We sat together in the predawn darkness, on the edge of the all but empty Springfield airport, in the cockpit of his small Cessna-a single-engine, high-winged four-seater equipped with long-distance fuel tanks. We had flown here earlier from the grass field in Dummerston, where he normally kept the plane. Not a man much given to idle chatter, he’d been content to sit in silence ever since we’d arrived a half-hour earlier, watching the eastern horizon’s slow-motion appearance as it was touched by the sun’s first glimmerings. That was fine with me. I’d taken advantage of the quiet to catch a long-awaited nap.
“Good morning, sports fans.” Spinney’s obnoxiously cheery voice came over the portable radio in my lap like some metal-toned jack-in-the-box.
I opened my eyes and brought the radio to my mouth. “You better have more than that.”
Al laughed quietly beside me.
“I have a stirring from an early riser.”
“Recognize him from any of our mug shots?”
“Yup, but not one of the ones with a name under it. You people took it in Bratt.”
That made it pretty likely he was connected to Truong. “What’s he up to?”
“Crossed the street for breakfast about fifteen minutes ago. I thought I’d let you sleep in.”
“Lester hasn’t changed much,” Al murmured.
“Al says you’re still a pain in the ass.”
There was a brief burst of laughter before the radio went dead.
“Nice boy,” Al said softly, the white of his hair beginning to gleam in the dawn light.
The radio came to life again five minutes later. “Zulu from Tango One. You might want to start your engines.”
Spinney had become official-the serious work was about to begin. We were Zulu-reflecting the aircraft’s official handle of N-for-November 4265 Z-for-Zulu-the tail cars were Tango One through Four.
“Where’s he headed?” I asked, foregoing the formalities.
“North on 91.”
Al began calmly hitting switches on the equipment-packed console before him. Springfield’s airport was a “noncontrolled” facility, meaning there was no control tower, and no personnel to man one. We taxied silently to the foot of the field like the only dancers in a dimly lit ballroom, and Al turned up the engine speed in preparation for takeoff. We both put on sound-deadening headsets, plugged into both the plane’s radio and the portable in my lap. The headsets had mouthpieces that hung on wire brackets directly before our lips.
Al keyed the airplane’s mike button three times to electronically light up the runway, and announced to any other pilots who might be flying nearby, “Cessna November 4265 Zulu departing Springfield for the northwest.” He then turned up the throttle and eased off on the brakes.
Moments later, I called Spinney. “Tango One from Zulu. We’re in the air.”
“Roger that.” Hammond took the plane up about four thousand feet, cut back on the power, and began lazily floating above the interstate.
“What’s your 20, Tango One?” I asked.
“’Bout ten miles north of the exit.”
Without comment, Al straightened us out, ran along the pale cement ribbon far below for a couple of minutes, and then cut back his speed again. The black roof of the van was as clear as if it had been marked with a bull’s-eye.
“Okay, Tango One, you can lay back. We’re in visual contact.”
“You got it.”
The surveillance of the camper van went on for the entire day. In the towns, where traffic was heavier, Al handed it over to Spinney and his rotation of four cars; in the countryside, where any vehicle hanging back would’ve stuck out, the roles were reversed. Only once, halfway to Burlington, during a two-hour lunch stop by the van driver, did we land to refuel and stretch our legs. And during the whole process, the van did what we’d hoped it would-stopping at Asian-owned restaurants, laundries, nightclubs, and rooming houses in Springfield, Ludlow, Lebanon, Woodstock, West Fairlee, St. Johnsbury, Montpelier, and places in between-slowly but surely working its way toward Burlington. At every stop, Spinney reported to Dan Flynn, who consulted his records and then contacted Walt Frazier, who in turn checked his.
Town after town, the unwitting driver caused the wires and airwaves to hum in his wake. Each business he called on prompted a look into the owner’s past criminal history, his financial records, and immigrant status. Name by name, Flynn and Frazier put together family histories, found out how many properties were owned by whom, identified whatever links connected the players, and found out if any of them were on file with the DEA, ATF, the Secret Service, INS, the Border Patrol, Customs, the IRS, Interpol, any state agencies from here to California, the Québec and Ontario Provincial Police, the Toronto Police and the MUC, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and of course the FBI.
My job, however, involved little of that. For hours, I sat high above the state I was born and brought up in, lost in its comforting contours. Looking down across the spectacularly broken land-the rounded pastures and deep-cut gullies, the streams and lakes and forested mountains-all washed in the verdure that had given the state its name-I felt a return of the inner calm I longed for, and which recent events had so riled.
I took the time to reflect on the losses I’d been refusing to acknowledge, to bury the dead and make a grudging peace with my mistakes. But while that helped to a certain extent, it also allowed me to focus on one of the truly innocent victims of this whole bloody mess. Surrounded by some of the most beautiful landscapes this country has to offer, my mind’s eye could only see the troubled face of Amy Lee.
By late afternoon, when the van pulled out of Burlington and headed toward St. Albans, we thought we’d connected all but one of the dots north of Springfield, and that St. Albans would likely be the last stop. There, however, we were in for a surprise.
Spinney was once again in the lead car. “Zulu from Tango One. I don’t think he’s heading for the barn like we thought. He just cut across the interstate on 105, toward Enosburg. You boys handle that?”
Our anonymous van driver had proven a gregarious type, staying for long periods at several of his stops, apparently mixing a little chitchat with business. Twice, the surveillance cars had been able to park close enough to observe him through binoculars, eating or drinking with his contacts and obviously enjoying himself. That had also been the case in St. Albans, where he’d had an early supper, and where we’d assumed he would spend the night.
Spinney’s question to us, however, was less concerned with a long day running to overtime. All of us were acutely aware of the failing light, and with the adjustments our strategy would have to undergo. It was Al Hammond’s call to make.
I looked over at him and raised my eyebrows, causing him to speak for one of the rare times all day. “Night doesn’t bother me any.”
I waited for more, got nothing, and asked Spinney if he’d copied that direct. I could hear the smile in his response. “I guess if he can do it, so can we.”
Route 105 runs along the Vermont-Canadian border, zigzagging from town to town, almost touching the boundary at a couple of points. From Enosburg Falls to East Berkshire to Richford, the gently rolling, sparsely populated land is utterly dominated by the looming presence of Jay Peak to the east, toward which we were flying. In contrast to the soft hills and shallow valleys below, rapidly vanishing into the gloom of the encroaching darkness, Jay stood like a white-topped tidal wave-huge, expansive, vaguely threatening-glowing in the day’s sole remaining light.
Similarly, Al and I were still bathed in the soft red glow to our back reflecting off the curved windshield and casting a pink wash on the map across my lap. And yet we were overflying a world soon to be as opaque as a black hole. Looking up at the orange-and-red-tinted clouds overhead, I suddenly felt vulnerable and alone, cast adrift from the lightness above, and yet abandoned by the very land I’d been receiving comfort from mere moments earlier. It was, I knew, only a metaphorical sensation, stimulated by too much stress and a lack of sleep, but it served as a reminder of what I was facing-and perhaps of my chances of success. Given what had happened to Benny Travers, just for the sake of a little gained turf, or what Dennis DeFlorio and Tony Brandt and Amy Lee had suffered in the name of “keeping face,” I began feeling like a tired swimmer in deep water, praying for a foothold.