Chapter 9 - The Arrival at the Tarmac
The engine of my sedan roared as I slammed my foot down on the gas, tearing out of the parking lot and racing down the highway toward the auxiliary airstrip. The speedometer needle climbed past eighty, ninety, a hundred miles per hour, the landscape blurring into a dizzying streak of green and gray.
My phone buzzed violently against the dashboard mount. I hit speakerphone with a single finger while gripping the steering wheel tight.
"Reynolds!" the state investigator's voice shouted over the engine noise. "We just intercepted a transmission from Jonathan Vance’s charter! They know the FAA put a hold on their flight plan, but the pilot is refusing to cooperate. They're attempting an emergency touchdown at the auxiliary strip anyway—they think they can taxi to a private hangar on the far side before units arrive!"
"I'm two minutes out," I barked back. "Have the ground units box in the perimeter before they touch down. Do not let them reach that hangar!"
"Copy that! Moving units into position now!"
I rounded a sharp bend in the highway, the chain-link fence of the military auxiliary airstrip coming into view just past the treeline. In the distance, against the pale gray expanse of the overcast sky, a sleek white twin-engine charter was descending at a steep, aggressive angle, its landing gear locked into position.
The aircraft’s tires hit the asphalt with a loud screech of burning rubber, sending up a thick plume of white smoke as the pilot slammed on the brakes.
I wrenched my steering wheel hard to the left, crashing through the unsecured maintenance gate of the airstrip and fishtailing across the grass before leveling out directly onto the parallel service road.
Ahead of me, two state police cruisers came screaming from the opposite side of the tarmac, their blue and red lights flashing furiously as they converged on the taxiing jet, cutting off its path toward the private hangars.
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The charter swerved violently, its wings tipping dangerously close to the ground before the pilot finally cut the engines, letting the aircraft coast to a grinding, shuddering halt fifty yards away.
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