“Confirmed.”
“Identify?”
“…. Dr. Peter Jance,” Peter said.
“Roger that. Did you get that code?”
“Blew out the window with my briefcase,” said Peter. There was a long string of static. “Advise turn west to two hundred sixty degrees, make landing Guantanamo. They are rolling emergency equipment.” “Roger that,” said Peter. He keyed the mike twice to say goodbye. As Anspaugh eased the plane into a twenty-degree bank, Peter watched the compass come around. “Where are we going?” Beatrice asked.
She was just behind him. Elizabeth was back in the cabin, hugging herself to stop the shaking. Anspaugh stared at him, white-faced, mute, waiting for instructions. “Guantanamo Marine Base, Cuba. Beatrice, you should strap in. Elizabeth, too.” “Why Guantanamo? Isn’t the Dominican closer?” “The Dominican would be civilian. I think they want us down on a military base.” “Better emergency equipment?”
“1 hope that’s it. Or else it’s because there’ll be no witnesses who aren’t working for the government.” He saw her tighten, then smile, pretending to look far less worried than she felt. “I think I’m over my fear of turbulence,” she said. “Trauma therapy,” said Peter, trying to remain calm by calming her. “So what are we going to do, I wonder?” he said, patting her hand. She looked at him a long moment. “Peter, I love you very much.” “I love you, too. Always have and always will.” “And Elizabeth?”
He looked out into the deep blue of the sky. “Yes. She’s you and you are her, and I guess I love her a great deal. It’s just that she and I haven’t gone through what you and I have.” Beatrice nodded. “I always did like your honesty,” she said. “And you know what I’ve realized in talking with her?” No , what?”
“If our situations had been reversed? If I had been twenty-four and had met you as you are now? I’d have fallen in love with you, too.” “I see,” he said. Did that mean he was a better man today? He hoped so. “I’ve always liked your honesty, too.”
Beatrice sighed. “I think you should talk to her.” “Elizabeth? Why? Is she coming unglued?” Beatrice shrugged. “She’s got more to lose, but she’s not coming apart. In fact, our Elizabeth has an extremely interesting idea.” 20
VIEQUES
The C-20 returning from New York hearing Frederick Wolfe and the semi comatose Phillip C. Kenner was met by considerably more vehicles than had attended Hans Brinkman’s arrival from Zurich. In addition to the usual Humvees, there were two APCs, light-armored troop vehicles mounted with 50-caliber machine guns, each carrying ten heavily armed young men assigned to cover the perimeter of the base from both ends of the airstrip. The plane touched down in the glow of a setting sun, and Kenner was wheeled to the ambulance, Wolfe trotting behind like a mother hen. The medics, he realized, must have miscalculated the anesthesia dosage because Kenner was twisting against the restraints, evidently in the throes of some abduction nightmare. The soldiers watching from the APCs sat silently, some looking away. God only knew what the old man they called The Reaper was going to do to the poor bastard on the stretcher. They had been ordered never to discuss anything they witnessed on these missions, but after seeing so many Arabs and, more recently, Caucasians arrive in this condition, they all had to wonder. The whole business had gotten so distasteful that the Special Forces troops had taken to drawing straws to determine who would pull the duty. “Go, go, go!” Wolfe was shouting now, hurriedly scanning the skies as he ran, as though some lightning bolt of judgment was about to strike from the deepening gloom. He had been informed by radio while still in the C-20 that Russell was dead in Kenner’s Manhattan apartment, his brains blown out, apparently with his own pistol. He had also been told that their errant Learjet, which had earlier disgorged Henderson’s evacuated body from one of its side windows, had-until fifteen minutes ago-been heading straight for Vieques. As the ambulance sped toward the Fountain Compound, a lieutenant colonel, whose name Wolfe had never bothered to learn, gave him a full briefing. “The pilot identified himself as Henderson but was unable to give his mission code. The speculation is it’s Jance.” “That’s impossible,” Wolfe asserted.
“Apparently not, sir.”
“Where’s the Learjet now?”
“It was ordered to Guantanamo, but it deviated. It’s over Cuban airspace. NASA monitored a telephone call between an unidentified woman and a General Jesus Pinar del Rio.” “A Cuban? A Communist? What the hell do they have to do with this? Who was this woman?” “As I say, we don’t know. The Learjet now appears to be tailgating a Cuban airliner-Cubana de Aviacion Flight 1204.” “Shoot them down!”
The lieutenant colonel shook his head.
“Not an option. They’re flying too close to the airliner, apparently very skillfully; too. We can’t risk an international incident.” “Jesus Christ. It’s not Jance, we can be certain of that. He might have managed to kill Russell, but Peter couldn’t possibly fly a Learjet. I don’t care how much cellular memory he has.” “He’s not flying the plane. There’s a pilot on board.” “Well, Jesuswhat’s a few Cubans, for godsakes!” “Excuse me a second,” said the lieutenant colonel, unsnapping his ringing cellular. Furious and shaken, Wolfe eyed Kenner on the gurney. Despite the efforts of the ambulance medics, he was quickly regaining consciousness, twitching and moaning. It put Wolfe in mind of a heart-lung lab in first-year physiology, the poor TAs running around with hypodermics like demented plates-and-sticks jugglers, trying to keep the damn experimental dogs from whimpering. He heard Kenner breathe the word “Mafia,” and then he heard the colonel curse. “What’s up?” he demanded, sensing more bad news. “Now the Learjet’s got an escort. Four MiG-23 MLDs, flogger class, armed with Aphid air-to-air missiles.” “Jesus Christ. It’s not Jance, it’s the bloody Red Cubans.” “We can’t be sure of that.”
“I’m sure,” said Wolfe. “I’m damn sure.” Yes, and he should have foreseen it. Black ops security was a famous sieve and Castro had enough dope money to buy any secret he wanted. Well, he thought wildly, this is why we started all this: to keep bastards like him in their place. He knew if he were Castro and learned that the U.S. was about to keep its power elite alive for centuriesthe very leaders who had squeezed him all these years while he aged and went infirm-then he would sure as hell try to sabotage the effort. It would constitute a grand, heroic last gesture. Kenner mumbled again, something about hit men and mercy. Wolfe thought he might not want to involve the mob, but otherwise it all made perfect sense. He sighed heavily. The next possibility was far more troubling. “And what about Mrs. Jance?”
“Mrs. Jance?” said the lieutenant colonel. “Dr. Beatrice Jance, wife of the fugitive Dr. Peter Jance. Has she returned to the base?” “No, sir apparently not.”
His heart fluttered darkly. “You’re sure?” “We would know, sir.”
“Her last known whereabouts?”
“Miami International.”
“She was supposed to be helping us spot the Parker girl.” “Yes, that’s right, she was.
“Any idea where she is?”
“Elizabeth Parker? Also last seen at Miami International. We think they both might be tied in with Jance at this point.” “In the plane?” he gasped.
“Quite possibly”
No, thought Wolfe, with a shudder. Not possible. The girl, maybe, but Beatrice couldn’t be back with Peter. She despised him. And the tenderness she had shown him en route to Miami, that couldn’t have been faked. Had she perhaps caught sight of her clone, and started to have second thoughts? No. Beatrice wasn’t soft like Peter. Beatrice was steely, like him. Throw away a chance at eternal youth? Never. She would show up eventually, probably with the Parker girl in tow and in handcuffs. He and Beatrice were fated to spend the twentyfirst century together: he had all the faith in the world. Meanwhile, the Communists had to be dealt with. “I want every incoming flight confirmed by binoculars from the tower,” he told the lieutenant colonel. “And all jets forbidden completely until further notice.” “Yes, sir, if that’s what you want, we can do that.” “And I want a bulldozer parked at the side of the runway. If a jet ignores our ban, then the driver is to position the bulldozer smack in the middle of the runway, do you understand?” “We’ll do what we can, Dr. Wolfe.”
“What you must,” said Wolfe.
“Yes, sir!”
The ambulance pulled into the compound and Wolfe leaped out. There was much to do. Beatrice or no Beatrice, if this whole dream was going to unravel during the next twenty-four hours, he sure as hell intended to be in his new body by the time it happened.
LEARJET 94838
Elizabeth was thanking God that they were alive and that she still had her wits about her. At first she was sure that the racket in the plane- the wind rattling through the cabin nonstop and the roar of the engines through the broken window-would deafen them all. To say nothing of the fighter out there threatening to shoot them down and then ordering them into Guantanamo Marine Base, where for all she knew they would be terminated by Langley operatives. And then she had remembered the cab driver in Miami, the little guy with the bubble-gum scar and the uncle who was a general in Castro’s army She still had the business card he gave them. Using her flawless Spanish, Beatrice had called the number and, wonder of wonders, the general himself got on the phone. At least they were fairly sure it was Jesus Pinar del Rio-the noise in the cabin had made it nearly impossible to hear. Then, just as the F-15 had threatened countermeasures, the wide-bodied Cuban airliner had appeared behind them. Anspaugh, goaded on by Peter, executed the maneuver of his career. The Learjet lifted up and over the huge fourturbofan’s wing vortexes and slipped into clear air just above and behind it, exactly as Peter told him they could. Now the Cuban MiG escort, dispatched by the general himself showed up in a roar and drove the F-15 away. Yes, she thought, if Peter and Beatrice have offended God, perhaps God has chosen to forgive them. At least so far.