Hot Pursuit

by Stuart Woods

  “I can do that,” Dino said.

  They arrived at the airport and were buzzed through the security gate. The CJ4 had just landed and was taxiing in; Stone’s M2 was just being rolled out of the hangar.

  Stone pulled up to his airplane, admiring her once again, and they loaded their luggage while Pat rolled her bag across the ramp toward the CJ4, which had just parked.

  A lineman walked up to Stone. “We fueled her yesterday—topped off as you requested.”

  “Thanks,” Stone said. “Is that Mustang still here?”

  “No, Mr. Reeves took off half an hour ago.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “His pilot was with him.”

  “Stone,” Pat called out, “will you put the car in the parking lot and leave the keys with the desk inside? Somebody will pick it up.”

  “Sure, I’ve got to pay for my fuel and hangar, anyway.”

  “Anything I can do?” Dino asked.

  “Yeah, when I get back, you can turn on the master switch—that’s the red one on the left-hand side—and the landing light—that’s on the right side. I’ll need to check them as part of my pre-flight inspection.”

  “Got it.”

  Stone drove the car out, left it in the parking lot, then went inside and handed over the keys and paid his bill. While he was doing that the lineman came inside. “Have we got any string?” he asked.

  “Sure,” his colleague replied, “there’s some on the shelf behind the desk.” The lineman got the string and went back outside.

  Stone signed the bill and put it in his pocket, then started back to the airplane. Dino was standing halfway between the building and the airplane, and the landing light was not yet turned on. The luggage had been removed from the airplane and was piled next to him. As he got nearer to Dino, he noticed that the ball of string the lineman had asked for was at his feet, and that he was holding the string, which led into the cockpit.

  “What are you doing?” Stone asked.

  Dino handed him a piece of green-jacketed copper wire about three inches long. “Do you recognize that?” he asked.

  “No, where’d you get it?”

  “It was on the carpet at the top of the airstair, just inside the door.”

  “And that caused you to unload the airplane?”

  “Call me crazy,” Dino said. “We’ll see.” He tugged hard on the string, and the airplane’s landing light came on.

  “I don’t get—” Stone started to say. Then the front end of the airplane exploded. Stone and Dino dove behind the piled luggage, and small pieces of airplane rained down around them. When they looked up again, the cockpit and everything ahead of it had disappeared. The nose gear, amazingly, was still intact.

  Then, slowly, the airplane sat down on her tail, making a crunching noise.

  “Holy shit!” Stone said, getting to his feet.

  Across the ramp, Pat and her client were cowering next to the CJ4. “Are you two all right?” she shouted.

  “Fine,” Stone yelled back. “My airplane isn’t so good, though.” He turned to Dino. “What did you do?”

  Dino looked sheepish. “The wire made me suspicious, so I tied some string to the master switch and rigged it so that I could turn it on from here. I guess I didn’t really believe that there was a bomb, and I didn’t want to call the bomb squad.”

  “Well, I congratulate you on still being alive—and on saving our luggage, too.”

  “I’m sorry about the airplane,” Dino said.

  “That’s what insurance is for,” Stone replied, and got out his cell phone. “I’d better call them now. You can deal with the cops.”

  “I think I’ll call Sir Martin Beveridge,” he said. “It’s better to deal with these things from the top down.”

  —

  THE POLICE WERE there in minutes with a chief inspector in charge, and a van full of men and equipment; they were soon crawling over Stone’s M2 like ants.

  Stone was about to call his travel agent to book himself and Dino on a flight to New York, when Pat came over. “Listen,” she said, “I’ve talked with my client, and if you like, you and Dino can fly back with us.”

  “What a great idea!” Stone said. “Saves us a trip to Heathrow and a lot of hassle.”

  “We’ve got some very rare favorable winds today, so we’ll fly to Presque Isle, Maine, and clear customs there. Do you think you can get a charter to meet you and take you to Teterboro?”

  “We can do that,” Stone replied. “Where’s Presque Isle?”

  “Just south of the Canadian border. We can clear customs there much faster than Bangor, where we’d have to mix with commercial passengers.”

  “Good to know.”

  Pat pulled him aside, looking embarrassed. “There’s something I haven’t told you,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re still my attorney, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “I didn’t tell you the whole reason why Paul and Kevin have behaved the way they have, but this business with your airplane changes things.”

  “Go on.”

  “In the beginning, when they were just trying to frighten me, it was because I know a lot more about Paul’s business and his relationship with Kevin than I’ve told you.”

  “Tell me now, then.”

  “I was a part of what they were doing. I flew Paul to various meetings with briefcases full of money, and I knew what it was for. I wasn’t exactly a partner, but I was an accomplice.”

  “I see.”

  “When Kevin fired those shots at us on Dartmoor, he wasn’t warning you, he was warning me, because he thought I might tell you about them. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to testify against them.”

  “And now?”

  “I still don’t want to testify against them, but if you advise me to, I will. The bomb on your airplane was a convincer.”

  “I understand, and I’ll keep you as much out of it as I can. The New York DA will be more interested in the murders than in their past.”

  They rejoined Dino, and the chief inspector approached. “Commissioner,” he said to Dino, “my men tell me it was something like half a pound of plastique, wired to the master switch. Very simple, really.”

  Dino thanked him. “Do you need us for anything else?”

  “No, we’ve talked to everybody. Mr. Barrington, what do you want done with your airplane?”

  “My insurance agent will be in touch with you about that,” Stone replied. “He’s in California and not open yet, but I’ve left a message for him.”

  The captain gave him a card. “We’ve checked, and this Mr. Reeves in the Mustang didn’t head for Reykjavik, as you said he might. He filed for Cork. Nothing beyond that. We’re still checking.”

  “I hope you catch up with him,” Stone said.

  “Mind you, we’ve nothing to connect him to your airplane, except your suspicions. At least, not yet.”

  “I understand. Thank you for your help, Captain. We’ll be off now.” He shook the man’s hand, and he and Dino carried their luggage over to the CJ4 and stowed it. Five minutes later, Pat was taxiing the airplane to the runway, with her client in the right cockpit seat and Stone and Dino buckled into passenger seats.

  They landed at Shannon, and Stone used the refueling stop to call his insurance agent again. “Larry?”

  “Yes, Stone, I got your message. Have you had a problem?”

  “You’re not going to believe it, Larry.”

  55

  THE MI6 CAR picked up Quentin and Millie at the Connaught at seven AM and drove them to headquarters, where they were escorted to the ground floor and a large conference room, with an office to one side for Quentin. His team was already there, unpacking equipment and dealing with the locals about the voltage differences
.

  Ian Rattle turned up. “Good morning. When can your people start installing your gear in Regent’s Park?”

  “Not in broad daylight,” Quentin said. “It’s a black bag job, and they don’t know the territory yet.”

  “Have a look at our monitors—we’ve got some aerial shots of the area, and a couple of cameras on the ground.”

  “Please take away your ground cameras now,” Quentin said. “We’ll cover all the angles we need, and half our job is not getting spotted. I do want to see the aerial shots, though. For God’s sake don’t have any more overflights, especially with choppers.”

  Ian led him over to a large monitor. “Put up the shot from yesterday afternoon,” he said to a tech. An aerial view of a large house surrounded by parkland came into view. “Zoom in to the delivery entrance.”

  Quentin peered at the closer shot. “I see a delivery truck unloading some large crates,” he said.

  “Three or four of them.”

  “Anything longer than, say, four feet?”

  “No, there are no air-to-ground missiles in those boxes, if that’s what you’re thinking, unless they’re building them from scratch in the house.”

  “Doesn’t seem likely. Do you have or have access to any drones?”

  “Possibly,” Ian replied.

  “I’d like to know what could be available, by type, range, load, et cetera, and especially hang time.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Ian said, then excused himself.

  “What do you have in mind?” Millie asked him.

  “We’re going to try for the same level of surveillance we have on the Washington site, but that will depend on how difficult it is to get inside. It would be a great help if you could ask Ian or somebody around here if it’s possible to get the plans for this house—maybe from whatever authority issues building permits over here. It’s an old house, so it must have been occasionally updated along the way, especially after the sultan bought it. I’d bet that they did a major renovation at that time.”

  “I’ll go find somebody,” Millie said.

  —

  THE CJ4 TOOK OFF from Shannon and climbed to flight level 400 (forty thousand feet). Stone watched Pat fly for a while from a forward seat and came back to Dino to report. “We’ve got a twenty-five-knot tailwind,” he said.

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Yes, the prevailing winds are from the west and southwest. I’ll call Mike Freeman and ask him to send his Mustang for us.”

  “Not yet,” Dino said. “I want to make some calls first. Have they got a satphone on this crate?”

  Stone pointed at it. “Dial zero-one-one, then the area code and number.”

  Stone tried to relax, but he kept thinking about his ruined airplane. It was as though he’d lost a leg. He was accustomed to flying himself wherever he went and on a moment’s notice, and now he was grounded.

  Dino hung up the phone. “We got a break,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I had the NYPD flight department run a check on Reeves’s airplane. He’s filed a report with U.S. Customs saying he’ll land in Presque Isle, Maine, at seven this evening.”

  “That sounds impossible for a Mustang,” Stone said, getting out a chart of the North Atlantic. “But maybe he’s taking advantage of the tailwinds, too.” He did some rough calculations. “From Cork, he could have gone to Santa Maria, in the Azores, then to St. John’s, Newfoundland, then Presque Isle. That’s stretching his range a lot, but he does have the tailwinds to help.”

  “Maybe he’ll crash into the sea and save us all a lot of trouble,” Dino said.

  “Hang on a minute,” Stone said. He got up, went forward, and tapped Pat on the shoulder. “What’s our ETA for Presque Isle?”

  She pointed at the top of the multi-function display. “With the time change, six PM Eastern. We’re forecast to get even better winds from the southwest as we get closer to the other side.”

  “Given the winds, could Reeves fly to the Azores, then to St. John’s and then to Presque Isle in the Mustang?”

  She thought for a minute. “He could very well do that. He departed from Cork—that’s, let’s see, about thirteen hundred miles to Santa Maria, then fourteen hundred to St. John’s. Then only about six hundred and fifty to Presque Isle. His range is thirteen hundred, but that’s at full cruise. If he pulled power, he’d increase his range, and the winds are even better for that route than they are for ours.”

  Stone thanked her and returned to his seat. “Reeves can make that schedule,” he said.

  Dino picked up the satphone and made a call. “Detective Robert Miller,” he said, “the commissioner calling. Hello, Bob? It’s Dino Bacchetti. Just fine, thanks. I want you to call the flight department and put a hold on our King Air in my name, then get a warrant for Kevin Keyes on the double murder charge and another warrant for a man named Paul Reeves for accessory after the fact. I don’t care if the mayor wants the airplane, you get it. Then I want you to fly to Presque Isle, Maine”—he spelled the name—“and I want you there at six PM sharp. After you land, park the airplane so that it’s not conspicuous to arriving aircraft. Got it? Stone Barrington and I will be arriving about that time in a Cessna CJ4. Got it?” He listened for a moment. “You got it. See you then.” Dino hung up. “Okay, we’ve got a ride back to Teterboro,” he said.

  56

  QUENTIN WAS at his desk at MI6 when he got a call. “It’s Turner at Hoover,” a voice said. “Something’s up at Mahmoud’s residence.”

  “Tell me, and don’t leave anything out.”

  “There have been two delivery trucks early this morning,” Turner said. “One was from an awning company—”

  “What the hell is an awning company?”

  “They rent tents and the like for outdoor parties, in case of rain.”

  “Any rain in the local forecast?”

  “Not for a week—I checked. We’ve got a video from the downstairs garage showing them unloading canvas and putting it in the elevator.”

  “Not outside? Are they expecting rain indoors?”

  “Beats me. The second truck delivered air freight—some large crates. I checked with customs, and they were shipped in under diplomatic seal from Dahai. Hey, hang on, have you got a monitor there?”

  “Yeah, the one in the office.”

  A transmission came up on the monitor. “This is from the Agency drone,” Turner said. “It’s the rooftop of the building.”

  Quentin watched and saw some men unrolling large pieces of yellow-striped canvas. “They’re setting up a tent on the roof?”

  “Looks like it. Wait a minute and you’ll get a three-sixty view. The drone is orbiting.”

  Quentin saw the canvas from every angle. “Looks like what you’d see at a funeral, over the grave.” They watched as the men set up a metal frame, then hoisted the canvas in place. “Turner, has Mahmoud played with his drone again?”

  “Yes, once. The Agency drone wasn’t up in time to photograph or follow it.”

  “Wait, look to the left of the awning,” Quentin said. “They’re bringing the crates up to the roof.” The crates were wheeled under the awning. “Shit. You think they’re onto our drone?”

  “They couldn’t be, we only got it up this morning. They’ve got reason to think about drones, though, so I think they’re just being careful.”

  “Can we get the Agency drone low enough to see under the awning?”

  “No, then the parapet gets in the way.”

  Quentin went back into the conference room and found the group all staring at the largest monitor.

  Ian Rattle was among them. “Hello,” he said. “We’ve got our hands on a drone—don’t ask who from.” He pointed at the screen. “That’s the roof of Regency House,” he said.

  “Show me the delivery entrance,” Quenti
n said.

  “We had a look at it a minute ago,” Ian said. “They got a lorry delivery from a marquee company.”

  “Marquis, like a French aristocrat?”

  “No, marquee . . .” He spelled it. “Like a tent. They must be having a garden party.”

  “It’s not a garden party,” Quentin said. “They’re going to set up the marquee on the roof.”

  “A roof party?” Ian asked. “It doesn’t look like that kind of roof—too industrial.”

  “Then they’re going to bring those crates that we saw earlier up to the roof and unpack them under the marquee.”

  “We didn’t furnish your office with a crystal ball,” Ian said. “Where are you getting this?”

  “They’re doing exactly the same thing in Washington, at the Dahai apartment building.”

  Ian stared at him. “I don’t like it,” he said.

  “I don’t like it, either.”

  “Can we get one of your black bag boys on the roof tonight?”

  “We’re better off with the drone,” Quentin said. “Tonight, I think there’ll be people on the roof.”

  “What do you think they’re doing?”

  “My best guess? They’re assembling a drone of their own.”

  Ian seemed speechless. “And what’s your best guess as to what they’re going to do with it?”

  “There are too many things they could do with it,” Quentin replied. “The mind boggles.”

  Millie came into the room. “What’s up?”

  Quentin told her. “Where is the president?”

  “In Rome.”

  “When does she get back to Washington?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I don’t suppose she could add another couple of cities to her tour, could she?”

  “It takes weeks, maybe months, to plan that sort of thing.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  Ian was taking all this in. He picked up a phone. “Get me Ten Downing Street,” he said, “the PM’s private secretary.” He waited for a while. “Sir Robert? This is Major Ian Rattle at MI6. Can you tell me, please, what is the PM’s schedule for the next few days?” He listened for a minute or so. “He looks to me as though he needs a rest. Do you think you could get him to go down to Chequers for a few days? I see. No, I’ll get back to you later today, after I speak to Dame Felicity.” He hung up and dialed an extension. “I’d like to come and see her now,” he said. “Right.” He hung up and turned to Quentin and Millie. “We’re seeing her in ten minutes.”