by Craig Thomas
"OK, Barbara OK. I promise I'll try and get him back alive." He sighed with what might have been disappointment, a sense of having been disinherited.
"I promise."
He sensed her about to say something else, then was aware, through his tense shoulders, that she had gone and the door had closed behind her.
Out beyond the fence, there was another glint, like that of sunlight on a piece of mica. Flickering like a signal. There was someone out there, he realised. He stood up awkwardly, quickly, and grabbed up the rucksack and the other equipment from the sofa. He had to hurry.
Fraser sat across the aisle of the Learjet from Mclntyre, his sense of being an unwelcome travelling companion undiminished by the hours of the flight. The FBI agent regarded him with a hostile suspicion that seemed to increase in proportion to the crumbling of his professional loyalties. Fraser was adept at patient silence and was prepared to wait Mclntyre out. Gant lay ahead of them, and Fraser was almost certain that Strickland was tied to Gant by an invisible thread. He was sure that Mclntyre knew Strickland well enough to be able to locate him. That was information that would have to be bought… Mclntyre had not yet opened his shop for business.
The great plains over which they had flown, sprinkled with the occasional lights of cities and towns, were giving way to the western mountain ranges; that bulldozed rim of the continent beyond which lay the fantasy of California. Kansas City's lights were long behind the aircraft and Colorado loomed, together with the deserts of the south-west. Chris, Mclntyre's young, naive assistant with the shining face and clear eyes, sat ahead of them, poring over maps, keeping in telephone contact with the surveillance team around the Vance Aircraft factory complex outside Phoenix. He was drinking prissily at a glass of 7-Up. Fraser was sharing Mclntyre's bottle of bourbon. The cramped passenger cabin was dim-lit.
Fraser glanced through the tiny porthole beside him, back towards the first faintness of dawn which seemed in pursuit of them. Ahead of the plane, the blackness was filled with bright, frozen stars.
He realised Mclntyre was studying him from beneath heavy eyebrows, his eyes narrowed, folded into the creases of flesh around them. Fraser had murmured the temptations of a large salary, a bright future… in exchange for Strickland, at the same time fending off Mclntyre's intense curiosity regarding his prospective employer Strickland's employer. He'd had to shrug in voiceless admission at Mclntyre's realisation that both he and Gant wanted Strickland because of the two downed 494s. Mclntyre's value and the price of the information he could supply had risen in moments, like some wild stock exchange barometer in response to rumours of tax cuts. Mclntyre had realised his true worth.
The man smiled conspiratorially. Greed was working in him like an acid. Fraser was satisfied.
The handset in Chris' armrest warbled and the young man snatched it up.
At once, his shoulders were tense with alarm and surprise, alerting Mclntyre. The melting ice in his glass spilt on to his lap as he lurched upright. He picked up his own telephone as Chris gestured earnestly.
"Mclntyre," he snapped.
"Sir we have kind of a problem here," he heard from the surveillance team's leader.
Tell me," he growled.
There's an airplane being prepared flight checks, that kind of thing, ref uell—"
"Where's Gant?" Mclntyre sensed his own shortwindedness, as if he had exhausted himself in a race, only to lose at the tape. He glanced heavily across at Fraser, who continued to sip like a woman at his bourbon and feign no more than mild interest.
"Where is the asshole!" Mclntyre bellowed.
"Sam picked him out, in the people around the airplane. He went aboard, we think—"
"Why didn't you call me?" This time the shock-wave of his rage seemed to unsettle Fraser. Chris was staring at him over the back of his seat, his phone still pressed to his cheek, like a man watching his house burn down. It was slipping away.
"You just watched while all this was happening?" Spilt 7-Up from Chris' glass bubbled like acid on the aisle carpet.
"While the guy just walked on to a plane?"
"Sir, we couldn't be sure what was going down! You ordered us to wait for your arrival—"
"Your ass is in the fireplace, Kennedy!" The asshole even had the right name to be a genuine, made-in-America prick!
"Get in there — now! Arrest Gant and anyone who gets in the way!"
"Sir." The response was pinched off by urgency and dislike.
Mclntyre slammed down the handset. He had wanted Gant to himself, had told them to hold off until he arrived. He'd wanted to grin into the asshole hero's shocked, defeated face as he read him his rights.
He quashed the perception of his error and the momentary flush of its possible enormity as if it had been a glimpse at a foreboding X-ray plate. Then glowered at Fraser, whose features at once settled into immobility. Chris turned away.
Mclntyre looked out of the window.
They had to stop Gant, stop him flying out, getting away The Learjet seemed, to his boiling impatience, to be suspended in some geostationary orbit between night and the pursuing day. There was nothing he could do… They had to stop Gant For Kennedy, sweeping the binoculars across the Vance Aircraft site, there remained a moment when Mclntyre's panic seemed unwarranted, even ridiculous.
The morning breeze whirled dust, the runway was empty, the first windows to catch the rising sun gleamed back innocent light.
Then the nose of the small jet sniffed out of the hangar below him.
Kennedy watched the airplane emerge, easing itself into the first dawn sunlight. Its movement mesmerised.
'-anyone who gets in the way!"
"Sir."
He heard Mclntyre break the connection. The sun was climbing into the wing mirror of the car against which he leant. Dazzled he flung the earphone away from him as if it burned his hand. Suddenly, the situation was slipping away from them, accelerating like the airplane below; it was fully visible now, turning on to the taxiway, making for the main runway.
A noise startled him into issuing orders. Someone shunted a round into a Bullpup shotgun close to his ear.
"Move it!" he shouted, plucking up the car intercom.
"Go, go, go! Biles, get your car down there, head him off block the runway!"
He climbed into the passenger seat of his car as it accelerated wildly over the lip of the outcrop from which the surveillance team had watched the Vance Aircraft site for most of the previous night. The windscreen in front of his eyes seemed to possess its own urgency, joggling and eager, breaking up the landscape as if he was seeing it reflected in the broken fragments of a mirror. The two other cars followed him down the slope.
He tugged the pistol from his shoulder holster and checked it. Don, the driver, was flinging the steering wheel from side to side like a kid playing a video game in an arcade. The executive jet was sliding as smoothly as if on ice towards the main runway. It seemed to be moving in a different element from the car, with greater confidence.
The mirrors were blind with dust. The car lurched and flew for an instant as it hit the road, then Don swung the wheel viciously again to right it, the tyres screeching. It was no more than a hundred yards and a few seconds before they turned into the open main gates of the site. If he screwed up here, he knew Mclntyre — a continentally renowned bastard would make him pay for the rest of his career.
The other two cars skidded and lurched through the gates behind them, and immediately Biles' car peeled away, making directly for the runway.
Don was heading their car towards the main administrative building.
It could all be too late' Head for the runway, Don!" he bellowed, changing his mind. Gant must be kept on the ground, the runway had to be blocked. The car swerved and then shimmied off the paved road on to desert sand. Ahead of them, Biles' car was streaking forward, seeming to tow behind it an impenetrable cloud of dust. Kennedy lost sight of the airplane's ghostly whiteness in the shadow of the surrounding mountains. H
is disappointment was as violent as if he had already seen it lift away from the ground.
"Come on, Don, for Christ's sake-!"
Had he seen it turn on to the end of the runway before the dust concealed it—?
The third car was invisible as it continued towards the office buildings. Then his car swung out of Biles' dust cloud and he saw the executive jet once more.
In the same instant, he heard Mclntyre's voice again over the earphone.
Kennedy pressed it to his ear and cheek as if it was the means of a self-inflicted wound.
"What's happening? Kennedy, have you stopped the airplane, dammit?"
Gant turned the executive jet on to the runway, nose pointing towards the two racing cars. Biles' sedan slewed on to the runway, maybe a little over halfway down.
'-almost!" he heard himself shouting back at Mclntyre.
"We got the runway blocked off- he's going nowhere!"
"Make sure of that!"
"I'm making sure dead sure!"
Biles had swung his car across the centre line of the runway. As the dust cleared in front of his windscreen, Kennedy saw the airplane clearly, and realised that it had begun to accelerate.
"Get across the runway!" he screamed at Don.
Biles and his driver were out of their sedan, shotguns sticking up, but their immobility suggested a growing fear rather than confidence as the executive jet roared towards them.
"Across the runway!" he wailed at the driver, the earphone still clamped against his cheek.
The white airplane was growing larger and outrunning them as the car seemed to move more and more slowly… Biles had parked too far down the runway… Then the whole scene froze for an instant, the only movement being the slow, very slow upward movement of the undercarriage
… Then there was a lurch of acceleration and the jet screamed away and over them, the dust enveloping him and the car, Biles' car…
Barbara saw the cloud of dust, anticipating the moment of impact between the plane and the cars. Then, as she heard his voice over Alan's intercom system, loud in the room, the Vance Exec lifted clear.
The plane seemed to stagger with the effort of retracting its undercarriage too soon and the severe angle of take-off.
'-up! Jesus…" she heard over the intercom, the relief evident in his voice.
Then there was only his breathing and the ether. The plane winking in the lightening sky. It was as if he remained in the room with her as the plane diminished; the dangerous, somehow cornered animal she had often felt him to be. The dust settled, exposing the two stranded, purposeless cars on the runway.
The plane was no bigger than a star, then it was gone.
The third car had already drawn up outside the administration block.
Bill and some of the ground crew were watching the disappearing plane from the gaping doors of the hangar. Beside her, Blakey only now seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. The throat-clearing that immediately followed was more like an anticipation of problems. Barbara impulsively patted his arm.
"Had to be," she murmured. Thanks, Ron."
"Sure."
The two cars on the runway had repossessed their occupants and had turned, like blind, squat insects, towards her and the buildings, as if they scented another source of sustenance. They accelerated in mutual frustration across the desert sand, throwing up dust that caught the sunlight and sparkled like cheap jewellery.
The plane had vanished southwards, towards the city and Mexico, as if fleeing.
Mitchell would turn north only when he was certain he was out of visual range.
Leaving her to answer their bullying questions, confront their anger
… even face arrest for assisting a fugitive from justice.
As the strange elation of his escape subsided, she recognised her own situation, for the first time. The other two cars joined their companion below her window. She was the one left hanging out to dry.
The phone rang on the desk and she snatched it up.
"Honey?" It was Tom, her husband.
"Yes?" She could not keep the impatience from her voice, and he was at once brittle and defensive.
"When are you coming home, Barbara or do I have to wait until the babysitter gets here? I have to meet important clients today!" Even the emphasis of his unpractised anger was wrong. She hated the cold judgement she made of him.
"I'm sorry, Tom, I may be tied up here for some time yet—" The men getting out of the cars below the window were grim-faced with failure.
That's not helpful, Barbara—"
"For God's sake!" she almost screamed.
Blaming Mitchell now, almost entirely.
"I'm busy, Tom OK? I can't just drop things!"
"OK, OK just be as quick as you can, uh? I'll try and reschedule—" The intercom buzzed.
"I have to go. Sorry…"
She put down the phone and answered the intercom. It was Bill, the ground engineer.
The FBI, Ms Vance. They want to talk to you…" The embers of self congratulation still smouldered in Bill's even tones.
"Right. Send them up, Bill."
"You want me to stay?"
She glanced around the room, shaking her head.
"No, Ron. Just take all the stuff you did for him, and shred it. Don't let them find it."
Blakey nodded and left the room. As Barbara sat down in Alan's swivel chair, she glimpsed the moon, hanging by forgetfulness above the desert in a pale-blue sky.
Carefully, she posed herself behind the large, impressive desk, the day lit window behind her.
She feared she would have to tell them, eventually. She did not want them sitting on her, along with everyone else. Mitchell would know that, it wouldn't be a betrayal of any kind… Guilt bubbled, but subsided as someone knocked at the door.
"Come in," she called, her voice calm.
"Put her on the line," Mclntyre snapped.
The early-morning New Mexico sun glared from the terminal building windows of Albuquerque's airport and the scent of aviation fuel was heavy on the air coming through the open door of the aircraft. Four or five miles away, the towers of the city huddled on bottom-land that, at that distance, appeared as arid as the airport's immediate surroundings. From the window beside Fraser's seat on the other side of the aisle, he could see dark-treed mountains thrusting up into an already leached sky. As he waited, he could hear the rush of fuel into the tanks from the bowser parked beside the airplane.
As Mclntyre gripped the receiver, his hand was clammy with tension rather than perspiration. His free hand clenched and unclenched in a fury of disappointment.
"Yes who is this?" he heard. Eraser's smirk, as he listened on his own handset, infuriated. Gant's wife, trying to tough it out. She knew the flight plan had to but it didn't matter whether or not she told him. Kennedy was checking it out.
He wanted to bruise her. He owed her some fear.
"Special Agent Mclntyre, Mrs. Gant," he ground out.
"My name is Barbara Vance," she replied, her voice tiredly challenging.
"Vance Gant, I'm not interested!" he growled. Chris' head and shoulders appeared in the doorway, blotting out the glare of concrete, but the young man ducked back as their eyes met.
"It's not you I want, lady it's the guy you used to be married to.
You've aided and abetted a fugitive from justice. I could and I will bring charges." The threat was heavy in the morning.
"You're in enough trouble as it is, Barbara Vance."
Her in taken breath was a source of immediate, sharp pleasure, as if he had aroused her.
"Why do you find it necessary to threaten me, Agent Mclntyre?" she managed.
"Is threat what you get off on?" Fraser snickered in the seat opposite.
"Don't make me really angry, lady. I just want him. You don't count but I can still make things bad for you. So cooperate. Tell me his flight plan."
Mclntyre glanced at his watch. It didn't have the right to be this hot before eight in the m
orning. Already, the hills seemed masked by a smog of heat and to have retreated to a greater distance. The terminal building was a single great mirror.
He listened to her silence which reminded him of a machine making noiseless but tangible and important calculations. Then he added:
"Listen to me, Ms Vance. I only have to instruct my agents who are with you, and I can have you arrested for harbouring a fugitive right now. But you realise that, I guess?"
The silence continued. Then, with a sigh of admission, the woman answered him.
"OK, you can make trouble for me, Agent Mclntyre. And I don't need any more problems right now. Mitchell is flying to Oregon, to the airfield at Redmond—"
He covered the mouthpiece of the receiver and gestured violently at the maps that lay unfolded on Chris' empty seat. Fraser moved, collected them and smoothed them out on his seat's folding table, which he jutted out into the aisle. Mclntyre tugged on his half-glasses.
"Why Oregon?" he asked.
For a moment, Fraser appeared both disappointed and on the point of asking him a question of his own.
"I–I'm not sure," Barbara replied.
"He didn't confide in me just borrowed the executive jet."
"How long will it take him to fly up there?"
"Most of the morning."
Mclntyre clicked his fingers impatiently at Fraser, who opened a map of the northwestern states and awkwardly tried to adjoin it to the one already spread out.
Mclntyre studied the distances voraciously, as if discovering a quarry's spoor.
"Why did you agree to loan him your jet, Barbara? You knew the situation—"
"Like you said, Mclntyre — I used to be married to the guy.
He deserved a break."
The last one he's going to get, Barbara." He grinned at Fraser.
"Put my man Kennedy back on the line. You showed good sense—" He realised that she had already gone, heard the murmur of her voice as she summoned Kennedy.
"Fraser call Chris and the pilot in here." Then: "Kennedy, you hear that? What's the confirmation on the flight plan?"
"We're still checking—"
"Five minutes is all you've got. Move ass—" He looked up from the map as a shadow fell across it. The pilot's shirt was already damp beneath his arms from the morning heat.