Conway walked to the window and looked outside. A thin, wiry man with spiked blond hair and a lit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth was jogging over to them: Chris Evans, Dixon's jump instructor and partner.
Conway went back outside and rejoined Dixon, who refused to look at him.
"Time for takeoff," Chris Evans said in that long, trademark Texas drawl. His eyes shifted down to the breakfast splatter on the ground.
A grin tugged on the corner of his mouth.
"You boys sure you're up for this?" he asked.
"I am," Dixon said and moved past Conway without a glance or word and trotted down the slope of grass that led to the runway. Evans watched after him, taking a long drag off his cigarette.
"Puking always happens the first time out," Evans said.
"Better he got it out now than when he's falling through the air. I can't tell you how many times that I've had jumpers spew all over me."
Evans turned to Conway.
"But I guess you've seen all that, since you've done this before. I see you packed your own chute."
"I had it in the car," Conway said, not really hearing himself.
Unconsciously, he scratched the scar on his collarbone.
Dix couldn't stay mad. Once he got to the plane's door, he turned around and, typical Dix, he smiled and motioned for Conway to join him.
Evans said, "Time's ticking, my brother. We got a full docket today.
You joining us or bowing out?"
Not right, it still doesn't feel right, goddammit.
Decision time, yes or no?
Conway boarded the plane.
Deep in the woods, less than half a mile away from the runway, Gunther Prad sat with his back against a tree, his hands folded across his lap, his entire body covered by a blanket that was in turn covered with actual leaves and tree branches. The blanket was critical in another way; it prevented a satellite from picking up his heat signature. As long as Gunther stayed under it, the CIA wouldn't know he was here.
Strapped across his shaved head was a pair of Viper binoculars. They were hooked into a specialized computer part of the army's MARS. system. The computer took what Gunther saw on his headset and transmitted the real-time images directly to the computer screen in Faust's Austin condo. From the open hole in the blanket, Gunther watched as Steve Conway, lead team member of the secret CIA unit called IWAC, boarded the small Cessna.
Gunther had wanted to break into Delburn, the fictitious consulting company back in Austin. All those computers hooked directly into the CIA; man, the place was a gold mine just waiting to be tapped. It wouldn't take much to figure out a way to bypass the building's security. Once inside he could hack his way inside the company's computer network. Gunther was no script kiddie; he was a professional hacker. Bypassing the security and then raiding the databases to see what the CIA had on Angel Eyes, Gunther could do it blindfolded. After that, he would plant a sniffer program on the line that would record the group's passwords, activities, you name it, and then encrypt the info and bounce it all over the Internet so it couldn't be traced. A simple process, he had done it hundreds of times and not once had he got caught.
Faust wasn't interested.
Faust listened he always listened and sometimes paused to ask questions, but in the end had said no. Gunther knew better than to press for an explanation. He figured Faust already had someone working on the inside, maybe a mole within the CIA, someone with access to IWAC. Faust, Gunther knew, had contacts in all the major agencies.
Faust never mentioned who this CIA contact might be or if this person did, in fact, exist. That didn't mean he was trying to hide the truth.
He had been very up front with his reasons behind stealing the technology: "It's up to people like us to protect the good and the innocent. That's who we are, Gunther. That's what we're about. Always remember that."
Gunther trusted Faust. His debt to the man was a large one.
Gunther had been fourteen and homeless, forced to live on the streets of Prague after being kicked out of the house by his cunt of a mother, a goddamn whore. She was pretty for her age and always had a man in her bed. Sometimes late at night, when the groans cut his sleep, he would walk over to her bedroom and in the space between the opened door he would look inside the room full of candlelight and see his naked mother being straddled by a man, usually an older teenage boy (and sometimes, but not often, it was someone Gunther knew). Gunther's attention always drifted toward the men. He liked men. At least he thought he did.
Gunther sought refuge in the local gym around the corner from his house. The gym was this musty-smelling basement of gray paint and mirrors and pounding techno music and a locker room with showers that offered no privacy. Gunther begged the owner for a job and finally got one: working after school as a sort of janitor to keep the place clean.
The money was horrible, but it gave him a free membership and allowed him to stay out of the house and away from his mother. More importantly, it allowed him to be close to the older crowd of teenage body builders Gunther liked to watch them work out, their muscles gorging with blood, sweat running off their brows and backs. When their workouts were done, he would find a reason to wander inside the locker room, the steamed air packed with sweat and testosterone, and through the pockets in the steam Gunther would drink in the sight of the hot water sluicing off their hard bodies and feel a sexual urge that he knew once validated would condemn him to a lifetime of rejection and hate.
But that knowledge didn't stop him from experimenting. When one of the boys approached him and offered sex, Gunther made the mistake of inviting him back to his house. His mother worked the bar on Wednesday nights and never came home until late. But for some reason, she came home early that night, drunk as always, and when she opened his bedroom door and saw what was going on, she threw him out and told him that she wasn't going to live with a faggot, that from this day on her son was dead. Gunther would never forget the look of relief on her face, as if she had suddenly been given the perfect reason to torpedo him from her life. Word got around. Friends wrote him off. Gunther was alone.
Living on the streets was manageable. But when the free food and scraps stolen from garbage pails dried up, the hunger gnawed at him until he grew desperate. Gunther had heard of the places where a boy's flesh could bring money.
It was about survival. It was just sex, that's it, no big deal. The men he was forced to transact with were often older, in their late forties to mid-fifties, some of them married, all of them out of shape and flabby, their bodies overgrown with untamed weeds of hair, their greedy hands gentle at first as they removed his clothes and then working his skin with a desperate and often violent hunger. Gunther didn't care about the temporary discomfort or the occasional beating.
As long as he didn't have to look into their eyes and see the way they glowed with a perverse sexual energy that always made him feel like they had torn away chunks of his soul, Gunther knew he would survive.
All he had to do was close his eyes and he could transport himself inside the dream world he had built, a place of constant blue skies and oceans and streets that didn't reek of dog shit, a warm sun, and a house with the kind of parents who could see the love inside the heart of a fourteen-year-old boy. The dream would die in the morning's harsh gray light.
The defining moment came on a winter evening. The man was a well-dressed foreigner from the United States who had been gentle, even loving, in bed. The man was buckling up his pants when his hands started shaking and he broke down and cried. Gunther had recognized his torment. He put a hand on the man's shoulder and told him it was okay to be gay, that he understood. The man's face twisted, and he turned around so fast that Gunther couldn't prevent the storm of fists from hailing down on him.
The air was cold, the wind biting into his skin like nails when Gunther bolted outside. He turned into an alley and found a stairwell that was out of the wind. He sat down and wrapped his coat around him and cried more out of anger than from the throbbing mess of welts and cuts. He touched his nose. It was bleeding.
"Don't worry, Gunther. It's not broken. Tilt your head back and the bleeding will stop."
Gunther looked up. An older man in what looked like a blue suit under a long black cashmere coat stood with his hands folded behind his back.
His head was shaved, his skin pale and stretched close to the bone.
"What do you hate more, Gunther? Your mother or the fact that you're a whore just like her?"
The man's deep voice was pleasant, though oddly flat, with a distinct monotone quality that reminded Gunther of the space ship's voice from that movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The man came toward him, speaking.
"How would you like to start your life over? Leave all of this behind?"
"Who are you?" Gunther asked.
"The person who can make it happen. I can give you the world you dream about."
Gunther tried to see the angle, couldn't.
"In exchange for what?"
"Loyalty."
"Loyalty," Gunther repeated.
"That and one other item, by far the most important." The man knelt down and handed him a handkerchief. His blue eyes were as bright and clear and as warm as the morning sky from Gunther's dreams.
"Under no circumstances do I tolerate lying," the man said.
"Always tell me the truth, even to the most personal, and sometimes embarrassing questions."
Loyalty and don't lie? It couldn't be that simple.
"And I have to do what, blow you once a day?"
"No need to be crude, Gunther. You're a good-looking boy, but I don't view you in that way. I never will."
"What are you, like some sort of good Samaritan?"
The man grinned.
"I've watched you on the street. You're cunning. Very adaptive. And you have other qualities I admire. I hate to see talent go to waste."
Gunther watched the man's face carefully when he spoke next.
"I'm gay."
The man's eyes, his face, did not change.
"Did you hear what I said? I'm a faggot, I get off on sucking " "Thank you for enlightening me on the proclivities of homosexual men." The man reached inside his jacket and handed Gunther a sealed white envelope.
"Inside is the name of my hotel, my room number, and a passport. You'll find enough money to buy a good meal and some nice clothes. The name and address of my tailor are in there."
Gunther ripped open the envelope. American money and a first-class plane ticket to New York.
"My flight leaves tonight. If you want to join me, come to my hotel no later than eight. The choice belongs to you, Gunther. It always will."
In the United States, Amon Faust provided him with unlimited educational opportunities, introduced him to culture, fine dining, showed him how to dress and act and walk so people would stop and take notice. But what Gunther prized the most were the personal gifts Faust had shared with him: the ability to sharpen one's mental clarity and to move through life fearlessly, and, most importantly, to never be ashamed of the dark range of desires and fantasies that ran through his blood. Some of the visions were so powerful, so real, he would wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat, his heart exploding inside his chest, an intense heat building inside his loins that ached for release.
He decided to tell Faust about the visions. When Gunther was done, his eyes dropped to the floor, feeling ashamed and vulnerable and dirty for reasons he couldn't quite form into words.
"There's no need to be embarrassed. The visions are quite normal,"
Faust said, his eyes free and clear of judgment.
"The key is to act against those people who can hurt or injure the good and the weak."
People like Raymond Bouchard and his IWAC team. People who intended to harm Faust.
The plane's engines climbed, getting ready for takeoff. It was about to begin.
The plane's engines were warming up, the steady, rumbling sound vibrating inside the cabin packed with four bodies that were, thankfully, not very tall or wide. Conway had only been expecting three people: himself, Dix, and the jump instructor, Evans. The fourth guy, Paul something Conway hadn't caught his last name was clearly the cameraman; a small video camera was mounted on the top of his helmet.
Videotaping the jump was extra. Conway, having no use for it, didn't check it off on his registration form. It must have been Dixon's idea.
Apparently Dixon was sparing no expense today.
Conway sat in the rear of the plane, next to the cameraman. Directly across from Conway and seated right next to the jump door was Dixon, wearing a helmet and clear wind goggles strapped across his glasses. He stared out the window at the ground, his attention turned inward to the business of psyching himself up for the jump.
The plane lurched forward. Dixon gripped the edge of his seat with both hands and kept swallowing, his eyes focused outside the plane, on the ground. The plane gained speed, bouncing over the bumpy runway of packed dirt and stone, the cabin shaking so violently it made him wonder if the plane would suddenly burst apart at the seams. The cameraman stared passively out his window while eating carrots out of a plastic baggie. Evans blinked one eye at Con-way in a gesture of shared conspiracy and then blew out a long pink bubble. Dix looked as though he was about to blow his breakfast again.
Then the plane lifted off the ground and the cabin stopped shaking, the windows filling with blue sky as the ground faded fast. Con-way's mind rolled back to that beautiful, warm October morning he first jumped, the day of his twenty-first birthday. He had sat in a plane not unlike this one, listening to its engines straining and leveling as it climbed higher into the sky, the engines sputtering, sometimes stalling, as if they were undecided about their job and without warning might suddenly quit. At that moment his heart had seized with an icy shudder that left him wondering why he had yet again listened to John Riley the son of a bitch was always doing crazy shit like this and had willingly strapped himself inside this badly constructed and amateurish machine that would at any moment give up and plummet to earth, killing them both.