by Wesley Lewis
Jennifer turned to Crocker. “Is this what you meant by ‘street smart’?”
Not wanting to piss off the woman with the gun, Crocker didn’t respond.
“Fuckin’ right I’m street smart,” said Scarlett. “You wouldn’t have thought of this plan.”
“True,” said Jennifer. “My plan wouldn’t be full of holes.”
“Bullshit. What holes?”
“For one thing, foreigners can’t own property on the Mexican coast.”
“What?”
“You can’t buy a bar in Ensenada. Also, Mexico has an extradition treaty with the United States. The FBI might not bother tracking down a hooker who sold some ecstasy, but you can bet your perky ass they’ll track down one who kidnapped and murdered people.”
Scarlett hesitated, then said, “I’ll buy a new identity.”
“You think it’s that easy, huh? Just buy a whole new identity? So let me get this straight. You kill off Brent and Crocker and me and—”
“Is this your idea of helping?” asked Brent.
Jennifer continued, “After you kill off the three people who know about your plan, you—what—walk around the streets of Mexico, asking if anybody sells identities?”
Crocker wasn’t sure where this was going, but he hoped Jennifer did.
“Of course,” continued Jennifer, “that’s assuming you don’t get shot down crossing into Mexico. Brent, correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you need to file a flight plan or something before crossing international borders?”
“Uh . . . Yeah,” said Brent, clearly uneasy. “Foreign governments generally frown on planes entering their airspace unannounced.”
Scarlett was visibly frustrated. “Can’t you fly under their radar or something?”
Brent swallowed. “Well, umm . . . I . . .”
“It doesn’t matter if he can or not,” said Jennifer.
“Why not?” snapped Scarlett.
“Listen.”
“What? Just say what you have to say.”
“No, I mean really listen. Can you hear them?”
“Hear what? There’s nothing to hear but the fucking engines.”
“If you listen carefully, you can hear the sirens on the sheriff’s cars driving down the dirt path from the Pear. Before Crocker and I left, he radioed and told them you were headed this way.”
Scarlett stood and looked out Brent’s window. “Shit!”
Crocker leaned through the opening in the bulkhead and looked for himself. Three Nye County sheriff’s vehicles led a procession of FBI vehicles down the hill that separated the lake bed from the Pear.
Jennifer leaned in beside him. “Have you ever seen that many cop cars, Scarlett? I know I haven’t.”
Scarlett turned and pressed the gun into Jennifer’s chest. “Back up! Both of you!”
Crocker put an arm around Jennifer’s waist and walked backward, dragging her toward the tail of the plane.
“Go ahead and shoot us,” said Jennifer. “You’re on such a roll, why not make it an interstate killing spree? Maybe you’ll get the death penalty.”
“That’s far enough,” said Scarlett. “Both of you put your hands up and stand aside.”
Crocker and Jennifer complied.
Scarlett pulled the gun tight to her chest and eased past the pair, giving them as wide a berth as the narrow fuselage would allow.
She remembers her training, thought Crocker.
When she was safely past them, she hurried to the Plexiglas door and stared outside.
Police sirens shouted to be heard over the hum of the idling engines.
Scarlett pointed her gun toward the cockpit. “Take off!”
“Where do you want to go?” asked Brent.
“Mexico. Anywhere. I don’t care. Just take off!”
Brent glanced at Crocker as if looking for advice.
Standing there with his hands up, Crocker simply shrugged.
“Okay,” said Brent, “the lady with the gun gets her way.” He turned back toward the controls and hollered, “Everyone take a seat.” As he put on his flight headset, he added, “Find a seat belt if you can. We’re taking off downwind, so this could get ugly.”
Crocker watched Scarlett, hoping she might drop her guard in her rush to get back to the cockpit. But instead of moving back toward the front of the plane, she lowered herself to the ground and grabbed the seat belt nearest the door. Using one hand, she fastened the belt around her waist. The other hand kept Larry’s .357 revolver pointed in the direction of her three hostages.
The whine of the engines grew louder, and the plane lurched forward, causing Crocker and Jennifer to stumble.
Crocker grabbed Jennifer by the waist and pointed her toward the copilot’s seat. “Sit next to Brent. I’ll sit back here.”
Jennifer ducked through the archway, into the tiny cockpit.
As the plane turned down the runway and accelerated, Crocker lowered himself against the bulkhead behind Brent’s seat. He glanced over his left shoulder and saw Jennifer sitting in the copilot’s seat, pulling a pair of shoulder straps down over her head.
He felt behind him and found a seat belt bolted to the floor. He quickly fastened it around his waist.
Back by the door, Scarlett kept the gun pointed in his direction.
He felt the wheels lift off and glanced out the small round window to his right. On the ground, the convoy of sheriff and FBI vehicles snaked its way through the tent city.
♦ ♦ ♦
Jennifer felt a tap on her shoulder and glanced over at Brent.
He pointed to a headset hanging near her right knee.
She grabbed it and put it on.
Before she’d had a chance to adjust the fit, he asked, “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” she replied.
“I expect your young friend will make her way back up here as soon as I level out, so do what I say, and don’t ask any questions.”
“Roger.” As soon as the word was out of her mouth, Jennifer wondered why she hadn’t just said okay. Wearing a headset apparently made her want to talk like Iceman.
“Reach under your seat,” he said. “There is an iPad under there.”
Jennifer leaned forward and moved Tom’s parachute rig to the side.
“Careful not to hit the yoke or the pedals,” added Brent.
Jennifer found the iPad, sat up, and turned toward the pilot’s seat.
“Don’t hand it to me!” he snapped.
Jennifer recoiled.
Brent cast a quick glance over his shoulder. “She can’t see our seats, but she can see if we pass anything between them.”
Jennifer nodded and looked at the tablet in her hands. “What do you want me to do with this?”
“Turn it on and open the Flight Planner app.”
Jennifer pressed the power button and risked her own glance back while it booted. Scarlett had the gun pointed at Crocker, who was staring out the window to his right. Jennifer contemplated trying to get his attention but decided against it.
“Okay,” said Brent, “it’s the icon on the top left.”
Jennifer looked down and saw that the iPad had booted. She opened the app. “Now what?”
“Click on ‘Monitor Flight’ and then ‘Set Waypoint.’”
Jennifer located the appropriate tabs. “Done.”
“Type in ‘Indian Springs.’”
She typed the name and pressed search. “Okay, it says, ‘Creech AFB,’ and then, in parentheses, ‘INS.’ Is that what you want?”
“Yes. Press ‘Confirm’ and tell me what my bearing should be.”
Jennifer pressed confirm. “It’s showing me a map with a path drawn on it.”
“Look at the information at the bottom of the screen. You should see the letters BRG followed by a three-digit number. What is the number?”
Jennifer scanned to the bottom of the page. “It says zero three four.”
“Okay, stick the pad back under your seat before I start my turn.”
Jennifer nudged Tom’s parachute out of the way again and slid the tablet under her seat. When the tablet was stowed, she glanced back over her shoulder.
Neither Crocker nor Scarlett had moved.
The plane banked slowly to the right, and Jennifer saw Las Vegas in the distance.
“What is Creech AFB?” she asked.
“Creech Air Force Base. It’s the command center for the U.S. military’s drone operations around the world.”
“Why would we want to go there?”
“Because it’s restricted airspace. If we get too close, Nellis will deploy a couple of fighter jets to escort us down.”
“Escort us down or shoot us down?” Jennifer already didn’t like this plan.
“As long as we do as they say, they’ll just escort us.”
“And if the crazy hooker with a gun refuses to do as they say, where does that leave us?”
Brent didn’t answer.
Jennifer shot him a sideways glance. “You need a better plan.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
As the plane leveled out of its turn, Crocker glimpsed the peak of Mount Charleston off the right wingtip and wondered what Brent was up to. Scarlett might have been naïve about the logistics of flying to Mexico, but she was smart enough to realize the plane was flying in the opposite direction.
As far as he could recall, there was nothing north of Mount Charleston except hundreds of miles of empty desert and a few military testing sites.
The plane was still climbing but not as steeply as before. Scarlett glanced from the Plexiglas door to the row of windows on the opposite side of the plane.
“Hey!” she yelled over the engine noise. “Why are we heading north?”
Crocker shrugged.
She pointed the gun toward the cockpit. “Ask them!”
He looked back over his left shoulder and waved to get Jennifer’s attention. She leaned toward him and pulled the headset away from her ear.
He cocked a thumb in Scarlett’s direction. “She wants to know why we’re heading north.”
Jennifer replied, “We’ve been ordered to land.”
“What?”
“Something about us flying too close to Creech Air Force Base while the FBI’s flight restrictions are still in place. They think we might be a threat to national security.”
“Threat to national security? What does that mean?”
From the back of the plane, Scarlett shouted, “What are you talking about?”
Crocker hoped she wasn’t about to shoot the messenger. “The air force is telling us we have to land. They’re saying we’re a threat to national security.”
“Land?” she screamed. “We are not landing!”
She unbuckled her seat belt and stood with the gun against her side, pointed at Crocker. She took a couple of steps toward him but stopped before she was within reach.
“Hey, pilot!” she screamed. “Brent!”
Brent turned and glanced back through the bulkhead archway.
Scarlett pointed the gun at him and yelled, “If you land this plane, I’ll kill all three of you.”
“If we don’t,” he said, “the air force will kill all four of us. Nellis Air Force Base is sending a pair of F-16s to intercept us. We’ve been ordered to land at the North Las Vegas airport, or they’ll shoot us down.”
“No!”
She looked as though she might take another step toward the cockpit.
Crocker readied himself to grab the gun.
Scarlett glanced at him and, as if reading his mind, took a step back. She glanced out the window to her left. “Land someplace else, someplace close, before the air force planes get here.”
“Wake up!” yelled Jennifer. “They’re tracking our plane. No matter where we land, local police are going to be waiting for us. You have two choices—land and get arrested or stay in the air and get blown up by a missile.”
Scarlett responded with an earsplitting scream that might have been directed at Jennifer or the situation or some combination of the two.
“Scream all you want,” said Brent, “but I’m landing at North Las Vegas. I’d rather take my chances with that revolver than with an AMRAAM missile.”
The plane banked slowly to the right, turning toward North Las Vegas. Scarlett took another step back and glanced nervously from window to window.
“Just turn yourself in,” said Crocker. “Fighting the inevitable is only going to make things worse.”
“Worse?” she screamed. “As in I might get the electric chair instead of the gas chamber?”
Crocker considered pointing out that Nevada used lethal injection to execute prisoners but thought better of it. Instead, he said, “Nevada isn’t big on the death penalty. They haven’t executed anybody in years.”
Scarlett shook her head. “I’m not landing!” She turned and looked out the Plexiglas door.
“I have an idea,” said Jennifer.
Scarlett turned back toward the cockpit.
“When the police storm the plane,” continued Jennifer, “you just offer them some of that ‘special attention’ that got you and Vegas off the hook when you went to buy drugs with your buddy Stinky.”
Scarlett’s face turned red.
“Blow jobs alone might not be enough.” Jennifer reached for something near her feet. “But blow jobs and six hundred thousand in cash might be.” She tossed Tom’s skydiving rig through the archway. It landed at Scarlett’s feet.
Scarlett stared down at the skydiving rig for a long time.
Crocker quietly unbuckled his seat belt and prepared to rush her if she raised the gun toward Jennifer. He was certain that some sort of outburst was coming. But when Scarlett looked up, the anger was gone from her face.
She reached down and picked up the skydiving rig. “This thing still works, right?”
“What?” asked Crocker.
“Tom said there’s still one parachute left in this thing. Brent, would it still work?”
She can’t be serious, thought Crocker.
Brent turned to look at the rig. “That depends on what you did to it when you were stuffing it full of cash.”
“I just sewed these top flaps shut”—she pointed to her handiwork—“the ones where the other parachute went.”
Brent stared at the tangle of nylon straps and steel buckles. “If you didn’t modify the bottom flaps, it would probably work, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.”
“How do I use it?”
“Use it? You want me to give you a skydiving lesson while I’m flying the plane?”
“I don’t need to know how to do backflips. Just tell me how to put it on and make it open.”
Crocker’s first instinct was to try to talk her out of it. Then he thought about the fighter jets and the sound of Larry’s labored breathing on the basement floor and the voice on the phone saying, “Megan, honey, is that you?” and decided this was as good a solution as any.
♦ ♦ ♦
By the time Brent had talked Scarlett through the process of putting on the skydiving rig and explained how to deploy the parachute, Las Vegas was close enough to fill most of the front windshield.
Jennifer turned around and yelled, “If you don’t want to land in a housing development, you’d better go now.”
With the skydiving harness cinched around her pink tracksuit and the gun in her hand, Scarlett looked like a dark-haired B
arbie doll that had gotten its accessories mixed up with a G.I. Joe’s.
She stared out the Plexiglas door. “Where are the jets?”
Jennifer pretended to check. “I see a plane in the distance. I’m not sure if it’s a fighter or an airliner. If you go now, you’ll be long gone before it’s close enough to matter.”
Scarlett knelt and examined the door.
“Just pull it straight up,” said Crocker.
She grabbed the handle with her left hand and gave a halfhearted tug. The door didn’t budge.
“With both hands,” added Crocker.
She shook her head and stood. “Jennifer, you do it.”
“What?” asked Jennifer.
“I’m not putting down the gun. Get back here and open the door for me.”
Crocker rose to his feet. “I’ll do it.”
Scarlett pointed the gun at him. “Sit down. Jennifer can do it.”
This wasn’t part of the plan, thought Jennifer.
Tricking Scarlett into jumping had been her idea, but she had little desire to open an airplane door in flight and zero desire to do so at gunpoint.
“Now!” yelled Scarlett. “Before the jets get here!”
Jennifer took a deep breath and reassured herself that this would all be over once Scarlett was out of the plane. She fumbled with the seat belt buckle, trying to figure out how to release the four-point restraint. Brent reached across and unbuckled it for her. She nodded in appreciation and climbed out of the seat.
Crocker’s eyes reflected Jennifer’s own deep concern as she stepped past him. She forced a reassuring smile and made her way to the back of the plane.
Scarlett peered out through the Plexiglas. “Where are we?”