Stuart Woods: Heat

“Afraid not,” Jesse said. “All this maneuvering has confused me.”

“Put the identifier into the GPS,” Casey said, pointing at the instrument. “That’ll give you a heading.”

Following Casey’s instructions, Jesse dialed in the correct identifier, pressed a button twice, and a heading popped onto the little screen. “There it is; we’re six and a half miles out, and the heading is three-three-zero.”

“Exactly right. Now engage the autopilot. First, put the arrow on the instrument in front of you on three-three-zero, then press the alt and nav buttons, then the on button.”

Jesse did as he was told, and he felt the autopilot take charge of the airplane.

“Now the autopilot will maintain our present altitude, and it will navigate us directly to the airport.”

“How do you find out an airport’s identifier?” Jesse asked.

Casey reached between the seats and held up a little book. “This has all the information about every airport in the West. Or, you can simply enter the name of the city into the GPS, and it will give you the identifier. Simple, huh?”

“Dead simple.” Jesse saw the field ahead. “Pat, what’s the range of this airplane?”

“About six hundred and fifty miles at maximum cruise in a no-wind situation. Of course, you almost never get a no-wind situation. Generally, the winds are westerly — higher at high altitudes and lower at lower ones, but you can get an anomaly in the weather and get the opposite. The airspeed indicator gives you your speed through the air, once you’ve set in your altitude and the temperature, and the GPS gives you your actual speed over the ground. It also give you your ETA at your current ground speed. Over there on your left is the fuel flow computer, which gives you the hours and minutes of flight time available on the fuel you have remaining; it’s accurate to within a gallon. You compare the flight time remaining on the fuel flow computer to the ETA on the GPS. Allow yourself an hour’s fuel for safety, and you know at any moment if you have enough fuel to reach the airport.”

“And what sort of cruise speed do you get?”

“Standard is about a hundred and forty knots, but I’ve got a lot of speed equipment — fancy wheel skirts, aileron gap seals, etcetera, so I get closer to one fifty-five.”

Jesse nodded and flew over the field to get a look at the windsock. He selected a runway and turned downwind. Soon, they were pushing the airplane back into the hangar.

“Top her off,” Casey called to the fuel attendant. Then he shook Jesse’s hand. “You did good. We’ll have you a private license in a couple of months.”

“Thanks for your time, Pat. Next Sunday?”

“For sure.” Casey got into his car and drove away.

Jesse went into the flight office and bought some charts and an airport directory.

As soon as the girls were in bed, he went to work. He spread out the charts on the dining room table and began measuring distances to various destinations.

Jesse pored over the charts until midnight, then he began reading the pilot’s operating handbook for the Cessna 182. He concentrated on the airplane’s systems, then memorized the operating speeds for takeoff and landing and for the stall speeds. He read up on the avionics, aircraft icing and emergency procedures. By two o’clock his eyes were burning. He put down the book and got into his coat.

He drove once around the town, as if he were simply an insomniac out for a wee-hours drive. All was quiet. He parked in an alley, as he had done before, and walked to the courthouse. The locks were easier this time, and inside half an hour he had entered the county clerk’s office and forged a birth certificate for Carrie.

As he walked back toward the truck the waxing moon came from behind the clouds and lit the streets as if it were daylight. Jesse crossed the street to stay in the shadows and, at that moment, he saw the police car.

It was driving slowly up the street toward him, swinging its spotlight back and forth from one side of the street to the other, checking the storefronts. Jesse flattened himself against a building, feeling terribly exposed; if he ducked into a doorway, he would be illuminated when the light hit the front door of the shop. He stood, frozen, waiting to be seen, trying to make up a story to explain his presence on the street in the middle of the night.

The spotlight hit the front of a shop across the street, then swung to the other side. As it moved, it caught Jesse full in the face, momentarily blinding him. It paused on the shop’s front door next to him, then moved on down the street. After a few seconds, the police car turned right and disappeared around the corner. Jesse couldn’t move for a moment. He had been fully visible to the driver, but he apparently hadn’t been seen. He sprinted for his truck.

He gave the police car another minute to move on, then he started the truck and headed east from town. He passed Wood Products and came to the bridge over the creek. A foot-long length of duct tape was stuck to the railing on the opposite side of the road. He pulled the truck off the road and into the woods, then walked back to the side of the road. He looked in both directions, then sprinted across the road and down the embankment, snatching the strip of duct tape from the railing as he went.

His flashlight found the bundle, taped securely in a corner of the bridge supports. He used his pocket knife to cut it free, then stripped off the remaining bits of tape and stuck them in his pocket. Back at road level, he knelt behind the bridge railing and waited for an eighteen-wheeler to roar past, then ran for his truck.

Back at home, he took the bundle into the kitchen and ripped away the plastic covering with his knife. Inside he found a canvas backpack, and inside that were all the items he had requested, plus one more. There was a typewritten note taped to it: “You must wear this wire to the meeting,” it read. “The tape will be crucial to our court case.” He ripped up the note and flushed it down the garbage disposal. The recorder was small, he’d give them that. If he wore it in some clever place, a body search might even miss it.

He put the materials back into the backpack, took it out to the garage and concealed it under a stack of firewood. Then he got under the truck, opened the safe and stashed Carrie’s birth certificate with the passports.

As he climbed the stairs to bed, he thought carefully about his plan. He had nearly everything he wanted now; the remainder of his needs he would find at Wood Products.

On Monday morning, Jesse rapped on Herman Muller’s office door, and Muller waved him in.

“Morning, Jesse.”

“Morning, Herman; have you got a minute?”

“Sure I have. Sit you down.”

Jesse sat. “Herman, I think I’ve got a pretty good grip on how the plant runs now, and I seem to have a little time on my hands. I just wondered if you could use a hand at the bookkeeping.”

Muller regarded him for a moment, then smiled. “Jesse, you put your finger on the thing I hate doing most around here. My wife kept the books until she died; fortunately, she got the computer system up and running before she passed, and she taught me to run it. I guess it’s time I taught you.”

“I’ll be glad to learn,” Jesse said.

“Pull your chair around here and look over my shoulder,” Muller said, switching on the computer. “You start from the main menu and press B for books, then it will ask you for your password. The password is Tommy.”

Jesse spent most of the morning following Muller through the program; it really was very straightforward. When everybody left for lunch, Jesse went to the computer, entered the password and asked the program to print out a balance sheet for the previous year. It took less than a minute to do so.