Chapter 17

 

La Libertad oozed like a great brown sore from the crusty foothills of the Jaguar Mountains to the sea. Sonja banked Mariposa around as gently as possible to give Harry an all-points view. Harry was getting better about flying, but he still white-knuckled it the whole way.

Industry met the sea at La Libertad, fouling the lucrative bathing beaches and the mandatory air alike with its thick, brown scum. Pollution was the Satan that President Garcia had sworn to smite when the Children of Eden won him his office. Fouled air framed the elegant, emerald islands of plenty in a sea of despair. The private grounds of the haciendas of the wealthy had long ago sucked the surrounding beauty dry.

No wonder the Gardeners are winning over the rich, Sonja thought. Greening the earth is noble. Feeding the poor is a threat.

The Gardeners promised the poor more food. While there was no more food, there were fewer people, so it worked out much the same.

Birthrate down to zero in some neighborhoods, she thought. But never a word on the news—the Gardener news.

Two large buildings that were not private stood out from the rest: the National Palace, home of President Garcia; and the United States Embassy. Sonja’s mother would be attending a reception at the embassy this afternoon and that made Sonja nervous. The reception would end after curfew, and her mother would have to spend the night.

I don’t know what’s worse, she thought. Curfew roadblocks or drunk politicians.

In the past couple of years she’d had a few bad experiences with the drunk politicians, their backhand brushes against a breast, a bump against her butt. Sonja thought she’d take her chances with the roadblocks.

The palatial and embassy compounds were made more green, more beautiful, by the scabby contrast of the surrounding poverty that they fed upon.

Sonja watched the guns of the outdated Phalanx system on the embassy rooftop tracking her little biplane. The Phalanx was outdated, but blow-by alone would disintegrate her Student Prince. If she continued her course for a few more moments, a red flare would warn her off. If she did not change course within thirty seconds of the flare, she and Harry and her little biplane would be confetti.

Sonja throttled up and banked towards the Park of Justice and Mercy, and as they lost altitude she heard clearly the horns of morning traffic blare over Harry’s groan and the clatter of her engine.

La Libertad was not a peaceful city, even from the air.

A Holy Week procession intersected a political march, and between icons Sonja could read signs like: “Alphabets not Bullets,” “Beans and Liberty,” “Arrest the Death Merchants.” She wasn’t quite low enough to recognize faces. Sonja was sure that both she and Harry knew some of the demonstrators. Students all over Costa Brava chose this spring vacation to march the streets with their signs and masks.

Three truckloads of soldiers positioned themselves ahead of the marchers and to either side. One soldier pointed up at Sonja’s plane, and another spoke into his Sidekick. A Mongoose vertical takeoff jump jet had been hovering near the crowd; now it turned on axis and rose to Sonja’s altitude. She changed course again, heading back home via the long loop up the valley.

“What’s going on?” Harry asked, pointing towards the crowd.

His voice sounded distant over the FM headset, though he was only an arm’s reach in front of her.

“Peace and Freedom Party march,” she said. “Mostly high school kids. Death squads executed three teachers yesterday.”

“I didn’t hear about that.”

It wasn’t in the papers, Sonja thought.

She had read it on her console, one in a string of mysterious messages that appeared under the signature “Mariposa.”

What do they want from me? she wondered.

The Peace and Freedom Party was Costa Brava’s legal arm of the guerrilla underground, and they had to know that she was watched constantly. Anyone with an aircraft, even an old biplane, was monitored. Her flight log could be faked, but the rationed gasoline could not. Her hours of flight per liter of gas had to match her logbook entries precisely, or the Garcia goons would simply cut out her gas card. Worse yet, they could impound her plane and shoot her.

Of course, I could just use gas from the car, she thought. That’s the beauty of an old machine. But it’s a hassle.

And they would catch her, anyway. Precious few airplanes in Costa Brava did not belong to the young officer corps, and the last Student Prince in Latin America was particularly visible.

Harry pointed off to their right.

“Company,” he said.

An old Dragonfly had taken watch over the crowd. The black Mongoose remained behind them, though far enough back to be nearly invisible against the sun.

One klick back? Or three?

Then Sonja realized that it didn’t matter. The jump jet could be on top of her in a blink, either way.

“I saw one paleface in the jump seat,” Harry said. “Couldn’t tell about the pilot because of the helmet.”

The gunship was too far away for her to make out detail now.

“What do you suppose they want?” he asked.

“Careful,” Sonja warned him. “This FM’s good for almost a kilometer.”

She flew on in silence, skirting the Jaguar Mountains to take advantage of the lift. This route took her to the edge of the protected airspace around the ViraVax facility. She skirted that edge in a semicircle to get a better look.

From the air the compound looked like any other large, successful farming operation. All the barns and sheds were immaculately kept and lined up in order. The main complex looked like a simple packing plant, though she knew from what her father told her that it took up several stories underground.

On close inspection she noted the subtleties of the chopper pad, gardens atop camouflaged bunkers, the three separate perimeters of razor wire.

Dad worked there longer than I’ve been alive, she thought, and I still don’t know what he did for them, or why.

Her mom said that some levels in that compound even he couldn’t access.

It seemed strange to Sonja to know so little of the place that took up so much of her father’s life. She felt resentful that he chose to spend his life there instead of with her, and doubly resentful that no one from ViraVax ever called to see how they were doing.

A group of deficientes, dressed in blues and reds and browns, turned their faces skyward and shielded their eyes from the sun.

He spent nearly twenty years there, she thought, and now it’s like he never existed.

Sonja’s reverie was shattered by the flyby roar and back draft from the Mongoose. The biplane lifted as though by the hand of God, then nosed over. Sonja yanked the throttle, dropped the nose even more to gain speed, then leveled out at about ten meters from the treetops.

“Jesus Christ!” Harry yelled. “They tried to kill us!”

The Mongoose wallowed to a stop, turned slowly on its column of air and closed the gap once again. Sonja tried lifting the nose but that just sucked her further into the turbulence of the jet wash and battered her eighty-three-year-old plane nearly apart.

This time Sonja didn’t have the altitude to spare and she nearly clipped the treetops. The hillside below dropped into a canyon and Sonja dropped with it. Maybe she could save them, after all.

Sonja’s attention came back to Harry, who kept repeating “Shit!” over and over behind her.

An officious-sounding male voice drowned him out on the FM.

“Shut up,” the voice said. “Land on that pad to your northeast.”

The voice spoke unaccented English. The pad he indicated was in the middle of the ViraVax compound, and the Mongoose hovered between them and freedom. She didn’t know who these people were, but if they wanted her they were going to have to earn her.

Sonja pulled her FM off, leaned up in the cockpit and yelled at Harry.

“Hold on!”

Sonja wasn’t going to put down at ViraVax. She wanted to get as far away as possible before they forced her down, hopefully far enough from ViraVax that someone would see what was happening. The Mongoose came in from her left and fired a cannon burst across her bow. Sonja opened her throttle wide and headed straight down-valley.