Although it had floats and was a seaplane, the old aircraft also had wheels built into the floats and therefore could land at a conventional airport for maintenance. Soon Haley would find out if Grant Landon had managed to get it back together right under Frick's nose.
It had taken another twenty minutes of reckless travel in the open, dodging police patrols and goons, to make her way to somewhere around the middle of the airport on the wrong side. Although she had run when she could, the route had been circuitous. She was sopping wet again, covered in various forms of ground scum and mold, and felt filthy and miserable.
It didn't matter.
On this side of the airport, away from the entrances, she felt relatively safe. The place seemed abandoned, but she worried about someone watching the perimeter. Using the drive-through gates for private pilots would probably result in her capture-even assuming she could make it to that side of the runway. She ducked behind a tree and watched for a few minutes, until she realized there was no way she could get the reassurance she was looking for. And she was out of time.
Even if she gained access to the airport, she'd have to cover a lot of open space to get to the rows of hangars. Frick's people seemed already to have finished an initial search of the airport, leaving no men behind. That, at least, was a comfort.
She had an idea. She dialed the mechanic's cell.
'How the hell are you?' Grant greeted her.
'Fine. Just harried. Too much out in the open. Wrong side of the airport.'
'Down from the fire station or up?'
'Down. Maybe two or three hundred yards. Don't know for sure how far.' Since Haley didn't commonly crawl around near the airport at night, it was hard to recognize landmarks.
'Be right there.'
Once, she and Ben had picked wild blackberries near the fire station. There was a chain-link fence with barbed wire atop and she didn't know how she might get through it. No doubt Grant would have a solution, probably in the form of wire cutters. She didn't have long to think about it. In moments Grant's pickup came rolling down the taxiway, then went onto the grass on a large bench below the main runway, right in front of God and anybody else looking. It scared her.
'Down farther,' she told him on the cell. 'That's good.'
After he had killed the engine and gotten out of the truck, she ran out across the road.
He carried a hefty pair of cutters and came quite a distance from the runway to the fence.
It took sixty seconds or so for him to cut enough chain-link fence to let her through.
Grant wore a graying mustache and hair to match, and plenty of crow's-feet around his eyes. He had a sandpaper voice and a temper, she knew, although he rarely showed it with her.
'Probably violated a bunch of federal laws when I cut an airport fence,' he said.
'I won't tell, if you don't.'
They climbed in the pickup and drove back toward the hangar. They were very much in the open and she decided it would undoubtedly be proof of God's existence if no one stopped them.
'They came and took some parts,' Grant said. 'I can't make Ben's plane fly now.'
'Oh man. That's bad.'
'You can fly a Lake amphibian, can't you?'
'Are you kidding?' Haley said. 'Landing those is a trick if you've never done it and I have always flown whatever Ben owned. It would be a miracle if I didn't submarine the nose or drag the tail in.'
'Will I go to jail if I fly you someplace?'
'If they think I'm really a criminal, you might.'
'You're no damn criminal,' Grant said. 'Did Sam shoot Crew?'
'No. He didn't shoot Crew,' said Haley. 'Frick did. Sam wouldn't shoot anybody, except in self-defense.'
'You sure about that?'
'I'm sure. And I was there.'
'This will help save Ben for sure?'
'And me. Yes,' Haley replied.
'That's good enough for me. Where do we pick up Sam?'
'Caution Point.'
'Oh, my God,' the older man gasped. 'At night? With this wind? At least you don't ask for much.'
'Is it possible?'
'There's a little indentation, kind of a bay just this side of the point. We could try there, and if we don't make it, we'll probably be dead and we won't have to worry about it. I'm old. Maybe you better let me try it by myself.'
'No way are you leaving me,' Haley said. 'I'd be greatly in your debt if you'd fly. I'm pretty sure I'd crash at night. But I'm going if you're going.'
'All right,' he said. And that was the end of it.
Haley felt more than a little guilty. 'You don't have to do this, you know.'
'I prefer to think I'm lucky enough to pull it off.' Grant winked. 'I've got my skunk tail in my back pocket and everything. Even my copper bracelet. 'Sides, I gotta live long enough to try some of Ben's invention.'
That shocked Haley. 'What do you mean?'
'You know I been helping Ben?'
'No. What have you been doing? I need to know.'
'Well, it's highly confidential and Ben trusts me. I just figured-'
'That I knew?' First Sarah, now Grant. Who else? Haley wondered. 'Not a word. Is there anything you can tell me?'
'Sometimes we fly people in and out to Orcas. The same people.'
'How many people?'
'A lot of people.'
'Ten, twenty?'
'More,' Grant said. 'But there's a dozen that they call project leaders. I see them the most often. But I don't know what they're doing, I swear.'
She looked at him sharply.
'Well, I got the idea that it has to do with living a long time.'
'What do you know, Grant?'
'There's this manifesto thing.'
'A manifesto?'
'They whispered about it once,' he said, 'and I asked Ben, and he got all stern with me and told me to forget it forever. So I can truthfully say that I don't know where or what.
Now I'd appreciate it if you'd leave me with a little self-respect and not ask me any more.'
It just keeps growing.
Rachael sat on the bridge of the Coast Guard Marine Protector-Class, eighty-seven-foot coastal patrol boat called the Orca. It was stationed in Bellingham and next to her sat a disbelieving officer by the name of Lieutenant Lew Stutz. He was a lieutenant and apparently it was unusual to get someone of any officer-grade rank on a holiday night at the Bellingham Unit, but this boat had an officer-grade skipper. He had a bit of Kirk Douglas about him and the fresh-faced look of youth. Rachael guessed he had big ambitions, and screwing this up wouldn't help. Her father was a successful local businessman and Rachael well understood life's food chain.
They had tied her uncle's boat in Fidalgo Bay, and she had seen in the young officer the possibility of reaching someone who mattered in the federal government, an opportunity that might not otherwise exist on a holiday weekend in the small town of Anacortes.
Using all her persuasive power, she had talked her way onto his boat for what she hoped would be a productive dialogue. Standard operating procedure would be to turn her over to police authorities at the dock, but she had forestalled that and had been talking and waiting for almost an hour.
'These men say you tried to run them down,' Stutz said.
'They were following me,' Rachael said. 'They shot a flare pistol at me. I told you what I was doing. Doesn't
