Fire Flight by John J. Nance

Author:John J. Nance
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2003-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

WEST YELLOWSTONE AIRPORT, MONTANA

Joe Groff sighed and sat back in the empty office, letting his mind roam through the possible solutions. He loved solving unexpected problems and proving his own brilliance to himself. And he was used to his employer grousing that he spent too much time finding solutions to problems that had yet to develop. But clearing away problems had always been his forte, and he was good at it. Jerry Stein had the visions and the entrepreneurial zeal, but it was up to the invisible man named Joe to make sure that no one interfered with those visions.

He shook his head and smiled at a private joke, thinking again how smart he’d been to leave his detective shield behind in Miami six years ago to follow the pied piper of aging airplanes and serve as Jerry’s security director. Stein always introduced him as something else, of course. Some days he was a business associate, and other days he was Jerry Stein’s personal pilot, even though he barely knew how to fly small Cessnas. And some days, Joe knew, his were the real brains behind Jerry’s success. He was the shadowy operative who anticipated major problems and did something about them just in time.

Of course, Jerry was the wily one who realized how many professional enemies he’d acquired over the years, and how vital it was to know more about the employees, the customers, and the other companies than they knew about him. It was, in other words, a dream job for a frustrated clandestine operative.

It also helped, Joe thought, that he had a plain vanilla face that could suggest dozens of different people. Not a chameleon exactly, but over the years he’d found he could meet the same person two or three times during a year and never be remembered.

Such as now.

Joe drummed his fingers and thought through the next move. Clark Maxwell’s determination to bring in the FBI at this point was a very dangerous move, given the sensitivity of things. The attempt had to be thwarted. But while he pondered, an alerted FBI agent was getting ready to drive down from Helena to hear what Maxwell was worried about. Undoing that momentum was going to be tricky.

Thank God I saw Maxwell looking for an empty office, Joe thought. Ducking in the parachute room and watching for the right line to light up had been a spur-of-the-moment reaction. Tapping into the call had been fairly easy for someone of his experience, especially since he’d already been shadowing the veteran captain. Maxwell had been on his close-watch list from the moment Joe had been told he was coming out of retirement for the season. He was well aware of Maxwell’s scathing article, though he hadn’t discussed it with Jerry. After all, they were short of pilots, and he figured he could keep careful watch on any seditious activity.

Joe picked up the phone and punched into an empty line, using the memorized number from the small telephone pad decoder he’d used to intercept the number Maxwell had been calling.

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