The First 48

by Tim Green

  Jane slipped into the darkness of the broom closet and the sour smell of mothballs. The front door creaked. Someone walked into the front room and the footsteps stopped. The closet door sagged open. A two-inch shaft of light ran the full length of her body. Jane wanted to pull it shut, but knew it was too late.

  She remembered her shirt and jacket hanging on the porch. Her shoe, sock, and the small puddles on the floorboards. The knife began to tremble in her hand. There was a hook pressing into her back. Her breathing had become so ragged and so loud that she was all but certain that whoever it was knew that she was there. The footsteps, quiet shuffling on the dusty floor, began moving her way.

  CHAPTER 43

  When they got to the airport, Mike went in to check the schedule. Tom waited in the truck to keep an eye on the new and improved Gleason. While he waited, he looked at his Ironman. He watched as it rolled from 10:00:00 to 09:59:59.

  The stink of jet fuel poisoned even the air inside the truck. Limousines swung through the circular drive in front of the airport at regular intervals, unloading men and women in suits. Tom began to crack his knuckles. When he came to his wedding ring, he stopped and spun it around and around. The ring was a part of his hand. He forgot he even wore it.

  He brought its perfect smoothness to his lips and caressed it as he watched the steady traffic of private aircraft taking off and landing. Appearing and disappearing into the indigo sky like white slivers, with barely a minute passing between one’s screaming in and another’s screaming out. Tom counted nine before Mike reappeared.

  “Munch just landed,” he said, climbing into the truck and turning the key. “I cleared it for us to drive the truck right out on the tarmac.”

  “There was another jet, a Lear 60. It took off this morning at five A.M. Same flight plan as us. Watertown.”

  “Was it Mark Allen? Did they see Jane?” Tom said, gripping the wheel.

  “There’s a whole different shift of people now,” Mike said, shaking his head. “No one knew.”

  A man in a gray mechanic’s jumpsuit let them in at the gate and directed them to the other side of a hangar where a Falcon 50 had just arrived from Ithaca. When they pulled up, a young man with a blond crew cut was jogging down the steps of the plane. He was dressed in a white V-neck T-shirt, faded jeans, and a pair of reflective Oakley wraparound sunglasses.

  Tom got out of the truck and extended his hand.

  “Munch?”

  “Yes, sir, I am,” Munch said, with a firm grip. The orange wind sock across the runway filled and sagged behind him amid a picket of blue lights on short yellow posts. Heat waffled up off the runway, bending the light. A jet screamed past.

  Munch was shorter than Tom imagined him. His freckled cheeks and gap-toothed grin reminded Tom of a schoolmate from his childhood who spent more time in the principal’s office than the rest of the kids combined. His hair was nearly white and cut short, military style.

  “This is Mike Tubbs,” Tom said. “We got a ticket to Watertown.”

  “Here’s the locator number and a flight plan,” Mike said. “I’m a pilot. I worked it out inside.”

  “Fellow flier, huh?” Munch said, making his hand into a kind of airplane, adding the noise, and flying it into Mike’s outstretched palm. “Good to know you.”

  Munch studied the paper and nodded his head.

  “Looks good,” he said. “I’ve got enough fuel, so we can be wheels up as soon as I get clearance.”

  “Will,” Tom said to the pilot, “I know if you work for Randy Kapp, you’re used to bending the rules a little, looking the other way?”

  “Like I tell Mr. Kapp,” Munch said, “as long as we come down with the same number that go up, I’m blind as a church mouse.”

  “You mean bat?” Mike said.

  “Anything you want,” Munch said, showing them his picket-fence row of teeth.

  “I’ve got a package to load up that would probably be in your best interest not to see,” Tom said.

  “Not a problem,” Munch said. “I can wait in the cockpit and close the door. You gents let me know when you’re ready.”

  Without the slightest hesitation, the young pilot turned and climbed back into the plane.

  Tom looked around and then opened the back of the truck. Gleason lay there, wide-eyed. Tom touched his leg and said, “Everything’s fine, Senator. You just relax. We’re taking a little plane ride. When I get my daughter back, we’ll put you right back where we found you. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but . . . I don’t trust you.”

  He wrapped Gleason up in the hotel blanket and bound it with five more long strips of duct tape.

  “Jesus,” Mike said, looking around.

  “I don’t have far to go. I’ll just load him up,” Tom said, straightening and scanning the fuel-stained tarmac up and down the rows of metal birds. “You take the truck back to the parking lot. If anyone asks, tell them we got a great deal on a rug.”

  He scooped Gleason out of the truck and threw him over his shoulder. The F-350 rumbled away. By the time Tom tossed his load down onto the Falcon’s couch, he was breathing hard and his forearms were damp with perspiration. He wiped his brow on the short sleeve of his shirt and took hold of a seatback to keep from staggering. He saw stars.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  “You okay back there?” Munch asked without looking.

  “Fine,” Tom said.

  He unwound some seat belts on the couch and crisscrossed them over Gleason. He took another blanket from the drawer below and spread it over the entire couch, tucking it in between the couch back and the oval windows to anchor it down.

  Gleason started to moan.

  “Uh-uh,” Tom said in a low tone, “no noise.”

  He knew that if Munch worked for Kapp, he was trustworthy. Everyone who worked for the contractor knew the story of the limo driver who once talked to a newspaper. They found him dead drunk in an alley two weeks later with bullet holes in each of his feet. And of course, there was Kapp’s wife’s boyfriend, whom the contractor had nearly beaten to death with a lamp. Still, their abduction of Gleason had been a clean operation so far. There was no reason to sully it by being sloppy.

  The jet gave a lurch and the stairs began to rattle and shake. Mike appeared red-faced and sweating beneath his duffel bag.

  “Right there,” Tom said, pointing Mike to the plush leather seats facing the front.

  Mike set his bag down behind the seat. He snapped his gum and sat down, removing his computer from the briefcase.

  “Hey, Will,” Tom said, buckling in, “we’re all set back here now. Thanks. You want to button us up and roll?”

  Munch popped out of the cabin, retracted the stairs, and pulled the door shut behind him. He returned to the cockpit, this time leaving the door open.

  “Not much pussy up in Watertown, you know,” Munch said. “Got some decent whores across the border in Kingston, though. Nothing like Vegas. The boss threw a little of that stuff my way on this last trip. Vegas is the place to be. You guys all set?”

  Munch pulled a headset into position over his ears.

  “Let’s go,” Tom said. He looked at his watch. 09:29:09.

  Munch nodded and let the headset snap closed on his ears. Soon Tom could hear him talking to the tower, jabbering about coordinates as he began flipping various switches among the riddle of lights and levers on the control panel in front of him. After a minute, Munch took the headset off and angled his head slightly toward the back of the plane and said, “We got a little hitch, guys. Some serious weather moving in across the Great Lakes.”

  “No,” Tom said, stiffening. “We have to go.”

  “We will, sir,” Munch said, turning in his seat. “But we can’t get clearance. They’re not going to let me take off.”

  “Time is of the essence here,” Tom said, raising his voice. “Tell them it’s an emergency.”

  “Change the flight plan,” Mike said.

  “What?” Tom said.

/>   Munch looked back and frowned. “You don’t want to go to Watertown?”

  “We’ll go to Watertown,” Mike said. “Just tell them something else to get us off the ground.”

  “Yes,” Tom said, slapping his hand on the armrest of his seat. “Do that like he said.”

  “It’s not just the tower,” Munch said. “It’s real bad what’s coming.”

  “Randy Kapp told me you could fly this bird like a bumblebee,” Tom said. “That’s what he said.”

  “I can, sir, but you don’t see any bumblebees in a storm.”

  “I’ll do it if you’re afraid,” Mike said.

  “Are you licensed to fly a jet?” Munch asked.

  “I really don’t give a damn about that. You want me up there? I’ll be glad to take the controls,” Mike said.

  “Kapp told me I’d get whatever I need, son,” Tom said. “I need it.”

  “It’s not about being afraid,” Munch said with a small giggle. “That’s bullshit there. I just don’t want to be responsible. This isn’t taking politicians and hookers to Detroit. This is risking lives.”

  “You going to make me call Randy?” Tom said.

  “Hey, don’t start threatening me,” Munch said, his face turning red. “Fuck that. You want to fly into a storm? You two better buckle up.”

  Munch jammed the headset back on and started talking. He pulled out a booklet and made some notes. Mike gave Tom the thumbs-up, and the Falcon began to roll across the tarmac. They waited in line, four planes in front of them. Tom tapped his foot and touched his ring to his lip.

  Finally, it was their turn. They stopped briefly at the head of the runway and then began an acceleration that pinned Tom into the back of his seat. He felt the plane leave the ground and heard the landing gear grinding until it thumped up into the Falcon’s belly. It seemed to Tom that they were ascending too steeply. He looked over at Mike, who smiled.

  Tom nodded and did his best to smile back.

  Soon the plane settled out and they banked in a gentle circle until the sun came glaring in through the windows on the left. Mike pulled the shades and opened his computer.

  “I got the address of Kale Labs and a bunch of information from their Web site. Some stuff on that Dr. Slovanich, too. I downloaded it all.”

  “Good work,” Tom said, his stomach dropping as the plane tilted so sharply he was staring straight down at a big red barn and a duck pond.

  “I didn’t mean it like it came out,” Tom said, projecting his voice up to the cockpit. “Me calling Randy. It’s just that my daughter is missing.”

  “No big deal, pops,” Munch said. “It’s just that I’m a big Lynyrd Skynyrd fan, you know. I know I seem a little young for it, but my older brother was wacky for them and I got hooked myself.”

  “What’s Lynyrd Skynyrd got to do with it?” Tom asked.

  “Oh, they went down in a storm just like the one we’re going into,” Munch said. “But your friend is right. You can’t live your life chickenshit.”

  “Well,” Tom said. “Be as careful as you can.”

  Munch gave a little cackle.

  Mike looked up from his computer and blinked at Tom.

  “Kale was an army colonel,” he said. “He got out and got his hands on an old Squibb pharmaceutical plant. Started making drugs for the army. They got into the biotech world in the mid-nineties and grew like hell. Bought up a bunch of drug companies all over the world. They do about ten billion a year, but they leveraged the whole thing with a bunch of expensive biotech acquisitions and their stock hit the shitter with the crash. They sold a lot of Cipro—the stuff they give you for anthrax. Best I can tell, if they didn’t have a couple big government contracts, they’d be bust by now.”

  “Wow,” Tom said. “Hey, are you up on Lynyrd Skynyrd?”

  “Ooo, that smell,” Mike sang, off-key. “Sure. I was a biker, remember?”

  “Not the music, though,” Tom said. “The crash.”

  Mike waved his hand in the air and turned back to his computer. “Pilot was crazy,” he said.

  “Oh,” Tom said. “That’s comforting.”

  The plane dipped into a long deep slide. Munch giggled.

  “You ever been in a sandwich, Mr. Redmon?” the pilot said, raising his voice over the drone of the engines. “With one girl licking the bottom of your feet and the other one on your crank?”

  “I never had a hooker, son,” Tom said. “I’m kind of old- fashioned that way.”

  “For real?” Munch said, snapping his head back. The jet banked and he turned his attention back to flying. “I’d hate to have a man pass into the next life without a taste of that.”

  “Twenty thousand employees worldwide. Two thousand jobs in Watertown,” Mike said, looking up from the computer again. “Their share price went from a high of seventy-four down to around a dollar. If Kale Labs went in the tank, they’d probably cancel Christmas for everybody north of the Thruway. You think they got anything to eat on this thing?”

  “You’re hungry?” Tom asked, fishing in the pocket in front of him for a barf bag.

  “A little.”

  “There’s a galley right there,” Tom said. He’d flown with Kapp on a trip to Florida once to close on a big glass contemporary home on the Intercoastal. That was when Kapp had bought a cigarette boat for three hundred thousand in cash. Tom could still recall the backpack full of hundreds.

  Mike struggled up out of his seat and started digging into the small galley. He found a bag of pretzels, then bent down and opened the little refrigerator, removing a bright gold can of Molson to get to a diet Coke. Tom wet his lips.

  “Maybe I’ll just have one of those Molsons,” Tom said. “Just one.”

  “Sure,” Mike said, opening the can and handing it to Tom as he sat back down with his pretzels and soda. He offered over the bag with a gentle rattle.

  “No thanks,” Tom said. He tried to sip at the beer, but it was gone in four swallows. He crinkled the can and looked down at his hand. It was shaking.

  “You want another beer?” Mike asked.

  “Maybe just one,” Tom said. “I’m not a great flier.”

  “Better drink it now, before we hit that front,” Mike said. He hopped up and got Tom another.

  Tom nodded his thanks and looked at the golden can. He took a sip and sighed.

  “I used to put guys like Randy Kapp in jail,” he said under his breath. “Now here I am, drinking his beer.”

  “Ever think about going back to that?” Mike asked.

  Tom took a deep breath and let it out. “No. Not really. I try to fight the good fight in my own way.”

  “I’m wearing your colors,” Mike said, smiling big.

  “You’re family, Mike,” Tom said. “I want you to know that.”

  “I know that,” Mike said.

  “But I never told you,” Tom said. “I just wanted to tell you.”

  Mike rattled the pretzels again. On his face was a look of hope. He offered over the bag. Tom shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. He reclined the seat, took a deep breath, and let it out.

  “‘Sleep is the best meditation.’”

  Tom smiled at her. He couldn’t exactly see her, but it was more than just her voice. He could feel her.

  “Dalai Lama,” he said to her.

  “Yes, my love.”

  “What?” Mike asked.

  Tom’s eyes shot open.

  “The quote,” he said. “It’s the Dalai Lama.”

  “What quote?”

  “Nothing,” Tom said. “A dream. I think I fell asleep.”

  “You should for a minute,” Mike said. “I got some stuff I want to read on that guy Slovanich.”

  “I think I will.”

  Tom settled in. The empty beer can clicked quietly under the loving flex of his fingers. After a while, Munch chortled in the distance. The airplane began to rumble gently, rocking him to sleep.

  Tom was ripped from blackness by a cry. Someone was sha
king him violently. His eyes shot open. The plane. It was bucking and weaving. Out of control. Mike was clutching his computer. His eyes wide. Only the seat belt kept Tom from smashing his face into the bulkhead. His heart pumped wildly and his stomach flew up into his throat. He groped, unthinking, for the vomit bag. The plane plunged.

  They were going down.

  CHAPTER 44

  Jane stepped away from the door and held still. Again, she thought back to her father. The motions seemed slow, weighted, but the sound of his voice rang clear.

  “Sometimes the best defense is a good offense,” he said.

  He never mentioned the reasons why she should learn to protect herself, but Jane knew.

  “A baseball bat or anything heavy that you can swing,” he said, “delivered to the base of the skull, back here . . . That’s where the brain stem is, that’s where even a big man will crumple.”

  “What about a knife?” she asked.

  “A knife? Where would you get a knife?”

  “Well, if you had one.”

  “You use it like this,” he said, picking up a pen from the little desk where he would fill out his weight-lifting card in his flourishing script. He placed the pen in his palm, as if he were holding a small sword. “You don’t stab down like they do in the monster movies. You thrust it like this . . . straight into their chest, between the ribs, like a punch. You nick something vital like that and they’ll go down like a bag of rocks.”

  Jane eased away from the hook that was sticking in her back. She shifted the knife in her hand and held it parallel to the floor. She cocked her arm back, her knuckles pressed up against her ribs. She would let him step past. Then she’d lunge out and stab him, straight in, between the ribs, just to the left of his spine. She’d nick a lung, maybe even the heart.

  Now her hand was still, but her knees were trembling. The footsteps were coming closer, slowly. Just outside the broom closet, they stopped. She could feel him there, and she wondered if he could feel her, too.