"Come on, Don, for Christ's sake-!"
Had he seen it turn on to the end of the runway before the dust concealed it—?
The third car was invisible as it continued towards the office buildings. Then his car swung out of Biles' dust cloud and he saw the executive jet once more.
In the same instant, he heard Mclntyre's voice again over the earphone.
Kennedy pressed it to his ear and cheek as if it was the means of a self-inflicted wound.
"What's happening? Kennedy, have you stopped the airplane, dammit?"
Gant turned the executive jet on to the runway, nose pointing towards the two racing cars. Biles' sedan slewed on to the runway, maybe a little over halfway down.
'-almost!" he heard himself shouting back at Mclntyre.
"We got the runway blocked off- he's going nowhere!"
"Make sure of that!"
"I'm making sure dead sure!"
Biles had swung his car across the centre line of the runway. As the dust cleared in front of his windscreen, Kennedy saw the airplane clearly, and realised that it had begun to accelerate.
"Get across the runway!" he screamed at Don.
Biles and his driver were out of their sedan, shotguns sticking up, but their immobility suggested a growing fear rather than confidence as the executive jet roared towards them.
"Across the runway!" he wailed at the driver, the earphone still clamped against his cheek.
The white airplane was growing larger and outrunning them as the car seemed to move more and more slowly… Biles had parked too far down the runway… Then the whole scene froze for an instant, the only movement being the slow, very slow upward movement of the undercarriage
… Then there was a lurch of acceleration and the jet screamed away and over them, the dust enveloping him and the car, Biles' car…
Barbara saw the cloud of dust, anticipating the moment of impact between the plane and the cars. Then, as she heard his voice over Alan's intercom system, loud in the room, the Vance Exec lifted clear.
The plane seemed to stagger with the effort of retracting its undercarriage too soon and the severe angle of take-off.
'-up! Jesus…" she heard over the intercom, the relief evident in his voice.
Then there was only his breathing and the ether. The plane winking in the lightening sky. It was as if he remained in the room with her as the plane diminished; the dangerous, somehow cornered animal she had often felt him to be. The dust settled, exposing the two stranded, purposeless cars on the runway.
The plane was no bigger than a star, then it was gone.
The third car had already drawn up outside the administration block.
Bill and some of the ground crew were watching the disappearing plane from the gaping doors of the hangar. Beside her, Blakey only now seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. The throat-clearing that immediately followed was more like an anticipation of problems. Barbara impulsively patted his arm.
"Had to be," she murmured. Thanks, Ron."
"Sure."
The two cars on the runway had repossessed their occupants and had turned, like blind, squat insects, towards her and the buildings, as if they scented another source of sustenance. They accelerated in mutual frustration across the desert sand, throwing up dust that caught the sunlight and sparkled like cheap jewellery.
The plane had vanished southwards, towards the city and Mexico, as if fleeing.
Mitchell would turn north only when he was certain he was out of visual range.
Leaving her to answer their bullying questions, confront their anger
… even face arrest for assisting a fugitive from justice.
As the strange elation of his escape subsided, she recognised her own situation, for the first time. The other two cars joined their companion below her window. She was the one left hanging out to dry.
The phone rang on the desk and she snatched it up.
"Honey?" It was Tom, her husband.
"Yes?" She could not keep the impatience from her voice, and he was at once brittle and defensive.
"When are you coming home, Barbara or do I have to wait until the babysitter gets here? I have to meet important clients today!" Even the emphasis of his unpractised anger was wrong. She hated the cold judgement she made of him.
"I'm sorry, Tom, I may be tied up here for some time yet—" The men getting out of the cars below the window were grim-faced with failure.
That's not helpful, Barbara—"
"For God's sake!" she almost screamed.
Blaming Mitchell now, almost entirely.
"I'm busy, Tom OK? I can't just drop things!"
"OK, OK just be as quick as you can, uh? I'll try and reschedule—" The intercom buzzed.
"I have to go. Sorry…"
She put down the phone and answered the intercom. It was Bill, the ground engineer.
The FBI, Ms Vance. They want to talk to you…" The embers of self congratulation still smouldered in Bill's even tones.
"Right. Send them up, Bill."
"You want me to stay?"
She glanced around the room, shaking her head.
"No, Ron. Just take all the stuff you did for him, and shred it. Don't let them find it."
Blakey nodded and left the room. As Barbara sat down in Alan's swivel chair, she glimpsed the moon, hanging by forgetfulness above the desert in a pale-blue sky.
Carefully, she posed herself behind the large, impressive desk, the day lit window behind her.
She feared she would have to tell them, eventually. She did not want them sitting on her, along with everyone else. Mitchell would know that, it wouldn't be a betrayal of any kind… Guilt bubbled, but subsided as someone knocked at the door.
"Come in," she called, her voice calm.
"Put her on the line," Mclntyre snapped.
The early-morning New Mexico sun glared from the terminal building windows of Albuquerque's airport and the scent of aviation fuel was heavy on the air coming through the open door of the aircraft. Four or five miles away, the towers of the city huddled on bottom-land that, at that distance, appeared as arid as the airport's immediate surroundings. From the window beside Fraser's seat on the other side of the aisle, he could see dark-treed mountains thrusting up into an already leached sky. As he waited, he could hear the rush of fuel into the tanks from the bowser parked beside the airplane.
As Mclntyre gripped the receiver, his hand was clammy with tension rather than perspiration. His free hand clenched and unclenched in a fury of disappointment.
"Yes who is this?" he heard. Eraser's smirk, as he listened on his own handset, infuriated. Gant's wife, trying to tough it out. She knew the flight plan had to but it didn't matter whether or not she told him. Kennedy was checking it out.
He wanted to bruise her. He owed her some fear.
"Special Agent Mclntyre, Mrs. Gant," he ground out.
"My name is Barbara Vance," she replied, her voice tiredly challenging.
"Vance Gant, I'm not interested!" he growled. Chris' head and shoulders appeared in the doorway, blotting out the glare of concrete, but the young man ducked back as their eyes met.
"It's not you I want, lady it's the guy you used to be married to.
You've aided and abetted a fugitive from justice. I could and I will bring charges." The threat was heavy in the morning.
"You're in enough trouble as it is, Barbara Vance."
Her in taken breath was a source of immediate, sharp pleasure, as if he had aroused her.
"Why do you find it necessary to threaten me, Agent Mclntyre?" she managed.
"Is threat what you get off on?" Fraser snickered in the seat opposite.
"Don't make me really angry, lady. I just want him. You don't count but I can still make things bad for you. So cooperate. Tell me his flight plan."
Mclntyre glanced at his watch. It didn't have the right to be this hot before eight in the morning. Already, the hills seemed masked by a smog of heat and to have retreated to a greater distance. The terminal building was a single great mirror.