Trade-Off

by Trade-Off (retail) (epub)

  ‘And what are you doing to achieve that?’ Charles Gainey asked.

  ‘Everything we can, Mr. President. We have teams of armed watchers at all airports, harbours and railroad stations, and roadblocks on all routes out of D.C. We know they haven’t left by air, water or rail, and we believe they’re still in the Washington area. They’re probably driving a stolen car, so we’re collating all vehicle theft reports with the police. Personally, I think they’ll lie low for a while somewhere here, then try and slip out of D.C. when they think the pursuit’s died down.’

  ‘And when will the pursuit die down?’ James Dickson asked.

  ‘It won’t,’ McGrath said. ‘Roland Oliver Control has been quite specific. These two people are to be found and eliminated. It doesn’t matter what it costs or how long it takes.’

  Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada

  Roger Ketch sat at his desk with his head in his hands. His project – for he had always regarded Roland Oliver with a somewhat proprietary attitude – was going wrong in a fairly spectacular fashion. He didn’t understand how Reilly and Hunter had managed to elude the clean-up team and make it as far as Washington, far less how they’d managed to abduct and then kill, albeit indirectly, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  The only good news was that Christy-Lee Kaufmann was dealt with: he’d had confirmation that she was en route to Las Vegas as a part of the program. And the actual operation of Roland Oliver would be unaffected, because the one thing he was sure about was that Reilly and Hunter definitely couldn’t get anywhere near him or the processing plant. The base security was literally unbreachable. But if they found out what was going on, and then went public with it and were believed, the consequences would be catastrophic for him personally and would certainly terminate Roland Oliver, permanently.

  The latest report from Pennsylvania Avenue was that the two fugitives, for so Ketch had labelled them, were still believed to be in the D.C. area, but he was even beginning to doubt the truth of that assumption. Their arrival in Washington had been unexpected, and impossible to predict, as had been their actions there. But their ability to improvise, to persuade the Director of the FBI to leave the safety of his office – despite Ketch’s and the Omega Procedure file’s specific instructions to the contrary – argued a level of competence that Ketch found almost frightening.

  And that same level of competence, Ketch was slowly coming to believe, would strongly argue against them still being in the Washington area, despite what McGrath thought. They would have had an escape route of some sort pre-planned, though Ketch had no idea what it might be. However, he did agree with McGrath’s opinion in one respect – if he’d been in Hunter’s or Reilly’s shoes, his next move would have been fairly obvious. They almost certainly now knew that Roland Oliver operated out of Nevada, so that’s where Hunter and Reilly would be heading.

  Ketch nodded to himself, and reached out for the telephone.

  Montgomery County, Virginia

  Fifty minutes later they were ready to roll. Hunter had checked the duster’s documentation and discovered it had just been purchased and had a new radial engine fitted, and was only at the field because the new owner wanted a different paint job. Brand new chemical tanks had been fitted, and were empty, but the machine was otherwise ready to work. Dave Charles had his own fuel bowser in the hangar, and Hunter filled the duster’s tank to the brim once he and Reilly had pushed it towards the front of the building. Then he filled the chemical tanks with fuel as well, and packed several five gallon fuel cans into the storage section behind the pilot’s seat.

  The duster had a fairly small tank, and Hunter guessed that it would have a range without refuelling of only about four or five hundred miles. He took a notebook from his pocket and scribbled down some figures. If he was right, they could cover almost three thousand miles with the total fuel he would have on board at take-off. He made a very rough calculation of the distance from Goshen to Nevada – he was aiming more or less for Las Vegas – and came up with around two thousand five hundred miles. He hoped they’d even have a little in reserve.

  ‘OK,’ Hunter said, ‘I’ve good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is that I estimate we’ve more than enough fuel on board this baby to make it to Nevada. We’ll have to put it down a few times to top up the tanks, but we won’t run out.’

  ‘And the bad news?’ Reilly asked suspiciously.

  ‘This duster is only a single-seater. That means there’s no seat for you, so you’ll have to cram yourself into the storage compartment behind the pilot’s seat.’

  ‘Great,’ Reilly muttered, without noticeable enthusiasm, ‘and we can’t even change places because I can’t fly the thing.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Hunter said. ‘At least you’ll be able to sleep. I won’t, and with about twenty hours in the air ahead of us, I’d definitely change places with you if I could.’

  They filled the fuel cans behind the pilot’s seat, and Hunter put a large funnel and some rags beside the drums in case any of the fuel spilled. Reilly dug around in the hangar and found an old padded jacket and a blanket which he spread out on top of the cans. Their bags went in there as well, plus a dozen cans of coke, six beers and a handful of chocolate bars which Hunter had found in the office, and finally Reilly tried it out for size.

  Hunter busied himself selecting cross-country charts. What he particularly wanted to do was avoid straying into any kind of military or civilian restricted airspace, so the charts were essential. There weren’t enough to detail the whole route, which was no surprise, but he found three low-level charts that covered the first six hundred miles, and a couple of air navigation planning charts that would provide basic details for most of the rest of the flight. After that, he’d have to trust to luck, his eyesight, and the GPS mapping application on his smart phone, and that would only work as long as the battery lasted, though he did have a back-up charger powered by photo-electric cells that he could use to charge the unit once daylight came.

  Reilly had unlocked and pushed back the double hangar doors by the time Hunter emerged from the office. Together they manoeuvered the duster through the doors and out onto the grass strip. Then they re-entered the hangar, locked the double doors and emerged through the side door, which Reilly also locked. He retrieved his multimeter and pushed the wire back under its clips.

  ‘Today’s Friday mornin’, just,’ Reilly said, climbing down. ‘You gotta reckon your old pal Charles will be workin’ here later today. There’s a good chance he’ll blow the whistle on us within about eight hours.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Hunter said. ‘Whatever. But whether he notices or not, we’ll be long gone.’

  Reilly climbed aboard and squeezed his not inconsiderable frame into the storage compartment. Hunter followed him and strapped himself into the pilot’s seat.

  ‘You OK back there?’ he called.

  ‘Nope, but there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s get goin’.’

  Hunter grinned and began the ignition sequence. When he pushed the starter, the big radial engine coughed once, then rumbled smoothly into life. Hunter didn’t know much about the duster, but he expected it to have a maximum speed of around a hundred and twenty miles an hour and a ceiling of about twenty thousand feet.

  He taxied to the end of the grass strip, pushed hard on the left rudder pedal to swing the aircraft round, and prepared for take-off. Hunter hadn’t been able to find a check list, so he did what any experienced pilot would have done. He checked all the controls for full and free movement, tested the magneto drop, set the altimeter sub-scale so that it gave him a negative reading of two hundred feet, to provide a slim margin for error, and hoped for the best.

  He selected maximum flap – he thought that gave him fifteen degrees, but the lettering was virtually illegible – applied the brakes and pushed the throttle smoothly forward. When the engine revolution counter was almost entering the red section, he released the brakes and the little duster surged forwar
d.

  The aircraft was heavily laden, but struggled into the air earlier than Hunter had expected. He climbed to an indicated fifty feet – really about two hundred and fifty – raised the flaps in stages, trimmed the duster for level flight and looked again at the first chart. It was still dark, but the landscape was faintly visible in the light of the moon, and he had no trouble making out the lights of vehicles on the Interstate off to his left, or the street lighting in Neelsville.

  Hunter turned the duster to port and settled on a westerly heading that would take him across Interstate 70 between Neelsville and Clarksburg. He was flying higher than he wanted, but he was unfamiliar with both the area and the aircraft, and was prepared to risk fleeting civilian radar contact rather than the possibility of colliding with an electricity pylon or some other obstacle.

  There was also another problem, which he hadn’t mentioned to Reilly, but the sheriff raised the question himself. Hunter felt a tap on his thigh and looked down to see Reilly peering around the back of his seat.

  ‘What is it?’ he shouted.

  ‘I just thought,’ Reilly yelled back. ‘Are you qualified to fly at night?’

  ‘I am,’ Hunter replied, ‘but the aircraft isn’t. Dusters don’t fly at night, so they haven’t got any IMC instrumentation.’

  ‘And what the hell does that mean?’

  ‘It means we’re chancing our arms up here. What I’m hoping is that we don’t need to land to refuel before dawn. And if we hit low cloud or fog, we’ve got real problems.’

  ‘Jesus H,’ Reilly muttered, and retreated into his storage compartment.

  Hunter grinned and turned his attention back to the view out of the cockpit canopy.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Friday

  Parkersburg, West Virginia

  The duster touched down in a deserted field surrounded by trees around thirty miles southwest of Parkersburg a little after dawn. It was a bumpy landing, a fact explained partially by Hunter’s lack of experience with the aircraft, but mainly by the uneven and rutted grass-covered ground, which even the duster’s softly-sprung undercarriage could do little to absorb.

  Hunter throttled back, then gently pulled on the brakes to slow down the little aircraft. Before it stopped, he swung it around through one hundred and eighty degrees. At a fast walking pace, he taxied the aircraft back up the field and turned it round again so that it was correctly positioned to start its take-off run. Only then did he lock the parking brakes and switch off the engine.

  ‘OK, Dick,’ he said, into the sudden and welcome silence. He removed his harness, opened the canopy and climbed out onto the wing. Reilly peered out and looked warily around.

  ‘You need to work on your landings, mister,’ he said. ‘Felt like a pebble in a tin can back there. And where in hell are we?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Hunter said, ‘It wasn’t one of my best. We’re in West Virginia, near Parkersburg.’

  Reilly’s face showed no comprehension.

  ‘It’s nowhere, it’s just a point on the map,’ Hunter added. ‘The important thing is it’s about three hundred and fifty miles from Washington D.C. and we’re still alive.’

  He reached into the storage compartment of the duster and pulled out the hand-pump. Then he and Reilly man-handled the first of the fuel cans out onto the ground. They took turns to work the pump, transferring the aviation spirit into the duster’s fuel tank. When the cans were empty, Hunter carried them over to the ditch that ran along one side of the field and tossed them in.

  ‘No point in leaving an obvious clue that we’ve been here,’ he said to Reilly, as he accepted a can of Coke. ‘The good news is you’ll have a bit more room for the next leg.’

  ‘Huh,’ Reilly grunted, taking a swig of beer. ‘And that takes us to where?’

  Hunter spread a chart out on the wing, and pointed.

  ‘We’ll pass close to Dayton, Ohio, and I’m planning on our next refuelling stop somewhere beyond Indianapolis. So far, consumption’s been better than I expected, and it’ll improve more as we lighten the on-board load.’

  ‘Right,’ Reilly said. ‘Reckon I can help a little with that straight away,’ he added, unzipped his trousers and urinated copiously.

  Hunter grinned, and did the same.

  Idaho Falls, Idaho

  At five past six local time, Christy-Lee Kaufmann stirred slightly on her gurney. Her respiration rate increased very slightly, her left leg twitched with a brief muscular spasm, and her eyelids flickered as her eyes moved rapidly behind them.

  The monitoring system picked up the change in her level of consciousness immediately, and increased the level of nitrous oxide she was breathing by exactly one point five per cent. Two minutes later, the nitrous oxide level was increased by a further zero point five per cent, and a minute after that Christy-Lee Kaufmann’s body ceased all involuntary muscular activity. Her breathing returned to normal, and her body relaxed.

  The monitoring system analyzed the data it had collected about her over the last twelve hours, and adjusted the nitrous oxide feed to deliver a slightly higher percentage of the gas continuously.

  At nine ten local time, Douglas and Robbins checked out of the motel, climbed into the ambulance after inspecting their two unconscious patients, started up and pulled out of the parking lot.

  They had a long drive ahead of them – about two hundred and fifty miles south-west across Idaho, maybe just clipping the north-western corner of Utah, and then a further five hundred miles down through Nevada to Las Vegas. Even as Douglas steered the ambulance south out of Idaho Falls, Robbins was already looking at the road map and planning a second overnight stop somewhere near McGill or Ruth, in the vicinity of the Great Basin National Park, Nevada.

  FBI Headquarters, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  William McGrath sat at his desk and turned over the reports one at a time, as he had done three times before, looking for something – anything – he might have missed. But all were depressingly negative – airports, harbours, railroad stations and roadblocks – all of which could mean only one of two things. Either the fugitives were still in the D.C. area, lying low somewhere and just waiting for a chance to slip away, or they’d already made it out of Washington.

  Despite his earlier confidence when briefing the President, McGrath was slowly coming to the conclusion that the continuing efforts of the law enforcement agencies were a complete waste of time, because Reilly and Hunter were already long gone.

  What he didn’t see was how they’d done it. Even without the instructions from Nevada, he would have swamped Washington with law enforcement officers in his search for the two men, and that should have been enough to flush out the fugitives. The fact that it hadn’t meant that he was missing something.

  He tossed the reports to one side and picked up the abstract of Hunter’s personal file which had been faxed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation from London. He’d already read through it twice, and nothing in it seemed much help, except that he was increasingly certain that Hunter wasn’t just a British policeman.

  The one piece of hard information he had acted upon was that Hunter had spent sixteen years as an officer in the British Royal Navy, leaving with the rank of Lieutenant Commander. This fact had reinforced McGrath’s decision to increase the teams of watchers covering the water frontages, as Hunter’s obvious familiarity with ships and boats strongly suggested that the two fugitives might chose that route out of Washington.

  He was looking again through the fax when a sudden thought struck him. He’d made the assumption – perfectly understandable, but an assumption nevertheless – that Steven Hunter had been a regular Naval officer, a seaman, but he suddenly realized there were other possible specializations in the Royal Navy. He checked the details listed at the top of the fax page, then reached for the phone and dialled a London number.

  Eight minutes later he leaned back in his chair. ‘Oh, shit,’ he muttered to himself. ‘He’s a fuck
ing pilot.’

  He depressed a key on the intercom unit. ‘Myers, get in here – right now.’

  McCarran Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada

  Morgan and Harris walked out of the terminal building carrying overnight bags and nothing else. Harris hadn’t been happy about being pulled out of D.C., just hours after arriving there, but Roland Oliver was calling the shots, and he had to admit there was some sense in what Ketch had said. If, somehow, Reilly and Hunter did manage to make it out of Washington, Nevada is where he’d expect them to appear.

  He also wasn’t particularly happy about having two additional men from another Roland Oliver team seconded to him. He’d protested to Ketch, but without success.

  ‘We can handle these two comedians,’ he’d said.

  ‘Like the way your men handled Sheriff Reilly?’ Ketch had responded. ‘This is too important to fuck up, Harris, so put your ego to bed and just get the job finished.’

  Outside the building a bulky figure in a dark suit was waiting. Harris recognized him immediately – Joe Kline had been with him in the SEALs eight or nine years earlier, but he hadn’t known he’d since become involved with Roland Oliver. Another new name to remember, Harris thought. He made eye contact, and Kline walked over to him.

  ‘Work-name’s Templeton,’ Kline said, without elaboration. ‘The car’s over there.’

  As the three men walked to the parking lot, Harris introduced Morgan. The car was a dark grey Lincoln with Nevada plates, another man sitting behind the wheel. Harris and Morgan tossed their cases into the trunk and climbed into the back seat.