“How’s that?” the trooper said.
“That’s her brother,” Gannon said.
“In-laws,” the trooper said, nodding knowingly as he stepped for the mart. “I get you there, partner.”
Gannon heard the door jingle.
“Let’s get going,” Stick said, rolling down the window.
“Shit,” Gannon said as he clicked the nozzle back into the pump.
“What is it?” Stick said.
“It’s only thirty-four.”
“What does that mean?”
“I got change coming.”
“Screw it. Let’s just go,” Stick said.
“Relax,” Gannon said, turning for the mart. “Take it easy.”
The trooper was coming out with a coffee in one hand as he was going in. He gave him a look as Gannon held the door for him but said nothing as he passed.
“Looks like I overshot it a bit,” he said to the heavyset lady behind the counter.
She smiled, opening the register.
Shit, Gannon thought as he looked out at the trooper where he was sitting in the cruiser typing at his terminal now.
69
“You know he’s running the plate,” Stick said as Gannon got back behind the wheel.
“I know, I know. Just take it easy.”
“You keep saying that, but it’s getting harder and harder,” Stick said as they pulled out.
Gannon watched the trooper in the rearview as he slowly accelerated. He was on his radio. Then Gannon saw him move the cruiser just as they hit the bend in the descending road ahead.
“He’s following us,” Stick said, glancing back, “and he’s on his radio now. They’ve got a BOLO on the truck. Has to be. What do we do?”
“Nothing,” Gannon said. “Just hold on. Let’s not get too hasty, okay?”
“But you know he’s calling for backup.”
Gannon looked ahead. Far below down the slope of the road they were descending, there was a car. It was coming up, heading toward them at some speed.
“Dammit! It’s another cruiser!” Stick called, pointing the field glasses over Gannon’s shoulder. “I knew it.”
Gannon looked ahead where some high voltage lines bisected the road at a high-to-low diagonal. He looked at the rusted red transmission towers over the trees on his right where the lines went down. They were a hundred yards from the utility cutout.
“Put on your seat belts! Now!” he called out.
“You have got to be shitting me,” Stick said as Gannon wheeled to the right off the road.
There was the snap of fallen tree limbs then a crunch of flying gravel as they swooped down an embankment onto a tire-track dirt path. Thirty feet from where they caught the path, there was a fenced-in stand of electrical equipment at the base of one of the transmission pylons, and the back end of the Subaru clipped one of its corner poles smartly as they skimmed headlong past it.
Coming down the cutout was like riding a bucking bronco down a ski slope. Dirt showered off the hood as they seesawed into the hill face and crunched over tree stumps and slid over gravel.
After a few hundred terrifying more feet, they suddenly hit a flat of concrete that supported another of the electrical pylons. Then they were off-roading again, zigzagging left and right as they bounced up and down hard over the rough descending terrain.
Gannon managed to halt the truck with a high screech at the cement base of the next pylon, and he rolled down his window and looked back up the slope.
Not surprisingly, the cruiser hadn’t followed them.
Of course not, Gannon thought. The guy was young, took care of himself. He didn’t want to die just yet.
“Mike, there’s an access road. See it?” Stick said, pointing another thirty feet below.
“Hallelujah,” Ruby said when they were finally on asphalt again.
The access road ran alongside a river onto an actual road.
“We need to ditch the car,” Gannon said as he gunned it past an old farmhouse. “Get a new one. They’re going to have every cop in the state looking for us now.”
They came to an intersection and hooked a right. They’d just crossed a bridge over the river when Ruby grabbed his arm.
“Wait, wait. Slow down.”
“What’s up?” Gannon said, easing off the accelerator.
“Turn left here. See?” she said, pointing at the road they were coming up on.
On the corner, there was a little green sign with an arrow on it.
Hollytree Airport, it said.
“Yeah?” Gannon said.
“Trust me,” Ruby said.
70
The road curved up a wooded hill for about a mile and a half before they came into the small airport’s parking lot. There were a half-dozen cars there that they sped past as Ruby guided them toward a utility road that ran parallel to the tarmac fence.
After twenty feet down the road, they came to the back of a long white metal hangar that fronted into the airport.
“Stop right here. Right here,” Ruby said, pointing at a little set of stairs that led to a door at the hangar’s end.
Ruby had her door open even before they stopped. She flew up the stairs and rattled at the little black box that hung from the door’s knob.
“Good. See, it’s just a key holder like real-estate agents use. I knew it. Is there a crowbar in the truck?”
Gannon took the Glock out of Stick’s leather jacket pocket and stepped up the stairs and shot the lockbox with a sudden loud pop.
“That’ll work, too, I guess,” Ruby said as she grabbed the key from the grass and opened the door and clicked on the lights.
The hangar inside was pristine. On one wall hung a huge American flag, and under the fluorescent lights in its center gleamed a new-looking cream-and-white single-engine prop plane.
“What do you mean to do?” said Stick.
“What do you think?” Ruby answered. “We’re flying the hell out of here.”
“You can fly?”
“No, I just thought I’d suddenly give it a shot. How hard can it be?” Ruby said as she went to the plane and threw up the pilot-side batwing door.
“Of course I fly,” she said as she climbed in. “Since I was in high school. You need a pilot’s license to even join Naval Safety.”
They stood watching as she checked the instrument panel and clicked some buttons.
“Gotta love rural airports,” Ruby said, looking down at them. “The key’s already in it.”
“People just leave the damn keys in?” Stick said.
“Of course,” Ruby said. “You know how much trouble you get in for stealing a plane?”
“What’s the plan?” Gannon said.
“The power is good to go, and there’s half a tank of gas. On a six-seater, that’s a range of about five hundred miles. I get this Beechcraft up and run it dead open for fifteen or twenty minutes to the south. She’ll go two hundred knots, and I’ll keep it low, under the radar. By the time they figure it out, we’ll be over the state line in Georgia.”
“Where are you going to put it down?” Gannon said.
“On a rural road,” Ruby said. “Or a field even. The tires looked pretty good.”
“Then what? Hitchhike?” Stick said.
“We’ll call a cab.”
Gannon laughed.
“That’s hilarious. But that just might work, sailor.”
“Hurry now. Get the gate,” Ruby said.
Gannon hit the button beside the roll-up gate and ran back as it started to rise.
Ruby turned over the engine and the propeller began to spin as Gannon and Stick climbed in.
The radio crackled on as they were outside on the taxi road about to get on the runway.
“This is tower. You are not author
ized to take off. What the hell are you doing?”
“Tower, we have a sick child aboard. We need to take off now. Clear the air,” Ruby said.
“You are not authorized!” cried the radio.
“We have no choice. Divert all aircraft. We’re coming out,” Ruby said and turned down the radio volume.
They hit the tarmac and turned and began to pick up speed.
“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” Stick said over the rising roar of the engine.
“Yep,” Gannon said as he crossed himself and began a quick “Our Father.”
“I never should have let you into my office,” Stick yelled as they suddenly left the ground. “I knew you were trouble, but I had no idea this chick was as crazy as you!”
71
In the gilded mirror, Reyland held his right hand over his chest like he was about to pledge allegiance.
Then he tilted up his chin and slowly drew the razor up his shaving-creamed throat.
As he clicked the steel against the rim of the full washbasin, they hit enough turbulence to make the water slosh.
As the rattling subsided, there was a change in light at the porthole window above the commode and Reyland stepped over and looked out.
The clouds they had been in had thinned out, and now seven miles down beneath the Gulfstream, he could see the bleached-salt white line of the North Florida coast.
The G550 they were on now belonged to the attorney general. Reyland had heard that the AG tried to block his use of it. Well, at least until he heard the nosebleed height from which the request had originated.
Reyland went back to the mirror and paused again with the razor as they hit some more bumpy air. He squinted at the back of Emerson’s head where he was sitting with a PowerBook on the jump seat just outside the restroom’s open door.
“Hey, you didn’t tell the pilot I was shaving, did you, Emerson?” he said.
Emerson swiveled and smiled.
Reyland kicked the door shut and finally smiled himself.
Now that they actually had something to smile about.
They had finally found the mystery man.
His name was Gannon. Michael Gannon. He was a diving instructor who lived on Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas with a boat registered in the Bahamian database called the Donegal Rambler.
Even with all the technology at their disposal, it was sheer unadulterated shoe leather that had finally broken the logjam.
They had taken screenshots of their pesky unsub off the MTA closed-circuit system in New York City and had them sent to their team of agents still down in the islands.
Their agent on Eleuthera had just lost hope when a guy in a bar said he knew the man in their picture, had fished with him. The agent had asked him where they had fished. The man had said they had gone marlin fishing in the Atlantic falloff thirty miles out north of Little Abaco.
It was this Gannon who had found the money. Reyland was sure of it. Gannon had come across the plane and had taken the money. Since he was a diving instructor, he had probably even dived down for more loot and had seen the director dead in the plane.
Which was the reason why, like Everett, he had apparently come up to NYC to talk to that puke, Wheldon, to blow the whistle about it.
Oddly, Gannon was an Irish national. Or at least he had used an Irish passport when he flew into the States from Eleuthera Island. He had flown to Tampa and then to Phoenix, of all places, and then on to New York City.
But besides that, all they knew about Gannon apparently was his name, address and boat. He had no social network presence. No credit cards at any major banks.
They had even hacked the Irish government records to see if there was any clue to his origins, but no dice. Not only was the Irish database a primitive, disorganized nightmare, there were actually thirty-seven bog-trotting Irish Michael Gannons running about in the world.
No matter, Reyland thought. He and his team were now on the way to Eleuthera right now. When they got there, they would go to Gannon’s house and hopefully find him there with his pants down. If not, they would tear his place apart and find out everything they could about him. Pick up his computers, any physical files he had.
Who knows? Reyland thought pleasantly. In their search, maybe they might even come up with the items the man had stolen.
Done shaving, Reyland let the warm water out and turned on the cold and splashed some on his face. When he glanced up, the electronic in-flight display board to the right of the mirror said that they would be arriving at Nassau in forty-seven minutes.
He patted at his face and neck with a fluffy cream-colored towel that smelled like a scented candle. As he did this, the ETA on the screen suddenly changed to forty-one minutes.
How do you like that? Reyland thought, smiling. They were making even better time now. Things were coming up rosy all fricking over.
72
Coming on 3:00 a.m., Sergeant Jeremy was out at the Coral Castle Resort in Charles Bay.
He was sitting in its lobby, and beyond the arched opening in front of him he could see the bartender turning off the lights of the straw hut bar beside the elaborately lit pool. To his left on the bench beside him sat a man. He was a large white man with a bad sunburn and a prodigious gut that protruded through the curtain-like gap of his unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt. The man’s eyes were closed, and he was sweating profusely.
Sergeant Jeremy sat beside the big man patiently, listening to his breathing. He had caused quite a ruckus forty minutes before, and Sergeant Jeremy, always reluctant to make an arrest, was hoping that the drunken tourist was about to finally fall into a restful slumber. He was beginning to edge away when the big man snorted himself awake.
“Where is she? Where is she?” the man said with German or maybe South African–accented English. “Is she back?”
“Not yet, but I am sure you will see her soon,” Sergeant Jeremy said with soft encouragement.
“Why aren’t you taking me seriously?” the man said, punching on his own thigh. “She was kidnapped, I tell you. Kidnapped!”
“Yes, I know. I remember,” Sergeant Jeremy said quietly.
Sergeant Jeremy nodded as the man mumbled to himself incoherently. He had been called to investigate such kidnappings before. It usually happened after the rum began to flow. Boyfriends and girlfriends and sometimes, as in this poor man’s case, even spouses would disappear. But in almost every case, such disappearances were the result of the victim voluntarily heading into the bedroom of another inebriated guest.
“Then why aren’t you doing anything? Shouldn’t we fill out a report or something?” the large man cried.
“We were just about to, sir,” Sergeant Jeremy said, lifting the clipboard in his lap.
He had taken out his pen and was about to click it when he finally heard the best possible resolution to the situation. Incredibly loud snoring. The man had slumped over with his sweating head against the palm pot beside him.
“Is he okay there for now?” Sergeant Jeremy asked, walking over to the desk clerk.
“Is he really asleep this time?” the clerk asked.
“Out for the count, I would say.”
“Not so fast,” the clerk said, tossing a chin.
Sergeant Jeremy turned to see a skinny middle-aged blonde woman come in off the beach. He thought there would be some fireworks as she started shaking at the large man. But he was wrong.
“Another kidnapping successfully solved,” Sergeant Jeremy said with a click of his pen as the two tourists stumbled off down the corridor together, singing and laughing.
He was heading back up Sherman’s Highway near Tarpum Head in his Jeep when he came up on his friend Michael Gannon’s cul-de-sac turnoff.
He found himself putting on his clicker. There had been some break-ins in nearby Rock Sound and on White Road Beach to the s
outh, and he thought he’d do a quick spin past.
He was approaching the second-to-last old bungalow when he saw the light in the window of Michael’s house. It was blue and flickering, his friend watching TV perhaps.
Home early? Sergeant Jeremy thought, rolling up.
He had parked the car in front of the house and was coming up the path when the blue light suddenly shut off.
That was strange, he thought.
He stood there in the darkness for a moment waiting, listening. The clicking sound of some kind of bird in the distance had just started up when the door to the house opened silently. A man appeared in the threshold. A tall man. He was smiling serenely in the moonlight.
Michael’s son?
Then Sergeant Jeremy saw the pale bald round head and a sudden sense of panic rattled through him.
“You,” Sergeant Jeremy said in utter confusion.
“Yes, it’s me, Sergeant. Funny meeting you here,” said the FBI man with the wolf’s eyes.
“I should say the same thing,” Sergeant Jeremy said. “This is not your house!”
“And whose house might it be, Sergeant?” the FBI man said. “In fact, why don’t you come in here, Sergeant, and talk to us. We’re all friends, right? Colleagues, fellow law enforcement officials. Perhaps you could help us with the investigation we’re conducting.”
Sergeant Jeremy stiffened as something cold touched his neck at the back of his collar. A short muscular man in black tactical clothes and some kind of goggles over his eyes was standing there with a gun pressed to the back of his skull.
“After you, Papi,” the soldier said.
The blow to his chest that came when he set foot into the house was like a sledgehammer. Sergeant Jeremy went back off his heels onto his ass with his breath gone. He actually skidded a little down the short corridor before he came to a stop against the wall.
It took him a second to process that the FBI man, Reyland, had kicked him. The huge bald man had just stomped him in the chest with the heel and sole of his big dress shoe.
“There you go. Have a seat, mon,” the FBI man said. “You sit right back and get real comfy, you little lying sack of shit.”
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