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After having to backtrack only once, they relocated the car. Goliad was the designated driver. Timmy got in the shotgun seat.
As Goliad reached for his phone, he made a split-second decision to be as short on details as possible. Once he and Timmy returned to Atlanta with that black box, any mishaps they had encountered during the undertaking would be irrelevant.
He turned on the speaker so Timmy could listen in and placed the call. After only half a ring, it was answered, not by the boss, but by his missus, who was much more excitable.
In a voice hard enough to chisel granite, she asked, “Do you have it?”
“Not yet, ma’am.”
“The plane’s not there yet?”
“Showed up about half an hour ago.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“It crashed.”
She gasped.
Goliad said, “The pilot was about to land, overshot the runway, crashed in the woods.”
He gave Timmy a look that said he could thank him later for saving his ass. Timmy gave him a thumbs-up.
“The plane burned, it was destroyed, what?” she asked. “What?”
“No, it wasn’t destroyed. The box made it okay.”
There was a pause, an exhale, a huskily spoken, “Thank heaven.”
“But the doctor beat us to the crash site.” He described the scene that he and Timmy had crept up on. “She and the pilot were talking.”
“He survived?”
“Uninjured, best we could tell.”
“What was she doing at the crash site? She was supposed to meet the plane at the airfield.”
“I don’t understand that, either,” he admitted. “All I know is, she was there. The pilot gave her the box. It’s as described. About the size of a loaf of bread. Padlocked. They struck off together on foot. They were headed to her car. She was giving him a lift to the airfield office.”
“So why didn’t you go after them? Richard will demand to know. How will I explain this to him?”
“They had no idea we were there, ma’am. Tracking them on foot, we could’ve given ourselves away. It wouldn’t have been a smart move.”
Knowing how thin she was on patience, he used as few words as possible to adequately describe how bad conditions were. “You think it’s bad in Atlanta, it’s worse up here. If we came up on them accidentally in this fog and there was an…encounter…this could get botched real easy.”
“It could’ve got messy,” Timmy said, speaking for the first time. “Because he was packing.”
“What’s he talking about, Goliad?”
“The pilot was armed. You, we, nobody took him into account. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the picture.”
“Why would we have taken him into account? We didn’t know he would crash!”
“True. There was no predicting that.” Goliad shot an angry glance toward Timmy, who squirmed in his seat.
“You say he was armed?” she asked.
“Pocket pistol. Nine-millimeter. He’s not a regular pilot. Looked worse for wear, and not because of the crash.”
