Turbulence (Stone Barrington #46)(15)
“Holly, it’s Sam. Where are you?”
“Still in Key West,” Holly replied, “and I’m getting antsy to get back to work.”
“Want me to send an aircraft carrier for you?”
Holly laughed. “No, but next best thing would be if you could give somebody at the FAA a jingle and get us permission to take off from Key West International today.”
“Give me your airplane information,” Meriwether said.
“Here’s the owner, Stone Barrington. Stone, it’s Sam Meriwether. He’s a good guy and a pilot.”
“Hi, Stone.”
“Hi, Sam. I’m flying a Citation CJ3-Plus, white with red-and-blue markings, tail number N123TF. I have five hours of fuel.”
“And where do you want to land?”
“Manassas would do us fine.”
“Let me get back to you, Holly.”
“Right.” They both hung up.
“Who’s Sam Meriwether?” Stone asked. “The name is familiar, but I can’t place him.”
“You met him during Kate’s campaign. Now he’s the White House chief of staff.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you just call the head of the FAA?”
“I don’t know the guy, and anyway, that’s not how it works in Washington. You want a favor from somebody you don’t know, you call somebody who outranks him and ask him to make the call. After the president, Sam effectively outranks everybody. Nobody doesn’t want to do him a favor.”
Her phone rang, and she pressed speaker again. “Hi, Sam.”
“Hi, Holly, Stone. Okay, here’s what you do. You get yourself to the runway holding line early, and at exactly noon, local time, you take off. Your first instruction is to turn left to 360 degrees—fly that heading for five or six miles, to keep you clear of the Naval Air Station, and after that you can proceed direct to Manassas at an altitude and on a course of your choosing. Don’t bother calling Miami or Jacksonville Center, because nobody will be home. Wait until you’re over south Georgia, then start calling Atlanta Center.” He gave them a frequency. “They’ll be expecting to hear from you, and they’ll give you your clearance to Manassas. You’ll be pretty much alone in the sky over Florida and south Georgia because most airports are closed, and what’s flying will be at lower altitudes—search and rescue and helicopters and such.”
“Thank you so much, Sam,” Holly said, “and don’t tell anybody. I don’t want to have to answer any questions about how I got out of Key West.”
“Gotcha,” Sam said. “Bye-bye, and happy flying.”
“Bye-bye.” Holly hung up. “Nice to have friends in high places, isn’t it?”
“I think, from now on, I’ll have you file all my flight plans,” Stone said.
12
THEY ROUSTED Dino and Viv out of bed and got them packing, and they were at the airport by eleven. George came along to drive the car back to the house.
Stone asked Ernie to pull his airplane out and point it at runway 9.
“What for?” Ernie asked. “The airport is closed.”
“We have a special clearance to take off at noon,” Stone said.
“Whatever you say,” Ernie replied, then went to work. Stone preflighted the airplane, stowed their luggage, ran through his checklists, started the engines and was at the end of the runway ten minutes early. He checked for traffic and saw a helicopter landing at the Naval Air Station, but nothing else. At one minute to noon, he announced his intentions on the airport frequency, then taxied into position for takeoff, setting his initial altitude at three thousand feet. At the stroke of noon he pushed the throttles forward and began his takeoff roll. There was a crosswind, but it was down to 10 knots or so.
Holly called out his airspeeds, then said, “V1, rotate.” Stone eased back on the yoke, and the airplane flew off the runway. He got the landing gear and flaps up, then turned the heading indicator to 360 degrees and pressed the autopilot button. The airplane climbed to three thousand feet, and Stone changed the heading to east.
“Why only three thousand feet?” Holly asked. “We can go as high as we like.”
“I want a look at the Keys,” Stone said, pointing out the right window. What they saw was awful. There were trucks and police cars on U.S. One, but utility poles were down here and there, and all sorts of boats lay where the cars used to drive. It began to look better at Key Largo.
Stone reset the altitude to flight level 450–45,000 feet—and pressed a button for direct to Manassas. They climbed quickly, and Stone turned on some music with the satellite radio.
They didn’t get as good a look at the rest of Florida, but it was clearly a mess down there. Stone checked the NEXRAD weather on his display and saw remnants of the hurricane as far north as Charleston, but they were high above all that.
An hour and a half later, Stone entered the frequency for Atlanta Center into his radio and made the call: “Atlanta Center, Citation November one, two, three, Tango Foxtrot. Do you read?”
A woman’s voice came back clearly, “N123TF, Atlanta Center. We’ve been expecting you. You’re cleared for direct destination at your present altitude.”
“N123TF, thank you, direct Manassas at 450,” Stone replied.