He uncapped it and offered it to him, but just as Westergaard was about to take it, he dumped it out onto the street before chucking it into the weeds.
“I’m sure my brother was thirsty, too,” he said. “You give him a drink?”
“C’mon, John. Let’s go,” Gannon said.
“Help me,” Westergaard said.
“Help who?” Barber said.
“I have money,” the killer said.
“I’m sure you do,” Barber said. “You’d pay it now, too, wouldn’t you? But there ain’t nothing gonna stop what you got coming, fella. Not all the money in the world.”
The sirens were getting closer now.
“We need to move, John. For real,” Gannon said.
“But he’s got money, Mike. What do you think? They got a cash machine in hell?”
“Of course. There’s plenty of them. All you’d ever want,” Gannon said as he pulled John Barber away.
“But what sucks,” Gannon said as he patted the dying killer on the cheek goodbye, “is that the stores are always closed.”
They found a late 2000s Mercury Sable parked on a suburban street two blocks in from where they’d left the crashed Jeep and shot-up Cadillac.
“Do we have to?” Kit said, glancing over at a nice little house on the corner as Gannon removed a hammer from his kit bag.
“Desperate times,” Gannon said as he smashed in the window and opened its door and sat down. He took out a big screwdriver and used it to chisel off the ignition lock. Then he slid the screwdriver into the steering column and turned the car over with a roar.
“Desperate measures,” he said.
Gannon let John Barber in behind the wheel, and they all piled in, and John peeled out onto the road. They headed west, running red lights following the Novak blip on the phone screen. It showed that the Range Rover already had a nice head start up the 101 Bayshore Parkway.
When they finally made it to the four-lane highway’s on-ramp off North Shoreline Boulevard, they saw that Novak was already far to the north past Redwood City, moving quick.
“They seem to be heading into San Francisco,” Kit said.
They were still about five minutes behind around San Mateo when Kit saw the blip exit the highway.
“Exit 422,” Kit said, checking her other phone. “Shit, that’s the airport exit. Oh, no. They really are going to try to get him out. They’re heading to San Fran International.”
111
With its patterned fabric walls and sleek butter-soft cream-colored leather club seats and highest-end detailing possible everywhere you looked, the Bombardier Global 7500 jet was like a luxury penthouse that could do Mach 1.
Past the galley where you walked in, there was a dining space, and past that was a semi-portioned-off entertainment area and then the sleeping stateroom with a lavish spa-level lavatory at the aft end.
On the bed of the aircraft’s stateroom, right beside the door of the closed lavatory, Dawn Warner sat with her hands clasped before her face as if in prayer. Ethan Weber sat just outside the open door beside her in the entertainment area, staring at the carpet, while the Chinese retinue sat forward cabin in the dining area, having drinks.
Dawn looked up as Harris poked his head out of the bathroom door.
“How are we looking?” she said in a frantic whisper.
When Westergaard’s two thugs had brought Novak into the Range Rover, the genius wasn’t looking so hot. He was barely coherent and there was blood on his shirt. They’d cleaned him up some for the Customs inspectors, but once they were on the plane, she’d ordered Harris and Fitzgerald to take him in the back for a more thorough assessment.
Because if Novak had been shot or had a heart attack or something it was over. Even the Chinese Communists couldn’t do anything with a dead artificial intelligence expert.
“He’s fine,” Harris said. “A little roughed up is all. The blood was from a scratch on his hand. He’s in the shower now.”
“You sure?” Warner said.
“Boss, honestly,” Harris said.
“Honestly, my ass,” Warner said hotly. “How close are they saying the pilot is now?”
“Ten minutes out,” Harris said glancing at his phone.
Ten damn minutes, she thought.
They were waiting on another pilot.
The delay was a result of Weber’s sudden change in flight plan. Originally, the plane was supposed to fly only Ethan back to his vacation place in Washington state. But now with all the excitement at the restaurant, the new plan was to fly Novak and all of them on the new plane straight to China along with their partners.
But by union laws, they now needed another pilot because of the long-haul time of the flight. There was no budging on the issue, they’d been told. They would just have to wait.
This last-minute delay couldn’t have come at a worse time since legally they were on extremely shaky ground. Novak as well as Sonexum were under Pentagon contract. Technically, Novak was not allowed to leave the country without authorized written permission from the Secretary of Defense.
Damn you, Hagen, Dawn Warner thought, glancing out at the tarmac.
And double damn that stupid screwup, Westergaard, for not putting her down on Grand Teton the way she had ordered him to.
She hadn’t even told her husband yet about heading to China. How would that convo go?
Hi, Neil. I’m in China.
She would worry about Neil later. All that mattered was the pilot showing up so they could get in the air and get Novak to mainland China and get all of her side deal contracts signed.
“Why the hell are you still standing there like a congenital idiot?” she said to Harris. “Get back in there and put some clean clothes on that junkie prima donna. And wake him the hell up. I want him real nice and chipper and polite to join our Asian guests for the takeoff, okay? Either you do it or I will. If he thinks he’s messing this up even more, I’ll personally drag him out of that shower by the—”
“Dawn?” Ethan Weber said, suddenly standing by the bedroom door.
“Ethan. Hi,” Warner said, instantly smiling at the billionaire as Harris closed the bathroom door again.
“How is everything? How’s Alex?”
“Alex is fine. Clean bill of health. He was just shaken up a little. My guys are helping him to finish freshening up.”
“Phew,” Weber said making a mock swipe at his brow. “That’s good news, Dawn. Very good. You know, I never did get a chance to thank you. About all of this, I mean. After we found out what had happened on Grand Teton, I must say with all of our, um, balls in the air as it were, I thought Sonexum was going to take its place in the annals of Silicon Valley next to Pets.com.
“If we didn’t have you on speed dial to get Alex the help he needed as well as expertly guide us through every step of this utter catastrophe, there’s no way this crucial Pacific Rim deal would have finally gotten solidified. That unfortunate call you had to make to eliminate the arriving FBI personnel especially. That was incredibly...”
“Necessary?” she tried.
“Critical,” Ethan finished, nodding. “You committed yourself fully there, Dawn. That was incredibly loyal. It also bought us the precious time we needed to close this. I know this is a little premature—and you don’t have to tell me now—but when the dust settles, it would please me greatly to personally nominate you as a Sonexum board member at the next meeting.”
For one of the few times in her life, Dawn Warner was struck silent with joy.
“Thank you, Ethan. I...” she said, flummoxed. “Really, I’m so flattered. It was the least I could do.”
“Happy to hear it,” he said with a smile. “Any word on the pilot?”
The bathroom door opened again and Harris stuck his head out again, grinning.
“He’s here. The pi
lot. He’s in the parking lot,” he yelled happily.
112
When they got to the airport exit, the blip tracking Novak’s location had come to a stop not at the regular terminals but beyond them on an access road at the opposite side of the huge airport’s northern edge near the bay.
“It’s the private aviation terminal,” Kit said. “C’mon, gun it, John. Dammit. Can’t this thing go any faster?”
The access road they sped along went around the outer edge of the airport, and they passed cargo bays and the tanks for the fuel depot and the FedEx facility.
“How far out are Ferguson’s buddies in the San Fran office?” Gannon said to Kit.
“Twenty minutes,” she said.
As they drove, Kit had called everyone she could think of to tell them about Warner and Weber and how Novak and his AI secrets were about to get into the hands of the Communist Chinese forever.
“They’re in there,” Kit cried when they finally saw the line of corporate jets beyond the tarmac fence on their right.
The square steel-and-glass structure of the private aviation facility had the look of a high-end car dealership, Gannon thought as they screeched up before it.
They left the Mercury out in front behind a chartered party bus and dodged several empty luggage carts as they ran inside.
Two feet past the foyer, a young, extremely snotty-looking strawberry blond–haired woman was standing behind a curving silver metal desk.
“This man!” Kit yelled, showing the woman Novak’s picture on her phone along with her FBI badge. “Have you seen this man? Where is he? We know he’s here.”
Gannon was already past the desk by the closed-off glass door of a lounge area that led through to the tarmac. He looked down at the killer’s phone, then across the lounge through the tarmac-side glass on the other side.
There was a large, sleek white-and-gold corporate jet idling there with its lights on. 7500, it said on its tail fin.
“He’s there! It’s that white plane. The 7500. He’s right there,” Gannon yelled as he stared at the huge blip on the phone.
As Gannon watched, a white-shirted pilot crossed the tarmac and hopped up the plane’s airstairs.
“They’re closing the door!” Gannon cried as he watched the airstairs shut and the plane was suddenly slowly on the move.
“It’s leaving! Stop that fricking plane!” he cried.
“Open this damn door!” John Barber said, rattling it.
Two blue-uniformed Customs cops suddenly came in from a door behind the snotty receptionist.
“Whoa there. What is it? Slow the hell down,” said the shorter and older of the pair.
“FBI!” Kit yelled. “We have a fugitive on that plane. This is a national security issue. Radio it now. It must be stopped!”
“Calm down now,” the cop said. “That’s not how this is going to work. Stop with the screaming and yelling.”
“Not how this works?” Kit yelled. “Officer, I’m ordering you to stop that plane!”
113
Gannon turned and bolted down the corridor and out the front door back outside.
He could see the taxiing 7500 through the thick tarmac-side fencing as he hopped in the Mercury and reversed it at speed down the terminal’s driveway and into its parking lot.
Back through the lot on its opposite side, there was a side wall of a hangar that fronted onto the tarmac.
Gannon bumped the Mercury up onto the sidewalk and turned the car in alongside it, almost touching its side.
He leaped out and lifted the M4 from the back seat. It was strapped to his back as he climbed up on the Mercury’s hood and then onto its roof.
There was a knot of electric and phone cables that came out of the ground up the side of the hangar to its roof and he quickly tugged at them, testing their weight.
Then he began hauling himself hand-over-hand up the side of the building as fast as he could.
The hangar’s roof was made of corrugated steel that rang hollowly under his heel when he swung his leg over on top of it.
Crouching low, he ran up the slope and at the top of the roof’s pitch, he dropped to one knee and looked through the carbine’s scope into the airport.
The 7500 was about two football fields away now, sideways to him, moving slowly as it turned off the taxiway right before one of the main runways.
Gannon lay down on his belly with a clatter. He laid the rifle between the corrugations, then thumbed the selector switch to single fire.
As he pressed in against the cheekpiece, he noticed the plane had come to a stop.
Gannon settled his right eye socket in comfortably against the gummy rubber edge of the scope.
Then he slipped his finger in above the flat trigger as he took a long, calming deep breath.
114
Warner had convinced the air hostess to let her sit in the pilot’s jump seat right beside the cockpit for takeoff.
This close to the end zone, she was on her last nerve now. She wanted to be in position to instantly squelch any and all last-minute bullshit that came up.
She was in the leather-seated alcove leaning into the open doorway of the cockpit and listening to the sweet voice in the tower telling them it was safe to take off when an alarm sounded out.
She stuck her head out into the aisle to see better as one of the pilot’s black computer displays began flashing stop sign red.
“What is that, James?” the second pilot said to the captain as the electronic alarm trilling continued.
“One of the front tires,” the captain said, examining the screen. “That’s funny. The pressure gauge is suddenly reading zero.”
Another electronic bleep of an alarm sounded on top of the first one. The electronic trilling came in stereo.
“What on earth? Now the left rear tire is zero, too,” the copilot said. “How can they both be flat? Did we run over something?”
“What the hell is going on?” Warner said, unclipping herself and standing.
“Sorry, Ms. Warner, but it looks like we have a problem,” said the captain. “Looks like we ran over something. We’ve got two tires down. We’re grounded.”
“Grounded?” Warner said. “No, no, no. We’re on the damned runway. Screw the tires. This is a plane, right? Not a car. You don’t need tires. Just take off. Take off on the rims!”
The pilot peered at her curiously.
“That’s not how it works, ma’am,” he said. “No tires, no takeoff. Our fuel tanks are loaded to full capacity for the flight. You do realize we’re all sitting on twenty-five tons of highly flammable and explosive jet fuel.”
“He’s right,” the copilot said. “The tires are extremely essential to safety. Back in 2000, a tire problem caused the Concorde to crash on takeoff in Paris. One of the spinning treads came loose and ripped into the aeronautics and fuel tanks. All one hundred fifteen on board were instantly killed.”
Warner began to seethe. She took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, gentlemen. I’m really, really sorry here. But we have no choice,” Warner said. “We must risk it. By the power of the United States federal government, I’m ordering you to take off.”
“Well, well. Is that right?” the captain said brightly as he turned in his captain’s chair and stood.
Captain James was a tall individual of around sixty with short white hair and a robust, clean-shaven tan face. He looked like he might have had some military in his background.
“Why in that case, I’ll tell you what,” he said as he put out his large muscular hands palms up.
“Anytime you want, you start pouring some of that federal government power in this hand here,” he said with a grin, “and then you start pissing in this other one right here, ma’am. The fed power fills up first, scout’s honor, I’ll follow orders without another thought.”
“This isn’t amusing, Captain. This is a matter of national security.”
“I don’t care what it’s a matter of, ma’am,” the pilot said pleasantly. “We’re powering down now. We’ll have a car come out to take us back. We’re heading back to the lounge whether you like it or not. Now take your seat.”
115
“What is the problem?” said a voice.
Dawn Warner turned.
It was one of the Chinese negotiators.
It wasn’t Bob. It was the other one. The young one. Frank, she remembered. Frank didn’t look happy.
“What is the problem?” Frank said again.
“The tires,” she said. “There’s something wrong with the tires. It’s going to be fine. It’s just a minor inconvenience. We just need to get another plane.”
Dawn Warner’s eyes were drawn toward the porthole window. Outside past the tarmac fence on the access road, several vehicles were now approaching. They were driving very quickly and they all had spinning blue and red lights.
When she turned, she saw Frank watching with her over her shoulder.
“What’s going on?” Ethan said, stepping up.
“We are at odds now, I’m afraid,” Frank said as he passed him.
They both watched as Frank stopped before Bob and the two Chinese women. He said something they couldn’t quite catch, but the three seated Chinese suddenly looked very frightened.
Then Frank pointed toward the rear of the aircraft, and the three Chinese stood and started walking back with him. They passed Novak, who was seated on the floor of the entertainment area, playing Xbox with Fitzgerald and Harris. They passed through the state room and entered the lavatory.
“Frank,” Ethan Weber called as the door slammed closed. “Bob. I’m sure we can work this out.”
“What’s going on?” Novak said, standing.
“I don’t know,” said Weber.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Dawn Warner said just as one of the Chinese women started screaming from behind the closed door.
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