The Japanese girls saw his transgression and immediately scattered. They didn't want be around when Zim realized one of his many rules had been so flagrantly broken.
Qank stared up at Zim for a few moments and then clapped his hands twice, very hard.
It was enough to cause Zim to lower the newspaper. Still, it took a few seconds for him to figure out what was happening. He stared down at Qank, a blank expression on his face.
"Yes? What is going on here, Major?" he asked, regaining his composure.
"Bad news, sir," Qank said, quickly correcting himself: "I mean,
possibly
bad news."
Zim was mystified. "What is it?"
Qank took a deep breath.
"Sir, we've lost radio contact with the gunship."
Zim seemed even more perplexed. He folded the newspaper neatly on his lap.
"Has that ever happened before?" he asked.
Qank had to shake his head no. "They have always kept in touch, through either their passive or active radios," he said. "But now all four lines are dead."
Zim pulled his chin in thought, absentmindedly glancing at a story about Indonesian gas reserves.
"Do you think something might have happened to the airplane?" he asked. "Could it have crashed?"
Qank could only shrug. "Impossible to say, sir," he replied.
Zim went right on talking: "Because if it crashed, well, that would—how do you say it?—
queer
the deal we want to make. The one-hundred-million-dollar sell-back? It would be
queered
?"
Qank almost laughed at the vast understatement.
"I would say that is an accurate assumption, sir," he replied.
Zim motioned for his two bodyguards to come forward. Qank did not notice the gesture.
"What do you suggest we do now then. Major?" he asked Qank.
Qank was prepared for this.
"I suggest we put all our security assets here on full alert, sir, until we re-establish radio contact with the gunship," he said.
"Full alert?" Zim asked. "Here? Why?"
Qank began shuffling his feet a bit.
"Just a precaution, sir," he replied. "The Americans have been unpredictable lately. You never know—they may even attack."
Zim was surprised to hear this word.
"Attack? Here?" he said. "I thought that was impossible."
Qank just shuffled his feet a little more. "Nothing is impossible sir." he said. "And I might add—nothing lasts forever."
Zim smiled a bit now. "That's for sure," he said.
He nodded to the guard who had silently placed a pistol at the back of Qank's head. The man pulled the trigger and Qank's throat exploded in a cloud of bone and red mist. The bodyguard then lowered the gun and put another bullet into the small of Qank's back. This round went through his lungs and demolished his heart. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Zim leaned back in his pillow and picked up
The Wall Street Journal
again.
"Clean that up," he ordered his guards. "And then prepare the compound for an attack. Whatever
that
means."
Norton was the first one on the scene after the ArcLight gunship went down.
He found it on the edge of a huge onion field inside a shallow valley about fifty kilometers north of El-Saad Men air base. It had come to rest at the edge of the long, narrow farming area, its extended nose barely touching a small road that ran into a small village nearby. It was rather amazing: Somehow the plane had found the softest piece of ground in a thousand square miles on which to land.
Norton roared low over the gunship. The pistol Delaney had given him had proved to be just enough weapon to finally bring down the flying monster. He was sure he'd killed at least one of the pilots, and that he'd wreaked havoc on the gunship's control board as well. Destroying the plane was never really his intention. That would have sealed forever a few secrets he was determined to uncover.
No—the plan all along was to disable the gunship, not kill it. Norton could tell now that the plan had worked. The plane had not crashed. Rather someone had landed it here, and had done a great job of it too.
And that meant someone was still alive on board.
*****
The other choppers were soon on the scene.
Both Halos descended quickly; Norton followed them in. Delaney continued circling overhead watching for any unfriendlies.
No sooner had the Halos touched down when the Marines were jumping out of them and slowly enveloping the downed gunship. From ground level it was obvious that the plane was in remarkably good shape. A slight wisp of smoke was coming from its left outboard engine, and one of its tires had blown. But it had landed with its gear fully deployed and there was absolutely no damage to its propellers.
By the time Norton had climbed out of his Hind, Smitz and Chou were waiting for him.
"Look at the way they came in," Smitz said. "They thought they were going to take off again."
"The arrogant bastards," Chou cursed. "You can be sure that ain't going to happen."
Chou gave his men the signal to move in, and within seconds the plane was completely surrounded with heavily armed Marines. They were careful to avoid the left side fuselage windows where the three miniguns and the howitzer were still in evidence.
"What do we do now?" Smitz asked Chou. "Yell, 'Come out with your hands up'?"
"No need," Chou replied. "Look."
The Marines had opened the rear left side door and three men were standing at it. They did indeed have their hands up.
The Marines pulled them out of the airplane, one by one, throwing them to the ground and frisking them. The trio was wearing U.S. Air Force flight suits. Not the modern multi-pocket space-suit type the chopper unit wore. No, these were of a design not seen in ten years or so.
"Jeesuz," Smitz said. "So they
are
Americans."
"They're three of the last four," Norton replied. "Just like Angel said."
Chou walked over to them.
"Name, rank, and serial number," he demanded of them.
The three men laughed at him. They were sitting up, legs crossed, by now.
"Who's working for the Agency here?" one man asked in a distinctive Southern drawl. Norton recognized him. He had dreamed about his wife. His name was Pete Jones.
"Name, rank, and serial number," Chou said again.
The men laughed again.
"Look, we're kind of tired here," Jones said. "And our boss, Colonel Woods, well, he's having a
really
bad hair day."
At this point Norton and two Marines climbed into the gunship and made their way up in to the cockpit. Sure enough, there was the guy named Woods, half his head blown off. There was extensive damage to the flight controls as well. Jones had landed the airplane here on the bare minimum.
They went back outside, and the three survivors were still joking around. They were making faces at the Marines, laughing at their own comments to each other, and asking for cigarettes. The Marines around them remained stone-faced and tight-lipped.
"OK, look," Jones said finally. "Just get us a phone or something and let us make a call. We'll straighten this whole thing out, then we'll let you guys buy us a beer."
But Chou was suddenly in his face.
"Straighten out killing more than a thousand innocent people? Straighten out sinking a U.S. Navy ship? And trying to kill us?"
Jones just laughed again. They all did.
"Well, damn, don't take it personally, man," he said. "We were just doing a job. Everyone at the Agency knew about it. Everyone who was high enough on the totem pole, that is . . ."
Suddenly three shots rang out.
Jones's face was blown away in an instant. The man next to him took a bullet behind his ear. The third man got it right between the eyes. Everyone spun around. The Marines all went down to one knee. Only one man was left standing in the onion field, a smoking M-16 in his hand.
It was Smitz.
"Fuck all three of you," he said, staring at the dead men. "No one told
me
. . . ."
*****
Twenty minutes later, Norton, Delaney, Chou, and Smitz were huffing and puffing, climbing a steep hill about a quarter mile from the onion field.
Everything that had happened in the past hour had been Angel's doing. He had saved their lives by tipping them off about the pending gunship attack. They had had to scramble so quickly getting out of the hangar and into the sky, there had not been enough time for him to tell them all he knew or why he had decided to spill it to them in the first place.
So he told them he would met them on the highest piece of climbable ground nearest to where the C-130 came down, twenty minutes after the event.
And now, here they were, climbing up the steep, sandy hill just west of the onion field. They finally reached the top and sure enough, Angel was waiting for them.
"I've got about ten minutes," the mysterious man told them straight out. "Then I've got to be somewhere else."
"Tell us everything you can in ten minutes then," Norton urged him. "And start with what you told me and Slick on the mountain the other night."
Angel did just that, relating his suspicions to Chou and Smitz about the failed raid and why he thought the mission had been doomed from the start.
Then he elaborated further.
"But not only were you guys patsies," he went on. "The genius behind it all was willing to kill you, simply because you became an inconvenience. A holdup in a business transaction."
"Business transaction?" Delaney asked. "What are you talking about?"
"They were in the process of buying the gunship back for the U.S.," Angel told them starkly. "Covering the deal like they were actually buying some old Fulcrums from Monrovia."
The four men were stunned.
"
Buying
it back?" Norton couldn't believe it.
Angel just shrugged.
"What better way to get it out of circulation?" he asked. "The enemy you own isn't your enemy anymore."
"But buying it back?" Chou asked again. "After all the misery it caused? Man, that's cold. . . ."
"True," Angel said. "But it's also business."
"How much were they going to pay for it?" Delaney asked him.
Angel just shrugged again. "Hundred million," he said simply. "Give or take. I mean, it's an old airplane. Who knows if anyone would have ever used it again. But that's why the people behind all this made sure it was never shot down by our fighters. They knew it was much too valuable for that."
"A hundred million dollars," Delaney said with a whistle. "I guess it's good to know what my life is worth these days. Me and a hundred and forty-six others."
There was a very long silence. Finally Chou said: "So, what do we do now?"
"Well, that's up to you guys," Angel said. "You've got two injured men. And all of you almost got killed at least once before. There'd be no shame that I can think of if you just split now. Fly over the next hill, get back to the real world."
The four men didn't say a word. Delaney was looking at the lights over the hill. Norton was staring up at the stars. Chou was looking down at his men and the choppers.
And Smitz?
Smitz was looking east.
"But if it's revenge you want," Angel went on, "I can tell you where you have to go, how to get there, what you can expect on arrival."
He paused. A light wind blew across the hilltop.
"Now, I can't push you one way or the other," he warned them. "I've already overstepped my bounds."
Another pause. "But I know what I'd do if I were you."
They all looked up at him. "And that is?"
"I'd go after the bastards," he said quietly. "Why let them get away with it? Why should they sleep well at night? They'll just do it again. Somehow, some way. There will always be people on this Earth whose sole purpose in life is to fuck things up for everyone else. That's how these people are. Now you guys are in a position to do a little housecleaning, if you will. And do a big favor for the rest of us."
A very long silence now.
"And I have one more piece of evidence, something that might help you make up your minds."
"Show us," Delaney told him.
"Not all of you," Angel replied. "Just him."
He was pointing at Smitz.
The CIA man laughed out loud. "Me? Why me? If anyone is low man on the totem pole these days, it's me. That's pretty clear now. I'm the one who got everyone into this. I shouldn't have any say in any of it."
"Quite the contrary," Angel said. "It really will be up to you what to do next. Only you know the person who is behind the worst part of this."
Smitz just shook his head in bafflement. None of this made sense to him.
That was when Angel walked over to him and pulled a small, computer-generated photograph from his flight suit pocket.
"This is a picture of the guy who started it all," he told Smitz. "He's the guy who set you up and nearly got you killed. You sure you want to see it?"
Smitz nodded, though timidly. "Yes . . ." he replied.
Angel held the photo up to eye level.
"Do you recognize this man?" he asked Smitz.
Smitz stared at the photo for a very long time. His face turned several shades of red. His eyes almost teared up in disbelief. Then his teeth clenched. Then his hands rolled into fists.
Then it all sunk in.
"Yeah, I know the
bastard
," Smitz said, his voice guttural, deep, sounding like something from a horror movie.
"Well, he's your boy," Angel said. "The guy who has been doing the dirty work. Playing both sides. Collecting a ton of dough for his trouble too."
That was enough for Smitz. He began walking very quickly back down the hill towards the choppers.
"Hey, Smitty!" Delaney called after him. "Where the hell you going, man?"
Smitz turned around. He was absolutely on fire now.
"I'm going to personally kill that son of a bitch," he said. "Even if I have to fly one of those fucking choppers and do it myself."