“He’s just stolen a JetRanger.”
“A helicopter?” The Secretary of Defense made a wry smile. “Where the hell does he think he’s going to get in that?”
“Beats me,” Williams replied. “F16s have already been scrambled from Joint Andrews Airforce Base.”
The Secretary set her jaw. Turning to her aide, she said, “Get me the commander of the 113th Wing, D.C. Air National Guard at Joint Base Andrews on the line. I want to make myself emphatically clear, one of my best consultants is on board that helicopter, and unless it’s about to fly into the White House I don’t authorize anyone to shoot it down!”
“Understood ma’am.”
The Secretary picked up a phone on her desk and dialed a number by heart.
A woman’s voice answered on the first ring. “12th Aviation Battalion.”
“This is the Secretary of Defense. I’m on my way up; I need a helicopter ready to go right now!”
“Yes ma’am,” came the immediate response.
The Secretary of Defense stood up.
Director Williams asked, “Where are you going?”
“To catch up with that JetRanger. Someone’s doing something they’re not telling me about. I want to make sure that I get there before someone does something really stupid.”
“That’s really not necessary…”
She gave a curt wave of her hand to stop him. “I’m afraid it is. Someone’s lying to me. I want eyes on that target when the F16s intercept it.”
“Understood ma’am.”
She turned to Tom, who was waiting just outside her makeshift office. “Mr. Bower, you can come too. Maybe you can tell me why it appears Sam Reilly is helping this man escape.”
Tom turned and raised his hands in supplication. “You know as much as I do, ma’am.”
She set her cold, piercing eyes hard on him. “We’ll see. We’ll see.”
Chapter Eleven
Ben Gellie forced himself to relax into the helicopter seat.
He was terrified of flying and, if the news was anything to go by, helicopters held the worst safety record for forms of flight. As far as he was concerned the damned things went against the fundamental laws of physics. Not that he had a choice at the moment.
He expelled a deep breath of air, his heart still thumping hard in his chest. He mentally searched a map of the eastern seaboard. If they flew in a beeline, the closest Canadian border would see them in Toronto in a little less than 500 miles.
It might as well be the moon given their current location.
Below him were the flashing red and blue lights of the local highway patrol.
Already, they would be radioing their base to report the theft of the helicopter. It wouldn’t take long for someone to make the connection with the Rolls Royce and the helicopter and determine that the helicopter was stolen by Sam Reilly. Ben Gellie had little understanding about the system of airways across the eastern seaboard, but given their close proximity to Washington, D.C. it wasn’t hard to guess that someone would locate the JetRanger on radar pretty quickly.
Then it would be a matter of determining their level of threat.
Would they shoot them down or force them to land? If so, how long would it take the local F16 Falcons to be in the air and in a position to shoot them down? He didn’t have to search far for the answer to that question: not very long. Would they wait until they had cleared the heavily populated cities? If they landed, could they escape on the ground? The answer came back as a resounding no.
The crisp air was unusually cold for early spring. There was a gibbous moon with no cloud cover whatsoever. With the helicopter flying in a nose down position, Ben stared through the windshield. The night’s canvas of velvet darkness was intermittently broken by the sparkle of a handful of stars struggling to compete for exposure against the radiant glow of Washington, D.C. Slow moving red and green lights zigzagged across the horizon, indicating routine air traffic for the region. A mixture of commercial jets, private helicopters, and military aircraft.
His eyes darted to the ground below.
Already, he could make out the series of flashing blue and red lights across the highway, where police continued to check the roadblock. They were still searching for him. It was a good sign. If the roadblocks had been opened, he would have known for certain that they knew he was in the helicopter.
Right now, someone would be reporting the hijacking of the helicopter to the police, who would be reporting it to Ronald Reagan Airport’s air traffic control, who would in turn be searching their radar screens for the stolen helicopter. Despite their advanced systems, Ben hoped that it was harder said than done to pinpoint an individual helicopter out of a sea of commercial traffic.
It would be given a high priority, but much lower than had a commercial jet been hijacked. The helicopter was small and light with no inbuilt weapons bar its weight to be used in a terrorist attack.
They would be deemed a low risk.
Until someone realized that he was on board.
He swallowed hard.
There was no doubt in his mind the F16s from Joint Base Andrews would be scrambled as soon as the connection had been made.
He turned his eyes to the right, leveling them at his captive, Sam Reilly. Despite the man’s obvious wealth, he flew with the comfort of a professional who’d spent years piloting a helicopter. The man was adeptly maneuvering the complex set of controls, flying the aircraft very low.
Ben asked, “Any idea how long the flight to the border is going to be?”
“No idea,” Sam replied without looking at him. “Why, were you planning on trying to fly to the Canadian border?”
Ben’s right hand tentatively touched the Glock’s hilt, reassuring him that he still had the weapon. He didn’t take it out from where he’d tucked it into his belt earlier. There was no need to wave it around now that they were in the air. They were at an impasse. He had no idea how to fly a helicopter, so he couldn’t kill Sam and Sam had no reason to land anywhere other than where Ben wanted because he still held the gun.
Ben let himself smile. “You heard the Secretary of Defense. The DoD won’t spare a dime over this. They’ll launch the largest fugitive hunt since 9/11 and they won’t stop until they catch me.”
“You think they’re going to stop when you reach Canada?”
Ben swallowed hard. “You’re right. They have an extradition treaty, but Canada’s not about to let thousands of FBI agents in to scour their countryside. Ideally, I’d head south, across the border, but we both know that’s an impossible journey for me to make. You got a better idea?”
Sam said, “As a matter of fact, I do.”
Chapter Twelve
The JetRanger dropped suddenly.
With its nose dipped in a downward attitude, the helicopter raced toward the ground some hundred feet below, before leveling out just above the blacktop of a maple tree lined road into Hagerstown. Ben held his breath, gripping the side of his seat until his knuckles turned white. Above him, he watched the haze of spinning rotor blades overhead running dangerously close to the foliage of the row of maple trees that seemed to continually encroach farther across the roadway.
Sam shoved the cyclic control — the joystick like device between his legs — to the left and the helicopter banked south, swinging round like the cart of a rollercoaster. Ben felt blood rush to the back of his head as he swung round the sharp bend.
He wanted to scream and tell Sam to stop but was too terrified that any distraction might just cause the man to crash and kill them both.
The helicopter seemed to speed up — if that was possible.