Blackout

CHAPTER 46

The driver of the Suburban was sweating as he turned around at the third snowy dead end and accelerated back toward the one road he was sure of.

“Hurry, dammit!” Schoen barked, as he sat with his nose practically against the windshield, his eyes searching for any sign of the tracked vehicle they were trying to intercept.

“Probably a snowmobile of some sort,” the driver said.

There was no response from the right seat.

They rocketed down the feeder road and skidded to a halt just past another turnoff. The driver threw the Suburban into reverse, backed up, and turned onto the road. His headlights caught the glint of something crossing a half mile ahead.

“There they are!” Schoen muttered, his hands opening and closing around the Uzi he was carrying. “Go! GO, GO, GO!”

“I’m going! There’re limits, you know,” the driver replied.

“It’s a Sno-Cat,” Schoen said, watching the machine move off the right side of the road and accelerate toward a grove of trees, and open fields beyond. The driver skidded to a halt where the tracks crossed the road into the adjacent field.

“Follow him!” Schoen demanded.

“We’ll get stuck.”

“DO IT!”

The driver cut the wheels to the right and moved into the ditch, where the Suburban sank instantly up to the running boards in snow, its wheels spinning uselessly.

Schoen was already out, leaping into knee-high snow and struggling to run in the direction of the accelerating Sno-Cat. It was obvious he couldn’t catch it, but he could stop them with a lucky shot. He made it to the first tree and used it as a platform, taking careful aim with the snub-nosed weapon before squeezing the trigger.

The chilling impact of multiple bullets pinging into the metal in the back of the Sno-Cat was unmistakable. Kat glanced in the rearview mirror, looking for the source of the shots. She jammed the accelerator to the floor and turned to the others. “Stay down!” she yelled, struggling to be heard over the engine. “Everyone okay?”

“Yes,” Robert answered, surveying the others and turning to look out the back. “I think they got stuck in the ditch. I see the headlights, but they’re not moving.”

“Dear Lord,” Dr. Maverick was saying to himself. “I’ve never been shot at.”

“The airport’s ahead, maybe a mile,” Kat said. “I can see the flashers.”

“They’ll know where we’re going, Kat,” Jordan said, his face ashen.

She was nodding. “If they’re in the ditch, it’ll take time to radio for help. Maybe we can scramble the local sheriff.”

Jordan was shaking his head. “No. This group will have covered that angle.”

Kat glanced at him in alarm. “What? Bought off the sheriff?”

“Neutralized him, somehow.”

“Your jet won’t be here for another hour, Jordan. We have to do something.”

Robert was leaning between them from the backseat. “Kat, we’re sitting ducks in this thing. It took those slugs because he was firing low, but this is thin metal around the cab.”

“I know it,” she said, correcting their direction as the vehicle lurched to the left.

“So what do we do?” Robert asked gently, almost in her ear.

“We can hide — or find another plane. Quickly.”

“Hiding won’t work,” Robert said.

She looked around at him, then at Jordan and Dr. Maverick. “You’re right. We commandeer a plane. Hang on. I’m going to run this machine flat-out.”

Arlin Schoen held the radio to his lips and kept his voice under control. “We’ll leave this car and use yours. Just get here. We’ve got them now.”

He pocketed the radio and safetied the Uzi before wading back through the snowdrifts to wait at the side of the road. It would take the other Suburban less than three minutes to reach him, he figured, and perhaps another ten to drive the circuitous route to the airfield. But there would be no place to hide. With the exception of their chartered Caravan, the airport had been all but deserted. He turned to his driver and motioned him over. “Bring the guns. Hurry.”

“Robert, I just remembered something,” Kat said as they bounced violently over a patch of rough ground and stabilized. The airport was less than a mile distant.

He leaned forward. “What, Kat?”

“Don’t ask me why I just thought of this. But in Walter Carnegie’s file that we downloaded?”

“Yes?”

“He said the Air Force had stonewalled his requests for information about a test they were running off Key West with an old F-one-oh-six drone the day and hour the SeaAir MD-eleven went down.”

“I read that. What about it? You think it’s connected?”

She shook her head while looking back at the rearview mirror, half expecting to see headlights bouncing across the field after them.

The landscape was clear behind them, no vehicles or people in sight.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But that business jet we flew wasn’t stolen until after the MD-eleven went down, so it wasn’t the firing platform. They could have used another airplane, but what’s been bothering me is, Carnegie said the air traffic control tapes around Key West showed no other aircraft in the area. That means not one but two airplanes are missing from the radar tracks. The one that fired at the MD-eleven, and whatever Air Force aircraft was working with the F-one-oh-six drone.”

“I don’t understand,” Robert said, aware that both Dr. Maverick and Jordan James were listening intently.

“Well, they don’t fly a target drone aircraft unless there’s someone up there to shoot at it. So, there should be another radar track from the Air Force craft, and according to Carnegie, there wasn’t. Second, there should be a radar track of some sort on the aircraft that shot the laser at the MD-eleven.”

“Maybe the Air Force craft was a stealth fighter. An F-one-seventeen, or something new,” Robert said.

Kat steered the machine around the end of a gully and accelerated again. “No, I mean — well, yes, that’s possible — but… what if there was another aircraft up there, not a stealth, and it purposefully wasn’t using its transponder? Carnegie said the FAA tapes showed an intermittent target.”

“Kat, that’s the road we came out on. We’ll have to cross it,” Robert said.

She nodded. “I know. If there’s a fence, we’ll just plow through it.”

“Okay.”

“What is a transponder, Kat?” Dr. Maverick asked.

“A little black box,” she said, “that electronically listens for an incoming radar beam from air traffic control. When it senses one, it sends an answering burst radio transmission back to the same radar site with altitude and identification information, so the controller knows who you are and precisely where you are.”

“And without it?”

“Without it, or if you purposefully turn it off, all the controller can do is look for what we call a ‘skin paint’ target. Just the raw radar beam bouncing back to the antenna from the metal of the airplane. That’s what military stealth technology prevents. The skin of the aircraft absorbs the radar beam so nothing bounces back, and, without a transponder, they’re essentially invisible to radar.”

“But a normal airplane without a transponder will still show a skin paint target to the controller?”

She nodded. “Usually. Like a shadowy, intermittent target, which were Carnegie’s words. So why would an Air Force test aircraft turn his transponder off?”

Robert tightened his grip on an overhead handrail as they bounced over a small depression. “Kat, what are you thinking? That the F-one-oh-six was involved?”

She glanced at Robert as they neared the road. There were no signs of cars coming in either direction. A barbed wire fence loomed ahead of them, and she gestured to it. “Hang on.”

The Sno-Cat plowed easily through the wire, and climbed onto the road and off the other side as she steered across the grounds toward a row of hangars.

“What am I thinking? They use F-one-oh-six drones for target practice. So who was shooting at this one, and why were they trying to stay hidden from radar? We know it wasn’t a stealth, because a stealth wouldn’t leave an intermittent target.”

“Wait,” Robert said, shaking his head. “You mean, who was shooting at the drone, or who was shooting at the MD-eleven?”

Kat looked at him. “What if it was one and the same, Robert? What if the test went bad and they got an airliner instead?”

In the growing light of dawn the flight line looked deserted at first. There were rows of light aircraft and a few light twins, all of which had obviously been out all night in the storm. Only a Cessna Caravan on floats at the other end of the field appeared to be free of snow.

“Okay, everyone. Time to borrow a bird.”

“How about the float plane?” Robert asked.

“Possibly. Those are easy to fly.”

“You don’t want to get close to that one,” Jordan said in a firm voice.

“Why?” Kat asked.

“It was in Boise when I left. Now it’s here, as are a bunch of assassins.”

Kat braked to a halt. “Oh, Lord. You think they came in on that?”

Jordan was nodding. “Count on it.”

She looked around quickly, spotting a hangar with its doors partially open. She let out the clutch and accelerated toward it, trying to make out the type of aircraft inside. Something large with high wings that were a shadow through the upper windows of the hangar. An Albatross!

She stopped and jumped out to peer into the hangar, returning in less than thirty seconds. “This will have to do.”

“Can you fly it?” Robert asked, raising his hand suddenly before she responded. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

“We don’t have a choice,” she said.

Robert and Jordan jumped from the Sno-Cat and hauled at the hangar doors, pushing them open slowly as Kat ran the snowmobile inside and parked it to one side. She grabbed her handbag and motioned to Dr. Maverick to follow, then ran to the right rear side of the huge amphibian. The ladder was down and she scrambled up, racing to the cockpit to turn on the master switch and check the fuel. Thank God! Almost full tanks.

The cockpit side window was open. She yelled to Robert and Jordan. “Hurry with the doors and get in. Pull up the ladder behind you.”

Checklist. There has to be a checklist. Kat searched rapidly through the papers in a side pocket, and retrieved a laminated checklist. She ran down the Before Starting Engines portion, locating the applicable switches and finding the primer for the two big radial propeller-driven power plants before turning on the switch and checking to make sure all three of the men were aboard.

She engaged the starter, holding her breath as she jockeyed the throttle slightly and waited. Two, three, four times the huge prop on the right rotated. She was considering priming it again when the cylinders began to fire, slowly, then in a smooth sequence. Kat adjusted the fuel mixture and started the left engine.

“Fasten in, everyone. Robert? Come up here with me.”

“You’re sure about this, Kat?” he said as he launched himself up into the bucket seat and fumbled for the seat belt.

She nodded. “Of course I’m sure. And if you believe that, I’ve got some swampland in the Mojave I’d like to talk to you about!”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Find their damned tracks!” Arlin Schoen jabbed a finger in the direction of the north taxiway as the Suburban changed directions and raced over the snow-covered concrete.

“There are the tracks!” one of the men said, pointing ahead.

“They’re hiding. Probably inside one of these hangars,” Schoen said. “Good. That’ll make it easier to—”

He trailed off as they rocketed around the northeast corner of the hangar and saw an Albatross come shooting through the open doors, its ample wings rocking as the pilot steered the craft toward the runway. From their angle, they could see nothing of the pilots or occupants.

The driver braked to a halt in confusion. “What now, Arlin?”

Arlin turned around, looked at the open hangar, and shook his head. “No. They didn’t have enough time. Drive into the hangar!”

The Suburban’s driver accelerated through the open doors and screeched to a halt by the empty but still-idling Sno-Cat. “Godammit!” Schoen snarled. “Turn around! They’re in that aircraft.”

The driver fought the wheel as he backed and then shot forward, floorboarding the vehicle to give Schoen a closer firing platform.

“Get on the runway! Get in front of them!”

To reach the end as a pilot would for a normal takeoff, the Albatross would have had to taxi north several hundred yards. But whoever was steering the amphibian wasn’t following the rules. It bounced across the snow-covered ground between taxiway and runway and turned on the runway, its engines coming up to takeoff power. “We’re not going to make it, Arlin,” the driver said.

“Try! Floor it!”

“I am.”

Schoen toggled the right side window down and leaned up and out as he cocked the Uzi and aimed at the plane’s tires, firing a burst that went wild when the Suburban lurched off the taxiway in angled pursuit of the accelerating craft. Again he fired, trying to walk the bullets toward the wing to get the fuel tanks, but nothing happened.

The Albatross was accelerating away from them, moving at more than fifty knots as the Suburban’s driver tried to match speeds. The roughness of the plowed snowpack on the runway forced Schoen back inside.

“Forget it. Get to the Caravan. We’ll get them in the air.”

The bone-jarring trip across the snow-covered grass to the runway and then down its washboard surface had been brutal, but the big World War II — vintage amphibian lifted clear of the surface at a sedate ninety knots with the engines screaming at full power. Kat pushed the nose over slightly to gain airspeed before fishing for the landing gear lever and pulling it up. She turned almost due south, checking the round gauge on the front panel called the artificial horizon, as well as the airspeed indicator, making sure she kept it right side up.

Engines. Throttle back, set the prop pitch. I’ll have to estimate. I have no idea what settings to use.

“Where do we go, Kat?” Robert asked.

She glanced at him and smiled briefly. “Boise, if I can find it.”

“Why?”

“Safety in numbers, I suppose. There’s an Air National Guard base at the airport, and Salt Lake is too far south.”

She kept the aircraft climbing, looking for a passage through the mountains to the west in the growing light. She spotted the pass she was looking for and banked toward it, leveling the aircraft just high enough to clear the ridge, then nosing it over and staying close to the mountainous terrain.

Kat pointed to the rear. “I threw my purse down in the back, Robert. See if you can get the satellite phone out and call the police in Boise, and the Air Guard. Get them ready to protect us when we land.”

“How long? An hour?”

“At least,” she said.

The Hailey Airport manager, alerted to an inbound Air Force Gulfstream, had arrived in time to see the visiting Albatross roar into the air, followed by a Caravan on floats. The occupants of the Caravan had thrown something on the ramp as they left, and the manager drove to it, unprepared to find the crumpled body of a man in a pilot’s shirt, lying in a growing pool of red.