Max rolls me deeper inside as he enters behind me. “Smooth move,” he says with a smirk.
I’m on my back with both hands clutching my skinned shin when the door slams shut and the driver stabs the gas, throwing me backward to smack my head on the steel of the wheel well. Great. The wound on my forehead from Pat’s bathroom has almost healed; let’s start a new one on the back of my thick skull.
Max shakes his head as he watches, then turns to Jake. “Maybe we should drop Tony off at Loyola Emergency along the way so he’ll be in good hands when he really hurts himself.”
“Fuck off, Max,” I mutter through clenched teeth, even though my leg feels as if it could use the ministrations of Loyola’s Level One Trauma Center staff right about now.
My cursing prompts a deeper laugh from Max. “We’ll turn you into a potty-mouthed old bastard like the rest of us yet!”
I work myself into a sitting position with my back braced against the van’s side panel and look around in the dim light. If the outside of this thing is in as poor shape as the grubby interior, our wheels won’t attract any attention. The roaring road noise bleeding through the bare steel floor and shell of the van make me long for the cathedrallike hush inside my Porsche.
“Did we get away clean?” I ask Jake.
“Yeah. I had uniforms stationed at both ends of the alley to make sure no one saw us pile in here. We should be good.”
I roll my pant leg up and frown at the angry two-inch gash on my shin. Max smirks before he looks away. I follow his gaze to Papa, whose eyes are glittering with excitement. At least one of us seems to be enjoying our little caper.
“Is fun!” Papa exclaims when he catches me looking.
“First time I’ve heard a target talking about how much fun it is to be out dodging bullets,” Max mutters with a dark chuckle.
Papa and Max will be on a flight to Europe by morning, but I’m not yet privy to the logistical details of their departure. In fact, I don’t even know what airport they’ll be leaving from. This whole production is an eye-opening glimpse into a darker cloak-and-dagger world than I’ve never experienced. When I travel, I simply catch a cab or drive myself to the airport.
“What next?” I ask Jake a few minutes later, after the van accelerates up a ramp and settles into a steady pace. We’re obviously on a highway, most likely Interstate 290 or I-55.
“We’re on our way to the airport. If anyone’s tracking Francesco, it’s most likely a Mickey Mouse operation using cars and shoe leather. They won’t be prepared to track an aircraft.”
“Are they leaving from O’Hare or Midway?” I ask, referring to Chicago’s two major airports.
“Neither. They’re flying out of Clow.”
So, now I know why we’re going to Bolingbrook.
Jake turns to Max. “I’m looking forward to seeing this place.”
“Nothing to write home about,” Max says with a chuckle. “Damnedest little ‘international’ airport I’ve ever seen.”
I’ve heard about the place from Billy Likens and am intrigued. Clow International Airport is a general aviation facility in the far-southwest suburb of Bolingbrook, around thirty miles away from downtown Chicago. The man who founded it as a grass strip in the 1950s, Oliver Boyd Clow, managed to bring a little fun to the staid world of airport nomenclature by attaching International to the name of the field. I smile as I recall Billy telling me that Clow had said his airfield was named on a lark that bordered on the ridiculous. He had that right. I wonder how many—if any—of the little aircraft flying in and out of Clow have the range to reach the Canadian border in a single hop, let alone wing their way across oceans to Europe and beyond.
“We’ll be monitoring the comings and goings at the airport to make sure nobody gets a good look at what’s going on,” Jake says as he turns back to me. “From Clow, our boys are off to Minneapolis.”
“We’ll be flying KLM from there to Amsterdam,” Max says.
“Minneapolis?” I ask.
Jake nods. “Yup. The Luciano clan might have eyes at the Chicago airports. Their reach doesn’t extend to Minnesota.”
Makes sense, but I was expecting to be home within the next hour or so after seeing Papa and Max off. “Guess I won’t be spending the evening at home, after all,” I grumble. “Hell, I’ll be lucky to be back by morning.”
Jake’s eyes cut to me. “You’re going to Minneapolis? That isn’t in the plan.”
“I’m going to see Papa off,” I announce firmly. Jake considers arguing for a long moment, then lets it go.
“The more the merrier,” Max quips before he outlines their travel plans beyond Amsterdam. “We’ll be traveling south by train through Germany with stops in Hannover and Munich on the way to Innsbruck, Austria. Francesco’s nephew will pick us up there, then it’s an eight-hour drive to Francesco’s sister’s place.”
“They can travel in the EU without passports after they clear customs in Amsterdam, so tracking them after that won’t be easy,” Jake explains.
Papa’s sister has been safely tucked away in the town of Penne in Italy’s Abruzzo province since she fled Orsomarso some fifty years ago. We’re hopeful Papa can also fly under the radar there.
Buried in the back of the van as we’ve bounced and jostled our way along since leaving the expressway, we haven’t seen much other than streetlights and the occasional building flash past. The first visual clue to our arrival at Clow comes when we pass through a pair of large sliding doors and find ourselves inside an aircraft hangar. Who knew there were hangars at Clow?
We tumble out of the van and find ourselves standing beside a gleaming white, high-winged airplane. It’s bigger than I imagined Jake’s “puddle jumper” would be, although it’s small by airline standards.
