by Stuart Woods
“There!” Thomas shouted, as the aircraft partly descended from the clouds to the south, but before he could get off a shot, it climbed into the clouds again, and from the noise, seemed to be turning north. In desperation, Thomas began firing at the sound, and Holly joined in.
Teddy heard the whistle of bullets, much closer than he would have liked, and a tear appeared in the right wing. He thought he had the aircraft stable now, headed north and climbing. The firing stopped.
Holly popped out the magazine and dug in her pocket for the spare Dino had given her. “Are you out, Thomas?”
“Yes, and I don’t have any more ammo,” he replied.
She rammed in the fresh magazine, racked the slide and listened. The sound of the engine had grown a little fainter. “Where is the fucking thing?” she yelled.
“More to your right, I think,” Thomas said. “He seems to be headed north.”
Holly raised the weapon and emptied the magazine, knowing that her chances of hitting anything were remote. “That’s it,” she said finally. “I’m out, and Teddy is gone.”
“Good,” Stone said quietly.
“Whose side are you on?” Holly demanded.
“There aren’t any sides now,” Stone said.
The thick cloud around Teddy began growing brighter and suddenly, like flipping a switch, the airplane was flooded in sunlight. He was on top of the clouds, and he leveled off. How high was he, he wondered. He had been airborne for what, two minutes, three? The ultralight could climb at about five hundred feet a minute, so he must be a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred feet high. He kept the airplane just above the clouds, in case a helicopter or another airplane appeared. If that happened, he could duck back into the undercast and change direction. He eased back on the throttle to what seemed a decent cruise power setting, not wanting to waste fuel by running at full throttle.
The tank held five gallons of fuel, enough for about two hours of cruise. The prevailing winds were from the southeast, and that would help his speed and extend his range a bit. The GPS told him he was making forty-one knots over the ground, or the sea, whichever he was over. He did a damage assessment.
As far as he could tell only two rounds had had any effect. One had struck the wing, and the tear was getting worse. He slowed the airplane, bringing the ground speed down to thirty-five knots. He sure as hell didn’t want to stall the thing at a low airspeed, but the fabric of the wing had now stopped tearing, and that was good.
He pulled up his trouser leg and looked at his right calf. He could see an entry wound and an exit wound, and the exit wound was bleeding profusely; his shoe had begun to fill with blood.
He took off his belt and made a tourniquet just below the knee, and the blood stopped flowing. That would hold him until Nevis airport, he reckoned, and he had a first-aid kit in the Cessna, which was secured in its hangar. He stopped thinking about the pain and concentrated on keeping the ultralight level and on the GPS line to St. Martin.
60
Holly grabbed a map from the glove compartment of Thomas’s car and turned it over, for a display of the Caribbean, then she got out the satphone and called Lance.
“Lance Cabot.”
“It’s Holly; Teddy’s gone.”
“Gone? You mean he’s dead?”
“No, though I think I hit him.”
“He’s on an island; how can he be gone? Does he have a boat?”
“No, he had an ultralight airplane.”
“You mean one of those spit-and-baling-wire contraptions?”
“More like aluminum and nylon, but you get the picture.”
“I don’t understand; how far could he get in one of those things?”
“I’m looking at the map now.”
Stone spoke up from the back seat. “It’s probably good for a couple of hours of flying at forty or fifty knots.”
“Stone’s a pilot, and he says it can fly for a couple of hours. From my map, I’d say that Barbuda, Antigua, St. Kitts and Nevis are all within his range. Guadeloupe is a lot farther.”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
Holly gave him a nutshell explanation. “Most of those islands have airline connections,” she said. “You should check those first.”
“No, he would avoid the airlines; he has to have an airplane stashed somewhere.”
“I guess that’s possible.”
“Are you at the St. Marks airport now?”
“We’re on the way; half an hour out.”
“Don’t let anything keep you from getting out of there.”
“Thomas Hardy is with us; he’ll help.”
“I’ll meet you at Manassas,” Lance said.
“I don’t know what time we’ll get there.”
“I’ll know.” Lance hung up.
Holly turned to look at Stone. “Lance thinks Teddy’s got an airplane stashed on another island.”
“That makes a lot of sense.”
“Where could he get to in a light airplane?”
“Do you know what kind?”
“Before, he had a Cessna 182, the one he blew up.”
“Well, in a similar airplane he might have a range of five to seven hundred miles. He could go north to other islands, but it would make more sense to head for South America. You say you think you hit him?”
“I know I missed on the first shot, but the second one felt right, and I thought I saw him jerk. That was just before he flew into the clouds.”
Holly turned around and sat silently in her seat.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I’m thinking, I wonder if I can get our pilot to stop in Florida and pick up Daisy.”
“Jesus,” Stone said.
An hour into Teddy’s flight the undercast was still there, and he began to invent an instrument approach for his destination. Nevis was straight ahead, another thirty-five minutes, according to the GPS, but the tear in the right wing was getting worse, and the little aircraft kept trying to turn right. One thing he didn’t have, Teddy reflected, was a life raft, or even a life jacket. He was going to have to make land or die, and he was going to have to descend through the cloud cover without running into a mountain.
He loosened the tourniquet until the leg began to bleed again and feeling returned to his foot, then he tightened it again and concentrated on keeping the ultralight on course. Nevis grew larger on the GPS, but much more slowly than he would have liked. He created an approach waypoint three miles east of the airport; his second waypoint would be the end of runway 28. He meant to be under the clouds by the first waypoint.
Thomas drove into St. Marks airport with a wave at the guard on the gate and stopped in front of the terminal. Everybody got out of the car. The jet was nowhere to be seen.
Holly looked up to see Bill and Annie Pepper, in the company of James Tiptree, coming out of the terminal.
“We heard our Hawker talking to the tower,” Bill said. “The pilot has declared an emergency; I hope nothing is wrong with the airplane.”
“Probably not. Lance told them to declare a fuel emergency if they tried to keep the plane from landing.”
“I don’t like the look of that low overcast, either,” Bill said. “I hope to God they have an instrument approach here.”
Now two uniformed policemen came out of the terminal and marched up to them. “No airplanes landing,” one of them said, “and no airplanes taking off.”
“Oh, shut up, Harvey,” Thomas said. “These people have a private airplane coming, and it’s going to land. Sir Winston authorized it himself.”
The two policemen looked at each other and said nothing.
“Look,” Stone said, pointing. An airplane had just popped out of the clouds. “It’s a Hawker.”
They watched as the airplane touched down and taxied to the ramp. The engines were shut down, the door opened, and a pair of uniformed pilots got out.
Stone waved to them.
The two pilots walked up. “We’re looking for
Stone Barrington and Holly Barker,” one of them said.
“I’m Stone, and this is Holly,” Stone said. “This is Bill and Annie Pepper.”
“Hi, I’m Ken Smith,” the pilot said, and this is Bob Harkin, my first officer. Bob will get your luggage loaded while I see about refueling.”
Teddy descended through the undercast and, to his delight, popped out of the clouds at his first waypoint, but the tear in the wing was now a gaping hole, and he was having great difficulty flying in a straight line; he couldn’t get it to point at the runway. The ultralight was slowing down, too, and he was worried about stalling. He increased power; there was no other choice.
The drag on the right wing was moving him to the right of the airport as he approached, and he knew he would not be able to turn left without stalling. In desperation, he allowed the little plane to make a right turn, hoping to gain some ground. He made a slow 360-degree turn, and 30 degrees before he completed it, he let the craft descend toward the airport. He didn’t care if it made a runway; all he wanted was level ground.
In the end, he made a taxiway next to the runway, bounced a couple of times and was finally in control again. He taxied the length of the runway toward the hangars at the other end, then turned behind a row of them, out of sight of the tower. With luck, they wouldn’t have seen him at all.
He found his hangar, shut down the engine and worked the combination lock, then he got the hangar door open and pushed the ultralight inside, under the Cessna’s high wing. He closed the big door behind him, switched on the lights, and unstrapped his bag and put it into the passenger seat of the Cessna 182 RG, then he got the first aid kit out of the luggage compartment and went to work on his leg. He injected a local anesthetic, then took off the tourniquet and began irrigating the wound from both ends with a squirter and hydrogen peroxide.
By the time he had cleaned the wound, the local had taken effect, and he sutured and bandaged the wounds. He checked his watch. It had been more than two hours since he had left St. Marks, and that was too much time; he had to get out of Nevis without further delay.
He opened the hangar door, picked up the towbar, which was already attached to the nosewheel of the Cessna, and pulled the airplane out of the hangar. He closed the hangar door, to hide the ultralight, locked it and got into the airplane. He could hear a siren in the distance.
He primed the engine, and it started immediately. Teddy didn’t bother with the checklist but started taxiing immediately. As he cleared the row of hangars he saw a police car parked in the middle of the runway, its lights flashing, and another police car was headed his way down the taxiway. He had only one choice.
He rolled onto the taxiway and shoved the throttle forward. The airplane began to roll down the taxiway, directly toward the oncoming police car.
“One of us is going to have to give,” Teddy said aloud, “and it isn’t going to be me.” The only question left was what the police car would do. Then it did the worst possible thing: it screeched to a halt, and its two occupants bailed out, leaving the car in the middle of the taxiway.
Teddy glanced at the airspeed indicator: forty knots; not enough. He reached over, put in full flaps and yanked back on the yoke. He didn’t have enough airspeed to fly, but maybe he had enough to jump. The airplane shot up about six feet, and Teddy struggled to get the nose down again. It came down hard a few yards behind the police car, still at full throttle; he was lucky he hadn’t blown a tire. Teddy reduced the flaps by a notch and after a moment he had rotation speed for a short-field takeoff. The airplane began to fly.
He looked over at the runway and saw the two policemen standing next to the other patrol car, their weapons drawn. They began firing, and he heard something hit the fuselage behind him. No stopping now.
He reduced flaps as he climbed into the overcast, then, when he was above it, turned toward the northwest, toward Puerto Rico; he wanted the police to hear the airplane going that way. He climbed to eight thousand feet and waited ten minutes, then turned back to the south. He was at optimum altitude now, and he pulled back the throttle to cruise and leaned the engine to best economy.
Now he went through the previously neglected checklist, then switched on the avionics and entered the identifier for Santa Marta, in Colombia, into the GPS. He would not fly there; instead, when the Colombian coast was in sight, he would bear to the east, toward the Guajira Peninsula, a region notorious for drug trafficking, where no questions were asked when you wanted fuel.
From the Guajira, he would head west to Central America, perhaps Panama, perhaps Costa Rica, and find a nice, rural airstrip. If that felt inhospitable, there was always Mexico, to the north.
Half an hour later, St. Marks was to the east of him, under the clouds, and he knew the airport had no radar. Teddy now had air transport, money and identification that would work anywhere in the world. He began to feel something very like peace. He had done good in St. Marks, but there were other countries that needed him. He flew on south, into the future.
61
The Hawker was refueled now, but surrounded by policemen, and Thomas’s posturing and pleading was not having the desired effect.
“You know,” Stone said to the others, “I don’t think I want to be questioned by a new generation of cops on this island. What do you say we get on the airplane and make a run for it?”
“They’d just shoot out our tires, Ken Smith said. “Let’s let your friend keep talking to them.”
Then something odd happened: the cop who appeared in charge began listening to his handheld radio, then talking into it. Stone strained to hear the conversation, but couldn’t. The cop walked over to Thomas and waved an arm.
Thomas smiled and walked back to the group. “The police say they have arrested the assassin,” he said. “You’re free to go.”
Stone heaved a big sigh of relief. “Who do you think they arrested?”
“I have no idea,” Thomas replied.
Stone gave Thomas a big hug. “It was a great stay, Thomas, and we thank you for your hospitality.”
“It was a pleasure having you,” Thomas replied.
A moment later, they had said their good-byes, boarded the airplane and closed the door. The pilots ran through their checklist, started the engines and began to taxi.
Holly grabbed Stone’s hand. “Something else is going to happen, I can feel it. We aren’t out of here yet.”
Stone squeezed her hand. “Shut up, Holly.”
The airplane reached the end of the runway, turned and began to roll. A few seconds later they were climbing through the overcast.
As they climbed on top of the clouds, Stone looked out the window and thought he saw an airplane below them. “Look at that,” he said to Holly.
They both looked out the window.
“What? I don’t see anything.”
“I thought I saw a small airplane, heading south,” Stone said. “But it’s not there anymore.”
“I’m glad I didn’t see it,” Holly said.
Late in the afternoon they landed at the little airport in Manassas, Virginia. As they taxied to the ramp, Holly looked out the window and saw Lance standing next to a car. Behind that was another car, a black Lincoln.
Holly was first off the airplane, with Daisy, and she walked over to where Lance stood.
“You landed the airplane in Florida for that animal?” he asked.
“I have nothing to say on that subject,” she said.
The fuel truck arrived and began its work. Holly went over to Stone. “I think we’re out of here,” she said. “You’ll be in Teterboro in an hour.”
“And I’ll be glad to see it,” Stone said.
“So will we,” Dino chimed in.
Holly gave everybody hugs and saw them onto the airplane, then it began to taxi out.
“Let’s get out of here,” Lance said. “We have to talk.”
The Peppers got into the waiting Lincoln and were driven away, then Holly put Daisy into the rear seat of L
ance’s car and got in.
Lance started the car and drove out of the airport. “Let me bring you up to date on what’s happened since you left the island,” he said. “The St. Marks police arrested an unidentified man. He was taken to the police station where, an hour or so later, he signed a confession to the murders of Croft, duBois and the prime minister. Half an hour after that, he was shot-‘while trying to escape,’ as the official announcement put it.”
“He was innocent,” Holly said.
“He confessed, and he probably doesn’t exist.” Lance replied. “Let it lie.”
“Did Teddy make it to another island in his contraption?”
“Two other things,” Lance said. “Harold Pitts’s yacht sank in three hundred feet of water off the eastern end of St. Martin, shortly after Harold got off an SOS. A search was conducted, but no sign of Harold. A life raft was found, empty.”
“What’s the other thing?”
“The other thing is something that didn’t happen,” Lance said. “Teddy didn’t make it to Nevis, where he didn’t elude two police cars and didn’t fly off the island in a Cessna he didn’t have stashed in a hangar there. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
“You’re buying into all of that?” Holly asked.
“Yes, I am,” Lance said, “and you would be wise to accept it, too. You and I have other work to do, and we’ve already devoted too much time to Teddy Fay.”
Holly thought it impolitic to mention Stone’s sighting of the small airplane when they took off from St. Marks. “What work do we have to do?”
“I’m making you my assistant at Langley; you won’t have a title for a while. There’ll be some carping among the people there about your not having enough training or experience.”
“Both true,” Holly said.
“You have lots of training and experience, just not what Agency personnel think of in that regard. After a time, when you’ve had an opportunity to win over some folks, and they’ve decided we’re not sleeping together, we’ll see what work we can find for you to do.”