A Vietnam special-forces veteran investigates a government conspiracy to build a superweapon that could alter the very fabric of reality
In San Diego, a cadre of American scientists toils on a weapon with the power to make things flit in and out of reality. If perfected, Project Vortex will make the atomic bomb look like a bow and arrow. They test it on a 727 on its way into Kennedy airport, and the experiment is successful, save for two dangerous aberrations. First is a passenger, a young man to whom Vortex gives strange powers over other people—powers he can control, but cannot understand. Second is an air traffic controller who calls in an old Vietnam buddy, Joshua Bane, to help investigate the plane that disappeared. When the controller vanishes, Bane is alone, staring down the barrel of government conspiracy that has the nation on the precipice of a third world war. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jon Land including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
A Vietnam special-forces veteran investigates a government conspiracy to build a superweapon that could alter the very fabric of reality
In San Diego, a cadre of American scientists toils on a weapon with the power to make things flit in and out of reality. If perfected, Project Vortex will make the atomic bomb look like a bow and arrow. They test it on a 727 on its way into Kennedy airport, and the experiment is successful, save for two dangerous aberrations. First is a passenger, a young man to whom Vortex gives strange powers over other people—powers he can control, but cannot understand. Second is an air traffic controller who calls in an old Vietnam buddy, Joshua Bane, to help investigate the plane that disappeared. When the controller vanishes, Bane is alone, staring down the barrel of government conspiracy that has the nation on the precipice of a third world war. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jon Land including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
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Overview
A Vietnam special-forces veteran investigates a government conspiracy to build a superweapon that could alter the very fabric of reality
In San Diego, a cadre of American scientists toils on a weapon with the power to make things flit in and out of reality. If perfected, Project Vortex will make the atomic bomb look like a bow and arrow. They test it on a 727 on its way into Kennedy airport, and the experiment is successful, save for two dangerous aberrations. First is a passenger, a young man to whom Vortex gives strange powers over other people—powers he can control, but cannot understand. Second is an air traffic controller who calls in an old Vietnam buddy, Joshua Bane, to help investigate the plane that disappeared. When the controller vanishes, Bane is alone, staring down the barrel of government conspiracy that has the nation on the precipice of a third world war. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Jon Land including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781453214701 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 420 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Vortex
By Jon Land
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1984 Jon LandAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-1470-1
CHAPTER 1
WHEN JOSHUA BANE SAW the man in the wheelchair, his first thought was to leave the rally because too many memories had already been rekindled. But it had been the hope that the cripple might be in attendance that had drawn him here in the first place, so he swallowed the past down, tucked his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker, and started across the Central Park grass.
It was exceptionally cold for spring, damp and drizzly, and Bane watched his breath misting before him in rhythm with his stride. Perfect atmosphere for a sullen rally of Vietnam veterans the country had done its best to forget. Most came in the uniforms they had worn in the jungles, the pants let out a few inches, the lowermost buttons of the shirts left undone. No one noticed.
Central Park in spring proved a gathering place for just about any group with a cause winter had forced indoors. Some stated theirs better than others, and today's group was having difficulty stating theirs at all. The moist air was playing hell with the makeshift PA set atop a low stage, and the succession of speakers had to battle feedback just to make themselves heard. Some gave up.
Bane reached the man in the wheelchair and tightened his fingers around the rear handgrips.
"Been a long time, Josh," the cripple said without turning.
"A year anyway, Harry," Bane acknowledged lamely.
Harry turned just enough to meet Bane's eyes. "I saw you over there before. I was hoping you'd come over." He looked back at the low stage. "What do you put the crowd at?"
"Five hundred maybe."
"I'd say closer to three. Bad weather shoots the shit out of rallies. In the fall we drew almost two thousand."
"'We'?"
"I belong with these guys, Josh. It doesn't matter that I have to mumble an answer when they ask me what unit I served with."
Bane released his grip, stiffened. "You served with the best, Harry."
The cripple swung his chair around. "We made quite a team, Josh, the Winter Man and the Bat—God, how I still hate that damn nickname. Sounds like something out of a fuckin' comic book." He paused. "We could have won that damn war."
"We weren't supposed to. Politics."
"Fuck politics."
"We did ... plenty of times."
The two men looked away from each other, lapsing into silence. Sporadic applause filtered around them as another speaker, this one wearing a green beret, rose to take his chances with the microphone. Bane searched for words to comfort Harry, quick and witty ones, but nothing came, maybe because there was nothing to say and even less to hold them together, just memories going back fifteen years that had dried and warped with time.
In his walking days, Harry "the Bat" Bannister stood a shade over six feet and carried 200 evenly layered pounds of muscle on his frame. The exact derivation of his nickname had been lost long before to myth, though the best information put it in 1969 near the Mekong Delta. His platoon had been ambushed and slaughtered by a troop of Vietcong. Harry rolled free of the initial fire burst and lurched to his feet with rifle blasting. When his clip was exhausted, Harry considered running only long enough to reject it. He had long been an expert on knife throwing, so he used the occasion to rocket six razor-sharp blades into the unsuspecting throats or chests of the enemy. And when his knives were gone, he charged the enemy, swinging his rifle like a Louisville Slugger. Maybe the Vietcong were too shocked to respond. Maybe Harry's bat was too fast. Either way, he held them off for an additional thirty seconds which proved long enough for help to respond. Harry spent two months in an army hospital, recovering from wounds he'd never felt being inflicted. He came out with a promotion and a nickname: the Bat.
The Bat saw Joshua Bane for the first time when Bane stared down at him as he lay in his hospital bed. Something impressed Harry immediately, something about his eyes.
"The name's Bane, Captain."
Harry noted his civilian clothes. "You from the USO or something?"
"Something."
Harry was going to smile but he thought better of it. He had placed Bane's eyes, the cold, deep-set stare and the blinks that came with astonishing deliberateness. They were the eyes of a man who walked away from every battle without a scratch, a man you always hesitated to call your friend and feared almost as much as the enemy.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Bane?"
"I'd like you to join my unit."
"Green Berets?"
"Not exactly."
"What then?"
"I had you figured for the kind of man who left asking for later."
"Count me in," Harry said.
Harry stayed in through Nam and longer, when Clandestine Operations found places for both of them in its network. And now Bane looked down at the Bat's withered frame and felt his flesh crawl with guilt. It was his fault Harry was in this chair, and that had kept him from making contact after they'd left the Game.
"So how are things with the Winter Man these days?" the Bat asked. "What have you been up to?"
"Lots of travel. It's different as a tourist, you know. You actually get to see the country. No late night escapades, no frantic border crossings, no dark men with guns lurking behind corners." Bane stopped, realizing his words had sounded rehearsed because, in fact, they had been. "Things are quiet, Harry," he said, softer now. "I've grown to like it that way."
"Come off it, Josh, this is the Bat you're talking to," Harry snapped, running his hand through his damp hair as if to hold back the emerging gray. "The Winter Man's no fucking tourist."
"The Winter Man died a long time ago."
The Bat regarded Bane knowingly. "You can bullshit the others, Josh, but you can't bullshit old Harry. Your eyes haven't changed and neither has the way you move. The best stays on top."
Bane shook his head. "I was the best because people thought I was the best. Only it was just a matter of time before they realized they were seeing shadows. I got out just in time. The shadows were everywhere."
"And what about Trench and Scalia? Is that the way they've managed their lives too?"
Bane flinched. Trench and Scalia were generally regarded as the greatest killers operating in the East or West, now that the Winter Man had taken himself out of the Game. Their allegiances fluctuated from year to year or month to month depending on who was paying the most. These days that usually meant the Arabs.
"Trench and Scalia are probably dead," Bane offered softly.
"Not unless the Winter Man killed them." The Bat glanced down at his useless legs. "Trench put me in this damn chair. I still owe him for that."
"It should have been my assignment. You went in my place. I fucked up and you covered my ass."
"It was Trench who blew my spine apart. A debt's a debt. I'll get him all right."
"Give it up, Harry. It's over. You had your run and it was a damn good one. In the Game you're only better than the man you've got centered in your cross hairs. Everything's relative. Nobody stays on top for long."
"You did, Josh."
"I didn't let it get to me. I got out in time."
The Bat looked at him grimly. "Did you? Did either of us? I lost my legs so they put me behind a computer keyboard. You lost your nerve and your family"—Bane squirmed at that—"so you quit, except you're still held to them by that check you pick up at the Center every other week. We haven't escaped the Game, not by a longshot. We're still playing it, but on their terms instead of our own."
A scuffle broke out just in front of the podium. A leftover sixties radical had gotten too close and said too much. He was being unceremoniously removed. Some of his friends rushed to his rescue. The scuffle grew, closing on Bane and the Bat. Josh watched Harry's eyes come to life as he drew the zipper of his green fatigue jacket down. Clearly, the possibility of violence had charged him.
"I've got four of the goddamn sharpest throwing knives in the world in here," he whispered to Bane, never taking his eyes off the approaching mayhem. "Lord fuck a duck, I'd like nothing better than to hurl a blade at one of those bastards. You carrying, Josh?"
"No."
The Bat's eyes dipped to the fingers Bane held tautly by his sides, coiled springs ready to leap out.
"Then again," he said, "you're always carrying—those damn hands of yours. I've seen what they can do. If my legs weren't dead, I'd've fucked these knives long ago and taken lessons from that bastard friend Conglon of yours. How is the King these days?"
"Never better," Bane said, not bothering to add that he worked out at the King's gym two hours a day on the average. The workouts added discipline to his life, a place to go at a given time, regularly. Without them, Bane often feared one day would swirl unnoticeably into the next. He was pushing forty, just one year down the road now. He had to work the muscles harder and harder just to maintain their present level. The sweat and pain, meanwhile, made the world he had turned his back on seem real and up close again, almost as though it was tapping him on the shoulder.
"Give the King my regards next time you see him. Toughest son of a bitch I've ever met. If we'd had him in Nam, they would've had to let us win the damn war."
"He speaks well of you too, Harry. Always had a lot of respect for what you could do with a knife."
"Yeah, but hands are better. They're always there and they never let you down. If I had it to do all over again, I'd specialize in hands. Lord fuck a duck, legs sure as hell haven't done me much good."
"I came to the rally today because I knew you'd be here," Bane admitted suddenly.
Harry's face brightened.
"And there was something else. Jake Del Gennio left a message with my service this morning."
"The Swan!" Harry beamed. "No shit! You call him back?"
"Not yet."
"But you're gonna, right? I mean, he probably just wants to go over old times."
"Sure," Bane said, but somehow he knew otherwise. Del Gennio, the Swan, was a helicopter pilot who had spent more time behind enemy lines in Nam than anyone else with wings, always stopping just long enough to pick Bane up or drop him off. As the personal chauffeur of the Winter Man, he had to get out of more scrapes and jams than any dozen of his fellows. They hadn't spoken in years, and Del Gennio wasn't the type who liked to sit over a six-pack and rehash the past. He had called because something was up.
"I'm glad I came over, Harry," Bane added. "I really am."
"So am I." A pause. "I didn't mean to make you a backboard for my miseries but there aren't many people left I can spill my guts to."
"What are friends for?"
A smile crossed the Bat's lips. His eyes scanned the perimeter of men who had become soldiers again for the day.
"It wasn't really so bad over there, was it, Josh?"
"It was hell, Harry, but it wasn't so bad."
"Let's have a drink soon ... for old time's sake."
"There is no old time's sake, but we'll have a drink anyway."
CHAPTER 2"WHAT TOOK YOU so long, Josh?" Jake Del Gennio asked nervously. "I've been waiting by the phone for hours."
Bane's grip tightened around the receiver in the first pay phone he saw after leaving the rally.
"It's been a busy day."
"Well, I've been sweating bullets. You don't know what hell I've been through, Josh, you don't!"
"Easy, Jake, easy. You haven't even said hello to me yet."
"I'll save it till we talk in person. I've got to see you."
"What's up?"
"I can't discuss it over the phone. The world's going crazy and no one wants to listen."
"Okay, but why me? It's been a long time."
"Because I'm desperate, Josh. I need someone who can get answers."
"Jake—"
"How soon can we meet?"
Bane checked his watch, found it was pushing four-thirty. He had planned on going straight to the King's for a workout but that could be put off till evening. Fewer kids around the gym anyway.
"Six o'clock," he said. "Dinner at La Maison on East Fifty-eighth."
"I'll be there," promised Del Gennio.
Del Gennio was waiting in La Maison at a corner table in clear view of the entrance. They shook hands, Bane detecting a slight tremble in the Swan's grip. Then he noticed the half- empty wine carafe.
"I never knew the Swan to be a drinker," he said, sitting down.
"Well, this is the first time the Swan has been too scared to sleep," Del Gennio retorted abruptly. "And that includes Nam, Josh. At least then you knew what was going on."
"And now?"
Del Gennio leaned forward. "You figure it's safe to talk here?"
"It's clean," Bane assured him. "New York branch of the CIA even has a charge here."
Del Gennio tried to smile and failed. "I need you, Josh. The whole world's gone whacko and you're the only one I know who can set it straight again ... It's deep, Josh, real deep."
"What's deep?"
Del Gennio ran his hands over his face. "It started two days ago. I ... lost a plane."
"A crash? Oh God ... But I haven't heard anything on the news."
"Because it didn't crash. I just ... lost it. One second it was there and then ..." Del Gennio went on to relate the events of two days before when Flight 22 appeared to vanish into thin air.
"And what do your superiors say?" Bane asked when he had finished.
"That's just it. They don't say anything. I go to them with my story and all they do is put me off, a first-rate stall."
"But you guys make tapes of everything. They should back you up." Del Gennio's lips quivered. "I heard the tape for the first time yesterday morning. My voice is the only one on it. Nothing from the cockpit."
"Could be equipment malfunction."
"No way. I checked my terminal inside and out."
"You tell your superiors that?"
"Sure and they kept insisting that I imagined the whole thing. They said Flight 22 came in ninety minutes late due to equipment malfunction and has been dry-docked for repairs."
"You check the hangar?"
Del Gennio nodded. "The 727 in question was present and accounted for. But that doesn't mean shit because I know it disappeared for a while, from visual and from the board. A sophisticated radar board, Josh. But it's not the machine that's got me losing sleep, it's these." Del Gennio pointed at his eyes. "These never lied to me before. Something happened to that plane and somebody's covering it up. Somebody wants to keep a tight lid on this. They erased the cockpit side of the tape but they can't erase me."
"You call the airline?"
"A dozen times. All unreturned. Nobody wants to talk about it there either."
"Somebody must, Jake. That plane must've been carrying one hundred fifty people...."
"It was undersold. Just sixty-seven passengers."
"All the same, if something happened to the jet, don't you think they would have complained? It'd be all over the papers by this time."
"Now we're on the same wavelength, Josh. I figured I'd check out the passengers on my own, except no one will give me a copy of the manifest. They've stuck me on desk duty and next month I'm up for reevaluation. They're gonna try to can me, Josh, I just know they are. They think I've cracked, gone schizo or something." Del Gennio's voice was frantic, panicked. He seemed short of breath. "It happened, Josh, I know it did. You're the only one I know who can get the real answers, dig them up before somebody buries them altogether."
Bane looked at the fear in his friend's eyes and patted his arm. "You flew into muddy hell to pick my ass up more times than anyone should have asked you to and never once with all the bullets and bombs did I ever see your hand waver on the joystick. You aren't the kind of man to lose your nerve easily or your marbles at all. So when you tell me that something strange happened at Kennedy two days ago, I believe you. Something happened, but let's face it, Jake, jets don't disappear."
"This one did."
It was eight-thirty by the time Bane dropped Del Gennio off at his apartment and drove off toward the King's gym in Harlem. He didn't know exactly what to make of the Swan's story but neither did he pass it off. Men like Del Gennio didn't crack under pressure. He agreed to meet the Swan at Kennedy the following morning to obtain more details with which to begin his investigation.
The sky was totally black now, and Bane felt the shadows of the long-gone years creeping up again.
Bane had gone into the army only because he was drafted. He saw no sense in the war and even less in protesting it. He accepted his induction and subsequent assignment to boot camp impassively without enthusiasm or fear, found he enjoyed the rigors of training and excelled in them far above the other recruits. He started noticing men watching him—some in uniforms bearing lines of medals, others in civilian suits. Two weeks later, Bane was transferred to a secret base along with a dozen others from similar boot camps.
They were told simply they had displayed ... something ... that warranted a more specialized training. This training went on eighteen hours a day every day, both mental and physical—all torturous. The number of recruits fell quickly until Bane alone was left. He learned all aspects of violence, learned to embrace, even cherish it. He learned to love the physical tests his instructors put him through. Survival training. Subversion. Infiltration. Guerrilla fighting. Killing.
Guns were fine but noisy.
Knives adequate but not always reliable.
Hands were always there, quick and silent.
Bane preferred hands.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Vortex by Jon Land. Copyright © 1984 Jon Land. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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