reporter?'
'Really, Zak...'
'Save your bullshit and your 'reallys' for the suckers. How soon?'
'Immediately after the Games I'll arrange a scholarship for you. Then you can go to your new country, decide to stay — officially — and you'll have no trouble here before you leave.'
'No trouble. What do you think I've got now? I've got damn Feds crawling all over me. I've got a reporter crawling all over me. After the Games is too damn late. Man, you're no use to me.'
Zak Wilson, caught between a rock and a hard place, headed for the door. Boering waited until the angry runner was almost out before he spoke.
'I do have a couple of athletes leaving tonight. Can you be ready on time?'
'Tonight. Yeah. I can be ready.'
'The University Elementary School at UCLA campus. North section where Sunset turns south. I'll be in the school parking lot at 7:30. I'll be in a large limo. Clear?'
'Clear. Anything else?'
'Bring only one small bag. Don't worry about what you leave behind. Everything you need will be provided.'
'I'll be there.'
'See you in two hours.'
Zak slammed the door behind him.
Boering leaned back in the chair and stared at the door. No sense getting up to lock it, he thought. More sheep on the way. Boering, sitting in the lap of luxury in a hotel suite, could not shake that feeling that success, something that usually came with long, hard work, was coming a bit too quickly. Too easily.
A knock sounded on the door.
'Come in,' Boering called. 'It's not locked.'
In walked Lighting Sam Jackson.
'Man,' he gasped, a little out of breath. 'I damn near bumped into Zak Wilson out there. I saw him getting into the elevator. I made it to the stairs before he saw me, but just barely.'
'Zak was coming from here,' Boering said with a smile.
Jackson relaxed visibly. 'Zak Wilson. Zak Wilson is coming with us. What was his price?'
'Not everyone is as greedy as you are, Sam. Some people are moving to a socialist state strictly on principle.'
'Yeah, right,' he replied sarcastically as he rejected the offer of a chair, choosing the bed instead.
Jackson sat silent for a second, then asked: 'You got it?'
'Of course, but I have a few questions.'
'No questions this late in the game.'
'Why now, Sam? Why leave now instead of after the Games? Why the others?'
'I've already told you.'
'Tell me again.'
Jackson sighed; 'It's those Feds who came in after that gymnast was killed. They know the score and they know someone's been after the brothers to leave the country. They're dangerous dudes. I told you when I saw you earlier that anyone who was still going to go would want to go now before those guys get any closer to the truth.'
'It seems you were correct. There will be a carload leaving this evening. It's too bad. After the Games would have made a lot greater impact, more of a show.'
'Who's going tonight?' Jackson asked.
'You'll see when you get there. If I told you those trouble-makers will be taken care of, would you wait until after the Games?'
'Me personally, or all the athletes who are planning to desert the sinking ship?'
'Both or either.'
'I doubt anyone would. I know I wouldn't. Anyone gets curious, it would be too easy to find out how many times you and I have talked. I think the others are crapping themselves even more than I am. Let's move this. I want to make a deposit into a bank here.'
'You can always take it with you,' Boering said. 'Then you'll have the money in a place where you can get at it.'
'I want the money now.'
Boering steered the subject on to a new course.
'You think those Feds you're all running from will try to stop you tonight?'
'If they know what's coming down they will.'
'Who would tell them?'
'Not me. Nobody. I don't think anyone has the nerve to tell those vultures anything. Whoever squeals will probably be taken into a quiet room somewhere and wrung out like an old undershirt. Mind you, I think they'll find out anyway. We're not dealing with turkeys.'
'Then,' Boering said, 'one way or another, I'd better assure that we're not delayed.'
Jackson stared at the ruddy-faced man. 'You do what you have to. I still gotta get to the bank.'
Boering reached behind his chair and produced a plastic shopping bag. He tossed it to Jackson. The boxer caught it and dumped the contents onto the bed. Stacks of fifty— and hundred-dollar bills littered the bed. Jackson started counting the bills in the bundles, his eyes aglow.
'You really don't have to go to all that trouble,' Boering remarked, watching the boxer count the cash. 'I'd be a fool to short you this late in the game.'
'No trouble at all,' Jackson said. 'I've gone short so long, believe me, this is no trouble.'
The counting was rapidly completed and the bundles tossed back into the bag.
Colonel Frank Follet crumpled the piece of paper and threw it across the room. The tightly packed paper bounced off an aerial photograph of Edwards Air Force Base and came to rest between Victory's torch and wings. Victory was a piece of plastic mounted on a cheap stand. Follet had won the trophy in 1969 at the base's annual dart tournament. Colonel Frank Follet was as competitive as they come.
'Rat shit,' the acting commanding officer of Edwards snarled. He said it to himself, having carefully waited until he was alone before throwing the paper — and a slight tantrum.
Twenty-one years of career service without attaining a command. Then, when General Bogart was sent to the European theater on only twenty-four hours' notice, Follet found himself not busily sewing stars on his uniforms, but merely being appointed acting CO. That stung. He had gone to his room in the officers' quarters and taken dart target practice on a photograph of the face of General Bogart. He had emerged from the room twenty minutes later ready to take over his temporary command.
But he had also emerged a determined man. He had vowed he would show the idiots in the Pentagon that Bogart's failure to recommend Follet to replace him at Edwards was an act of spite — the act of a small mind unable to admit that his would-be replacement had a superior mind. He had vowed he would run Edwards so damn well anyone who was sent to the base as new commander would look like a jackass by comparison.
The first thing he had done as acting commander was double the fatigue duties. He wasn't out to win friends, he was out to win respect from high places. The lawns were cut twice as often, buildings that had not been painted for two or more years were given brand-new coats, inspections were doubled and the standards became more rigid. He would have the spiffiest base in the service or there would be hell to pay.
Then he had learned about the Soviet trawler. One of the lieutenants on radar duty had been glancing at a scope that was really a monitor of a scope operated by the Coast Guard. Questioned by Follet, the young lieutenant had reported that the image was that of a Soviet trawler. It was just outside the U.S. territorial limit and was being monitored from the radar on a small ship that was tagging the Russian vessel. The image was then bounced comsat to all military bases in the area.
It had not taken Colonel Follet long to realize that this was a golden opportunity to flex his muscles and impress some people. The trawler, according to all concerned, was probably a spy ship. Follet deduced that if it in fact was a spy ship, it was probably carrying a helicopter. And when that chopper went on its mission, the man who
