The Plan

by Stephen Cannell

  Chapter 48

  CRASH

  Milo Duleo had seen more than his share of death. He'd learned to fly in the Navy. He'd had the dangerous but important job of monitoring the Russian-Afghanistan war in his supersonic high-flying Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. He would streak off at stratospheric heights, the wing cameras whirring as he took surveillance photos along the Afghanistan border. He had been shot at dozens of times but had finally gone down when he got jumped by a squadron of Yakovlev 38s. He'd been taking an adrenaline ride against orders, streaking low through narrow valleys, the huge rock outcroppings racing past on both sides. Before he knew it, he was dodging ASM rockets and, finally, took one up the tailpipe and had to eject over hostile territory. He'd been lucky and run into a Mujahedin scout patrol, and was returned after two months to his carrier. He'd been asked to stand for a naval review and was found to have lost his aircraft unnecessarily. The decision ended his gonzo years. He found a home in commercial aviation, but grew bored with it and took a job flying Joseph Alo's Lear-55. With the Alos, he was occasionally asked to do some dick-puckering work, and he lived for those jobs. . Like the time they'd grabbed a black drug dealer with the unlikely name of Napoleon Outlaw and pushed the sorry son of a bitch out of the Lear without a parachute, forty miles out over the Atlantic Ocean … Not exactly the same as dodging MiG-29 Foxbat missiles, but at least with the Alos, he still had a chance to pump a little joy juice.

  Milo was looking forward to tonight's flight as he packed his jump chute and prized Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine gun with the retractable stock and rotating rear sight cylinder. He loaded his gear into his black Range Rover and took off for the Providence executive terminal, where Pulacarpo Depaulo and Anita Farrington Richards were scheduled to arrive just after dark. The only tricky part was getting aboard unobserved. He had asked Mickey to rent a Lear-55 because he was familiar with the avionics, and if it was locked, he could access the cabin through the rear luggage compartment. The plane would be parked at the terminal, and because of the cold weather, he figured the pilots would be in the lounge drinking coffee. He should be able to scale the fence and get to the plane without difficulty.

  It worked pretty much the way he figured. Milo jumped the six-foot fence and moved quickly across the tarmac and opened the rear luggage compartment. He unscrewed the panel that accessed the toilet. Within minutes, he was in the back of the plane. He shinnied into the small head, sat on the toilet seat and replaced the panel. Once it was secure, he remained there with his parachute and backpack duffel on his knees.

  At nine-fifteen, he heard the door of the plane being lowered and the two pilots talking.

  "What's wrong with her?" one of them asked.

  'Then Milo heard the thick Italian accent that he recognized as Pulacarpo's.

  "She's a' got too much'a to drink. I'm'a bring da car out so we get her in'a plane much bets' a"

  Sitting in the small rest room Milo pulled the machine gun out of the top of his bag.

  "Did you see her out there in the car? What the hell's wrong with her?" one pilot asked.

  "If she's sick and gets in trouble while we're flying, we're gonna have an insurance claim, sure as shit. You better call the office and find out what they want us to do.

  Milo opened the door and stepped out into the cabin with the H amp;K MP-5 on his hip. The two pilots turned and saw him standing behind them. Their expressions registered shock.

  "Why don't you two sky kings go on up and start the preflight, okay? Anybody gets loopy, I'm gonna take him out," Milo said softly, his adrenaline giving him a rush.

  "You shoot that in here, you break this bird's skin; we'll never get off the ground," the taller one said to him.

  "Bullshit. . Guess what, Sky, I'm qualified in this equipment."

  He herded them into the cockpit but kept his distance so there was no chance they could spin and grab him.

  "Put the seat belts on, fellas, just so nobody'll be pop-pin' up, unannounced."

  Both put on three-point belts; then Milo unplugged the two headset mikes and took them out of the cockpit. He sat on the jump seat with the machine gun on his knees and waited until the limo pulled onto the tarmac. He saw Pulacarpo leading Anita out of the limo. Her hands were tied and she looked drugged. Pulacarpo helped her to the plane and Milo grabbed her arms to steady her as she came aboard.

  "Is she drugged? What's she got in her?" Milo asked, concerned that a body pumped full of chemicals would raise eyebrows at the autopsy.

  "She's a' been drink vodka. . too much, is'a my think:'

  "Okay, that works. Get outta here." Milo helped her into a seat.

  Pulacarpo left the plane and pulled the limo away from the executive terminal. Milo looked at Anita, her eyes at half-mast.

  "Having fun, Mrs. Richards?"

  Anita didn't answer; her head lolled on her shoulders. He reached down and buckled her in. Her hands were still tied behind her, but he decided to wait until just before the end to take care of that detail. He moved back into the pilots' cabin.

  "Okay, let's power up, boys," he said to the two frightened pilots, who began flipping switches. The starboard engine began to whine. As it wound up, Milo plugged the headphone into the jack behind the pilot's head and put it on.

  `This is White Lear-55, 7-6-8-9 Whiskey Sierra, requesting first available takeoff," Milo said into the headset mike.

  "Roger, Niner-Whiskey-Sierra. You can proceed on taxiway 1–6 to runway 3–5 south and hold short."

  Then Milo tapped the pilot on the shoulder with the H amp;K. "Wanna do that, Sky?"

  Milo got permission from the tower for takeoff; they taxied out onto the tarmac and began the roll. The engine whined as the sleek Lear-55 roared down the runway and took off into the night sky.

  Milo signed off with the tower, contacted Hays Field departure, and told the pilots to head toward Cleveland.

  They punched in the omnirange coordinates and Milo leaned back and watched them with a practiced eye. They flew in silence.

  Two hours later, they were over Lake Erie and Cleveland appeared on the color radar, fifty miles ahead. Milo took the H amp;K machine gun and stood behind the copilot.

  "Gonna use the bathroom. Anybody gets up, he's dead." Then, without warning, he jabbed the copilot under the left ear with the stock. The man's head rolled dow n o n his chest. The pilot let out a yell and struggled to unhook his seat belt. Milo swung the weapon back in hi s d irection. It took two hard blows to the head before th e p ilot stopped struggling and slumped against the side panel of the cockpit.

  "Thanks for the lift, fellas." Milo reached into the cockpit and rolled the trim tab forward, putting the plane into a shallow dive. He checked the color radar in the dash and noted the position. They were ten miles from land. His plan was to bail out at about five thousand feet and ride the prevailing winds with his chute, to reach land on the western tip of Lake Erie. He had set the dive so that the plane would hit farmland to the east of Hopkins Field, Cleveland's international airport. There would be questions about the crash, but several flights had gone down trying to land at Hopkins in recent years. The FAA had made extensive investigations and could not explain why the area had become a mini-Devil's Triangle for aviators. Lear-55 Niner-Whiskey-Sierra was going to be the latest in a series of unexplained aviation disasters. Milo untied Anita and checked her. It wouldn't be necessary to knock her out. She was still dazed by the alcohol. He left her and moved to the rear emergency exit, pulled the handle release, yanked the hatch open, and threw it on the carpet behind him. The wind screamed through the opening and Milo could feel the joy juice pumping through his body. Then he lunged out into a blast of cold night air.

  Milo was falling. His face freezing. The bitter cold was biting his skin. He counted to ten and then pulled the rip cord. The chute streamed out, then snapped open and he was yanked up, the shoulder straps pulling at his body. Off to the right, he could see the shoreline of Lake Erie and the lights of Cleveland. He pulled on the
guidelines, gently leaning the chute in that direction. He saw he would easily reach the shore.

  Inside the Lear, Anita was awake. She had been in a stupor, but when Milo pulled the emergency hatch, the cold air brought her to her senses. At first she couldn't figure out where she was and then it came to her. . The trip in the limo, the stop at the liquor store, and the whispered instructions by the man with the heavy Italian accent. He had forced her to drink the vodka while he poked her in the ribs with an automatic and held the bottle to her lips till she passed out.

  Now she was in a plane. . She could hear the screaming engines, much louder than normal and, when she turned, she saw the emergency exit gaping. She unsnapped her seat belt and stumbled forward, where both pilots were unconscious.

  "Oh, my God," she said out loud. And then she could see the ground. They were very low, streaking over moonlit farmland, fields, and occasional buildings.

  She looked in horror out the windshield, as a brick building rushed headlong toward her. This can't be right, her struggling mind was saying, as the Lear obliterated itself into a concrete and brick grain locker.

  The flames shot three hundred feet in the air. The concussions of the explosion rattled the windows of farmhouses miles away. Pieces of the plane were on fire and burning all over the surrounding fields. The main fuselage was a twisted, charred framework of burning metal.

  By the time the first fire unit arrived, there was very little left.

  Chapter 49

  SYMPATHY

  Kaz worked all afternoon in a small office in the Justice Department in Washington, D. C. He was working o ff a computer printout and his eyes were beginning t o c ross as he rummaged through the corporate shadow bo x t hat was C. Wallace Litman's tax return. Kaz was beginning to suspect that he wasn't going to get anywhere. I n f ront of him on a scarred metal table was a confusing we b o f interlinking holding companies, tax-loss corporations, foundations, and charitable deductions. It had turned hi s m ind to putty, but he plowed on. He wasn't even sure wha t h e was looking for. He'd been cashing so many ticket s w ith old federal buddies, he'd developed the leprosy effect-when they saw him coming, they'd start walking i n t he opposite direction.

  The file in front of him was called ICCI (Intertel Communications Corporations, Inc.). It was a cluster of what looked like tax-loss corporations that were sheltering an investment in Atlantic Telephone and Telegraph. Litman had been gradually increasing his holdings in telephone companies for the last two years. Kaz had phoned Cole Harris and asked if he knew why. Harris explained that the telephone company would probably end up being th e m ain supplier of TV programming sometime down the road. Every house in America, Cole said, was already wired for the telephone and, with fiber-optic cable, it was possible to use phone lines to provide entertainment and news, thus eliminating the need for traditional over-the-air broadcasting. An intriguing thought, but all it had gotten Kaz so far was a headache. He was scheduled to meet Cole that night for dinner. Cole had been digging into connections between UBC and the mob, a subject he was already passionate about. Kaz had urged him to be careful and discreet-two words that apparently had been left out of the IR's vocabulary. Cole Harris had a tendency to come at problems with the subtle urgency of a wrecking ball.

  At seven, Kaz closed up shop and left by the side door. Kaz and Cole had been meeting in a dingy restaurant in Virginia called the Spotted Calf. It advertised beef in secret barbecue sauce. The beef was tougher than an NHL goalie and the secret sauce was baked to the shade and consistency of road tar. Cole arrived after Kaz had already been there for half an hour and was working on his second Coke.

  "I won't bother to ask you, 'What's up?' " Cole said. "You look like you've been hit by a logging truck."

  "Litman has companies inside of companies. His tax structure is designed like a Bangkok suburb. I'm lost."

  "While you've been stuck in tax hell, I managed to sniff up a little something interesting."

  "What's that?"

  "Got through to a guy who worked with Litman at Harcort, Lowe and Smith in Chicago. C. Wallace Litman, as you'll recall, was an account manager for them as a young CPA before he quit and came north to seek his fortune i n t elevision."

  "What about it?" Kaz asked.

  The waitress came over and Cole glanced at her. "I'm celebrating. Martini, two olives." She moved away, a hefty woman who looked ridiculous in her farm girl skirt and fluffy white apron.

  "We gotta find another place to meet," Cole said. "This place fails on every level, from placemats-to pussy." "Get to it. What did you find?"

  "Well, this guy says that he remembers C. Wallace saying that he was handling Meyer Lansky's wife's personal accounts after Meyer moved to southern Florida."

  "C. Wallace was Theodora Lansky's investment adviser?"

  "That's what this guy says."

  "Jesus, how the fuck we prove that?"

  "I figured if he filed her tax returns, he hadda sign 'em. Instead of going through C. Wallace's taxes, why don't you dig up Teddy Lansky's and see what you find? I can almost guarantee there won't be any interlocking companies."

  It was then that the TV in the bar showed a picture of Anita Farrington Richards. Kaz caught it out of the corner of his eye. "Look 't that."

  Cole swung around as the waitress brought the martini. "Were you watching the TV in there?"

  The waitress nodded. "Haze Richards's wife just died. Went down in a plane crash on her way to meet him in Ohio." She walked away.

  Kaz and Cole exchanged looks and clambered out of the booth. They galloped into the bir like two water buffalos after a cow.

  "There isn't much left of the plane," a field correspondent in a checkered coat was saying. "Apparently, several other flights have undershot Hopkins International Airport in recent years. The Lear-55, carrying Mrs. Richards, the wife of the certain Democratic nominee for President, crashed into a grain locker and exploded. The FAA is on the scene and they will be moving pieces of the debris to a hangar at Hopkins Field for inspection. So far, three bodies have been retrieved from the wreckage and the flight plan filed in Providence showed them to be David Horton, the pilot; Sam Shelton, the copilot; and the candidate's w ife, Anita Richards. Dental identifications will confirm that, probably sometime tomorrow."

  Then Vidal Brown was on camera in a shot that had been taped earlier.

  "Haze Richards is under sedation. Anita was Haze's life mate; they met in college and she shared all of Haze's hopes and dreams. He is simply devastated by this loss."

  "How you wanna work this?" Cole said.

  C. Wallace Litman saw the story while he was monitoring the ten o'clock news. He always stayed up until the late newscast was complete so he could make notes to be passed out at the morning meeting. The UBC affiliate in Cleveland had supplied the footage of the Lear jet crash and the confirmation word that Anita Richards was dead. C. Wallace dropped his pad and called Steve Israel, at his desk on the Rim, hoping he would give him the broad strokes.

  "I don't know," Steve told him, after he'd asked what the political ramifications would be. "This has never happened before. The closest we can come is James Buchanan in 1857. His fiancee, who he was going to many before the inauguration, committed suicide, so his niece, a woman named Harriet Lane, ended up serving as the first lady. Of course, this is completely different. We're conducting a telephone poll right now, but my guess is Haze is gonna get a huge wave of sympathy."

  C. Wallace moved to the window after he hung up and looked out over the New York skyline. A troubling thought hit him. Could Mickey have had anything to do with the crash? Then he brushed the idea away. What would he possibly have to gain?

  The men at Fudge Anderson's Washington, D. C., election headquarters were gathered in a small room in a suite of offices they had rented for the campaign. They were waiting for Fudge and Henny, who arrived twenty minutes late. Fudge dropped his overcoat on the table and they al l s at down. Henny turned to Justin Davis, the campaign pollster.
r />   "Justin, you have the results?"

  Davis, a heavyset man with brooding good looks, had already done a quick telephone tracking poll. He had the results in front of him. It looked horrible for them.

  He got to his feet with the slip of paper in his hand. "To begin with, I feel bad for Haze's loss. . But we've got to deal with the political fallout. It could affect our strategy, so forgive me if this sounds a little cold-blooded."

  "Understood," Pudge said.

  "Okay. This is just a three-hundred-call survey, so its accuracy is moderate, but representative. It is also random, so it is demographically scattered. The people we called felt immense sympathy for Haze. When asked if the loss of his wife would affect his ability to be President, most people said no. That didn't surprise me. The thing that I found surprising was that this has somehow lifted his internals. The spot percentage is almost fifteen percent higher than when we asked the same character questions a week ago. Same on the crisis questions and the economy. How this plane crash could improve his ability to deal with a national military crisis or the economy baffles me, but there it is. Of course, this is just a preliminary survey, but we've gotta deal with the fact that Haze is a recipient of a helluva lot of goodwill right now. My guess is this will build, not ebb. The question is whether it's a two-week phenomenon or whether it drops to the bottom line and becomes part of his baseline goodwill coefficient." Justin sat down and looked at Pudge and Henny.

  "What do you want to do with the bimbo?" Stan Dershman said from the back of the room, asking the question they were all thinking. Dershman was the press secretary and he had a big kiss-and-tell tournament planned for tomorrow in which Bonita Money was going to get up and put Haze in the Philanderers Hall of Fame.

  "If you go through with that, we're gonna get backlashed into oblivion," Justin said.

  The room was silent.

  "How 'bout we just change the timing?" Dershman continued. "They're not going to mourn this woman for long. . Maybe in a month, we can trot Bonni out and she can sling her shit-burger and it won't blow back on us."