SILENT GUNS (45 page)

“
Jesus. That smarts,” Graves
cried, holding a hand to his ear. Madden held his .45 in both
hands, pointed it at the cockpit and ordered, “Come out of there,
both of you.” Four sets of eyes locked onto one another.

The door swung open and the pilot stepped out. The
co-pilot followed close behind. Madden studied them both carefully,
like a scientist might a newly encountered visitor from outer
space. He’d react instantly to any false move a sailor might make;
but, to him pilots were strange animals. Trent emerged from the
hatch shielding his eyes. The pilot’s head tracked him right off,
as if searching for him from the start.

“
Are you Trent?” The pilot’s face
was full, easy-going yet contempt showed around his mouth. He was
of good height, of an athletic build, with light-colored hair
parted off to one side. A pencil-thin mustache graced his upper
lip, undetectable except face-on. Trent noted an unemotional
flatness to his voice, but detected a sharp intelligence and a
latent quickness. His eyes gave him away. They were like sponges,
absorbing details, while his mind processed and stored
impressions.

“
Where’s the money?” Graves
interrupted.

The pilot almost smiled.

“
The suitcases are in the aft
cabin.”

“
Get them,” Graves
said.

“
Back off, Graves,” Trent
warned.

“
Where do you want them,
Commander?” Madden said, looking at Trent and ignoring
Graves.

“
Below decks. Down that hatch,”
Trent pointed. “Harper, check the ‘copter over.” They
waited.

“
It’s clean. No
weapons.”

“
You two, come with me,” Madden
ordered, leading. Graves followed, weapon at the ready. Trent
watched the pilots unload the suitcases. The handles and the
expandable side folds, cinched tight by wide leather straps, sagged
under their heavy contents. Flimsy, dull brass latches left a
hollow sense of security.

“
Frisk them, Madden,” Trent said.
Madden waved the .45. They placed their hands on the side of the
‘copter and spread their feet. Harper moved over and ran his hands
over their bodies, found nothing. He signified so by shaking his
head.

“
Move out.”

The pilots shuffled the bags below decks.

“
You first,” Madden said, prodding
the pilot with the .45. “Move aft. Down the corridor to the first
door on the right.”

The pilot hesitated. His mouth curled on itself as
he said, “I thought you wanted to be ferried off this ship.”

“
We do, but not yet,” Trent
replied. “I will let you know when I’m ready; meanwhile, you are
our guests.”

Madden walked them down a dark passageway and locked
them up in a room. Graves heaved the first suitcase up on the table
and had it opened by the time Madden returned. The two side folds
separated and fell neatly open. “Wow! Will you look at this,”
Graves said, his eyes bulged, a sea of stacked, green bundles
greeted him. He gleefully wrung his hands.

“
I’ve never seen so much dough,”
Madden cried.

“
It’s all marked and recorded;
but, where we’re going, it won’t make any difference.” Trent
laughed.

“
When do we divvy it up?” Graves
asked reticently.

“
Not until we get there,” Trent
said.

Graves kept staring at the money.

* * *

Charlie Wingate stood on the crest of the bluff
shifting his glasses left and right. He refocused them until he
could count the rivets holding the helicopter together. That his
head achingly throbbed reminded him he had stood here before.
Angling his body, he threw an occasional glance over his shoulder.
The icy wind that coursed over the bluff created a tumultuous roar.
Wingate dropped his glasses and cinched up his windbreaker. But for
the cold, the bluff was a perfect setting for a picnic. With the
proper lady-friend, of course, he smiled. That diversion drew a dim
regret. Preoccupied with his job, as he was, his social life was
nil. A small vessel, its single funnel pouring out a steady trail
of dark, greasy smoke, distracted him as it wandered across the
inlet. He prayed the ‘copter would lift off before dark. How
boring, he thought, and then he spotted the pilots emerge from
below decks. Snapping the glasses to his eyes, he pressed the
radio-telephone.

Conover answered, “I’ll switch you over to BASE,
Charlie. Simons is here, too.”

Wingate did a double take; Conover had never used
his first name before. He hesitated, then reported, “I count six
men. The pilots are seated in the cockpit checking out the
instrument panels. Looks like pre-flight check. Two guys are
standing in the aft cabin doorway; one’s the big guy, must be
Graves; the other checks out with Trent’s photo. The suitcases:
they’re loading them. The engines just kicked over; the blades are
rotating. Two more just climbed aboard.”

Simons looked at his watch, “Two hours and
forty-minutes. Why so long? Did they load anything else?”

Wingate replied, “Like I said: three suitcases;
unless you count two machine guns and plenty of rounds of ammo -
the big guy has bandoliers laced over both shoulders. He’s hugging
an M60, like he’s itching for somebody to piss him off. He’s
playing like he’s out of a John Wayne movie. And, a brief case and
that’s it.”

Conover interrupted, “With a load like that they
can’t get very far, they’ll need to set down somewhere soon.”

Simons queried, “Charlie. Did they put aboard any
water-gear; you know, life jackets, rubber rafts, paddles; that
sort of stuff.” Conover interrupted, “No need. That’s standard
stuff aboard a Pelican for water rescue missions…”

“
They’ve lifted off,” Wingate
broke in, a high-register edge to his voice. As the main rotor
wound up to a high pitch, the blades twisted upward easing the
heavily laden ‘copter up off the deck. He could almost feel the
‘copter strain under the extra weight. The bird rose about five
feet and hovered. As the pitch of the rotor blades changed, the
rotor blades carved out bigger and bigger chunks of sky. The pilot
slowly pulled up on the collective. Wingate watched the pilot tip
his bird slowly forward then accelerate upwards.

“
They banked and are headed south;
belay that, he’s circling and heading due west. He’s up about 100
feet and just turned on his anti-collision lights. He’s over the
hill and gone. Wingate stared out at the darkening Inlet. He’s all
yours, guys - as they say, over and out.”

* * *

Deep in the bowels of a cavernous building, in a
small town twenty-miles to the southeast, two FAA air-traffic
controllers sat before radar screens in the Seattle Air Traffic
Control Center, commonly referred to as Seattle Center. Radar
dishes rotated on the roof twenty-four hours a day, without let-up,
scanning the skies. Controllers posted watch on red, twenty-four
inch circular radar screens, each screen covering a pre-assigned
sector of airspace. Controllers identified, interrogated and
directed air traffic. Coded identification and flight information
identified each small blip when pilots selected the right
transponder switches. All types, sizes and shapes of aircraft from
the largest commercial jets to single-seat private airplanes to
helicopters, were tracked. If it flew, Seattle Center tracked it -
even when prying eyes were unwelcome. Drug running and other
illegal activities, were encouraged by the closeness to the
Canadian border.

Jim Duff stretched his arms and yawned, and then he
pushed his cursor onto a red square on the radar screen and
remarked, “This guy ain’t ‘squawking’, he started to transmit his
identification code, then cut it off.”

Pete Keller asked, “Which one?”

“
This one, right here,” Duff
pointed. “He just popped up out of nowhere. He must be a
helicopter, unless somebody just put in a runway at the Navy Yard.
Yep. Here he comes on again. He’s turned his transponder back on,
again. He’s green. Oops! He’s back to red, again. He killed his IFF
again. Money says he’s the one we tracked in three hours ago. Check
the computer.”

“
Is he the one the Coast Guard
asked us to watch for?” Keller asked. “He’s our target for
tonight,” Duff rustled through posted slips, then checked a
computer terminal and said, “Nope; no flight plan filed. He has to
be our ‘copter. What’s his heading?”

“
Due west. We lost him; he’s
dropped below a-hundred feet. He knows we can’t pick him up down
there. Watch it, he just popped up again, he had to, he was flying
into a mountain. Now he’s swinging north. Better let Coast Guard
Base Command Center (Center) know; I expect they’ve already picked
him up.”

One minute later Duff reported, “He’s theirs all
right. It’s a Pelican. They’re on him. The ‘copter picked up that
Trent gang off the
Missouri
. Center says they’re on the run:
where the hell are they gonna run to in a chopper?”

“
Oh! Geez, look at this, will ya,
Jim. Coast Guard ‘copters are popping up all over, three of them.
Here’s two more, small ones, probably Navy. The cops don’t have
any. Got ‘em. They’re Navy, all right. Looks like they’re being
positioned as spotters. The Coast Guard must figure Trent’s going
to head north to Canada and into the bushes. If he can set down and
get a head start, they’ll never catch him in those
woods.”

Duff said, “Center asks for area-wide surveillance.
They’re locking on for intercept. Looks like we got a good
old-fashioned chase coming up.”

“
Yeah! Like the Keystone cops,
only those clowns were on the ground. Nobody’s going to see this
one but us.”

Duff said, “I think I’ll stay over.”

“
What about that hot date you’ve
lined up?”

“
This promises to be more
exciting. Those clunkers can’t do much over one hundred forty
knots. It’ll be like watching a movie in slow motion.”

Keller offered, “Ten bucks.”

“
I’ll take the Coast
Guard.”

“
Gimme odds, then.”

* * *

Coast Guard Base Operations (Center) buzzed with
activity. The Center was crammed with charts and plot tables, and a
barrage of tracking equipment. A large table occupied the center of
the room. A large map, extending north into the far reaches of
southwestern British Columbia, east to Idaho, south into Oregon and
westward into the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean, lay spread
flat across its full surface. Concentric blue circles, of
twenty-five miles radius, spread out like waves made by a stone
dropped into a quiet pond. This was the tracking table. Crowded
with extra bodies, the air hung heavy with leftover sweat and
condensation. A marker spotted the renegade HH-60J. It had been
tagged Rabbit. Three other Coast Guard helicopters and two Navy
units were also tagged. Fifty-miles off the Washington Coast, two
Coast Guard cutters patrolled their stations on active alert. The
Yacona on her way back home to Kodiak, after a two-month
refurbishing stint in Seattle, was recalled and assigned a
station.

At Center Operations, Specialist Bjarne Ona sat off
to one side. His eyes, fixed on a green-eyed monster, followed a
pencil-lead thin line of light that rotated repeatedly identifying
aircraft passing through airspace. Ona was affectionately known as
Den Mother. He didn’t mind, but felt diminished when anyone sitting
in his chair assumed his mantle. Den Mother was in constant
communication with Seattle Center.

“
Den Mother, this is Seattle
Center,” the overhead speaker in Center blared. Center was a room
crammed full of equipment and people at Coast Guard, Seattle
District located along the edge of the Lake Washington Ship Canal.
Lt. Miller Elston, acting, was in charge. Chief Simons entered,
flicked his cigar and watched the ash drift to the floor and land
in a clog. Lt. Elston glanced up at the No Smoking sign posted over
the doorway. Detectives Jim Frances and Annette Gleese hovered over
Den Mother, awed at his concentration.

“
Too bad Charlie Wingate is going
to miss all this,” Conover said. Wingate was still miles plus a
ferryboat ride away.

Lt. Elston leaned on his hands across the tracking
table, his face made older by the weight of responsibility placed
on so young an officer. His superior, Lt. Cmdr. Rath, normally in
charge, was away on leave. Simons stood by the table in silence,
the tension could be sliced with a knife. Lt. Elston glanced
sideways and said, “Sit down, Chief, and have some coffee.” His
eyes flickered back to the table.

“
Den Mother, this is Seattle
Center, we have unidentified aircraft heading 270 out of the Navy
Yard.”

“
Seattle Center, this is Den
Mother. He’s our man. Can you stay with him?...Den Mother, we will
maintain, but on 270 he’ll be in the mountains in ten minutes… he’s
not squawking. His mode C is turned off. He won’t tell us who he
is…Seattle Center, who else is up there? Den Mother, no one we
don’t know. This guy is slow. He’s hugging the water. Seattle
Center, thanks, we’ll track. Keep tabs on big picture. Target is
Rabbit, be careful what you say - he’s one of us and tuned
in.”

“
Den Mother, Fox 3. I have a
possible visual on Rabbit on 290 heading.” Operations Specialist
Ona reported, a sober look set on his face, “Fox 3 is on his tail
five miles behind. Fox 2 is out of position north of the Straits.
Fox 1 is lying in ambush, here,” he pointed to a bright dot on the
screen that remained unmoving. “Rabbit is off Port Angeles. Which
way will he turn, north or west? Anybody’s guess?”