His cover as a mechanic at Tyner held up from day one, allowing Gibson to poke around and ask questions without drawing attention to himself. The new mechanic was a genial sort of fellow but not all that quick on the uptake. As a result, he asked a lot of rudimentary questions about the airport. No one held it against him, though, because he was very sweet about it, and they’d all been new once too.
Gibson returned with the results of his reconnaissance, and then he and Jenn began all over. Both taking turns playing devil’s advocate, looking for holes in their thinking. Tearing it to shreds and stitching it back together again. During their morning runs, they used the same tactic to propose ways to keep Eskridge’s classified materials from falling into Calista’s hands. Then back to the airport went Gibson with fresh questions. Soon, the gaps in their plan narrowed. They did their best to anticipate the ways that things could go sideways on them and write contingencies into their script. Jenn projected an air of confidence that Gibson played into, but they both knew that the airport represented a complex and chaotic target. There were simply too many moving pieces to see everything coming. The risks were high, and the chance of taking George Abe cleanly was low.
Gibson’s crash course on Titus Stonewall Eskridge Jr. had been sobering. Eskridge was smart, ruthless, and adaptive. A survivor. Going up against a man like Eskridge under ideal circumstances would be risky, and these circumstances were far from ideal. They didn’t know what they’d be walking into in Hangar Six. And if by some miracle Eskridge didn’t kill them, they still had Calista Dauplaise to contend with. Jenn, George, and Gibson represented dangerous loose ends to Calista, just as Eskridge did.
Jenn compensated by working longer and harder. She lived for exactly this. She probably had precise, printed mission specs for brushing her teeth. She went over everything in meticulous detail while Gibson took notes. Any element that they couldn’t account for went on a master list to be worked out later. She’d drill him until he could recite the mission details backward and forward. If the past was any indication, there would be a quiz later.
“So why don’t we get Hendricks in on this?” Gibson suggested one afternoon during a marathon planning session. “I know he’d come. Another set of reliable hands would up our odds on this a lot.”
“Can’t. Cold Harbor has eyes on him. If he suddenly decamped for the East Coast, Eskridge would know we were making a play for his aircraft. Besides, he’s already doing an important job. We know from Calista that Eskridge is surveilling Dan. He and I’ve spent the last month establishing a false narrative that I am in hiding somewhere on the West Coast. Dan has been openly begging me for a meet. So far I’ve resisted, but the day before Dulles, I will agree to a meet in the Castro. Ideally, that will give Eskridge a false sense of security and give us the freedom to operate here.”
Gibson nodded. “If you’re in San Francisco, you can’t very well be at Dulles.”
“Something like that,” she said. “Eskridge had eyes on you too. Another reason I had to stay away from you. But Cold Harbor lost track of you when you disappeared. That’s the only reason we thought it safe to reach out.”
“Well, it’s a shame. We could use Dan here.”
“That we could,” she said and went back to work.
With a day to spare, Gibson thought they had things nailed down as well as they could on this timetable. But, true to form, Jenn got one of her bad feelings, and they spent the morning reviewing every phase of the operation. Gibson groaned inwardly but resisted the urge to intentionally forget details. He was almost punchy enough to find it funny but not punchy enough to think Jenn would too. In the end, they agreed on the necessity of Gibson making one more trip out to Dulles.
When he returned to the house, he found Jenn in the midst of an equipment and weapons check, a ritual that had evolved into her cleaning every weapon and re-handloading every magazine.
“If it jams on me, I want it to be my fault.”
“Happy to be off the hook for that one,” he said.
“How did it go at the airport?”
“We may have a small problem.”
“Tell me,” she said.
The plan called for Jenn to fly into Dulles in a small aircraft rented out of Ohio. After she landed, Gibson would need to pick her up in a Tyner Aviation vehicle. Most of the vehicles inside the airport’s security perimeter were parked with keys in the ignition. However, Tyner personnel kept a watchful eye on them. Tyner also had a parking lot outside security. It wasn’t nearly as carefully monitored, but no keys were left in vehicles there. If he managed to commandeer a vehicle from that parking lot, Gibson would also need to cross through security to get into the airport. Neither option was ideal, and he’d gone back to the airport to determine the lesser of two evils.
“So I could probably take a vehicle from inside the fence, but after that we’re rolling the dice on how long before someone raises the alarm. Might be two hours, might be ten minutes. There’s just no way to know.”
“So it’s got to be a vehicle from outside the lot.”
“That would be my vote.”
“You don’t happen to know how to hot-wire a car?”
“No,” Gibson said. He’d been giving this issue a lot of thought, and he had a solution. Jenn wasn’t going to like it. Without ever meeting him, she wasn’t going to like it one little bit. “But I know a guy.”
“You know a guy? Why do I suddenly feel like I’m about to get an STD?”
Gibson described Gavin Swonger to her.
“And there it is,” Jenn said in disbelief. “You want to recruit a white-trash, convicted car thief? Are you out of your goddamn mind? There’s no time to vet him. I leave in less than eight hours. Calista’s going to brick.”
“Then let her brick. Look, I’m all for scouring LinkedIn for a Harvard-educated car thief, but I don’t know how many of those we’re going to find.”
“Gibson . . .”
“We’re twenty-four hours out. You have a better idea?”
“You’ve worked with this guy?”
“In West Virginia. I’ll vouch for him.”
Jenn looked as if she’d been given the choice between having her fingers smashed with a hammer or smashed with a rock. “Fine, give your guy a call. I’ll smooth things over with Calista. God help me.”
Swonger didn’t take any convincing at all. He agreed before Gibson even finished laying out what he needed. Gibson brought up payment, and Swonger shut him down.
“Dog, how many times I got to tell you? Your paper’s no good here.”
“Thanks, Swonger.”
“Not a thing. See you ma?ana.” Swonger hung up.
Calista took significantly more persuasion, and Jenn didn’t come back downstairs for an hour. When she finally reappeared, they squared away the house ahead of their departure tomorrow. A cleaning crew would follow after them and scour the house from top to bottom, but they wanted to be sure they hadn’t left anything incriminating behind.