Stuart Woods - Shoot Him If He Runs

“There!” Thomas shouted, as the aircraft partly descended from the clouds to the south, but before he could get off a shot, it climbed into the clouds again, and from the noise, seemed to be turning north. In desperation, Thomas began firing at the sound, and Holly joined in.

Teddy heard the whistle of bullets, much closer than he would have liked, and a tear appeared in the right wing. He thought he had the aircraft stable now, headed north and climbing. The firing stopped.

Holly popped out the magazine and dug in her pocket for the spare Dino had given her. “Are you out, Thomas?”

“Yes, and I don’t have any more ammo,” he replied.

She rammed in the fresh magazine, racked the slide and listened. The sound of the engine had grown a little fainter. “Where is the fucking thing?” she yelled.

“More to your right, I think,” Thomas said. “He seems to be headed north.”

Holly raised the weapon and emptied the magazine, knowing that her chances of hitting anything were remote. “That’s it,” she said finally. “I’m out, and Teddy is gone.”

“Good,” Stone said quietly.

“Whose side are you on?” Holly demanded.

“There aren’t any sides now,” Stone said.

The thick cloud around Teddy began growing brighter and suddenly, like flipping a switch, the airplane was flooded in sunlight. He was on top of the clouds, and he leveled off. How high was he, he wondered. He had been airborne for what, two minutes, three? The ultralight could climb at about five hundred feet a minute, so he must be a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred feet high. He kept the airplane just above the clouds, in case a helicopter or another airplane appeared. If that happened, he could duck back into the undercast and change direction. He eased back on the throttle to what seemed a decent cruise power setting, not wanting to waste fuel by running at full throttle.

The tank held five gallons of fuel, enough for about two hours of cruise. The prevailing winds were from the southeast, and that would help his speed and extend his range a bit. The GPS told him he was making forty-one knots over the ground, or the sea, whichever he was over. He did a damage assessment.

As far as he could tell only two rounds had had any effect. One had struck the wing, and the tear was getting worse. He slowed the airplane, bringing the ground speed down to thirty-five knots. He sure as hell didn’t want to stall the thing at a low airspeed, but the fabric of the wing had now stopped tearing, and that was good.

He pulled up his trouser leg and looked at his right calf. He could see an entry wound and an exit wound, and the exit wound was bleeding profusely; his shoe had begun to fill with blood.

He took off his belt and made a tourniquet just below the knee, and the blood stopped flowing. That would hold him until Nevis airport, he reckoned, and he had a first-aid kit in the Cessna, which was secured in its hangar. He stopped thinking about the pain and concentrated on keeping the ultralight level and on the GPS line to St. Martin.

Holly grabbed a map from the glove compartment of Thomas’s car and turned it over, for a display of the Caribbean, then she got out the satphone and called Lance.

“Lance Cabot.”

“It’s Holly; Teddy’s gone.”

“Gone? You mean he’s dead?”

“No, though I think I hit him.”

“He’s on an island; how can he be gone? Does he have a boat?”

“No, he had an ultralight airplane.”

“You mean one of those spit-and-baling-wire contraptions?”

“More like aluminum and nylon, but you get the picture.”

“I don’t understand; how far could he get in one of those things?”

“I’m looking at the map now.”

Stone spoke up from the back seat. “It’s probably good for a couple of hours of flying at forty or fifty knots.”

“Stone’s a pilot, and he says it can fly for a couple of hours. From my map, I’d say that Barbuda, Antigua, St. Kitts and Nevis are all within his range. Guadeloupe is a lot farther.”

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

Holly gave him a nutshell explanation. “Most of those islands have airline connections,” she said. “You should check those first.”

“No, he would avoid the airlines; he has to have an airplane stashed somewhere.”

“I guess that’s possible.”

“Are you at the St. Marks airport now?”

“We’re on the way; half an hour out.”

“Don’t let anything keep you from getting out of there.”

“Thomas Hardy is with us; he’ll help.”

“I’ll meet you at Manassas,” Lance said.

“I don’t know what time we’ll get there.”

“I’ll know.” Lance hung up.

Holly turned to look at Stone. “Lance thinks Teddy’s got an airplane stashed on another island.”

“That makes a lot of sense.”

“Where could he get to in a light airplane?”

“Do you know what kind?”

“Before, he had a Cessna 182, the one he blew up.”

“Well, in a similar airplane he might have a range of five to seven hundred miles. He could go north to other islands, but it would make more sense to head for South America. You say you think you hit him?”

“I know I missed on the first shot, but the second one felt right, and I thought I saw him jerk. That was just before he flew into the clouds.”

Holly turned around and sat silently in her seat.

“What are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking, I wonder if I can get our pilot to stop in Florida and pick up Daisy.”

“Jesus,” Stone said.

An hour into Teddy’s flight the undercast was still there, and he began to invent an instrument approach for his destination. Nevis was straight ahead, another thirty-five minutes, according to the GPS, but the tear in the right wing was getting worse, and the little aircraft kept trying to turn right. One thing he didn’t have, Teddy reflected, was a life raft, or even a life jacket. He was going to have to make land or die, and he was going to have to descend through the cloud cover without running into a mountain.

He loosened the tourniquet until the leg began to bleed again and feeling returned to his foot, then he tightened it again and concentrated on keeping the ultralight on course. Nevis grew larger on the GPS, but much more slowly than he would have liked. He created an approach waypoint three miles east of the airport; his second waypoint would be the end of runway 28. He meant to be under the clouds by the first waypoint.

Thomas drove into St. Marks airport with a wave at the guard on the gate and stopped in front of the terminal. Everybody got out of the car. The jet was nowhere to be seen.

Holly looked up to see Bill and Annie Pepper, in the company of James Tiptree, coming out of the terminal.

“We heard our Hawker talking to the tower,” Bill said. “The pilot has declared an emergency; I hope nothing is wrong with the airplane.”

“Probably not. Lance told them to declare a fuel emergency if they tried to keep the plane from landing.”

“I don’t like the look of that low overcast, either,” Bill said. “I hope to God they have an instrument approach here.”

Now two uniformed policemen came out of the terminal and marched up to them. “No airplanes landing,” one of them said, “and no airplanes taking off.”

“Oh, shut up, Harvey,” Thomas said. “These people have a private airplane coming, and it’s going to land. Sir Winston authorized it himself.”

The two policemen looked at each other and said nothing.

“Look,” Stone said, pointing. An airplane had just popped out of the clouds. “It’s a Hawker.”

They watched as the airplane touched down and taxied to the ramp. The engines were shut down, the door opened, and a pair of uniformed pilots got out.