An Absence of Light

The turbo-powered Pilatus, sounding sure and powerful, its lights brighter than had been the lights of the other two aircraft, came off the water in a precision approach that allowed no seam of sound or sight to tell them when it had hit the tarmac. One moment it was airborne, and the next it was taxiing as though there were no tactile difference in the two activities. It went slightly farther down the runway than the others had done, and when it turned to come across to the hangar it did so without hesitation or uncertainty, almost as if it were being flown by a computer.

Graver’s heart was working hard, still crazy from the shooting. It didn’t help any that he now began to worry that the guard on the Pilatus was going to see something he didn’t like and cause a standoff that might get one of them killed.

“Let’s move across in front of the light,” Graver said, “let them see us, but not too well.” His legs were rubbery, and he hoped to God they didn’t give way unexpectedly.

Redden, perhaps sensing the situation in front of him, cut the plane lights when he squared on the hangar door, and now the only light that could illumine their faces was the dim one coming from inside the van, which Graver and Remberto were careful to keep behind them.

The Pilatus stopped as had the others, about a dozen feet from the hangar doorway, and then Redden cut the engine and the turboprop whooshed to a standstill.

For just a moment nothing happened. Every one of Graver’s pores was weeping perspiration. The Pilatus was large enough to have both a passenger door just behind the cockpit as well as a much wider cargo door behind that But there was only one cockpit door, on the opposite side of the plane from Murray.

The passenger door opened first, the steps were lowered, and the client stepped into the doorway and started down. Almost to the tarmac, the passenger suddenly turned and looked back to the plane, and at that instant Graver heard shouting from inside and suddenly four explosions-bam! bam! bam! bam!-and a man’s body flew backward out of the door, landing on his back almost on top of the client, half on and half off the stairway.

The guy in the business suit screamed and lurched back and was instantly grabbed by Graver who dragged him into the darkness a few feet beyond the body.

“Hold it! Hold everything!” Redden yelled from inside the plane. “I shot him, Graver! Had to, okay? Hear me?”

“Okay, Redden,” Graver yelled. “Toss out the gun and come down with your arms straight out to the sides, shoulder high.”

“Okay! Okay.”

An autopistol flew out the door and bounced and skidded on the tarmac. That didn’t mean a damn thing, of course. He still could be armed. But Redden appeared in the doorway, his arms straight out as instructed as Murray came under the belly of the nose behind the prop and stood at the steps.

“Son of a bitch smelled a rat,” Redden explained, standing on the top step. “He got spooky from the very start when I showed up without a copilot Watch his goddamn Uzi”-Redden nodded at the body at the foot of the steps-”it’s cocked and off safety.”

“Come on down,” Murray said, his. 45 trained on the considerable target of Redden’s chest.

At the bottom of the steps Redden had to be careful not to lose his balance when stepping over the guard’s body, and the moment his feet hit the tarmac Remberto was cuffing his hands behind his back.

“No one else in the plane?” Graver asked.

“No, that’s it. But the money’s in there, ten boxes of it.”

Graver felt like a man who had just survived an explosion unscathed; he was doing the psychological equivalent of feeling his body, almost disbelieving the fact that he had been through something so incredible without having one of his limbs blown off. All three loads of money were on the ground. None of his people had been hurt or even fired on. He had two of the three clients. Each of them could be tremendously enlightening about Kalatis’s operations from their own perspectives.

But even so, standing there in the silence of the aftermath, his relief at having escaped all the tragedies that could have befallen them, he was somberly resentful that Kalatis had escaped. Whatever means Kalatis had arranged to take possession of his money had died with the guards and the van driver. The clients would know nothing about what was to happen to the money after the delivery. And now everyone who did know was dead. Graver was, in effect, cut off from Kalatis by a very neat sectioning away of the middlemen. He hadn’t even laid eyes on him, except for photographs. But like a greedy man, though realizing that fate had been good to him, Graver still was not satisfied. The very thing he had wanted most had eluded him, and that single deprivation turned all the rest of his good fortune to sour disappointment.