Stock slid the videotape cartridge from his camera, slid it into the VCR, and clicked the play bar. There was the usual delay while blank leader wound through the heads.
What Parkhall saw over the next half-hour was riveting. His assassins had shot vivid action footage of the fire and the efforts to put it out. But his biggest reaction came when the video camera panned to a silver Toyota that pulled up behind the blue Ford van. Two men got out. One of them Parkhall knew on sight.
“McGill,” Parkhall whispered. “So you’re the one.”
“The one what?” Bonaro asked.
“He’s the one Antravanian called, was going to have the little meeting with. I don’t know the other guy. Either of you recognize him?”
Bonaro and Stock both shook their heads, neither moving his eyes from the television screen. When the fire was out, rescue workers extricated what was left of the driver from the burned ruins of his car. When the victim was carried in a black body bag up the hillside, the police could be seen ordering the spectators to leave. And the tape ended.
Parkhall realized his hands were sweating and wiped them up the thighs of his jeans. He was an engineer by trade, and he had little appetite for the work done that night. But his distaste was overcome by his greed. His pot at the end of this rainbow held both gold and revenge.
He’d spent twenty-four years of his career at Warner Woolcott, a small, innovative company doing remarkable work on aviation and space programs. He’d quit abruptly seven years earlier after being passed over for promotion. WW executives told him he wouldn’t be promoted until he learned to get along with his peers and supervisors. He was frequently arrogant and often preposterous, and other engineers went out of their way not to work with him.
Parkhall had walked out with nothing but his vested pension and an expression of interest from the NTSB. Although agency officials were aware of Parkhall’s reputation, they’d lost so many people to the glamour, prestige, and salaries of the private sector that the temptation to take a little back was great. Parkhall accepted the government job at a significant cut in pay in the belief another private company would snatch him up as soon as his departure from WW became known. He even fancied a bidding war for his services. It didn’t happen.
He languished, growing more bitter and more certain that when his time came to strike back at the industry, his would be a monumental blow. This was his chance, his distaste for violence notwithstanding. There was a million dollars cash in this, and there was no act of violence, no deed of sabotage, no threat to public safety he was unable to rationalize to claim his just due.
“You did well,” he said, crossing the room to a nightstand. He pulled a hotel envelope from the drawer and handed it to Bonaro. “This is payment in full. I know where I can reach you if we need you again. Take the equipment. Leave the tape.”
Bonaro and Stock dismantled and packed their VCR. They left without a word.
Parkhall wandered over to the window, which looked out over Dulles. The noise-proofing and the distance from the terminal prevented any sound from penetrating. He whispered to the night that couldn’t hear him, “Stay out of this, McGill, or you’re dead, too.”
If Parkhall had been in New York at John F. Kennedy Airport instead of at Washington Dulles, he could have seen a big silver-and-blue Sexton 811, owned by TransAmerican Airlines, glide in for a perfect landing on Runway 13R.
As they taxied toward their gate, the captain and first officer grinned at each other.
“This is a dream ship,” the first officer gushed.
“No less,” the captain agreed. “She feels so damned solid, like she could fly forever.”
But the aircraft they had come to love carried the registration NTA2464.
And flying forever was one thing she would not be able to do.
Pace picked up the Chronicle lying in front of his apartment door and shuffled in wearily as daylight began to brighten the eastern sky. He was still a little bit drunk.
He and McGill had remained at the scene of the accident until the Virginia cops ordered them and the two who’d arrived in the beat-up blue van to leave. They’d gone back to the Dulles Marriott to have a drink and talk things over. The bar was closed, but McGill had a bottle of Black Jack in his room. So they got a bucket of ice, set the ice and the bottle between them on the round, phony-wood-grain motel-room table, and tried to make sense of the night.
They’d had little success in coming to any supportable conclusions, though they’d had great success depleting the supply of Jack Daniel’s. Pace thought he wasn’t being affected by the liquor until he got up to leave several hours later and felt the room tilt.
McGill suggested he spend what was left of the night in the unused second double bed right there, but Pace said he had to be at work early and insisted on going home. McGill let him go after extracting a promise that Pace would stay off roads like Georgetown Pike and stick to highways that were wider and straighter.
They’d walked to Pace’s car still debating whether the death they witnessed earlier had any connection to their investigation.
“I guess we’ll know when you find out who the poor sap was,” McGill said. “I keep thinking about the voice of the man who called. It sounded sincere and frightened. I’m not imagining it. I wouldn’t have called you out in the middle of the night if I hadn’t been convinced it was legit.”
“That’s the fourth time you’ve said that. It’s beginning to sound like an apology.”
“That’s not the way I mean it.”
They reached Pace’s Honda sedan. “Let’s do as we agreed and go on with our jobs and see where this leads us, if anywhere,” the reporter summed up. “You watch goings-on at the hangar, and I’ll check on the body’s ID first thing in the morning.”
“It is morning,” McGill said, checking his watch.
“Oh, fuck,” Pace responded. “I’ll do it first thing later this morning.”
He got into the car, keyed the engine, and thumbed the electric buttons that lowered the front windows on both the driver and passenger sides. He would leave them open, and perhaps the fresh air would clear his head.
“Put your seatbelt on, hotshot,” McGill ordered. “And drive carefully. I’ll call you.”
Pace made it home with a minimum of weaving, although he did draw a long look from a Virginia highway patrolman who passed him on the Beltway. Pace nodded and apparently was sufficiently convincing. By the time he turned the key in his door, he felt ready for the junk heap.
The red light on his answering machine was flashing. Pace hit the playback button.
It was Kathy. She’d called late the night before.
“Hi, Steve. It’s just before eleven, and I thought you’d be home. You sure are working hard.” Pace heard her take a deep breath. “Daddy called this afternoon. The airline released Jonny’s body to us.” Her voice cracked. God, how he wanted to be with her. “I’m flying to Boston early tomorrow for the funeral on Monday—Betsy decided Jonny should be buried in the family plot—but I’m not going to stay in Boston very long. You know Daddy. Get over the grief and get on with life. He told me he wants me to come back to Washington right after the funeral. So I’ll be home Monday night. Before I left, I wanted to say thanks for everything you’ve done, and I wanted, well, I’d like to see you when I get back. Good luck with your stories. ’Bye.”
He also had a message to call Glenn Brennan if he got home before midnight, but he was many hours late for that.