"November Four-Seven-Seven, we copy that you have lost engine power, going down, eastern shore of Skilak Lake." The Kenai tower controller came on the air immediately as Lightstone scrambled back into his seat clutching both sleeping bags. "Help is on the way."
"Kenai tower, advise Foxtrot Bravo India that we need immediate assistance. Suspects escaping in a — Oh, shit!"
The Cessna shuddered and seemed to start to fall backwards in the air, which forced Woeshack to quickly concentrate on his flying and increase the angle of the dive. From Henry Lightstone's horrified point of view, the ground seemed to be coming up at them at an incredibly fast speed. Then it suddenly occurred to him.
"Hey, you're aiming for land. What about the lake?"
"I can't swim," Thomas Woeshack said. "Besides, it feels like that left float is starting to go. We hit the water like that, we're gonna break up and then probably freeze to death before anybody can get to us."
"But-"
"You got that safety belt on tight?"
Lightstone quickly fastened his belt and shoulder harness, trying not to look at the mass of trees coming up at them fast now.
"Yeah, it's as tight as I can get it."
"Okay, put your hands in through the sides of the bag and hold it up in front of your face," Woeshack said as he grabbed the other sleeping bag and put in in his lap.
Then he waited until the last moment before pulling the stick back and dropping the wing flaps to send the orange Cessna plummeting floats-first into a dense clump of spruce trees, looking for all the world like a huge orange eagle flaring its wings as it swooped in to grasp its prey with its talons.
The initial impact of the crash was absorbed by the two floats as they buckled and then crumpled up into the cross pylons. But all Henry Lightstone knew at the time was that the front windshield was suddenly filled with tree branches, and the safety belt tore into his body, and his head was slammed forward toward the instrument panel, with the sleeping bag absorbing most, but not all, of the impact.
Barely conscious, Lightstone was vaguely aware of the plane starting to shift in its precariously wedged position in a clump of broken spruce trees about ten feet off the ground.
He was trying to reach for the seat-belt release when he felt a hand pulling on his arm and a sharp knife blade sawing through his safety harness. Then somebody pushed him out the door and he tumbled to the ground through what seemed like a thousand broken spruce branches that smelled like a curious mixture of fresh pitch and gasoline.
Then he and Woeshack ran as fast as they could until the concussive force of the plane exploding knocked both of them off their feet and into the darkness.
Even after he regained consciousness, it took Henry Lightstone several seconds to recover to the point that he could turn his head and throw up.
Then, after what seemed like an eternity of gasping and coughing, he finally found the strength to crawl over to where Thomas Woeshack was lying on his back, using his cut and bruised forearms to block the sun from his bloodied face.
"You alive?"
"Must be," Woeshack mumbled after a moment. "My whole body hurts."
"Good sign." Lightstone nodded weakly as he slowly rolled over on his back and lay next to the sprawled-out pilot.
"Well, you finally did it, kid," he said quietly after a few moments.
"Did what?"
"You finally figured out how to fly just like one of those goddamned birds."
"Yeah, you really think so?" Woeshack smiled through his split and bloody lips.
"Absolutely. No question about it."
It was only then, as the two special agents lay there in the rock and spruce and lichen-covered clearing, bruised, bleeding, and covered with black soot, that they first heard and then saw the large blue floatplane that appeared overhead at an elevation of about a thousand feet.
"You read the number?" Lightstone asked.
Woeshack tried to focus his blurry eyes on the moving blue object and then slowly shook his head. "No."
"Me neither."
"Maybe they'll try to land."
"Yeah," Lightstone smiled. "That'd be nice."
The plane made three complete circles over the crash site. Then, apparently satisfied that his team had caused sufficient damage to their unexpected adversaries, a tired, blood-smeared and mildly irritated Gerd Maas directed the pilot to rock the wings of the plane in a mock salute before turning away.
For a long time, neither agent spoke, until finally Woeshack said: "They just gave us the finger, didn't they?"
Henry Lightstone continued to watch the large blue floatplane until it finally disappeared off in the distance. Then he nodded his head slowly. "Yeah, I'd say so."
Woeshack thought about that for a few more seconds. "So what do we do now?" he asked.
Then Henry Lightstone turned his head to stare straight into the dark, questioning eyes of his thoroughly bruised, battered, and bleeding partner, and said:
"Find us another airplane."
Chapter Thirty-Five
"Understand you're still the senior law-enforcement officer here representing your agency."
There were at least eight of them on the scene, and they'd been working diligently for three hours now: chalking the locations of the bodies, taking measurements, making sketches, filling paper bags with pieces of neatly tagged evidence, photographing everything at right angles at least twice, and videotaping the whole thing. They worked with such methodical thoroughness that Lightstone found it easy to accept that the "new" FBI was really something else.
The only trouble was, they still hadn't put it all together yet. And based upon what Henry Lightstone was seeing with his own CSI-trained eyes, he wasn't sure that they were going to. At least not right away.
Which was beginning to worry him, because if there was ever a time when he wanted a crime-scene team to come in, pick up the clues, and get back to their desks with plenty of time to complete all the paperwork, it was right now.
"Apparently," Lightstone answered in a carefully neutral voice. "I don't think we've met." He felt like his body was a mass of cracked bones and torn muscles.
"A1 Grynard, assistant special agent in charge of the Anchorage office," the gray-haired man said politely, offering his hand. He was dressed in a neatly pressed sport shirt, new blue jeans, and gray Gor-Tex hiking boots that looked like they'd just come out of the box.
"Henry Lightstone. Senior resident agent, on special-duty assignment to our Anchorage office," Lightstone responded equally politely, making a mental note that the ASAC's light gray eyes seemed just a little too intense and skeptical to have any serious connection with that infamous FBI smile. "And this is one of our agent-pilots, Tom Woeshack."
"You must be the fellow who made that fancy emergency landing back there," Grynard said as he turned to shake Woeshack's hand. "What is it you pilots say? Any landing you can walk away from must be a good one?"
"Uh, yes sir, that's about it."
"Nice landing any way you look at it," the FBI agent smiled. "Too bad you couldn't have made it to water, though. Probably would have been a lot easier on you two, and you might have been able to save the plane. Gets rough on the budget when you lose an expensive floatplane like that."
Feeling every bit as bruised and battered as his new senior-agent partner, Thomas Woeshack was suddenly finding it difficult to remain composed in the face of the FBI agent's comments. He had no idea of whether they were rooted in interagency camaraderie, warped amusement, or simple accusation. Woeshack recognized him as the man who had arrived in a fancy executive helicopter and who had waited until the rotors had shut off before he opened the door.