An Absence of Light

Almost immediately the sound of the plane returned, but this time it was coming from the direction of the Gulf. Graver listened to it, imagining the aircraft coming in low over the water and leveling off. He heard it trimming its speed, the tone of the engine deepening, and then it cut way down, and the plane was on the tarmac. Graver saw the lights flick past the crack in the door as the plane wheezed to taxiing speed, revved slightly as it turned, and headed toward the hangar.

As the sound of the taxiing engine approached, the driver of the van began pushing aside the two hangar doors until they were wide open, and the plane taxied up to the opening until its nose was almost inside the hangar. Then the pilot cut the engine, and the prop feathered to a standstill.

The driver slapped open the latches on the back doors of the van, and flung them open. At the same time the door to the airplane, which was situated almost midway in the fuselage and contained the second window back from the cockpit, opened from its middle, the top half hinged at the top swinging up and out of the way while the bottom half folded down to make steps.

Graver watched with one eye peering through the dirty window as a large man wearing a sport coat without a tie and carrying an Uzi equipped with a silencer was the first to disembark.

“Everything okay here?” he asked, standing at the bottom of the steps and looking at the back of the truck where an interior light was throwing a splash of illumination on the concrete floor of the darkened hangar.

“I’m ready to load up,” the driver said from inside the back of the truck, but not exactly responding to the guard’s question.

The guard nodded unenthusiastically, and looked around as the pilot-Wade Pace, Graver reminded himself-came down the steps followed by a man who must have been the copilot, followed by a man in a business suit who was unsteady and unsure about coming down the narrow steps of the plane.

Pace came up to the back of the truck and looked in.

“I’ve got eight boxes,” he said.

“Okay, fine. Bring ’em out, and I’ll stack ’em in the back here.”

Pace looked at the guard who was standing near the door of the plane now. The guard looked back at him.

“Go ahead,” the guard said, jerking his head toward the steps of the plane.

“We could use a little help,” Pace said.

The guard gave a jerk of his head that said tough luck and checked the silencer on the Uzi as if to make sure it was secure.

Pace hesitated, still looking at the guard, then turned and started to the steps of the plane.

“I want to call Kalatis about this,” the client said, standing awkwardly near the hangar door. He was visibly jittery, one hand on his hip, the other one wiping his face. “This sort of thing’s never happened before. This is a hell of a long way from Mexico.”

“We can’t risk radio contact from here,” the guard said. “Security is Mr. Kalatis’s special expertise. He knows what he’s doing.”

The client clearly knew he was in no position to demand anything. If his money was being stolen right now, there was nothing he could do about it, and he would be lucky not to be shot. If it wasn’t being stolen, if this was a legitimate security maneuver, then he ought to keep his mouth shut and not alienate the people who were trying to protect his money.

Pace swore and climbed into the plane. In a moment he began handing out banker’s boxes to the copilot The client watched them. It apparently didn’t occur to him that he might help, or if it did he had decided that it wasn’t his job either. No one said anything else until Pace handed down the last box to the copilot who lugged it to the back of the van and plopped it down on the carpeted floor at the rear door.

“That’s it.” Pace said, coming down the steps. “We’re outta here.”

“You remember what to do?” the guard asked.

“I think I can manage,” Pace said, pissed at the guard’s surly haughtiness.

“You’ve got the coordinates… fifteen miles out, and then you can do whatever the hell you want.”

“Let’s go,” Pace said to his copilot, and the two of them slowly pushed the plane back away from the hangar doorway into the darkness at the edge of the tarmac.

In the dim light coming from the back of the van, Graver could barely make them out climbing back into the plane and pulling the steps up behind them. In a minute the plane engine kicked alive, and Pace revved it to a whine, held it a minute and then maneuvered his flaps to turn the plane toward the tarmac where it taxied toward the end of the runway. He squared for the takeoff, revved his engine, and then the plane was barreling down the runway and lifting off over the water toward the Gulf the way it had come in.

The guard, the van driver, and the client stood just at the edge of the splash of light and watched the plane’s lights disappear into the stars, and then the guard turned, lifted his Uzi, and shot the other two men.