Джон Сэндфорд - Ocean Prey [calibre]

Traffic wasn’t good; Hamm was snarling at the drivers in front of him, reluctant to move even for the cop lights and siren. “You motherfucker, get out of the fuckin’ way . . . Get your ass . . .”

“You need to turn north on 42nd Avenue when we get there, that should take us right through the middle of the airport,” Virgil said, squinting at the nav screen.

“That’ll probably be tomorrow morning the way it’s going, get out of the way, you cocksucker . . .”

Virgil asked, “You armed?”

“Of course.”

“You ever shoot anybody?”

“No.”

“Okay, let’s sort of follow my lead, huh? We’re a major problem for this guy. If we take him down, he’s going away forever.”

“Got it.” He leaned on the truck’s horn and didn’t get off it until the car in front of them, a Prius, edged off to the right, and the woman in the driver’s seat gave them the finger as they went by.

“At least another mile,” Virgil said. His phone rang: Weaver.

“You there yet?” Weaver asked.

“Couple more minutes, at least.”

“Okay, I called the Miami office, they’ve got links to everyone. There’s a street . . . 42nd Avenue . . .”

“We see it on the map.”

“Okay. There’ll be a cop car sitting at the intersection of 42nd and Curtiss, he’ll have his flashers on. He’ll take you around to wherever it is that you need to go.”

“Great, thanks, man.”

“I’ve been looking at the other Miami airports, I think you’ve got the best chance—that’s the closest general aviation airport to Broward, in Miami-Dade. Get him.”

“We’re there . . . well, almost,” Hamm said. He edged through a red light and they were moving fast again, came up to 42nd, made the turn north into the airport.

A block up the street, they saw the flashing lights of a cop car.

“Here we go,” Virgil said.

When they pulled up to the cop car, a heavyset flatfoot got out, chewing on a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. “You guys are looking for somebody at the airport?” he asked, still chewing.

“He could be flying out of here in a private plane, a twin-engine plane, would have been in the last little while, we don’t know where to go, who to ask,” Virgil said, blurting it all out in a jumble of words.

The cop swallowed and said, “Well, it’d be out of one of the four fixed-base operators, they do everything from single-seaters to jets, so . . .”

“Let’s go, take us there, lights and siren,” Virgil said, not quite shouting.

The cop had taken another bite of his sandwich, chewed once, swallowed, made no move to get back in his car. He said, “I could do that, but there are four of them, probably take us a half hour. Or I could call them all and that’d take two minutes and if he’s out here, we could go right to it.”

“We gotta hurry,” Hamm said, and he was shouting. “Make the calls, make the calls.”

The cop nodded, asked, “What’s the guy’s name again?” and when told, punched a number into his cell phone. “Hey, Betty, this is Gene Potts. Yeah, how ya doin’? Listen, we’re looking for a guy named Behan who might have left here in the last hour or so in a twin-engine plane, don’t have any further information, the FBI is looking for him . . . No. Thanks, Betty.”

Hamm said, “Jesus. Jesus.”

Potts punched in a new number. “Hey, Bill, this is Gene Potts. Yeah, how ya doin’? Listen, we’re looking for a guy named Behan who might have come through here in the last hour or so, flying out in a twin engine . . . Yeah? Where is he? Yeah? Listen, I got the FBI here, we’ll be with you in two minutes.”

He hung up and said to Virgil and Hamm, “He’s here, at Catskill Aviation, but he’s on the way out.”

“Lead the way, and fast, really fast,” Virgil said. They piled into their cars and took off. Though Potts was a slow talker, he was a fast driver, and took them down the street and into a parking lot in front of a sprawling white concrete block building where a man was waiting at the front door.

Hamm jammed the car in a handicapped parking space and he and Virgil jumped out and ran toward the man at the door, who asked, “What’d he do?”

“Drugs and murder,” Virgil said. “Is he still on the ground?”

“Yeah, I think so. He left here a couple of minutes ago . . . come on this way.”

The man led them across the building at a jog, and out the back, where he pointed through the dark to a plane three or four hundred yards down a taxiway, moving slowly away from them. “That’s him, the white plane, the lights, see the twin engines? It’s a Beechcraft King Air 250, an older one . . .”

Virgil: “Can we get out there?”

“You mean, in a car?”

“Yeah, in a car. In a car!”

The man hesitated, then pointed down the length of the long building. “I can open up that door there, and another one on the other side, we use it for limos delivering passengers . . .”

“Do it!”

Virgil and Hamm ran back to the truck and climbed inside. The building’s doors were already rolling up ten seconds later when they pulled up to the first door. Virgil said, “Kill the lights, kill the lights.”

Hamm did that. They drove through the building and emerged between a couple of baggage carts and out on a semicircular concrete apron attached to a taxiway. Hamm hit the gas and Virgil rolled down the windows and Hamm asked, “What are we gonna do?”

“Try to take out the tires, I guess. I hope they have air in them, hope they’re not solid . . .”

“I got no idea . . . I don’t know if a nine will punch holes in them anyway.”

“If I can’t, I’ll put a few shots into the cabin,” Virgil said.

“You could kill him . . .”

“I’ll shoot low . . .”

“Hope to God we got the right plane.”

They were gaining on the white plane, probably a quarter-mile away when they hit the taxiway, but as they watched, the plane slowed and then made a right-angle turn.

“Shit, he’s going for the runway,” Hamm said.

The plane continued rolling for a few seconds, then turned again, toward them, this time.

“I’m cutting across the grass, I’ll come up behind him . . . maybe I could ram him.”

“Just get me up beside him . . . Don’t ram him yet.”

The plane hesitated on the runway, rolled forward a few feet. Then a few more feet. Behan had apparently not yet seen them. Hamm drove the car across a grass island between the taxiway and the runway, onto the runway, and as the plane began its takeoff roll, Virgil saw the pilot’s white face turn toward them.

He’d seen them now. Hamm swung behind the plane and floored the accelerator, and caught it, well off to the side because of the plane’s low wing.

Virgil leaned out the window with Regio’s Beretta and as they pulled up beside the plane, began firing at the nose gear with no apparent effect, five, ten shots, hard to hold because the car was bouncing, then the tire suddenly collapsed and the plane twisted toward them. Virgil, watching the prop, screamed, “Get away, get away!” and Hamm swung hard away.

Virgil looked back. The plane stopped beside the runway, half on, half off, and wasn’t going anywhere.

Hamm cranked the truck in a circle as the plane’s engines died, and brought it nose to nose with the plane. Virgil climbed out of the truck and ran around it as he saw stairs coming down from the side of the aircraft, and then Behan in the doorway.

Virgil pointed his pistol at him and shouted, “Out! Out!”

Behan squinted at him and said, “What the fuck? Willy?”

Hamm came up and shouted, “FBI! Get out of the plane! Let’s see your hands.”

Behan said, “Fuck you. I got no gun.”