Stuart Woods: Orchid Blues

John could hear the siren only faintly over the engine, but that was enough. He shoved the throttle forward. A training aircraft was ahead of him on the taxiway; he slammed on his left brake and turned onto the grass. As he made the turn, he could see the police car coming toward him. No more time, he thought, as he reached another taxiway. No time for a runway, either. He shoved the throttle all the way forward and, steering with his feet, tried to aim the airplane down the taxiway. Another aircraft, a large twin, was coming straight toward him, perhaps a thousand feet away.

The ground controller was yelling over the radio, "One, two, three, tango foxtrot, stop where you are; aircraft coming opposite direction on your taxiway. Stop now!"

"Yeah, well he better get out of my way," John said into the radio, maintaining his direction.

The other had obviously heard him on the ground frequency, because he was turning off the taxiway and onto the grass.

John was at twenty knots now, then forty. He needed eighty for takeoff. A corporate jet roared down the runway parallel to him, and the wake turbulence from its wingtips rocked the Malibu, but still John continued his takeoff roll.

Holly drove across taxiways and grass, dodging taxiing airplanes and tearing up turf. John's Malibu was accelerating down a taxiway ahead, at a right angle to her. She picked a point ahead of him and aimed for it. "Get down, Daisy," she said, pointing at the floor of the front seat. A collision seemed the only way. Then she realized that his wing was full of one hundred-octane aviation fuel, and she decided she didn't want to hit that.

John saw the police car coming. He put in twenty degrees of flaps, which would allow him to take off at seventy knots, instead of eighty. He was now at sixty and accelerating. A landing gear warning horn, which came on automatically at slow speeds and twenty degrees of flaps, began to bleat loudly. John's hands were slippery on the yoke.

Holly had the accelerator on the floor, and it looked as though she might hit the engine, and she wanted nothing to do with that spinning propeller, so she adjusted course. She also began groping for her seat belt, which she had completely forgotten. Daisy gazed raptly at her from the floor.

Harry's car rolled onto the ramp, leading a charge of half a dozen FBI cars. Maybe three hundred yards away, he saw a police car headed for a collision with an airplane. He picked up the microphone. "We're going to need ambulances," he said. "Send them right now."

Holly had misjudged the acceleration of the airplane. She saw his nosewheel lift off the ground, and she turned slightly to the right, nearly hitting the wing. The car collided with the tail of the airplane, and Holly, not having gotten her seat belt fastened, struck the steering wheel at the same moment she applied the brakes. The car began to spin to the left.

Harry, who was bearing down on the scene now, saw the tail assembly of the airplane break off from the fuselage, as the airplane spun left from the impact, and the loss of the tail created a weight imbalance that caused the airplane to nose over, while still at full power. The engine abruptly stopped as the propeller chewed up the ground, but the airplane had enough momentum to continue until it somersaulted and came to rest on its back. The FBI men spilled out of their cars and found themselves wading through fuel.

"Get out of it!" Harry yelled, waving them away from the airplane. He saw a fire truck racing toward them.

John hung upside down from his seat belt, but he could see all the flashing lights and hear the sirens. There was an overwhelming odor of aviation gasoline. Everything loose in the airplane now rested on its ceiling-charts, pens and, among the debris, a disposable cigarette lighter. John picked it up. "On the day," he said. Then he flicked the lighter.

The explosion of a hundred and twenty gallons of aviation fuel knocked down a dozen FBI agents and Holly, too. She had struggled from the police car and, when she saw the agents running, she ran, but the blast lifted her off her feet and dumped her onto the grass. She rolled on her side and looked back at the fireball.

"Get out of that one, John," she said, then she put her head on the grass and rested.

Daisy trotted over, careful to avoid the flames, and gave her a big kiss.

Holly found Ham sitting up in bed, watching the news on CNN. She couldn't believe it.

"Why aren't you in intensive care?" she demanded.

"Well, hi to you, too," Ham said, switching off the TV.

"You've just had surgery."

"Nope. The bullet missed pretty much everything important, and it removed itself through my shoulder. All they did was clean the wound and stitch it up and give me antibiotics and a tetanus shot. I wouldn't let them put me to sleep, and I'll be sore as hell when the local anesthetic wears off. They want me to spend the night in the hospital. Now that we've got that out of the way, will you tell me what the hell has happened in the past few hours?"

"As much as I know," Holly replied, perching on the edge of his bed. "I chased John out to Opa-Locka and prevented his taking off in his airplane by the simple device of driving a police car into it."

Ham laughed, then winced. "Don't, don't make me laugh."

"Sorry. Then the airplane exploded, and John is toast."

"Was it really the president in that car?"

"It was. Harry was too dumb to make an official request to find out, because he wanted the operation all for himself. He had me throw myself at a Secret Service guy to find out if the president was in town, and he told me no. He didn't lie, because the president flew in this morning to make an officially unscheduled appearance at a Republican congressional gathering in the hotel across the street from where you were waiting. It was supposed to be a surprise, since Democratic presidents don't usually show up at Republican gatherings. God only knows what the ramifications will be on relations between the FBI and the Secret Service. My guess is, everybody's ass is covered, since Harry never made an official request and the Secret Service never told him anything. They'd better hope there's never a congressional inquiry into all this. Tell me what happened in your hotel room."

"I was set up, that's what. I looked over at the hotel across the street and I saw another Barrett's rifle pointed right at me. I guess they planned to burn some bridges and I was one of them. Anyway, I blew the shit out of the other hotel room, and when the Secret Service saw the explosion, they got the president the hell out of there in a hurry. Then you arrived, and your buddy shot me."

"He wasn't my buddy," Holly said. "He just chased me down the boulevard and then into the hotel. I identified myself, but there wasn't time to explain the whole situation to him, and when we broke into the room, he saw you holding the gun and fired. He was young and inexperienced, but I don't think we can blame him, unless you're hell-bent on suing the Miami Police Department."

"Nah, I've already spent a couple of hours talking to them. What is Harry going to do about Lake Winachobee?"

"They're raiding it as we speak, choppering FBI men in from all over the state. We should hear from Harry soon."

"John told me there are three affiliated groups in Florida, and hundreds around the country. I hope they'll find some records there that will lead them to the others."

"I'd better call Harry about that right now," Holly said, producing the scrambled cell phone. She tapped in the number and waited.

"Crisp," Harry said. "Who's bothering me?"

"It's Holly."

"What's wrong?"

Silence.

"Where are you, Harry?"

"At the Lake Winachobee compound."

"And?"

"And there's nobody here."