by Stuart Woods
“Roger that.”
Ted looked again at the CRT and still saw a blank screen. He left the cupboard door open, turned down the bed, and got out a pair of flannel pajamas from a drawer. As he began to unbutton his shirt, he heard a soft beep from the cupboard; he looked at the CRT and saw a blip on the north side of the house. A deer, he thought, or maybe a raccoon; he continued to unbutton his shirt. Then the instrument beeped again. This time the blip was on the south side of the house. Was he being surrounded by deer? Both blips remained absolutely stationary, but they were still there. Was somebody watching the house? Was somebody, maybe, listening? He switched on the bedside radio, which was already tuned to Bay Radio, which played the old, big band music he loved. He moved quietly around the room, putting a few things into a small duffel, things he might need.
Smith took the headphones off. “He’s playing music,” he said to Kinney.
“Music?”
“Big band stuff, fairly loudly.”
“There’s a radio station up here that plays big band,” an agent said. “I had it earlier on my Walkman.”
“Maybe it helps him sleep,” Smith said.
“Maybe it’s to cover up other noise,” Kinney replied.
“Hang on, I just heard a toilet flush,” Smith said. “He just sat on the bed, too. The springs squeaked.”
Kinney’s cell phone rang. “Jack here.”
“The bedroom light went off. The house is dark.”
“Right, we hear him in bed, but there’s radio music playing, so we can’t hear his breathing. Check back in an hour if there’s no change.”
The music stopped, and an announcer spoke. “We now pause for a test of the national alert system,” he said. “We’ll return to Bay Radio in sixty seconds.” Ted reached out and turned up the radio. A glance at the CRT across the room showed two more blips moving in. Now.
Smith pulled off the earphones again. “The radio is playing that national alert test that drives everybody crazy. I can’t even listen.”
“It only lasts one minute,” Kinney said.
Smith looked at his watch and waited. Finally, he listened again. “We’re back to music, but it’s louder than before. Why would he turn up the radio as he was going to bed?”
Kinney winced. “He’s on to us. We have to go in right now.” He pressed a button on his cell phone, and the SWAT team leader answered. “We have to go in right now. Position your people to enter in sixty seconds from my mark. Ready… mark!” Kinney snapped the phone shut and punched a button on his wrist chronograph, starting the second hand.
“Everybody in position; we go in one minute.”
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Kinney looked at his watch, then pressed the button on his cell phone.
“Yeah?” the team leader said.
“Go,” he said, and he waved his half of the SWAT team forward. They were all running toward the house now.
Inside the bedroom cupboard, more than a dozen blips were converging on the cottage. Ted had already tiptoed out of the bedroom with the duffel, grabbed his parka, and was moving slowly down the stairs to the basement. He was pretty sure they couldn’t hear him down here. He got into his warm clothes, went to a large cupboard against the west wall, took hold of it and shifted it away from the wall a couple of feet. Behind the cupboard was a heavy wooden door. He pushed it open and tossed his duffel through the opening, then he backed through the opening on his knees, and reached out and dragged the cupboard back against the wall, hiding the door. He shut the thick door and double-bolted it from the inside, then he turned around in the tunnel, slipped on his night-vision goggles, and waited for his eyes to adjust.
The SWAT team had the doors open in a few seconds, and the black-clad men, wearing night-vision goggles, moved through the house, searching each room, each closet, each cupboard. “Okay,” the team leader shouted, “goggles off, lights on!”
People began switching on the house lights in each room.
Kinney burst through the front door, followed closely by Kerry Smith. “You got him?” he yelled.
The team leader came out of the bedroom. “He’s not here,” he said, “but come look at this.”
Kinney followed him into the bedroom and saw the CRT in the cupboard. He could see a couple of blips moving around the house; his men were searching the perimeter. “He saw us coming,” he said.
“Basement door!” somebody shouted from the hall.
“Go get him!” Kinney said to the team leader. He followed the man into the hallway; SWAT team members were already swarming down the stairs, guns at the ready.
Kinney was right behind them. When he got to the bottom of the stairs, the lights were on, and he looked around. Workbench, hot water heater, furnace, all the usual basement stuff. He opened a large cupboard and found an assortment of tools neatly laid out. “He’s in this house somewhere,” Kinney said. “Find him.” He could already hear the noise of team members taking the upstairs apart, and the men in the basement started up the stairs to help.
“Wait a minute!” Kinney said. Everybody stopped.
Ted could see the tunnel ahead. He began crawling along the plank floor, dragging the duffel. It had taken him three summer vacations to dig this thing and shore it up. He hoped he was crazy, paranoid, that the blips were really deer, but he wasn’t going to take the chance. Then he heard the burglar alarm go off upstairs.
He reached another door, opened it, and slipped through into the concrete culvert. Closing and bolting the door behind him, he began to move down the culvert, which was larger in diameter than his tunnel. He was now on his feet in a half crouch, moving quickly. A minute later, the culvert had passed under the road, and he emerged into starlight. He waded as quietly as he could through the shallow end of a small pond, into which the culvert emptied, and made dry land.
He looked up, checked the stars, and began jogging overland, keeping roughly parallel to the road.
He had, maybe, three-quarters of a mile to go, about twelve minutes. He paced himself, breathing deeply. Five minutes later he was loosening clothing to cool down.
“What?” the SWAT team leader asked.
“Is anything in this basement movable, except that cupboard?” Kinney pointed at the large piece of furniture.
“No, sir, I don’t think so,” the man replied.
“Have a couple of your men move it away from the wall,” Kinney said.
The leader made a motion, and two large men got hold of the cupboard and moved it out.
“There,” Kinney said, pointing at the door. “Get it open.”
The two men tried and failed to open it.
“Use a door charge,” Kinney said.
“Do it,” the team leader said to his men. “Everybody upstairs. The concussion will kill your ears in this basement.”
Everybody clambered up the stairs. The last man up held a remote control in his hand. He closed the door behind him.
“Blow it,” the leader said. Everybody stepped back.
The man pressed a button, and the door flew off its hinges into the hallway, followed by noise.
The team leader was first down the stairs, with Kinney right behind him. The explosion had blown out the lightbulbs, so flashlights came on.
The team leader shone his light past the splintered door. “We’ve got a tunnel.” Without another word, he knelt down and started crawling.
Kinney followed, and there were more men behind him. He had no night-vision goggles, but everybody was using flashlights.
“We’ve got another door,” the leader hollered. “Hold up!” He tried the door. “It’s like the other one. We’re going to have to blow it. Everybody out of the tunnel!”
There was barely enough room to turn around, but gradually, the tunnel emptied.
Kinney was half out of breath. “Blow it. I’m going to take some men and see if I can figure out where it comes out.” He motioned for Smith and three SWAT team members to follow him, then he ran up the stairs and out of the h
ouse. “All right, stop,” he said. “Look around. See where you’d have a tunnel come out if you built it.”
Everybody stood in the front yard and looked around.
“The beach,” Smith said. “That’s where I’d have it come out.”
“Everybody to the beach,” Kinney said, then started jogging. They were there in less than a minute. “Look for an opening. It’s probably behind something.”
“There’s a culvert,” Smith said, shining his light on it. “A good-sized one.”
“Everybody shut up,” Kinney said. He knelt at the culvert and listened. He was nearly blown off his feet by a rush of air and noise from the pipe.
“They blew the door,” Smith said. “The tunnel leads into the culvert.”
Kinney grabbed a team member. “You go down the culvert as far as you can. Watch out, you might meet Buddy coming the other way. Kerry, you take a man and go down the beach that way,” he said, pointing. “I’ll take a man and go the other way.”
Ted cut across the road past a farmhouse and ran toward the airstrip. Finally, he had to walk, for fear of having a heart attack; he was fit, but he had just run three-quarters of a mile, carrying a heavy bag. He made the airplane, unlocked it, and tossed his bag into the passenger seat, then released the tiedown ropes. No time for a preflight; he climbed in and started flipping switches. He primed the engine, then turned the key to the starter position. The prop began to swing, and a moment later, the engine caught and started. There was no wind to speak of, so Ted knew he could use either end of the runway.
He started taxiing, then put in twenty degrees of flaps. He stopped at the end of the runway, ran the engine up to full power, paused a moment to make sure it was going to keep running while cold, then released the brakes.
Kinney ran for a few hundred yards, then turned back. He met Kerry Smith back at the culvert.
“Hey!” a voice shouted from a distance. “Over here!”
It came from the other side of the house.
Kinney led the group back to the house, past it, and across the road, where the shouts were coming from. Finally, they came across a SWAT team member, standing knee deep in a pond.
“The culvert ended here,” he said.
“Where is the guy going to go?” Kinney asked. “He can’t get off the island without a boat.”
The team leader rushed up.
“Get some men down to Dark Harbor and make sure nobody leaves by boat,” Kinney said.
“Listen,” Kerry Smith said.
“We’ve got to get the chopper in here from Augusta with more men,” Kinney was saying.
“Shut up and listen!” Smith shouted.
Everybody got quiet.
“Do you hear that?”
“What is it?” Kinney asked.
“An airplane engine. Look!”
Just for a moment they caught a flash of moonlight on something climbing away from the island, something with no lights.
“Oh, shit,” Kinney said.
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Kerry Smith looked up in the direction of the parting airplane; it seemed to be making a turn.
“We’re fucked,” he said. “A Cessna i82RG will make a hundred and fifty knots. That’s faster than the helicopter.”
“What direction would you say he’s flying?” Kinney asked.
“I’d say he’s headed southwest, along the coast.”
Kinney thought about his options and realized there was only one. He got out his cell phone and dialed a Washington number.
“White House,” an operator said.
“This is Deputy Director Robert Kinney of the FBI. Please let me speak to the president at once.”
“He’s asleep, Mr. Kinney. Do you know the hour?”
“He asked me to call. This is an emergency. Please wake him immediately.”
“Hold, please.”
Kinney waited, tapping his foot, while Smith and the others stared at him.
“This is Will Lee,” the voice said, sounding remarkably awake.
“This is Bob Kinney, Mr. President. Please listen carefully. Rawls was right about Fay having a Maine hideaway. My men and I are there now, and Fay has escaped the island in a light airplane, a Cessna 182RG.”
“I used to fly one of those,” the president said.
“We now have only one means of catching him, and if we don’t get him tonight, I don’t think we ever will.”
“What means do we have, Bob?”
“You need to call the Pentagon and scramble a couple of jets out of the Brunswick, Maine, Naval Air Station. Maybe they can force him down, but more likely, they’ll have to shoot him down.”
The president was silent for a moment. “Hold on for a minute.”
Smith looked at Kinney. “Are you on hold?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much.”
“Is he going to do it?”
“How do I know? I’m on hold.”
After perhaps two minutes, the president came back on the line. “Bob, I’m going to conference you with the duty officer in the office of the chief of naval operations.”
“All right, sir.”
“Just a minute.” There was a click, then the president said, “Captain, are you there?”
“Yes, Mr. President”
“I have Deputy Director Robert Kinney of the FBI on the line.”
“Good evening, Mr. Kinney.”
“Kinney is going to give you instructions on what and where this airplane is. I want you to scramble as many jets as you think it will take from the Brunswick, Maine, Naval Air Station with orders to force down this airplane, and if that is not possible, to shoot it down. Is that order clear?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Tell him what he needs to know, Mr. Kinney.”
“Captain, a Cessna 182 retractable took off from Islesboro Airport, in Penobscot Bay, Maine, about ten minutes ago. I’m told the airplane can do a hundred and fifty knots.”
The president interrupted. “A hundred and sixty, if it’s lightly loaded.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kinney said. “We believe the aircraft is headed southwest, down the Maine coast. If so, it will pass nearly directly over Brunswick. It’s not wearing any lights, and I doubt if it has its transponder turned on, but Brunswick ground radar may be able to pick it up as a primary target.”
“How many aboard?”
“I believe there to be one man aboard.”
“Fuel?”
“As far as I know, the airplane was last refueled at Manchester, New Hampshire, yesterday, before flying to Islesboro.”
The president broke in again. “It will carry eighty or ninety gallons of usable fuel, depending on what year it was built, and it uses about thirteen gallons an hour in cruise.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” the captain said. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“Not I,” the president said. “Mr. Kinney?”
Kinney thought for a moment. “The pilot is desperate, I believe. He’ll do anything not to get caught. You might inform your pilots of that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kinney,” the captain said. “Mr. President, I should inform you that this is going to be a very difficult job for these pilots, because of the difference in airspeed between their jets and a light piston airplane, and I’m not sure offhand whether his engine generates enough heat for a heat-seeking missile to home in on. If they fire, I’ll have them fire toward the sea, since we don’t want any stray rounds impacting the coast.”
“I know they’ll do the best they can, Captain. Good night. Please report back to me directly when you have news.”
“Good night, Mr. President.” The captain hung up.
“Bob, you still there?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Am I doing the right thing, here?”
“I believe so, sir. There isn’t anything else left to do. He can land that airplane in any farmer’s field and be on his w
ay.”
“You heard the speaker died?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t want Fay to still be at large when his funeral is held.”
