Warrior (Freelancer Book 2) (19 page)

"With all those 'friends,' Cloyes is almost bulletproof even though . . .." Corey broke off and shook his head in disgust. "I don't know why everyone always puts gays in the same category as the gutless bastards who go after young kids."

Rick felt a chill go down his back. "What's that got to do with Cloyes?"

"You mean Wilton Calderson, formerly of Crockett's Bluff, Arkansas?" He grinned at Rick's puzzled look. "Yeah, that's who the holy Mr. Cloyes was before he arrived in DC"

He paused and his voice lost all humor. "I don't know anything for certain: no one will investigate, and all his people are too brainwashed to talk; but there have been stories for the past several years…stories about kids being separated from their parents and…"

He coughed and continued, "Well, there's been nothing firm, but I don't like the guy."

"You've met him?"

"Yeah, he came up to meetings on the Hill a couple of times. Some of the Congressmen are even dumber than they look, and he's a fast talker with a lot of money. He has a nasty bastard for a deputy that keeps hanging around the Energy Committee. Can't remember his name but he's about as cuddly as an
SS Sturmfuhrer
." He looked up at Rick, "Why? You're not thinking of becoming one of the Saved? I hate to break it to you but I don't think they'll let you in. I mean, you hang out with gay people. You're doomed."

"Ha, Ha!" Rick shrugged. "No, the Crusaders just keep popping up here and back in Montana."

"Well, I'd recommend staying away from them. You've heard of Synanon out in California—started out getting people off drugs and proceeded to turn them into zombies? Well, these guys are just as bad—they just haven't had a movie made about them."

Corey put his arm around Rick's shoulders as they walked into the club. "Of course, you've never taken my advice before. Why start now? Let's find Preach and get your psychological crutch back."

At 6:00 a.m., Rick could see the sun lighting up the clouds in his rear view mirrors.

He knew he was somewhere in West Virginia but not much more than that. Most of the night had been spent relearning how the Kawasaki handled.

It handled like a rocket—all raw power and a tendency to go its own way.

Coming off the light on River Road in Gaithersburg, he'd decided to see what would happen if he really cranked it off the line, expecting a dramatic tire burnout. Picking himself up from the road 15 feet past the light, he walked to the green bike with new respect. You had to respect a machine that would lift the front wheel up and over your head at three-quarter throttle.

Respect it or hate the bastard.

Later, when he'd achieved, if not mastery, at least a grudging partnership with the little beast, he dropped it down to third gear while he was going 90 on I-270, and—standing on the pegs—the insane torque of the three-cylinder engine pulled him up until he balanced on the rear wheel.

Last year, he'd only ridden the bike once. On that crazed ride, all his attention was on the two men pursuing him. Now, the strange gearshift with neutral below first instead of between first and second like every other bike, the "rhumba" that it made on turns, and the fact that it was built to go faster than it was built to control, all were things he noted and mastered.

Filling the tank in the only gas station open in New Market, he could see where someone had painted the original white tank the neon green of the Kawasaki factory race team. He could understand the desire to bond with Team Kawasaki—their riders were tearing up the tracks—when they finished a race.

Turning to face the sun, he headed back to DC, choosing the rural four-lane of Route 211 over I-81. Interstates just weren't fun, no matter how quickly they got you places. Anyway, school was out, he'd learned the way this bike behaved, and it was time to give it a real workout.

A Corvette fell in behind him as he came up the sharp curves of the small ridge before the Shenandoah River. Rick was glad to see that it was the 1970 model, made before they'd gutted it with emissions controls.

They tested each other out on the curves, taking turns in the left lane, and then the big-block Chevy opened it up on the long straights leading up to the mountains. Rick thought the driver looked a bit surprised as the Kawasaki blasted past him and pulled out to a commanding lead.

Before the tight curves of the climb to the Skyline Drive, Rick backed off the throttle and let the car catch up. He wasn't interested in winning—the point was to dance, and, like any type of dancing, it was much more fun with a partner.

The sound of the car's motor suddenly doubled in volume, and Rick smiled as he looked back to see flames shooting out both sides of the low-slung sportster. The driver had just flipped the lever on an illegal exhaust cutout.

Definitely worth waiting for.

They were both running close to their limits as they pushed through the switchbacks. Rick was almost touching his inside knee to the asphalt on the turns, and he could hear the wheels of the Corvette right behind him as the driver fought to find the perfect balance between speed and traction.

After three tight turns, the Corvette slid into the groove and held it through a hairpin turn. Rick fell in behind and rode the draft while he looked for the right moment.

It came on a sweeping right around an arm of the mountain—a 200-foot drop on the outside. Rick pushed the Kawasaki down into third gear and feathered the throttle to keep it from lifting the front wheel. Pulling out to the left, he lowered his head almost to the tank to cheat the wind, and pulled past.

It felt like slow motion. He stayed locked into what he knew was the best position at precisely the top possible speed and gained on the car by inches. Coming out, the road swooped immediately into a left; instantly, Rick was on the inside line and pulling away.

It was a moment of pure speed and balance. A crystalline clarity of mind he so desperately needed.

He knew that if they were on the road, the state troopers would be waiting at the summit. He slowed the bike, sat up, and turned in the seat, giving a thumbs-up to the driver. He waved and Rick could see the wide grin that split his face—he knew there were no losers—it hadn't been a race. The big car's engine suddenly sounded stifled as the exhaust was redirected through the mufflers.

At the top of the ridge, Rick pulled off and parked the bike. The sun was full, and he could see the trees give way to fields and roads and parking lots. The white spire of the Washington Monument was a tiny point on the horizon.

He lit a cigarette with the snap of the Zippo and sat back and relaxed, shaking the vibrations out of his arms and hands. It had been a great run. He managed to smoke two cigarettes before the memories of head-high elephant grass, blood-soaked mud, and the incessant, terrifying buzz-zip of incoming rounds returned.

Two steps and a hundred-foot drop.

Rick tried not to think about what was beneath him and to concentrate on what was in front of him. The Shenandoah Valley stretched away under a perfect blue sky. The fields were all shades of bright green, the tree lots and forest a uniform darker green, and the river a wriggle of blue at the bottom of the mountains.

The breeze picked up just a bit, and the blue hang glider on his back lifted slightly. He looked up and, once again, went through the pre-flight check: kingpost, control bar, harness, tension wire left, tension wire right.

It all looked good.

Time to review the flight plan. In the middle distance was the landing zone: a dirt road that showed its orange dust just past the river and what looked like a postage-stamp-sized green meadow.

Of course, it was over two miles away, but it still looked damned small.

He ran through the lessons learned in last weekend's trial runs on the gentle slope of a cow pasture west of Frederick. Rogallo wing hang gliders were still so new that there weren't many skilled pilots around to give lessons. He'd spent the day with Eps and Steve, the three of them taking turns reading from the spiral-bound book of instructions and shouting guidance and encouragement to whoever was flying. The fact that each participant's idea of the proper guidance tended to be different added to the fun.

The flight where Rick finally got it, he ended up making an almost perfect landing on an exceptionally startled cow. Luckily, the cow went left; Rick went right and safely skidded to a stop in a fresh cow patty.

They'd discussed whether to continue on the small slopes, but they could already tell that the only pilots who truly flew were those who jumped off a damn mountain. There wasn't a learning curve—it was cow pasture or goddamn cliff, your choice.

This led to today's flight. Two miles out, a thousand feet down. They were flying off the western side of the Blue Ridge where you could catch the lift from the constant westerly breezes as they flowed over the mountains.

That was the theory.

Doing this for real was frightening. Rick reminded himself that the trick was to set a series of three actions: the first two were easy, and the third just happened.

That's how a firing squad worked, after all.

He took a deep breath, pulled the kite up to a level position, feeling the lift of the wing like an umbrella in a storm, and took two steps forward.

It was just as terrifying as expected. Even as he realized he was falling to his death in possibly the stupidest mistake of a life filled with dumbass mistakes, he remembered the steps he'd tried to hammer into his brain all week.

Pull in on the bar and dive.

That was tough because while his rational mind knew he needed air speed to keep the wing filled and avoid a stall, every muscle in his arms wanted to hit the brakes, slow down, stop rushing toward those trees.

Stalls were bad, he thought, because a low airspeed stall was the difference between flying free under a beautiful blue wing and falling with a useless mess of lightweight nylon, aluminum tubes, and guy-wires on his back. Try to avoid that.

So he kept the bar tucked into his torso, watched the trees rush toward him, and counted to three. Then, he slowly pushed out on the control bar, felt the wing rotate around his center of gravity, and then the blessed lift as the wing filled with air.

It was pure joy.

He swooped through a heart-stopping change from the vertical to the horizontal and had to remember to pull the bar back just a bit so he wouldn't lose that precious airspeed.

Damn! He was flying.

The wind seemed to fill his brain; he could hear the whoosh through the posts and guy wires, feel it create the firm support of the wing above him. His eyes were open, but he couldn't see.

Pilot blindness.

OK, he'd read about this. The world around you was suddenly all new, intense sights, sounds, and sensations flooding in; your brain simply couldn't process it all, and sight went first. He worked to stay calm, to listen to the wind, feel the lift, and, suddenly, he was hundreds of feet above the ground with the beautiful greens of the river valley laid out before him.

The little piece of ribbon at the sharp tip of the front was steady and swinging a bit to the left. He moved the bar a bit to the right and felt the wing immediately soar to the left—closer to the wind.

He looked back, trying to spot Eps' rusted-out Impala SS that they'd used to bring the kite up. He was already hundreds of yards from the Skyline Drive where he'd launched, but he'd regained most of the altitude he'd lost in the takeoff, and the worn, soft-edged slopes of the Blue Ridge were falling away beneath him.

Then the wing reacted violently to the twisting of his body, and he jerked his head to the front and tried to spot the landing field. It all looked so different from when he had his feet on solid ground, but he found the blue of the Shenandoah, then the dirt road, and finally the small pasture where he was supposed to land.

As he got accustomed to the sensations, he began to take long, smooth turns. Moving the bar sideways and in toward his stomach put the kite into the turn without losing speed. He could feel the pull and swing of the turns all through his body. It was a feeling of pure flight—easy to forget the wing as the balance of body, harness and lift surface all mingled into a single sensation. Changing direction or speed was frightening, but in a way that was very much like the swoop and lift of a bike; the proper word was "exhilarating," he decided.

With a start, he realized that the river was amazingly close. He needed to lose altitude and line up for landing. He was a bit too high so he made a wide 360-degree circle to the right, the world sweeping past him until he straightened out.

OK, it was more like a 300-degree turn but not bad for a first try, he thought. Another swing of the control bar to the right, and he was lined up on the pasture.

He slowly, carefully pushed out to pivot the wing's front up and lose speed. Suddenly, he heard the chatter of slack nylon from behind him that warned of a stall and yanked the bar back. The kite shuddered, seemed to pause, and then dove out of the stall.

He thought, "I just might live through this, but it's not going to be pretty."

Sweeping over the river, he spotted his ground crew. Eve, Sage, and Kristee were waving from the edge of the field where they'd parked the bus. Sage was screaming encouragement.

He was about 20 feet up when he came over the fence and then, suddenly, he had to switch gears from staying aloft to getting down. He feathered the tip up until he felt the stall again—on purpose this time—and then tucked it down, dropping quickly to the long grass. He leveled out inches above the ground and pushed the bar all the way forward, using the wing as an airbrake that dumped him hard into a skidding slide on the grass.

He knew that he was supposed to land running, but everything had sped up pretty violently at the end, and he just lay on the grass smelling the richness of spring and relished what he'd done right. It seemed as if all the strength had evaporated from his body. He didn't move, listening to the sound of Sage racing across the damp grass in her pink Wellington boots.