Blue Smoke and Mirrors td-78 Read online

  Batenin turned. The face was silently contracting. Brashnikov was breathing. Batenin looked ceilingward and saw that Brashnikov's booted toes were just about to come free of the ceiling.

  "Brashnikov," Batenin shouted at him. "Do not turn off suit. Do you understand me? Do not touch suit."

  Brashnikov waved his arms feebly. Batenin couldn't tell if he had heard him.

  Then the tip of his toes emerged from the ceiling. Batenin examined the toes from every angle before satisfying himself that they were not in contact with the plaster.

  "Now, Brashnikov.f Turn off suit now!"

  Weakly Rair Brashnikov reached for his buckle. His hand twisted. Brashnikov's fuzzy outline clarified, and the suit came into hard focus. Rair Brashnikov landed on his head with a loud thunk.

  Batenin rushed to the fallen man and pulled off his helmet, which came away with the ripping sound of separating Velcro.

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  "Brashnikov! Are you well?" demanded Batenin, who secretly hoped the stupid thief had broken his neck.

  "Da," Rair Brashnikov said feebly.

  "You have Stealth tiles?"

  Brashnikov shook his head dazedly. "Nyet. They found me again. The two I spoke of. I had to escape."

  Hearing that, Yuli Batenin became a madman. He had to be pulled off Rair Brashnikov before he could strangle him. The thief s true face had turned a smoky lavender before Batenin's thick fingers were pried from Brashnikov's throat.

  Now, a day later, Yuli Batenin sat in his phoneless office, worrying about the messages being telexed between Moscow and the Soviet ambassador. Twice he had failed to deliver the promised RAM tiles. He knew he could not honorably return to the Motherland until that last piece of Stealth technology was in his hands.

  So when his secretary informed him that there was a call for him, Yuli Batenin pried his clenched fingers from the desk's edge and opened a drawer. He extracted a desktop speaker. It was wired to the reception-room line. Batenin had insisted on this after being assured by the technical-support person who maintained the vibration suit that there was no way that Brashnikov could emerge from a mere satellite speaker.

  Just to be certain, he tripped the intercom. "Where is Brashnikov?" he demanded. Receiving assurances that the thief was recuperating in the infirmary, Batenin placed the speaker on his desk and turned it on.

  "Yes?" he said, fearing the worst-a call from the Kremlin.

  "You are the embassy's charge" d'affaires?" a saucy female voice asked in an unidentifiable American regional accent.

  "Yes. Who is this, please?"

  "I am an Air Force investigator who's had to go AWOL, thanks to your phantom thief."

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  "I do not understand."

  "I was assigned to LCF-Fox. Your man made a monkey of me there, and again at the Northrop Stealth plant. Let's not pussyfoot around. I'm a dead duck as far as my superiors are concerned. There were too many unexplained thefts and no one believed me when I tried to tell them the truth."

  "What truth?" Batenin asked cautiously.

  "About the white ghost with no face."

  "I am not following you," Batenin said vaguely.

  "You can check my story if you want. See if a special agent Robin Green is AWOL from the OSI. You know what the OSI is?"

  "No, but I can look it up. What are you suggesting?" he asked, having received such calls from disgruntled U.S. military personnel before. They always wanted one thing, and Batenin thought that the less they discussed Brashnikov over an open line, the better.

  "Political asylum. And I have something to trade for it."

  "And what is that?"

  "A U.S. military device even your ghost cannot steal without help."

  "Naturally, I have no idea what you talk about. Ghosts are for children's fairy tales."

  "Be as cagey as you want," the female voice said, "but what I have to trade is very big. And your man can only steal it if he knows what it is and where to find it. And I can supply that in return for safe passage to Russia and the usual arrangements."

  "You are talking about defecting, nyetl"

  "I am talking about the best damn trade you'll ever get handed to you. If you have any contacts that can verify my rank and current status, do it. I'll call back in an hour."

  In that hour, Yuli Batenin set his staff to work. In short order they verified the existence of an OSI special agent named Robin Green, who was in fact miss-

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  ing and presumed absent without leave. There were several notations in her file that could not be explained. The matter of a half-demolished Holiday Inn in North Dakota and another damaged motel in Palmdale, California.

  By the time the woman called back, Major Batenin knew he had a very big fish.

  "You are genuine," Yuli told her. "Perhaps."

  "Where should we meet?" she asked him.

  Batenin named a popular steakhouse in Washington, famous for its prime rib. He arrived ten minutes late, and was led past the bar, where autographed portraits of the restaurant's political clients covered virtually every square inch of wall space.

  He sat at a solitary table and ordered a gin and tonic, but when it came he told the puzzled waitress that he had made a mistake. He would prefer vodka.

  At that remark, an attractive redhead with sparkling blue eyes slid into the booth, facing him.

  "You are Green?" he asked.

  "Right at the moment, I'm black and blue. But that's my name, all right. And you?"

  "Call me Yuli," Batenin said, his dark eyes falling to her chest. She wore a clingy knit dress that was cut just low enough to display her ample cleavage. For a passing moment Batenin wondered if this could be a CIA sex trap. It was not uncommon. The KGB did it to Americans. The CIA did it to Russians. It was a game everyone played.

  "I will provide nothing until you deliver," Yuli said carefully, knowing that his diplomatic immunity would safeguard him from arrest. And if this was a CIA trap, what was the worst they could do? Declare him persona non grata and ship him back to Moscow? This was exactly what Batenin wanted.

  "Agreed," Robin Green said, leaning closer. Her perfume tickled his nostrils. "Now, listen carefully," she said after the vodka came and she waved the

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  waitress aside without ordering. "Your people are very anxious to obtain Stealth technology. No, I don't expect you to answer that. But I know that your spook- and I use the term advisedly-has been pilfering it hither and yon."

  Batenin took a sip of his vodka. Headlights from a passing car threw the woman into sharp relief. It was then that Batenin decided that she could not be a CIA sex lure. Her face, under subtle makeup, showed bruises. Even her cleavage was a discolored yellowish-purple. She looked like she had been in a car wreck. He wondered what had happened to her.

  "Okay," she went on, "you're probably aware that even with the first planes only now becoming public knowledge, the Stealth program is ten years old. By the time the Stealth bomber is fully operational, it's going to be obsolete. There's something new."

  "I am listening," Batenin said coolly, taking another sip of his drink. His gaze raked the room. The other diners looked harmless. He sensed no eyes on him. He relaxed slightly.

  "They've perfected the Stealth radar-absorbing material to a new plateau. Not just invisible to radar, this stuff is invisible, period. It's a transparent resin-based polymer mounted on a silicon-mica base. When it's pumped full of electricity, it is virtually invisible in flight. From a distance, you can't even make out the pilot or the engines. And best of all, it has all the radar-deflecting properties of existing Stealth material."

  "This sounds, shall we say, preposterous?" Batenin said archly.

  "No more preposterous than an electronic suit that will allow a man to walk through a solid wall," Robin countered. "Are you interested?"

  "I must have more particulars. For my superiors."

  "This stuff is so new, so experimental, that all the Air Force has now is a scale-model proto
type. But it's operational. It's about to be shown to a secret con-

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  gressional committee. But until then they have it in a nuclear-weapons storage bunker. It's supposed to be impregnable, but your man should have no problem with it."

  "You have the exact location of this bunker?" Batenin asked, his remote voice fluttering with the first hints of real interest.

  "It's Bunker Number 445. Pease Air Force Base, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It's going to be moved within the next two days, so your man had better move fast."

  "How do I know this is not some inane American trap?"

  "Look, I'm going to assume you checked me out, otherwise you wouldn't be here. So you know who I am, and you know my butt is in a sling over your agent's shenanigans. That means I know what he can do. And I know, just as you do, that nothing-no trap, no technology, no scheme-could possibly snare him. Right?"

  Yuli Batenin nodded silently, his eyes staring into the distance. When they refocused, he said, "If this works out, I can definitely offer you what you want. Where can I reach you?"

  "I'm hot," Robin Green said, rising to her feet. "So I'm going to be on the move until you get me on a plane. I'll check in periodically. Deal?"

  "Done," said Yuli Batenin, who looked into the woman's frank American eyes but saw instead the lights of faraway Moscow.

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  Airman Henry Yauk thought it was ridiculous.

  "What do you mean, no one's going to relieve us?" he asked his companion in the guard tower.

  "That's the word," Sergeant Frank Dinan told him. "When we go off duty, we just go. We don't watt for relief and we don't hang around either."

  "We just leave the nukes unguarded, is that it?" Yauk said angrily.

  "That's it."

  "Unbelievable. I know the base is being phased out, but isn't this a little premature?"

  "Search me," Dinan said. He was looking out over the bunkers. Darkness had fallen. It was a warm Indian-summer night in New Hampshire. Moonlight brushed the grass-covered tops of the nuclear-weapons storage bunkers so that they looked like sleeping silver-furred monsters.

  "I wonder if this has anything to do with opening up Number 445?" Yauk muttered.

  "Search me," Dinan said again. Yauk frowned. He hated being paired with Dinan. The guy was a bogus conversationalist.

  "I never saw them put a nuke back into a bunker like that. No special-purpose vehicle. No guards. Just a civilian truck."

  Dinan said nothing. Yauk looked at his watch. His

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  frown deepened. Five more minutes until the end of their shift.

  For as long as Airman Yauk had been an SP at Pease Air Force Base, the nuclear-weapons bunkers had never been unguarded. Officially, there were no nukes stored at Pease, even though it was a SAC bomber base, headquarters of the 509th Bombardment Wing. At any given time, five fully manned FB-111 bombers sat under open-ended hangars on the flight line, ready to be cart-started in the event of a nuclear war, cocked nuclear bombs cradled in their bays. Everybody knew that. Just as everybody knew that the twin rows of bunkers hunched behind the wire-link fences were nuclear-weapons storage containers.

  Few civilians ever saw these bunkers, however, which was why the base public-affairs officer was able to keep a straight face whenever he was forced to categorically deny the official Air Force line that absolutely no nuclear weapons were quartered at Pease. The bunkers looked like prehistoric turtles that had died, their heads drawn into their shells and the grass of ages grown over their sloping sides. The grass was to prevent the bunkers from being indentifiable from the air. This, of course, was a joke. From the air it would look like the Air Force had fenced off a section of the base and set a solitary guard tower around it just so SP's like Airman Yauk could keep gophers off official Air Force grass.

  A utility road ran past the fence. Beyond it, a solitary road paralleled it. This road looped around the boarded-up Sportsman's Club and came back. This was so if any suspicious car drove past the security fence, it would have no place to go except back the way it had come, where it would be intercepted.

  And although there were signs posted on the fence that warned that the SP's in the towers were authorized to use lethal force against any passing vehicle that did

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  not maintain a constant speed-never mind actually stopped-outside the fence, Airman Yauk had never heard of any SP actually having to do that. The signs were there to keep curious cars-usually visitors to the base-moving. Yauk's orders were to hold fire unless fired upon or if someone went so far as to penetrate the utility road. The narrow corridor between the outer and inner roads was the death zone. Any unfriendlies caught there were cold meat.

  No one had ever been shot in the death zone. And with Pease Air Force Base scheduled to be phased out of existence next year, Airman Yauk figured no one ever would. It made Yauk sad to think that a year from now he'd be stationed somewhere else. But it made him mad to think that even with a year to go, security was getting so slipshod that they weren't bothering to guard the nukes-the officially nonexistent nukes-round the clock.

  "What if some terrorist group finds out we're slacking off?" he blurted out loud.

  Before Dinan could answer him, his watch alarm buzzed.

  "That's it," Dinan chirped. "Midnight. I'm outta here. Coming?"

  "I think I'll walk," Airman Henry Yauk said. "You go ahead."

  Dinan descended the steps from the huge white guard tower.

  Yauk hesitated. He looked out over the array of bunkers once more. From the back, they reminded him of the old Indian burial mounds back in his home state of Missouri. But from the front, the big black double doors set in concrete made him think of modern mausoleums. Either way, the resemblance was appropriate. He wondered again if this had anything to do with the activity at Bunker Number 445.

  Earlier in the day, a civilian truck had been admitted into the fence perimeter and something was un-

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  loaded into Number 445. Yauk, as well as every other tower SP, had been ordered to keep his eyes averted, but the activity had been so unusual he couldn't help but sneak occasional glances at the unloading.

  He couldn't see much. The base commander was there. So was a woman in a dress Air Force uniform. She had red hair, and the biggest chest this side of Dolly Parton. There were others. One guy was in his T-shirt. Yauk figured him for a civilian workman of some kind, which was unusual. The little Oriental in native costume broke the "unusual" meter. He was bizarre. The whole thing was bizarre. You had to have a secret clearance to work around nukes.

  The unloading procedure took over an hour. When it was done, everyone got into the truck and drove off. Yauk followed the truck with his eyes, hoping to get a better look at the redhead with the big jugs.

  No such luck. He was surprised not to see her in the cab. They must have made her ride in the back, which Yauk thought was pretty fucking unchivalrous of them. He didn't see the guy in the T-shirt either. Lucky stiff. He got to ride in back with the girl. Probably asking her out on a date, too.

  Unless, of course, they had been left in the bunker, which was a ridiculous thought. As ridiculous as leaving the place unguarded overnight.

  Reluctantly Airman Yauk descended the tower stairs. He felt guilty doing so. Some inner voice warned him that this was bad policy. He had joined the Air Force in part because of its reputation of being the least military of the services. There was none of the gung-ho bullshit you got in the Marines. And it was a damn sight more prestigious than being in the Army, which was for grunts anyway. Still, this was plain ridiculous, he thought as he left the outer fence behind him.

  He walked forlornly down the utility road, thankful for the evening warmth. It was a good ten-minute walk back to Hemlock Drive, where he lived in one of

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  the many identical base clapboard quadruplexes. He looked over his shoulder a few times. All was quiet and peaceful. But he couldn't shake the
nagging feeling that he was making a mistake in leaving his post without relief, orders or no orders.

  Airman Henry Yauk stopped looking back when the low bunkers disappeared around the bend. He wore a worried frown all the way home.

  He would have worried more had he lingered five minutes longer.

  A ghostly white shape emerged from the Sportsman's Club. Its white skin alive with pulsing golden veinwork, it detached itself like the luminous soul of a haunted house and paused briefly.

  It drifted down the road slowly, methodically, through the first electrified fence, without causing sparks to spit or a short circuit, and then passed through the zone of death to the inner fence and beyond.

  It stalked toward the array of bunkers, going up to the nearest one. It lingered there a moment, as if looking at the painted number over the massive black doors. Then it passed on to the next grass-sided bunker. It paused at three of the nuclear-weapons storage buildings until it came to the one marked 445.

  The shining white being merged with the door, and after it had gone, there was only the soft sighing of a breeze through the well-tended grass.

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  Rair Brashnikov was unaccountably nervous.

  Penetrating Pease Air Force Base was a simple matter. Perhaps too simple. He simply drove his rented Cadillac-he always drove Cadillacs because after years of driving a cramped Russian Lada, it was a luxury- past the sweeping entrance to Pease just off the Spaulding Turnpike. The brown sign with its inevitable "Peace Is Our Profession" slogan told him he would soon be approaching exit 4-S. He took 4-S, which whipsawed back on itself, and took a right at a self-service Exxon station. This put him on Nimble Hill Road with its pastoral homes. He followed this until he came to Little Bay Road. He took it and went left on Mclntyre Road.

  It was nearly midnight. Rair noticed with a frown that while the forest on either side of the road was dense, the trees were very thin and sickly. Many of them had fallen and were leaning against other trees because there was so little open ground. Few standing trees would conceal him in an emergency.

  Presently Rair came to a heavily fenced concrete bridge. He pulled over to the side of the road a little way beyond it and got out. The forest looked impenetrable, but not to him. Still, he was astonished at the lax security. The only fence was a series of waist-high metal posts strung with three wide-spaced strands of razor wire.