We piled into the helicopter, which was one of those big military types that sat seven with room for gunners on both sides. I sat next to Bennacio and Natalia in the seat at the back. My butt was hardly on the cushion when we were airborne, dipping hard to the left as we climbed, and I could taste soured cheese as my stomach came up toward my throat. Natalia was still barefoot and I thought her feet must be freezing in the swirling air inside the open hold. Cabiri and Mike Arnold sat across from us, and Mike was smiling at me with very large white teeth that the gum-smacking made easy to notice.
He leaned forward and shouted in my face, “So you’re Alfred Kropp, huh! Hey, what a boner, taking the Sword like that! You’re our century’s Pandora! You study Greek mythology in school? Pandora’s Box? You must be like, ‘Holy moley, what the hell was I thinking?’ ” He laughed and his gum went smack-smack-smack. He chewed gum like he was angry at it.
He looked at Natalia. “Don’t think we’ve met. Mike Arnold, how ya doin’?”
Natalia just stared at him. He didn’t let it faze him, though. He gave her a wink and turned to Bennacio.
“So anyway, you were asking how I found you. Of course, we knew when and where you crossed the border. Then a couple hours ago we got the intel on the little number you guys did on Kaczmarczyk, so it wasn’t brain surgery figuring you were probably gone to ground with Cabiri.”
“Your arrival was most . . . fortuitous,” Bennacio said.
“Like the cavalry, huh?”
“Where are you taking us?” Bennacio asked.
“We’re giving you a ride across the pond, Benny. See, there’s been a development.”
“What development?”
He glanced at me, then said, “That’s classified.”
“Mogart has contacted you,” Bennacio said. It wasn’t a question.
“That’s classified, Benny. Class-i-fied.” He flashed a meaningless smile in my direction.
“You have made an offer to buy the Sword and he has accepted.”
“I’m beginning to think we have a communication problem here,” Mike shouted at him over the roar of the engine. “We’ve taken full jurisdiction over this little matter and I’m not authorized to tell you anything else!”
Cabiri turned his head and pretended to spit. I had seen him make that gesture once before, and as I stared at Mike Arnold it hit me I was looking at an agent of OIPEP.
We were in the air only about twenty minutes when the helicopter made a wide loop and started to descend. Mike looked at his watch, pulled a gun from his Windbreaker pocket, and held it loosely in his lap. He noticed me staring at it.
“A nine-millimeter Glock! Wanna hold it?” he asked me. I shook my head. He smiled, smacking on the gum. Mike Arnold clearly didn’t share Bennacio’s opinion that guns were barbaric. I got the feeling Mike Arnold liked guns—a lot.
The morning sun was just visible below the cloud cover that was pulled across the sky as we touched down. It felt cold enough to snow, and the wind was kicking up. We were at another airfield. About a hundred yards away was a military cargo plane parked on the runway, its huge back door open to a blackness like the inside of a gigantic mouth.
I followed Mike and Cabiri out of the helicopter, but Bennacio stayed inside with Natalia. It looked like they were having another argument, and Natalia’s eyes were shining with tears. Bennacio tried to get up, but she put a hand on his arm and it was pretty clear to me she was pleading with him not to go. He shook his head and kissed her cheek before joining us in the tornado beneath the helicopter’s spinning blades.
“All set then?” Mike asked. “Great!” He started across the tarmac toward the cargo plane, but nobody followed him. Bennacio turned to Cabiri.
“I am coming with you!” Cabiri shouted at him.
“No. You must stay with Natalia. While I live she is in danger. Keep her safe, Cabiri!”
He turned to me. “I will say good-bye to you now, Kropp. Though not himself a knight, Cabiri is a Friend of the Sword and will help you home if that is what you wish.”
Deep shadows crept along his mouth and under his deep-set gray eyes. He looked very old, and tired. “My path is dark and only heaven knows its end. Pray for me, Alfred. Good-bye.”
He squeezed my shoulder, then turned and walked quickly toward where Mike was waiting by the rear of the cargo plane door. I watched until Bennacio had almost reached the plane, and then I took off after him, yelling, “Bennacio! Bennacio! Wait! Wait for me, Bennacio!
“Bennacio!” I stopped by the gangplank, gasping for air. It was a hard run; I was big and not used to it, and besides, I had just taken a hard one between the thighs. “Take me with you.”
“You do not know what you ask,” he said.
“I could help. I could . . .” I had no idea what I could do. “I could be your squire or lackey, whatever it’s called. Please don’t leave me here, Bennacio. I’ve got to—you gotta give me a chance to make up for what I’ve done.”
He glanced at Mike, who was smiling at me like a preppie Buddha. Then Bennacio said quietly, “And what have you done, Alfred?”
“Took the Sword,” I stammered. Again he was like the stern father and I was like the little kid who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “And that got Uncle Farrell killed, and Mr. Samson and all the rest of the Knights, Jules and Milo now, and God knows who else is gonna die just because I didn’t want to live in a foster home. So I can’t go back now, Bennacio, don’cha understand? I can’t go back.”
“Maybe that’s so,” Mike Arnold said. “But you can’t come with us. You don’t have clearance and I’ve got no authorization.”
I ignored him. “You owe me,” I told Bennacio. “I saved your life and you owe me.”
“I saved yours,” Bennacio reminded me.
“Look, Mr. Samson sent you all the way back here just to tell me what happened,” I said. “Why do you think he did that? There’s got to be a reason. I don’t know what it is, but he thought it was important enough to have you drop everything just to tell me. You know he would have said I could come. You know that, Bennacio.”
He didn’t say anything. He turned and walked up the ramp into the plane.
“Gee, what a tough break, Al,” Mike said. “But you really should count yourself lucky you made it this far.”
He hit a button and the ramp started to rise. Something caught his eye over my shoulder and all of a sudden he said, “Great! Company!”
He reached down, grabbed my wrist, and heaved me into the cargo bay. I turned around and saw three dark shapes on the edge of the sky coming in fast, either helicopters or low-flying planes. Mike pushed me out of the way and ran toward the front of the plane, shouting into a walkie-talkie, “This is Mother Goose, we’ve laid the egg and we have three baby dragons heading for the nest. Repeat, we are still on the nest! Request immediate air support!” He slammed into the cockpit at the front of the plane. The bay door was still closing as the plane lurched forward, throwing me backwards. I would have fallen if Bennacio hadn’t caught me. We both peered out the shrinking opening as the black shapes got closer— they looked like the attack helicopters that brought us here. I looked over and saw ours taking off and one of the baby dragons, as Mike called them, peel away from the other two and head after it.
Then the bay door closed and I couldn’t see anymore. Bennacio reached around me, swung the locking mechanism down, and said, “Come, then, Alfred.” I followed him to a small bench against the hull and we sat down as the plane accelerated for takeoff.
“There’s no safety belts!” I yelled at him over the roar of the engines. He ignored me and flipped up the plastic shade of the small window behind us. He craned his neck but snorted with frustration because he couldn’t see anything, I guess.
Then we were off the ground and banking sharply to the right. Bennacio had turned from the window and was sitting with his eyes closed. Maybe he had a fear of flying, like me. I looked out the window and saw two helicopters, one chasing the other, but they were identical, so I couldn’t tell which was ours and which was theirs. Little explosions of bright light were coming from the chasing helicopter as the other one rose and dipped, banked hard right, then left, trying to avoid the fire. We kept gaining altitude, until they were about the size of my thumbnail below us, and then I saw a fireball and a great cloud of billowing black smoke. I wondered where the other two baby dragons were and if our plane was armored and how, if it wasn’t, it ought to be.
I looked at Bennacio and he still had his eyes closed. I looked out the window again and this time, maybe a thousand or so feet beneath us, saw what looked like fighter jets, maybe F-16s or their Canadian equivalents. The jets were chasing down two of the helicopters. I couldn’t see the third one, so maybe the one that blew up wasn’t the one with Cabiri and Natalia on board. I hoped so. I looked at Bennacio again to tell him what I’d seen, but he had fallen asleep.