Hit List (Stone Barrington #53)(64)

They ran to the rear door and opened it. “Stone, you and Herb go right. I’ll go left, and we’ll meet back at the car.” He turned left and started to run.

Stone and Herbie ran, dodging a garbage truck coming from the other way.

Herbie stopped and yelled, “Stone!”

Stone looked back at him. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s driving the garbage truck!” Herbie yelled, watching as the truck made a turn at the end of the block.

Stone, panting in the heat, got out his phone and called Dino. He took three rings to answer. “What?”

“Sig is driving the garbage truck!” Stone yelled into the phone.

“What garbage truck?” Dino yelled back.

“The one that’s about to run over you!” He wasn’t sure about that, because he couldn’t see it, but he thought it was the safe thing to say.

A torrent of bad language issued from the phone. “Dammit!” Dino yelled. “He nearly got me, and I can’t get a shot at him from behind.” He fired a shot anyway.

“Let’s keep going this way,” Stone said to Herbie, and they ran. They made it to the main street in concert with Dino, who was coming from the other direction, and they all piled into their car.

“Back the way we came,” Dino said. “Toward the airport!”



* * *



—

They made the airport, which was secured by a chain-link fence. The garbage truck was inside, parked on the ramp, and a twin-engine Piper, a Navaho painted yellow, was starting up. “He’s in the Navaho,” Stone shouted, “but the gate’s locked.” They drove around to the FBO, abandoned the car and ran for the G-500. Faith, Stone’s pilot, was standing by the airplane and saw them coming. She yelled something inside the airplane, and an engine could be heard to start turning. She waved the three of them aboard, locked the door behind them, and dove into the cockpit.

“Let’s go!” Stone yelled. “Follow the Navaho!”

“We can’t move without a clearance,” she said, donning her headset.

“The Navaho didn’t seem to have one.”

“Or he did it all in advance,” she replied, pressing the push-to-talk switch and requesting taxi and takeoff clearances. “Five-minute delay,” she said to Stone, who was hovering over her.

“Go anyway,” he replied.

“We’ll just get arrested, and they’ll get away. Open the door and see if you can tell which way the Navaho is going.”

Stone ran back, opened the door, and stood there scanning the skies.

Dino joined him. “Is that it?” he asked, pointing aloft.

“Is it yellow?” Stone asked. “I think the Navaho was yellow.”

Dino ducked back inside and came back with a pair of binoculars. “It’s yellow,” he said. “Which way is it headed?”

Stone looked around to orient himself. “North,” he said. He shut and locked the door and went back to the cockpit. “Request a departure to the north,” he said to Faith. “It looks like it’s headed for the Bahamas.”

Faith did so, then she released the brakes and started to taxi. “We’re cleared for takeoff,” she said.

“We’re a lot faster than the Navaho,” Stone said. “Try to avoid running past it.”

“It could turn for Florida,” she said.

“I want to see it do that before we head that way,” Stone said.

Faith shoved the throttles forward and started her takeoff roll.





51


They were halfway to the Bahamas before Faith’s copilot spotted the yellow Navaho. “Ten o’clock and maybe twelve thousand feet,” she said.

Faith retarded the throttles, and tried to keep the smaller airplane in sight. The Bahamas loomed ahead. She got on the radio and requested twelve thousand feet, then turned toward Stone, who was occupying the jump seat behind her. “We don’t have a clearance to land,” she said, “because of the hurricane.”

Stone had forgotten about the recent hurricane. He ran back to where Dino was sitting. “Get on the satphone to the head of your aviation department and tell him to call somebody at the FAA and get us permission to land, which is being denied, because of the recent hurricane. Tell them it’s a pursuit of a dangerous fugitive.”

Dino grabbed a phone and went to work.

Stone went forward to the jump seat. “Are we still with him?”

“Yes, and he won’t be able to see us. No rearview mirrors in airplanes.”

“Dino’s working on a clearance.”

“There are three airports,” Faith said, “and I think they are all up and running by now. Look, the Navaho is descending.” Then she answered a radio call. “Wow!” she said. “We’ve got clearance to land anywhere.”

“Land where the Navaho lands.”

She began to descend again. “Looks like he’s headed for Marsh Harbor,” she said.

“Drop back some more, so we can land behind him. We could lose him, if we have to go around.”

Faith followed his instructions. “All right,” she said, “this is as slow as I’m going to go; any slower, and we risk a low-altitude stall.” She swung left. “I’m going to give him more space,” she said, then after a couple of minutes she turned right again. “The instrument approach isn’t working yet, but I can use our onboard synthetic vision; that will keep us pointed at the airport, until I can see it.”