Gone

CHAPTER 30

Two US marshals showed up at the farmhouse less than two hours after I called Emily back with my agreement to join the hunt for Perrine.

I’d met some marshals, since the US Marshals Service was the branch of the Justice Department that ran the witness protection program, but this young team, Agents Leo Piccini and Martha McCarthy, was new to me. They must have had orders to step on it, because after Martha dropped my overnight and duffel into the trunk of the Crown Vic, Leo dropped the hammer.

The best news of all was that after I caught my flight, the marshals would be heading back to the ranch to guard my family. My kids would be getting extra-special, round-the-clock protection while I was gone. Their safety was paramount, the priority for me. I wanted Perrine bad, but my guys came first. If anything ever happened to them while I was away, I didn’t know what I would do.

Leo told me we were headed to a place an hour south-east of Cody’s ranch, along the California-Nevada border, called the Amedee Army Airfield. As we drove, I wondered if Amedee was Indian for end of the world, because the area was hands down the most desolate place I had ever seen in my life. On both sides of the faded two-lane blacktop was nothing but mountain-rimmed scrub desert beneath a sky so huge and bright and blue, it hurt my head.

“Is this where they tested the atom bomb?” I asked as we slowed and turned onto a dirt road.

“No, sir. I believe that was down in New Mexico,” Leo said from behind his aviator shades.

“I knew I should have made a left in Albuquerque,” I mumbled as we bumped along.

We slowed and stopped about five minutes later. I looked to the left and right for the military airport that was our destination, but there was nothing. No planes, no control tower, no buildings. There was nothing but more desert.

“Um, I thought I was supposed to catch a plane,” I said, scanning the bleak landscape.

The young agents looked at each other, smiling.

“You’re about to,” Agent McCarthy said, opening the door.

“But where’s the … you know, buildings and TSA gropers and everything?” I asked, stepping out and spotting for the first time the macadam runway in front of us.

“That’s at an airport,” the female fed explained as she checked her watch. “This is an airfield.”

“Aha,” I said, pretending like that explained something.

When I turned to her partner for clarification, he was pointing up at the sky.

“Here comes your ride now,” Leo said.

Far in the distance to the east, a plane began to make a whistling descent out of the wild blue yonder. Though unmarked and military charcoal gray, it looked sort of like a corporate jet.

The plane made a wide turn to land from the west. I was almost surprised that the plane didn’t start buzzing me like the crop duster that goes after Cary Grant in North by Northwest.

The sleek, rumbling jet aircraft landed and taxied up, close enough for me to reach out and touch the razorlike edge of its wing. Its jets were rumbling so loud that I couldn’t even hear myself when I thanked the agents who handed me my bags.

Instead of a stewardess, a green-fatigues-clad soldier wearing a beret dropped the door and helped me aboard. As the soldier resealed the door, I could see that the plane’s resemblance to a G6 ended at the steps. Inside, it looked like a cargo plane, with netting and jump seats, and smelled frighteningly like spilled gasoline. A female pilot gave me a wide smile and a thumbs-up from the forward cockpit.

“Can I get you anything, sir?” the soldier asked after he expertly strapped me and my bags to the wall.

Still in a state of shock and awe, I just shook my head as the jets fired and the desert outside the window started to roll.

The soldier didn’t offer me any peanuts or headphones, but he did snap out a large brown paper bag and handed it to me as we left the ground.

“Just in case,” he said.