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J
esse pored over the charts until midnight, then he began reading the pilot's operating handbook for the Cessna 182. He concentrated on the airplane's systems, then memorized the operating speeds for takeoff and landing and for the stall speeds. He read up on the avionics, aircraft icing and emergency procedures. By two o'clock his eyes were burning. He put down the book and got into his coat.

He drove once around the town, as if he were simply an insomniac out for a wee-hours drive. All was quiet. He parked in an alley, as he had done before, and walked to the courthouse. The locks were easier this time, and inside half an hour he had entered the county clerk's office and forged a birth certificate for Carrie.

As he walked back toward the truck the waxing moon came from behind the clouds and lit the streets as if it were daylight. Jesse crossed the street to stay in the shadows and, at that moment, he saw the police car.

It was driving slowly up the street toward him,
swinging its spotlight back and forth from one side of the street to the other, checking the storefronts. Jesse flattened himself against a building, feeling terribly exposed; if he ducked into a doorway, he would be illuminated when the light hit the front door of the shop. He stood, frozen, waiting to be seen, trying to make up a story to explain his presence on the street in the middle of the night.

The spotlight hit the front of a shop across the street, then swung to the other side. As it moved, it caught Jesse full in the face, momentarily blinding him. It paused on the shop's front door next to him, then moved on down the street. After a few seconds, the police car turned right and disappeared around the corner. Jesse couldn't move for a moment. He had been fully visible to the driver, but he apparently hadn't been seen. He sprinted for his truck.

He gave the police car another minute to move on, then he started the truck and headed east from town. He passed Wood Products and came to the bridge over the creek. A foot-long length of duct tape was stuck to the railing on the opposite side of the road. He pulled the truck off the road and into the woods, then walked back to the side of the road. He looked in both directions, then sprinted across the road and down the embankment, snatching the strip of duct tape from the railing as he went.

His flashlight found the bundle, taped securely in a corner of the bridge supports. He used his pocket knife to cut it free, then stripped off the remaining bits of tape and stuck them in his pocket. Back at road level, he knelt behind the bridge railing and waited for an eighteen-wheeler to roar past, then ran for his truck.

Back at home, he took the bundle into the kitchen and ripped away the plastic covering with his knife. Inside he found a canvas backpack, and inside that were all the items he had requested, plus one more.
There was a typewritten note taped to it: “You
must
wear this wire to the meeting,” it read. “The tape will be crucial to our court case.” He ripped up the note and flushed it down the garbage disposal. The recorder was small, he'd give them that. If he wore it in some clever place, a body search might even miss it.

He put the materials back into the backpack, took it out to the garage and concealed it under a stack of firewood. Then he got under the truck, opened the safe and stashed Carrie's birth certificate with the passports.

As he climbed the stairs to bed, he thought carefully about his plan. He had nearly everything he wanted now; the remainder of his needs he would find at Wood Products.

 

On Monday morning, Jesse rapped on Herman Muller's office door, and Muller waved him in.

“Morning, Jesse.”

“Morning, Herman; have you got a minute?”

“Sure I have. Sit you down.”

Jesse sat. “Herman, I think I've got a pretty good grip on how the plant runs now, and I seem to have a little time on my hands. I just wondered if you could use a hand at the bookkeeping.”

Muller regarded him for a moment, then smiled. “Jesse, you put your finger on the thing I hate doing most around here. My wife kept the books until she died; fortunately, she got the computer system up and running before she passed, and she taught me to run it. I guess it's time I taught you.”

“I'll be glad to learn,” Jesse said.

“Pull your chair around here and look over my shoulder,” Muller said, switching on the computer. “You start from the main menu and press B for books, then it will ask you for your password. The password is Tommy.”

Jesse spent most of the morning following Muller through the program; it really was very straightforward. When everybody left for lunch, Jesse went to the computer, entered the password and asked the program to print out a balance sheet for the previous year. It took less than a minute to do so.

He put the statement into his pocket, found his coat and went down to the parking lot, then he drove into town and parked in front of the bank.

“I'd like to see Kurt Ruger,” he told the secretary. Then he looked up to see Ruger waving him into his office.

“What can I do for you, Jesse?” Ruger asked, and his tone was cool. “You want to borrow some money?”

“Thanks, Kurt, but I'm here to do something for you.” He produced the balance sheet, unfolded it and handed it over.

Ruger read the document, then smiled, the first time Jesse had ever seen him do so. “Well, I'll be damned,” he said. “The old goat is doing even better than we thought!”

“This year ought to be a lot better,” Jesse said. “I've developed two new plywood outlets in the East, and I think those will lead to more.”

“Yeah, Casey told me about the order from Maryland. That and the New York order, on top of the usual business, ought to keep the plant humming for the better part of the year.”

“That it will,” Jesse said.

“How'd you do it? How'd you get the computer password?”

“I just asked. I offered to help with the bookkeeping, and Herman jumped at it; said he hated doing it himself.”

Ruger stood up and offered his hand. “Jesse, I've underestimated you, and I've been suspicious of you over nothing. I want to apologize.”

Jesse shook the man's hand. “Don't mention it,” he said. “Is there anything else you want from Herman's books?”

“If you could get me a temporary balance sheet for this year so far, that would help,” Ruger said.

“I can do that; I'll drop it by tonight on the way home.”

Ruger smiled again. “We'll own that business before the month is out,” he said.

Jesse left the bank and went back to his truck. Before the month is out, he mused, you'll be in the joint. Or in hell.

A
t lunchtime on Tuesday, Jesse made what he was sure would be his last call to Kip Fuller.

“Kip, it's Jesse. What's happening?”

“Jess, we need another day.”

Jesse felt anger replace the dread. “Well, you can't have it.”

“Listen to me, Jess; we're going to do it the way you wanted; the army is sending in a battalion of Rangers, the best they've got. But they need a little more time to get things in place.”

“Well, they can't have it. They're just going to have to get their asses in gear and get it done very early on Thursday morning.” He looked at his watch. “That's thirty-odd hours, and they'd better not be late.”

“Let me tell you the plan; it's very close to what you suggested.”

“Okay, tell me.”

“The Rangers are being transported in a fleet of trucks—everything from a UPS van to eighteen-wheelers.”

“That's good, I like that.”

“At one
A.M.
on Friday morning they're going to simultaneously hit the police station and the telephone exchange. Ten minutes later, a specially reinforced truck carrying a heavy load of ballast is going to crash the gate at the top of the mountain; follow-up vehicles will discharge a company of Rangers, and at the same time, electric power will be cut to the whole town. This is very close to what you wanted.”

“It is, and it sounds right.”

“The Rangers will then take the weapons emplacements outside the main fortification, and when they've secured the ground-to-air missiles, the choppers will come in and put another two companies on the mountaintop.

“Right behind the troops at the main gate will be three heavy-duty swat teams of specially trained U.S. marshals; they'll hit the homes of Coldwater, Casey and Ruger at the very moment that the truck crashes the gates.

“Headquarters will be in another specially equipped eighteen-wheeler; when they get word that the big three are in custody and that the Rangers are on the mountaintop, they'll send in four C-130 aircraft, each of which will hold an armored personnel carrier and a complement of troops. Your airport at St. Clair has a forty-five hundred foot strip, and there's a thousand-foot grass overrun, winter-hard, at one end of the runway. That's enough for the C-130s. At the same time, other troops will arrive in unmarked cars and begin a door-to-door sweep of the whole town. We've arranged the biggest federal search warrant in history; it's good for the whole county. We reckon that by dawn the town will be ours, and we're counting on minimum casualties.”

“Kip, I think your plan is good. But it has to happen Thursday morning.”

“Jess—”

“Kip, shut up and listen to me. Tell them to hit at three
A.M.
, not one. These people are likely to still be awake at one. I've got a shot at keeping Coldwater and his people out of the fortifications; if it hasn't happened by three
A.M.
it won't happen, and they'll have to take their chances on a security leak that could give Coldwater some warning. You better pray I make it.”

“I don't understand—what's the big deal about another day?”

“The deal is, I can't last another twenty-four hours. I've hardly slept at all since Sunday, and I'm starting to come unglued.”

“Come on, Jess, you're tougher than that.”

“Kip, I don't have anything left, and that's the truth. I've planned for tomorrow night, and tomorrow night it is. Can this phone reach you at that time?”

“Yes, I can use call-forwarding to route your call to the headquarters truck.”

“Is there any way for you to find my position by backtracking the telephone?”

“No, we can only tell what cellular service area you're in, and all of the area in the Idaho panhandle is in the same service area. We'll have to depend on position reports from you.”

“I understand. Remember, now, hit the police and telephone buildings at three
A.M.
, and not a minute before. I'm going to have a shot at paving the way for you, but I can't promise anything, so don't expect it.” He hung up before Kip could reply.

He hadn't lied about his condition; he was a wreck, and he was going to have to get some sleep tonight, or he'd never make it.

W
ednesday. Jesse suffered through the day, stopping work now and then to do his yoga breathing exercises, the only thing that seemed to help him relax. At the end of the day, he pretended to still be working while he waited impatiently for everyone to leave. When he was finally alone in the plant he went downstairs to the machine shop, found a canvas tool bag and started to select equipment. He wasn't sure what he'd need, but he chose a six-pound sledge, a couple of cold chisels, wire cutters, pliers, some screwdrivers, a thick roll of duct tape and a pair of short bolt cutters. Finally, he unplugged a heavy-duty, half-inch, battery-operated drill from its charger and dropped that into the bag, along with a spare battery. The bag wouldn't hold any more, so what he had would have to be enough.

He drove home, forcing himself to obey the speed limit, and parked the truck in the garage, then he dug out his bag of equipment from Kip and tucked it behind the seat of the truck, along with the tool bag. He crawled under the truck, opened the safe and
extracted the contents. He put the pistol and spare clips into the canvas backpack and took the money, the passports and the miniature tape recorder into the house. Jenny was feeding the girls an early supper, as planned.

“Hey, everybody,” he said, trying to sound jovial. He sat at the table and drank a glass of milk while they finished their dinner, and, when the girls had been tucked into bed, protesting, he took Jenny back downstairs to the kitchen.

“All right,” he said, “time for final plans.” He went to the sink, took a plastic tool box from underneath it and emptied out the tools, then he removed the money from its brown paper bag and packed it into the tool box. “That's a little over fifty thousand dollars,” he said. “Pack some sandwiches around it.”

“What's going to happen tonight?” she asked.

“I'm going to a dinner meeting at Jack Gene's house, and I'm going to record the proceedings; what I get there should be enough to put everybody present away for a long time.”

“Do you want us to wait here?”

“No. I want you to pack one bag for each of us, and put them into the trunk of your car, along with the toolbox and some blankets, and at two
A.M.
I want you to take the girls and drive out to the St. Clair airport.”

“Are we going to fly out of here?”

“Just listen. Be sure and have some story ready, in case you're stopped by a patrol car. There's a big hangar next to the flight office, and it has a combination lock; the combination is 1234. I want you to unlock the hanger and, just inside the door, along with several other airplanes, you'll find a Cessna—that's an airplane with high wings, the kind you can walk under—and the number on the side of it is N123TF. Got that?”

“N123TF,” she repeated, “and the combination for the lock is 1234. That's all very simple.”

“The airplane will be unlocked; there's a rear door to the luggage compartment on the left-hand side, and I want you to put all the luggage and the toolbox in there, then I want you to put the two girls in the back seat of the airplane with a couple of blankets. Then you drive your car into the woods, where it can't be seen from the airport, go back to the hangar, close the doors from the inside, get into the airplane and wait for me.”

“Jesse, can you fly an airplane?”

“Sort of. Now listen; if I'm not there by three-fifteen, I want you to put everybody back into the car, drive back to the main road, turn east and then, as soon as you can, head south toward Salt Lake City. There, do what you were to do in Seattle the last time we planned this: get most of the money converted to traveler's checks and a cashier's check; make a reservation for Tokyo, this time through Los Angeles. Here are your passports and Carrie's birth certificate; you can talk her through with that.

“After Tokyo, it's the Peninsular Hotel in Hong Kong for a week, then to Sydney and the Harbour Hotel, ask for Bluey at the bar.”

“I remember all that.”

“I'll join you if I can. If I can't, take care of yourself and the girls; make them happy.”

She reached across the table and squeezed his hand.

“I'll most likely make it to the airport, but if not, look for me in Hong Kong.”

 

While Jenny was upstairs packing, Jesse took off his shirt and dropped his pants. It wasn't the first time he'd worn a wire. Using the special tape provided with the wire, he taped the recorder to the inside of his left thigh, high up, next to his testicles. In his experience, most men didn't like groping other men's crotches,
even in a search. He plugged in the microphone wire, then ran it between his legs and up between his buttocks to his waist, anchoring the wire there with tape. He then ran it up his back, taping as far as he could reach, then again at his shoulder. He ran it down his left arm, applying patches of tape as he went, then he attached the microphone to the wire and taped it securely to the inside of his wrist, a couple of inches above his watchband. A switch on the tiny microphone would allow him to start the recorder; after that, it would record whenever it picked up someone's voice.

He got dressed again, swung his left arm around and walked around the kitchen to be sure he had free movement. The microphone wire was very thin, and he didn't want to put any strain on it. He went upstairs, got his dark brown sheepskin coat, a pair of hiking boots and some thick socks, then came back down to the kitchen. Jenny joined him there.

“You're sure you understand everything?” he asked.

She nodded.

Jesse looked at his watch; quarter to seven; time to go. He took Jenny in his arms, hugged her, kissed her; he tried to keep it light; didn't want it to seem like goodbye, although God knew it might very well be.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you,” she replied.

He got into his coat, tucked the sheepskin jacket and the boots under his arm and left the house.