Mulholland and O’Donnell were nodding in agreement and Sanger looked from one to the other as if gauging their reaction. “Widening the search will take more time, more people,” he said. “I suggest we concentrate on the Presidential venues for the next two days, if they still come up negative, we run the program through venues where the President isn’t expected but where we know other possible targets will be. Ed, when do you expect the pictures of Bailey and Hennessy to go public?”
“Two days,” said Mulholland. “Tuesday evening. If my producer comes through.”
“He’d better,” said Sanger. “The following week could be too late.” He pushed his handkerchief back into his trouser pocket and looked at his watch. “Gentlemen, it’s now almost three o’clock. I’ve had rooms arranged for you at a hotel nearby. There are cars waiting to take you, and they’ll collect you first thing so we can make an early start.” The door opened and his secretary appeared. Howard wondered if Sanger had pressed a concealed button because he hadn’t touched his desk intercom or telephone. A young man stood behind the secretary, carrying a Polaroid camera. Sanger explained that their photographs would have to be taken for their White House passes, so one by one they stood with backs to the wall as the camera flashed and whirred.
When they’d finished, Sanger asked his secretary to show them to the cars. “And make sure their luggage hasn’t gone astray,” he added. He looked at Mulholland and shrugged. “Sometimes it happens,” he explained.
Joker’s internal alarm clock woke him at five o’clock in the morning. His mouth tasted sour and there was a thick coating of something unsavoury on his tongue. He swallowed, but his throat was so dry he almost gagged, so he lurched to the tiny bathroom and drank from the tap. He showered and wrapped a thin towel around his waist, then went back into the bedroom and bent down by the side of the bed. From under the mattress he pulled out the gun and silencer. The SIG-Sauer P228 appeared to be brand new; there was scarcely a mark on it and the silencer had never been used. There were thirteen cartridges in the clip, which Joker recognised as 147 gram Hornady Custom XTP full metal jacketed hollow point loads. Joker was no stranger to the gun or the ammunition. He knew that XTP stood for ‘extreme terminal performance’. The bullets had no exposed lead at the nose and the hollow points meant the bullets would mushroom out on impact, increasing their penetration and the amount of damage they did. They were real man-stoppers and because they were big bullets they came out of the gun at a relatively slow 978 feet per second. Joker had smiled at the number of bullets the clip held. He knew that another SIG-Sauer model, the P226, actually held even more bullets — sixteen — but even thirteen was too many. If he ever got himself into a situation where that number of bullets were necessary, he’d be dead. The ‘spray and pray’ method beloved of the paintball amateur warriors didn’t work in real life. It was drilled into the SAS recruits from their first day in the Killing House — two shots per target, both to the chest. If you had time then maybe a third in the head to make one hundred per cent sure, but in a hostage situation with handguns it was two — bang-bang and then onto the next target. And if you were up against more than two targets you’d made a big mistake because no matter how many bullets you had in the clip you were outgunned. Only an amateur firing almost at random would need thirteen rounds. And when it came to killing, Joker was not an amateur.
He dried himself and put on a pair of blue Levi jeans and a black polo shirt and wrapped the gun in his pea jacket. He carried it out to his car and shoved it behind the driver’s seat, then went to reception and paid his motel bill, using his Visa card. The roads were clear and Joker drove quickly to the address in Laurel where Patrick Farrell lived. The house was a two-storey detached Colonial standing in several acres of lawn with a Stars and Stripes flapping from a pristine white flagpole. The number of the house was on the mailbox which stood at the end of the gravelled drive. Joker slowed but didn’t stop. Standing in front of a basketball hoop was the Lincoln Continental which Joker had seen outside Farrell Aviation. Satisfied that the man he had seen closing up the office was Patrick Farrell, he drove back to the airfield.
Matthew Bailey was already waiting outside the Farrell Aviation building when Patrick Farrell arrived. Bailey looked at his watch and sneered. Fifteen minutes late. He climbed out of his car and stood by the main entrance to the building.
Farrell waved. “Hi, Matthew; sorry, my alarm didn’t go off.”
Bailey sneered again. More likely the old sod had been pulled back into the bed for a quick one by whichever rump-rustler he was hanging around with these days. Farrell had never been especially choosy about the company he kept, in bed or out of it, but he was a first-class pilot and essential to Mary Hennessy’s plan, so Bailey just smiled and waited for him to open the double-glass doors.
“You want a coffee first?” Farrell asked.
Bailey declined, saying that he wanted to take the plane up right away. Farrell got the message and opened a metal cabinet behind the reception desk. Inside were more than a dozen sets of keys hanging on hooks, each with a metal tag denoting the call sign of the plane. He took out a set of keys, closed the cabinet and picked up a sectional chart from a table.
“Headsets?” asked Bailey.
“In the plane,” said Farrell. The two men walked together towards the line of small planes which faced the grass strip. “You had no problem getting the licence?” Farrell asked.
“Nah, the school you recommended were ace. They arranged the written for me, gave me about half a dozen lessons and then fixed me up with an FAA examiner. Piece of cake.” Bailey had been taught to fly by pilots from the Libyan Army, and could pilot a variety of single- and multiengined planes. During a six-month stay, courtesy of Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyans had given him a full grounding in instrument flight, and taught him how to fly the French-made Alouette 111 helicopter. Flying in the States on a Libyan licence was obviously out of the question, so Farrell had faked up a logbook showing some fifty hours of flying lessons and Bailey had gone out to New Mexico to get a new FAA licence under an assumed name. The licence was only good for single-engine fixed-wing aircraft, but that was all Bailey intended to fly.
“You’ve flown a Centurion before?” Farrell asked.
“Sure,” said Bailey. “What year is it?”
“It’s an ’86, one of the last that Cessna built. But it’s not a straightforward 210, it’s an Atlantic Aero 55 °Centurion upgrade, done by a company down in North Carolina. They upgraded the power plant and the propeller, now she’s got a top speed of 180 knots, range of 850 miles, takeoff ground roll of twelve-fifty feet. Here she is.”
The plane was white with green stripes down the side and the company’s green propeller and hawk logo on the two doors. Farrell pulled out the cowling covers and untied the ropes which kept the wings and tail tethered to the ground while Bailey walked around, checking the flaps, tail assembly and landing gear. He stood and watched as Farrell took fuel samples from the drain valves to check that there was no condensation or contaminants in the tanks. It was a beautiful day for flying, blue skies as far as he could see with the merest hint of clouds at twenty thousand feet or so. The wind-sock pointed to the south-west but it was hanging almost vertically.
Farrell threw his last fuel sample on the ground, checked the oil level and nodded to Bailey. “Okay. Let’s go,” he said. The two men climbed into the cockpit and strapped themselves in. “Controls handle pretty much the same as the 210,” said Farrell. “Stall speed with the flaps down is 56 knots, with flaps up it’s 65 knots. After take-off bring the flaps up at 80 knots, best rate of climb is 97 knots which should give you about thirteen-hundred feet per minute.” He unfolded the sectional chart in his lap and pointed to the airstrip. “We’re within the Baltimore-Washington International Terminal Control Area once we get above twenty-five hundred feet and on up to ten thousand feet. If you keep below twenty-five hundred you’ve no problem, but if you go through that ceiling you have to have the transponder on and be in radio contact with Baltimore Approach. We’re going to stay below two thousand until we’re out over Chesapeake Bay, but when we go up I’ll call them anyway, just so they know who we are. The airspace is real busy around here because you’ve got BWI, Andrews Air Force Base and Washington Dulles International, and their air space overlaps. Which way are you going to be heading on the day?”