urprised they made you an undercover

Fed."

Steve shrugged modestly. There hadn't been a plan.

From the moment they'd boarded the wheelboat for Bu-faro he'd been

playing it by ear. Plagued by divided loyalties, his mental confusion

had steadily increased until Roz had come through on their own private

line with the reassurance he needed. But given their present perilous

situation this was not the moment to reveal any hint of weakness or

indecision.. If Jodi was convinced he was ten moves ahead of everyone

else in the game, why spoil the illusion?

CHAPTER FIVE

For the wingmen aboard The Lady from Louisiana, the second day produced

more encouraging results. The primary search area had been assailed by

new snow flurries overnight but the accompanying wind, which sculpted

the landscape into a new pattern of knife-edged dunes and hollows, blew

most of the accumulated snow from the abandoned Skyriders.

They were spotted by the afternoon patrol led by Nate Stinson. He had

been Deputy Section-Leader aboard Sands of Iwojima before being

transferred and moving up a notch into the post that Jodi had held

aboard The Lady. Stinson radioed news of the find to Hartmann then,

after all four pilots had made a low-level check on the area, he

detailed Vickers to land and examine the crash site.

The wingman, one of two on the present patrol whose aircraft had been

fitted with ski attachments wasn't too thrilled at having drawn the

short straw but there was nothing he could do except say 'Roger,

Wilco'. He put down alongside the remains of the highway and taxied

back to where one of the Skyriders still stood more or less uptight

with its wheels buffed in the snow.

Leaving his motor running, in case he needed to make a quick getaway,

Vickers made his way towards it. The wind had cleared patches of the

crumbling highway but the vegetation on the overgrown slopes had

trapped the snow beneath an icy crust.

This was Vickers' second operational tour but, up to this moment, he

had only ever set down on the flight-deck of the wagon-train. Well,

that was not quite true. He had made four touch and go landings to try

out the skis but this was the first time he had actually walked more

than ten yards on Plainfolk territory and prior to crossing the

Missouri he had never, in his whole life, seen so much snow before.

Pressing ahead on the blithe assumption it was all ankle deep he

crashed through the brittle surface and sank in over his knees.

Recovering from his initial surprise, he attempted to resume the

purposeful stride with which he'd left the Skyhawk but was quickly

reduced to an ungainly waddle by the buried tangle of roots and stalks

that kept trapping his feet.

Goddamn fuggin' overground. . . First Family wanted their brains

examining ... who'd wanna live in an asshole place like this?

It was not all that far to the highway, but by the time he reached it,

Vickers had run out of obscene swear words to heap upon the heads of

the shit-brained high-wires who had dreamt up this operation.

From the air, the plane had appeared to be undamaged, but as he drew

closer, Vickers saw that the Skyrider had been reduced to a mere

shell.

A horde of scavenging Mutes, working with the same expertise that

desert vultures bring to the job of removing the edible parts of a dead

camel, had picked the metal carcass clean: seats, cables, control rods

and wires, instruments, hatches, parts of the canopy, every square inch

of fabric and anything that could be unscrewed, unpicked or torn loose

had vanished.

An examination of the snow-covered debris wrapped around the nose-wheel

revealed that this Skyrider had ploughed into the severed tail section

of its companion during its landing run. Vickers used his

walkie-talkie to report his findings to his airborne companions then

climbed back into his 'hawk and taxied eastwards till he came opposite

the last of the trees where the forward half of the other aircraft had

come to rest.