Chapter six

Clarke had been home for three months. The early morning sun was still below the horizon but painting a beautiful October sky through the longleaf pines when Max Trunker watched Kayla park her battered old 2000 GMC Sierra super cab pickup next to Clarke’s vintage ’68 Plymouth Road Runner.  The air had that feeling of early fall and the trees were fading from late summer green to the myriad blend of autumn colors.

From behind his sunglasses, Max Trunker’s ice-blue eyes had followed the GMC from the point where it turned into the complex all the way to where Kayla parked, and he watched as Kayla wrenched the door open on the old heap and slid out of the driver’s seat, an attractive twenty-five-year-old with a shapely figure that just couldn’t be concealed by her loose-fitting work clothes.  Trunker’s heart rate increased slightly in spite of the distance.

He raised his camera and zoomed in for a better look. Her hair was a deep auburn brunette that spilled halfway down her back. She had a pleasingly light sprinkle of freckles across her mild olive complexion and Trunker’s camera screen revealed a pair of hazel eyes and stenciled brows that would have been the envy of any Hollywood actress. He watched and lusted while Kayla peered over in the back of the pickup truck to check the contents before making her way to Clarke’s front door, punching in the code, and placing her thumb on the keypad.

Trunker, captured a high resolution video and several still photos of the gorgeous young woman as she glanced over her shoulder toward a passing car before stepping through Clarke’s front door.  He fired the images off to Warren.  His boss’s reply came back through Trunker’s earpiece almost immediately.

“The woman will make good leverage.  Bring her in as soon as you can.  We’ll use her to draw him here and force him to trade the equipment for her.”

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The sun was bright, the clouds were puffy and white, and the sky was deep celestial blue. Over the roar of the Pratt & Whitney J-57-P21 turbine that was pushing his jet through the atmosphere, Clarke heard the muffled squawking sound in his headset that warned of radar lock from a North Vietnamese jungle SAM site, then noticed the puff of steam as the missile cleared its launcher.

At this point, he had two choices to make if he wanted to avoid becoming a vital statistic. He could dive for the deck, dodging machine gun fire and flak, or try to outmaneuver the rocket on its way up. The steam from the launch was dissipating in the trees and the phone-pole- sized missile had dropped its booster and was leveling out. If Clarke dodged too fast, the missile would turn and catch his F100, and if he waited too long, it would explode near enough to riddle his plane with deadly shrapnel. With iron nerve, the veteran pilot waited for the right instant to shove the nose of his aircraft toward the jungle below. In spite of his G-suit, Clarke felt the tug of blood pressure rising in his cerebral cavity as g-forces mounted.

The missile angled and wobbled sharply in its dogged attempt to remain on a collision course with Clarke’s plane. As he saw the missile change its direction, Clarke brought the stick back hard and opened the throttle wide, fire walling the engine and thundering directly toward the morning sun. The missile attempted to nose up once more but was unable to make another course change and Clarke smiled with satisfaction as the hapless missile went whirling into the trees, blasting foliage and mud high into the air.

Tracers arced across his right wing from a trailing aircraft’s guns, and Clarke rolled the F100 abruptly to the left and away from the murderous projectiles to get a peripheral glimpse of a MiG 17, its 37mm cannon blazing away. Rolling into another hard bank, Clarke extended his speed brakes, bringing the tortured MiG up beside his F100. Clarke yanked the stick back, throwing the nose of his plane up at a 45 degree angle, slowing his jet even more rapidly. A few seconds later, the MiG was in Clarke’s sights, and his Saberjet’s 20mm cannons shuddered in response to Clarke’s trigger pressure. Tracers split the air, narrowly missing the MiG’s canopy. Clarke nosed his plane in closer, then twisted and bucked in the enemy’s jet wash long enough for a six second burst of his cannon fire to find its way into the MiG’s tailpipe. Various engine parts came spewing out and then without warning the plane vanished into thin air as if it had never existed.

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Clarke Unger ground his teeth and growled; the plane was supposed to explode, not vanish. From outside the whistling canopy, blazing guns, and screaming turbines in his virtual world, Clarke felt a tap on his shoulder and heard Kayla’s voice.

“Find a stopping place in that silly video game and get your head out of that screen.”

“Just a minute, I’m trying to work here…” Clarke froze the playback at the point where the plane vanished, opened the file and scanned the code, looking for the guilty command string that was causing the anomaly. He mentally bookmarked one possible set of characters before closing the file. He briefly considered then just as quickly discarded the idea of booting up his cerebral CPU to speed up the work he needed to do. The simple fact was that he couldn’t take the chance a second time. The first time he had indulged, he had felt a probing presence in cyberspace that was trying to crack his encryption and he had been spooked ever since.

 Clarke extracted his hands from the electronic gloves and his globe-shaped virtual reality headset swiveled its way up and away with a smooth silent hum.

In the here and now, with his internal CPU sitting dormant, Clarke watched on his external monitor as the F100’s afterburner extinguished and the now pilot-less aircraft went into a long glide into the trackless verdure of the virtual 1969 Southeast Asian jungle; it should have exploded in a ball of fire and a shower of debris but instead it simply vanished the way the first plane had as soon as it touched the tree line. Navigating out of the game, he worked his way through two menus, saved the file in his Teikodrive and disengaged from the globe screen and displays, both of which went through their shutdown procedures, each losing their electrified glow without Clarke’s having to touch a single button.

“Hello, Clarke! Anybody in there?” Kayla gently rapped her knuckles on the back of his head.  “Still chasing bugs?”  Clarke came out of his chair and gave Kayla a gentle hug.

“Yeah, sometimes I think I’d be better off writing comic books or something. I figured out what to do about the vanishing wheels on the Humvee III’s and the invisible ATA smoke trails, but the evaporating jet planes in the Viet Nam era maps are driving me nuts. These vanishing planes are turning out to be a pain in the…“

“Done your workout yet?”  She interrupted.

“Yeah, yeah, about an hour ago.”  

Clarke wore his hair closely cropped and kept himself physically fit by engaging in daily aerobic exercises in his small personal gym and by running five miles a day, in spite of the fact that he swore off rigorous exercise when he left his SEAL team for the last time. His belly was flat, his biceps were bunched, and his shoulders were broad. Clarke looked more like the ex-soldier he was or a boxer than the computer geek, especially with the permanent scar on his neck from that AK-47 round that came a bit too close and changed his life by way of Frank Rodger’s operating table.

“Well, give the VA games algorithm a rest,” Kayla was in little sister mode now. “You need to exchange the computer gloves and that globescreen for some leather White Mule work gloves, some safety glasses, and a chain saw. Mama still wants a full cord of wood stacked in her tinder room before Sunday, and we should have enough time to get it done today if we get on the road.”

 

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After Kayla and Clarke had left his apartment with Trunker’s tracking device attached to the inside of the GMC’s rear bumper, Trunker watched them on his screen.  They were headed out of town to the north.

He broke into the apartment with Warren watching from Parsec via a button camera and searched high and low for the mysterious piece of hardware Warren wanted.  Trunker found the high-tech gaming computer with its globe screen, gloves, and what looked like a processor cabinet, but Warren’s frustration mounted as Trunker found nothing that could have produced the powerful BVT signature Warren had seen originating from this apartment.

“Could this be the wrong apartment?”  Trunker queried.  The voice that replied in his earpiece was Clara’s.

“Negative, Max. My triangulation places it within those four walls.  There is the possibility that it could have been removed without being activated.”  The next voice was Warren’s:

“This Clarke Unger character probably has the device with him, and he’s not likely to give it up unless we have some sort of leverage to use against him.

“I think I could take him in a fight,” Trunker mused.

  “Maybe.  But while he’s not expecting you, he’s also an ex-SEAL, and from what I’ve gleaned from his training records, he’s more than a match for you, Max.  This man is very dangerous, even unarmed.  What I want you to do is acquire his girlfriend… what’s her name?”

“…Kayla.”

Trunker’s mouth watered at the thought of her.  Warren continued.

“Find a way to abduct her very quietly without involving the local law, and bring her in for leverage.  I imagine he’ll give up whatever he has to do save her. I know I would if I were him! We’ll contact him after we have her in custody.  And Max?”

“Yes sir.”

“Don’t molest her.  I’ll know about it if you do.”

“Roger, Mr. Warren… out.”