Arkle laughed. “Son, you’re talking to Task Force One Sixty here, from Fort Bragg, Carolina. You want to know
about behind-the-lines activity? Ask us, we wrote the book. The nearest Russians are a hundred and forty miles away in Mexico City and we got them monitored. We’re a full brigade, with the blessing of the Mexican Government who are proving highly co-operative on account of they object to being vaporized.”
The Sun flickered briefly, and Webb felt a sudden down-draught. A helicopter whispered overhead and lowered itself into a clear space a few hundred yards away.
“You see that, son? That is a McDonnell-Douglas MH Sixty Pave Hawk. Quiet as a mouse on account of it’s for infiltration. It has all-weather vision, seven-point-six-millimetre machine guns and two-point-seven-five-inch rockets. It can do a hundred and eighty-five miles an hour and fly to Mexico City and back twice without refuelling. We got two of them too.”
“General Arkle, you seem to have two of everything.”
“Believe it. Anything you need?” The general looked appraisingly at Webb, then produced a large cigar and proceeded to light up. About a hundred yards over his shoulder Judy was having the intricacies of a diesel power generator explained to her by about a dozen GIs.
“I’d like to get back. Can I commandeer a jeep?”
“Sure, and a driver. Tell ’em I said so.”
“There’s an old joke, General Arkle. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are now flying in the first fully automated aircraft. There is no need to worry as nothing can go wrong nothing can go wrong nothing can go wrong . . . ’ ”
The soldier laughed again, and blew a smoke ring. “Boy, you sure are a worrier.”
Low, dark clouds overtook the jeep on the way back, blotting out the hot sun. Noordhof had stayed put, still having business with Arkle, and Webb had finally prised Judy away from her enthusiastic technical instructors before commandeering
the little fat driver to take them back. The landscape, already primeval, took on a dull, alien look, as if it belonged to another planet. Out here, the brooding atmosphere was almost tangible.
The driver put on his headlights and assured them that Jesus begging your pardon ma’am we’re in for Sumthin that’s for Shore. He pulled over and stopped, the brakes squealing. The humidity was terrific and his short thick neck glistened with sweat. The silence was unnatural. He began to haul at the tarpaulin hurriedly, as if anxious to get away. Webb jumped out to help just as the first hailstone clanged noisily off the bonnet of the jeep, and they barely had time to scramble back in before an avalanche of hail poured down from the sky.
The first flickering blue etched a brilliant Christmas tree on Webb’s retina, and a deep electrical crackle rumbled round and round the mountains. Judy cried with delight, and after that the powerful echoing
Boom!
of one thunderclap after another merged with the solid roar of hailstones on the jeep, while wind tore at the canopy and lightning strobed the landscape so that it looked as if they were part of a jerky old movie. Conversation was futile, but the driver managed a steady stream of profanity.
Once the bouncing and mud-sliding got out of hand; the driver had mistaken the road. He put on the brakes but the jeep started to slither and they found themselves in a terrifying, out-of-control slide taking them sideways down towards a gorge. They were about to jump for their lives when the jeep hit a rock about three feet from the edge and stopped with a bump. Webb had a nose-down view of a surging, yellow river forty feet below them, and a fallen tree wedged between black rocks.
Judy and Webb jumped out and heaved on the jeep while the driver, white-faced and shaking, reversed slowly on to the real road. Arcs of mud flew up from the spinning wheels and they all turned a sodden, yellowish brown and their fear released itself in hysterical laughter.
They eventually reached the real road, where the driver pushed his nose up to the windscreen and called up some Special Reserve language which took them safely back to Oaxtepec.
Judy stopped Webb as he was about to enter his room, mud and water forming spreading pools around them. She spoke softly. “That was not an accident, Oliver.”
Webb stared. “Come on, Judy, the driver misjudged the road.”
“Warning posts had been pulled up. Recently. The sockets were still filling with water. The posts were probably thrown in the river. And there were footprints in the mud. Not ours.”
“How can that be? Nobody overtook us on the way back.”
Judy wiped water from her eyes. “The helicopter could have.”
“The helicopter? Do you know what that implies?”
She put a finger to her mouth. “Not so loud. We must talk.”
“Not in this state. Later.”
Webb had a shower, feeling badly rattled. It was too humid for comfort and he wrapped a towel around himself. He lay under a sheet, watching the rain pour down the French windows and listening to it hissing down on the grass, while the sky beyond crackled and flickered.
He fell into an exhausted, nightmarish sleep. When he awoke it was dark. He dressed quickly and walked hurriedly along to the reception area. Apart from the lady at the desk, the big ranch-like place was deserted. Rain drummed down on its roof. She had taut curves and black hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a white frilly blouse with a low cleavage guarded by a golden crucifix. The receptionist smiled as Webb approached.
“Ah, Señor, there is a message for you. It came before the storm.” She handed over a fax:
WHEN IS A CUSTARD PIE NOT A CUSTARD PIE?
UNCLE WILLY LUMPARN.
The address was c/o a newsagent in Coolidge, Arizona.
“I’d like to make an international call, to London.”
“But the lines, they are all down.”
“Mexico City, then?” The woman picked up the receiver, listened and shrugged.
“Does this happen a lot?”
“Always, when we have thunder.”
“When will they be open again?”
“When the thunder is gone. Maybe.” Webb nodded and strolled thoughtfully on to the covered cloister.
Between Oaxtepec and Mexico City, there was only one road, and General Arkin’s enthusiastic little story about the awesome gunships suddenly made a lot of sense. Suddenly everything was beginning to make sense.
Between two hundred million and a billion lives, he thought, depended on his making a telephone call. But he was isolated, in remote bandit country, and hemmed in by an elite task force.
And no way would they let him make that call.
Vice-President Adam McCulloch settled himself into the front left seat of the passenger capsule and looked at his watch, which he had not adjusted since leaving Washington DC in order to avoid troublesome subtractions. It was 22:15. A two-hour flight to Andrews, from where, he thought, he would board
Nightwatch
and disappear into the blue yonder. His head still reeling from the Presidential Counsellor’s briefing, he wondered where
Nightwatch
could go to be safe from the blast from this flying mountain thing. Or maybe they would bundle him into the Presidential helicopter and take him to some subterranean command post.
Through the little oval window he watched the generals and the military specialists climbing the steps into the converted C-130, each man an inky black shadow rimmed with floodlight from a battery of harsh lamps. Admiral Tozer and his aide settled themselves down in the seats across the passageway. Tozer nodded amiably across at the Vice-President, who was beginning to think about the hip flask which his assistant carried for him in the Vice-Presidential briefcase.
The door below was closed, the big lever turned by a stocky man in Air Force uniform. A light came on overhead and the Vice-President clicked on his safety belt. A man was down below, waving from the runway. It was General Cannon. McCulloch unbuckled, got up quickly, climbed the three steps to the cockpit door and hauled it open. He tapped
the co-pilot on the shoulder. “Hold the plane. And get the door open.”
The door was pulled open and McCulloch shouted down over the roar of the giant engines. “Ain’t you s’pposed to be coming with us?”
The general cupped his hands over his mouth. “I’m going on ahead. Things to do. Got a jet waiting as soon as you take off.”
McCulloch put his thumbs up and went back inside. He put his jacket into the overhead hold, buckled up again, and the door was again secured. One of the propellers started to race, and the transport swivelled around. Then all four engines revved up and the massive aircraft lumbered towards the runway, its wings vibrating as it moved.
Cannon watched dispassionately as the transport aircraft, lights strobing the dark, aligned itself on the runway. Then the sound of the four engines rose in a powerful crescendo, the huge propellers spun up to a grey blur, and the aircraft started forward. “Goodbye, McCulloch,” Cannon said, as if to himself. Then he turned to his aide. “Right, Sprott, let’s get up there.”
The control tower personnel watched the Hercules transport hurtling along the runway and rising past them into the air, carrying the Vice-President, six generals, four admirals and a couple of dozen aides and experts. Fifteen minutes earlier two Cessna security planes, loaded with night vision and radar detectors, had probed a corridor fifty miles east-north-east of the base and reported in. It was a routine precaution against the possibility of terrorists with missiles. Now the Cessnas were circling the airstrip, waiting to land, red lights flashing from their underbellies; otherwise the airspace was quiet. It was just a case of giving Cannon’s jet the signal for takeoff.
McCulloch watched the control tower, an oasis of light in the black, pass below him, and then there was the flat panorama of rural Oklahoma, barely visible in the moonlight, sprinkled with lights from farms.
While the huge aircraft climbed, the Presidential Counsellor climbed up the steeply tilted passageway, leaning into the acceleration and holding a maroon briefcase. He tapped the Vice-President on the shoulder. McCulloch nodded and indicated the seat next to him, and the man virtually fell into it.
The Vice-President was looking puzzled. “Bozo, maybe you cain tell me somethin’. If this hyar mountain from space hits us, what in hell’s name am ah s’pposed to do about it?”
“Balls Niner, you are cleared for takeoff.”
“Balls Niner. Roger.” The pilot pushed forward the throttle and the aircraft whined quickly along the runway, climbed nimbly into the air and went into a shallow, banking turn. The pilot took it steeply up to forty thousand feet and levelled out.
McCulloch looked up from the briefing paper the Counsellor was explaining to him. He shook his head, as if to clear it, and glanced out of the window. A solitary car was moving along some solitary road. “That’s strange,” he said.
“Sir?”
“You got ahs, Bozo, take a look. We’re kinda near the ground.”
The Counsellor glanced out and smiled indulgently. “I don’t think so, sir.”
The pilot exchanged some comments with the tower. He glanced back, looking worried, at General Cannon. “Sir, there
may be a problem.” Cannon moved up to the vacant co-pilot’s seat.
The pilot said, “Eagle Five aren’t responding to Tinker.”
Cannon put headphones on. The pilot leaned over and pressed a switch. “Who am I speaking to?”
“General Cannon?” a young voice replied anxiously. “We can’t raise the Vice-President’s plane.”
“Explain, that, please.”
Another voice came on, older, carrying an edge of authority. “General Cannon, Lieutenant Commander Watson here. Tower asked Eagle Five for their position three minutes ago. They gave us their ETA for Washington and a stand-by for present position, then, nothing. We’ve patched in a civil radar. They’re on course and due to pass into Missouri at fifteen thousand feet in four minutes. But they’re at twelve now and losing altitude. Make that eleven.”
“Have they given a mayday?”
“No sir, that’s the problem. We’re getting nothing. But at this rate they’ll soon be in the grass.”
“Give us a vector and we’ll head over.”
The Vice-President was staring intently out of the window. The Counsellor looked across the passageway. Admiral Tozer was reading a report and his aide was asleep, mouth open. The Counsellor leaned over McCulloch. The aircraft was ploughing solidly on, the huge propellers, illuminated by an underbelly light, were spinning reassuringly, and the muted roar of the engines was rock steady. But the light from the scattered farms below seemed brighter, and the C-13 had a definite backwards tilt. Quietly, he unbuckled and climbed the three steps to the cockpit door.
The first thing which the Counsellor noted was the sheer size of the cockpit, which looked not so much like a cockpit as the bridge of a ship. An array of multi-coloured lights moderated the gloom.
The second thing he noted was that the flight crew were either unconscious or dead. They were slumped forwards or sideways, held in their places by the safety harnesses.
The third thing to impinge on the Counsellor’s senses, as he turned to shout, was a brief, overwhelming dizziness as he breathed the poisoned air, followed by a tremendous spasm in his carotid artery, and the sensation of floating down towards the cabin floor.
An automatic mechanism in the tail of the Hercules detected the nose-up configuration of the aircraft and applied a correction. In fact it overcorrected and the plane, manned by lifeless pilots, began to head towards the ground two miles below. The mechanism, detecting this, pulled the plane back up, and the cycle was repeated, more steeply this time. It was on a downward cycle when, pushing aside the corpses of the Counsellor, an Air Force captain and his own aide, Admiral Tozer took his turn in the poisoned air. The port wing of the aircraft touched a steeple, sending a spray of stonework and a thirty-foot fragment of wing spiralling over the town of Carthage, Missouri. He pulled on the joystick, his lungs bursting, and there was a moment of blackness. He seemed to be floating towards the cockpit ceiling. A cluster of orange lights approached rapidly from the sky above. Disoriented, it was a second before he recognized them as the lights of a town. The lights shot over his head and then there was more blackness.