“Absolutely, but I've got a request about changing these guards, Avery. This detail is so fucked, I'd be safer if I was being guarded by Manelli's thugs. I have everything under control. When I testify I will be believed.” He winked. “Trust me.”
What choice do I have? Whitehead tapped on the window to signal the marshals that it was time to go.
As the plane filled with people, Avery Whitehead closed his eyes and prayed.
“By the way, guys,” the pilot called back over his shoulder, “no hot chambers in my plane. I have this morbid fear of one of you guys sneezing and blowing a hole in my airplane and me getting sucked out right along with you.”
“No problem,” Greg answered. “Guys, clear your long guns.”
There was a series of clicks and slapping metal as magazines were withdrawn, the round in the chambers removed, and the magazines returned with a sharp rap of their palms.
“Our copilot will be passing through to the rear, and if anyone wants to stow a coat or anything, he will handle that. We will be without a stewardess tonight because we lack room for one. This is a smoke-free flight. After we are upstairs, and I have turned off the seat-belt sign, you are free to help yourselves to a drink out of the fridge.”
The copilot slipped from his seat and made his way to the rear.
“Kinda cramped, ain't it?” Bear said.
“But fast,” Beck said.
Dylan yawned and closed his eyes. “Wake me when we get there.”
The pilot turned in his seat and looked back into the cabin. “I would appreciate it if you'd close the shades until we are at altitude.”
Whitehead closed the shade beside him and, as he turned back, saw the pilot on his feet, holding a silenced pistol in his hand, a tattoo of barbed wire on his right wrist. Whitehead felt like ice water had been thrown in his face. He hadn't been paying attention to the things around him. This pilot was not the same man as the one who'd flown him down. This man was younger, taller. As Whitehead was about to call out, the pilot in front of him and copilot at his back opened fire.
Avery Whitehead's last thought was not that the marshals were dying around him. His last thought, which was interrupted by a Glaser round through his brain, was whether, earlier in the day, he had locked his car door at the airport.
32
The radio shack on Rook Island was Signalman Lane Nash's duty station for another three hours and twelve minutes. It was a concrete bunker with a steeply pitched roof covered in sheets of terra-cotta-colored aluminum. The wires and cables ran up the wall like bright vines, secured to the girders and then routed out to the tower through a weatherproof nipple. The copper and fiber-optic material connected the console's monitoring instruments to the sensory devices. Those sensors, located on the tower above the shack, gathered information about things in the atmosphere or on the water and conversed with the satellites that circled the planet in swarms.
There were no windows in the bunker. The console table was ten feet long and had metal cabinet doors at both sides of the operator's seat. There were storage cabinets for parts and equipment, two swivel chairs, and a bathroom that held only a toilet and sink. A single door that opened out from the room was protected from the weather by an awning.
Lane concentrated on the radar screen. The young radio operator had set his paperback aside on the console and was using his shoulder to hold the red receiver against his ear as he spoke to the air-traffic controller at Cherry Point.
“I got the first return just after that King Air passed four miles to the east of here.”
“He was having radio problems and was warned off to the east,” the controller said. “He stayed clear of your position by a half mile.”
“I got returns after it passed.”
“Returns looked like what? I didn't show anything on our end.”
“Soft returns. One sweep showed a spot at four miles, altitude unknown, four sweeps later there was one a half mile from me, then a few later almost onshore.”
“Birds come to shore, right? Go out and shoot a goose.” The controller laughed. “Nothing substantial fell off that King Air. I have it sixty-nine miles south of your position at twenty-five thousand feet, two hundred and thirty- nine knots true.”
“Probably. Just birds,” Lane agreed. He took one last look at the screen and signed off with his controller. He ran his hand through the stubble on his head and picked up his book.
The operator was at a particularly good part when the lights over his console flickered, then went out. It had been storming, but the electricity was almost never interrupted, because it was fed by underground cable to the island. The backup generator was supposed to cut in if the main failed, so the operator waited. It didn't come on.
“God damn it,” he muttered.
He flipped on his flashlight, walked to the switch, and flipped it up and down. He went to the breaker panel. Nothing. Planning to check the generators, he opened the door.
A gloved hand seized his wrist, and a man dressed completely in black, his features hidden behind a black nylon mask, pushed a remarkably large knife under the place where Lane's ribs met, three inches above his belt buckle. Lane looked down and saw the knife go in, but it didn't hurt. The sensation was like the first twinge of a bout of indigestion. He wanted to push the man away, but he couldn't. He felt so weak, so sleepy.
His vision started closing down like a camera aperture being twisted, the image darkening from the outside in. He just wanted to lie down and close his eyes.
John Ramsey Miller
Inside Out
33
Winter flipped his final card, an ace of spades, facedown onto the stack of discards. “Gin.”
“You dog!” Martinez complained. “I'm not even going to count up my hand. What's another few hundred points among friends.” She turned to Sean, who had started playing with them then decided to read. Despite the relaxed atmosphere, Winter and Martinez kept her constantly in sight, their weapons close.
“Anybody besides me want coffee?” Sean asked.
As soon as Sean was out of the room, Martinez said, “God, I wish she would settle somewhere.”
“You want to arm wrestle?” Winter asked her, joking.
“Fine by me. I'd have a chance at that.”
“Almost certainly.”
“Sean's the first package I've truly liked since I started this four years ago. I might ask for a transfer-leave this baby-sitting for some fugitive recovery, like you. Maybe I'll come work in that office of yours,” Martinez said.
“For every fugitive I chase, I serve twenty warrants, escort a hundred prisoners, and fill out fifty reports. Devlin wasn't far off when he called me a security guard.”
“A security guard?” Martinez said, laughing.
They joined Sean in the kitchen. She poured a cup of coffee, took a sip, then dumped the contents into the sink. “It's stale.” She sighed loudly. “This weather. God, I'm glad I'm not flying in this soup. I hate flying when I can't see the ground.”
“As long as they skirt thunderstorms, they'll be all right,” Winter said.
“You know a lot about flying weather?” she asked Winter.
