The Outsider (James Bishop 4)

by Dean, Jason

  ‘We’ll discuss the exact location later, but it’ll be somewhere west of Columbus. Maybe Greenville, maybe Sidney. Maybe somewhere else. I haven’t decided yet. I’ll call back later so you can speak to the boy, but for now I suggest you get your asses into gear and start making tracks.’

  The line went dead. Bishop took the phone and put it back in his pocket. He looked at his watch. It was 10.04. Which left them with just under forty-four hours to get to the meet.

  ‘How long to drive to Ohio?’ Strickland asked.

  Bishop shrugged. ‘Using the main highways? Day and a half, maybe. But we have to figure on more roadblocks between here and there, which means using the back roads for long stretches. So add another half a day at least. That’s if we drive.’

  ‘But why would the law assume we’re going to Ohio?’

  ‘The feds won’t assume anything yet, but they’ll figure it out in time. They’re not dummies. I’ve had experiences with them before. Right now they’ll be digging into my background and trying to gauge what my role is in all this. Was I really working for Delaney off the books, or was I in Hartnell’s pocket all along? In which case, was I the one who led the assault team to the house or not? And if I am in league with Hartnell, what then? Have I got orders to deliver you to him in person or am I taking you to a pre-planned drop-point? And then there’s Barney. They might figure I brought him along simply as a means to keep you in line. Or maybe I’m working for somebody else altogether. A competitor of Hartnell’s who’s decided you’re worth your weight in gold. See what I mean? Lots of possibilities and they’ll consider them all, then act on the most likely ones. Hell, maybe all of them.’

  ‘Or maybe they’ll assume you’re exactly who you’re supposed to be.’

  One side of Bishop’s mouth turned up. ‘Anything’s possible. But if I’m on the side of the angels, why did I run from the scene of that highway shooting? And why haven’t I turned you and Barney over to the law by now? That’s a big question mark right there.’

  ‘But that highway shootout can only work for us,’ Strickland said. ‘Right? I mean, we were locked in the cage, so you couldn’t possibly have shot the cops. The feds will have to figure Hartnell’s people were behind it and you fought them off with the cops’ weapons. Either that or they pulled us all out from the wreckage and took us with them to wherever.’

  ‘On what evidence? A few bloodstains and some chunks of glass that could have come from anywhere? Because there’s no other indication of a second car being involved, and no witnesses. And those rear windows aren’t impossible to break out of. I’ve done it before. With enough leverage, I could have kicked it out, reached around for the driver’s gun and killed them both.’

  ‘Sounds pretty unlikely.’

  ‘But it’s not impossible, and that’s what counts. Still, whatever they think they’ll have to assume we’re still out on the loose. I know I would.’

  ‘Okay,’ Strickland said. ‘So do we go steal a car, or what? Because I don’t like the idea of getting on a train. If somebody spots us there’s no way off. And flying’s out. They’ll grab us the moment we set foot in an airport.’

  Bishop had been thinking along the same lines. ‘Maybe there’s another way,’ he said.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Since Pahrump had no public transportation they had to walk the four miles to the Calveda Meadows Airfield, situated in the north-east section of town. Bishop still remembered how to get there from his previous visit. It wasn’t hard. You just kept on the main Pahrump Valley Road until you got to Belle Vista Avenue on the right, which then led you directly to the private airfield and the private hangars surrounding it. The sky was a clear azure with not a cloud in sight, and Bishop estimated the temperature as somewhere in the early sixties. Which was pretty impressive for early November, even in Nevada.

  They were walking along Belle Vista Avenue when Bishop said, ‘Did you have much face-to-face contact with Hartnell?’

  ‘You kidding?’ Strickland snorted. ‘Nobody gets too close to the Man, except for Callaway, maybe. Hartnell always keeps at least three layers of insulation between himself and everybody who works for him. That’s one of the reasons he’s never seen the inside of a courtroom. I was just one of his many flunkies, that’s all. A well-paid flunky, but nothing more than that. Sometimes I’d have to go and talk to him in person, one on one, but only when a real important matter came up, which wasn’t often.’

  ‘So what made you decide to testify against him in the first place?’

  Strickland paused, then said, ‘My wife, Carrie. It was mostly her who pressured me into it. You never knew her, Bishop, but you’d have liked her. She was always the best part of me, that’s for damn sure. Once I finally admitted to her what I did for a living, instead of leaving me like any normal person she just patiently kept working on me, trying to get me out of the life. She never gave up on me. Never. And there’s Barn too, of course. He also played a big part in turning my head around.’ He sighed. ‘And now my wife’s in the ground and my boy’s in the hands of a couple of major-league psychos. Jesus.’

  ‘We’ll get him back.’

  ‘Correction: you’ll get him back. In exchange for me. See, that’s why I been so quiet till now, Bishop. It’s a hell of a thing facing up to your own death, and if I know Hartnell like I think I do it’ll be a drawn-out painful one.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Bishop said.

  ‘Oh yeah, I do. I worked for the man for over ten years and I know how he operates. Callaway wasn’t lying on the phone. Hartnell takes things personally and he likes to inflict pain. Callaway even told me about one time a few years back, when he was ordered to grab a certain street dealer and bring him to this out-of-the-way place where Hartnell was waiting. See, this guy had been mouthing off to everybody about how he’d dated Hartnell’s wife a few times before Hartnell and she had ever met, and what a real freak she was in bed. You know, playing the big man who’s managed to get one over on his boss. So Hartnell decided he was going to personally teach this guy a lesson and just went to work on him. Callaway says he really took his time on the guy, using every kind of blade imaginable. He’d start at nine in the morning, finish at five, then go home to a nice hot dinner and have sex with his wife. Meanwhile, two doctors somehow kept the poor bastard breathing through the night and made sure the flies stayed off him, then Hartnell would come back and do the same thing the next day, while Callaway watched. Callaway said the poor, blind bastard lasted three days before his heart gave out. Three whole days. Can you imagine that? God only knows how long I’ll last.’

  Bishop said nothing in response. But he already knew a little something of Hartnell’s character, and suspected this story wasn’t an exaggeration. Hartnell was one of those people who were pretty much capable of anything. And now he had Barney in his hands.

  Worst-case scenario, all right. The very worst.

  They carried on walking in silence and it wasn’t long before Bishop saw the first hangar about a hundred feet away on their left. It was completely closed up. Beyond it, running off into the distance, were twenty or thirty more hangars of different shapes and sizes, some old, some new, all either locked up or vacant. Further along on the right Bishop saw several administrative buildings and a couple more, larger, hangars. The last time he’d been out here those last two hangars and one of the administrative buildings had belonged to the flying school. And he knew that just beyond them lay the five-thousand-foot-long runway, running from north to south.

  It was very quiet. They were the only things moving, it seemed. There were no planes preparing to take off, no vehicles on the road. Just the two of them, walking.

  Five minutes later they came level with the admin buildings. Bishop was pleased to see the building nearest the two hangars had a sign affixed to the side with the words SAGUARA FLIGHT TRAINING in large letters. That wasn’t the same name as before so it looked like his old client had since sold it on. Just outside the hangars there were a
number of single- and twin-engine aircraft on the ground. Bishop counted five in total, mostly single-prop from the looks of things. Some looked in better shape than others. All could have done with a lick or two of paint. One of the large hangar doors was wide open, but Bishop couldn’t see a single person, inside or out.

  Strickland said, ‘Sure looks dead around here.’

  ‘There’s bound to be somebody still working,’ Bishop said. He turned to the other man. ‘I don’t suppose you got any money on you?’

  Strickland made a face. ‘Is that a joke?’

  ‘Thought I’d ask. Guess we’ll just have to improvise instead. Okay, let’s go.’

  They both walked across the uneven field towards the two hangars and the planes. There was no fence or anything to denote boundaries. As they got closer Bishop finally saw a burly male figure exit one of the admin buildings and march towards one of the single-engine planes. The man was wearing a dark polo shirt, tan chinos and sunglasses, and carried a clipboard or folder under his arm.

  ‘There’s our pigeon,’ Bishop said, and aimed for him.

  The pilot reached his plane, glanced briefly at the two men walking his way, then opened the door on the port side and bent down to look at something. It took Bishop and Strickland another minute before they reached him. Up close, Bishop saw the guy was probably in his mid- to late forties. He had a heavily lined face, and short brown hair that was thin at the back and greying at the temples. The aircraft he was working on was a single-prop Cessna. Possibly a Skyhawk. Bishop saw two front seats and two more in the back.

  Perfect.

  The guy was sitting half in, half out, and inspecting the floor and seat hinges as he made notations in the folder. Finally he turned from his work and stared at the visitors through his mirrored aviator sunglasses. ‘Help you, fellas?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Bishop said. ‘You free to take us up today?’

  The pilot removed his sunglasses as he looked at each of them. Bishop noticed his eyes were of the palest blue, even more so than Bishop’s own. ‘You mean you want a lesson?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The pilot frowned as he studied them. ‘You both just walked here from town?’

  Bishop shook his head. ‘A friend gave us a lift to the intersection back there. We walked the rest.’

  ‘Oh, okay. So either of you ever been behind the controls of one of these babies before?’

  ‘Not knowingly,’ Bishop said.

  The pilot smiled. ‘First-timers, huh? Well, nothing wrong with that. And as you can see, we ain’t exactly rushed off our feet at the moment so I guess we can go up anytime you want.’ The pilot held out his hand. ‘Charlie Hooper, by the way.’

  They all shook hands and Bishop said, ‘You the owner, Charlie?’

  ‘Nah, just a lowly pilot. Owner’s back in Oklahoma, I think. We rarely see much of him these days.’ He stood up and said, ‘So you guys wanna follow me back to the office? We’ll fix the paperwork and take your credit card details, then get you started.’

  Bishop sighed. He really hated doing this. He pulled the Glock from the back of his waistband and showed it to Charlie.

  ‘Maybe we can just skip the paperwork part altogether,’ he said.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  While Charlie was finishing his pre-flight checks, he looked over at Bishop sitting in the co-pilot’s seat and said, ‘Look, you sure you want to do this? I don’t—’

  ‘Save your breath,’ Bishop said. ‘All you need to know is that we both need to get out of this area as fast as possible. That’s your job for today. Nothing else, just that.’

  ‘Hey, you’re not gonna hurt me, are you? I got a wife and kids back home.’

  ‘Nothing’ll happen if you do what I tell you. Now I noticed there’s no control tower around here, so I assume you use standard CTAF procedures for getting clearance?’

  Charlie blew air from his cheeks. ‘Yeah, there’s a UNICOM base station at Vegas Airport, and we use their frequency to co-ordinate all our landings and departures. They don’t give us clearance or anything, we do that ourselves. They just warn us if there’s a lot of traffic in the area, or if there’s bad weather ahead, things like that.’ He frowned. ‘So you have flown before?’

  ‘A little.’ He wasn’t about to tell Charlie his time in the air had mostly been in helicopters. A guy Bishop knew in Jersey named Mandrake had given him a few lessons, but work seemed to keep getting in the way for both of them recently. ‘Better get them on the line then. And no hidden code words, Charlie. I’m not stupid. Just take us where we want to go with the minimum of hassle so we can all carry on with our lives. That sound good to you?’

  ‘That sounds real good. You don’t have to worry about me, fella. I’m no hero.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear.’

  ‘So where we heading?’

  ‘East.’

  ‘Anywhere in particular?’

  ‘Just east for now.’

  In the back seat, Strickland tapped his feet on the floor and said, ‘Come on, come on, let’s go.’

  ‘Relax, will you?’ Bishop said. ‘Charlie, who’s on office duty today?’

  ‘Just Rosie, our receptionist. Guy, our other pilot, is probably napping in one of the old offices. Why?’

  ‘I’m thinking maybe you better call this Rosie and let her know you’ll be out the rest of the day. Just tell her you’ve got a couple of cash-paying customers who want to spend the rest of the day learning the ropes and that she shouldn’t wait up for you.’

  The pilot nodded, pulled a cell phone from a pocket and pressed a button. Bishop quickly took the phone from him and held it to his ear. Once he heard a female voice say, ‘Saguara Flight School,’ he handed it back and let Charlie say his lines.

  Bishop had already read the Cessna’s specs and knew what the plane was capable of. He leaned forward and checked the fuel gauge. The needle showed both tanks were almost full. He made a few quick mental calculations while he listened to Charlie. Fifty-plus gallons at an average cruise speed of a hundred knots or more meant they could probably cover five hundred miles in four to five hours, which would take them as far as Colorado. A quarter of the way. Possibly. If the wind was with them. Refuelling might be a problem, though, especially with no money. He’d have to think his options through carefully once they were up in the air and make a decision then. He checked his watch and saw it was 10.48. Amazing. It was hard to believe it was even the same day, let alone the same morning.

  Charlie finished his call and hung up the phone.

  ‘That was real good,’ Bishop said, taking the cell and placing it on the floor at his feet. ‘Now it’s UNICOM’s turn.’

  He watched Charlie switch on the radio and adjust the frequency to 122.700 MHz. When he donned his headset, Bishop also put his on. He listened as Charlie spoke with an operator named Ben, giving his general heading and asking if there was any reason he couldn’t take off this minute. There wasn’t. It wasn’t a long conversation.

  ‘Before we take off,’ Bishop said. ‘You got anything to eat or drink in here?’

  ‘There’s some emergency rations I keep in the aft baggage hold,’ Charlie said. ‘You get to it through that small door on the portside.’

  Bishop got out and stepped over to the small cargo door at the back. He opened the latch and saw an old knapsack lodged further in, alongside some tools and some rope. He pulled the bag out and undid the zip. Inside was an assortment of candy bars and energy bars, a single large carton of concentrated orange juice, two bottles of water, three packs of biscuits, three packs of beef jerky, one pack of dried mango and one of dried apricot. Charlie was clearly a man who planned ahead. Good for him.

  Back in his seat, Bishop passed the knapsack to Strickland and then buckled his safety belt.

  ‘Okay, here we go,’ Charlie said, and made a few final checks before pushing the red fuel control button all the way in. Then he pressed the red master switch, jiggled the primer and pulled it out until it was l
ocked into position. He turned the ignition key to the right. The engine turned over but failed to catch. He tried again, moving the throttle back and forth at the same time. This time the engine caught. The nose propeller kicked in and within seconds it was just a circular blur in front of them.

  Bishop sat back as Charlie slowly taxied them towards the start of the landing strip. Once they were on the centreline and pointing north, he increased the throttle to two thousand rpms. They started moving down the runway, gathering speed as the engine rose in pitch.

  The runway was a lot smoother than Bishop had expected. He kept his eye on the air speed indicator. At fifty-five knots Charlie pulled slowly back on the control yoke, the plane continued to gain speed and then the wheels left the ground and they were airborne. As they rose into the air Charlie dipped the right wing a little and kept them on a north-easterly heading for another mile before levelling out. Then he slowly turned the yoke to the right until the compass needle was pointing east.

  ‘Excellent, Charlie,’ Bishop said. ‘No muss, no fuss. Just how I like it.’ He turned to Strickland in the rear. ‘Reach into that bag and pass me the orange juice, will you?’

  TWENTY-SIX

  Bishop looked out the portside window and tried to make out the Rocky Mountains he knew were down there, twelve thousand feet below, but there was too much cloud cover to see anything clearly. They’d already been in the air for just over four hours, with the sky gradually becoming more overcast the further east they went. Despite the heating in the plane, he was also feeling the sizeable drop in temperature.

  Pulling up the collar of his suit jacket, he turned in his seat and saw Strickland in the back, also looking out the window and still looking as jittery as when they’d taken off. No doubt he was thinking of Barney, imagining what the boy must be going through right now. But Barney was a pretty tough kid for his age. Bishop had an idea the boy was probably handling the situation a lot better than Strickland gave him credit for. He hoped so, but he also knew it was pointless worrying about things beyond his power.