by Mark Donovan
Gritting his teeth he looked up at the man holding the mallet and said, “As I said to you before, the two of you can go to hell.”
In a flash, Basil slammed the mallet into the side of Ed’s head with all of his strength, crushing his temple in the process and instantly killing him. Basil looked over at Alex who stood frozen.
“You didn’t need to kill him,” said Alex.
“It was obvious he knew Dave Henson. If we left him here alive, he would have called him before we could find him and the rest of his group. Besides, he pissed me off.”
“Well let’s get out of here. We can take that road where we saw Henson’s vehicle turn off of and see if we can track him down.”
“Alright, we’ll leave Mr. Clemons here where he lies.”
The two men left the hangar, closing and locking the door behind them. They got into their beige sedan and exited the airport heading east.
Chapter 87 (March 31, Sunday 3:45pm Mountain Daylight Savings Time)
Ron and Joe were loading up the Explorer with the remaining few pieces of computer equipment that they had used to transmit the video, while Dave and Dana were doing a last minute sweep of the building to make sure they weren’t leaving anything of significance behind. Dr. Gillian was seated in the kitchen area watching flash AP news reports about the video release on his iPad. While watching one of the three major network news anchors try to spin the video release as yet another weak attempt to try to discredit the administration, a window popped up on the screen. It was the security program window that was associated with the sensors they had installed in the trees along the driveway. A vehicle was slowly making its way up the quarter mile dirt driveway.
“Dave and Dana, we’ve got company.”
Dave got to Dr. Gillian first and looked at the iPad screen. Displayed on it was the beige car that Dave had seen at the airport a couple of days ago. He could also dimly make out two men in the vehicle. Dave yelled loud enough so that Ron and Joe who were still outside could hear him as Dana came up and looked over his shoulder.
“Guys we need to leave now! Dana and Doc grab the rifles and let’s get out of here.”
Ron and Joe were still outside when the others came racing out of the building. Dr. Gillian gave the rifle he was holding to Joe.
“The men I saw the other day are driving up this driveway now. They’ll be here in a few seconds. We’ll leave through the back driveway behind the building. Dr. Gillian and Dana, you take the Lexus, Ron and Joe will go in the Explorer, and I’ll take my car.”
“Dave, you need to get to the airport first to get the plane out of the hangar and to get it fired up. Take off now with Dana and Doc, and Joe and I will try to run some interference here to give you a few extra minutes.”
Dave looked at Ron for a second trying to think of a better plan. He couldn’t. “Alright, but don’t stay here too long. I’ll have the plane ready to go in five minutes.” He glanced over at Joe and was about to ask him if he really wanted to stay back with Ron, when Joe said, “Go on, get out of here now. Ron and I will deal with these two.”
Dave jumped into his car while Dr. Gillian and Dana climbed into the Lexus. Dave took off first down the old dirt driveway that more resembled an overgrown path, while Dana sat behind the wheel of the Lexus and hugged his vehicle’s backend. Simultaneously Ron and Joe ran behind the back of the NSurv building to duck out of sight of the approaching beige sedan.
Just as Dave and Dana drove out of sight of the NSurv building, the two men in the beige sedan pulled up in front of it. They wasted no time stepping out of the car. As they did, they each pulled out 9mm handguns and approached the building cautiously with their guns extended. One of the men looked briefly over at the red Ford Explorer and then returned his gaze back to the building as he approached it. Ron and Joe watched quietly from behind the building.
The men entered the building and completed a sweep of it in a matter of seconds.
“It’s empty,” said Alex as they began to exit the building.
“Yes, but they left this behind.” Basil held up a bundle of computer network wiring and a router.
“They must have just left,” responded Alex. “Barbas said they had just released a new video a few minutes ago.”
“Unless they released it remotely.”
“No. If they did you’d be holding more than a bundle of computer wire and a router.”
“Then that means we’ve probably just missed them. I’ll bet they’re preparing to fly out of here while we’re standing in this empty building.”
Basil dropped the wire and router, and the two raced out of the building towards their car. They jumped into their vehicle and backed up to turn around. As they started to drive forward down the driveway, Ron fired several rounds at the car’s back passenger side tire with his Ruger LCP 0.380 ACP. The tire went instantly flat. Though the two men heard the gun shots they initially did not notice that the tire was flat due to the rough dirt driveway surface.
As soon as Ron had fired the shots he yelled for Joe to run to the Explorer. Due to the surprise attack, Basil and Alex hesitated just long enough to react so that Ron and Joe were able to jump into the Explorer unscathed. As Ron started the ignition and spun the wheel around, Basil and Alex jumped out of their vehicle and began firing at the Explorer. In their rush to react, their shots went wild and either missed the Explorer all together or went wide of the driver and passenger seating area.
Instead of going out the back driveway Ron decided to floor the Explorer’s gas pedal and exit out the main driveway, and in the process, heading directly into the path of the two men that were firing at them. Ron mashed down on the gas pedal hard as both he and Joe ducked low behind the dashboard. The Explorer lurched forward and slammed into one of the men. The man fell underneath the Explorer’s undercarriage and they could hear and feel the crunch of bones as the vehicle drove over him. Ron looked up over the dash just in time to swerve the Explorer around the parked sedan and down the driveway.
Basil emptied the remaining bullets in his magazine clip at the Explorer as it raced down the driveway. Alex’s body lie in the driveway twisted and crushed. He was bleeding profusely from the mouth and he had multiple compound fractures on his arms and legs. But he was still breathing. Basil knelt down beside him and inserted a full magazine clip into his gun. He then fired a single shot into Alex’s head to end his suffering.
As the Explorer flew out of the gravel driveway and onto the main road, in the direction of the airport, Ron let off a little on the gas pedal to get the vehicle back under control. While Ron raced towards the airport, Joe continued to watch behind them to see if the beige sedan pulled out of the driveway. As they put nearly a mile behind them, there was still no sign of the vehicle.
“I think you killed one of them,” said Joe as he continued to look behind them.
“By the sound of the crunching underneath the vehicle as we ran over that guy I’d say so. It was either kill or be killed. We didn’t have a lot of choices.”
“You think that other guy will follow?” asked Joe.
“Probably, but he’s got to change that tire first if he plans to get anywhere. My bet is he’s changing the tire as we speak and is probably doing a half-ass job of it. By blowing out that tire we’ve probably given ourselves an extra five minutes.”
Ron went flying into the entrance of Cut Bank Airport. They could see that Dave had already pulled the Citation out of the hangar, and Dana and Dr. Gillian were quickly throwing the contents of the Lexus into the aircraft’s cabin. Ron blew by the FBO office parking lot and directly out onto the ramp next to the Citation. As he slammed on the Explorer’s brakes, Dave stepped out of the cabin door of the aircraft. The Citation’s engines had already been spun up.
Dave yelled over the sound of the engines, “How did it go?”
Ron yelled back, “We took out one of them and temporarily incapacitated their vehicle. I blew out one of the car’s tires. I suspect the other guy will be
here in a matter of minutes though, so we better get the hell out of here soon.”
“Okay, transfer the equipment from the Explorer into the Citation while I finish prepping the aircraft.”
Dave stepped back into the Citation and into the left seat of the cockpit while the other four raced to empty the Explorer.
Two minutes later they had transferred everything from the Explorer into the Citation. Everyone had already entered the passenger cabin and was buckling into their seats, with the exception of Ron. He had driven the Explorer into the hangar where the Citation had been parked and had closed the hangar doors.
As he ran across the ramp to climb aboard the Citation, he caught a movement out of the corner of his right eye. He turned his head as he continued to run towards the aircraft and saw that the beige sedan had just entered the airport. It was on a direct path barreling towards them.
From the cockpit Dave also saw the sedan racing in their direction and began to push the throttles forward on the Citation to get the aircraft moving. As the plane began to roll, Ron pulled out the Ruger from his back waistband. Confident that Dave wouldn’t leave without him, Ron stopped and positioned himself to take accurate shots at the windshield of the fast approaching car. The car was still at least two hundred yards away from him so he fired three rapid shots into the front windshield. He could see that the first bullet had entered the windshield just right of center while the other two bullets hit the passenger side of it.
Basil began to swerve the sedan as soon as he saw Ron aim his weapon at the vehicle. The first shot had hit him in the right shoulder, while the other two shots went wide due to his lighting fast reflexes on yanking the steering wheel hard to the left. With blood pouring from his wound, and using just his left hand, he fought to steer the car back on an intersecting course with the now moving aircraft.
Ron saw that the car had swerved sharply when he fired his shots, but now he was racing to catch up to the moving aircraft. After climbing up onto the jet’s still down step ladder, he turned and saw the sedan now back on course racing towards them.
Again, he took aim at the oncoming sedan and emptied the gun’s remaining rounds into the driver’s side windshield. Due to the fact that the vehicle was now much closer, all of his shots hit their mark. And the results became immediately obvious. The car instantly accelerated. However, instead of maintaining an intersecting course with the Citation, it lurched hard to the left. As it did so, it slammed into several parked small general aviation aircraft that were tied down on the ramp. There was an instant explosion and fireball as the parked aircraft and sedan went up in flames.
Ron heard a small cheer break out from the passenger cabin and cockpit as he pulled up the step ladder and closed the cabin door. As he buckled into his seat Dave taxied the Citation into position for takeoff. A minute later they were wheels up headed northwest into Canada. As the Citation cruised at only a couple of hundred feet above ground level to avoid radar detection crossing into Canada, Dave wondered to himself about the reception they would receive in Calgary.
Thirty minutes after their departure out of Cut Bank, firemen were putting out the final remnants of the inferno that had occurred on the airport’s ramp. In the middle of the burnt aircraft wreckage was a blackened and smoldering sedan. Inside the sedan were the charred remains of Dimitris Barbas’s cousin Basil. While the firemen looked over the twisted wreckage, a Department of Homeland Security SUV rolled up next to one of the fire engines and police cars. As Agents Haley and Smith stepped out of the SUV, a Cut Bank police officer walked over to them and said, “You’re a little late.”
“How’s that?” responded Agent Ted Haley.
“Apparently your man Dave Henson and his NSurv colleagues just flew out of here thirty minutes ago.”
“Does anyone know where they were headed?”
“No, the woman that is working at the FBO office said she had no idea where it was headed.”
“Did anyone else around here speak with Henson?”
“Yes we think so. The woman said Henson was a good friend of Ed Clemons, an aircraft mechanic who works here on the airport. That’s his hangar over there and here is one of his aircraft.” He pointed to the charred remains of the Cessna 182.
“Good, we’ll go have a chat with him.”
“No you won’t.”
“Excuse me,” said Agent Haley indignantly.
“I said no you won’t. He’s dead. We found him lying in his hangar with his head half caved in.”
Agents Haley and Smith were stunned.
“Do you think Henson killed him?”
“Again, the woman said Henson was a good friend of Ed. I personally know the woman and I can vouch for her honesty and integrity in the matter. Most likely this guy here in the burnt out sedan probably had something to do with Ed’s death.”
“Do you know where Henson and his team were staying while here in Cut Bank.”
“Yes, he purchased a small property back a couple of years ago. I’ve already had my guys go out there to check it out. All they found was an empty building and a man’s corpse lying in the driveway.”
The police officer paused for a second and looked back over at the burned out sedan.
“The woman said there had been two men in the sedan that had spoken with her on two recent occasions, including one meeting earlier today. She described them both as creepy characters with foreign accents, possibly Greek accents. We believe this is the sedan and that both men are now deceased. This man here in the sedan, and the other man’s corpse up at Henson’s property.”
Agent Haley nodded to the police officer and thanked him for the information. The two DHS agents then climbed back into their SUV and began the long drive back to their office in Boise, Idaho.
Chapter 88 (March 31, Sunday 4:45pm Mountain Daylight Savings Time)
About fifteen minutes after crossing into Canadian airspace, Dave brought the Citation up to 10,000 feet and contacted Canadian Air Traffic Control simply stating his aircraft’s tail number. Upon the acknowledgement of his initial transmission, he indicated his present position, altitude and heading. He also indicated that he had a minor emergency onboard and requested to land at Calgary International Airport. The air traffic controller asked Dave to state the emergency. He responded saying that they had had a sudden uncontrolled decompression issue with the aircraft. The response back from the air traffic controller was terse, but he was approved to maintain his course to Calgary International Airport, and advised to maintain his current altitude. He looked over at Ron who had moved to the right seat in the cockpit and gave him the thumbs up sign.
Ten minutes later Canadian Air Traffic Control advised him to switch to the Calgary Tower frequency. Upon identifying the Citation to the Calgary tower, the airfield controller vectored him in for a straight on approach for Runway 34. Five minutes later they were taxing up to a terminal for Canadian Custom Agents to board the aircraft.
After sitting nearly an hour on the tarmac idle, followed by an intense thirty minute grilling by the Canadian Custom Agents, their passports were stamped and they were officially granted entry into Canada. Once the agents disembarked from the aircraft, Dave turned around and gave a big sigh of relief to the rest of the NSurv team members who were all smiling. They had made it into Canada safely and legally without any issues. Dave was shocked to say the least, as he figured the United States government already had an international warrant out for all of their arrests. Apparently that wasn’t the case. The President, or more particular one of his billionaire financiers, must have had a reason why he wanted to keep their names out of the international limelight.
The NSurv team secured the aircraft and took their personal belongings with them as they headed for the terminal.
“So where are we headed?” asked Ron with a big smile. “I could really go for a big steak. I was really getting sick of the camp food.”
The team all got a big laugh out of Ron’s statement as they had all grown tir
ed of the canned beans and hamburgers over the past week.
“Well, I suggest the first thing we do is find ourselves a hotel in downtown Calgary where we can keep a low profile. I figure we’ll hunker in there for the next several days to wait for the release of Jeff Kolosky’s news piece on the President, and follow the reaction of the American public and the U.S. Congress. But for tonight, as soon as we check in and freshen up, let’s all go out to a steak house for dinner. It’ll be my treat. Maybe we can find a Ruth’s Chris Steak House or the equivalent in town.”
“Now you’re talking,” responded Ron as he rubbed his stomach. “I’ll take a free steak dinner anytime.”
“I’m just looking forward to getting a hot shower,” said Dana.
The team walked through the airport terminal and took a bus to a Hertz rental car facility where they rented a van. An hour later they checked into the Hyatt Regency in the heart of downtown Calgary. It would be their home for the next week, where they could comfortably watch from the sidelines the political events unfold in their own country.
Chapter 89 (March 31, Sunday 8:00 pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time)
The President and his staff at the White House were in complete panic mode as a result of the video that had been aired a few hours earlier. They were scrambling to put together a response to it, in a feeble attempt to save Jesse Coleman’s presidency. The American public was enraged and in the streets all over the country demanding his impeachment. He had also received calls from many members of Congress, from both sides of the aisle, demanding he step down as President. In addition, the President had received phone calls from Dimitris Barbas and Chung Lee. Barbas had been in a fit of rage for his apparent lack of sufficient security at the Camp David retreat, and had all but said he’d thrown in the towel on him. Chung Lee had been more diplomatic and simply told him that in light of the video release, his company would unfortunately not be able to produce the MAGLEV locomotives and passenger cars for him.