Vincenti admired Harley for standing up to Wilkes and most of the rest of the FBI. She was definitely someone he wanted to get to know better. He still wasn’t exactly clear what her relationship to former Vice President Kevin Mar- tindale really was, but Vincenti never liked to take a backseat when it came to the pursuit of women. He could take on Martindale any day of the week. That aside, he wished Harley would at least take some pride in knowing that Cazaux’s organization was busted up, his sources of funds cut off and confiscated, his butt being chased closer and closer every hour. Vincenti hoped Cazaux would dive back under whatever rock he crawled out from — Harley didn’t believe he would. But the U.S. Marshals and the FBI were hot on Cazaux’s organization’s heels, so if Cazaux’s wasn’t one of the bullet-riddled bodies she pulled from the mansion in New Jersey, he was as good as captured anyway.
Cambridge-Dorchester Airport, Maryland
That Same Time
The little airport on Choptank Bay in south-central Maryland was a busy and favorite destination for fishermen from all over the northeast United States, but at dusk it was as dark and as quiet as the countryside around it. The Patuxent River Naval Air Station was just thirty miles southwest, where the U.S. Navy trains all of its test pilots and conducts tests of new and unusual aircraft — it was the Navy equivalent of the Air Force’s Edwards Air Force Base — and the area just south of the little airport was often filled with Navy jets dogfighting or practicing aerobatics or unusual flight maneuvers. But promptly at nine P.M., at the very latest, the Navy jets went home. No one dared disturb the peaceful little Chesapeake Bay resort town in summertime unless you had a lot of political or financial pull…
… or unless you were an international terrorist, and you didn’t give a damn.
Inside a hangar rented for this mission, Gregory Townsend checked the attachment points of the devices under the wings of the single-engine Cessna 172. He had slung one BLU-93 fuel-air explosive canister under each wing, just outboard of the wing strut. It was a simple two- lug attachment, connected to a mechanical-pyrotechnic squib that used small explosive charges to pull the lugs out of the attachment points and let the bombs go. The charges were bigger than what was needed and would probably punch a hole in the Cessna’s thin aluminum wing, but that didn’t matter as long as the bombs were able to free-fall properly. As the bombs fell, a simple cable would pull an arming pin out of the canister. Three seconds later the canister would disperse the explosive vapor, and two seconds* after that three baseball-sized bomblets in the tail cone of the canister would detonate in the center of the vapor cloud, creating an explosion equivalent to ten thousand pounds of TNT. The fuel-air explosive blast would incinerate anything within a thousand feet of it and destroy or damage almost any structure within a half-mile.
Once the canisters were properly attached and checked, Townsend and two of his helpers threw tarps over the wings to hide the canisters and towed the aircraft south down the parking ramp and onto the parallel taxiway to a runup pad at the end of runway 34, using a rented pickup truck and a nylon tow strap. Cambridge-Dorchester Airport had a lot of airplanes parked there, but there was no fixed- base operator to service planes, so it was not unusual to see private autos towing them. There were a few onlookers outside the Runway Restaurant at the entrance to the little airport, the usual assortment of people that hung around airports day or night, but when they saw the airplane with the tarps over it, they assumed it was being fixed, so few paid it any more attention — onlookers came to see takeoffs and landings, not engine runups or fuel tanks being drained or scrubbed out. By the time Townsend and his soldiers reached the runup pad, they were away from most of the lights and the spectators.
Townsend towed the Cessna onto runway 34, then stepped into the cockpit and started its engine. His soldiers meanwhile moved the truck behind the plane, attached the tow cable to the rear tie-down bracket and the other end to the truck’s rear bumper, and pulled the nylon tow-strap tight so it held the plane in place.
Inside the cockpit, it took only fifteen seconds for the Global Positioning System satellite navigation unit to lock on to enough satellites for precision use. He checked the navigation data in the set. There were only three waypoints in the flight plan — an initial takeoff point about two miles off the departure end of the runway, a level-off point over Chesapeake Bay, and a destination: 38–53.917 North, 7727.312 West, elevation twelve feet mean sea level, the geographical coordinates of the Oval Office in the White House, Washington, D.C. programmed to the nearest six feet. Townsend checked that the GPS set was exchanging information with the Cessna’s autopilot, then activated the system. The GPS immediately inserted the first altitude into the system, which was one thousand feet, and its initial vertical velocity of three hundred feet per minute. The Cessna’s horizontal stabilizers moved leading-edge down slightly, ready to execute the autopilot’s commands. Townsend then stepped out of the cockpit and motioned to his soldiers to get ready for launch. He began to push in the throttle control for takeoff power and…
The Cessna’s one VHF radio suddenly crackled to life— Townsend didn’t even realize he had it on: “Cambridge UNICOM, Cambridge UNICOM, Seneca-43-double Pop, ten miles northeast of the field at two thousand five hundred, landing information please, go ahead.”
Before Townsend could respond, someone else on the airport radioed back, “Seneca-43 Poppa, Cambridge UNICOM, landing runway three-four, winds three-one-zero at five, altimeter two-niner-niner-eight, no observed traffic. Airport is closed right now, parking available but no fuel or service available, over.”
“Shit,” Townsend swore, pulling the throttle on the Cessna back to idle until he decided what to do. “What in bloody hell is he doing here?” In the past few days, as. his men monitored activity at the airport, there had not been one takeoff or landing after nine P.M., not one. Their whole mission was in jeopardy, and he hadn’t even launched it yet!
As if to answer his question, Townsend heard, “Hey, Ed, this is Paul,” the Seneca pilot replied. “Yeah, it’s just me. I gassed up at Cape May this time — their gas is down thirteen cents from last week. I had dinner out at Wildwood, too — that’s why I’m late. Hope the condo association doesn’t give me too much grief. I’ll try to keep the noise down.”
Townsend grabbed the microphone and, trying to tone down his British accent as much as possible, radioed, “Cambridge traffic, this is Cessna-125-Bravo. I’m doing a little engine and brake maintenance at the end of runway 34. I’ll be done in about five minutes.”
“Hey, Cessna-125B, are you running engines out there?” the guy on the ground asked. “You know you ain’t allowed to run engines out here after eight P.M. County ordinance.”