High winds from the heat of the fire, convection whirls, apparently blew at gale force for several minutes.
So far we had discovered only one body in the rubble. Everyone was wondering the same thing: why only one? Why spare the others? Why blow up this trailer-park town at all?
It just didn’t make sense. Nothing did so far. But especially Shafer’s presence.
One of the local FBI agents, Ginny Moriarity, called out my name and I turned. She waved excitedly for me to come over. Now what?
I jogged back to where Agent Moriarity was standing with a couple of local cops. They all seemed exercized about something.
“We found the Bronco,” she told me. “No army trucks, but we located the Bronco in Wells.”
“What’s in Wells?” I asked Moriarity.
“An airport.”
Chapter 14
“LET’S GO!”
I was back in the FBI helicopter and headed to Wells in a hurry, hoping to catch up with the Weasel. It seemed like a long shot, but we didn’t have anything else. Agents Wade and Moriarity traveled with me. They didn’t want to miss this—whatever was waiting in Wells.
As we pulled up and away from what remained of Sunrise Valley, I was aware of the high desert; the former town was at an elevation over 4,000 feet.
Then I tuned out the surroundings and started thinking about Shafer, trying once again to figure what could possibly tie him to this mess, this disaster, this murder scene. Three years before, Shafer had kidnapped Christine Johnson. It had happened during a family vacation in Bermuda; at the time, Christine and I were engaged to be married. Neither of us knew it, but she was pregnant with Alex when
Shafer abducted her. We were never the same after her rescue. John Sampson, my best friend, and I found her in Jamaica. Christine was emotionally scarred, and, of course, I couldn’t blame her. Then she moved out to Seattle, where she lived with Alex. And I blamed Shafer for the custody struggle.
Who was he working with? One thing was obvious, and probably useful to the investigation: the firebombing at Sunrise Valley had involved a lot of people. So far we didn’t know who the men and women posing as U.S. Army were, but we did know that they weren’t real army national guardsmen. Sources at the Pentagon had helped confirm that much. Then there was the matter of the bomb that had leveled the town. Who made it? Probably somebody with military experience. Shafer had been a colonel in the British army, but he’d also served as a mercenary.
Lots of interesting connections, but nothing very clear yet.
The helicopter pilot turned to me. “We should be in visual contact with Wells as soon as we clear these mountains up ahead. We’ll see lights, anyway. But so will they. I don’t think we can sneak up on anybody out here in the desert.”
I nodded to him. “Just try to land as close as you can to the airport. We’ll coordinate with the state troopers. We might draw fire,” I added.
“Understood,” the pilot said.
I started to discuss our options with Wade and Moriarity. Should we try to land at the airport itself, or nearby in the desert? Had either of them fired their weapons before, or been fired on? I found out that they hadn’t. Neither of them. Terrific.
The pilot turned to us again. “Here we go. Airport should be coming up on our right. There.”
Suddenly I could see a small airfield with a two-story building and what looked like two airstrips. I spotted cars, maybe half a dozen, but I didn’t see a red Bronco yet.
Then I saw a small private plane taxiing and getting ready for takeoff.
Shafer? It didn’t seem likely to me, but neither did anything else so far.
“I thought we shut down Wells?” I called to the pilot.
“So did I. Maybe this is our boy. If it is, he’s gone. That’s a Learjet 55 and it moves pretty damn good.”
From that moment on, there was very little we could do but watch. The Learjet shot down one of the runways, then it was airborne, winging away from us and making it look ridiculously easy. I could imagine Geoffrey Shafer on board, looking back at the FBI helicopter, maybe giving us the finger. Or was he giving me the finger? Could he know that I was there?
A few minutes later we were on the ground at Wells. Almost immediately I got the jolting news that the Learjet was off radar.
“What do you mean ‘off radar’?” I asked the two techies inside the tiny Wells control room.
The older of the two answered. “What I mean is that the jet seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. It’s like it was never here.”