“I need to trust you. Now more than ever.”
“You can.”
“What I’m about to tell you can’t go any further. Tell no one. Absolutely no one else can know. It’s life-and- death, Dad. My life, and Harv’s.”
“What’s happened?”
“I need your word.”
“You don’t have to ask for that.”
“Your word.” He heard his dad sigh.
“Okay, I give you my word.”
It took five minutes for Nathan to tell the story and describe the plan going forward. He knew with certainty the news of the Ortega conspiracy to entrap the Bridgestones by selling them Semtex both shocked and angered his father. The only thing that surprised Nathan was how good it felt to know his dad hadn’t been in on it.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” Stone asked when Nathan had finished. “I mean, absolutely sure?”
“Yes.”
“You think you know someone. Frank and I were in Korea together, fought side by side. I can’t believe this whole thing is about revenge against Ernie Bridgestone.”
“It hurts, I know. Harv feels betrayed too. There is some good news. We recovered most of the missing Semtex. Nearly three hundred pounds.”
“That’s good news.”
“Leonard still has ten bricks and some blasting caps.”
“What can I do to help? Name it.”
“We need satellite images of the location where they stashed their cash.”
“I’ll get to work on it right away. Do you have exact coordinates?”
Nathan rattled them off. “I need twenty-four by twenty-four-inch prints at three meters per inch, ten meters per inch, and one hundred meters per inch. Radial from point zero. Did you copy that?”
“Yes, I’m writing it down.”
“Get me a fourth print at five hundred meters per inch. We’ll be airborne within the hour. Communication will be critical. My cell’s tied into the NavCom of my helicopter. It usually works over urban areas, but in the more remote locations, all bets are off.”
“Nathan, it’ll be hard to keep this under wraps once the military’s involved.”
Nathan didn’t respond.
“Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.”
“Do your best, Dad, that’s all I can ask. I think Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana is our best bet to download the images.”
“I know Malmstrom well. We put our first Minutemen silos up there.”
“Listen, I’ve got to go. We’ve got a long flight ahead of us.”
“Nathan, thank you for trusting me. I’m sorry for the things I said to you the other night.”
“Me too.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I have something to report.”
“Tell Mom I love her, okay?”
“You can tell herself when this is over.”
Nathan said nothing. He didn’t have to.
“I’ll tell her,” Stone said.
After dropping off Harv, Grangeland, and Bridgestone at Sacramento Executive Airport, he returned to the Hyatt and cleaned himself up as best he could. There was nothing he could about his head-turning trek through the lobby. He grabbed the duffels, returned to the sedan, and drove back to the airport. Grangeland looked concerned and asked about his arm. He told a white lie and handed her the medical supplies he’d stopped for on the way over.
“She ready to go?”
“Ready,” Harv said.
“This is everyone’s last chance for a pit stop. We’ll be in the air for several hours.”
Grangeland looked around in an exaggerated manner. “Hmm, no restroom.”
Nathan nodded to the hangar buildings.
She jogged over to the hangars and disappeared around the corner.
Nathan turned toward Ernie. “What about you?”
He shook his head.
Harv removed their duffel bags and Nathan’s aluminum rifle case from the Crown Vic’s backseat and secured them in the baggage compartment.
“Listen up, Ernie,” Nathan said. “I’m willing to cuff your hands in front for the flight provided you behave yourself. Do we have an understanding?”
“I ain’t gonna make no trouble,” he said.
Without being asked, Harv pulled his Sig and pointed it at Ernie’s chest. Using the handcuff key Grangeland had given him, Nathan re-cuffed Ernie’s hands in front of his stomach. Even though he had it coming, leaving the condemned man’s wounded hands cuffed behind his back for the long flight seemed cruel, especially with his dislocated shoulder. Harv pushed Bridgestone into the right rear seat, behind the pilot’s position. He fastened Ernie’s seat belt and shoulder strap.
Once Grangeland returned from her business, Nathan pulled her aside and kept his voice low. “I cuffed Ernie’s hands in front for the flight. Guard your weapon closely, okay?”
She nodded and strapped herself into the left rear seat.
“What about the Crown Vic?” Harv asked.
“Yeah,” Nathan agreed. “Park it over by the hangars with the other vehicles.”
“There’s Semtex in the trunk,” Harv said.
“Grangeland can relay its location once we’ve landed at our first fuel stop. We’ll just have to risk that no one steals the car within the next few hours or so. As a precaution, we’ll take the blasting caps with us.”
“Good thought,” she said.
When Harv returned from parking the sedan, he secured the blasting caps into a duffel bag and handed Grangeland a Bose headset with a boom mike. He plugged it into the console over her right shoulder. Bridgestone didn’t receive a headset. Although engine and slipstream noise would be loud, it wouldn’t be overly so, but more important, it allowed Grangeland, Harv, and Nathan to communicate without being overheard, which was far more important than worrying about Bridgestone’s ears. Besides, he wouldn’t need them much longer anyway.
While Nathan went through the start-up checklist, Harv connected Nathan’s cell into the audio interface that would allow them to patch calls through their flight helmets. Harv entered the GPS coordinates Ernie had given them into the Garmin G600 NavCom. The glass avionics in Nathan’s helicopter were state-of-the-art. Along with flight-control data on the left screen, the G600 employed built-in terrain and navigation databases on the right screen, providing a precise moving map of where they were at any given time and where they were going. With the GDL-A data-link receiver, they could access high-resolution weather information anywhere within the United States.
“While you were at the hotel, I did some rough flight planning,” Harv said. “It’s a three-leg trip. Winnemucca, Nevada, Idaho Falls, Idaho, then into Great Falls, Montana. Our destination coordinates are close to a town called Dupuyer on Highway Eighty-nine. We’ll fuel up in Great Falls. I checked the airport listing binder. At each airport, self-service pumps are available if the jet centers are closed. All of them have Jet-A available, night or day.”
“Good job. We might be landing at Malmstrom Air Force Base instead of Great Falls.”
Harv consulted the charts. “That’s…. no problem. It’s only a few miles to the east.”
Within two minutes of starting the engine, Nathan had the two-and-a-half-ton Bell 407 in a stable hover.
“Clear on the left?” Nathan asked.
“Clear,” Harv answered.
They were on their way.
