Prey

Chapter Nine

They were number three in line for takeoff, which gave Henry Lightstone plenty of time to check his safety harness and readjust his headset.

"Nervous?" Len Ruebottom asked, speaking into his headset mike through the Lear's intercom system as he continued to monitor the gauges on the complex instrument panel.

"Yeah, I've never strapped myself inside a goddamned rocket before," Lightstone replied through his intercom microphone as he tried to ignore the tower traffic reports coming through his headset. The controller was saying something about head winds and down drafts that Lightstone really didn't want to hear.

"The Lear's actually a pretty smooth plane," Ruebottom said as he tapped at a gauge and then keyed his mike over to the external channel to acknowledge the tower's report. "Once we reach altitude, you're going to find that she gives you a real nice ride. Almost like sitting in your living room and watching a ball game."

"I'd like to be sitting in my living room watching a ball game," Lightstone said seriously. "Any chance you could pick up one of the games on this?" he asked, thinking that he might not vomit in the brand-new Lear jet if he could close his eyes and concentrate on something halfway interesting.

"Sure. What do you want to hear?"

"Lakers and Blazers?" Lightstone said hopefully.

Len Ruebottom checked his watch and then consulted a half-inch-thick booklet that he pulled out of a nylon pocket beside his seat. "Would you settle for a relay feed out of L.A.?"

"You can get that?"

Ruebottom laughed into his microphone. "Are you kidding? With all the money my buddy put into this radio gear, we could probably pick up a phone call in downtown Moscow. Which reminds me," he said, pointing to a part of the instrument panel that looked like a calculator key pad, "you can call out if you need to. All you've got to do is link in with a couple of codes, then punch in a phone number and talk through your mike. No sweat."

"Except that you and anybody else with a scanner gets to listen in, right?"

"Just me," the young pilot grinned. "Stu bought himself the high-priced rig. Signals come in and go out through a satellite hookup using scrambled transponders. Pretty good for privacy, unless there's a hacker out there who knows how to break matrix codes at two-second intervals."

"I think I've already met a guy like that in Special Ops," Lightstone said.

"Oh, yeah? Probably Mike Takahara, right?"

Lightstone nodded.

"I got to meet him at In-Service last year," Ruebottom said. "Real nice guy. I took him up in a Cessna a couple of times. I think I've just about got him talked into going for his license."

"Jesus, that's just what I need," Lightstone muttered to himself. He watched uneasily as the young agent-pilot released the brakes and gently advanced the throttle, winding the Lear's engines up into a high-pitched scream as they moved along the taxiway parallel to the main runway.

They were number two in the pattern for takeoff now.

Len Ruebottom responded to the traffic controller with some numbers that he read off his instrument panel, then busied himself making notes on the latest weather report.

Finally he looked over at Lightstone with obvious concern. "You really think it's going to be okay, my leaving Sue and the kids by themselves after I screwed up like that?"

"Yeah, they'll be fine," Lightstone said reassuringly, hoping he was right. "I was just giving you a bad time back there, trying to make you think about what you were doing."

"Yeah, I know, and I appreciate it," Ruebottom said in a sincere voice. "I guess I shouldn't worry about them so much, but Christ, it's bad enough with all the normal stuff going on. People shooting each other. Kids running cars into trees. Rapes, robberies, burglaries. Jesus!"

"Exactly," Lightstone nodded. "That's why I got out of police work. Too goddamned depressing. You have to shut that part of your mind off, like in a closet in the back of your head. Then you focus in on what you're supposed to be doing out there and try not to look into their eyes too often. And while you're doing that," Lightstone went on calmly, "you keep searching around for that little bit of craziness that'll make everybody laugh so they don't have to worry about crying when they go off shift." The ex-homicide investigator shrugged as he stared out through the Lear's thick windshield, remembering the two-o'clock-in-the-morning call-outs, the blood-splattered crime scenes, the dull, vacant gaze in the eyes of the victims, the rambling statements of the witnesses, and, finally, the interminable wait for the judge to sign the warrant, knowing all the while that the suspect was…

Ruebottom reached for the controls as the tower came on the air and the 737 ahead of them began to move forward. Lightstone consciously brushed his fingers across the release snap of his safety harness.

A sudden burst of static provided advance warning of another message from the control tower, this time letting everyone on the taxiway know that they were getting ready to start moving airplanes again. Lightstone could feel himself starting to tense up as he realized that they were nearing takeoff.

Ruebottom was making slight adjustments to the controls to counteract the jet wash as the 737 ahead of them began to roll forward, three powerful engines sending shock waves all the way down the line.

Working quickly now, Ruebottom checked both his and Lightstone's safety harnesses, adjusted his headset, scanned the instrument board for red lights, double-checked the critical gauges, and then inched the throttles forward again.

"You about ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Lightstone said with a visible lack of enthusiasm.

"Try to think about something else," Ruebottom advised, trying hard not to grin.

"Okay," Lightstone agreed, willing to try just about anything at this point. "What about you and the plane? Everything in here clean, just in case somebody does start snooping around?"

"Thanks to McNulty and his no-limit credit cards, this plane is officially leased to the Ruebottom Air Transport Service, a more or less reputable outfit that doesn't dig too deep into the sordid past of its clients," Ruebottom said as he continued to monitor controls and gauges. "Far as the flight logs are concerned, they've been cooked so that it looks like I've been taking you up on an average of about once a week for the last couple of years. You pay in cash, and what you do when you land is nobody's business but your own. I'm just a fly-for-hire, who wouldn't know a set of agent's credentials from a Crackerjack badge."

"What about ID and weapons?"

"I've got an old military forty-five in a kit bag behind the seat, handy to have in case some critter starts chewing on the wings." Ruebottom gestured with his head as he scanned the instrument panel one last time, a hand poised on the throttles. "Registration papers track back to my buddy Stu, who's got too damn much money to care about having extended conversations with people he doesn't know. He'd just tell them to buzz off or talk to one of his lawyers."

"What about your wallet?"

"Wallet, map case, kit bags, pants, shirt and jacket pockets are all clean, no incriminating evidence."

"Good habit for you young married types to get into," Lightstone advised, half serious. "That way you won't have to worry about Sue finding slips of paper with all those strange phone numbers in your pockets."

"Yeah, right," Ruebottom said absentmindedly as he began to tap at individual gauges on the instrument panel.

"By the way," Lightstone said, "I want you to call a girl named Marie when we get to Bozeman and tell her I'm sorry I stood her up."

"I should tell her how you and I get to go to Yellowstone this weekend and she doesn't?"

"For Christ's sake, don't tell her I'm at Yellowstone!" Lightstone said quickly. "That was another place I promised I'd take her to someday."

At that moment, the 737 began to accelerate down the runway in a deafening roar of jet exhaust, which meant that the Lear was next in line for takeoff. Henry Lightstone thought he could actually feel his rib cage and chest muscles begin to tighten around his heart.

"Which reminds me," Ruebottom said. "You sure you don't want me to go down to Gardiner with you, give you some backup in case things go nuts?"

"No thanks." Lightstone shook his head, making a conscious effort now to control his breathing as he spoke into the headset mike. "These guys are spooky enough as it is. They'll be watching us from the minute we touch down, and you can count on there being at least one guy on you the whole time you're in the airport, so be real careful about using the phones."

Ruebottom nodded in silent understanding as he adjusted his headset mike, keyed the radio, and made one last weather check with the tower.

Moments later the Lear jet was poised on the end of the runway, looking far more like a scrappy fighter jet than a hotdogging passenger aircraft.

"Great Falls Tower, Lear November Three-Three-Five-Charley-Papa," Ruebottom spoke into his mike as he checked each quadrant of the sky. "Requesting clearance for takeoff."

"Lear Three-Three-Five-Charley-Papa, stand by."

"Come on, guys. Let's get the show on the road," Len Ruebottom muttered, anxious to be up in the air, where he felt he truly belonged. "Any last questions?" he asked, turning to look at his copilot passenger.

"No, just get us there in one piece, and hurry it up," Lightstone instructed.

"Okay. Then how about one last set of instructions? See those pedals down by your feet?"

"Yeah."

"You want to try to keep your feet away from them."

"Why?"

"Well, because if you don't, I could lose control of the plane at a very bad moment," Ruebottom explained.

Lightstone quickly brought his feet as far away from the pedals as possible, which resulted in his knees being jammed up against the copilot's set of controls.

"And while you're at it, you're going to want to keep your knees away from the controls, too," Ruebottom advised. "Makes it a whole lot easier for me to steer this thing."

"Anything else?" Lightstone muttered as he tried with reasonable success to find a neutral position for both his feet and his knees.

"Barf bags and life vest are under your seat," Ruebottom smiled. "No parachutes, so you're stuck in here for the duration. Just try to keep the backseat driving down to a minimum, and enjoy the flight."

"Yeah, well, now that you brought it up, and since we don't have an honest-to-God copilot in this thing, what am I supposed to do if something happens to you up there?"

"Well, I'll tell you," the young pilot said with a serious expression on his young face. "You see this big gauge here?" He tapped at the glass-faced dial with a gloved finger.

"Yeah, I see it."

"That gauge tells you how much gas you've got left in the fuel tanks. If I happen to go unconscious, or have a heart attack or something like that, and you can manage to keep this thing up high enough so that the wind resistance is pretty much at a minimum, then you're probably looking at, oh, maybe six hours of flying time."

"Yeah, and just what the hell good does that do me?"

"There's an instruction manual in the compartment to the right of your seat," Ruebottom said, pointing with his right hand. "It's a pretty good read. Explains everything you've ever wanted to know about how to fly a Lear jet. If you work at it, you can probably get through the whole thing in, oh, I'd say about five or six hours. Although, if I were in your position," he added thoughtfully, "I think I'd probably skip the beginning stuff and go right on ahead to chapter thirty-six."

"Lear Three-Three-Five," the control tower interrupted, "you are cleared for takeoff. Have a good flight."

Len Ruebottom acknowledged the clearance, scanned the instrument panel for any last-minute reds, and the sky for any incoming planes that the controller might have forgotten to mention, and then keyed his internal mike again.

"You say something?"

"I was asking why the hell I should read chapter thirty-six first," Lightstone muttered through a clenched jaw, gripping his seat tightly.

Len Ruebottom looked over at his passenger and smiled. "Because by the time that fuel gauge starts to read empty…" he said, pausing to set the brakes, throttle each of the engines up to a high-pitched shriek, make a final instrument check, and then release the brakes.

"Lear Three-Three-Five," Ruebottom keyed his mike, "we're on the roll."

As the Lear jet began to accelerate down the long runway, Ruebottom switched over to his internal mike one more time.

"… you're probably going to want to have at least a general idea of how to land a Lear jet without putting too much of a dent in the runway."

Then he pushed the throttles to full-forward and sent the sleek-nosed jet screaming up into the gray-clouded sky.