Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,135
car across a grass island between the taxiway and the runway, onto the runway, and as the plane began its takeoff roll, Virgil saw the pilot’s white face turn toward them.
He’d seen them now. Hamm swung behind the plane and floored the accelerator, and caught it, well off to the side because of the plane’s low wing.
Virgil leaned out the window with Regio’s Beretta and as they pulled up beside the plane, began firing at the nose gear with no apparent effect, five, ten shots, hard to hold because the car was bouncing, then the tire suddenly collapsed and the plane twisted toward them. Virgil, watching the prop, screamed, “Get away, get away!” and Hamm swung hard away.
Virgil looked back. The plane stopped beside the runway, half on, half off, and wasn’t going anywhere.
Hamm cranked the truck in a circle as the plane’s engines died, and brought it nose to nose with the plane. Virgil climbed out of the truck and ran around it as he saw stairs coming down from the side of the aircraft, and then Behan in the doorway.
Virgil pointed his pistol at him and shouted, “Out! Out!”
Behan squinted at him and said, “What the fuck? Willy?”
Hamm came up and shouted, “FBI! Get out of the plane! Let’s see your hands.”
Behan said, “Fuck you. I got no gun.”
He came down the steps and marched straight at Hamm, who was closest to the door, and Hamm said, “You’re under arrest for . . .”
Behan lurched forward and with a truly excellent straight right hand, hit Hamm in the nose, knocking the FBI agent down. As Hamm rolled and tried to crawl, Behan turned toward Virgil, and Virgil said, “You take another step, Mike, I swear to God I’ll shoot you in the balls.”
Behan put his hands up and said, “Don’t do that.”
Hamm staggered to his feet, hands to his face, and when Virgil asked if he was okay, said, “I think he broke my nose. I’m bleeding like a fire hose. Shoot him. C’mon, shoot him.”
Behan said, “Hey! Hey!”
* * *
More lights were rolling toward them, fast, including a fire engine. Potts, the cop, got there first, and when he got out of the car, Virgil said, “Put some cuffs on this guy. And we’re gonna need some gauze or something for the agent here.”
When things were controlled, Virgil walked away from the crowd and called Lucas.
“You get him?”
“Yeah. I had to shoot down his plane to do it, but we got him.” He took a minute to tell Lucas about the chase and shooting.
“Well, good. Finally found a target big enough for you to hit,” Lucas said. “Maybe the gun company will pay you for an endorsement. Anybody hurt?”
“The agent with me got punched in the nose. That’s about it. Regio’s dead and Lange’s cooperating, so . . .”
“Clean sweep,” Lucas said.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
Loose ends, trials, more diving, a little sex, and the Islands . . .
* * *
Virgil gave his last GPS coordinates to the Coast Guard, along with the magic wand. The Coast Guard brought in a group of professional divers and they cleaned up the heroin cans in two days. Coast Guard officers were a little irked that they’d been cut out of the surveillance and the arrests, but they made the best of it, piling seven hundred kilos of heroin on an admiral’s desk in front of the Coast Guard flag, for the reporters and photographers to gawk at. There were unconfirmed rumors from the DEA that a cartel kingpin in Colombia saw the picture and wept.
* * *
Despite the follow-the-money tactic demanded by Lucas, which was a major feature in the trials, the Manhattan agent in charge was shown, the day after the final raids, with rolled-up shirtsleeves, piling the seized heroin on a table in an FBI basement somewhere. Orish, who ran the actual operation, was allowed to hang in the background, smiling wistfully.
* * *
Douglas Sansone’s organization was torn to pieces by the investigation. All the major figures—with two exceptions—drew life sentences in federal prisons. The trials, held in New York, New Jersey, and South Florida, got sporadic media coverage. A small Canadian forest was cut down to create paper for the FBI press releases.
* * *
During the trial of Sansone, Behan, and Cattaneo—they were tried together—Cattaneo’s wife, Belinda, was put on the stand by the prosecution, as a friendly witness, given immunity for information tying the three men together in a single conspiracy. When questioned about her authority to speak to