The Patch of the Odin Soldier, page 11
“Oh! Remote control.”
He shrugged. “Not quite. More like pre-programming an onboard computer guidance system.”
The aircraft made an adjustment, and he decided he didn’t like seeing the steering mechanisms move on their own like that—it smacked too much of an intelligence greater than his.
An hour passed, and he was forced to admit that watching the stars as they were, without being washed out by city lights, was an absorbing and almost hypnotic experience; the moon caught flecks of phosphorescence on the surface below, and made it seem less like water than a rolling dark plain half magic, half demonic.
“Lincoln?”
He turned to her, smiling.
“If what you said before is true, why did the pilot and Takana bail out?”
He opened his mouth to answer, and closed it again when he realized he didn’t know. To have them picked up at sea made sense, but it also added a number of unnecessary complications to the operation. What Cull should have done was provide them with gas masks, and a means to pump the poison out of the plane once the deed was done. The arrangements would have been ridiculously simple, and it would have provided a back-up system in case the gas didn’t work as it should have.
In fact, the more he thought about it, the less this whole episode made sense. Why the hell didn’t Cull just have Takana shoot them and be done with it?
He took a closer look around the cockpit then, and realized with a silent groan that unless both the pilot and Eddie Takana were able to transform themselves instantly into skydiving midgets with matching parachutes, there was no possible exit to the outside from here.
Oh, damn, he thought.
“Bless you,” Molly said then, taking off her mask.
“Huh?”
“You sneezed. I said bless you.”
He took off his mask as well, and frowned. “But I didn’t sneeze.”
“Sure you did. I heard you.”
He turned to argue, and something caught his attention behind him. He looked down at the deck and saw a large handle that was, flush with the deck when they’d entered, and was now upright and rotating.
“Well,” he said, working feverishly on his straps.
“Well what?”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
He eased out of the pilot’s seat and knelt on the floor, seeing now the outline of a hatch, watching as the handle rotated a few times more, then was pulled down until it lay within its depression. A quick search found the hinges, and he knelt behind them, waiting as the hatch cover vibrated slightly before slowly beginning to rise.
Molly, unbuckled but unable to join him because of the confines of the cabin, watched fearfully.
The cover rose.
The plane banked right.
Lincoln shifted back awkwardly to permit the cover to tilt in his direction. Once it settled back, there was a moment when nothing moved. Then he rose abruptly and swooped forward to grab the shoulders of the man who was scrambling out of the compartment below. The man popped out of the opening with a squeal and was flung sideways, landing against the door with a hollow thud that seemed to rattle the cabin. Lincoln was on him instantly, pinning him to the floor with his knees, one fist raised to perform minor cosmetic surgery on his nose when, suddenly, he froze.
“Well, for crying out loud,” he said.
“What?” Molly said.
He looked down at the man and shook his head. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain.”
Arturo Pigmeo, his initial shock at the accosting passing when he recognized Lincoln’s voice, grinned. “Lordy, it’s you, you old air pirate! What fortune!”
“Who is it?” Molly asked.
Lincoln backed off Pigmeo and brushed at his jeans while the tiny man struggled to regain his feet. Once he had, and was sitting in the navigator’s chair, he beamed.
“I thought I was going to die down there, Lincoln. You don’t know what it’s like to be in the dark.”
Lincoln stood over him, hands loose on his hips in case they required a flurry of exercise, and he said nothing, just listened to the man babbling until at last, Pigmeo quieted. Then he pointed behind him. “What,” he said, “were you doing down there? You’re supposed to be in Pittsburgh.”
Molly whispered something to him, but he waved her silent.
“I was in the Pittsburgh,” Pigmeo protested. “But now I am here.”
“Why?”
“Because,” said Salome from behind him, “he wants to see you die.”
FOURTEEN
Lincoln and Molly sat silently on the right side of the cabin, each strapped into a leather seat and facing a narrow teak table whose highly polished surface was graciously indented for holding glasses and plates and the occasional hand of gin rummy against the vagaries of air currents. On the other side of the table, facing them, Arturo was brushing his curly hair thoughtfully while Salome, with a moue of distaste for a deed that had to be done, tackled the dust his tuxedo had accumulated in the compartment below the cockpit.
Takana, after hastily stuffing the broken window with several blankets and a broad webbing of tape, was forward in the galley, humming an interminable medley of Don Ho’s greatest hits and fixing a snack.
The pilot, whom Lincoln still hadn’t seen, was snoring in a pulldown bed behind the Chinese screen.
The private plane droned on.
It had taken some while for Lincoln to sort matters out to his satisfaction, and when he had he managed to keep his growing dismay to himself.
Arturo had indeed been in suburban Pittsburgh at Cull’s stern request, and the negotiations they went through were obvious by the fading, well-placed bruises that pocked the little man’s cheeks. Since Pigmeo was nothing if not a practical man in terms of his survival route along the evolutionary scale, he understood perfectly Cull’s point of view—either stop being a nuisance and join the cause, or spend the rest of eternity singing in a celestial opera where the fat lady never dies and the spear carriers aren’t joking.
“It is a matter of priorities,” Pigmeo said with a sorrowful shake of his head. “One must reevaluate now and then so that one does not stagnate and grow careless, don’t you agree?”
Lincoln did, and told him that he held no grudge. Whether the energetic if not dynamic duo had shown up or not, he was still faced with the same problem—what to do when they landed in Hawaii and Cull, faced with the disappointment of them not expiring as they should have, lost his temper. He had seen that display once before, and had seen the victims of the tall man’s wrath; Pigmeo’s lumps were mere mosquito bites by comparison.
“When do we land?” he asked.
“Two hours, give or take,” Pigmeo said with a check of his gold watch. “Shortly after dawn.”
Lincoln yawned, long and loud and without apology, and saw Salome blink furiously to hold back one of her own. It must have been terribly uncomfortable for her down there, he thought; and she was evidently not pleased, especially after having to scramble out the rear of the hotel in Maine just before it blew up and seared the back of that seductive green dress. She really ought to get some rest or she wasn’t going to be much good to anyone once they touched down. When he suggested it, however, in the kindest possible manner, she sneered in his general direction and proceeded to work on her coif.
A look to Molly, and he smiled—despite it all, she was dozing.
Takana came out of the galley with a heaping tray of cocktail sandwiches he placed on the table. Lincoln squinted at the garish shirt until the man filled his own hands and walked off; then he took one himself, holding it until the others had made their selections and were already eating before he took his first bite. A brief period of waiting to be sure he wasn’t going to be drugged, poisoned, or otherwise exotically incapacitated, and he had several more, thinking that Takana’s skills amazingly weren’t limited to the production of general mayhem and all-purpose disposal; the only problem was, the guy had a thing about passion fruit and tuna fish.
After finishing, he leaned back and closed his eyes without saying a word. He still hadn’t figured out the purpose behind this elaborate show of technological wizardry, and was determined to do so before they landed; it might, after all, have some bearing on his future.
He fell asleep.
He awoke when the cabin flooded with sunlight.
Cautiously he opened his eyes, noting that Arturo was still in the same seat and snoring, Salome had stretched out across two others just by the galley, and Takana and the pilot were nowhere in sight. It would have been the perfect time for a magnificent, if somewhat gaudy and reckless, show of heroics, except for the fact that he had no weapon other than the small knife sheathed on his wrist, he couldn’t fly the plane, and he hadn’t the faintest idea what he was going to do once he touched ground.
So he closed his eyes again, and didn’t wake up until he felt the plane shudder violently.
“Nuts,” he whispered, and refused to look out the window where the Islands were rushing up to meet the belly of the plane. He hoped the pilot—computer or human—knew the difference between land and sea, because there wasn’t much of the former and rather too much of the latter out there. One miss, and they would be rowing this damned thing with their hands.
“Lincoln?” Molly said nervously from beside him.
“I’m thinking,” he assured her.
“That’s what you said the last time.”
“We didn’t die, did we?”
She grunted, accepted a brush from Salome who had retaken her seat on the other side of the table, and turned away from him, clearly disturbed that he had not, as yet, lived up to her expectations.
It’s a curse, he thought; people these days expect too much of tailors. They see too many movies, read too many books, and then they’re crushed when the genuine article can’t produce a magical weapon in time to save the day from the hordes of evil overwhelming the land. They even expected him to be tall, dark, and ruggedly handsome, whereas he was actually of medium height, slender, and with undistinguished brown hair that kept falling into his eyes if he didn’t use a hair spray.
“Well, you old landlubber,” Pigmeo said heartily, “it’s about that time!”
He glared, and gripped the armrests more tightly.
“We will, of course, be taxiing to a private section of the airport,” the little man informed him gaily. “I think we will have a reception committee.”
“Immigration, I hope.”
Pigmeo laughed loudly and slapped his thighs, then looked to Salome who managed a tight, mirthless grin. She apparently still hadn’t forgiven Lincoln for leaving her in the hotel to be blown to her component parts, and he hadn’t been able to convince her that Molly’s appearance with the skillet had not been part of his plan.
“What then?” he asked as the plane began to drop.
“Why, then we will seek out Miss Partridge’s delightful and clever brother.”
“What?” Molly said. “Monty?”
“But of course, my ponytailed one,” Pigmeo assured her. “Our instructions are quite clear on that score, isn’t that right, my darling?”
Salome shrugged.
“You see?”
“And what about Cull?” Lincoln said, not daring to believe the one-eyed man wouldn’t be waiting for them when they landed.
The plane made several adjustments, and he gasped when the pilot—a blond, khaki-uniformed, husky young man—walked around the screen and headed for the cockpit, yawning, stretching, and scratching himself wherever his long fingers could reach in a hurry.
“Oh my god,” Molly said when she saw him.
“If he isn’t,” Lincoln said, “we could be in trouble.”
Pigmeo frowned a moment, then burst into a gale of laughter that made Lincoln wince. Even Salome allowed herself a smile, just before she took a stale sandwich from the tray and stuffed it, lovingly, into the little man’s mouth. Lincoln appreciated the gesture, but he still scrambled silently for a prayer or two as the water rushed closer, the rolling waves rose higher, and the sun flared through the windows opposite and temporarily blinded him.
When he stopped blinking, the runway was below them, making contact with barely a squeal and almost immediately headed away from the main terminals toward a small hangar shaded by a clutch of palm trees.
Neither Pigmeo nor Testa moved.
Molly leaned across Lincoln to look out the window, and as he pressed away from her to give her room she whispered, “I think we’re going to be all right.”
“Sure,” he said just as quietly.
“No, I mean it”
“Good for you. Stiff upper lip and all that”
She turned awkwardly and glowered at him, pressed back into her own seat, and began humming softly. Salome eyed her suspiciously, but Arturo joined her in expert counterpoint Lincoln didn’t know the tune, and was sure he wouldn’t recognize it even if he did; nevertheless, he could not understand why, suddenly, the mood in the cabin had altered so dramatically.
True, they were in Hawaii, the land of beautiful women, beautiful beaches, beautiful foliage, soft nights, and gentle breezes; true, they had landed in one piece, which was a superb testament to those who had created the onboard computers and had let the chips fall where they may; and true, Takana hadn’t reached under his seat for the rifle Linc had seen braced there just before the heavy man strapped himself in for the landing.
But Molly was absolutely transfixed.
The plane taxied on, the sun’s glare making him squint as he tried to study their surroundings. But except for the palms, the enormous white clouds and stark blue sky, and the short sleeves and pants many of the early morning workers wore, he could have been in almost any tropical airport. So where, he wondered, are all the grass skirts?
Five minutes later they coasted into the relatively cool shadows of the hangar. There was a muffled grinding and a few shudders before the engines wound down with a whine, and the light dimmed as the massive doors slid shut.
Then the cockpit door opened and the pilot returned to the cabin.
Molly stiffened.
Lincoln stiffened in reaction.
Takana unbuckled himself and reached down for the rifle.
That’s when the pilot reached into his shirt, pulled out a gun, and aimed it at the henchman’s forehead.
“One move,” he said, “and you’re sushi.”
“I told you he did not look Hawaiian,” Salome hissed angrily at Pigmeo, adding a vicious slap to the man’s shoulder for emphasis.
Arturo bleated meekly in aggrieved pain and rubbed his wound gingerly with his left hand, while his right reached into his tuxedo jacket.
The pilot pulled another gun from inside his shirt and aimed it at the back of the little man’s skull. The sound of the hammer being thumbed back froze Pigmeo and, after a glance for approval, Lincoln reached across the table and took out the gun bolstered under the man’s arm.
Then he pointed it at the pilot’s heart and said, “Who the hell are you?”
“Angel Lymington,” Molly told him cheerfully, unfastening her seat belt and springing to her feet. She stretched, grinned, and blew a kiss at their rescuer.
The pilot saluted her, British-fashion.
“And who the hell is Angel Lymington?” Lincoln asked, lowering his arm but still not rising.
“RAF, retired,” the pilot said stiffly. “And I’ll thank you, sir, to please prepare yourself for departure before the others get here.”
“Others?”
Molly grabbed his arm and yanked him to his feet, then rushed into the galley and returned with a length of twine she used to tie Testa and Pigmeo in their seats. Meanwhile, Lymington fetched the rifle from under Takana’s seat, cradled it under his arm, and walked behind the screen.
“What the hell’s going on?” Lincoln demanded.
“Beats me,” Takana told him, eyeing the gun in Linc’s hand and deciding it still wasn’t a good time to practice the lethal movements his hands had been trained for over the past twenty years. “That guy was hiding down below when I went there, after you were supposed to be dead. I thought he worked for Mr. Cull.”
“I thought he worked for you.”
“I work for no one, sir,” Lymington announced as he returned with several sheets torn into strips. As he bound Takana into his seat, he explained tersely that he had been hired by Mr. Partridge to keep an eye out for potential interference, for he feared he would find himself in serious trouble as he continued with his current research. To do this, it was necessary to incapacitate the plane’s original pilot and take his place without notice. That bit of sleight of hand had taken place after the prisoners had been brought aboard.
As for Miss Partridge, he had known her since she was a child, though he hadn’t seen her in many years.
There was a muffled thump outside. Lincoln guessed it was a portable staircase being positioned against the plane.
Once Takana was securely in place, grumbling and eyeing them all with simmering fury, Lymington sighed and dropped his weapons into the nearest seat. Then he took a massive yellowed and torn handkerchief from his hip pocket, shook it out and began to rub at his face vigorously. Though it was increasingly warm in the cabin, Lincoln didn’t see the need for such a thorough going-over until, when the handkerchief lowered, he saw the man’s face.
“Well, damn and double-damn. I thought you were a bit young to be retired.”
Lymington, once his expertly applied makeup was removed and the handkerchief replaced, bowed and smiled. “I’ll be sixty-one come December, sir. Keep myself in shape.”
Someone pounded on the exit door.
Molly tied towel-gags around the mouths of their prisoners, then gathered up the weapons and distributed them with appropriate comments on their efficacy. She then gestured Lincoln into the seat nearest the door, took the one behind him, and nodded to the pilot, who took a deep breath, smoothed down his uniform, cranked open the door, and stepped back deferentially, with his gun hidden by his right side.
The air that rushed in was hot, extremely humid, and Salome whimpered in dismay as her hair began to curl visibly.
