“Okay, everyone. Time to borrow a bird.”
“How about the float plane?” Robert asked.
“Possibly. Those are easy to fly.”
“You don’t want to get close to that one,” Jordan said in a firm voice.
“Why?” Kat asked.
“It was in Boise when I left. Now it’s here, as are a bunch of assassins.”
Kat braked to a halt. “Oh, Lord. You think they came in on that?”
Jordan was nodding. “Count on it.”
She looked around quickly, spotting a hangar with its doors partially open. She let out the clutch and accelerated toward it, trying to make out the type of aircraft inside. Something large with high wings that were a shadow through the upper windows of the hangar. An Albatross!
She stopped and jumped out to peer into the hangar, returning in less than thirty seconds. “This will have to do.”
“Can you fly it?” Robert asked, raising his hand suddenly before she responded. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“We don’t have a choice,” she said.
Robert and Jordan jumped from the Sno-Cat and hauled at the hangar doors, pushing them open slowly as Kat ran the snowmobile inside and parked it to one side. She grabbed her handbag and motioned to Dr. Maverick to follow, then ran to the right rear side of the huge amphibian. The ladder was down and she scrambled up, racing to the cockpit to turn on the master switch and check the fuel. Thank God! Almost full tanks.
The cockpit side window was open. She yelled to Robert and Jordan. “Hurry with the doors and get in. Pull up the ladder behind you.”
Checklist. There has to be a checklist. Kat searched rapidly through the papers in a side pocket, and retrieved a laminated checklist. She ran down the Before Starting Engines portion, locating the applicable switches and finding the primer for the two big radial propeller-driven power plants before turning on the switch and checking to make sure all three of the men were aboard.
She engaged the starter, holding her breath as she jockeyed the throttle slightly and waited. Two, three, four times the huge prop on the right rotated. She was considering priming it again when the cylinders began to fire, slowly, then in a smooth sequence. Kat adjusted the fuel mixture and started the left engine.
“Fasten in, everyone. Robert? Come up here with me.”
“You’re sure about this, Kat?” he said as he launched himself up into the bucket seat and fumbled for the seat belt.
She nodded. “Of course I’m sure. And if you believe that, I’ve got some swampland in the Mojave I’d like to talk to you about!”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“Find their damned tracks!” Arlin Schoen jabbed a finger in the direction of the north taxiway as the Suburban changed directions and raced over the snow-covered concrete.
“There are the tracks!” one of the men said, pointing ahead.
“They’re hiding. Probably inside one of these hangars,” Schoen said. “Good. That’ll make it easier to—”
He trailed off as they rocketed around the northeast corner of the hangar and saw an Albatross come shooting through the open doors, its ample wings rocking as the pilot steered the craft toward the runway. From their angle, they could see nothing of the pilots or occupants.
The driver braked to a halt in confusion. “What now, Arlin?”
Arlin turned around, looked at the open hangar, and shook his head. “No. They didn’t have enough time. Drive into the hangar!”
The Suburban’s driver accelerated through the open doors and screeched to a halt by the empty but still-idling Sno-Cat. “Godammit!” Schoen snarled. “Turn around! They’re in that aircraft.”
The driver fought the wheel as he backed and then shot forward, floorboarding the vehicle to give Schoen a closer firing platform.
“Get on the runway! Get in front of them!”
To reach the end as a pilot would for a normal takeoff, the Albatross would have had to taxi north several hundred yards. But whoever was steering the amphibian wasn’t following the rules. It bounced across the snow-covered ground between taxiway and runway and turned on the runway, its engines coming up to takeoff power. “We’re not going to make it, Arlin,” the driver said.
“Try! Floor it!”
“I am.”
Schoen toggled the right side window down and leaned up and out as he cocked the Uzi and aimed at the plane’s tires, firing a burst that went wild when the Suburban lurched off the taxiway in angled pursuit of the accelerating craft. Again he fired, trying to walk the bullets toward the wing to get the fuel tanks, but nothing happened.
The Albatross was accelerating away from them, moving at more than fifty knots as the Suburban’s driver tried to match speeds. The roughness of the plowed snowpack on the runway forced Schoen back inside.
“Forget it. Get to the Caravan. We’ll get them in the air.”
The bone-jarring trip across the snow-covered grass to the runway and then down its washboard surface had been brutal, but the big World War II — vintage amphibian lifted clear of the surface at a sedate ninety knots with the engines screaming at full power. Kat pushed the nose over slightly to gain airspeed before fishing for the landing gear lever and pulling it up. She turned almost due south, checking the round gauge on the front panel called the artificial horizon, as well as the airspeed indicator, making sure she kept it right side up.
Engines. Throttle back, set the prop pitch. I’ll have to estimate. I have no idea what settings to use.
“Where do we go, Kat?” Robert asked.
She glanced at him and smiled briefly. “Boise, if I can find it.”
“Why?”
“Safety in numbers, I suppose. There’s an Air National Guard base at the airport, and Salt Lake is too far south.”
She kept the aircraft climbing, looking for a passage through the mountains to the west in the growing light. She spotted the pass she was looking for and banked toward it, leveling the aircraft just high enough to clear the ridge, then nosing it over and staying close to the mountainous terrain.
Kat pointed to the rear. “I threw my purse down in the back, Robert. See if you can get the satellite phone out and call the police in Boise, and the Air Guard. Get them ready to protect us when we land.”
“How long? An hour?”
“At least,” she said.
The Hailey Airport manager, alerted to an inbound Air Force Gulfstream, had arrived in time to see the visiting Albatross roar into the air, followed by a Caravan on floats. The occupants of the Caravan had thrown something on the ramp as they left, and the manager drove to it, unprepared to find the crumpled body of a man in a pilot’s shirt, lying in a growing pool of red.
CHAPTER 47
“I can see them to the south,” Arlin Schoen said to the member of his team who could fly, as the Caravan climbed in pursuit. “Get as high as you can but stay with them.”
“We’re faster, Arlin, but not that much.”
The Albatross’s turn to the west was a lucky break. They altered course to intercept the lumbering amphibian and followed it for nearly ten minutes before Schoen tapped the pilot on the shoulder again. “Bring me to his left and stay high so they can’t see us.”
Kat was breathing easier as she sat back to survey the engine instruments. She gave a small prayer of thanks that the weather was clear. Her eyes had just focused on the airspeed indicator when it suddenly exploded in a hail of bullets.