Orchid Blues

She got the police car started. "How do I get to Opa-Locka airport?" she yelled at the doorman. He gave her directions. She switched on all the car's lights and sirens and floored it.

With her free hand, she punched the redial button on the phone.

"Yeah?" Harry said.

"You sonofabitch," she said, "why has this number been busy?"

"Sorry, what do you want?"

"Ham is in room two-ten of the Savoy Hotel with a bullet in his chest. An ambulance is on the way."

"What happened?"

"I don't know, but I think the president is in town, or was. My guess is he's headed for Air Force One right this minute. Now listen, John is headed for Opa-Locka, and I'm about a minute and a half behind him in a Miami police car. If he gets to his airplane, he could go anywhere, so you shake it, Harry! Call the tower and tell them not to clear him to take off. Better yet, close the goddamned airport!"

"I don't understand-"

"Don't even try, just move!" Holly closed the phone and concentrated on her driving. She wished to hell that she knew what kind of car John was in.

John was in the maroon van. "Just drive at a normal speed," he said to the driver. "We don't want to attract attention. How long to the airport?"

"Ten minutes," the driver said. "Where's Ham?"

"He couldn't make it." John picked up the car phone and called Opa-Locka. "Hi," he said, "my airplane, a Malibu, N123TF, is parked there. Can you tell me where the lineman put it?"

"Let me see," the woman said, consulting a list. "It's to the right, as you exit the terminal. You need fuel?"

"It was fueled last night," John said. "Please be sure that no one's blocking me, that I can taxi straight out. I'll be there in five minutes."

"Okay," she replied, and hung up.

John sat back and collected his thoughts. Then, from somewhere behind him, he heard a police siren.

Holly saw a sign for Opa-Locka, and she made a high-speed right turn in a four-wheel drift, and ricocheted off a bus, but she kept going. She was weaving in and out of traffic, which wasn't moving out of her way fast enough.

The van came to a halt outside the terminal. John opened the door. "You disappear," he said to the driver. "Get word to the board that I made it out. I'll call as soon as I can."

"Got it," the man said, then drove away.

John made himself walk at a normal pace through the terminal building. He went straight through onto the ramp, and the airplane was where it was supposed to be. Then he heard the police siren, close, and he started ru

Holly followed the signs to the ramp gate and slammed on her brakes at the intercom, switching off the siren. She pushed the button. "Police! Open the gate now!"

"What?" a woman's voice said.

"This is the police! Open the gate!"

The gate began to slide slowly open.

John got the airplane's door open, got inside and secured the door. No time for a preflight, no time for anything. He got into the pilot's seat, switched on both magnetos, both alternators and the master switch. He opened the throttle half an inch, pushed forward the mixture control to prime the engine, switched fuel tanks and repeated the procedure. The fuel gauges read full. He hit the starter button; the prop turned for three or four seconds, then the engine caught. Slowly he moved the mixture control all the way forward, then he opened the throttle more. The airplane did not move. He had forgotten to remove the chocks on the nose wheel. "Shit!" he screamed. He applied full power, and the airplane overrode the chock and lurched forward at speed. People on the ramp were ru

Holly spun the tires getting through the gate, then she was on the ramp. She stopped and looked around at the airplanes parked there, searching for a Malibu. She saw two, but they had the wrong registration numbers. Where the hell were Harry and his people? Then she heard the sirens. "Thank God," she breathed. Then she saw the airplane. It was taxiing out of the ramp area toward the runways, and she could plainly see the number painted, in twelve-inch numerals, on its fuselage. She switched on the siren again and floored the car.

John could hear the siren only faintly over the engine, but that was enough. He shoved the throttle forward. A training aircraft was ahead of him on the taxiway; he slammed on his left brake and turned onto the grass. As he made the turn, he could see the police car coming toward him. No more time, he thought, as he reached another taxiway. No time for a runway, either. He shoved the throttle all the way forward and, steering with his feet, tried to aim the airplane down the taxiway. Another aircraft, a large twin, was coming straight toward him, perhaps a thousand feet away.

The ground controller was yelling over the radio, "One, two, three, tango foxtrot, stop where you are; aircraft coming opposite direction on your taxiway. Stop now!"

"Yeah, well he better get out of my way," John said into the radio, maintaining his direction.

The other had obviously heard him on the ground frequency, because he was turning off the taxiway and onto the grass.

John was at twenty knots now, then forty. He needed eighty for takeoff. A corporate jet roared down the runway parallel to him, and the wake turbulence from its wingtips rocked the Malibu, but still John continued his takeoff roll.

Holly drove across taxiways and grass, dodging taxiing airplanes and tearing up turf. John's Malibu was accelerating down a taxiway ahead, at a right angle to her. She picked a point ahead of him and aimed for it. "Get down, Daisy," she said, pointing at the floor of the front seat. A collision seemed the only way. Then she realized that his wing was full of one hundred-octane aviation fuel, and she decided she didn't want to hit that.

John saw the police car coming. He put in twenty degrees of flaps, which would allow him to take off at seventy knots, instead of eighty. He was now at sixty and accelerating. A landing gear warning horn, which came on automatically at slow speeds and twenty degrees of flaps, began to bleat loudly. John's hands were slippery on the yoke.

Holly had the accelerator on the floor, and it looked as though she might hit the engine, and she wanted nothing to do with that spi

Harry's car rolled onto the ramp, leading a charge of half a dozen FBI cars. Maybe three hundred yards away, he saw a police car headed for a collision with an airplane. He picked up the microphone. "We're going to need ambulances," he said. "Send them right now."

Holly had misjudged the acceleration of the airplane. She saw his nosewheel lift off the ground, and she turned slightly to the right, nearly hitting the wing. The car collided with the tail of the airplane, and Holly, not having gotten her seat belt fastened, struck the steering wheel at the same moment she applied the brakes. The car began to spin to the left.

Harry, who was bearing down on the scene now, saw the tail assembly of the airplane break off from the fuselage, as the airplane spun left from the impact, and the loss of the tail created a weight imbalance that caused the airplane to nose over, while still at full power. The engine abruptly stopped as the propeller chewed up the ground, but the airplane had enough momentum to continue until it somersaulted and came to rest on its back. The FBI men spilled out of their cars and found themselves wading through fuel.