The morning sun lay just barely above the horizon, and it glimmered off the side of the DC-9 jetliner that sat at gate 23 of Trans-American's terminal at Kennedy International Airport. Dominick Trombetta looked down the clean lines of the airliner and along the two horizontal stripes of rich-toned red that contrasted nicely with the brilliant white of the fuselage. He turned to his men. "Let's move it," he said as he peeked down at his wristwatch for the fifth time in as many minutes. 6:10 A.M. As usual, his crews were running late. "What's going on here, a damn work slowdown or something?" No wonder this job is making me old.
"Sure thing, boss." The lead man in the cargo crew smiled to show he was only kidding — he knew enough not to take Trombetta too seriously, and also not to push him too far. "This one first?" he asked as he pointed at one of the crates on the security cart.
"Yes. Be careful. Get good leverage before you push against it."
The man nodded, then gestured to where he wanted the other three men to grab hold. They began to shove the first of the heavy cases of gold into the belly cargo compartment of the airplane.
"Careful. Easy, now." If one of those cases slipped backward and gouged a hole in the skin of the airliner, Trombetta knew that maintenance would delay the flight or, worse, ask for a substitute airplane. Any delay at this stage might mean trouble.
Trombetta looked at the most senior of the two armed guards stationed on either side of the security cart. "Evans, nothing goes in this compartment but our shipment. Don't let any of those assholes from the ramp bullshit you otherwise. Got that?"
"Yessir."
"I'll be right back. Nature calls." Satisfied, Trombetta ducked around the nose of the jetliner and climbed up the stairs that led to the jetway connected to the airplane. The briefcase he held in his hand began to tilt backward awkwardly because of the weight inside it. Trombetta worked on keeping the briefcase as straight as he could while he climbed the staircase slowly and carefully. McClure had told him that the package wasn't dangerous to handle, but Trombetta wasn't going to take any chances.
He opened the door to the jetway. To his left, the narrow tube that led to the terminal and the men's room — the tube the passengers would eventually walk down — remained relatively dark and completely deserted. But instead of turning left, Trombetta turned toward the airliner.
The door to the DC-9 jet was open. The aircraft door lay back against the fuselage, its massive bulk covering a portion of the cockpit side window. Just inside the airplane was the galley — in full view of everyone who entered the jetway. Trombetta cursed himself again for not convincing McClure to use a Boeing 727 instead, where at least the ship's galley was out of sight in the center of the cabin. For some reason, McClure had insisted on the smallest airliner they owned, the DC-9.
Trombetta examined the jetway's loading canopy. It was snugly in position so that no more than a few feet of the aircraft's exterior were visible to him. At least that part was good. If he couldn't see outside, then no one out there could see him as he went aboard.
Trombetta stepped into the cool, darkened interior of the DC-9. With its electrical system still shut down, the only light in the cabin came from outside where the morning sun crept through the long rows of cabin windows. The forward upper corner of the galley. Make it fast.
Trombetta's hand had begun to shake again. He laid his briefcase on the galley counter, then snapped open its latches. Inside sat the square black package that McClure had provided him with, its exterior covered with long strands of double-sided adhesive tape.
"Damn." Trombetta's perspiration-soaked fingers fumbled repeatedly with the tape as he tried to peel off its outside covering. Finally, he managed to get the tape started. Soon it was completely exposed. He took out the plastic package, then shoved the peelings from the tape back into his briefcase.
Forward upper corner of the galley. Trombetta unlatched the top cabinet and stuck in his hand. The area was tall and deep, and he needed to push himself onto the galley counter ledge in order to reach in all the way.
There was a sudden loud noise from outside the airplane. Trombetta froze in position. He knew full well that there was no way he could explain what he was doing, why he was fooling around in the galley, why he hadn't gone into the terminal building. Trombetta turned his head slowly to look up the jetway.
Dark, no one there. Trombetta closed his eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks. The noise had evidently come from below — from his own men, probably. For an instant. Trombetta wondered if one of the morons who worked for him had dropped a crate and broken it open. Maybe the crate that he had put McClure's other package in. Trombetta pushed that thought out of his mind — he could only handle one nightmare at a time.
He wiped his face with his free hand, to push away some of his sweat. Then he began to position the plastic package farther back into the upper compartment of the galley. Phoenix, Arizona. Two more months. Make this quick. Trombetta's probing fingers found the corner. He pushed hard to get the package to stick against the aluminum. Please stick. Don't fall behind the cabinet. He removed his hand from the package tentatively. To his surprise, the package remained firmly against the upper corner. Great. McClure knows what he's doing after all.
Trombetta tested the strength of the tape a few times by pushing against the package. It remained securely in place against the dark aluminum corner of the upper galley compartment.
Trombetta's heart pounded so loudly he could hardly hear himself think. Two more months. Arizona, Warm and dry air. Clear blue skies. No more cold weather. No more bullshit. Trombetta pulled his arm out of the cabinet, then eased himself off the ledge of the galley counter. He looked around once more to be certain that he hadn't left anything that could be traced back to him, then snapped his briefcase shut. He grabbed the briefcase and stepped out of the airplane, then out of the jetway and onto the steps that led to the ramp.
Dominick Trombetta tried to let out a sigh of relief, but found that he couldn't because of the continued pounding of his heart and the shaking of his hands. But none of that mattered now. His job was done. Arizona in two months. Now all he had to do was make the final telephone call to McClure, then pick up his money.
<>
It was 6:20 A.M., eastern standard time, when Paul Talbot decided that they had sailed far enough eastbound — they had gone nearly two hundred miles already — to execute the next step in the plan. He turned himself around in the captain's chair of the Yorktown and looked toward the stem of the ship.
The visibility had picked up somewhat during the last few hours, but so had the wind and the seas — both just as predicted. Rain showers surrounded the ship on all sides and the base of the heavy clouds remained ragged and low, but it looked to Talbot as if they had enough for their operational purposes. He took one more sip of coffee from his mug, put it back in the holder, then spun himself around. He lay his hand against the interphone switch. "Engine room from bridge. Our position and conditions are correct for dumping."
There was a long pause before a reply came out from the speaker in the bridge. "Sure thing, pop. I'll leave one man in each engine room to monitor. The rest of us will be topside in a few minutes."
"Understand," Talbot answered. He gazed out ahead of the Yorktown, where small whitecaps had just begun to form ahead of the bow. The giant ship rolled slowly but continually in the growing swells. "Has the number two bearing temperature remained within limits?"
"It's a little warm, but your idea worked fine. I'll have Davis repeat the oiling procedure if and when it reaches its limits again."
"Okay." Talbot held his finger on the transmit switch, but he couldn't find anything else to say to them below. If this were a normal crew, there would have been something else to add, some expression of feeling, satisfaction, camaraderie. But if this were a normal crew, they wouldn't be about to do what was ahead. "Attempt to complete the dumping as quickly as possible. When I see you on the deck, I'll ring for dead slow."
"Okay, pop."
Talbot turned away from the interphone. It would be several minutes before they came up to the flight deck and got themselves into position for the dumping. Until then, he had nothing to do but continue to steer the eastbound course and monitor the radar set for targets.
Talbot stepped up to the small screen and huddled over it. An electronic line swept back and forth like a metronome across the radar's green-colored tube. It kept time with the motions of its antenna, which Yang had clamped to the outside ledge of the bridge the night before.
Talbot watched as the electronic sweep line went from the port to the starboard quarter, then back again. A few of the heavier rain showers were displayed on the scope as fuzzy areas of off-colored white, but no other targets of substance were within the radar's range of twenty miles. That meant no ships and, of course, no masses of land or shorelines.
Talbot marveled for a moment at how well the portable radar had worked for him as he had steered the Yorktown out of the fogshrouded mouth of Charleston harbor. He had made continual adjustments at the helm to avoid what the radar had depicted as the shorelines, and it was an easier job than he had thought it would be. Once out on the open sea — only fifteen minutes of careful sailing after they had swung away from the dock at Patriot's Point — the radar gave enough advance notice of conflicting ships that Talbot easily altered course to avoid them by a wide margin. They didn't want to run the risk of being spotted by some other vessel, even though the darkness and the fog were a perfect cover to prevent any visual sightings. Their avoidance of other sea traffic, the low clouds and the heavy weather, plus the action they were about to take, would give them the time and distance they needed from any Coast Guard pursuit, if one were eventually launched. McClure had been right so far, none of this had been a problem.
A problem. You could have a serious problem. Talbot let out a deep sigh. The words of his son-in-law — his ex-son-in-law, now that the divorce papers had arrived — ran through his thoughts. It was one year ago this month. September seventeenth. If only he had listened to Russ about the crack, if only it hadn't been Keith's birthday, if only he hadn't been so damn pigheaded. Talbot walked to the window behind the captain's chair and looked out. The carrier's flight deck was still empty, none of them had yet to come up from below. He ran his hand along the metal framework of the bridge windows, his fingers pushing through the rivulets of water that had leaked around the old and dried weather stripping. Talbot gazed absently across the angled flight deck and into the bleakness of the rolling sea.
"Grandpa! Look!"
Talbot turned, but he knew from the sickening sound what he would see. The small crack he had noticed months before in the sailboat's mast — the one Russ had told him about repeatedly — had let go in the sudden gust that had swept down on them out of the afternoon thunderstorm. "Hold on! Keith, grab Thomas!" The mast had splintered in the center, then tumbled. Shards of wood flew in all directions. The boat itself, only twenty-two feet long and already working hard at remaining seaworthy in the suddenly churning sea beneath the afternoon storm that had caught them more than a mile from shore, began to roll uncontrollably toward starboard. "Hang on!"
Talbot threw his body to the port rail in a desperate attempt to keep the boat upright, but it was too late. They began to roll over, slowly at first, then more rapidly as the boat broached from the incessant walls of water that pounded against them.
"Grandpa! Help me!"
It was Thomas' voice, and Talbot turned in time to see the eight-year-old boy lose his grip on the rail and slide into the ocean. "Hang on! Hang on! Don't let go!" Talbot screamed irrationally, even though he could plainly see that the boy had nothing within reach to grab. "Hang on! I'm coming!" He dove into the water near the boy, but the downed mast of the sailboat had come between them. "Grab the sail! Thomas! The sail!"
"Help! Help! My life jacket!"
Though he could only glimpse the boy every few seconds because the tangled sail and splintered pole rose and fell between them as it was carried on the violent waves and swells, he could see that the boy's life jacket had unsnapped or been cut by one of the roughened pieces of wood. The jacket had partially come off. It hung half off his shoulders... was in his arms ... pulled against his chest.. ."Hold the jacket! Don't let it go!" Talbot pushed frantically against the downed sail and, finally, clawed his way around it toward where he had last seen the boy.
But Thomas was gone. The torn life jacket floated on the water a few feet away, but the boy was nowhere in sight. Talbot thrashed around in the water in all directions and screamed Thomas' name as long and as loud as he could, until he finally swallowed so much water he nearly could not catch his own breath. God. Help me, God.
"Grandpa!"
Talbot turned toward the new voice. It was Keith, eleven years old that very day, a good swimmer, a strong boy. "Keith! Where are you! Hang on!" He finally saw the boy as he bobbed up and down in the depression of a swell, at least twenty feet from the overturned sailboat. Thirty feet from where Talbot was. "I'm coming!"
But Talbot had to fight his way back through the debris, past the overturned boat, before he got himself on the clear side. He began to swim into the face of the waves. They splashed over his head repeatedly, until the taste of salt water was etched so deeply into his lungs that he couldn't stop himself from gagging. "Keith!" he yelled loudly, the one time he inhaled a full enough breath to get a word out.
There was no answer. He thought once that he heard a faint cry from the distance, but he couldn't be sure. Keith, too, had disappeared. He was somewhere beyond the crest of the next series of waves, or the next one after that. Or the next.
When Paul Talbot glanced down from the motion of the distant sea and back to the Yorktown’s deck, he saw Yang and the others below. They waved indignantly at him. Evidently, they had been on the deck and signaling him for some time. Talbot acknowledged their wave, turned to the interphone and, after clearing his throat, called below for the ship's engines to be slowed. The Yorktown came to a near standstill in the water.
<>
"Asshole," Richard Yang said to no one in particular as he jerked his thumb toward the bridge. He walked to where his three men stood on the open flight deck. "Okay," he said to the younger two, "you cut the cables. John will drive the tug."
John Solenko mounted the small yellow tug and put it in gear. He drove it ahead slowly, to where the first of the five display aircraft were moored to the deck of the Yorktown. "It'll go off that way," Solenko shouted over the wind and noise from the chugging of the tug's engine.
"Give them another minute to clear that last cable."
"Right." Solenko sat back and watched the two younger men finish their work. When the last cable had been cut, he put the tug into gear and steered it straight ahead. Pushing the aircraft from nose to tail, he quickly had the old, engineless jet fighter teetering on the edge of the flight deck as if it were no more than a plastic model about to fall off a boy's bedroom shelf.
"Careful," Yang shouted above the noise. "That's the only tug we've got."
"Screw you." Solenko backed a few inches off, then jerked the tug forward. The momentum of the collision caused the old fighter airplane to bounce rearwards. It tilted on its main wheels, rolled over the edge, then fell tail first off the carrier and into the sea. The two younger men cheered, and Solenko gave an exaggerated bow from his sitting position on the tug. "Tell Mary what a good job I did," Solenko shouted.
"Wonderful performance," Yang said loudly. "Your wife will be proud. But not until we finish with the other four." Yang gestured across the flight deck, to where the remaining aircraft — rusty old relics from one war or another — were positioned. "Once they're in the water, Davis will release the oil slick from below. That should make it look like this is the spot where this tub of shit," Yang said as he stomped his foot against the Yorktown's deck, "went under. They'll figure the boilers blew or something like that, and we went straight down."
"With all hands."
"That's right." Yang began to move toward the next display aircraft, the three other men behind him. "Let's get this done quickly, so we can get back to full speed. We've still got another hundred miles before we reach the rendezvous point."
"Don't forget the net," one of the younger men added.
"Of course not." Yang smiled indulgently. "You'll get a chance to erect the net very soon. As soon as we get these four pieces of aeronautical crap into the water."
<>
A light morning breeze blew across Long Island Sound from the south and it carried a refreshing smell of salt water with it, even as far north as Westchester County Airport. Edward McClure stood a few feet from the door of the white Learjet. The sunlight played off his tanned skin while the breeze added just enough airflow to make the experience exhilarating. He enjoyed most any physical sensation, and this one was quite pleasant.
"Almost done," the copilot called out as he walked around the tip of the left wing.
"Take your time." McClure tugged at the vest of his brown suit to straighten it, then adjusted the fall of his jacket. Through his dark sunglasses he watched as the Learjet's copilot finished the preflight inspection of the airplane he had just chartered, all the while casually stroking the neatly trimmed corners of his dark mustache.
"We're all set," the copilot said as he approached the door. It was company policy to use the customer's name whenever possible, but the name they had gotten from this particular gentleman — John Smith — was too far afield to be taken very seriously. Still, his money was good — and he had paid in cash. "After you, sir."
"Thank you." McClure jumped into the small cabin and sat in the back. He watched the copilot close the entrance door, then climb into the cockpit with the pilot. "Incidentally," McClure called out before the two of them began their cockpit routines, "how long will it take to get to Kennedy Airport? My friend should be there shortly."
"On a nice day like this," the pilot answered as he pointed to the cloudless sky above them, "not very long. It's only forty miles. Fifteen minutes at the most, by 8:00 o'clock."
"Very good."
"The flight from Kennedy Airport to West Palm Beach will be a little over two hours."
"Fine." McClure sat back. While the engines were started and the Learjet taxied out, he ran the schedule of events — those already past, those still to come — through his mind again. Trombetta was due to show at 8:15. The Trans-American flight was scheduled to depart at 9:00. Everything had worked perfectly so far. There would even be a few extra minutes to kill. McClure decided that the next time he did something like this — not that there would ever be a need for a next time, not after this score — he would time it so precisely that there wouldn't be an extra minute in it anywhere. Just like he had done in Vietnam. Loose schedules made for loose operations.
The Learjet took off on the southeast runway and headed straight for Kennedy Airport. McClure split his attention between the view out the window — the flat blue waters of Long Island Sound, then Oyster Bay, Roosevelt Raceway and Belmont Park as they began the final approach for landing — and a peek at what the pilots were doing. He quickly sized them up as two technocrats who made a big deal out of nothing; two amateurs, basically. McClure smiled to himself. He wondered how either of those hotshots would've been in 'Nam, a helicopter gunship strapped to their asses, tracer bullets flying inches from their heads. Not well, he was sure. He laughed out loud.
"On the ground in three minutes," the copilot called back.
"Thank you." McClure reached for his briefcase, pulled it onto his lap and opened it. There were two metal cylinders inside, each with a pressure gauge mounted near its valve stem. He checked both pressure gauges. Both were okay.
The Learjet swept in low over a highway, then the airport boundary, the runway, and finally made its touchdown. It maneuvered off the runway and began the circuitous taxi route to the general aviation parking area on the west side of the field. McClure sat upright in his seat — it was almost time to start the next phase of his plan. He slipped off his sunglasses, took the oxygen bottle out of his briefcase, turned the valve, then pulled the mask over his face. He waited until the pilot brought the Lear to a stop at a crossing intersection to allow an opposite-direction jumbo jet to taxi by. McClure took the second bottle, the blue spherical one, out of his briefcase and opened its valve. The hiss of escaping gas melded in with the noise from the Lear's engines.
The copilot was the first to grab for his throat. He rose up in his seat, as far as his cinched seatbelt and shoulder harness would allow. He was gasping, but with an odd, frightened sound mixed in — a combination of a cough, a wheeze and a cry.
"What's wrong?" The pilot had begun to unfasten his seat-belt and reach across to his copilot before the toxic fumes finally hit him. He let out a short, curdled scream before he threw back his head and began to claw irrationally at his face. His fingernails cut long red gashes into his cheeks. After a few seconds of frenzied motions, his hands fell heavily to his sides and his head dropped.
McClure watched in fascination. Incredible. He looked down at the blue bottle he held in his lap. Very effective. Well worth the cost. He closed the bottle's valve, laid it back in the briefcase, then rose from his seat. He knew he had to act quickly to avoid becoming conspicuous to the control tower.
McClure moved carefully, well aware that if the oxygen mask on his face slipped off then he, too, would die. Death itself didn't frighten him — he had long ago grown accustomed to the prospect of it while he was in Vietnam — but he couldn't jeopardize the project because of a silly physical error. Life had become too exciting again, too much worth whatever efforts it required. He would not allow it to slip away too carelessly. The exhilaration he felt at that moment was worth more than any price he might ever have to pay.
McClure held the oxygen bottle closely against his chest as he reached for the Learjet's door handle. When the door popped open, the loud whine of the jet engines filled the small cabin. But so did the breeze from outside. In just a few seconds, McClure was certain that the toxic gas had been dispelled from the airplane and had been carried harmlessly away. He took off his mask and let the oxygen bottle drop to the floor, then took a deep breath and waited.
The corner of his lips curled into a smile. All was well, he felt fine. McClure exhaled slowly, then turned toward the cockpit.
The pilot had unfastened his seat belt before he died, but the copilot had not, so McClure reached across his body and unlatched the buckle. He then dragged each of them out of their cockpit seats slowly, careful not to have their arms or legs come in contact with any of the controls. He placed the bodies of both men into seats in the cabin, then slipped back to the cockpit and into the pilot's seat.
"Lear twenty-four Bravo," the cockpit speaker blared. "I repeat, continue along the outer taxiway. Cleared to the general aviation ramp."
McClure grabbed the radio microphone. "Roger. Understand. Lear twenty-four Bravo is cleared to continue along the outer taxiway." He released the parking brake, pushed the twin throttles a few inches forward, then wheeled the Learjet to the left and down the long strip of blacktop that led to the assigned parking area. As he entered the ramp, he parked toward the rear where he would be less easily seen from the operations building. McClure set the aircraft's parking brake and shut down the engines. It was 8:05. Trombetta was due any minute. Yet there was still one more job in the cabin for him to accomplish.
McClure moved back to where the pilots were. He strapped their bodies into the passenger seats, then maneuvered their heads, arms and shoulders to make it appear as if they were asleep. That would satisfy any casual onlooker from the outside. Then McClure reached around to the hip pocket of the dead pilot and pulled out the man's wallet. "Sorry," he said as he opened the wallet and pulled out the wad of bills, "but if I'm going to fly the trip, then I'm the one who should be paid." He closed the empty wallet and shoved it back into the dead man's pocket, then placed the stack of bills inside his own jacket pocket. McClure was about to return to the cockpit when he spotted Trombetta. The old man walked directly toward the Learjet from across the ramp. McClure waited until Trombetta approached, then swung open the aircraft's door. "Come in," he said. "Come in and we'll conclude our business."
"Just give me my money." Trombetta was slightly out of breath, and there was the glow of perspiration across his forehead and the top of his balding skull — the combination of physical exertion, general nervousness, plus apprehension about dealing with McClure. Trombetta knew he had no choice, that he had come too far already to not try to collect his money. He prayed that McClure would give him no trouble — yet he now realized that there was little he would be able to do if McClure simply refused to pay any more than the token down payment he had already made. Trombetta climbed aboard the jet. "Who are these people?" Trombetta asked suddenly when he saw the inert bodies of the two pilots strapped in the passenger seats. He took a half step backward, away from McClure.
"The pilots I stole the Learjet from. I drugged them. They'll be sleeping for a long time." A hell of a long time. McClure managed a friendly smile. "Listen, I'm running on a tight schedule — let's get this over with. I've got your money."
"Fine." Trombetta couldn't take his eyes off the two men strapped in the seats a few feet from him.
"Let me close the door," McClure announced matter-of-factly as he maneuvered around Trombetta and toward the left side wall of the Lear.
"No. Leave the door open."
"I need to close it. I have your money here and I don't want anyone outside seeing me pay it to you. That would be no good for either of us." Without waiting for his answer, McClure swung the Lear's door closed. "You do the counting," McClure added as he pushed down on the door's locking handle. "I don't want any bitching later on that I cheated you." He reached into his inside jacket pocket as if he were going to retrieve his billfold. Instead, he pulled out a small black pistol.
"What the hell's going on?" Trombetta visibly squirmed. "I did everything you asked. What's the matter?"
"Nothing much is going on," McClure answered as he shrugged his shoulders and made his comment as if his behavior were as much a mystery to him as anyone else. "It’s just loose ends. I hate loose ends. You might become one."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"It's perfectly obvious to me. Sit down." McClure produced a set of silver handcuffs out of his other jacket pocket.
"What are you doing?" Trombetta couldn't take his eyes off the barrel of the pistol as he sat himself in the right rear seat. The gun was pointed directly at his chest.
"Don't worry, you'll get paid. Here's the money." With his free hand McClure reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the wad of bills he had taken from the pilot. He waved them in front of Trombetta's nose before he put them back into his coat pocket. "But not yet. Not until this job is finished. Then I'll land and you can take your money. Then you can leave."
"No." Trombetta didn't know what else to say. "There's no need for this. There's no need to handcuff me," he stammered. "I'm with you." He was sorry as hell he had ever dealt with McClure in the first place: He should have known better than to trust a madman.
"It's only until takeoff. I don't want you to change your mind. You might try to get away."
"I won't."
McClure smiled. "True. Especially if you're cuffed to the airplane." He laughed loudly, then reached forward and snapped one end of the cuff to Trombetta's right wrist, the other end to the metal brace that ran beneath the seat. With the small pistol pointed directly at Trombetta, McClure removed the key from the handcuffs and put it in his coat pocket. "It won't be uncomfortable for you, although you might get bored. If one of my two drugged pilots wakes up early," McClure said as he pointed at the two dead men in the forward passenger seats, "you can strike up a conversation. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do." Without waiting for Trombetta to lodge another protest, McClure stepped back into the cockpit.
He adjusted the pilot's seat so he would be comfortable, then pulled up his briefcase and laid it open on the copilot's chair. Satisfied that the cockpit was ready, he selected the proper radio frequency, canceled their flight plan to West Palm Beach and substituted in its place a nine o'clock departure directly out of the area and to the North. Those jobs done, McClure began to monitor the appropriate frequency for the first call-up from Trans-American Flight 255. "By the way," he called over his shoulder, "if any of you three gentlemen want a cup of coffee, just let me know." McClure glanced toward the back of the plane in time to see the expression of horror register on Trombetta's face. The old man had obviously figured out the actual condition of the two pilots in the cabin. Equally obvious now was the fact that Trombetta didn't know what to make of McClure, what would happen next.
McClure laughed again, then turned his attention back to the radio. Once Flight 255 had begun to taxi out, he would start up the Learjet's engines and leave. That would put him a few minutes ahead of the Trans-American flight — a few minutes ahead of the airliner that was now the total focus of his attention.