Standoff: A Vin Cooper Novel Read Free

that the runway was still darkened informed her that the mystery aircraft hadn’t made –
    A black shape exploded from out of the darkness and roared past low overhead, interrupting her thoughts.
    “Shit!” she exclaimed, ducking involuntarily as the blast of propeller and turboprop roar enveloped her. “Hey!” she shouted at it as the shape disappeared in the blackness. Macey’s muscles relaxed as she stood up from the crouch, the hair raised on the back of her neck, her spine tingling with shock. Then a second aircraft, lower than the first, almost took her head off, the pressure wave coming off the backs of its wings buffeting her. Like the first aircraft, this second one was almost instantly swallowed by the night. She peered into the darkness, trying to locate them. After a dozen seconds, as if to help her out, their landing lights and strobes came on, pinpointing them against the stars, one three hundred yards behind the other. They were coming in to land.
    The fright Macey experienced almost being chewed up by low flying propeller blades ebbed away leaving indignant anger in its place. She was gonna have some serious, mother-lovin’ words with those pilots. But almost immediately she decided that probably wouldn’t be too smart. There was only one reason for coming in low like that: to avoid the radar at El Paso International. The aircraft seemed to have come from the southwest, the direction of Mexico. The border was barely seven miles away, only a couple minutes’ flying time with the ass those turboprops had been hauling. Macey watched the aircraft lights enter the landing pattern. Her hands were clammy. Everything told her that what she was witnessing had a dangerous quality about it.
    The runway lights finally came on. Macey started walking toward the facility, turning to look back over her shoulder at the inbound aircraft. They were approaching fast, the wash from their powerful landing lights already shimmering and flickering on the ground around her. After a few steps she broke into a jog, which turned into a sprint. She was running hard, wanting to get back to the Lear, find Gartner. She stole another glance over her shoulder. The aircraft were coming in hot. Her foot went into a hole. It went in deep. She stumbled. Macey knew she was in trouble. Her momentum propelled her forward, all the strain of her weight on a point against her shin pressed against a rock, her knee joint overextended. She knew it was coming, nothing she could do to stop it … The crack was like a dry tree branch being snapped over someone’s thigh, her bones breaking as the ground rushed toward her outstretched hands.
    Macey lay facedown in the dirt for several seconds, groaning, dreading the worst – knowing the worst – before rolling slowly to the side. The change in body position released the pressure on her foot and it popped out of the gopher hole. She pushed herself up on an elbow and saw that her lower leg was bent in an odd way, a right angle in it halfway up the shin like she had a second knee joint there. She rolled all the way onto her back and grunted, holding her leg below the break, swearing angrily at her own stupidity.
    “Now what the hell are you gonna do?” Macey said aloud and brought her foot back down on the dirt, feeling the ends of the fractured shinbones grinding against each other. This should feel worse than it did, she thought, but knew the real pain was yet to come.
    The lead aircraft touched down and then its engines shrieked and propeller blades snarled in full reverse thrust. Macey turned her head to the side to watch it go by, to identify it. It flashed past, lit up by the runway lights. A turboprop with a T-tail – a King Air. The whole thing was painted flat black. Macey hadn’t seen too many King Airs painted flat black. Or any, come to think of it.
    She groaned and let her head fall back onto the ground. Then the second aircraft thundered past, sounding the same as the first. Another