Assignment - Ankara (14 page)

Then they struck the sea.

The first jolt was like a hammer blow that slammed into Durell’s spine with enormous impact. He braced his shoulders against the bulkhead, his feet pushing at the nearest seat. The plane slanted up, leveled off, and came down again.

The second impact seemed worse than the first. Several of the others came sprawling down the aisle in a screaming heap near Durell as more metal crashed and tore. Someone screamed in terror and pain.

They struck a third time.

The tail came up and there came another tumble of bodies, arms, legs and anguished faces around Durell. He ducked his head between his knees and braced himself. The nose went down, and there was a vast crashing sound of surging water.

Then the nose lifted and the tail leveled off.

They stopped moving.

There was only the rise and fall of the sea on which they floated for the moment. The silence seemed deafening.

Durell was the first to move. He pushed at someone sprawled across his flexed knees and saw it was Wickham. The colonel was deathly pale. A streak of blood ran from under his brush of white hair. He looked dead. Durell shoved his weight aside and tried to stand up. Pain stabbed at his side. He tried again. He saw Francesca’s white face, and her mouth was open as if to scream at him. But no sound came from her. He stood up.

The floor of the cabin heaved up and down uncertainly. The sound of the sea came through the twisted metal sides of the cabin. Water poured in a thin stream, as if from a hose, through one of the holes torn by the MIGs bullets. It sprayed them all with an icy impact. Durell stared at it without thinking for a moment. He felt numb. He heard groans and whispers all around him as the others stirred. He saw Susan get up and look around uncertainly. She saw him and smiled at him.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes. Yes, I think so.”

“Good,” he said. “Help me.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m not,” he said, not sure if this was the truth. He pointed to the flooding hole in the plane’s side. “Let’s stuff that with some loose clothing or blankets.”

“Shouldn’t we get out of here?”

“The plane is supposed to float for hours. It’s safest here.” “But if we’re taking in water—”

“Get a blanket,” he repeated.

He moved away toward the stern, where the leak threatened to swamp them in minutes. Already the water was ankle-deep on the cabin floor, and it dragged at his feet with an icy grip. Susan thrust a thin coat into his hands. It was her own. He hesitated, took it, and crammed it into the jagged hole in the plane’s skin. The metal tore at the cloth and the water spurted wildly all around him. He crammed it in further and held it, twisting. The plug of cloth held. Only a small trickle oozed in, running to the cabin floor.

Durell straightened and looked out through the small port window before him. The KT-4 had snapped off one end of the starboard wing, but she floated easily, sustained by the extraordinarily long wingspan that remained. The Black Sea seemed anxious to fulfill its name; the swells were long and dark, racing down from the north with whitecaps riding the crests. The seas broke over the wings and poured in dark streams over the shining metal and smashed angrily at the cabin hull. Durell watched it for a moment. The plane lifted and fell lightly on the heaving water. They didn’t seem to be sinking. He turned away to consider the others.

Miraculously, no one was killed. Wickham was seated now, his uniform rumpled and bloodied from the crack on the scalp he had suffered. He sat on the aisle floor with his back against an overturned seat and whimpered as Durell approached.

“Colonel, can you stand up?”

The man’s eyes were blank with shock, and Durell turned to Susan. “Can you take care of him?”

“What can I do?”

“Just keep him quiet. Find a bottle, if there’s one that hasn’t been broken. I suspect his kit-bag has some Scotch. Feed him some.”

“Are we going to sink?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we climb out?”

“No. Not yet.”

She looked at Wickham with her face smoothed into an expressionless mask, once again in the flat planes of her public character. Durell left her and worked his way forward toward Francesca. The dark-haired girl was trying to get Kappic on his feet. The Turk’s face was a strange yellowish color. Francesca slipped and splashed in the water and fell against Durell. He steadied her and turned to the Turk. “What happened to you?”

“My leg—I think it is broken. I will try—” Kappic pushed himself erect, put some weight on his left foot, and grunted. Great beads of sweat suddenly jumped out of his dark skin. His mouth contorted as he reached down and pulled at his trouser leg. Blood covered his shin, and through the blood glistened the end of a splintered bone. The Turk looked up with his lips skinned back over white teeth. “Can you help me set it?”

“I know how,” Francesca said. She pushed back her dark hair. “But I don’t have the strength.”

“Anderson?” Durell said.

The big man still looked dazed. “Yes?”

“Can you help the lieutenant?”

“What about the pilot?”

“We’ll stay afloat for a few hours. Take care of Kappic, will you?”

Anderson gestured toward John Stuyvers. “What about him?”

Durell glanced at the missionary, who lay back on one of the seats, his face gray. His eyes were open and he kept muttering to himself.

“What is it?” Durell asked.

“My bag—I lost it—”

Durell looked through the tangled piles of coats and bags and paraphernalia that had tumbled about with the impact. He found the bag jammed under a broken packet of rations, and swung the load of books into Stuyvers’ lap. At the same time, he thought with despair that the tapes might be irretrievably lost now. In the confusion of the last few minutes, anything might have been done with them by whoever had it, since those who were set to watch the others, Kappic and Anderson, had been busy with other things. He had gambled against heavy odds, Durell thought—and now it looked as if he had lost. The tapes could easily have been jettisoned into the wreckage tumbled about the cabin. He surveyed the disorder with dark, angry eyes, then abruptly turned and went forward into the pilot’s compartment and closed the door after him. He spoke to the back of the Texan’s head.

“Harry?”

He spoke Hackitt’s name again, then stood still. There was a shattered panel of plexiglass in the pilot’s bubble. The straw-haired Texan sat at the controls, one hand gripping the wheel. The sea surged impersonally beyond the fragile nose of the plane. Hackitt had brought them down safely, skipping from the crest of one swell to the next, repeating the maneuver three times, until he was able to settle the ship on the surface of the uneasy sea.

But one of the MIG slugs had burst the plexiglass bubble over Hackitt and slammed into his back and ruptured the young man’s internal organs. There was not much blood, except for some that ran down one leg into the scuffed cowhide boots that Hackitt had worn to remind himself of Texas. Somehow the boy had brought them all down safely —and then he had died.

DURELL eased out a long, slow breath. He did not touch the dead man. He squeezed past the pilot’s bucket seat to get a wide, sweeping glimpse of the sky. A distant, rumbling thunder of jet exhausts shook the dark vaulted clouds. Rain spattered on the glass overhead. He could not locate the jets until a dark pinpoint came through the lowering clouds and swiftly grew into the sleek, swept-wing shape of the MIG, screaming over the sea to observe them, crashing overhead with an ear-splitting thunder. Then it lifted gracefully in a long sweeping bank and vanished to the north.

Presently the ominous thundering ended, echoing away beyond the horizon.

Durell looked at his watch. It was almost noon.

He wondered how soon a vessel would come this way, prompted by radio directions from the MIGs, to pick them up.

He knew that whatever happened, he could not let himself or Uvaldi’s tapes be taken this way. Yet, there was nothing he could do. He wasn’t even sure he could stay alive.

The sea was choppy, setting in from the north, where the wind blew in spiteful gusts. The trawler they had seen from above was lost beyond the dark horizon of heaving swells and shredded clouds. Rain moved in thick patterns over the dark water, and a few drops found their way into the pilot’s compartment and touched Durell’s face. He studied the long, tapering wings that kept them afloat. In theory, the KT-4 could sustain itself indefinitely on a calm sea; but the Black Sea was not noted for being calm at this season of the year. Durell shivered. Already the cold was creeping into the wrecked ship, now that the engine was silent and the sea air attacked the cabin.

Perhaps the fishing boat they’d seen would try to reach them first. But even if the little vessel was on its way, it

would take three or four hours to be found. By now, other Naval forces would be steaming at top speed to pick them up.

I would be a race, Durell thought, between the clumsy trawler and the high-speed ships sent from the north to find them.

And there were other elements in the race—the question of how long the KT-4 would stay intact in the roughening sea, and how long the survivors could co-operate for their mutual safety.

Someone back in the cabin was a traitor. Durell was sure of this. But suspicion pointed in several directions at once, and he was haunted by the question of identity. Perhaps now that survival was paramount, the strain would crack his opponent’s facade of innocence.

But he made no mistake about this. His enemy was smart and ruthless. He—or she—had killed Uvaldi back in Karagh. Killed efficiently and professionally, with no hesitation. They were all in danger? Durell concluded—not only from the sea and what might be heading toward them from over the horizons of the sea, but from the killer among them who would not scruple to kill again if the success of his mission was threatened.

Someone knocked on the cabin door and opened it. It was Francesca. The dark-haired girl looked pale, and her large gray eyes were clouded with concern. She glanced quickly at Hackitt’s body and closed her eyes for a moment, swallowing.

“He’s dead,” Durell offered quietly. “Take it easy, Francesca.”

“Yes. I came here thinking there might be some medical kit for Kappic. Anderson helped me set his leg, but the pain is terrible for him. If I could just find some drugs, some morphine—”

“I think he’ll just have to stand still for it,” Durell said. “He didn’t ask for an opiate, did he?”

“No, but I thought—”

“He would refuse one, anyway,” Durell said. “And I want Kappic awake and with his eyes open, even if it does cost him some sweat.”

“I don’t understand. Do we stay on the plane, really? In this sea?”

“We have no choice. There are no life rafts,” Durell said. “Well, if you think we can survive. . . She paused and bent her head toward the main cabin. “Some of them back there seem determined to commit suicide, the way they behave.”

“I’m not so sure of that. Do you trust any of them, Francesca?”

“No, but—” She paused. “Kappic wants to talk to you, Sam. Alone, if possible. He’s got something on his mind, but I don’t know what it is. But he changed, the moment the MIGs shot us down.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure. It’s not just his broken leg, though God knows it must be painful for him. He—his voice, his manner —it just changed, that’s all. And he wants to talk to you.” “All right,” Durell said. “I’ll see him right away.”

“Please. Wait a moment.” The girl turned away, shivering, to look at the sea that washed sullenly over the KT-4’s wings. The sky seemed darker. The rain came down with a heavy persistence on the wreckage. The movement of the plane seemed more uncertain, and certain creaking, snapping noises sounded through the fragile length of the cabin as they lifted and fell on the choppy currents. Francesca said thinly, “If we stay afloat—and if a ship comes to take you prisoner —what happens to someone like you, Sam?”

“I might be shot,” he said. “Or given a big trial with lots of international propaganda.”

“Tried—as a spy, you mean?”

“Yes. If they didn’t execute me at once.”

She shivered. “I think I understand. I didn’t trust you. I didn’t trust anyone. Nobody here seems to be what they claim they are. But you—” She drew a deep breath. “Please let me help you, Sam.”

Anderson came into the pilot’s compartment just then. He had to duck to clear the overhead, and water poured in a small tidal wave across the floor when he opened the bulkhead door. The cabin beyond was awash in a foot of water, and Durell wondered if his improvised plug had given way; but his glimpse of it showed it was still sound. The next moment Anderson turned Francesca gently out of the pilot’s compartment and said, “Take care of our fiery young Turk, honey. I have some business with Durell.”

The girl hesitated, but went out at Durell’s nod. Anderson’s pale eyes touched the body of the pilot, covered the dark horizon of the sea from the bubble, and fixed on Durell. The big man looked different. His amiability was gone, replaced by a hard challenge.

“You’re responsible for this mess,” he said flatly. “I’ve got my job, the same as yours, and I put myself subject to your orders up until now. I didn’t ask for help when I was sent from Ankara—

“You needed it, though,” Durell pointed out drily. “Your charge, Dr. Uvaldi, got himself murdered.”

Anderson’s big hand sliced the air impatiently. “Sure, and you moved in and got the tapes. For a moment, that is. But where are they now? I’m equally responsible for getting that data to Washington, and I want to find those tapes before this cockleshell goes down.”

“We’re not going down—not for a time yet.”

“No? The water’s risen six inches since we struck. Wickham is getting frightened because we can’t budge the emergency door.”

“We all stay aboard!” Durell said sharply.

“And drown because you say so?” Anderson drew a heavy breath. “I’m tired of being kept in the dark. I think you’ve got the tapes; I think you’ve had them all along. You’d better hand it to me, here and now.”