without preamble. She nodded at Jackie. The younger woman didn’t look happy. “And Tall Deer just called, demanding to speak to North Wind.”
Jackie slouched in a chair. She had run into Michael on his way out and had tried talking to him. But as always, he remained distant and silent. She stared at the small Russian soldier. Sergei was finishing off a corn dog and looked like a little kid.
“What’d he want?” Michael asked.
“He wanted someone named North Wind.”
Michael looked at Sergei. “Do you have the program?”
Sergei took several floppy disks out of his coat and handed them to Michael. He spoke quietly in Russian. “I replaced the program in the dish with a virus that will erase everything I’ve done on my computer so they can’t recall all I’ve done.”
“What’d he say?” Jackie looked at Sergei. She had a feeling that boy spoke English, but didn’t want to. At least, not in public. Or maybe his English wasn’t very good. The second option seemed the more likely.
Michael nodded. Sergei was a bright kid. “Good thinking. What do we do about Tall Deer?”
Marella was silent for a minute. “I have an idea. Sergei, I’m going to need you in on it. In fact, you’re in on it too, Mike.”
Michael sat down facing his desk. He had a weird sense of déjà vu. He remembered sitting in the same chair when Zeus sat on the opposite side of the desk. “What’d you have in mind?”
Jackie lit a cigarette. “Okay, so we find this North Wind and have him take Sergei to Tall Deer since he won’t see Sergei any other way.”
“Could you put that out?” Michael didn’t even look at Jackie as he spoke.
“You smoke.”
“Yeah. But I don’t smoke around kids. On top that, there was a policy change last month. No smoking indoors.”
“What, are you trying to quit?” Jackie shot back.
“It wasn’t my idea, Agent Kendricks. Just like it’s not my idea for you to be here.”
Jackie put her cigarette out and sat back in the chair.
Marella and Sergei watched the exchange in silence. Marella had a feeling that something had happened between them. She decided to break the silence. “Sergei will sell the disks to Tall Deer. But the disks are blank.”
“What if he wants to look at the- the- program?” Sergei asked.
“Can that program be run on a home computer?” Marella asked.
Sergei looked at his father.
Michael translated the question into Russian.
Sergei shook his head. “It needs a fast processor chip. Very fast. There are no chips fast enough on the market. He’ll need a government computer.”
“It needs a fast processor chip. Very fast. There are no chips fast enough on the market,” Michael translated almost simultaneously. “He’ll need a government computer.”
Marella frowned. “What if he has access to one?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jackie smiled slightly.
“What do you mean?”
Jackie was all business. “If he tells Tall Deer that the disks are genuine, he’ll believe him.”
“Excuse me?” Marella was a little confused.
“Tall Deer and I grew up together.” Michael explained. “I’m the one Tall Deer wants to speak to. If I say that the disks are good to go, he’ll believe me.”
“Why?”
“I’m accepted by the Konochine, just like he is. Besides, if we’re trading the disks, why would I give him bad merchandise?”
“He may not believe you.”
“He will. I’m not like him and he knows it. He knows that I don’t lie, so if I say something is good, he’ll believe it.”
“Why?”
“The Konochine believe that if you gossip or lie, the Great Spirit will take your mouth away.”
“Wow.” Marella felt a twinge of fear. She knew that Voodoo had some severe punishments for evil, but nothing that came close to what the Konochine believed. If they thought gossip and deceit would cause them to lose their mouths, she could only imagine what would happen if they did something truly terrible, like murder. It was no wonder that Michael never told lies. If he didn’t want someone to know the truth, he simply remained silent or wouldn’t tell certain facts. She wondered if he really believed the stories and magic of the Konochine.
“Yeah.” Michael nodded. “The only problem is, I don’t want to lie. If I’m going to tell him that there’s a program on those disks, there had better be a program on those disks.”
“We can give him a video game program,” Marella offered. “We copy a program to the disk and give him that. While it’s not the program, it’s still a program and therefore not a lie.” Apparently Michael did believe the stories.
But it’s not honest in deed, Michael wanted to argue. But then, if I don’t say what program is on the disks and he doesn’t ask, I’m not being dishonest. I’m giving him a disk with a program on it, just as he asked for. But I know what program he wants. I know I’m not trading honestly. “I can’t.”
“Why?” Marella folded her arms.
“I can’t give him bad merchandise.”
“But if he doesn’t say what program he wants and you don’t ask, who’s to say that he’s not getting what he deserves?” Jackie offered.
“I’ll know,” Michael answered. “I’ll know that I didn’t deal honestly. I know what program he wants, and I knowingly gave him bad merchandise. I can’t do that. I won’t do that.”
Marella was silent. She had no idea what to say. She had never imagined that anyone was that honest anymore.
“I’ll do it,” Sergei offered. “I will do it so you will not be guilty of lying.”
“You’re just a kid, Sergei. I can’t-”
Sergei stood a little straighter and his young face hardened. He looked like a miniature, clean-shaven version of Michael. “If I am man enough to serve in the Army and I am man enough to fight and die for Mother Russia, I think I am man enough to help stop a terrorist.”
Like father, like son. Marella shook her head slightly. She had no idea what Sergei said, but she could take a good guess. “I’ll get disks.”
Michael looked at Sergei. The boy had the same look on his face that he knew he always wore when challenged. It was the look that said ‘go ahead, Asshole, and watch what happens’.
Sergei’s face softened. “Mother never told me why you didn’t want me,” he said in Russian.
“I never said that, Sergei.” Michael’s Russian was flawless.
“You were never there.”
“She never told me about you.” Michael looked down at his hands. “Sergei… Your mother never said anything about you. I had no idea that I had a son.”
“I was... I want a real family. I want a family like I see on television.”
Michael smiled. “No family is like that, Sergei. My family is kind of like the Channings of Falcon Crest. There are times when we make the Ewings look like the model family.”
“But I will have a mother and brothers and sisters?”
“You have a brother, a sister, and a cousin.”
Sergei nodded. “I have spent my life thinking about coming to America to find you. Now I do not know what to do.”
“Be a kid.” Michael tousled Sergei’s short hair. “Be a kid. You don’t need to be a man anymore.”
Sergei smiled. “But first, I will help stop Tall Deer.”
Michael smiled faintly. Sergei was just like him.
His smile faded when he realized the implications of that statement. If Sergei was just like him, the boy was going to have a difficult life ahead of him.
Only if I let him, Michael told himself. He watched Sergei finish the corn dog and wipe his face and hands with the napkin.
Jackie watched the exchange, wondering what was going on between the two. She felt a twinge of concern when she saw the envelope in Michael’s hand. That color was used by the lab. And since Sergei was a kid… The thought of Michael having another son chilled her. It put a whole different angle on things. Yeah, she loved Michael and was ready for a commitment, but she wasn’t ready for motherhood. At least, not if this kid was anything like Zack.
Michael looked down at the results of the paternity test. It was simple blood test, but required by the FIRM since the boy was born outside the United States and had nothing more than a birth certificate to identify him.
Sergei’s citizenship papers were already being routed and the people in Personnel were updating his file even as the boy sipped his root beer.
He felt a flash of anger when he thought of what Medical was doing. They had given Sergei a full physical and updated his shots. They had also asked a lot of questions about the bruises and scars on his small body.
Sergei was too scared to speak English, so Michael translated for him. He wanted to find Gregor Svorsky and pound the man into a barely recognizable pile of broke bones for what he’d done to Sergei. He had no tolerance for people who hurt children, and would gladly beat anyone who hit a child; his or anyone else’s.
“Are we to go now?” Sergei looked up. He had the same bright-eyed innocence that only a child could have.
“We’re gonna get some sleep, first.” Michael smiled. “Then we get you some clothes.”
“When do we stop Tall Deer?” Sergei was suddenly all business again.
Michael knew it was going to take a while for Sergei to get out of the Russian Soldier mode that had been programmed into him almost since birth. “As soon as we find him. In the mean time, young man, we go to Personnel, get you an ID card, then get home to get some sleep.”
Jackie watched Michael and Sergei leave the room. She considered following them, but she had a feeling that she wasn’t welcome. And she wasn’t sure if she wanted to become too involved with his family just yet. She was still having some real problems with Zack.
Marella watched Jackie for a moment. She had a feeling that Jackie wasn’t ready to be a mother. “Good idea backing off when you did.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice. What’s with the kid?”
“That would be his son.”
“He has another son?” Jackie felt cold. It was true. The boy was Michael’s son. “That’s why he didn’t want me around?”
“No, he was married.”
“I know. And now he’s not. What’s the problem?”
“He’s not ready for a new relationship, Jackie.” Marella sat on the edge of the desk. “He’s a widower. His wife died of breast cancer earlier this year.”
Jackie nodded slowly. She knew how hard Michael had taken his wife’s death. The kids, it seemed, were having just as hard a time with it. Moreover, they were being extremely protective of their father. In fact, she suspected that they were deliberately pushing her away to keep her from what they perceived as her taking their father away from them. “So what about the kid?”
“You remember Maria Von Furster?”
“Do I?” Jackie shook her head. “God, that bitch needs to get beaten.”
“She got hers.” Marella sat down in one of the chairs. “Anyway, Sergei’s their son.”
“That poor kid. Thank God he’s like his father.”
“Don’t be too quick to count the chickens. That kid’s smarter than you know. He’s a smart little guy with more experience than most adults twice his age. Don’t underestimate him."
“So you’re saying he’s a little creep.”
“No, that would be Josh.”
“Josh… Ruddiker?”
“The same. That little bastard offered to ‘give me the honor of making him a man’.”
Jackie almost started laughing. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. That little rat thinks he’s God’s gift to this planet. I swear, one of these days, he’s gonna push someone too far and he’s going to get it big time.”
“I just hope I’m there to see it.”
“What’d he do to you?”
“We’re at the Christmas party. I think Dianne took him because no teenager is that desperate for cash.”
“Jacks, I’ve known junkies that aren’t that desperate,” Marella chuckled.
Jackie laughed. “Anyway, he’s standing under the mistletoe.”
“Oh, God.”
“Yeah. Yeah. He looks up at me and says ‘Hey babe, I’m under the mistletoe.’ I look at him and then go back to crowd watching. Then he pinches my ass and tells me that me that I’m supposed to kiss him.”
“I’d have smacked him.”
“I almost did.” Jackie shook her head. “And then he goes and tells me that he knows where there’s a gear locker with a door that locks from the inside. I blew him off. So he suggests that I accompany him to the gear locker to ‘have our own little celebration’.”
Marella smiled. “Does his mother know about this?”
“And what would she do? You know as well I do that she’s doing everything she can to get into Michael’s pants. Shit, I think he’s the only guy she hasn’t slept with. She’d probably just laugh and say that Josh’s ‘just being a boy’.”
“That kid has problems.” Marella smiled and picked up her coffee mug. “So. Gossiping done, how are you doing?”
“Okay. And what was Michael’s attitude back there? He’s not normally that big a bitch.”
“Maybe he just needs some Midol,” Santini shrugged as he walked by.
Marella tried not to laugh, but didn’t quite succeed. “I’ll tell him you said that.”
“Go ahead,” Santini chuckled. “God knows he’s got a short temper.”
“Almost as short as you are,” Marella countered.
The elevator doors closed before the portly Italian could come up with any kind of reply.
0900, Sunday
Tall Deer walked around the main chamber of the Tree Stump. The helicopter was gone. Frious, he went to his hostage and kicked him in the ribs.
“When will it be back, pinda liqoyee?”
Hawke didn’t say anything. He knew that Michael would come to his aid. It was just a matter of time before the spy decided to look for him and rescue him. He wondered what Dominic had done with Airwolf.
Tall Deer walked to the entrance of the cave and watched the horizon for signs of intruders. Satisfied that no one was near, he walked back to Hawke. “You know no one will come for you.”
Hawke ignored the man. He knew that at least Dominic would come for him. Michael would because he was the only one who knew where Airwolf was. It only made sense that Michael would want him found. He looked at the entrance of the cave. He didn’t know why, but he had a feeling that Michael had something going on. The spy hadn’t asked about Airwolf in a while and that worried him for some reason. Did Michael know where it was?
The thought of Michael knowing where Airwolf was bothered him. If Michael knew where it was, he could take it back whenever he wanted, so what was to stop him?
The distant thumping of rotor blades announced Airwolf’s arrival.
Hawke wondered if Michael was in the helicopter. He hoped not. But on the other hand, the spy was, without question, the best person to have around when you were in a jam. No one was as resourceful or tough as Michael.
Tall Deer jerked his hostage to his feet and dragged him off into a tunnel as the helicopter approached.
Hawke had a feeling that Tall Deer was relocating him to keep him out of sight for some reason. Was he to be used as a bargaining chip? If so, he didn’t hold out much hope for his escape. Michael would gladly trade him for the helicopter any day of the week.
Airwolf hovered over the Tree Stump for a moment before lowering.
Hawke could understand why. The wind shears over the top of the cave were fierce and made take-offs and landings tricky at best.
He strained to see the entrance of the cavern, but couldn’t see past the entry to the tunnel.
Michael and Jackie, along with Talking Stick and Marella tethered their horses outside the cavern. They walked in quietly, using Airwolf’s descent as cover.
Michael motioned for Jackie and Marella to stay near the entrance while he and Talking Stick made their way into the cavern.
Santini set Airwolf down neatly in the center of the room, but didn’t shut the engines down. Once he saw Michael, he knew that things were going according to plan. He shut the engines down and let Sergei out of the helicopter. “Be careful, kid.”
“I will.” Sergei stepped into the center of the room noiselessly, not sure what to expect.
“Give me the disks,” Tall Deer called out.
“Show yourself,” Michael answered.
Hawke closed his eyes. Michael knew where Airwolf was. Now the chopper was as good as gone.
Tall Deer shoved Hawke into another side chamber and tied him up. “You move or speak, I kill you. I will be watching.”
How anyone could watch anything in the darkness of the cave, Hawke could only guess. But he knew better than to try anything when his captor was nearby, armed, and probably out of his mind.
Michael and Talking Stick split up and moved behind some ammunition crates.
Tall Deer walked into the main chamber silently, keeping to the shadows. He saw Sergei standing in the light near the helicopter. “Give me the disks and get away from the chopper.”
Sergei stepped away from the chopper.
“Give me the disks.”
Sergei looked at Tall Deer as if he didn’t understand what was being said.
Tall Deer circled the cavern. He couldn’t see the interior of the helicopter from this angle and he didn’t want any tricks.
Michael watched the situation unfold. So far, so good.
Tall Deer edged closer to the helicopter. All he had to do was get into the chopper and he was a rich man.
“Going somewhere, ci’ola?” Talking Stick stepped out of the shadows and stood facing his cousin.
Tall Deer looked at Talking Stick and took a knife out of his belt.
“Drop it.” Michael stepped out of the shadows as well. He kept his gun trained on Tall Deer’s chest. He addressed Sergei in fluent, unaccented Russian. “Sergei, get clear.”
Sergei ran to Marella’s side. He wasn’t afraid of gunfights, he just didn’t want to disobey, thereby giving Michael reason to send him back to Russia. He didn’t think his father would send him away, but he didn’t want to risk it.
“Pretty brave when you have a gun,” Tall Deer sneered. “Why don’t you fight me like a man, pinda liqoyee?”
“I can’t,” Michael replied coldly. “I fight men, not snakes.”
Tall Deer turned to Michael. “You speak pretty tough for a wanna-be.”
“So?” Michael shrugged. “You speak with two tongues.”
Tall Deer smiled slightly. “Put the gun down and we’ll talk.”
“I have nothing to say to you, scorpion.” Michael hissed in Konochine.
“You have no right to speak that language. You’re not Konochine. You’re not even an Indian.”
“Neither are you,” Talking Stick answered. “You’re not even a man. You are a scorpion. You sell poison coated with honey and hide deceit behind a fake smile. You are a shame to your family and a disgrace to your people. It is llanayas like you that give Indians a bad name. You are the reason the White Man hates us.”
Tall Deer turned and whipped out a revolver.
“Stick!” Marella went for her gun as soon as she saw Tall Deer’s hand go to his belt.
Michael shoved Talking Stick to the ground as Tall Deer fired. He felt the familiar, white-hot stab of pain as the bullet ripped into him. He was about to return fire when things went from bad to worse.
“Enough.”
Michael stared at the man across the room. “Shit.”
“Really, Michael, you should know better than to use language like that in front of ladies and children.”
Michael glared at Kruger. How the man had gotten here was a mystery, but his presence meant trouble.
“Put the guns down, everyone.” Kruger knocked ash off the tip of cigar.
Marella and Jackie looked at Michael.
“Do it.”
Marella put her gun on the ground and backed up a few paces. She wondered what Kruger was going to make Michael do.
“Let them go. They’re not involved.”
Kruger looked at Marella, Jackie, and Sergei. “You may leave.”
"Jackie, take Sergei out of here.”
“Michael-” Jackie began.
Sergei said something in Russian. Jackie didn’t know what it was, but she had a feeling that the boy felt the same way she did.
She had to admit, Sergei had a set of solid brass.
“Jackie, take Sergei out of here. Take them to my place and hang out until I get there.”
“Then he shouldn’t have been here to begin with.”
“He-” Michael looked at Marella.
The Haitian woman nodded and moved a few steps closer to Jackie and addressed her in Creole, the common language of Haiti. “If Kruger finds out that Sergei has the disks, he’ll kill Sergei.”
“Why does Sergei hold the dishes?” Jackie’s command of Creole was okay, but she still had a long way to go.
Marella had to think about that one for a second. She made the connection. It was hard to understand Jackie’s Creole because of her accent. “Sergei wrote the program that Kruger wants.”
“He did? Marella, he’s just a kid.”
“Ever hear of child geniuses? Sergei’s one of them.”
Jackie stared at Sergei in shock.
“Get him out of here,” Michael instructed.
“Michael-” Jackie hated being left out as if she weren’t qualified to handle this kind of situation.
“Jackie, leave.” Michael’s tone stopped any further debate.
Sergei looked at Michael. “What about you? You are coming too, yes?”
“In a bit. Go with Jackie.”
“No.” Sergei stood his ground. He was a major in the Russian Army, not a helpless little boy. Okay, he was a boy, but he wasn’t helpless. “I will to help.”
“Sergei, I need you to take care of Jackie for me,” Michael said in Russian. “Will you do that?”
“She’s not in danger.”
“I didn’t say she was. But she’s going to need a man around to make sure. And I wouldn’t want just anyone around. I need someone reliable and tough. Someone who knows how to make good decisions about security.”
“I can do that.” Sergei answered with a nod. “I will protect her.”
“Okay, just don’t tell her I asked you to protect her, okay? Let her think she’s protecting you.”
“I will.” Sergei pushed his glasses up, put an annoyed look on his face, and shuffled out, careful not to get his new high-top sneakers dirty. He stopped at the entrance to the cave and winced slightly as a breeze went up the legs of his baggy cargo shorts. He straightened his oversized Hawaiian print shirt.
Michael watched Kruger who stared back at him with a faint predatorial smile.
Talking Stick slipped into the antechambers in search of Hawke.
Santini stayed in Airwolf, ready to take off at a moment’s notice.
Michael glanced at Marella.
The Haitian woman nodded slightly.
“Don’t think you’re going to try anything, Michael,” Kruger said genially.
“I’m not,” Michael said flatly.
Santini saw Marella’s nod and started the engines. Things were going downhill fast, so it was better to get Airwolf clear than let it be damaged, destroyed, or worse, captured.
Kruger watched the chopper take off and turned toward Michael just as Talking Stick walked out of an ante chamber with Hawke in tow. He saw the two out of the corner of his eye, turned, and fired before anyone could react.
Michael saw Stick hit the ground and took a step forward.
“Stay there.”
Michael froze as if he were a film put on ‘pause’.
Hawke looked down at Talking Stick. The tall Native American had been shot through the heart and was dead before he hit the ground. He looked up and saw Michael looking at the American Indian with a look that was somewhere between shock and worry. He looked at the group.
“Pick up your gun, Michael.”
Michael reflexively did as he was told.
“Now shoot Hawke.”
Michael looked at Hawke for a moment, then back at Kruger.
“Shoot him, Michael.” Kruger’s tone was that of a patient parent instructing a child.
Michael raised his gun and clicked the safety off. He didn’t want to do what he was doing, and everything in him was screaming in protest.
“Shoot, Michael.” Kruger was beginning to get impatient. He had to show them that he still had control over Michael.
Tall Deer leaned back against a crate and smile.
“Do you find this funny, Tall Deer?” Kruger raised his gun. “You didn’t seriously think I was going to let you have Airwolf, did you?”
Tall Deer shrugged. “I’m just in it for the money, Herr Kruger. I couldn’t care less about the helicopter or any of these assholes. Except maybe North Wind.”
“North Wind?” Kruger’s eyebrows went up.
“Yeah. That man you just shot and his family adopted him. They seemed to think it was okay to make a white man part of the tribe.”
Hawke and Marella stared at Tall Deer. Neither them had any idea that Michael had been adopted by the Konochine people. It just proved that there was more to Michael that anyone knew.
“Interesting. It won’t save you, but it’s interesting nonetheless.” Kruger fired once, killing Tall Deer instantly.
Michael watched Tall Deer fall and lowered his gun. He looked at his cousin, then at Kruger. He wondered who else was going to get killed. Was Marella next? He hoped not. He looked at Kruger.
“Shoot Stringfellow Hawke, Michael.”
Michael looked at Kruger. “I- I can’t.”
“I said, shoot him.”
Michael raised his gun and pointed it at Hawke.
Hawke knew that he was as good as dead. Michael never drew his gun unless he was ready, willing, and able to use it. And when he did shoot, he didn’t miss. He shot to kill and that was exactly what he did. He killed. “Michael.”
Michael pushed his glasses up.
Hawke noticed just how much the spy’s pale eyes stood out in the twilight gloom of the cavern. They were flat and calm. It was the same look he’d seen on the faces of the Viet Cong soldiers as they marched across the field. They were just doing their duty, nothing else. There was no emotion, just duty.
“Shoot him, Michael.”
Michael’s hand trembled slightly. He didn’t want to do this. He had never enjoyed killing, and he certainly didn’t want to kill one of the few friends he had. He knew he couldn’t do it, but he couldn’t stop himself any more than he could have flown on a carpet.
Hawke stood still. He had no problems dying. He just never thought it would be at Michael’s hand.
“Michael.” Kruger’s tone was faintly threatening.
Michael clenched his teeth. His head was beginning to hurt and he was beginning to feel faintly queasy. He noticed that the metallic taste was back in his mouth. He could feel sweat run down the back of his neck. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and exhaled slowly, just as he had been taught in sniper school. “No.”
“I said to shoot him.”
Michael closed his eyes for a moment to ease the pain behind his eyes. He hoped he wouldn’t get sick, but the nausea was getting worse by the second.
Kruger smiled. He had designed the serum to make the recipient completely obedient and if they didn’t obey, the results would be bad.
It would start with a faint throbbing in the head followed by nausea and chills. If the subject obeyed, the symptoms would vanish. If the subject resisted, they would get worse. The headache would get worse as the chemical balance in their brain was altered and synapses were interrupted and interfered with. Continued resistance would result in seizures, loss of consciousness, coma, brain damage, and ultimately, death.
Michael winced as a searing hot pain flashed behind where his left eye had been. The fact that it was a prosthetic had no effect on the pain. He could feel his arm getting tired.
“Just shoot him, Michael, and it will all go away,” Kruger encouraged gently. He knew that intimidation wouldn’t have any effect on the man, so he tried a gentle approach. Michael seemed to respond better to that during conditioning, so he used that method.
“I… can’t.” Michael winced as a sharp stab of pain threatened to tear his brains apart.
“Don’t feel that good, Michael?” Kruger smiled. “You can end all of it right now.”
Marella took a step forward. She had never seen anything like what Michael was going through. She wondered what Kruger meant by ending it all. Michael was a high-risk case, as Beeks would say. He had attempted suicide before, so he was at a greater risk for a repeat attempt. Would he shoot himself instead?
Michael stared at his gun. His hands were shaking too much for him to take a proper aim, but a shot through the chest was possible. The pain behind his eyes was almost unbearable.
Kruger smiled slightly. “Fire the gun, Michael.”
Michael considered doing as he was told just to make the pain go away.
“Now. Shoot Stringfellow Hawke.”
Michael raised his gun and leveled it at Hawke. His eyes were cold and flat.
Hawke knew what was going to happen. He was a dead man.
Michael took a deep breath and turned toward Kruger. “No.”
“Put the gun down, Michael.”
“No.” Michael wished he hadn’t said that. His head felt like it was about to explode. He raised his gun and pointed it at Kruger.
“Michael, I’m warning you.”
“What are you… going to… do?” Michael could barely think he was in so much pain. “Kill me?”
“If I have to.” Kruger’s voice was frighteningly matter-of-fact.
“I wish… you would,” Michael said slowly. He held his gun with both hands to keep it steady before firing.
“Don’t do it, Michael.” Kruger warned.
“I… will.”
“If you shoot me,” Kruger’s tone had a strange tone of authority to it. “You will then shoot yourself.”
“I will.” Michael fired once, killing Kruger instantly. He looked at his gun. He knew what he had to do, but he didn’t want to. He stared at his gun. He had never felt so cold or sick in his life. This was worse than his first kill. You will shoot yourself. You will shoot. Shoot yourself. You will. Shoot yourself. Shoot.
He was so focused on his gun that he didn’t see Marella run over and take his gun from him.
“It’s okay. I got it.” Marella took the .9mm, clicked on the safety and unloaded the weapon.
Michael sat down before what remained of his left knee gave out. He was too cold and sick to move.
“It’s okay.” Marella took her jacket off and put it around his shoulders. He was shivering. One glance told her that he was going into shock. “Are you okay?”
No response.
Marella knew that if she didn’t keep him awake, his chances of survival would drop dramatically. “How do you feel?”
No response.
Marella knelt beside him. He was staring blankly at the floor. “Michael?”
Silence.
She touched his arm. She could feel the cold through his sweat-soaked sleeve. “Mike?”
“Okay,” Michael said softly.
“How do you feel?”
“Cold.”
“You’re going to be okay.” She looked up and tossed Hawke her radio. “Call Nguyen. Tell him we need a med-evac pronto. And get me a blanket.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s going into shock. Get moving.”
Michael closed his eyes to ease the pain of the light shining through the roof of the cavern. He was so cold, but the darkness that was beckoning him was quiet, pain free, and warm.
“It’s okay.” Marella had him lay down. She noticed how still he was. She hoped to God that he would be okay. But if he survived, what condition would he be in? How much damage would be done? Would he be okay, or should they just leave him be so he would finally be at peace?
What would he do? More importantly, what would he want?
He wouldn’t want to be condemned to a life without freedom. She knew that much. There was no way he’d be able to adapt to, or even cope with a life like her sister’s.
Janelle was paralyzed from the neck down from a beating her pimp had given her during one of his drug rages. She wasn’t able to do much of anything for herself, and even basic tasks such as speech were a struggle for her.
Michael wouldn’t want that. He needed freedom. He needed to be outdoors and moving, not cooped up inside or worse, confined to a wheelchair, completely dependent on someone else. He wouldn’t last long. He’d find a way to end that because that, in his opinion, wasn’t living, that was existing. And he refused to simply exist.
She suspected that that fierce independence and strong will were what had kept him alive all these years when most people would have given in or simply given up.
He had to be okay.
He had to.
If not, she would do whatever she had to do to free him of that existence whatever the cost. She owed him that much as a human being, if not a friend.
1630, Saturday
The room was quiet and dimly lit.
Michael blinked a few times until his eye got used to the light. He had no idea where he was. All he knew was that he felt a lot better than he had.
His leg hurt, but he felt better otherwise.
In the hall, Marella was trying to explain to Sergei that he wasn’t old enough to visit. The boy looked up at her, not understanding. He had seen men get tortured and killed in some of the most horrific ways, but he wasn’t old enough to visit his father. It didn’t make any sense to him.
“Why?”
“It’s the rules.”
“The rules are stupid,” Sergei answered.
“But they’re still the rules.”
Dr. Beeks saw Sergei standing in the hall. “Problem?”
“I am old to kill men, but I am not old to see my father,” Sergei shrugged and walked to the waiting room where Rolling Pony was reading a magazine.
“He’s killed people?” Beeks watched Sergei leave.
“The Russians lied about his age and put him in the military.” Marella looked at the door. “How is he?”
“He’ll be fine. I swear that man is too damned stubborn to die.” Beeks opened the door and looked in. “He’s awake.”
Marella considered her options. “Do you think maybe we could lie about Sergei’s age?” She knew what it was like to not be allowed to visit family. She wanted to see her grandparents in Port-au-Prince, but she wasn’t allowed because her parents had died and she wasn’t old enough to go alone.
Beeks smiled and nodded. “I’ll see if he’s up to visitors. He’s been through a lot.” She walked into the room. “Michael?”
“Hey.”
“How’re you feeling?”
“My leg hurts, but I’m okay.”
“Do you feel up to a visitor?”
“Not Hawke.”
“What about Sergei? I can sneak him in if you want to see him.”
Michael smiled. “Okay.”
Beeks smiled warmly. “I’ll be just a minute.” She left the room and went to get Sergei. She was just about to talk to Sergei when she saw Rolling Pony, Zack, and Jessie teaching Sergei and Dustin how to play gin rummy.
Sergei studied his cards intently, asked a question, and sorted his cards.
Sergei looked up. He looked so much like his father it was almost disturbing. Who needed a paternity test when the resemblance was so strong? “Your father would like to see you.”
“All of us?” Jessie’s face brightened.
“Yes, just one at a time.”
Sergei smiled briefly. “I am not old to visit.”
“Neither am I,” Dusty added.
“Think we can bend the rules.” Beeks smiled. “Who wants to go first?”
“Youngest to oldest,” Zack offered as he slid his left index finger over the playing card. The raised dots across center of the card told him that it was a three of diamonds.
“Dusty and Sergei are the same age,” Jessie pointed out. It was a weird coincidence, but Sergei and Dustin were both born on the exact same day at the exact same time in two different countries.
“He can go first,” Dustin offered. “I gotta go, so he can go ahead of me. I don’t want to hold everyone up.”
Sergei flashed the same Cheshire-Cat smile Michael had and stood up. “Please to excuse.”
“You can only visit for a few minutes, okay?”
Sergei nodded. “Is sick?”
“No, he’s just very tired. He’s hurt pretty bad.”
A dark look crossed the young boy’s face.
Beeks knew that look. “It’s okay. He’s fine, just very tired.”
Sergei nodded. “He is go home soon?”
“Not soon. A few days.”
“Why? Because is hurt?”
Beeks nodded. The neurologist wanted to have a look at Michael before the spy was turned loose. The CAT scans had turned up some disturbing anomalies in the left prefrontal lobe. If she was right, then they had gotten to Michael just in time. He’d live, but he’d have to be cleared by neurology before he was allowed to do anything or go anywhere.
As far as she was able to tell, the only lasting problem would be seizures, but how severe or frequent they would be, or if he had any at all remained to be seen.
Hawke stood in the doorway.
“He’ll be fine.” Jackie said coolly. She hoped she had hidden her worry well enough. “He always is.”
“Not this time,” Hawke answered. “He almost checked out.”
Jackie looked away. She was still angry about what had happened, but she understood why Michael had declined to stay with her that night. She wondered if he had forgiven her. “Sergei.”
Sergei turned around at the door. “Yes?”
“Tell your dad I said hi.”
“My ‘dad’?” Sergei’s eyebrows knitted.
“Your father,” Hawke explained.
“Oh. I tell. Do you want to see him? He is tired. I can let you go in front of me. I can see the next day.”
“He’s your father, kiddo. You go ahead.” Jackie’s envy was so well hidden, that she didn’t even realize what she was feeling.
“What is ‘kiddo’?” Sergei brushed a few crumbs from his cheeseburger off the front of his Journey shirt. Elias ‘Tater Tot’ Griffin had taken him and Dusty to see Journey perform the night before last. He had enjoyed his first American rock concert immensely.
“I’ll explain later,” Jackie smiled. “Go on.”
Sergei looked at Hawke. “Do you want to go first? You say you must to have words with him.”
“I’ll only be few seconds,” Hawke tousled Sergei’s short blond hair as he walked by. “Thanks.”
Michael looked at Hawke.
Hawke walked in quietly. “How’re you feeling?”
“Felt worse. You?” Michael watched a nurse inject something into the IV. He had a bad feeling that he was going to be asleep for a while. He couldn’t place why, but he felt a twinge of fear at the prospect of falling asleep. He hadn’t forgotten what it was like to wake up on the ceiling with no way to get to the floor to get out of the room or at least away from the blood that was, impossibly enough, dripping up from the floor.
“It’s Dilantin,” the nurse smiled.
“Okay.” Michael wasn’t sure what Dilantin was, but he could always ask later… he hoped.
Hawke looked at Michael.
The spy looked back at him as calm and aloof as ever.
“So when are you going to take it?” Hawke growled.
“I never said I would.” Michael glanced at the IV. Whatever Dilantin was, it was beginning to make him feel slightly fogged out.
“You will.”
“Really?” Michael didn’t sound too surprised. In fact, there was no emotion at all in voice. He wondered if he really didn’t care or if the drug was making him indifferent.
Hawke felt slightly chilled. He knew Michael was going to take the helicopter. It was just a matter of time.
“Look.” Michael focused on Hawke. “I’ve… known where… Airwolf is for a long time.”
“Then why pretend that you didn’t?”
“Because…” Michael forced the words to get together in the right order. “Until just recently, I wasn’t sure. I suspected… but I wasn’t sure.”
“So when are you going to take it back?” Hawke resisted the urge to hit the spy’s injured knee.
“Who said I was?” Michael was having a hard time keeping his thoughts on track and in any semblance of order.
“I know you.”
“You don’t…” Michael shook his head slightly. He knew what he wanted to say, but the words were eluding him. “You don’t… know a damned thing about me, Hawke. You… you don’t even know… my real name. What makes you think…” He forced the words to get in the proper order. “You know what I’m going to do?”
Hawke gave Michael a dark look. If the spy’s name was a lie, how much about him wasn’t true? How far could he trust a man that he didn’t know the first thing about? And if he did learn something about him, how did he know it was true?
“If it’s any help, Hawke,” Michael fought the darkness that was closing in on his thoughts and making it harder and harder to think and stay focused. “I’m not taking it back any time soon.”
“How do I know?”
“It’s a matter of honor… among other things.” Michael closed his eyes for a moment. The drugs were beginning to drag him down.
“Honor.” Hawke’s tone was almost sarcastic. He didn’t believe that Michael had any honor. He was a spy. What honor could he possibly have?
Michael nodded. “And it’s also a matter of survival.”
“Survival?” Hawke whipped around.
“Yeah. You see…” Michael fought the urge to let his mind drift. “If they find out that…that I know where Airwolf is, they’ll…” What was the word he was looking for? “They’ll have me take it back. And when I refuse, they’ll…” What would they do? They’d do something, but what it was he had no idea, so he took a guess. “Kill me… So I think if no one else knows…” the words were running in as many directions as his thoughts. “That I know where it is, we can all go about our lives in peace.”
Hawke wondered what the nurse had given Michael. Whatever it was, it was fast-acting. “What if I tell them you know where it is?”
“Then they’ll still…” Michael thought for a minute. They’d make him do something. “They’ll make me take it back.” Michael cut Hawke off before the pilot could begin to protest. “And if you think…” Why couldn’t he think? What was he thinking about? “This is all about me… think again. As soon as… as soon as they find out…” What would they find out? That’s right. “That I know where it is, they’ll… kill you to- to…” the word escaped him. He used the only word he could think of. “Stop you from stopping me.”
Hawke watched Michael struggle to stay awake. Whatever he’d been given was a fast-acting sedative. “We have a deal.”
“Prove...” Michael fought to get the right words in the right order, but it was becoming harder by the second as the drugs pulled him down into darkness. He gave up fighting for the words. It was a losing battle. “Prove it.”
Sleep beckoned, but Michael didn’t want to sleep. Every time he fell asleep, he did so with the knowledge that he might very well wake up on the ceiling again. That, more than anything else, scared him.
Hawke glared at him for a moment before turning to leave. He stopped when he saw Santini in the doorway.
“He won’t take it back String.”
“Yeah? How do you know? We don’t know anything about him.”
“I know a bit more than you think,” Santini said firmly. “And I know that he’s a man of his word.”
Hawke shook his head.
“What are you going to do if he does take it back? You can’t take him to court. If you did, you’d be in a world of shit for stealing and illegally possessing government property. He’s just recovering it.”
“But he said I could keep it,” Hawke countered.
“Prove it.” Santini folded his arms across his chest. “Did you sign a contract? I didn’t, and I know he didn’t.”
“Who’s side are you on?” Hawke shoved past Santini and left the hospital.
Santini could almost see the spy’s reaction to Hawke’s remark.
I know where it is, so I can take it back any time I want. And if they find out that I know, you’re dead and I still take it back. Either way, young man, you’re screwed.
Michael had effectively backed Hawke into the same corner that he always thought he’d had the spy in without them ever realizing it.
“Always one step ahead,” Santini shook his head. He watched Michael for a moment then closed the door quietly.