A St. Patrick’s Day for all to remember.
At the Dallas airport, Collins watched the American Eagle regional jet push back from the gate and taxi for departure. Michael Sullivan occupied seat 7A.
He’d listened to O’Rourke’s exchange with Sullivan in the limo. Now he knew O’Rourke’s plan. The bug worked perfectly. All the pieces were falling into place.
The assassin had carefully devised the ruse of the IRA hit man and used his contacts to get that information relayed back to Sullivan — and through him, to O’Rourke. His plan to separate Sullivan and O’Rourke had worked flawlessly.
He typed quickly on his Blackberry, addressed the message and pressed send:
O’Rourke and Sullivan separated
Sullivan enroute to Savannah — arrives tonight.
CHAPTER 4
The morning sun peeked over the eastern horizon and glistened across the Dallas skyline, announcing the arrival of a new day. A cold front had passed through the Dallas area the night before and left it unseasonably cold. The forecast high less than forty degrees. The low-pressure system that passed through Dallas two days ago had now become a severe winter storm along the Eastern seaboard, wreaking havoc with airline schedules. A northwest wind blew across the airport, carrying with it a chill that cut through the assassin’s layers of clothes.
Ground crews scurried on the tarmac of the Dallas Love Airport readying several business class jets for whatever journeys awaited them. Parked on the ramp in front of Longhorn Aviation was a chartered business jet.
The Bombardier Challenger 604, a long-range wide-body corporate jet, could fly at speeds of four hundred sixty knots for a distance of nearly thirty-eight hundred miles. Equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation, the jet sported what was known as a full “glass cockpit,” rapidly becoming the norm among general aviation aircraft. Sixty-eight feet long and nearly twenty-one feet tall, the jet had a wingspan of just over sixty-four feet. Although not nearly as corpulent as airline aircraft, the Challenger dwarfed the ground crew.
The jet’s paint scheme was unusual, with both wings and the underside of the aircraft burgundy, and the top two-thirds painted white. The required registration number was painted across each of the two General Electric CF-34-3B turbofan engines in burgundy twelve-inch-high numbers — N319CB.
While the Challenger was being fueled, the lineman buried his hands under his armpits in a vain attempt to keep them warm, all the while bouncing on his toes.
Two men in pilots’ uniforms, with classic leather bomber jackets, gloves and aviator-style Ray-Ban sunglasses, walked around the aircraft conducting a preflight inspection. One of the pilots pointed to the landing gear door at the nose of the Challenger.
Another man, in a considerably different uniform, loaded food and beverages from the catering service van onto the aircraft.
Out of the cabin doorway stepped a large man wearing a jumpsuit with the Longhorn Aviation logo on the left breast pocket and carrying a toolbox and a clipboard. He adjusted his cap against the gusting wind, then descended the stairway and walked over to the pilots. He set his toolbox down on the tarmac and handed one of the pilots the clipboard. The man cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew his breath into them. A puff of steam slipped through his fingers. He spoke to the pilot, who signed the clipboard and handed it back to him. Tucking the clipboard under his arm, the man picked up his toolbox and disappeared into the hangar.
The lineman secured the fuel pump, logged the number of gallons pumped on his clipboard, tore off the top copy and handed it to the copilot. With the sheet in hand, the copilot climbed the stairs into the aircraft to make required weight and balance computations.
The black limousine pulled onto the tarmac and drove toward the Challenger, stopping within thirty feet of the cabin door. Two men in navy blue trench coats scurried from the limo, taking their places next to the rear passenger door. The men could have passed for brothers except for their age — maybe father and son. Both were large, six-four, maybe six-five. Both had broad shoulders, red hair and freckles — the elder’s hair a shade darker than the younger man’s.
Their trench coats draped over them, concealing their weapons. The bodyguards scanned the area, moving in synchrony, each keeping one hand in his coat pocket and using the other to open doors and move luggage. The elder of the two men opened the limousine door and a tall man dressed in a dark brown three-piece suit stepped out.
Laurence O’Rourke had gained more than twenty pounds since his days in the Maze prison. Weighing in now at one hundred ninety pounds, his six-foot-three frame made him look tall and lanky. He stepped from the limousine, a gust of wind rocked him backwards and tousled his gray hair. He placed his hand against the limo to catch himself. He took off his silver metal-framed glasses and tucked them into his vest pocket, retrieved his briefcase from the seat, and walked toward the jet, flanked by his two bodyguards.
The pilot greeted O’Rourke with a handshake. The lineman took the baggage and secured it in the aircraft while the pilot escorted O’Rourke onto the aircraft.
The lineman spoke into a handheld radio and one of the pilots closed the cabin door. Within two minutes the left engine started the familiar whirling sound of the turbines spooling up, followed by the thundering sound of ignition. The smell of burning jet fuel flooded the tarmac.
The Challenger remained motionless for several minutes. Then, with a short burst of power, it started to move. As the jet taxied away from the hangar, the right engine ignited with another roar. The aircraft disappeared from sight as it taxied to the departure end of the runway.
Standing by the edge of the hangar, the assassin watched the Challenger thunder down the runway, past the hangar, becoming airborne and then banking into a climbing left turn. He unzipped his coveralls and stepped out of them, revealing his new appearance — khakis and a button-down blue oxford shirt. He wadded up the coveralls and tossed them into the corner of the hangar. He slipped on a brown corduroy sport coat with brown leather elbow patches, threw his mechanic’s cap onto the crumpled coveralls, put on his Donegal tweed cap, and grabbed his travel bag.
Casually walking into the parking lot, he pulled out his Blackberry and sent a message:
O’Rourke enroute to Savannah, departed 7:40 lcl, expect arrival approx 10:40 Eastern Time
As before, he sent the message to more than one recipient. Finally, he could get the hell out of Dallas. The first stage of the project was complete. What a God-forsaken piece of land Texas turned out to be. And the people, their obsession with the Old West, couldn’t they just move on?
O’Rourke was finally on his way to Savannah where the assassin’s trap awaited him.
Collins parked Sanders’ old pickup in long-term parking and discarded the keys in a trash bin along the walkway to the terminal building. Arriving at the ticket counter, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his Southwest Airlines ticket, a ticket for a nonstop flight from the Dallas Love Airport to Jacksonville International Airport. There, his leased black Cadillac Escalade was waiting for him in another long-term parking lot. Within a few hours he would be in the Escalade driving to Savannah for the final stage of the Savannah Project.
CHAPTER 5
Gregg Kaplan stood inside the doorway of the radar room at the Savannah Air Traffic Control TRACON, as the Terminal Radar Approach Control was known.