Stuart Woods_Stone Barrington 14

by Shoot Him if He Runs

  They both heard the crunch of gravel from the driveway, and car doors slammed.

  “Shit!” Teddy said. “You’re going to have to stall them for me; give me as much time as you can.” He kissed her and ran out the back door as the doorbell rang. As he ran, he looked up at the overcast, which was nearly down to rooftop level at Irene’s house. This was going to be tougher than he had thought. He headed down the hill at breakneck speed.

  Irene Foster opened the door, wearing an apron. “Well hello, all of you, what a nice surprise! I was just making a crab salad; can you stay for lunch?”

  “I’m afraid not, Irene,” Thomas said, stepping into the house. “Where’s Harold?”

  “He’s just getting out of the shower. Why don’t you all have a seat; he’ll be out as soon as he’s dressed.” She showed them all into the living room, but nobody sat down.

  “We really need to see him right now, Irene,” Holly said.

  “Goodness, what’s the rush? Can I get anybody some iced tea?”

  From outside somewhere came a loud buzzing noise.

  “What’s that?” Stone asked.

  “Chain saw,” Irene replied smoothly. “They’re clearing out some trees in the ravine below the old guest house.”

  “There aren’t any trees in that ravine, and that’s not a chain saw,” Holly said, and she started running.

  59

  Teddy sat in the front seat of the two-seater ultralight aircraft, his case strapped into the rear seat. A map image appeared on the Garmin portable GPS he had fixed to the frame ahead of him. He tapped in the identifier for Nevis airport and pressed the “Direct To” button. A line appeared on the map; all he had to do was to follow that. He pushed the throttle forward for takeoff, and the engine died. He hadn’t had time to warm it up properly.

  “Shit!” he practically screamed. He pulled the choke out halfway and pressed the starter button, hoping to God he wasn’t flooding it. The engine began turning over again, but more weakly than the first time; the battery was a small one.

  “Teddy!” he heard Thomas yell from up the hill somewhere. “Teddy!”

  The engine caught and roared to life. Teddy pushed the throttle slowly forward, letting the rpms build, trying not to let it die again. Finally, it was wide open. Teddy took the knife from his belt and turned to cut the light rope that was all that was holding the little aircraft back.

  Holly rounded the corner of the old guesthouse ahead of Thomas and Stone, clawing at the pistol stuck in the belt of her jeans. “Teddy!” she yelled. “It’s Holly Barker! Don’t do anything stupid!” She came to a sliding halt and fell on her ass. Teddy Fay was sitting in what looked like a large bird, made of aluminum and cloth, and he was reaching behind him with a knife. The noise from the propeller was deafening. Holly got to one knee and aimed carefully at Teddy’s upper body. “Don’t do it, Teddy!” she yelled and began squeezing the trigger.

  Teddy cut whatever was holding the little airplane back, and, finally freed of its tether, it shot down the hill, as Holly fired, missing him.

  Teddy concentrated on keeping the ultralight airplane in the concrete spillway, which was all the runway he had. The little craft gained speed, and as the end of the spillway rushed at him, he pulled back slightly on the stick, clearing the rough ground, but still headed downhill, picking up airspeed. He heard another gunshot, this one a little different-sounding. Two of them were shooting at him. It was now or never.

  Teddy pulled firmly back on the stick, and the ultralight started to climb toward the thick clouds above him.

  Holly braced herself against the corner of the house and sighted carefully. This time he was hers. She squeezed off the round, then, suddenly, the ultralight disappeared.

  Teddy felt a blow on his right calf as the ultralight entered the clouds, but he couldn’t let that distract him. He was going to have his hands full, keeping the wings level with no visual references. All he had was a compass, mounted at eye level, and it was moving, signaling a turn to the south. He corrected gently to his right, and the wind through the rigging began to sing louder. He was in a descent, and he yanked back on the stick.

  There!” Thomas shouted, as the aircraft partly descended from the clouds to the south, but before he could get off a shot, it climbed into the clouds again, and from the noise, seemed to be turning north. In desperation, Thomas began firing at the sound, and Holly joined in.

  Teddy heard the whistle of bullets, much closer than he would have liked, and a tear appeared in the right wing. He thought he had the aircraft stable now, headed north and climbing. The firing stopped.

  Holly popped out the magazine and dug in her pocket for the spare Dino had given her. “Are you out, Thomas?”

  “Yes, and I don’t have any more ammo,” he replied.

  She rammed in the fresh magazine, racked the slide and listened. The sound of the engine had grown a little fainter. “Where is the fucking thing?” she yelled.

  “More to your right, I think,” Thomas said. “He seems to be headed north.”

  Holly raised the weapon and emptied the magazine, knowing that her chances of hitting anything were remote. “That’s it,” she said finally. “I’m out, and Teddy is gone.”

  “Good,” Stone said quietly.

  “Whose side are you on?” Holly demanded.

  “There aren’t any sides now,” Stone said.

  The thick cloud around Teddy began growing brighter and suddenly, like flipping a switch, the airplane was flooded in sunlight. He was on top of the clouds, and he leveled off. How high was he, he wondered. He had been airborne for what, two minutes, three? The ultralight could climb at about five hundred feet a minute, so he must be a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred feet high. He kept the airplane just above the clouds, in case a helicopter or another airplane appeared. If that happened, he could duck back into the undercast and change direction. He eased back on the throttle to what seemed a decent cruise power setting, not wanting to waste fuel by running at full throttle.

  The tank held five gallons of fuel, enough for about two hours of cruise. The prevailing winds were from the southeast, and that would help his speed and extend his range a bit. The GPS told him he was making forty-one knots over the ground, or the sea, whichever he was over. He did a damage assessment.

  As far as he could tell only two rounds had had any effect. One had struck the wing, and the tear was getting worse. He slowed the airplane, bringing the ground speed down to thirty-five knots. He sure as hell didn’t want to stall the thing at a low airspeed, but the fabric of the wing had now stopped tearing, and that was good.

  He pulled up his trouser leg and looked at his right calf. He could see an entry wound and an exit wound, and the exit wound was bleeding profusely; his shoe had begun to fill with blood.

  He took off his belt and made a tourniquet just below the knee, and the blood stopped flowing. That would hold him until Nevis airport, he reckoned, and he had a first-aid kit in the Cessna, which was secured in its hangar. He stopped thinking about the pain and concentrated on keeping the ultralight level and on the GPS line to St. Martin.

  60

  Holly grabbed a map from the glove compartment of Thomas’s car and turned it over, for a display of the Caribbean, then she got out the satphone and called Lance.

  “Lance Cabot.”

  “It’s Holly; Teddy’s gone.”

  “Gone? You mean he’s dead?”

  “No, though I think I hit him.”

  “He’s on an island; how can he be gone? Does he have a boat?”

  “No, he had an ultralight airplane.”

  “You mean one of those spit-and-baling-wire contraptions?”

  “More like aluminum and nylon, but you get the picture.”

  “I don’t understand; how far could he get in one of those things?”

  “I’m looking at the map now.”

  Stone spoke up from the back seat. “It’s probably good for a couple of hours of flying at forty or fifty kno
ts.”

  “Stone’s a pilot, and he says it can fly for a couple of hours. From my map, I’d say that Barbuda, Antigua, St. Kitts and Nevis are all within his range. Guadeloupe is a lot farther.”

  “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  Holly gave him a nutshell explanation. “Most of those islands have airline connections,” she said. “You should check those first.”

  “No, he would avoid the airlines; he has to have an airplane stashed somewhere.”

  “I guess that’s possible.”

  “Are you at the St. Marks airport now?”

  “We’re on the way; half an hour out.”

  “Don’t let anything keep you from getting out of there.”

  “Thomas Hardy is with us; he’ll help.”

  “I’ll meet you at Manassas,” Lance said.

  “I don’t know what time we’ll get there.”

  “I’ll know.” Lance hung up.

  Holly turned to look at Stone. “Lance thinks Teddy’s got an airplane stashed on another island.”

  “That makes a lot of sense.”

  “Where could he get to in a light airplane?”

  “Do you know what kind?”

  “Before, he had a Cessna 182, the one he blew up.”

  “Well, in a similar airplane he might have a range of five to seven hundred miles. He could go north to other islands, but it would make more sense to head for South America. You say you think you hit him?”

  “I know I missed on the first shot, but the second one felt right, and I thought I saw him jerk. That was just before he flew into the clouds.”

  Holly turned around and sat silently in her seat.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “I’m thinking, I wonder if I can get our pilot to stop in Florida and pick up Daisy.”

  “Jesus,” Stone said.

  An hour into Teddy’s flight the undercast was still there, and he began to invent an instrument approach for his destination. Nevis was straight ahead, another thirty-five minutes, according to the GPS, but the tear in the right wing was getting worse, and the little aircraft kept trying to turn right. One thing he didn’t have, Teddy reflected, was a life raft, or even a life jacket. He was going to have to make land or die, and he was going to have to descend through the cloud cover without running into a mountain.

  He loosened the tourniquet until the leg began to bleed again and feeling returned to his foot, then he tightened it again and concentrated on keeping the ultralight on course. Nevis grew larger on the GPS, but much more slowly than he would have liked. He created an approach waypoint three miles east of the airport; his second waypoint would be the end of runway 28. He meant to be under the clouds by the first waypoint.

  Thomas drove into St. Marks airport with a wave at the guard on the gate and stopped in front of the terminal. Everybody got out of the car. The jet was nowhere to be seen.

  Holly looked up to see Bill and Annie Pepper, in the company of James Tiptree, coming out of the terminal.

  “We heard our Hawker talking to the tower,” Bill said. “The pilot has declared an emergency; I hope nothing is wrong with the airplane.”

  “Probably not. Lance told them to declare a fuel emergency if they tried to keep the plane from landing.”

  “I don’t like the look of that low overcast, either,” Bill said. “I hope to God they have an instrument approach here.”

  Now two uniformed policemen came out of the terminal and marched up to them. “No airplanes landing,” one of them said, “and no airplanes taking off.”

  “Oh, shut up, Harvey,” Thomas said. “These people have a private airplane coming, and it’s going to land. Sir Winston authorized it himself.”

  The two policemen looked at each other and said nothing.

  “Look,” Stone said, pointing. An airplane had just popped out of the clouds. “It’s a Hawker.”

  They watched as the airplane touched down and taxied to the ramp. The engines were shut down, the door opened, and a pair of uniformed pilots got out.

  Stone waved to them.

  The two pilots walked up. “We’re looking for Stone Barrington and Holly Barker,” one of them said.

  “I’m Stone, and this is Holly,” Stone said. “This is Bill and Annie Pepper.”

  “Hi, I’m Ken Smith,” the pilot said, and this is Bob Harkin, my first officer. Bob will get your luggage loaded while I see about refueling.”

  Teddy descended through the undercast and, to his delight, popped out of the clouds at his first waypoint, but the tear in the wing was now a gaping hole, and he was having great difficulty flying in a straight line; he couldn’t get it to point at the runway. The ultralight was slowing down, too, and he was worried about stalling. He increased power; there was no other choice.

  The drag on the right wing was moving him to the right of the airport as he approached, and he knew he would not be able to turn left without stalling. In desperation, he allowed the little plane to make a right turn, hoping to gain some ground. He made a slow 360-degree turn, and 30 degrees before he completed it, he let the craft descend toward the airport. He didn’t care if it made a runway; all he wanted was level ground.

  In the end, he made a taxiway next to the runway, bounced a couple of times and was finally in control again. He taxied the length of the runway toward the hangars at the other end, then turned behind a row of them, out of sight of the tower. With luck, they wouldn’t have seen him at all.

  He found his hangar, shut down the engine and worked the combination lock, then he got the hangar door open and pushed the ultralight inside, under the Cessna’s high wing. He closed the big door behind him, switched on the lights, and unstrapped his bag and put it into the passenger seat of the Cessna 182 RG, then he got the first aid kit out of the luggage compartment and went to work on his leg. He injected a local anesthetic, then took off the tourniquet and began irrigating the wound from both ends with a squirter and hydrogen peroxide.

  By the time he had cleaned the wound, the local had taken effect, and he sutured and bandaged the wounds. He checked his watch. It had been more than two hours since he had left St. Marks, and that was too much time; he had to get out of Nevis without further delay.

  He opened the hangar door, picked up the towbar, which was already attached to the nosewheel of the Cessna, and pulled the airplane out of the hangar. He closed the hangar door, to hide the ultralight, locked it and got into the airplane. He could hear a siren in the distance.

  He primed the engine, and it started immediately. Teddy didn’t bother with the checklist but started taxiing immediately. As he cleared the row of hangars he saw a police car parked in the middle of the runway, its lights flashing, and another police car was headed his way down the taxiway. He had only one choice.

  He rolled onto the taxiway and shoved the throttle forward. The airplane began to roll down the taxiway, directly toward the oncoming police car.

  “One of us is going to have to give,” Teddy said aloud, “and it isn’t going to be me.” The only question left was what the police car would do. Then it did the worst possible thing: it screeched to a halt, and its two occupants bailed out, leaving the car in the middle of the taxiway.

  Teddy glanced at the airspeed indicator: forty knots; not enough. He reached over, put in full flaps and yanked back on the yoke. He didn’t have enough airspeed to fly, but maybe he had enough to jump. The airplane shot up about six feet, and Teddy struggled to get the nose down again. It came down hard a few yards behind the police car, still at full throttle; he was lucky he hadn’t blown a tire. Teddy reduced the flaps by a notch and after a moment he had rotation speed for a short-field takeoff. The airplane began to fly.

  He looked over at the runway and saw the two policemen standing next to the other patrol car, their weapons drawn. They began firing, and he heard something hit the fuselage behind him. No stopping now.

  He reduced flaps as he climbed into the overcast, then, when he was above it, turn
ed toward the northwest, toward Puerto Rico; he wanted the police to hear the airplane going that way. He climbed to eight thousand feet and waited ten minutes, then turned back to the south. He was at optimum altitude now, and he pulled back the throttle to cruise and leaned the engine to best economy.

  Now he went through the previously neglected checklist, then switched on the avionics and entered the identifier for Santa Marta, in Colombia, into the GPS. He would not fly there; instead, when the Colombian coast was in sight, he would bear to the east, toward the Guajira Peninsula, a region notorious for drug trafficking, where no questions were asked when you wanted fuel.

  From the Guajira, he would head west to Central America, perhaps Panama, perhaps Costa Rica, and find a nice, rural airstrip. If that felt inhospitable, there was always Mexico, to the north.

  Half an hour later, St. Marks was to the east of him, under the clouds, and he knew the airport had no radar. Teddy now had air transport, money and identification that would work anywhere in the world. He began to feel something very like peace. He had done good in St. Marks, but there were other countries that needed him. He flew on south, into the future.

  61

  The Hawker was refueled now, but surrounded by policemen, and Thomas’s posturing and pleading was not having the desired effect.

  “You know,” Stone said to the others, “I don’t think I want to be questioned by a new generation of cops on this island. What do you say we get on the airplane and make a run for it?”

  “They’d just shoot out our tires, Ken Smith said. “Let’s let your friend keep talking to them.”

  Then something odd happened: the cop who appeared in charge began listening to his handheld radio, then talking into it. Stone strained to hear the conversation, but couldn’t. The cop walked over to Thomas and waved an arm.

  Thomas smiled and walked back to the group. “The police say they have arrested the assassin,” he said. “You’re free to go.”

  Stone heaved a big sigh of relief. “Who do you think they arrested?”