He unwrapped the bundle. He smiled when he saw the little red letters saying ARMED. He stuck his hand in his jeans pocket and pulled out the directions he’d written in the kitchen. Took a deep pull on the old brewski. Smoothed the scrap of paper out on his worktable and went to work.
Unbelievable. How good he was. He had it programmed in thirty goddamn seconds. Just seeing the 3000 flashing made him smile.
Who wants to be a millionaire?
Rafael Gomez, that’s who. Yeah, baby.
Then he leaned in through the driver’s window and put the little box on the front seat. He got in and started the piece of crap Yugo. He looked at his watch glowing in the dark. He had an hour and forty-five minutes to relax and enjoy himself. Couple of drinks, calm down, and think.
Because there was still a part of the plan he hadn’t wanted to deal with, but now he had to face it head on.
The problem he had to figure out, now that he’d programmed the goddamn thing was, once he’d pushed the two buttons, what the fuck did he do then?
He got behind the wheel and started the car, thinking hard as he could about the one thing he’d been trying so hard not to think about.
Namely, how did he make sure his family got the hell out of Dodge before the fit hit the shan when all them damn roaches checked out? That was the one-million-dollar question, all right. Had to work on that one.
Good news was he had thirty whole hours to figure that beauty out. Give a man with his kind of brainpower that much time, he’d be more than likely to come up with the goddamn secret of life!
He put the car in reverse and backed out of the garage. He’d start to figure something out, once he sloshed a couple of cold vodkas down the pipe. Another family emergency in Miami? Would that work again so soon? Probably not.
He backed into the street and put the car in first, splashing through puddles, tearing up his street at a pretty good clip. He could afford to speed. Weren’t too many MPs cruising around in their Humvees this time of night. And after all, he was on a pretty tight deadline.
As he drove with his left hand, he unwrapped the bundle. The RC felt cool to his touch on the seat beside him. He looked down at the red window that was flashing ARMED and then 3000, back and forth. So, he was ready. Focused.
He pulled into the PX parking lot. Something was wrong. All the windows were black. Goddamn. Sunday night. He’d totally forgotten. PX was closed on Sunday night. He pounded on the steering wheel. • Now what? Here’s what. Go around the back, break a window in the door, and let himself in! Hello? Duh!
Steal a Stoli for Jesus!
The hootch would be locked up behind the metal gate back of the bar. Nothing serious. He had a tool kit in the trunk. Wirecutters, everything. He could jimmy anything. Hell, probably jimmy the back door at the White House no problema if he had to. He’d always been good with tools. Good with anything. He saw the little box winking at him. Bad if somebody took his little friend RC while he was on a mission. Real bad. He decided to take it with him along with the tool kit. Swig of Bud, toss the empty in the backseat, and it’s party time, pretty mama!
“RC call home” popped into his mind and he giggled.
He climbed out of the car and turned his face up into the falling rain. He opened his mouth and let the sweet water fill it. So this was what life was like on top of the world.
Christ, it was great to be rich. Don’t let anybody kid you.
Sweet.
42
“Call the ball, Kittyhawke,” squawked the irritated voice of the air boss in his headphones.
Calling the ball.
That’s what the U.S. Navy carrier pilots called it.
If the ball showed green, you were coming in too high. Red, too low. A line of white lights was what you wanted to see.
He watched the lights at the after deck flash green, then red, then green as his little plane bucked the thirty-mile-an-hour headwind. On final approach, what you were mostly worried about was a stall, and Alex was definitely worried. His jumpsuit was wet with the sweat of his adrenaline boost.
He’d already had two unsuccessful attempted landings.
A stall now would be catastrophic.
His headphones squawked again.
“You’ve got to land here, son,” the air boss said. “This is where the hot chow is.”
The carrier had turned into the prevailing wind. It was traveling at flank speed to give maximum wind over the deck, helping pilots to reduce their landing speeds. From experience, Alex knew that wind, wave, air, and skill must be in total sync for him to get home.
Alex had lined up once more, approaching the fantail of the heaving 1,000-foot steel runway of the U.S. aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy from astern. The 82,000-ton Kennedy, or “Big John” as she was called in the service, had a four-and-a-half-acre deck. Because of the heavy rolling swells, the huge flight deck was lazily rolling ten degrees side to side, but it was rising and falling with the wave action, causing twenty-to thirty-foot surges of the deck.
A carrier landing like this in his old Royal Navy Tomcat was one thing. All those thousands of pounds of thrust gave you a lot of control. A lot of options. Too low? Pull up. Too high, nose her down. Miss the wire? Power out at full throttle. His little seaplane was a different matter entirely. He’d already been waved off twice. The landing signal officer he’d been arguing with on the radio had finally told him to please just go home.
He’d considered just landing alongside the carrier and letting them send a launch to pick him up. The giant swells took that idea out of his consideration set fairly quickly. There was no going home, either. The cold front had moved in solidly and the conditions had worsened to the point where flying back to the Exumas was not an option. He told the LSO he was coming back around. His earphones crackled again.
“Kittyhawke, you’re three-quarters of a mile out. Call the ball.”
“Roger. Got the ball,” Hawke said.
He felt the little plane shudder as he lined up on his target. Wheels down, full flaps, tailhook down, prop pitch into full low, adjusting his trim tabs to get Kittyhawke into proper trim. His fuel was at total rich mix for maximum power recovery. He knew he’d have to dump the plane down hard to have any chance of his tailhook catching the wire. There were four arrester wires on the deck. Catching one of them would be his only chance of stopping short of the water at the other end of the carrier.
“Kittyhawke, you’re way below glide path. Pull up!”
“Roger,” Hawke said. “No problem.”
In fact, it was a problem. He didn’t think there was any power left in the old Packard-Merlin engine. He was pitching and yawing and the headwind was killing him. Somehow, he had to get his nose up. This was his last shot. He hauled back on the stick. What the hell. He was going in one way or the other.
He’d gotten his nose up a little but the deck was still rising, lifted by the enormous swells. Christ. Fall, damn it, fall! Sweat stung his eyes. It was going to be very, very close.
At the last second, he saw the deck pause majestically and finally begin its long slow fall. He’d timed the swell perfectly. That’s the only thing that saved him. The deck began to drop at precisely the right instant. He cleared by maybe a couple of feet and he banged the little plane down hard. It bounced and jarred him and he said a little prayer, instantly realizing he had another problem. He might just bounce right over all of the four arrester wires.
In his old Tomcat jet fighter, he’d had sufficient power for a bolter. Go to full throttle in a touch-and-go and power out if you miss the last wire.