Presidential Deal (20 page)

He veered onto the dark ribbon of path that would take them up the last rise toward the quarry. A dozen steps more and the wind belted them again, sent him sprawling, both of them sliding through the muck again.

He heard the roaring behind them, felt the threat of a new coolness approaching in the air, sensed the light going altogether, and he forced himself up and pulled her to him, and was running again.

He hit the first of the tumbled boulders squarely, without seeing it, but when they fell this time, he was ready before they stopped rolling. Everything nearly dark, the sound behind a frothing explosion of snapping timber and grinding rocks, a monster mouth gnashing at his heels.

He saw an impossible tendril of foam, fifty feet or more, soar through the dark sky at his shoulder, saw an entire uprooted tree sailing overhead, its tangled bare roots mirroring the wind-stripped branches on its opposite end. The thing flew just ahead of the skein of foam like a giant insect chased by a silvery tongue. He saw what might have been the roof of a house twirling through the sky beyond that—like Dorothy now, he thought—and was on his feet again, his arm under Linda as if he were lugging a sack of grain, up over another boulder, and then one more, until, finally, he saw two huge stones that loomed up before them like something out of Stonehenge, with a gap of darkness between.

He staggered forward, dropped Linda into the crevasse—no time to check just how deep, how rugged the fall, what were the choices anyway…

…and though he shouldn’t have, though he told himself he wouldn’t do it, he paused and turned and gave that last look backward, the one all the coaches tell you not to take, and now he knew why:

…nothing there, nothing, the world gone, swallowed, nothing but a dark wall above him…

…and then he was down, and spinning in the grip of the sea.

Chapter 33

“I told you,” Driscoll said to Brisa as the tiny plane took another sickening lurch, its engines groaning. “The man is a consummate professional.”

Brisa tried another of his ugly looks, but he was too pale to pull it off. “I’ll never forget this,” he managed. “Long as I live, man.”

“Jeez,” Driscoll said to Brisa, glancing around the bouncing plane. “I guess that means I got about fifteen minutes to worry.”

“Real funny,” Brisa said.

“Uh-huh,” Driscoll said. “You gotta puke, make sure you do it on your own side.”

The plane rocked wildly in the unpredictable updrafts, but its engines whined steadily on. Driscoll peered out over Billy’s shoulder, trying to see what he might be fixed upon, but the sky outside seemed only darkness. All Driscoll could see was the reflection on the inside of the windshield glass, the less-than-reassuring image of a squinting, florid-faced man in a disheveled pilot’s shirt, an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

Driscoll tried to check his watch, but it was hopeless in this light. He guessed they’d been aloft over an hour. They couldn’t be too far from land, assuming Billy had maintained anything resembling a proper heading.

“How close, you figure?” Driscoll asked, raising his voice over the whine of the engines.

“I thought I saw our marker beacon a minute ago,” Billy called from the pilot’s seat.

“He thought?” Brisa cried.

“Quiet,” Driscoll said. “Let him concentrate.”

“I could use a drink,” Billy said, still hunched over the wheel.

“Get us down,” Driscoll said, “I’ll buy you one.”

“Man, oh, man,” Brisa said. “This is not the way they talk at the airlines.”

They were lost in a cloud suddenly, a cloud that exploded in greenish-white light and sent a dancing spark out the left wing of the plane. Brisa gave a moan that made his earlier whining sound brave.

“Just so you’ll know, Billy,” Driscoll called, “there’s not enough left on my plastic to pay if this airplane crashes.”

Billy’s shoulders lurched as if he’d found the remark funny, but he kept his gaze ahead. “Don’t sweat it,” he said. “All those rental outfits carry insurance.”

“Even if you lie on the flight plan?” Driscoll asked.

“They’ll just say we got blown off course.”

Yeah
, Driscoll thought. The paperwork said they were going to Jacksonville, but once they’d cleared Miami airspace, Billy had swung them some ninety degrees, dead on toward Nassau. That’d be quite a stiff breeze. They’d spent the first half hour waiting for some query, some chase plane to appear, but so far their luck had held.

Another bombshell of light strobed through the passenger cabin, and Driscoll had a glimpse of Brisa gripping the arms of his seat like a man who’d caught sight of hell.

In the next instant, the plane tilted sideways, sliding sharply away to the right as if the sky had collapsed beneath them. Billy wrestled frantically with the stick and the engines screamed with the strain of the dive. Even Driscoll, who had glommed on tightly to the armrests of his seat, wondered if the lightning blast had disabled something, wondered if it were all coming to an end. Still, it would be better than dying in bed, he told himself. Better than sitting around with the other old farts in the home, waiting for your prostate to explode.

Some of the noise in his ears was coming from Ray Brisa’s mouth, he realized, and another thing had occurred to him in the midst of the chaos: What if there were an afterlife, and what if the handcuffs didn’t snap on impact? What if he had to go through eternity chained to the ghost of Ray Brisa?

“You gonna pull her up, Billy?” he shouted.

“Whatever you say, boss,” Billy called back. Driscoll thought he saw a madman’s grin reflected from the windshield glass.

Billy leaned back hard on the stick and, miraculously, the plane’s nose picked up. Moments later, they were back in clear skies, leveling out, the whine of the engines dropping back what seemed about a hundred notches. A few miles ahead, Driscoll saw the lights of what looked like a hotel or condo tower rising up out of the darkness. A moment before, the view was of impending death. Now, by all appearances, they were homing in on a tropical resort.

“Sorry about the dive,” Billy said, glancing quickly over his shoulder. “Had to get us out of that crap in a hurry.”

“You’re the pilot,” Driscoll said, holding up his hand in surrender.

“That’s not the hurricane, you know,” Billy said. “Just garden-variety bad weather. The real storm’s kicking north. You might get lucky. The worst stuff might miss Nassau altogether.”

Driscoll nodded. “I won’t feel too bad if that happens.”

He glanced over to see what Brisa thought of the news, found him with his eyes closed, his head thrown back.

“We’re dead now, right?” Brisa said.

“If we were, I’d kill myself,” Driscoll said.

Brisa opened his eyes, gave him a look. “That makes no sense, man.”

“I’ll explain it to you sometime,” Driscoll said.

“Just get me on the ground,” Brisa said.

Driscoll glanced out the window. “Don’t tempt me.”

Driscoll was thinking again of the ignominy of going through eternity chained to this punk when he saw a brilliant flash of light spearing through the dark sky just ahead. Driscoll glanced anxiously at Billy, who seemed to have been expecting it.

“Roger that,” Billy said, and leaned hard on the stick. The plane banked again, swooping low over the combing waves toward land. The flashing lights shot up from the ground once again. Someone down there with a hand held beacon of some kind, Driscoll realized, signaling Billy in.

The plane was dropping rapidly now, and a screen of feathery limbs rushed past, so close to the starboard wingtip that Driscoll had to fight the impulse to throw up his arm.

“Jesus,” he said. “We that low?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Those trees we almost hit.”

“What trees?” Billy glanced over his shoulder, then turned back quickly as a draft rocked the plane again.

“I’m not looking, man. I am not opening my eyes.”

“Shut up,” Driscoll said.

When the plane steadied, Driscoll saw what he supposed was the landing strip laid out in front of them, a dim set of multicolored Christmas lights laid out in vague parallel lines running off into the darkness.

“Number seventeen fairway,” Billy said. He nodded at the skein of lights without turning. Driscoll thought that the ground seemed to be rushing up very quickly.

“You landed here before?”

“Sort of,” Billy said.

“Sort of?” Driscoll thought he was beginning to sound like Ray Brisa, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Before they turned the nines around,” Billy said, shrugging, calling over the noise of the straining engines. “It used to be number eight. Long par five. A real tough mother, too. You want to stay out of the traps down the left side.”

“You bet I do,” Driscoll said, feeling a mounting pressure from his own bladder. Maybe he’d been a little tough on Brisa, after all.

“I landed on it before, I played on it, too, back in the old days. I reached the green in two one time,” Billy was saying. “Driver and a three iron, stopped three feet from the cup.” Billy shook his head, made what seemed a sudden adjustment to something on the control panel. The engines were making a sound Driscoll didn’t remember hearing before.

“Missed the goddamned putt, though,” Billy said. “That’s the kind of luck I have.”

“Should we be talking about golf?” Driscoll said, watching Billy’s hands dance about the controls.

“Sorry,” Billy called. “I get a little nervous, I tend to rattle on, that’s all.”

Nervous?
Driscoll started to say something, gave it up. Billy was pointing out the windshield now. “They’re running those landing lights off batteries,” Billy said. “That’s why they’re so dim.”

“I’d just as soon not think about it,” Driscoll said. He saw the vague silhouettes of trees waving to the left and right. They were roaring down a chute of tall pines now. He wasn’t a pilot, but even he knew there’d be no chance to pull up now.

“The ganja boys get pissed off at a pilot, think he’s been running his own scam, they’ll string those lights right up against the trees or up to the side of a cliff,” Billy said. He shrugged, and Driscoll could see his smile in the reflection of the glass. “Upside of it is, you never even see it, you never know what hit you until it’s all over.”

Driscoll heard Brisa groan softly. He stared at Billy, his hands turned to steel on the armrests. “I like an optimist,” he said. He had to swallow hard before he could get the words out. He could be home at the fourplex drinking beer, he thought. He could be flying helicopter circles with Eddie Izquierdo and the trapeze girls.

“Hang on now,” Billy said. He flipped a switch and powerful landing beams shot out in front of the plane.

Driscoll caught his breath as the ground seemed to erupt just beneath them. The good news was that there was no cliff, no wall of trees rising just ahead: only a gently undulating ribbon of green fairway that rushed up to the wheels of the plane before he could think further about it. They skipped once, a light, foot-high hop, then were down for good, skidding a bit when the port wheels dug into a soggy section of grass.

“The members’ll be pissed off about the tire tracks in the morning,” Billy said. He was wrestling with the stick, pulling the plane into a steady taxi as the engines ground down to an almost-lull.

“I guess it won’t be the first time,” Driscoll said.

Billy laughed. “You guys gotta step smartly, once I make the loop down here by the green,” he said. “It’ll be what we call a quick turnaround.”

Driscoll turned to Brisa. “You hear that?” Brisa gave a grudging nod.

“What about the guys who set up the landing?” Driscoll said to Billy. “They okay?”

“For what you’re paying, you got nothing to worry about,” he said.

Driscoll nodded, was about to turn away, when Billy took his arm. “Look, Driscoll, you’re a pain in the ass, but you always did right by me. I hope you find out what happened to your friend. Whatever you need, these guys’ll take care of you. Consider it a favor.”

“I appreciate it, Billy.”

“Captain Michael Cudahy, okay?”

Driscoll stared at him for a moment. “Captain Cudahy,” he said, nodding. “Just make certain you get this plane back to Miami before my plastic melts, okay?”

Billy gave him something of a smile as he slowed the plane for its turn. Driscoll saw what must have been the seventeenth green out his window, caught a glimpse of a yawning sand trap, of a flagstick and a red pennant with a number stenciled, waving wildly in the prop wash…and then the plane was turned around, its nose pointed down the fairway in the direction they had come.

He leaned across Brisa, opened the door, jerked on the cuffs. “Where’s the steps?” Brisa grumbled, coming slowly up from his seat.

“
Banzai
, asshole,” Driscoll said, and took them flying out the open door.

They rolled over the soft grass together, the cuffs digging painfully into Driscoll’s wrist as he dragged Ray Brisa after him. He pulled himself to his feet, forcing Brisa up as well. The plane was already well down the fairway, its engines whining, picking up steam. A few more moments and the landing lights had snapped off. The engines kicked into a snarl, and Driscoll saw the plane’s dark silhouette rise up against the lightning-strobed sky. No rain, he thought, which seemed odd, given what they’d flown through. Despite Billy’s reassurances, Driscoll suspected there’d be plenty of weather to come.

They stood quietly together until the sound of the engines had disappeared and there was only the rush of the wind through the tall, feathery pines, and the rumble of approaching thunder in the distance. Even Brisa seemed chastened by the silence, by the realization that they were on their own.

“You have any idea what you’re doing?” Brisa said.

Driscoll sighed. “Stop trying to think, Ray. It doesn’t suit you.” The truth was, he wasn’t sure if what he was doing was worth all the effort. But he didn’t have many options, now, did he? If he thought this trip was a long shot, what were the chances of interesting any government agency in following up his tenuous skein of suspicions? “
Sure, Mr. Driscoll, we’ll get right on that, just as soon as the First Lady checks in
.”

His hacker friend Osvaldo had done as much as he could. Recordkeeping in the Caribbean nations was not as tidy as Driscoll might have hoped, but they’d finally discovered that the number was a Nassau listing, for an outfit called Tradewinds, Inc. There’d also been a street address, which meant nothing to Driscoll, of course. Then, a few keystrokes later, Osvaldo had tapped into Metro-Dade’s database, had run Tradewinds through the department’s crime files, but nothing had come up—no mention of the firm, no apparent connection with any of the sleazewads on file.

Driscoll got on the phone and convinced Dedric Bailey’s assistant to call their Bahamian counterparts, but with similar results. No files on Tradewinds. It had been too late to try any business association offices, though Driscoll doubted that would have yielded anything, either. When he’d finally dialed the number of Tradewinds itself, there had been nothing but the odd and endless series of double rings.

Of course, Driscoll could have simply left Bailey’s offices and gone home then, waited for a call from Harvey Clyde, or for a bright morning to start anew, but it just wasn’t possible, simply wasn’t in his makeup. Assume Driscoll were trapped in some collapsed building; would John Deal go home for a hearty meal and a good night’s sleep before seeing what he might do?

A man who had used Ray Brisa to steal police uniforms had used a telephone here in the Bahamas to make his initial contact. Driscoll had exactly that one lead, and he intended to pursue it as far as he possibly could. If this pursuit finally led him nowhere, to the blank wall of a cliff, then he would accept that fact. But he would not rest until he had brought himself to that pass, he simply could not, and if it meant melting a couple of credit cards and taking a near-hurricane plane ride with an idiot hoodlum to get there, then so be it.