“Niner-niner-four, roger. We’ll file a full report when we reach O-R-D. It looked like less than three hundred feet vertical. Thanks for your help today.”
“Have a good one.”
The rest of the trip to Chicago O’Hare went without incident.
But the strain of emergency maneuvers over Upper New York Bay stretched the longer of the turbine-disk cracks in Number One engine to within 3.7 inches of the disk’s edge. The next flight operation would push the crack through the rim and unbalance the disk by a tiny fraction. It would be enough, however, to produce a microscopic wobble and a slight increase in vibrations that would compound themselves until the disk shattered.
Schaeffer, Pace, and McGill started their meal with two rounds of drinks and an appetizer of something with smoked salmon that the chef did especially for Schaeffer.
They followed with veal, each choosing a different preparation, but all compatible with Schaeffer’s choice of a 1985 Volnay.
McGill begged off after one glass of wine, pleading the need to arrive with some degree of sobriety back at the Dulles Marriott. So Pace and Schaeffer split the rest, and neither was feeling any pain when the mousse, cognac, and coffee arrived.
During the meal, no one spoke of the Dulles accident or any facet of the investigation and the turmoil surrounding it. They talked of the new baseball season and the inability of Washington to get a pro franchise despite the presence of a great stadium, of the chances the Green Bay Packers would ever again have a championship team, of politics and Presidents, of Watergate and other old political scandals.
When McGill checked his watch, it was after 9:30.
“This has been outstanding,” he said. “I needed it. I’d like to leave some money with you and get on my way. It’s a long trip back to Dulles, and I’ve got an early start tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to buy your way out,” Schaeffer said. “This is on us. We owe you.”
“Why don’t we part even-up?” McGill suggested. “I accept dinner in return for the help on your stories. No debts owed or collectible.”
“Sounds like a fair deal, Mike,” Schaeffer said, extending his hand. “How are you getting back to Dulles?”
“I’ve got my rental in town,” he said. “I followed Steve in this afternoon. Thanks again for dinner. It was a great break.” He turned to Pace. “Is there a drugstore near here? I ran out of shaving cream this morning, and I hate getting ripped off at hotel newsstands.”
Pace gave him directions.
McGill collected his leather jacket from the comely redhead at the checkroom, dropping a dollar bill on the brown plastic tray sitting on the lower half of the closet’s Dutch door. He shrugged into the coat, returning a smile from the young lady that suggested she wouldn’t mind getting to know him without his coat and other selected items of clothing. Too bad, he thought. There’s never time when I need it.
Outside, McGill spotted the drugstore at the same moment the passenger sitting across the street in a blue Ford van glimpsed him leaving Maison Rouge. Without taking his eyes off the pilot, Wade Stock reached over and tapped Sylvester Bonaro and jerked his head in McGill’s direction. They saw that McGill wasn’t heading for the garage where he’d parked his car. They exchanged a few words and left the van, walking quickly across the street at mid-block. When McGill went into the drugstore, they followed.
Inside the store, they spotted the pilot immediately. He had a can of shave cream in his hand and was walking the aisles, apparently looking for something else. Stock unzipped the front of his windbreaker and walked to the prescription counter. Bonaro remained near the door, crouching down as if to look at a bottom rack of magazines but, in fact, concealing his face from other customers. He saw his partner talking to the pharmacist behind the high counter and noticed with satisfaction the look of fear that crossed the pharmacist’s face. Although he couldn’t see it, he knew Stock had drawn his gun and was demanding a bag filled with amphetamines. The pharmacist started shaking his head when an elderly woman screamed.
“He’s got a gun!”
Stock ignored the woman and kept his eyes on the pharmacist, who was moving to his left, probably toward an alarm button.
“Don’t do it!” Stock yelled, and an instant later, he fired. The pharmacist crashed backward into the shelves that held rows of drug jars, spilling several onto the floor. A bright-crimson stain started spreading across his white coat at the right shoulder, and he sagged as the elderly woman began screaming hysterically.
Behind him, Bonaro could hear other customers in the store running for the front doors, a few screaming themselves. Bonaro glanced at McGill, whose concentration was riveted on the prescription counter. As Stock turned toward the elderly woman, turning his back to the pilot, McGill began advancing.
“Don’t hurt me, please!” the elderly woman implored. “I didn’t see anything. Please!”
“Shut up,” Stock said. McGill was twenty feet from him, still advancing. The woman continued to scream, and the gunman fired a single shot directly into her open mouth. Bonaro, who was still crouched, saw the bullet blow off the back of the old woman’s head, blood and brain matter mingling with her blue-white hair as she hurtled backward and out of sight behind a display of foot-care products.
McGill came up directly behind Stock. In a single motion, he grabbed the gunman’s arm at the wrist, twisted it up and behind his back and exerted strong downward pressure on the thumb. Stock screamed and dropped his gun. Without letting Stock go, McGill kicked the pistol out of reach beyond the prescription counter.
“Now we’ll wait for the police, you fucking piece of shit,” McGill spat as he pushed Stock face-first over the prescription counter and held him down. Bonaro had a clear shot. He withdrew a chrome-plated .357 Magnum with a six-inch barrel from his waistband, pointed it at McGill and fired once, the report so loud it reverberated through the store like a cannon shot.
McGill was blown forward, over Stock, then tumbled backward off his feet. It felt to him as if he’d been hit with a baseball bat, but there was no pain. He was on the floor, although he had no notion how he got there. The man with the big silver gun was standing over him, and McGill was looking up the barrel into the blackness of his own future.
“A setup,” he said, the harsh whisper gurgling up past the blood flooding his throat from a shattered lung.
He heard the man standing over him say, “You’ll never know,” and saw a spit of flame from the gun’s muzzle. McGill thought it strange that he heard no sound. He felt his body convulse, and then he felt nothing, for the second shot had plunged through his chest, nicking his heart and severing his spinal cord. Instead of pain, McGill felt a blanket of icy cold envelop him. He dropped into a long tunnel and spiraled down into total darkness.
Pace and Schaeffer watched McGill walk through the archway and into the foyer leading to the street in front of Maison Rouge.
“He’s a hell of a guy, Steve,” Schaeffer said. “How’d you meet him?”
Pace repeated the story as they waited for the waiter to return with Schaeffer’s credit card and the bill. The restaurant was busy, and the process took nearly fifteen minutes. That business accounted for, they got up to leave and heard the first distant shriek of sirens.
It was a common sound along that stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue, a main corridor to the George Washington University Hospital. But these sirens weren’t going to the hospital. They sounded as though they were stopping right outside the restaurant. Pace felt his heart rate click up.