Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,134
said, blurting it all out in a jumble of words.
The cop swallowed and said, “Well, it’d be out of one of the four fixed-base operators, they do everything from single-seaters to jets, so . . .”
“Let’s go, take us there, lights and siren,” Virgil said, not quite shouting.
The cop had taken another bite of his sandwich, chewed once, swallowed, made no move to get back in his car. He said, “I could do that, but there are four of them, probably take us a half hour. Or I could call them all and that’d take two minutes and if he’s out here, we could go right to it.”
“We gotta hurry,” Hamm said, and he was shouting. “Make the calls, make the calls.”
The cop nodded, asked, “What’s the guy’s name again?” and when told, punched a number into his cell phone. “Hey, Betty, this is Gene Potts. Yeah, how ya doin’? Listen, we’re looking for a guy named Behan who might have left here in the last hour or so in a twin-engine plane, don’t have any further information, the FBI is looking for him . . . No. Thanks, Betty.”
Hamm said, “Jesus. Jesus.”
Potts punched in a new number. “Hey, Bill, this is Gene Potts. Yeah, how ya doin’? Listen, we’re looking for a guy named Behan who might have come through here in the last hour or so, flying out in a twin engine . . . Yeah? Where is he? Yeah? Listen, I got the FBI here, we’ll be with you in two minutes.”
He hung up and said to Virgil and Hamm, “He’s here, at Catskill Aviation, but he’s on the way out.”
“Lead the way, and fast, really fast,” Virgil said. They piled into their cars and took off. Though Potts was a slow talker, he was a fast driver, and took them down the street and into a parking lot in front of a sprawling white concrete block building where a man was waiting at the front door.
Hamm jammed the car in a handicapped parking space and he and Virgil jumped out and ran toward the man at the door, who asked, “What’d he do?”
“Drugs and murder,” Virgil said. “Is he still on the ground?”
“Yeah, I think so. He left here a couple of minutes ago . . . come on this way.”
The man led them across the building at a jog, and out the back, where he pointed through the dark to a plane three or four hundred yards down a taxiway, moving slowly away from them. “That’s him, the white plane, the lights, see the twin engines? It’s a Beechcraft King Air 250, an older one . . .”
Virgil: “Can we get out there?”
“You mean, in a car?”
“Yeah, in a car. In a car!”
The man hesitated, then pointed down the length of the long building. “I can open up that door there, and another one on the other side, we use it for limos delivering passengers . . .”
“Do it!”
Virgil and Hamm ran back to the truck and climbed inside. The building’s doors were already rolling up ten seconds later when they pulled up to the first door. Virgil said, “Kill the lights, kill the lights.”
Hamm did that. They drove through the building and emerged between a couple of baggage carts and out on a semicircular concrete apron attached to a taxiway. Hamm hit the gas and Virgil rolled down the windows and Hamm asked, “What are we gonna do?”
“Try to take out the tires, I guess. I hope they have air in them, hope they’re not solid . . .”
“I got no idea . . . I don’t know if a nine will punch holes in them anyway.”
“If I can’t, I’ll put a few shots into the cabin,” Virgil said.
“You could kill him . . .”
“I’ll shoot low . . .”
“Hope to God we got the right plane.”
* * *
They were gaining on the white plane, probably a quarter-mile away when they hit the taxiway, but as they watched, the plane slowed and then made a right-angle turn.
“Shit, he’s going for the runway,” Hamm said.
The plane continued rolling for a few seconds, then turned again, toward them, this time.
“I’m cutting across the grass, I’ll come up behind him . . . maybe I could ram him.”
“Just get me up beside him . . . Don’t ram him yet.”
* * *
The plane hesitated on the runway, rolled forward a few feet. Then a few more feet. Behan had apparently not yet seen them. Hamm drove the