Ruebottom reached for the controls as the tower came on the air and the 737 ahead of them began to move forward. Lightstone consciously brushed his fingers across the release snap of his safety harness.
A sudden burst of static provided advance warning of another message from the control tower, this time letting everyone on the taxiway know that they were getting ready to start moving airplanes again. Lightstone could feel himself starting to tense up as he realized that they were nearing takeoff.
Ruebottom was making slight adjustments to the controls to counteract the jet wash as the 737 ahead of them began to roll forward, three powerful engines sending shock waves all the way down the line.
Working quickly now, Ruebottom checked both his and Lightstone's safety harnesses, adjusted his headset, scanned the instrument board for red lights, double-checked the critical gauges, and then inched the throttles forward again.
"You about ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be," Lightstone said with a visible lack of enthusiasm.
"Try to think about something else," Ruebottom advised, trying hard not to grin.
"Okay," Lightstone agreed, willing to try just about anything at this point. "What about you and the plane? Everything in here clean, just in case somebody does start snooping around?"
"Thanks to McNulty and his no-limit credit cards, this plane is officially leased to the Ruebottom Air Transport Service, a more or less reputable outfit that doesn't dig too deep into the sordid past of its clients," Ruebottom said as he continued to monitor controls and gauges. "Far as the flight logs are concerned, they've been cooked so that it looks like I've been taking you up on an average of about once a week for the last couple of years. You pay in cash, and what you do when you land is nobody's business but your own. I'm just a fly-for-hire, who wouldn't know a set of agent's credentials from a Crackerjack badge."
"What about ID and weapons?"
"I've got an old military forty-five in a kit bag behind the seat, handy to have in case some critter starts chewing on the wings." Ruebottom gestured with his head as he scanned the instrument panel one last time, a hand poised on the throttles. "Registration papers track back to my buddy Stu, who's got too damn much money to care about having extended conversations with people he doesn't know. He'd just tell them to buzz off or talk to one of his lawyers."
"What about your wallet?"
"Wallet, map case, kit bags, pants, shirt and jacket pockets are all clean, no incriminating evidence."
"Good habit for you young married types to get into," Lightstone advised, half serious. "That way you won't have to worry about Sue finding slips of paper with all those strange phone numbers in your pockets."
"Yeah, right," Ruebottom said absentmindedly as he began to tap at individual gauges on the instrument panel.
"By the way," Lightstone said, "I want you to call a girl named Marie when we get to Bozeman and tell her I'm sorry I stood her up."
"I should tell her how you and I get to go to Yellowstone this weekend and she doesn't?"
"For Christ's sake, don't tell her I'm at Yellowstone!" Lightstone said quickly. "That was another place I promised I'd take her to someday."
At that moment, the 737 began to accelerate down the runway in a deafening roar of jet exhaust, which meant that the Lear was next in line for takeoff. Henry Lightstone thought he could actually feel his rib cage and chest muscles begin to tighten around his heart.
"Which reminds me," Ruebottom said. "You sure you don't want me to go down to Gardiner with you, give you some backup in case things go nuts?"
"No thanks." Lightstone shook his head, making a conscious effort now to control his breathing as he spoke into the headset mike. "These guys are spooky enough as it is. They'll be watching us from the minute we touch down, and you can count on there being at least one guy on you the whole time you're in the airport, so be real careful about using the phones."
Ruebottom nodded in silent understanding as he adjusted his headset mike, keyed the radio, and made one last weather check with the tower.
Moments later the Lear jet was poised on the end of the runway, looking far more like a scrappy fighter jet than a hotdogging passenger aircraft.
"Great Falls Tower, Lear November Three-Three-Five-Charley-Papa," Ruebottom spoke into his mike as he checked each quadrant of the sky. "Requesting clearance for takeoff."
"Lear Three-Three-Five-Charley-Papa, stand by."
"Come on, guys. Let's get the show on the road," Len Ruebottom muttered, anxious to be up in the air, where he felt he truly belonged. "Any last questions?" he asked, turning to look at his copilot passenger.
"No, just get us there in one piece, and hurry it up," Lightstone instructed.
"Okay. Then how about one last set of instructions? See those pedals down by your feet?"
"Yeah."
"You want to try to keep your feet away from them."
"Why?"
"Well, because if you don't, I could lose control of the plane at a very bad moment," Ruebottom explained.
Lightstone quickly brought his feet as far away from the pedals as possible, which resulted in his knees being jammed up against the copilot's set of controls.
"And while you're at it, you're going to want to keep your knees away from the controls, too," Ruebottom advised. "Makes it a whole lot easier for me to steer this thing."
"Anything else?" Lightstone muttered as he tried with reasonable success to find a neutral position for both his feet and his knees.
"Barf bags and life vest are under your seat," Ruebottom smiled. "No parachutes, so you're stuck in here for the duration. Just try to keep the backseat driving down to a minimum, and enjoy the flight."
"Yeah, well, now that you brought it up, and since we don't have an honest-to-God copilot in this thing, what am I supposed to do if something happens to you up there?"
"Well, I'll tell you," the young pilot said with a serious expression on his young face. "You see this big gauge here?" He tapped at the glass-faced dial with a gloved finger.
"Yeah, I see it."
"That gauge tells you how much gas you've got left in the fuel tanks. If I happen to go unconscious, or have a heart attack or something like that, and you can manage to keep this thing up high enough so that the wind resistance is pretty much at a minimum, then you're probably looking at, oh, maybe six hours of flying time."
"Yeah, and just what the hell good does that do me?"
"There's an instruction manual in the compartment to the right of your seat," Ruebottom said, pointing with his right hand. "It's a pretty good read. Explains everything you've ever wanted to know about how to fly a Lear jet. If you work at it, you can probably get through the whole thing in, oh, I'd say about five or six hours. Although, if I were in your position," he added thoughtfully, "I think I'd probably skip the beginning stuff and go right on ahead to chapter thirty-six."
"Lear Three-Three-Five," the control tower interrupted, "you are cleared for takeoff. Have a good flight."
Len Ruebottom acknowledged the clearance, scanned the instrument panel for any last-minute reds, and the sky for any incoming planes that the controller might have forgotten to mention, and then keyed his internal mike again.