‘Good morning,’ he heard her saying in her assertive manner, ‘I’m booked on the flight to Jackson Hole at eleven twenty-five.’
‘Ok ma’am, let me just check,’ replied the counter agent. He heard the sound of a keyboard being tapped.
‘Any checkin baggage ma’am?’
‘No, I’m just carrying this,’ Gerry replied. Samms heard the brief chatter of a printer.
‘Ok here’s your boarding pass. You need to go to gate 36 in an hour or so. Have a good flight.’
‘Thank you.’
Samms watched her wander aimlessly for a few moments and then she walked purposefully towards the Coffee Beanery concession. He returned to the ticket desk and booked himself on the 11:25 flight to Jackson. He reluctantly showed his imitation FBI ID to the duty manager but thus ensured that he was not by some calamitous misfortune seated close to, or even alongside, passenger Edith Williams. Samms nodded in satisfaction, and thanked the woman for her help. He walked past the coffee shop and saw Gerry sipping her drink and gazing out into the middle distance. He smiled and then took the elevator to the mezzanine floor and entered the smokers’ bar where he knew she would never go. He ordered a beer and lit a cigar.
An hour later Samms was undeniably nervous as he lined up for boarding. There were twenty others standing between him and Tate but he felt that at any moment she would swing round and recognise him despite the disguise. The contact lenses were irritating his eyes and he blinked rapidly behind his sunglasses. She suddenly swung round, but instead of looking at him she glared at the man behind her.
‘Just hold on would you?’ he heard her call out in a strong clear voice. ‘If you jostle me one more time I’ll deck you!’
There was an immediate buzz of disapproval from her fellow passengers and Samms was a little concerned that some zealous member of security would come over and suggest that she was too aggressive to be permitted to travel, but now it appeared that the incident was over. At least her journey through two major airports had ensured she was unarmed. His own Glock 17 lay in the bottom of his rucksack, permitted through security on the strength of his bogus FBI identity.
At checkin, his inspection of the small Canadair airliner’s seating plan had revealed that she was seated towards the rear while he was in the second row. On boarding the aircraft he took his place as quickly and unobtrusively as possible and read his copy of Classic Bike magazine.
Gerry studied the map of Wyoming and in particular the road from the airport to Jackson and the routes through Grand Teton National Park. Apparently Wyoming was the state with the lowest population density after Alaska, albeit with a large influx of summer visitors to its parks. If Gerry had wanted to hide she would have chosen a densely populated city where strangers would not be noticed, but perhaps Hall’s lack of experience or some personal reason had lead him to this remote spot. She gazed at the seat back in front of her and conjured up a mental image of Dan Hall whispering to her as he placed the gun behind her back. He had given her his phone number and e-mail address on a piece of paper and she remembered pulling the seawater pulped piece of paper from a pocket and dropping it on to the floor of the raft. She hoped that he would be pleased to see her. The Captain’s announcement that they would be landing in fifteen minutes broke into her train of thought. She wondered how liberal were Wyoming’s gun purchasing laws.
‘Then there’s this Remington at nine hundred.’
Gerry picked up the pistol, and checked the action. ‘Ok Hank, is this the cheapest you’ve got?’ she asked. She had not realised that a used hand gun would be so expensive, but then she had been used to having them issued to her free, courtesy of Her Majesty’s Government.
‘That one’s nearly brand new ma’am. I’m out of Glocks for now. They come in at around six hundred. You see I mostly do rifles. Oh wait a minute.’ He bent down and opened a drawer. ‘There’s this Beretta 8000 with an eleven round clip. They’re not popular round here. This is second hand, about twelve years old and you can have that for three hundred, maybe three hundred twenty with the rounds.’ Gerry took the proffered pistol and examined it carefully.
‘That seems ok. Have you got a range?’
‘Yeah, out back.’
‘You don’t happen to sell Tasers do you?’
Hank eyed Gerry carefully. ‘No ma’am, but Marvin does, and you can get that hunting knife you’re after off of him too. Range is this way now.’
Gerry stowed her newly acquired weapons in handy locations inside the cab of her rented Chevrolet Equinox and entered her destination in the satnav. She was about to set off when she remembered one more thing she should do. She pulled out her phone and sent a text message to Richard Cornwall to say that she was on her way.
‘Proceed to the highlighted route,’ a female voice announced for the third time in a slightly petulant voice.
‘Yes, alright,’ Gerry muttered. She put the gearbox in drive and headed off towards Moose. After a mile she passed a General Motors Yukon and without interest she noticed the driver sitting by the side of the road talking on a cell phone. If he had not been facing away from her with his pony tail tucked inside his jacket, she might have recognised one of her fellow passengers. Neil Samms watched her drive past and then started his rented vehicle. By dint of careful observation and interviews with two somewhat dodgy retailers in Jackson he knew that she was armed and dangerous. He had also watched her walking to the Mountain Rental Company and climb into the white SUV with plate numbers 17 and 4368 either side of the bucking horse emblem. He waited until five other cars had gone by and she was out of sight before he pulled off the roadside into the traffic and set off after her.
Dan Hall stood in line for the checkout at the general store in Moose muttering to himself that it was about time they opened another till. Since he had arrived at the nearby campsite a week ago he had noticed an increase in the number of vehicles parked outside the town’s stores. Perhaps it was time to move on again, but to where? As summer progressed every site would be getting crowded and there would soon come a time when they would be filling up with campers who had made advanced bookings, which he had no intention of doing. He had driven further and further north but if he drove much further he would be up to the Canadian border and he was not sure if he could safely get through border controls.
‘Good morning and how are you today?’ asked the young woman on the till.
‘Fine thank you,’ he replied, whilst thinking it was a bad sign that he was now a recognised customer. As he packed his groceries away he wondered if he should make plans to move on before the weekend when the sites would become even more crowded. ‘That’s thirty-two dollars and three cents, please.’
‘Er, thanks; here’s thirty five.’
‘Ok, here’s three dollars change and we’ll forget those cents. Have a nice day.’
‘Thank you,’ Dan replied. He took hold of his carrier bags and walked through the exit. As he gazed up the street while waiting to cross the road he saw a woman stepping out of a white SUV, yawning and stretching. He nearly dropped his bags. Gathering his wits he walked with his back towards her to the gap between the general store and the next door hardware store. He put down his bags and peered carefully round the corner in time to see Gerry Tate walking inside the diner outside which she had parked. How in hell had she survived? Even more extraordinary how had she managed to find him? She couldn’t possibly have done it on her own. He resisted the urge to rush over to her. First of all he had to make sure that she was alone. He tried to walk as quickly and as casually as he could to his small Toyota pick-up. He drove the vehicle slowly past the diner and peered in. She was sitting gazing at a map. He so much wanted to go straight inside and speak to her, ask her how she had escaped from the missing aircraft, what had happened to her in the days since he had last seen her. But now whose side was she on? Had she bargained for her freedom and safety in exchange for a commitment to track him down? As soon as he was out of the city limits, he accelerated as fast as the battered old vehicle could manage to get back to his stolen RV.