Relentless

5

Far off in the eastward distance an Air Force jet made a sound like slowly ripping cloth. The silent engine of the jeep made a pinging sound, heat contraction in the cold air. Watchman stood rocking heel-to-toe, considering the crippled remains of the airplane. The landing gear had collapsed on one side and it left one wing sticking up in the air at a high angle. The wind whipped at dried remains of foam where they had used the pressurized extinguisher to put out a fire-the starboard engine nacelle was blackened along half its length. Vickers had already got on the walkie-talkie and directed Cunningham to pass the word to get a team of technicians out here. That was all right; necessary procedure; but it wasn’t likely to find the fugitives for them. Watchman doubted the bank robbers had left any clues to their intended destination aboard; they’d done a thorough job of stripping the plane of everything usable-emergency water bottle, fire ax, maps. They had left several air charts behind, showing this morning’s weather and the radio navigation ranges of all stations in the tristate area, but the pilot had made no position-fix marks on his charts and there was no way to judge where they would plan to go, or where they had been planning to go before the plane had crashed.

Vickers came up from the jeep, new shoes creaking and squealing, and stood restlessly beside Watchman, bouncing on his arches like an athlete waiting to compete. After a while he cupped both hands around a match and hunched his shoulders to light a cigarette, blew smoke unnecessarily at the match and conscientiously put it in his pocket. “You know we may be jumping to conclusions. Maybe this wasn’t an accident. Maybe they planned it this way.”

“You think they planned to crash?”

Buck Stevens, ten feet away, got up from his haunches and came over. “What do you mean?”

“Look at it this way,” the FBI man said. “You get five or six professionals together and you lay out a plan to rob a bank. The bank itself is a pushover but there’s a hitch, there always. is-this time it’s the getaway route. Only one highway through town. So you lick that problem by using an airplane to make your getaway. But you also know the police are going to figure out that you used an airplane. You’re not going to have much more than half an hour before everybody in three states starts hunting for you in the sky. Radar, search planes, ground spotters-an airplane’s a very easy thing to spot and a very hard thing to hide, as long as it’s in the air.”

Buck Stevens said, “You’re saying they landed here on purpose. They planned it this way from the start.”

“It’s possible. Or take another possibility. Say this wasn’t the getaway plane at all.”

Stevens said, “No other planes have been reported missing. It’d be too coincidental.”

“Not if our bank robbers planted it here deliberately. Look, they knew we’d be looking for an airplane. So they’ve given us one. It’s possible they hired some out-of-work stunt pilot in California to crash-land here and make it look as if he had an engine fire. That fire could have been set after the plane landed, you know. Then the pilot walked away, knowing we’d find him sometime soon but knowing he wasn’t going to be in too much trouble-he was hired to do this, he doesn’t know any more than that. In the meantime while we’re chasing the son of a bitch the real fugitives are halfway to Mexico.”

Watchman said, “It’s a mite fanciful.”

“Sure it is. The whole caper showed imagination-making them all take off their pants.”

“I suppose you’ve just told Jace Cunningham to get the planes back in the air and keep searching for the real getaway plane.”

“That’s right. I admit it’s a long shot but it’s worth trying.” The polite smile rode smugly on Vickers’ satisfied face.

“It’s a cute theory,” Watchman said. “There’s only one hole in it”

Vickers’ smile coagulated. “Such as?”

“The way I read the signs, four or five men walked away from this plane. Probably five.”