Shepherd ran for the exit, glimpsing an obscure figure on the darkened balcony above. Applegate fired both remaining shots, but Shepherd had taken away the angle by running directly beneath him, and the rounds missed, chipping into the concrete floor.
Larkin retrieved his weapon and dashed into the corridor. Shepherd had already reached the opposite end and exited into the darkness. He spotted one of the security policemen, assumed he was bona fide, and sought assistance. “Hey! Hey, these guys just—” He bit off the sentence when the SP went for the pistol on his hip. Shepherd still had his flight helmet by the chin strap. He swung it at arm’s length. The rock-hard plastic connected with the side of the SP’s head. He fell to the ground, writhing in pain.
The flight helmet went bouncing across the tarmac.
Shepherd’s eyes darted to the SP’s pistol, lying 10 feet away. A lanyard trailed from the handgrip to the holster, which meant Shepherd couldn’t just grab the weapon and run. He saw Larkin exiting the hangar and sprinted toward a tanker truck that was parked beyond the two F-111s. Larkin opened fire but, in the darkness, he had little chance of hitting a moving target with a handgun. Shepherd didn’t know what was going on, other than that men in air force uniforms had killed Foster and were trying to kill him. Russians? Spies? Terrorists? The last thing that would occur to him was that they were Americans, officers who had fought for their country and were as committed to its defense as he was. The only thing he knew for sure was that he would be dead if he didn’t get out of there.
Shepherd climbed into the cab of the tanker, thanking the Al-mighty that most military vehicles had unkeyed ignitions. He turned the starter switch, slammed the transmission into drive, and roared off into the darkness as Larkin and the SPs approached on the run.
Applegate came out of the hangar an instant after the truck roared past. He lumbered to his sedan, drove across the tarmac, and pulled to a stop next to Larkin. “Mop up inside,” Larkin barked at the SPs. He got in next to Applegate, who floored the accelerator.
The truck had reached the far end of the huge hangar and was turning into an access road that ran alongside it. Shepherd was steering with one hand and fumbling across the dash in search of the headlight switch with the other. He had no knowledge of the base; no idea where wing or security police headquarters were located.
The side view mirror came ablaze with light.
Shepherd glanced to see the sedan in pursuit. His hand finally found the dash switch. The truck’s headlights came on, revealing a chainlink fence dead ahead. The gate was closed and padlocked. The truck smashed through it, littering the area with fencing, and came onto an unlighted, two-lane road that wound through the rural Heyford countryside.
The sedan rumbled over the fragments of twisted pipe and chainlink, in pursuit.
Shepherd had the gas pedal to the floor now, but the massive truck wasn’t made for speed. The headlights in the mirror were closing fast. They would overtake the lumbering tanker in a matter of seconds. Shepherd waited until the gap had closed, then slammed on the brakes. The truck’s huge stoplights came alive in an explosion of crimson light. Smoke spewed from the wheel housings. The tires streaked the macadam with rubber as the tanker shuddered violently to a stop.
As Shepherd expected, the sedan was directly behind him, heading for the massive steel bumper that stretched across the back of the truck, windshield high.
Applegate spun the steering wheel.
The sedan swerved, narrowly missing the truck. It went up on two wheels, traveling the tanker’s entire length before coming down with a jarring thump, and sliding sideways across the road in front of the cab.
Applegate had just slammed on the brakes when Larkin saw headlights bearing down on them; bearing down on his side of the car. “He’s going to ram us!” he shouted as the car jerked to a stop. Larkin fired his pistol at the truck. Several rounds popped through the windshield, whistling above Shepherd, who was hunched behind the steering wheel.
Applegate stepped on the gas. The car lurched across the road. The onrushing truck clipped the rear fender, spinning the sedan around.
Shepherd kept on going.
Applegate got the car turned around and pursued.
The truck came through a sharp turn. Red lights were flashing up ahead. A spiderweb of cracks radiating from the bulletholes in the windshield picked up the light. Shepherd could hardly see through the pulsing maze, but he heard the rapidly clanging bell. The truck was approaching a railroad crossing — so was a forty-car freight. Shepherd had no idea how close the train was and kept the accelerator to the floor. The truck blasted through the crossing, splintering the gate arm, bouncing over the tracks.
The locomotive was 50 feet from the crossing. The engineer recoiled as the diesel’s headlight revealed the truck flashing past. He released the throttle and yanked hard on the emergency brake. A shower of blue-orange sparks exploded from every one of the train’s castiron wheels. The air filled with the high-pitched screech of grinding steel.
Since this was a rural crossing, the engineer hadn’t reduced speed as he would in a town or city. The 175-ton locomotive smashed into the rear of the tanker at full throttle. The tremendous impact knocked the huge truck aside like a toy. It pivoted around and began rolling back toward the tracks. Thousands of gallons of jet fuel were spewing from the buckled tanker.
The pursuing sedan came through the turn. Applegate slammed on the brakes. The sedan screeched to a stop a distance from the crossing, where, despite its brakes being locked, the freight was still streaking past, blocking their view.
“Son of a bitch!” Larkin exclaimed, thinking the truck had made it through.
“Come on, come on,” Applegate urged the train impatiently, eager to resume the pursuit.
Suddenly, the jet fuel ignited with a loud whomp. Flames shot into the night, high above the passing freight, which continued through and beyond the crossing, finally revealing the conflagration beyond.
The truck was on its side, almost parallel to the tracks, and totally engulfed in flames. The interior of the cab looked like the inside of a blast furnace.
Larkin and Applegate got out of the sedan and stared awestruck at the roaring inferno.
The intense heat kept them at a distance.
Larkin watched one of the fenders turn to a puddle of molten steel. His mind was racing, calculating all the factors: There would be no human remains, he reasoned, nothing to identify who had died. Shepherd would be cremated; his flight suit and dogtags would be ashes amid the debris. Furthermore, theft of equipment from military bases was an ever-growing problem. Investigators would have every reason to conclude that the truck and its valuable cargo had been stolen and that it was the thief who had perished in the fire.
While the flames raged, Larkin and Applegate searched the surrounding area, concluding beyond any doubt that Shepherd hadn’t been thrown from the cab.
The locomotive had come to a stop more than a mile past the crossing. By the time the engineer and fireman had shaken off the effects of the collision and walked to the burning truck, Larkin and Applegate were long gone.
They drove back to the hangar, joining the two Special Forces SPs who had completed the cleanup. Now, at Larkin’s direction, the SPs drove to a darkened corner of the airfield where a new runway was under construction and buried the pilot’s body, knowing that the corpse would soon be forever entombed beneath an 18-inch-thick slab of rock-hard concrete laced with reinforcing steel.
Larkin went to his office, thinking that Kiley would really be pleased, and sent a cable that read: BIRDS IN HAND.