Heat

Chapter 60

Jesse thought as he fell. Fifty feet. He couldn’t survive that in one piece. Then he hit the tree. It rose a good thirty feet out of the ground, leafless, in its winter mode. Jesse, upside down, grabbed at branches, trying desperately to slow his fall. He tumbled, hit larger branches, held on to smaller ones, and suddenly, he was on his back in three feet of accumulated snow, wondering what had happened to him. A gunshot cleared his mind of fog. He rolled over and, clawing at the snow, got to his feet and ran toward the road, pulling the night goggles on as he floundered forward.

There were more gunshots and the soft “plop” that came when one struck the snow, but they obviously couldn’t see him; they were just hoping for a strike. Jesse’s mind was on something else, anyway; somewhere around here was a plastic bag with a million and a half dollars in it, and he was going to find it if he had to go through a gunfight to do it.

His pistol, amazingly enough, was still in his belt, and he drew it, just in case, to give himself the extra half-second. He stopped and looked around, and there it was, stuck into the snow like a bottle of champagne in a wine bucket. He snatched up the plastic bag and headed for the road. Then he stopped. He heard the front door of the house open and footsteps on the plowed driveway. Coldwater and Casey were in pursuit on foot.

They would think he was headed down the mountain, so he climbed a retaining wall of snow-covered boulders, ran across the drive and headed up the mountain, struggling through the snow. It was only twenty or thirty yards, he knew, even if it seemed like a thousand.

He made the clearing, and the truck was still there; he was afraid the mountain might have fallen on it. Then the vehicle became easy to see, because the sky was filled with light. He hit the snow, flat on his face and waited for the shock wave. When it came, it rocked the truck so much that he feared it would turn over. That explosion had been the gas tanks, he was sure, but they were on the north side of the mountain, thank God.

He got to his feet, got into the truck, turned it around and headed for the road. When he got there he turned off the engine and coasted down the mountain. Lesser explosions were going off, now, but they were increasingly behind him. Then, ahead, he saw a man in the road. It was Coldwater, and he was in a marksman’s crouch, aiming a pistol at the driver’s side of the truck.

Jesse ducked just as the windshield went white. He was driving from memory, now, trying to stay in the road. He heard Coldwater shout an obscenity as the truck passed him, then Jesse shoved the truck into gear and gave the engine a rolling start. No need to be quiet now.

He stuck his head up for one second and punched frantically at the windshield, breaking out a hole that let him see, and just in time to make a sharp curve. As he did so, a round through the rear window sprayed him with broken glass. Jesse floored the accelerator and concentrated on his driving. At least two more shots struck the cab of the truck, and then he seemed to be in the clear. He passed the church and turned right, and as he did, he was greeted with an improbable sight. Two vehicles passed him going the other way, one a milk truck, the other an eighteen-wheel Mayflower moving van. He had already done their job for them, and he was glad he hadn’t met them on the mountain road.

He came to an intersection and turned left, missing a Federal Express truck by inches. There was a soldier at the wheel. Checking the rearview mirror, he saw lots of headlights in the town behind him.

Two minutes later he turned onto the airport road. His hands were nearly frozen to the wheel since there wasn’t much windshield to keep out the frigid night air. The moon came out, and he could see the outline of the big hangar ahead of him, with the Reverend Packard’s King Air parked next to it. He had to get out of this airport before C-130s starting landing on it.

He screeched to a halt next to the hangar, grabbed the plastic bag, got out of the truck and kicked open the flimsy door of the flight office. He vaulted over the counter and played his flashlight on a board festooned with airplane keys, looking for the right one. He found it, then ran out of the office and toward the hangar. He shoved open first one big door, then the other, then the idea of a possible pursuit occurred to him. He pulled the pistol from his belt, and, taking careful aim, shot out the nosewheel tire of the King Air.

“Jesse?” Jenny’s voice called.

“I’m here, sweetheart! Stay in the airplane!”

He ran around to the pilot’s door, tossed the plastic bag into the airplane and leapt in, slamming the door behind him.

“What’s that?” Jenny asked.

“A new life,” he replied. “I’ll explain later.”

He stuck the key into the ignition and groped between the seats for the checklist. Oh, the hell with it, he could remember enough to start it. He shoved the mixture and propeller control forward, flipped on the master switch, and began priming the carburetor. As he did, he looked up and saw, a mile away, a car’s headlights; they were coming toward them at a high rate of speed.

Jesse turned the ignition key and prayed that the engine wasn’t too cold to start. It caught, and after running roughly for a few seconds, revved smoothly.

No time for warmups, runups or checklists. Jesse shoved the throttle halfway in, and the airplane roared out of the hangar. Who could be in the car, he wondered; Coldwater and Casey couldn’t have eluded the invading forces so easily. Could they? He stood on the right brake so hard that the airplane nearly spun back in the direction from which it had come.

The car was moving directly toward the airplane now, and if Jesse tried to taxi to the runway he would collide with it. Instead, he pointed the nose of the plane down the narrow taxiway and shoved the throttle to the firewall. The airplane began to pick up speed. Airplanes don’t have rearview mirrors, so Jesse couldn’t tell where the car was; instead of worrying about it, he flipped in the first notch of flaps and watched the airspeed indicator. He could fly at sixty knots.

Forty, then fifty, then the needle crept to fifty-five. Jesse was aware that headlights behind him were lighting his way. At sixty, he yanked back on the yoke, and the little airplane leapt into the air. As it did so, a car roared underneath it. Somebody had tried to ram him from behind.

He couldn’t see the car now, because he was climbing too steeply. His airspeed was falling, and he pushed the yoke forward to let it rise again. As soon as he had eighty knots, he turned right ninety degrees; never mind waiting for the usual five hundred feet. He wondered if they were shooting at him, if they would somehow cripple the airplane.

He pushed the nose of the airplane down again, wanting to gain speed and put as much distance between him and the airport as possible. Trees rushed past him in the moonlight, fifty feet below, his recent reconnoitering made him feel safe, knowing that there were no high obstacles immediately to the south.

The GPS was still set to the St. Clair airport, so he could watch his distance increase on its screen. At five miles out, still at a hundred feet, he started to climb. He grabbed a headset from between the seats and handed one to Jenny.

“Are you and the girls all right?” he asked.

She pointed at the back seat. “I gave them each some bourbon in tea,” she said.

Jesse looked back. The two little girls were sound asleep under a blanket. He went back to flying the airplane, establishing a cruise climb speed. When the climb was stabilized, he turned to the GPS and dialed in SLC, for Salt Lake City.

Jenny watched him do it. “How far is it to Salt Lake City?” she asked.

“Four hundred and eighteen miles,” he said, pointing to the GPS.

“How long will it take us?”

“About three hours and a half, if there’s no headwind. When we level off, the GPS will tell us exactly.”

He continued climbing. His course was east of south now, so he needed an odd-numbered altitude, plus five hundred feet. He decided on eleven thousand five hundred, for the moment. Later, he’d have to climb to thirteen thousand five hundred, in order to clear the mountains south of St. Clair.

As he climbed, he made a ninety-degree right turn; it would take him off course, but he wanted to look back at the town.

As the airplane came around, he pointed toward St. Clair. “Look at that,” he said.

The two of them stared at the conflagration atop the mountain. Occasionally a shell would cut an arc into the air, like a Roman candle.

“What is it?” Jenny asked.

“It’s the end of Jack Gene Coldwater,” Jesse replied, with some satisfaction. He turned the airplane back on course and dug behind the seat for a chart. Now he had to navigate them to Salt Lake City without coming to a sudden stop against a mountain.