by Cave, Hugh
No trees. No fences. No anything.
Not here.
Only water.
But if he failed here, he would not be given a second chance, even if he were still alive to try again.
Would he still be alive? This had to be a maneuver that would make a Blue Angel proud. An eraser wiping a blackboard; that close.
If he misjudged and flew an inch too low, he might still complete the mission, of course. But Ken Forrest would be part of the funeral that followed.
The car was off the bridge. Ahead of it the road was level. With his lower lip caught in his teeth and his temples being pounded from inside by little sledgehammers, he dropped the plane's nose and took aim.
The road rushed up at him. The car came on without a waiver, its driver defiant.
Chicken. It was a game of chicken, as when teenagers in hot rods raced toward a head-on collision.
Hang in there, Forrest. You're a better man than he is. Hang in for Sandy. For Merry. For the future.
The car loomed up in front of him. Nothing else on the road was in motion. There were vehicles in the westbound lanes, on the edge of his line of vision, but their drivers had stopped to watch the drama unfold. He dipped the plane's nose lower.
Aimed it straight at the approaching windshield.
Okay, Brian darling, it's up to you. Think about Daddy in Washington, and how you might take his place someday if you don't throw your future away here. Think about how you might even make President—if you live.
At the last second, or what seemed to be the last, he caught sight of the driver's face. Just a glimpse. A flicker of a glimpse. The face was frozen in contortions of terror. Its eyes were so enormous, they looked as though they could be staring into hell itself.
Then the car swerved, and Ken jerked the plane's nose up.
He felt a gentle upward nudge as some part of the Cessna brushed the car's roof. He felt a blaze of fear that was like the brief kiss of a blowtorch. Then he was past, clear, in the sky again, turning on a wing tip and looking down.
Just in time to see the car hurtle off the concrete highway onto the grass and go lurching toward the river.
Just in time to see it hit something soft at the river's edge and roll over, then miraculously right itself before plunging into the water.
There, after swirling near the surface for a few seconds like some prehistoric monster trying to master the art of swimming, it coughed up a froth of bubbles and sank from sight.
"We did it!" Ken heard himself shouting. "Sandy, we did it!"
Now, for God's sake, Forrest, get out of here!
Chapter Forty-seven
It would be stupid to fly the plane back to Sebastian. He would be jailed for stealing it, no matter what kind of tale he told to justify the theft.
Seeking a place to put it down, he flew high and spotted a golf course. Good enough. He flew low again and looked over the terrain. With a prayer that his luck would hold, he landed on what appeared to be a par five fairway close to a clubhouse. Adjoining the clubhouse was a parking lot.
Abandoning the plane, he made for a patch of rough that seemed a good place to hide. As he disappeared into it, a crowd poured from the clubhouse to find out why the golf course had been used for a landing strip.
With the building probably empty and all hands milling about the plane, he made his way through the rough to the parking lot. In a place like this, some careless driver just might have left a key in a car, no?
Someone had. The car was a pale blue Cadillac, almost new. If in the excitement anyone noticed his departure, he wasn't aware of it as he headed west to interstate 95 and then south to Sebastian. There was no pursuit.
At the Sebastian airport, which seemed as sleepy as before, he drove the Cadillac to the bend of the entrance road and left it there with the key in it. Unchallenged, he cut through the pines on foot to where he had hidden his rented car and drove out.
Now, at last, as he made for the motel where Sandy and her daughter should be waiting, he was able to think of what he had accomplished.
Were the three in the silver Jag now dead at the bottom of the Indian River lagoon near Canaveral? They ought to be, unless someone very good at miracles had been present to dive down and rescue them. He would know when he heard a news broadcast or read a newspaper.
As for the rest of it, the owner of the stolen Cessna would soon learn, of course, that his plane awaited him at the golf course. No problem there. And the car Sandy had wrecked on the road to Vero Beach . . .
Phone the rental agency from the motel, Forrest. Tell them you cracked up the car and must have walked away from it in a daze because you've only just remembered it. Tell them you're on your way to Miami and will come in to straighten things out.
Not a big problem. Not after the one he had just solved.
Then there was the car he was driving now. He had better phone that agency, too, to let them know he was headed for Miami and ask what to do with it when he got there.
There would be some details to work out, of course. Never mind. He and Sandy would work them out together.
And then, after Brian's funeral, Sandy would want to go back to Haiti, he supposed, to close up the house on Rue Printemps and arrange for her things to be returned to the States. No problem there. He would be present to help. So would the Embassy people. And then—well—what?
At the motel he voiced the last question aloud while lying on a bed with Sandy in his arms. Both were fully dressed; it was a little soon for anything else when he had only just finished telling her that she was free again. Besides, her daughter was on the bed, too—sitting like a golden-haired elf at the foot of it, happily smiling at them both.
"How about it, hon?" he said. "A month or so at the plantation down there would get you away from the media wolf pack and help you put all this behind you. My house is big enough for the three of us if you don't mind being a bit cozy. We could go for rides in the mountains, swim at the plantation beach, get to know what kind of people we are now."
He looked into her face and saw moisture in her eyes. "Unless, of course, you want nothing more to do with me after what's happened," he concluded anxiously.
"It wasn't your fault, what happened."
"I flew the plane."
"And did what had to be done." She wiped her eyes with her hand. "I'm not crying about that. Don't ever expect me to."
"You'll come, then? You and Merry?"
She raised herself on one elbow to look at her daughter. "Have you been listening, honey? Would you like to do what Ken suggests? Go and spend some time on the plantation with him, swimming and exploring and—well, you heard."
"I'd love to, Mommy!"
Sandy burrowed a little deeper into Ken's embrace. "You heard her. All I can add is 'Me, too.'"
Chapter Forty-eight
JOHN KLOBEK'S WASHINGTON FILE
Have you been reading the papers lately with your curiosity fine-tuned? If so, the reports of the recent death of the son of presidential aide Rutherford Franklin Dawson may have left some questions in your mind.
The younger Dawson, as you surely know by now, was at the wheel of a car that went out of control and into the Indian River while presumably en route to the launch of a communications satellite at Cape Canaveral in Florida. His father and the President arrived for the launch soon after his death.
(This writer would still like to know what there was about a seemingly routine rocket launch that made it necessary for our chief executive to so suddenly decide it required his presence.)
In any case, the car in question, with Brian Dawson at the wheel and a black man and black woman on the rear seat, plunged into the river because it was dived upon by a small airplane. Who was at the controls of the plane is not yet known. We know only that, (1) the craft was stolen from a small airport in Sebastian, some fifty miles to the south, (2) after buzzing the car and causing it to go off the road, the unknown pilot landed at a nearby country club where he stole a car, and (3
) the stolen car was later found abandoned near the aforementioned Sebastian airport.
Also still unknown is the identity of the black man and black woman reported to have been with Mr. Dawson in the doomed car. Were they Haitians? Mr. Dawson worked at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince and very probably had Haitian friends in Florida. But why would he have been taking two of them to Cape Canaveral?
Whatever the answer to that—and it could be most interesting, we suggest—we are not likely to uncover it soon, for when swimmers went down to the car soon after its fatal plunge, they encountered an enigma. While the driver was dead at the wheel, either from drowning or from a severe head injury suffered when the car rolled over, one of the rear doors had either sprung or been thrust open, and the two rear-seat passengers could not be found. Why, if they somehow managed to save themselves, have they not come forward?
There remain several other puzzling aspects of this most curious event. Mr. Dawson's six-year-old daughter, Marcia, we are now informed, was kidnapped in Haiti nearly two weeks before the tragedy, presumably by a legless Haitian called Margal, reputed to be an infamous bocor, or witch doctor. Mr. Dawson was in Florida at the time. His wife flew to Miami to join him on learning the stolen child had been carried to Florida.
When Mrs. Dawson learned from a television newscast of her husband's death, the child was safely back with her after having been held for days at the home of one Elie Jumel. Yet another Haitian, in the Indian River County town of Gifford. An anonymous telephone caller, she says, told her where Marcia was, and on going there she found the child alone in the house. Jumel, now in custody, claims not to know or even to have heard of the supposed kidnapper, Margal. The child was left in his care by her father, he insists. Her father?
It seems to be a strangely complex affair indeed, and we hope one day to unravel it for you. Meanwhile, the son of our President's closest associate is dead; two black persons who were in the car with him and may actually have kidnapped his daughter are missing; a third Haitian will not talk; and for the time being, at least, Mr. Dawson's widow has returned to Haiti with her child.
And no one—at least, no one who is talking—seems to know who flew the plane that day. Or why.
