The Outsider (James Bishop 4) (16 page)

Perfect.

The guy was sitting half in, half out, and inspecting the floor and seat hinges as he made notations in the folder. Finally he turned from his work and stared at the visitors through his mirrored aviator sunglasses. ‘Help you, fellas?’

‘Possibly,’ Bishop said. ‘You free to take us up today?’

The pilot removed his sunglasses as he looked at each of them. Bishop noticed his eyes were of the palest blue, even more so than Bishop’s own. ‘You mean you want a lesson?’

‘Sure.’

The pilot frowned as he studied them. ‘You both just walked here from town?’

Bishop shook his head. ‘A friend gave us a lift to the intersection back there. We walked the rest.’

‘Oh, okay. So either of you ever been behind the controls of one of these babies before?’

‘Not knowingly,’ Bishop said.

The pilot smiled. ‘First-timers, huh? Well, nothing wrong with that. And as you can see, we ain’t exactly rushed off our feet at the moment so I guess we can go up anytime you want.’ The pilot held out his hand. ‘Charlie Hooper, by the way.’

They all shook hands and Bishop said, ‘You the owner, Charlie?’

‘Nah, just a lowly pilot. Owner’s back in Oklahoma, I think. We rarely see much of him these days.’ He stood up and said, ‘So you guys wanna follow me back to the office? We’ll fix the paperwork and take your credit card details, then get you started.’

Bishop sighed. He really hated doing this. He pulled the Glock from the back of his waistband and showed it to Charlie.

‘Maybe we can just skip the paperwork part altogether,’ he said.

While Charlie was finishing his pre-flight checks, he looked over at Bishop sitting in the co-pilot’s seat and said, ‘Look, you sure you want to do this? I don’t—’

‘Save your breath,’ Bishop said. ‘All you need to know is that we both need to get out of this area as fast as possible. That’s your job for today. Nothing else, just that.’

‘Hey, you’re not gonna hurt me, are you? I got a wife and kids back home.’

‘Nothing’ll happen if you do what I tell you. Now I noticed there’s no control tower around here, so I assume you use standard CTAF procedures for getting clearance?’

Charlie blew air from his cheeks. ‘Yeah, there’s a UNICOM base station at Vegas Airport, and we use their frequency to co-ordinate all our landings and departures. They don’t give us clearance or anything, we do that ourselves. They just warn us if there’s a lot of traffic in the area, or if there’s bad weather ahead, things like that.’ He frowned. ‘So you
have
flown before?’

‘A little.’ He wasn’t about to tell Charlie his time in the air had mostly been in helicopters. A guy Bishop knew in Jersey named Mandrake had given him a few lessons, but work seemed to keep getting in the way for both of them recently. ‘Better get them on the line then. And no hidden code words, Charlie. I’m not stupid. Just take us where we want to go with the minimum of hassle so we can all carry on with our lives. That sound good to you?’

‘That sounds real good. You don’t have to worry about me, fella. I’m no hero.’

‘That’s what I like to hear.’

‘So where we heading?’

‘East.’

‘Anywhere in particular?’

‘Just east for now.’

In the back seat, Strickland tapped his feet on the floor and said, ‘Come on, come on, let’s go.’

‘Relax, will you?’ Bishop said. ‘Charlie, who’s on office duty today?’

‘Just Rosie, our receptionist. Guy, our other pilot, is probably napping in one of the old offices. Why?’

‘I’m thinking maybe you better call this Rosie and let her know you’ll be out the rest of the day. Just tell her you’ve got a couple of cash-paying customers who want to spend the rest of the day learning the ropes and that she shouldn’t wait up for you.’

The pilot nodded, pulled a cell phone from a pocket and pressed a button. Bishop quickly took the phone from him and held it to his ear. Once he heard a female voice say, ‘Saguara Flight School,’ he handed it back and let Charlie say his lines.

Bishop had already read the Cessna’s specs and knew what the plane was capable of. He leaned forward and checked the fuel gauge. The needle showed both tanks were almost full. He made a few quick mental calculations while he listened to Charlie. Fifty-plus gallons at an average cruise speed of a hundred knots or more meant they could probably cover five hundred miles in four to five hours, which would take them as far as Colorado. A quarter of the way. Possibly. If the wind was with them. Refuelling might be a problem, though, especially with no money. He’d have to think his options through carefully once they were up in the air and make a decision then. He checked his watch and saw it was 10.48. Amazing. It was hard to believe it was even the same day, let alone the same morning.

Charlie finished his call and hung up the phone.

‘That was real good,’ Bishop said, taking the cell and placing it on the floor at his feet. ‘Now it’s UNICOM’s turn.’

He watched Charlie switch on the radio and adjust the frequency to 122.700 MHz. When he donned his headset, Bishop also put his on. He listened as Charlie spoke with an operator named Ben, giving his general heading and asking if there was any reason he couldn’t take off this minute. There wasn’t. It wasn’t a long conversation.

‘Before we take off,’ Bishop said. ‘You got anything to eat or drink in here?’

‘There’s some emergency rations I keep in the aft baggage hold,’ Charlie said. ‘You get to it through that small door on the portside.’

Bishop got out and stepped over to the small cargo door at the back. He opened the latch and saw an old knapsack lodged further in, alongside some tools and some rope. He pulled the bag out and undid the zip. Inside was an assortment of candy bars and energy bars, a single large carton of concentrated orange juice, two bottles of water, three packs of biscuits, three packs of beef jerky, one pack of dried mango and one of dried apricot. Charlie was clearly a man who planned ahead. Good for him.

Back in his seat, Bishop passed the knapsack to Strickland and then buckled his safety belt.

‘Okay, here we go,’ Charlie said, and made a few final checks before pushing the red fuel control button all the way in. Then he pressed the red master switch, jiggled the primer and pulled it out until it was locked into position. He turned the ignition key to the right. The engine turned over but failed to catch. He tried again, moving the throttle back and forth at the same time. This time the engine caught. The nose propeller kicked in and within seconds it was just a circular blur in front of them.

Bishop sat back as Charlie slowly taxied them towards the start of the landing strip. Once they were on the centreline and pointing north, he increased the throttle to two thousand rpms. They started moving down the runway, gathering speed as the engine rose in pitch.

The runway was a lot smoother than Bishop had expected. He kept his eye on the air speed indicator. At fifty-five knots Charlie pulled slowly back on the control yoke, the plane continued to gain speed and then the wheels left the ground and they were airborne. As they rose into the air Charlie dipped the right wing a little and kept them on a north-easterly heading for another mile before levelling out. Then he slowly turned the yoke to the right until the compass needle was pointing east.

‘Excellent, Charlie,’ Bishop said. ‘No muss, no fuss. Just how I like it.’ He turned to Strickland in the rear. ‘Reach into that bag and pass me the orange juice, will you?’

Bishop looked out the portside window and tried to make out the Rocky Mountains he knew were down there, twelve thousand feet below, but there was too much cloud cover to see anything clearly. They’d already been in the air for just over four hours, with the sky gradually becoming more overcast the further east they went. Despite the heating in the plane, he was also feeling the sizeable drop in temperature.

Pulling up the collar of his suit jacket, he turned in his seat and saw Strickland in the back, also looking out the window and still looking as jittery as when they’d taken off. No doubt he was thinking of Barney, imagining what the boy must be going through right now. But Barney was a pretty tough kid for his age. Bishop had an idea the boy was probably handling the situation a lot better than Strickland gave him credit for. He hoped so, but he also knew it was pointless worrying about things beyond his power.

Instead his mind drifted to Angela Delaney again, and that brief conversation they’d had over coffee this morning. She’d clearly wanted to ask him to share her vacation time with her, and probably would have asked outright once the assignment was over. He would have accepted, too. He still liked her a lot. Or maybe she was thinking of something more than just another brief holiday romance this time, maybe she wanted something a little more concrete in her life. Or then again, maybe he was overthinking it. He’d never find out now.

All he knew for sure was Delaney was dead and that somebody on her side of the fence had leaked their whereabouts to Hartnell and set this morning’s events in motion. In the end it always came down to one person, and Bishop knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he knew the identity of that person.

But that could all wait until the proper time. The boy was their number one priority now.

He looked at Charlie in the next seat, currently staring straight ahead, all his concentration on the sky before them. Bishop checked his watch and saw it was a minute to three, Vegas time, making it almost four o’clock here in Northern Colorado. Twenty minutes earlier Charlie had contacted the base station at the municipal airport where they were due to land and asked if it was possible to refuel while they were there. It was a small airport he said he’d used before, situated midway between the towns of Fort Morgan and Wiggins. The guy at the other end had remembered Charlie from before and said he’d get back to him.

If all went to plan, and with two or three more stops along the way, they could be in Ohio by tomorrow morning, a whole twenty-four hours ahead of schedule. This would give Bishop enough time to plan for the exchange to come. Although his first priority was getting Barney back, he wasn’t planning on handing Strickland over if he could possibly avoid it. Bishop wanted Barney safe, but for a whole bunch of reasons he also wanted Hartnell’s ass in a sling, and Strickland was the key to achieving that.

But of the few options available, all required some kind of outside help, which was where the problems lay. Because Bishop knew better than most how the Marshals Service worked. He’d had first-hand experience of their methods not too long ago, so he knew the first rule of evasion was to steer clear of all known associates. He had no idea of the scale of the search being undertaken, but he had to assume that pretty much everyone he’d ever known in his adult-life would now be under scrutiny by the various law enforcement agencies. Same went for Strickland. Which meant they were totally cut off.

But an answer would come. He was sure if it. Think long enough on a problem and a solution always presented itself.

A sudden jarring shift in the plane’s altitude shook Bishop out of his thoughts. But it was just a little turbulence, and he watched Charlie calmly pull back slightly on the control yoke as he returned them to their original position.

A minute later, Charlie raised a hand to his mic. Bishop quickly put his own headset on and heard the same voice as before say, ‘… Echo One, this is Wiggins Ground, do you read, over?’

‘Wiggins Ground,’ Charlie replied, ‘this is Cessna Calveda Golf Echo One, I read you, over.’

‘Sorry for the delay, Cessna, but that’s an affirmative on the refuelling. We should have enough on-site for you.’

‘That’s great, Wiggins. The only problem is I forgot my wallet. Can you charge it to the school?’

‘No problem, Cessna. So, uh, tell me, how’s things up there? Everything okay?’

Bishop’s antennae suddenly shot up. He didn’t like the sound of this.

‘Sure, we’re fine,’ Charlie said. ‘No problems this trip.’

That was it. Bishop glared at Charlie and made a rapid chopping motion with his hand.
Wrap it up, right now
.

‘Gotta go, Wiggins,’ Charlie said, eyes wide. ‘See you on the ground. Over and out.’

‘Over and out,’ came the reply. ‘Take care of yourself.’

Bishop switched off the radio and took off his headset. Charlie did the same.

‘And you were doing so well up till then,’ Bishop said. ‘I thought you said you were no hero.’

‘I’m not. I wasn’t lying.’

‘No? Then what was that I just heard? “
No problems this trip.
” That
is
what you said, isn’t it?’

Charlie just looked at him.

‘What’s happening?’ Strickland said from the back.

‘Our pilot here just gave our friends down below a heads-up. I told you I’m not an idiot, Charlie. When I first started taking chopper lessons I read up on call signals, and using the word “trip” in a sentence is a trigger to alert the ground that you’ve been hijacked. Somehow it wouldn’t surprise me to find a whole cadre of cops waiting for us once we landed. Or are you going to tell me I’m just imagining things?’

‘Look,’ Charlie said, ‘it just came out before I could think it through. I didn’t—’

‘Don’t make things worse,’ Bishop said, and Charlie got the message and shut up.

‘How did they even suspect something was up?’ Strickland asked.

Bishop shrugged. ‘Back during his first communication with the base station, he could have given them a signal I didn’t catch. Something that got them worried. I thought it was taking too long for them to get back to us. How about it, Charlie? That what happened?’

Charlie didn’t look at all well. ‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘you’re gonna kill me.’

‘Relax, Charlie, I’m not a psychopath. Granted, you’ve complicated things for us, but you can still get yourself out of this by taking this thing down and landing at the first available opportunity. Then after I’ve tied you up, we’ll go our own way and call it evens.’