Ruthless.Com

Chapter Fifteen

Sitting in his pickup outside the Bayview Motor Inn, Jack McRea resisted the impulse to check his watch for the third time in ten minutes. He was torn between contradictory desires, part of him eager to see the woman he was supposed to be meeting arrive in her car, part of him hoping she wouldn't show. He had been unfaithful to his wife only once in over a decade of marriage, and that had been when his drinking had gotten out of control and Alice had moved out for a while. Furthermore, he had never before breached his trust as a county sheriff's deputy or screwed up any of the jobs on which he'd moonlighted to pay the bills. Not even when his alcoholic binging was at its worst had he done that.

Yet here he was in a motel parking lot when he should have been on duty at the private airfield where he worked as a night watchman. Here he was waiting for a woman he had met in a bar where he still occasionally had a couple of beers between the end of his shift at the sheriff's office and the beginning of his shift at the airport. He knew nothing about her except that her name was Cindi with two I's, and that she was blond and had pretty eyes and looked fantastic in short skirts and high-heeled shoes. Also, she wore this glossy stuff on her lips that made them look very moist, and had an incredible, sexy smile, the kind of sexy that made your stomach tight.

When they had met at the bar last night, she'd told him she was waiting for a friend who'd stood her up, and he had bought her a drink because she'd seemed kind of down, and somehow or other they'd gotten kind of flirty, and she'd edged a little close on her stool, and when he'd given her a look to show he'd noticed, she just smiled, and sat there a while with her skirt way up high and her thigh touching his leg.

Well, one thing had led to another, and they'd gotten very touchy, and because it was obvious where they were heading, and just so she knew where they stood, he'd decided to come clean and tell her he was married. She'd giggled a little at his confession, and when he'd asked what was so funny, had put her finger on his wedding band and said she'd sort of figured it was either that or he was trying to look hard to get, and he'd realized how lame he must have sounded and started laughing, too. And then she'd told him she had a regular boyfriend, which made them even, or almost even, and for some reason that had gotten both of them laughing harder, and they were still laughing as they leaned in close to each other and deep-kissed, then began necking at the bar, saying how much they wanted to be alone, forget the wife, forget the boyfried, alone, damn near getting it on right there at the bar.

Jack had known of the Bayview from passing it on the way to work every night — work being the airfield, which was owned by a group of local businessmen who had partnered up to keep their corporate jets there, and was just a hop-skip-and-jump from the bar — and also because a couple of his married buddies had been there with women they were seeing on the sly, and told him the owners went out of their way to keep things nice and discreet.

He'd mentioned it to Cindi while they were practically climbing aboard each other's laps, and said he had a couple of hours before work, and would she like to go there with him and finish what they'd started? And that was when she had explained about the guy she was kind of dating, saying he was a long-haul trucker who would see her whenever he was in town, and was stopping by that night midway through a long run, and that even though she didn't expect him until much later, she figured he'd want a little something from her like he always did, which made her feel funny about, you know, being with Jack that same night.

Jack hadn't known what to think of her story, except that it left him feeling like he needed a cold shower, and he'd asked her outright if she was having second thoughts about getting into something with him, and she'd said, no, no, you've got it all wrong, and had put her hand between his legs, and told him her boyfriend would be gone the next morning, and that it'd just be better if they could get together when she could be free to give everything she had to Jack… that was exactly how she'd worded it, keeping her hand on him the whole time, rubbing him where it counted right in front of everybody in the place. And that smile of hers, that smile, it was — how did the song go? — sweet as cherry pie and wild as Friday night, something like that.

Everything I have.

Ah, God, how could he resist?

And so they'd wound up making their plans for tonight. His original idea had been to meet her at the bar around six o'clock, and then for them to drive over to the Bayview, where they could be together for a couple of hours before he had to take over for the day guard at the airfield. But she'd said she had some important errands to run that evening, how about they made it a little later, maybe seven, seven-thirty, just to be on the safe side. And he'd told her that was no good for him because he really had to be at his night job by eight, which would leave them with, what, half an hour tops, and that he didn't think either of them wanted the first time they were alone to be a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am kind of situation.

It had gone back and forth a while, the two of them trying to get at a way to make it happen, neither wanting to delay it again, but Cindi insisting she couldn't put off whatever she had to do, until at last she'd asked if he couldn't maybe be a little late for work, or find somebody to cover for him, or even sneak away from his post for an hour or so, which she thought would make it that much more exciting for them, kind of dangerous in a fun way, didn't he!

Crazy as it sounded when she brought it up, he'd immediately realized Cindi had hit on something. He could leave the gate unattended for a short time without anybody noticing; in fact, he'd done exactly that on occasions when he'd gone to buy a coffee or a pack of smokes for himself, and once or twice had even stopped for a brew before heading back to the airport. It wasn't as though he worked at Frisco International. There were rarely any comings and goings during his watch. He could clock in at his usual time, slip away for a couple of hours with Cindi, and be back without anybody being the wiser. And, yeah, she was right, it did somehow make things more interesting.

They had finally arranged to meet in the parking area of the Bayview — he'd given her directions, and she'd told him that she sort of knew where it was, anyway — at eight-thirty, which had given him long enough to punch the time clock at the guard booth, make sure the day man was gone, and head on over.

And here he was the very next night, looking at his watch yet again, waiting for her to arrive, wondering if she was going to let him down after all their planning… negotiations, you could even call them. Which, he thought again, might be for the best. Alice was a good woman and had gone through a lot with him, and he knew it would kill him to lose her. But it hadn't been happening in bed for them since Tricia was born, and he was a healthy guy who had his needs. What he was doing tonight was only sexual, and had nothing to do with how he felt about his wife. Still and all, though, once these things got rolling you could never be a hundred percent sure you wouldn't get caught with your pants down, and he guessed that was why there was a small part of him that would be glad if—

The sound of an approaching car suddenly interrupted the flow of Jack's thoughts. He glanced into his side-view, saw a red Civic enter the parking lot behind a splash of headlights, watched it pull into a slot in the row of cars behind him… and then felt his pulse start to race as her long legs slid out the driver's side and she came walking toward him, sweet as cherry pie, wild as Friday night, wearing clothes that might have come right out of his hottest fantasies, clothes that made it impossible for him to think about anything besides what she would look like once he peeled them off\

He hit the button on his armrest to roll down his window, and waited.

"Waiting for anyone special?" she said, smiling as she leaned into his car, her great big eyes and the scent of her perfume making his heart race.

"Not anymore," he said, and reached for his door handle, knowing very well that he would not be heading back to the airport anytime soon, that he couldn't have claimed to care if he never showed up at work, and that, like goddamned Samson in the old Bible story, he was wonderfully, deliciously doomed.

Its location chosen with privacy in mind, the airfield edged on a narrow inlet of the lower bay just northeast of the border between Almeda and Santa Clara Counties. Each of the four cinder-block maintenance hangars had a distinctive corporate logo painted large on its rooftop and at least one outer wall, making visual identification easy for approaching pilots. There were some small prefab outbuildings and two runways, one just over two thousand feet long, and a 3,400-foot high-speed stretch for the larger propeller and jet aircraft. Tonight only a handful of birds sat on the ramps beneath the calm and quiet sky: a single-prop Pilatus, a larger King Air C90B twin-turboprop, Cessna and Swearingen bizjets, and three or four kit-built sport planes. A fleet of passenger copters rested with their wheels on the numbers on a helipad at the north end of the airport.

A small oval of blacktop with space for perhaps two dozen motor vehicles, the airport's parking area was vacant as the unmarked commercial van swung in from the tree-lined access road at half past eight, and then nosed against the fence running behind the hangars and apron.

The pair of men inside had encountered no one at the guard booth, which had been their certain expectation. The guard had been lured to a motel by a woman whose expert distractions would make it impossible for him to remember his own name, let alone his responsibilities at the airport.

Moments after its headlights and engine cut out, its driver and passenger exited the van and passed swiftly through the entrance to the hangar areas. Both wore green utility coveralls. The driver carried a wallet with forged identification, two small adjustable wrenches in a patch pocket on his chest, and an empty pint jar in one hand. The passenger was also holding counterfeit ID, but had nothing else on him except a silenced Beretta in a concealed holster.

The service road ran in a loop around the airport, and had a concrete sidewalk leading past the hangars. Reaching the walk, they spotted the UpLink hangar about thirty yards to their right, and turned quickly and silently in that direction.

If they came across someone who questioned their presence, they would explain that they'd been hired to perform last-minute preflight maintenance on Roger Gordian's Learjet and arrived late because of difficulty finding the airfield. They had brought the Beretta as a fallback should that answer fail to quell any suspicions.

As it was, they reached the hangar without encountering anyone and found the hangar door open to the cool night air. They entered, located the overhead light switch, and turned on the fluorescents. The hangar's interior smelled of fuel, lubricant, and metal.

Stabalized by wheel chocks under the high, flat ceiling, Roger Gordian's Learjet 45 was a sleek eight-passenger plane with upturned wingtips and powerful turbofans. The driver stood admiring it for a moment. It was a beautiful work of engineering, but like all things had its Achilles heel.

Now the driver of the van turned to the other man, gestured toward the front of the hangar with his chin, and waited as he went to stand lookout. Once in the doorway, the man with the gun stretched his head outside, glanced left, right, and then over his shoulder at his partner, nodding to indicate there was still nobody in sight.

The driver returned his nod, and then went and slid down under the plane. Turning on his back, he produced the wrenches from his pockets and got to work. He unscrewed the lid of the pint jar and set the open jar on his stomach. Then he clamped one of the tools to the line running from the landing gear cylinder and, holding it steady by the handle, loosened the cylinder's hydraulic fitting with the other wrench. He held the jar underneath the fitting as the fluid bled out, and kept it there until it was full. Then he twisted the lid back onto the jar, put the tools back in his pocket, and wriggled out from beneath the aircraft.

Less than fifteen minutes after they had entered the hangar, the two men were back in the van. The driver placed the jar of drained-off hydraulic fluid in the glove compartment, and then turned on the ignition and pulled out onto the access road.

When they rode by the guard station it was dark and empty.

The watchman was still out enjoying himself, and would no doubt remember his hours of stolen pleasure with a smile, never realizing they had all but guaranteed Roger Gordian's fiery death.