High Heat

by Richard Castle

  “By the way,” Rook said, “you do realize we’re starting to sound like Justin and Preston, completing each other’s thoughts and sentences, right?”

  “Speaking of which, I bet when we do voice-matching, it’s those two in the video, pretending to be terrorists, knowing the Darth Vader filter—”

  “Kylo Ren filter.”

  “—the whatever filter would throw it off. But when Raley stripped the filter away, it sounded like two kids who ran a college radio station—just like Justin and Preston. I bet one of them is left-handed, like the guy in the video who swung the machete. I knew that was strange for an Arab. It would also explain why they kept glancing just to the side of the camera. They were constantly looking to Lana for approval.”

  “Okay, but you know I’m not taking that bet,” Rook said. “As you’ll recall, you still have to make love to me dressed as a sex-crazed Vulcan. I haven’t collected on that yet.”

  “You will. You will.”

  “But first?” Rook said.

  “LaGuardia Airport,” Heat said.

  And Rook finished: “The LokSat Aviation terminal.”

  Rook drove. Heat worked the phones.

  They probably should have done it the other way—Heat really was a better driver, even if Rook would have been loath to admit it—except they needed Heat’s official status when it came to talking to Port Authority. Especially given the seemingly preposterous news she had to deliver: that Legs Kline was behind American ISIS, and that he and his plane had to be detained until she arrived.

  Heat’s next call was to Hamner, who promptly put out an APB on Kline’s limousine, in case they had taken a detour or gotten slowed in traffic and were still en route.

  Then she called Lorain Police Lieutenant Jen Forbus, who confirmed that George Lichman—who she was now referring to in the past tense—had worked for Kline Industries, a detail she hadn’t realized was important before. All five of the other men whose phone numbers Svejda had collected also worked for Kline.

  As Heat hung up, Forbus was making noise about search warrants and about declaring Lichman a homicide. Maybe they’d find Lichman’s car somewhere. Both women knew it was more than likely far too late to find his body. A smelter can easily top two thousand degrees. There would be nothing left of him.

  Heat soon heard back from Hamner, who said the limousine had been pulled over on Grand Central. The driver claimed to have dropped off the entire Kline party—Legs, Lana, and their security detail—at the LokSat Aviation terminal, then let the uniforms thoroughly search the limo, just to prove it.

  All the while, Rook was living out a long-held vehicular fantasy. Google Maps would tell you the trip from 82nd Street to LaGuardia Airport takes twenty-one minutes. With Rook gleefully ignoring traffic laws and speed limits, driving with the impunity of an unmarked car and a flashing gumball, they made the trip in sixteen.

  By the time Rook gunned the engine for the final time and pulled up in front of LokSat Aviation, a large warehouse-like building on the west side of the airport’s acreage, it appeared half of the Port Authority Police had beaten them there. There was a tremendous show of force, half of it likely unnecessary—a fire truck, really?—but Heat knew enough about the incessant overtime padding at the Port Authority that she wasn’t surprised.

  Following the source of activity to its zenith, Heat and Rook worked their way around the building to the front of the hangar. There, a Boeing 737 NG was surrounded by Port Authority Police vehicles, looking like a rhinoceros beset by a pack of dachshunds.

  “That’s Kline’s plane,” Rook said.

  The vessel had been painted like an American flag, with the stars on the tailfin and the red and white stripes on the fuselage. It was like a supersized version of Preston’s—or was it Justin’s?—American flag lapel pin.

  “Yeah, I think I could have guessed that,” Heat said, continuing her charge.

  Flashing her badge to get past a variety of Port Authority cops who were working hard to justify their overtime, Heat eventually presented herself to the lanky dark-haired man who seemed to be running the show.

  “Hi. Captain Nikki Heat. I’m the—”

  “Reason I’m out of bed right now? Yeah, I know,” he said, then offered a good-natured smile and stuck out his right hand. “Captain Ron Marsico.”

  Then Marsico turned to Rook. “Mr. Rook, I once thought about going into journalism before I came to my senses and joined the Port Authority. But I just want to say I’m a big fan.”

  “And I appreciate all you do to protect New York’s bridges, tunnels, and ports,” Rook said. “And I know there are hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who feel the same way every day.”

  He was laying it on a bit thick, but Marsico seemed to be lapping it up.

  Or at least he was until he turned back to Heat. “I guess you’re responsible for there being a mess, but I’m responsible for the mess itself. So please tell me you have a very, very good reason for me detaining the plane belonging to the future president of the United States. Because I like my job and prefer to stay unfired.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Heat said. “Where’s Legs Kline?”

  “You tell me. He wasn’t on that thing, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Marsico said, pointing at the plane.

  “What?” Heat said.

  “We intercepted this vessel just as it was starting to taxi out toward the runway. We instructed the pilot to come to a full stop, saying it was a police matter and that we had to board the plane to apprehend a suspect. The pilot complied, but when we boarded the plane, there were no passengers, just crew.”

  Heat scowled at the plane with consternation. “That’s not possible. We talked to a limo driver who said he dropped off Legs and his people here.”

  “Tell that to the pissed-off pilot I interviewed,” Marsico said. “He swore up and down that his orders were to fly an empty plane over to Europe somewhere to pick up some Kline Industries VIPs and then bring them back to the states. He was cursing me out for making him late, going on and on about how he’d have to file a new flight plan, yada yada. For what it’s worth, we interviewed the co-pilot and the flight attendant separately. They both backed up the pilot’s story. They’re all still in the interrogation room back at our place if you want to talk to them.”

  Heat crossed her arms. Rook pouted silently.

  “I also talked to the entire LokSat Aviation graveyard shift, which consisted of one kid who, admittedly, might have been stoned,” Marsico said. “For what it’s worth, he said he didn’t see any passengers boarding the plane.”

  “Probably because he couldn’t see beyond the end of his blunt,” Rook said.

  “That may be true. And, look, I’m all for striking blows against terrorism. Anyone who has been with the Port Authority as long as I have lost friends on 9/11. But I can’t just impound a plane for no reason. If you don’t have some kind of probable cause that this particular vessel or its crew was involved in the commission of a crime, I’m going to have to let it go. I shouldn’t have even held on to it this long, but I watch the news. I know what you and your husband have been through today.”

  “Thanks,” Heat said.

  She turned to Rook. “Okay. I’m too tired to figure this out. How did they slip the hook? How did they even know we were onto them?”

  Then Heat snapped her fingers. “The murder board! Lana was looking at it while she was at the precinct. She must have looked at everything on there and figured it was only a matter of time until we put it together. They must have known we were coming and then switched planes. Damn it. They were just using this thing as a decoy. I should have asked them to halt all private air traffic.”

  Marsico volunteered, “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it would have made a difference. He didn’t escape from here. This was LokSat Aviation’s only scheduled departure for tonight. And we’ve had units at the other private aviation terminals asking about him, just to be sure. Legs Kline isn’t exactly
a guy who can just tiptoe in and out of places unnoticed. No one has seen him.”

  Heat groaned. She was too tired to have come this far and fallen this short. She uttered a rare swear.

  The entire time, Rook had just been looking up at the red, white, and blue monstrosity before them with a distracted smile on his face.

  “Captain,” Rook asked, “do you mind if I board the plane for a moment?”

  “What for?”

  “Nostalgia,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  Rook steadied his gaze at Marsico. “Legs Kline has a king-sized bed on that thing. I was allowed to sleep on it once for forty-five minutes. It was a very special, very magical experience and I’d…I’d just like to say good-bye.”

  “Rook, seriously?” Heat began. “We don’t have time to—”

  But Marsico was already shrugging. “For Jameson Rook? Sure. Why not. I need a little time to announce that this party is over and clear my people out of here. You got five minutes while we make ourselves scarce. After that, I have to let this thing go on its way.”

  “You got it,” Rook said. “And thank you.”

  Rook was already taking long strides toward the portable stairs still attached to the side of the plane. Heat had to scramble to keep up.

  “Rook, I know you loved that bed, but isn’t this a little much?”

  He didn’t answer. He was already climbing the stairs.

  “Rook, come on. We’re wasting time. Legs Kline is probably finding some other way to flee the country as we speak. He obviously knows we’re after him. He’s probably on board a boat or a submarine or God knows what.”

  Rook, ignoring her completely, was now inside the plane. Heat continued giving chase. She finished climbing the stairs, took a right turn at the cockpit, and passed through the first cabin, which contained a dozen extra-wide leather chairs that were bolted to the floor. Each of them had enough space around them that they could have reclined completely and still had room to spare.

  The cabins were separated not by a curtain, like a commercial airliner would be, but by a door. It was solid-looking, perhaps steel-reinforced, probably soundproof. Extra privacy, she thought, for any Mile High extracurricular activities that might be happening on the other side.

  She opened the door and walked into the second cabin, which contained the bed. Rook was jumping on it. Then he dropped and sprawled out on it.

  Actually, the word “sprawled” didn’t do him justice. He was rolling around, almost like a dog trying to itch its back on the grass.

  “Okay, Rook,” Heat said. “You’ve had your fun. And I’ll tell Ochoa all about it so he can be more jealous than he already is. But can we go now?”

  Rook paid her no heed. He had already moved on to a set of buttons on the side of the bed, which was apparently adjustable. Rook was pressing the buttons in random order, almost like a toddler who had discovered a new toy. The bed responded to this conflicting set of commands spasmodically, with various parts of it reclining, then flattening, then reclining again. Overhead lights went on and off. Music played then cut out. The flight attendant call button dinged several times.

  Heat slapped her forehead. This was a new low, even for her husband. Rook may have sometimes acted like the only child in the world to have won two Pulitzer Prizes. But, underneath, she now realized there was something far less mature.

  “Okay, Jameson,” Heat said, hoping she sounded enough like Margaret Rook that Rook would snap to. “Playtime is over. Now let’s—”

  She was interrupted by the humming of a motor kicking into action. Then the bed started to move. Not up or down, like when Rook had been working those controls.

  The bed was moving to the side.

  “I knew it,” Rook said. “It really is the Millennium Falcon!”

  Rook was wearing an enormous self-impressed grin. Sure enough, the bed was sliding over to reveal a secret compartment underneath.

  Heat watched in amazement as the gap between the bed and the side of the compartment grew to be about a foot wide.

  Then a black rectangular object, about the length of a candy bar and maybe twice as thick, flew out of the opening.

  Rook shouted, “Flash bang!”

  And the world went white.

  The noise hit them a split-second later, a deafening wall of sound.

  It was even more stunning than the light. And between the shock wave and the way it threw off the equilibrium of their inner ears, Heat and Rook had been knocked off their feet.

  A human being has five senses, but they get the majority of their input from either sight or hearing. If you disable one, most people can still find a way to function, albeit in diminished fashion. Without both, Heat and Rook were totally incapacitated.

  Heat felt a hand touching her holster. She tried to grab it, but she was so off-kilter she had a difficult time even knowing where her holster was. Whoever wanted her gun, probably one of Kline’s thugs, now had it as easily as if he had been disarming a baby.

  She braced herself for a shot. Was there a greater ignominy for a cop than being killed with her own gun?

  Her head throbbed. She kept blinking, hoping it would restore her sight. But there was still nothing but blinding lightness. It was like she had stared at the sun too long.

  If there was one saving grace, it had been Rook’s warning. In that split second between Rook’s shout and the object’s detonation, Heat was able to close her eyes and bring her hands to her ears. It spared her from the grenade’s full force. She was recovering ever so slightly faster than if she had been caught completely unawares.

  Heat got to her hands and knees and crawled around until she found the bed. It steadied her somewhat, just having something she could hold on to. She kept blinking. Her eyes still throbbed, but she felt like she was starting to be able to distinguish between light and dark again.

  Then she felt a lurch.

  Was it just her disturbed sense of balance playing tricks on her, or…

  No. There was no question about it. The plane was moving.

  With the small amount of hearing that had returned to her, she could distinguish that the engines had been turned on. The whine of the turbines was unmistakable.

  Legs Kline was trying to escape the United States in a plane painted like an enormous American flag.

  Surely, Heat thought, someone on the ground would notice this grandiose display of overblown patriotism on the move. And they would stop it.

  But who? And how? When they had left Captain Marsico, he’d seemed more concerned about clearing his forces out of the private aviation area. His people were traveling in the wrong direction. And once a big plane like this got moving, there would be no stopping it.

  That was why Kline’s goons hadn’t shot them yet. They were trying to make their getaway first. Either that, or they knew a police captain and famous writer would make for valuable hostages if things went sideways.

  “Rook! Rook can you hear me?” Heat yelled.

  “I’m still on the bed,” he yelled back.

  “Is Legs Kline crazy enough to think he’ll be able to fly this plane out of here?”

  “Legs Kline probably thinks he can do anything,” Rook shouted. “He used to fly crop dusters in college. And I bet at least one of those ex–Special Forces guys he employs knows something about how to work an airplane. Between them, they could probably get this thing in the air. And if you know anything about how to engage the autopilot, these planes will fly themselves. It could make it all the way to Croatian airspace without anyone so much as touching the controls.”

  Heat was still blinking. She could now see shapes. Using the bed for leverage, she hoisted herself up. She found she could stand again, if unsteadily. She staggered a few steps until she found the side of the fuselage, which she used to help keep herself vertical.

  The plane was picking up momentum. It wasn’t to takeoff speed, not yet. But it was definitely now at a fast taxi. A plane that size would need a real runwa
y in order to gain the velocity needed to achieve liftoff. But whoever was at the controls seemed determined to get to a runway in a hurry.

  Heat groped along the walls, working her way to the front of the cabin. Between her limited—but quickly returning—sight and her hands, she was able to find the door to the cabin.

  She tried to open it, but it was locked. Naturally. She felt along until she located the handle. She squinted at the spot, then delivered a devastating back kick.

  The handle didn’t move. This was a door built to last. She stomped it again. Nothing happened. It was steel reinforced, no question. She could kick it all day. Her foot would break before the door did.

  “Don’t waste your energy,” Rook said. “You’ll never get that thing open. And even if you do, there are a couple of beefy security goons waiting for you on the other side. Beyond that, you’ve got Legs and a flying buddy in the cockpit. And all cockpit doors these days are designed to be completely impenetrable. You’ll never get through.”

  “So what’s our plan?” Heat said, realizing she no longer needed to shout as much to be heard.

  “We have to keep the plane from taking off somehow,” Rook said. “Once it gets in the air, the only thing that’s going to get it back down on the ground is the US Air Force.”

  “You really think they’d shoot us down?”

  “An unauthorized plane being flown by confirmed terrorists in New York airspace? In a heartbeat,” Rook said. “And I don’t mean to point out the obvious, but I don’t think the F-18s who take us down are going to be real concerned about our soft landing. They’ll probably wait until we’re over water so we don’t fall on any civilians below us and then enjoy the target practice.”

  So that was it. They were locked in a rear cabin, behind an impregnable door, on an aircraft that would essentially become a huge flying coffin the moment it got into the air. They had no firearms nor any weaponry more powerful than the pillows on Legs’s king-sized bed. And they could only dimly see and hear.