Standoff: A Vin Cooper Novel (2 page)

The night quickly returned and the sound of the single-engine plane dwindled to nothing after a minute or two. Macey stood in the darkness and took it in, her hands deep in her pockets, playing with spare change in one and the packet of Big Red in the other. She took a deep breath. Better head back and pre-flight the Lear, she told herself. Their charter would be turning up soon.

It was then that she heard aircraft engines. This note was totally different to the Warrior’s. These engines were distant, the hum carried by the night air, and the sound faded as the currents shifted. But then they came back again, distinctly louder this time. Macey peered into the night, searching for landing lights. She couldn’t see any. The engines were turboprops. The rapidly growing volume of sound told her the aircraft were approaching fast and it was disorienting not knowing the direction they were coming from. And troubling. Aircraft approaching a facility like this had to do so with at least fifteen hundred feet of air under their wings, their strobes and running lights illuminated. An inbound radio call would have automatically triggered the runway lights. The fact that the runway was still darkened informed her that the mystery aircraft hadn’t made –

A black shape exploded from out of the darkness and roared past low overhead, interrupting her thoughts.

“Shit!” she exclaimed, ducking involuntarily as the blast of propeller and turboprop roar enveloped her. “Hey!” she shouted at it as the shape disappeared in the blackness. Macey’s muscles relaxed as she stood up from the crouch, the hair raised on the back of her neck, her spine tingling with shock. Then a second aircraft, lower than the first, almost took her head off, the pressure wave coming off the backs of its wings buffeting her. Like the first aircraft, this second one was almost instantly swallowed by the night. She peered into the darkness, trying to locate them. After a dozen seconds, as if to help her out, their landing lights and strobes came on, pinpointing them against the stars, one three hundred yards behind the other. They were coming in to land.

The fright Macey experienced almost being chewed up by low flying propeller blades ebbed away leaving indignant anger in its place. She was gonna have some serious, mother-lovin’ words with those pilots. But almost immediately she decided that probably wouldn’t be too smart. There was only one reason for coming in low like that: to avoid the radar at El Paso International. The aircraft seemed to have come from the southwest, the direction of Mexico. The border was barely seven miles away, only a couple minutes’ flying time with the ass those turboprops had been hauling. Macey watched the aircraft lights enter the landing pattern. Her hands were clammy. Everything told her that what she was witnessing had a dangerous quality about it.

The runway lights finally came on. Macey started walking toward the facility, turning to look back over her shoulder at the inbound aircraft. They were approaching fast, the wash from their powerful landing lights already shimmering and flickering on the ground around her. After a few steps she broke into a jog, which turned into a sprint. She was running hard, wanting to get back to the Lear, find Gartner. She stole another glance over her shoulder. The aircraft were coming in hot. Her foot went into a hole. It went in deep. She stumbled. Macey knew she was in trouble. Her momentum propelled her forward, all the strain of her weight on a point against her shin pressed against a rock, her knee joint overextended. She knew it was coming, nothing she could do to stop it … The
crack
was like a dry tree branch being snapped over someone’s thigh, her bones breaking as the ground rushed toward her outstretched hands.

Macey lay facedown in the dirt for several seconds, groaning, dreading the worst –
knowing
the worst – before rolling slowly to the side. The change in body position released the pressure on her foot and it popped out of the gopher hole. She pushed herself up on an elbow and saw that her lower leg was bent in an odd way, a right angle in it halfway up the shin like she had a second knee joint there. She rolled all the way onto her back and grunted, holding her leg below the break, swearing angrily at her own stupidity.

“Now what the hell are you gonna do?” Macey said aloud and brought her foot back down on the dirt, feeling the ends of the fractured shinbones grinding against each other. This should feel worse than it did, she thought, but knew the real pain was yet to come.

The lead aircraft touched down and then its engines shrieked and propeller blades snarled in full reverse thrust. Macey turned her head to the side to watch it go by, to identify it. It flashed past, lit up by the runway lights. A turboprop with a T-tail – a King Air. The whole thing was painted flat black. Macey hadn’t seen too many King Airs painted flat black. Or any, come to think of it.

She groaned and let her head fall back onto the ground. Then the second aircraft thundered past, sounding the same as the first. Another King Air. The facility’s buildings were a good thousand feet away across the dirt and rock. “You’re gonna have to crawl or hop to get there,” she told herself. “What’s it gonna be?” Macey decided on the latter; too many critters on the ground, some of them with stingers or fangs.

The effort that went into standing up made her eyes water, but she eventually made it, her foot, held off the ground, swinging uselessly in midair. She had a cell phone in her breast pocket. Call Gartner, she told herself, and patted both pockets – empty. The damn thing must be on the ground somewhere. She looked around but couldn’t see it. Get back to the Lear, was her next thought, and the quicker the better. But then the runway lights went out again, plunging the world into darkness. “Fuck,” Macey grunted.

*

“It’s a Piper Warrior taking off. Nothing to get excited about,” said Gartner to the night air. He decided to head back to the Lear, but there was plenty of time, no need to hurry. And Macey was probably already there, taking charge as usual. Flinging what was left of the coffee on the ground, he dropped the cup in a trash-barrel. It was only when he heard the Piper’s engine racing out on the end of the runway that he picked up the pace. The aircraft was already moving when he walked around the corner of a building to bring it into view, its landing lights dancing in the darkness out on the end of the runway. The thrill of flight still excited Gartner and, though it was only a Warrior, he paused to watch it inch down the runway and eventually, finally, lift off. A jet it wasn’t.

A few minutes later Gartner arrived back at the Lear and now there was a mini hub of activity going on around it. A refueling truck was topping up the Winjeel’s tank, its pilot discussing something with the mechanic. Their charter was also waiting, the family sitting in a white Suburban with the motor running to power its AC, a muffled song from
The Lion King
playing on the DVD for the kids. As Gartner approached the vehicle, the driver’s door opened and a fit, forty-something male in Levi’s and a crisp blue shirt hopped out and came to meet him.

“Barney Sorwick,” he said. “You the pilot?” He tilted his head at the Lear.

“Co-pilot.” Gartner held out his hand. “Rick Gartner.”

Barney shook it. “We’re a bit early.”

“No problem, sir. Good to get an early start. The boss will be back in a minute and we’ll take off shortly after that.”

“Call me Barney, okay?”

The passenger door opened. Mrs Sorwick climbed out and walked over: long tan legs, khaki shorts, suede boots and a loose white cotton top.
Gail
Sorwick. It clicked – the woman giving her husband a Mach I for an anniversary present. Gartner felt he already knew her. And yeah, he could see what all the fuss was about: tall and slim with olive skin, dark eyes and dimples. Her straight black hair was in a tight high ponytail. It swung from side to side as walked toward him, seemingly in slo-mo. The Gail Sorwick Effect.

“This is my wife, Gail,” said Barney.

“Hi.” She smiled warmly.

“Rick Gartner, your co-pilot for the day.”

“Dad …” a whining kid called out from the Suburban. “Can you tell Amie to stop?”

“Excuse me.” Barney sighed deeply. “Duty calls.”

Gartner was happy to be left alone with Mrs Sorwick, only she seemed to be distracted by something in the night sky. “What’s that noise?” she asked.

Gartner realized that the sound of approaching turboprop engines had been in the background for a while. He hunted around in the sky for the source but couldn’t locate it. The aircraft – was it more than one? Yeah, two. They were close,
very
close. And low. Gartner frowned with confusion. Why were aircraft buzzing the airport at night with their lights turned off? He subconsciously scratched his head while he searched the sky again, at a loss. Gail Sorwick was having similar problems. Then, above, aircraft landing lights came on. There were two sets, almost directly above them, climbing. The runway lights came on next.

“They’re landing,” said Gartner, thinking aloud.

Mrs Sorwick stood beside him. “Do planes usually fly like that? With their lights off?”

“No,” Gartner replied, uneasy about it, same as she was. He hid it with shrug. “But I’m sure there’s a good reason – emergency training procedures …” Of course, that was complete fabrication.

Mrs Sorwick changed the subject. “So, I checked the weather in Florida and looks like it’s going to be hot, steamy and overcast. I hope that doesn’t affect the flight home.”

“No, but it’s going to provide plenty of excuses for ice cream,” Gartner ventured.

“Trust me, our kids don’t need
any
excuses when it comes to ice cream.”

Gartner glanced across at the Winjeel and the Lear, the refueling truck having finished with the old RAAF trainer and starting to move. The pilot was in the truck, hitching a ride somewhere. Gartner noticed a lightening in the eastern sky, the black sliding into a thin dark-blue band at the horizon. Time was marching on. He’d happily stand around for hours doing small talk with Gail Sorwick, but duty called. He wondered where Macey had gone. “Well, you’ll have to excuse me, ma’am. Gotta go do my thing.”

“Sure,” she said. “When can we come aboard?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Mrs Sorwick gave him a nod and went back to the Suburban to organize the kids, World War III having broken out between them and their father.

Gartner walked to the Lear. The landing lights of inbound aircraft were now lined up with the runway – the mystery turboprops. One was a mile out, the other two miles behind it. “Bobbie?” he called out. Silence. He went past the back of the Lear to the edge of the ramp. Perhaps Macey had gone for a walk in the desert. He scanned the darkness for signs of her, but there weren’t any.

The first aircraft touched down, its propeller blades snarling when reverse thrust was selected. It slowed quickly, using very little runway, and turned off onto the taxiway. The second aircraft landed moments later, as economical as the first in the amount of runway used. Gartner focused on the plane coming toward him, wondered what type it was and who might be at the controls. The mystery only deepened when the lead aircraft was close enough for him to get a good look at it. A King Air. It was painted a dull, flat black all over. The second aircraft, also a King Air, had caught up to the lead plane and he saw that it, too, was painted up just like the first: black.

This little airport was suddenly getting busy. A large truck had pulled up behind the Suburban, which the Sorwicks were in the process of moving to a spot around the back of the parking lot. The air was now full of turboprop noise, and beams from the two sets of landing lights. The aircraft came off the taxiway and continued on past the Lear and the Winjeel. The lead King Air turned ninety degrees so that it faced the access road and the truck parked on it, extinguished its lights and shut down the engines. The second aircraft pulled up beside the first and its lights and engines died. The deafening roar of the turboprops ceased almost immediately and simultaneously, replaced by a
whoosh
of the windmilling blades. Despite the imminent arrival of dawn, the two aircraft on the ramp were congealed remnants of midnight.

The sudden silence increased Gartner’s unease. Where the hell was Macey? She was ex-military. Maybe
she
could explain this. He took the cell phone out of his pocket and was about to speed-dial her when the door behind the cockpit of the lead aircraft opened, the action mirrored by the King Air behind it. Ladders came down. And then men spilled out of the first aircraft. Gartner swallowed. They were all wearing ski masks and carrying guns.

They fanned out across the ramp. Some were shouting. And before Gartner could move, two of the masked men ran up to him, yelling. He froze. One of them slapped the cell phone out of his hand and stamped it into the asphalt. The other bashed him in the side of his face with a swipe of his gun. Gartner fell to the ground in a state of shock, his face numb and his mouth full of blood. Jesus Christ, a tooth was loose.

The two men were talking at each other excitedly. Gartner couldn’t understand them. He thought that his brain had come loose, like his tooth, or that something had broken inside his head. Then he realized that they were speaking a foreign language – Spanish. Were they Mexican? He began to sit up and one of the men pointed a gun at him and shouted. Gartner lifted his hands up above his head and moved slowly as he got to his knees. Then he saw the Sorwick family being herded toward the Lear by two armed men. The kids were bewildered, crying. Gail was trying to comfort them while Barney attempted to reason with their captors. One of the men grabbed a kid by his blond hair, pulled a heavy Bowie knife from a scabbard on his belt and held the blade against the boy’s throat. He wanted silence. Barney Sorwick gave it to him.

Gartner knew enough Spanish to order a tortilla, but that was about it. He couldn’t communicate with these men. And he’d seen the reaction when Barney Sorwick tried. Two more masked individuals walked almost casually over to the Sorwicks. One of them was dressed in military camouflage pants and shirt. He was short – maybe only a little over five feet tall, and stocky. The shape of that well-fed body told Gartner that he was older than the men around him, all of whom were fit-looking and mostly dressed in faded military gear. The men who had accosted him and the Sorwicks all seemed to defer to this man, standing aside for him when he approached. He reached Barney and Gail. He spoke to them in Spanish and Barney replied in Spanish. The man laughed, made a gesture and, in response to it, Gail was separated from her husband. The man with the Bowie knife offered it to his boss, who shook his head. He turned to Gail and assessed her as he removed his own knife from the scabbard on his belt, a knife with a long thin blade and mother-of-pearl handle. Then he cut Gail’s top off her body. Just like that. Gartner’s mouth fell open. Gail screamed and the man slapped her, hard. He then grabbed her by the ponytail, cut the straps of her bra and the cups sprang away from her breasts. The sight of them, now exposed, terrified Gartner. The situation was fucked up to the nth power. What was happening? This wasn’t reality.