My only alternative was to punish the Duck and hope he forgave me.
I shoved the throttle full forward, enriching the fuel-air mixture. The RPM needle on the tachometer crept past the red line.
We began to pick up speed.
Going faster came at a price. The oil temperature climbed steadily. So did the exhaust gas temperature. Both climbed well beyond what I would’ve ordinarily considered safe. But this was no ordinary flight and there was no other alternative. Either I pushed my plane to the brink, or Savannah and our baby might well die. The Duck’s engine had been rebuilt, thanks to Larry, after our crash in San Diego. I could only hope it would hold up under the strain.
Just this one time. C’mon, Duck, you can do it. I know you can.
I could feel rising heat on my knees and my feet, radiating through the firewall. The engine, fortunately, sounded otherwise normal. I hoped like hell it stayed that way.
Below, the green forested slopes of the Sierra rose up to meet us like a mirage, deceptively soft and benign. If the Duck’s power plant were to suddenly seize and we went down, I knew there was a good chance I might end up in some inaccessible draw, hoping for rescue or, like the mummified pilot sitting in that Twin Beech, waiting interminably for rescue. Better, I decided, to let somebody know where I was.
I radioed Oakland Center to request flight following. Air traffic controllers would assign me a transponder code allowing them to more readily follow me on radar. Only I got no response. I was probably too low for them to pick me up on their scopes.
Flying without a net, over potentially hostile terrain, wasn’t particularly daunting or new. I’d done it dozens of times hunting Republican Guard armor on low-level sorties into Kuwait and Iraq during Desert Shield and Storm. The realization that nobody in the world has any idea where you are can be unnerving if you let it, or oddly comforting. I opted at the moment for the latter, focusing on Savannah, trying to convince myself that everything would work out.
Approaching Mariposa, the weather gods decided to cut me some slack. The headwind I’d been bucking shifted back to the north. The Duck responded as if he’d been gulping vitamins. Our airspeed climbed steadily until the GPS showed we were doing 139 knots across the ground — nearly 160 miles an hour. I eased off the throttle, bringing the RPM’s back to 2500, cooling the engine, and cruised at a blazing 135 knots.
With our increased speed, the ETA ticked back down to 1107. I figured to make up even more time as we started downhill on our descent.
Maybe we would make it in time after all. I patted the top of the instrument panel.
Nice job, Duck.
At fifty miles out, I radioed Oakland Center and requested radar advisories for any aircraft in my area. At twenty miles out, Center handed me off to the tower at Santa Maria. The controller there told me to plan on making right traffic for Runway 30. At ten miles out, with no other aircraft in the pattern, he cleared me to land. My approach was uneventful; my landing, not the greatest, but it would do. From the air, I had seen the Radisson hotel on the south end of the field where Crocodile Dundee had instructed me to deliver the suitcase.
“Cessna Four Charlie Lima, say intentions,” the controller radioed me as I cleared the runway.
“Charlie Lima’s going to the Radisson.”
“Right on Taxiway Alpha, left on Alpha three. Monitor ground, point nine. Have a nice day.”
I repeated his instructions back to him and continued rolling toward the Radisson at high speed. No one told me to slow down. Santa Maria’s airport was a mere shell of what it had been during World War II, when it was used as a military training base, crammed with fork-tailed, P-38 fighters. Its vast flight line now sat largely empty.
Parking was plentiful behind the boxy, four-story Radisson; there were no other airplanes on its ramp. I shut down the Duck’s engine and hopped out. My watch read 1113. Two minutes to spare.
As I was hauling the suitcase out of the luggage compartment, my phone rang.
“Logan.”
“Have you not gotten any of my messages? Where the hell have you been?” The urgency in Matt Streeter’s voice was hard to miss.
“Have you found Savannah?”
“We’re still looking.”
A palpable feeling of lament and relief washed over me — they hadn’t found her, but they hadn’t found her body, either. I began running toward the hotel with the suitcase.
“There’s something you need to know,” Streeter said.
“Not now. I’m right in the middle of something.”
“I’m afraid it can’t wait, Logan. That crate in that airplane you found? It was carrying forty pounds of enriched uranium. The kind they use to make atomic bombs.”
My mouth tasted like chalk.
Forty pounds of enriched uranium.
During training at Alpha, we were told that nine pounds was enough to construct a portable nuclear device, a so-called “suitcase nuke.” Depending on the type and purity of nuclear material used, such a bomb could create a blast radius wide enough to level downtown Colorado Springs or Buffalo, New York.
I slowed to a stop at the back door of the hotel, my heart suddenly palpitating, my brain swirling, and stared down at the suitcase in my hand, staggered by the horrific choice that confronted me:
I could hope to save the love of my life by cooperating with her kidnapper, or I could potentially save the world.
My watch showed 1115.
Out of time.
One second later, my phone buzzed with an incoming text message.
“We had an arrangement, Logan.”
THIRTEEN
“I ’ll call you back,” I told Streeter and hung up.
Did Dundee understand the significance of what was in the suitcase? I had to assume so. What did he intend to do with the uranium? Who was the buyer? What would he do to Savannah if I told him that I was on to him, and that I was done playing his game? Would he listen to reason? Recognize the futility of his plan? Let her go?
We had an arrangement, Logan.
I stared at the screen, more afraid than I’d ever been in my life.
Fear is rooted in what the Buddha deemed “delusions”—the distortions with which we look at ourselves and the world around us. By learning to control our minds, we can eliminate those delusions and, eventually, our fears. The truth, though, was that I couldn’t think straight. Savannah was going to live or die. The choice was mine and mine alone.
My phone rang. After several seconds, I pushed “answer,” slowly raised the phone to my right ear, and listened without speaking.
“You’re being watched,” Dundee said. “I know you’ve landed. Now, either you do what you agreed to do, immediately, or the lady’s blood will be on your hands.”
I scanned the windows of the hotel for any sign of surveillance, but saw none.
“You’ve got exactly one more minute, Logan. Take the suitcase into the hotel like you were instructed, walk out the front door, put it under the car, and walk back inside, or I swear, she… will… die.”
“Let her go. She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“You’re wasting time. Get moving.”
“You’ll kill her anyway.”
“Fifty seconds.”
I saw Savannah’s face in my mind’s eye. The way she watched me the first time we made love, her eyes locked on mine. The way her lips drew into a slow, satisfied smile, knowing the effect she was having on me. Every fiber of my being as I stood there on the tarmac compelled me to take that suitcase and do as I’d been instructed.