What the hell? Teddy thought. Who was this? He shoved the throttle all the way in and added a notch of flaps. Forty knots.
The pickup reached the packed sand and turned north, toward the airplane, which was running south on the sand.
Fifty knots. He put in another notch of flaps for a soft-field takeoff and pulled the yoke back into his lap. Sixty knots. The airplane struggled off the sand and into the air, but Teddy kept it inches off the sand, in ground effect, while it gathered speed. He retracted the landing gear to decrease drag. The pickup truck was upon him, the fool at the wheel obviously planning to ram him. Then, for a split second, Teddy clearly saw the driver. It was that kid, Bacon, from Owen Masters’s staff.
Teddy jerked back on the yoke and cleared the pickup by inches, then he got the airplane into ground effect again, retracted a notch of flaps and let the airspeed build.
Todd braked to a halt, panting. He couldn’t believe he had tried to drive the truck into a spinning propeller; if he had been successful, he would have been mincemeat. He spun the truck around and floored it, chasing the airplane. It was flying just above the beach and not all that fast. Maybe he could clip the tail with the front of the truck and crash it. Now he was gaining on the Cessna. Since he was behind it he couldn’t see the registration number, but he saw that it was a retractable. He was forty feet behind the airplane and closing fast, his speed nearly a hundred miles an hour on the speedometer.
There is no rearview mirror on airplanes, so Teddy could not see the pickup coming. At ninety knots he pulled back on the yoke, and the airplane pulled away from the beach. Then, to Teddy’s astonishment, he saw the pickup in front of him, out the right side window. He retracted the last notch of flaps and kept climbing. Then he heard shots.
Todd was leaning out the window of the pickup, his pistol in his left hand, firing at the airplane as it pulled away from him. He emptied the magazine, and he had no idea if he had hit the thing.
Teddy reached the end of the island and kept going straight. He checked his fuel: both tanks were at three- quarters, and he had some in the ferry tank, too. He flew straight down the coast at five hundred feet, passing Fernandina Beach and Amelia Island. When his GPS told him he was thirty miles from Cumberland Island and well out of sight of the pickup, he went to the flight-plan page of the GPS and tapped in the code for a little airstrip he knew in the Bahamas. Then he descended to around twenty feet, set the altitude hold on his autopilot and the navigate button, and took his hands off the yoke.
He had over two hundred miles to go, but he had the fuel, and if he didn’t turn up on somebody’s look-down radar, he would be fine.
Todd Bacon stood on the beach beside the pickup and watched the airplane disappear to the south. Then he reloaded his pistol, got out his BlackBerry, and dialed a number.
Teddy was an hour from the coast, with another hour to go when he noticed that the right wing tank was nearly empty. He looked out the right window and saw what appeared to be smoke trailing from the wing; it was a mist of fuel. The son of a bitch had gotten lucky and hit a tank, and a quick calculation told him it was unlikely that he would make the Bahamas. And he had no life raft aboard.
59
Lance Cabot was walking into his office when he heard the characteristic ring of his direct telephone line. He picked it up. “Yes?”
“It’s Bacon,” a voice said. “Scramble.”
Lance pressed the Scramble button. “I’m scrambled. What’s up?”
“I’m in Georgia,” Todd said.
Lance’s jaw dropped. “What the hell are you doing in Eastern Europe?”
“Not that Georgia, the other one, the one in the United States.”
“Same question,” Lance said, feeling his gorge rise, “and your answer better be good.”
“I’m at a place called Cumberland Island,” Todd said. “I pursued Teddy Fay here.”
“What?”
“I figured out where he was going and what he was going to do when he got there, so I followed.”
“You followed him back to the United States?”
“Yes. I figured out that he was in Atlanta or nearby and that he was going to assassinate the Reverend Henry King Johnson. Do you know who that is?”
“Of course I know who he is,” Lance snapped.
“Teddy has mostly killed right-wing political figures, but he figured Johnson was a threat to the president’s reelection. After killing Owen, he had to get out of Panama, so he went to Atlanta.”
“Todd, Teddy Fay is dead, and I don’t want you ever to mention his name to me or anyone else again. Is that clear?”
“No, he’s not dead. I saw him less than five minutes ago.”
Lance was speechless.
“You’d better let me tell you what’s happened, because I think you need to know about it before it hits the papers. Teddy tried to blow up a little church on this island where Johnson was scheduled to perform a wedding ceremony. He placed a propane tank with a detonator on it under the church, but I managed to find it and disable it before it went off. I pursued Teddy to the beach, where he had an airplane. I tried to stop him, but he managed to get the thing in the air and flew south.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Lance said.
“I was unable to see the registration number, but it was a Cessna 182 RG, mostly white. I fired at it, emptied a magazine, but I don’t know if I hit it.”
Lance began to regain himself. “Now you listen to me very carefully, Todd,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“I don’t know how you got to the States, but…”
“I chartered a small jet.”
“I don’t care about that. Your orders are to get your ass back to Panama City immediately, if not sooner, and to stay there. You are not to discuss where you’ve been with anyone, nor are you to mention any theories you might have about Teddy Fay. Do you understand my orders?”
“I suppose.”
“Well, you’d better do more than suppose, or you’re going to find yourself in a much less attractive station than Panama City and at a much lower salary level than you are now. That, or you’ll find yourself on the street, and I can promise you that the street will be an inhospitable place. Am I beginning to get through to you?”
There was a brief silence. “Yes, sir,” Todd replied. “I think I understand perfectly.”
“Good, and you’d better go on doing so. Was anyone hurt in the explosion?”
