75 WHISPER MODE

75

WHISPER MODE

High above the land, in a rotary-wing aircraft nearly as quiet as a hot-air balloon, Boschvark and Yataghan drift through the early afternoon like sleepers in a dream about being reincarnated as eagles.

Terrence Boschvark loves more than money. He is also passionate about the extravagances that money can buy. The smallest of his many houses encompasses twenty-four thousand square feet of living space, while the largest is three times that size. His car collection, numbering two hundred and nineteen vehicles, includes seven Rolls-Royce classics, including three that once belonged to British kings and queens. He owns four billion dollars' worth of abstract expressionist paintings so meaningless and ugly that, displayed in one gallery, they would render connoisseurs of such art suicidal with delight. He collects exotic wristwatches ranging in price from fifty thousand dollars to half a million, as if with each purchase he is buying not just a timekeeping instrument but time itself, more years of life and perhaps even life eternal.

Each of Boschvark's residential properties includes a limited-production four-seat helicopter with the latest Blue Edge technology and state-of-the-art engine muffling, either on site or in a hangar nearby. Powered by a bearingless engine, the Blue Edge main rotor has five double-swept blades, each with three Blue Pulse flaps in its trailing edge that are automatically activated as many as forty times per second. This all but eliminates blade-vortex interaction that produces the thwop-thwop-thwop noise when a rotor blade impacts the wake vortex created by the blade in front of it.

With a portfolio of fourteen residences, Boschvark therefore owns fourteen expensive rotorcraft capable of traveling in what is called "whisper mode." Although this stealthy progress through the sky, especially at night, makes him feel superior to humankind and appeals to his inner child, or to whatever corroded version of a child still finds harbor in him, the fleet is not the extravagance it might appear to be. In addition to transportation, these helos double as security ordnance.

Having been secretly customized by a team of retrofitters, each craft is a gunship with a .50-caliber machine gun fed by a drum belt with a six-hundred-round capacity. An airborne weapon of such power is of no use when the need arises to deal with a curious trespasser or burglars or a team of kidnappers; his experienced security staff can deal with those annoyances using conventional means. However, because Boschvark is well connected with the shadow state and with those in charge of the Federal Reserve System, he is aware of the turmoil that will ensue if a catastrophic financial crisis occurs or is engineered. Society will collapse; violence will escalate wildly. Even people as well placed as Boschvark will be endangered if only for a few weeks, until the ruling class can effect the conversion from the current semi-fascist system to pure, glorious, rewarding fascism. His weaponized stealth rotorcraft, along with numerous other precautions, allow him to sleep at night—except on those occasions when people and events have struck in him a fierce anger that fosters insomnia more effectively than five pots of coffee.

At the moment, in spite of everything that's gone wrong, his dissatisfaction is mere peevishness, a simmering irritation, which is because he has taken matters into his own hands and will shortly eliminate the bitch Vida and everyone whom she has drawn into her crusade against the Grand Plateau project. He is taking direct action, which he has occasionally done before, always with great success. It's good to get out of the office, out of the boardroom, and into the field when it most matters.

With Yataghan in the pilot's seat, the rotorcraft floats twenty feet above the trees, angles down as the land slopes, and hovers over a glen where two horses graze in a section of a meadow that's enclosed by a split-rail fence.

Yataghan puts the helo down facing the house and kills the engine. The rotor blades silently slice the air one last time before falling still.

"What a dump," says Boschvark.

Both men carry pistols in shoulder holsters, concealed by sport coats. Those who have moved this far from civilization must distrust people so much that they will greet any visitor with hostility, but they are not likely to open fire without provocation. Mack Yataghan is an earnest and soft-looking individual who might be a bewildered choirmaster late for choir practice and looking for his church, but few would be perceptive enough to see in him a man who could set fire to an orphanage to clear a property and facilitate its sale to his boss for the construction of a thirty-story building of luxury condominiums. As for Boschvark, from his twenties he has modeled his appearance and relaxed way of moving after the all-time most beloved host of a TV show for children, Mr. Rogers; his viciousness, whether in matters personal or in business, always comes as a surprise to those who haven't already been put through the grinder by him.

By the time Boschvark and Yataghan step onto the loggia, no one has come out of the house to see why a helicopter has landed in the yard. Yataghan knocks on the door, waits, then knocks again, but no one responds. Boschvark tries the door, and it's not locked, and the two of them go inside, calling hello, asking if anyone is at home.

The house is larger than the average middle-class Manhattan apartment, but not by much. They need less than a minute to confirm that no one is here.

Yataghan notices the two backpacks on the floor by the sofa in the living room. Stitched to the top-pocket flap of one is a patch with a name and phone number. The name is Sam Crockett. The second backpack bears no name, but when Boschvark inspects its contents, he finds a pair of leather gloves small enough to be appropriate for a woman's hands.

"Wherever they've gone," Yataghan says, "they'll be coming back for their gear."

Surveying the twigwork furniture and Navajo rug and woven wall hangings, Boschvark grimaces. "You know where they must have gone. We'd be making a mistake waiting here for them. We catch them on the plateau, we can still take them by surprise."