Decker Field was a private airport south of the city of St. Louis which catered to private pilots, particularly those interested in sport flying. There were several homebuilts based on the field, and five or six acrobatic aircraft, including a Stearman. Henry Bowman flew in there fairly frequently, and he and his black-andyellow clipwing Cub were well-known to the regulars at Decker.

At any small airport with lots of private planes, there are always some planes whose owners don't have much time to fly, and quite often, these planes are for sale. The situation at Decker Field was no exception. Henry knew of at least two and possibly three Cessna 172 Skyhawks on the airport that were for sale. He wanted one with an autopilot. Given that, he wanted the most neglected-looking one there.

Henry rode his BMW down the taxiway with its lights off and pulled in almost at the far end of the flight line. He parked the bike, took a small Mag-Lite from his saddlebag, and shone it in the plexiglas side window of a blue-and-white 1973 model that had a 'For Sale' sign taped in the window. No autopilot. And the outside's cleaner than I'd like. He jogged thirty yards to another 172 and repeated his once-over. Autopilot. Kind of dirty. He shone his light on the brake rotors, and saw they were rusty. Hasn't been flown in quite a while. Battery might be dead. He ran down the rows of planes and found three more Skyhawks, but one had a custom paint job, and the other two Henry recognized as planes that were flown regularly. One of the two was on a leaseback arrangement with the airport owner. He jogged back to the second plane he had looked at.

It's down to this one Henry Bowman decided as he grabbed a wingtip and pulled it up and down. It felt heavy, and there was a slight sloshing sound. Almost full Henry thought with a smile. He looked around the deserted airport on the off-chance that someone else was on the field, and might be able to see him. Henry had a story ready about checking out the 172 for an out-of town friend that was in the market for one. The fact that it was four in the morning was somewhat unusual, but everybody knew aero pilots were different, and nobody would suspect Henry Bowman or any other rube-and-rag aero pilot of trying to steal a tri-gear 'spam can'. Any interruption would nonetheless destroy his plan, however, and Henry stayed in shadow as he worked on the door lock.

Light airplanes in general and older ones in particular are ridiculously easy to get into and start without the key. Private aircraft are of necessity lightly constructed, and theft has never been a big problem since there are relatively few pilots, and almost all airplanes have to be based at airports. Theft-for-export is a risk, and the drug business has forced some owners of transport aircraft to take stronger measures, but low-powered, four-place planes based in the midwest are generally ignored by professional criminals.

Henry Bowman had a pocketful of small keys he had either scrounged from Allen Kane's shop or bought at the Walgreens several hours before. It took him less than a minute to discover that a Craftsman toolbox key would open the door of the 1973 Skyhawk, and less than two more minutes to jump the ignition and learn that the battery was in fact sufficiently charged to turn the engine over. Once he was convinced the airplane would fly, he transferred the contents of his saddlebags to the back seat of the plane, and rode the BMW off the airport to the adjacent industrial park. He parked it behind the end building in the row of offices nearest the runway, and began the 15-minute jog back to the plane.

The 150 horsepower Lycoming caught on the third revolution when Henry Bowman pressed the starter button. He fed the mixture control to full rich, leaned it out slightly, released the brakes, and began a fast taxi. Henry pressed the right rudder pedal to the floor and pulled onto the south runway, cycling the yoke to make sure the controls were free. Steers like a goddamn car he thought distractedly. Henry was used to planes that could turn around in their own length on the ground.

Henry dispensed with a mag check and gave the engine full throttle as he kept it centered on the runway. At 70 MPH the airplane lifted off the ground. He checked his oil pressure and fuel, fiddled with the mixture for best power, and turned onto a compass heading that would take him straight to his house.

After dark, things look much different from the air than they do in the daytime, but Henry Bowman had spent enough time flying in and out of his place at night that he had no trouble finding it or setting up for a landing in the somewhat unfamiliar craft. The Cessna, with flaps extended, had a steeper approach angle than his flapless, clipped-wing Cub, but that was to be expected.

Dad would have been proud of that one he thought as his mains kissed the grass strip at less than 60 MPH.

Henry looked at his watch as he got out of the Skyhawk and saw that it was quarter to five. He pushed the airplane into his spare hangar, closed the door, and trotted up the hill to his garage. After deactivating the alarm, Henry pulled the door closed, flipped on the fluorescents, and began searching his tool shelf.

"Bingo," he said aloud when he spotted his electric die grinder. He pushed a 1979 Kawasaki Z-1 out into the middle of the floor, plugged his grinder into a retractable-reel extension cord that also housed a trouble light, packed several semi-clean shop towels between the bike's frame and fuel tank, and began to relieve the motorcycle of the serial numbers on its frame and engine.

That done, Henry inflated the bike's tires using shop air, checked the tank to see that he had fuel, set the choke, flipped on the petcock, turned the key in the ignition, and pressed the starter button. Nothing happened. Dead. Well, I guess that would have been too much to expect, wouldn't it? he thought to himself, and popped the seat so that he could attach his booster to the Kawasaki's battery. With the airbox open, he sprayed a three-second shot of ether starting fluid into the carb throats before hooking up the cables, turning the dial to 200 AMP CRANKING ASSIST, switching the booster on, and pressing the starter button.

The l000cc motor caught after a few seconds of high-speed cranking, and settled into a fast, ragged idle. Sounds like the pilot jet's gummed up on at least one carb he thought. No matter. Henry disconnected the cables, shut the seat, turned the lights in the garage off, and hit the button that opened the east overhead door. Shit, no plates he realized. The Z-l was a spare that he had never licensed. It took another minute to take the plates off his 1452cc GSXR with the 210-horsepower Gatlin motor and affix them to the back of the slower bike. By the time he put his helmet on and pushed the Z-l outside, the motorcycle was wanned up, but still threatened to die when the choke was switched off. Henry closed the garage door, climbed on the old Kaw, and headed back to the airport to retrieve his BMW.

It was just after 7:00 a.m. when Henry Bowman wheeled the yellow-and-black BMW in front of his garage with his GSXR's plates in his jacket pocket. It felt like he had been up forever. Stay with it, hoss he told himself. About two more hours worth of prep, then you can sack out for a good three, maybe four hours.

The first order of business was to strap the three aluminum cases onto the BMW. The second was to outfit the Skyhawk for long-range travel.

Like Randy said Henry reminded himself, just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

It was a few minutes past 4:00 p.m. when he finally heard the helicopters coming. The wind was blowing gently towards him, and it carried the sound well. Two choppers, he judged from the pitch of the engines, possibly three. Henry realized that his first emotion upon hearing the sound of rotor blades approaching was not one of anxiety, or even sadness, but rather an overwhelming sense of relief. The waiting was over.

His next thought concerned the relatives of the men that were about to die. The surviving spouses and children would never comprehend that their loved ones were dead because a little man in an out-of-control federal agency had wanted to be a hero. Actually, Henry thought, Blair was just the last straw. It started when the government got just a little too heavy-handed in June of '68.

That isn't right, either he reflected. It started a long time before King and Kennedy got killed. The death sentence for the men in the helicopters was handed down a lot earlier. In June of 1934.

Henry settled in behind the big Solothurn and checked his field of view through the optical sight. The example of Swiss craftsmanship had been manufactured in 1939. That irony was not lost on Henry Bowman. 1939 was the year the Supreme Court had ruled on the Miller case, after the defense had declined to show up.

Supreme Court's been ducking that issue ever since Henry thought as he strained to hear a change in the approaching noise. Well, guys, the tide has turned. It's time you thugs had a little history lesson. I don't suppose you're familiar with what happened in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. A small smile appeared on his lips, as Henry remembered something. It's just like the story Uncle Max told me when I was a kid. About Billy Dell, pulling a Paul Bunyan.

Henry Bowman's right hand tightened around the walnut grip of the Solothurn S18-1000. He twisted his head methodically and arched his back as he lay there on his stomach, working the stiffness from his body. He had lain prone for over an hour with his face pressed against a pair of binoculars, and he needed to be loose for what he was going to have to do.

The helicopters appeared over a ridge that Bowman had previously determined was a little more than two miles distant. They were following a heading that would take them to the spot that he had selected, next to the old water-filled quarry where he did most of his shooting. Henry steadied the binoculars by resting his right wrist on the top of the Solothurn's receiver, and cranked the zoom control from ten power all the way up to twenty. The binoculars amplified the heat waves in the air that are invisible to the naked eye, and called 'mirage' by competition shooters who use high magnification optical sights.

The boiling, shimmering image in the glasses gave a surrealistic appearance to the approaching choppers, but Henry could make them out well enough. Three of them. Bell turbine model, Jet Ranger or its descendant. A door gunner with a belt-fed machine gun poking out of the right side of each one. Possibly the Belgian MAG-58, but more likely M60s, he thought with derision.

They should have brought armored Apaches carrying napalm, he thought. Or nukes. A grin split his face. Oh, those poor bastards.

"I'll put down on the east corner, near the water," the pilot of the lead helicopter announced over the radio. "Two, you take the south edge, Three, you land in the northwest corner." The other two pilots acknowledged as all three rotorcraft throttled back and began their descents.

Calron Jones, crouched behind the M60 in the third helicopter, had been feeling uneasy ever since boarding the aircraft. It was his first time flying in anything other than a commercial jet airliner, and the wind blast and the open door did nothing to relieve his anxiety. He nervously flicked the safety off of t he belt-fed gun, without consciously realizing he had done so. His right hand gripped the weapon's black pistol grip more tightly as the turbine helicopter descended.

Jaime Hernandez, in the lead aircraft, visually scanned the ground below for signs of Wilson Blair. He saw nothing but wooded rolling hills, and the open grassy area next to the water-filled quarry pit. The gravel road leading from the state highway to Henry Bowman's house was over a half-mile away from the clearing, straight line. Hernandez scowled, trying to figure out how Wilson Blair could have come to this remote location. Walking was the only way, as far as he could see.

Just like ducks flaring out to land in the decoys Henry thought as he watched through the optical sight of the 20mm. The three choppers were in a stairstep descent, aiming for the clearing west of the limestone pit. Henry Bowman tightened his right index and middle fingers around the Solothurn's two-finger trigger, and waited.

The hilltop on which Henry Bowman lay was, by actual measurement with a laser rangefinder, four hundred twenty-three yards from the center of the clearing by the pit. The 20mm was sighted in at 300 yards, and would place all its shots in an area the size of a large dinner plate at that range. At 425 yards, the slugs would hit about 15" lower than they would at the 300 yard distance for which the gun was zeroed. At 600 yards, they would be 45" below point of aim.

Henry centered the most distant helicopter in the scope. It was about 300 feet off the ground, flying straight at him, and was perhaps 650 yards away. He switched his aiming point to the swash plate on top of the chopper's whirling mainshaft, and tracked the aircraft's gradual descent.

Send helicopter gunships to my house, will you ? Suck up to your buddies in DEA and Secret Service so you can snowflake my friends? Not today, guys Henry said silently as he began to squeeze the trigger. It's hammer time.

The big gun lifted about an inch off the ground as it thundered, and pushed Henry back half a foot. The quarter-pound thermite-filled incendiary slug took less than a second to traverse the one-third mile distance. It was traveling at twice the speed of sound when it struck the thin aluminum skin below the helicopter's plexiglas windshield, and detonated on the back side of the instrument panel just in front and to the left of the pilot.

The fifteen thousand foot-pounds of kinetic energy the projectile already possessed due to its forward motion was greatly amplified by the small explosive charge inside it. The explosion vaporized the left side of the pilot's torso just above the hip, ruptured six of the eight eardrums on board the aircraft, and blew out all the windows on the left side as thousands of tiny, white-hot thermite particles were propelled at supersonic velocity throughout the chopper.

The pilot's body shielded Calron Jones from much of the shrapnel, but the force of the blast blew the gunner out the open doorway even as his hand clamped onto the M60's pistol grip and his index finger reflexively grabbed the trigger. The M60 was bolted into a 360 degree swivel mount, and for a brief moment, Jones was outside the helicopter, hanging onto the M60 and spraying the inside of the aircraft with 147-grain armor-piercing .308 projectiles traveling at 2600 feet per second. In less than two seconds, the centripetal acceleration from the spinning, out-of-control chopper exceeded the strength of Jones' grip, and he was flung away from the doomed craft.

The M60, like most M60s that were not brand new, had a worn sear. It was worn enough that the gun did not stop firing even though no finger remained on the trigger. The continued stream of .308 slugs tore additional holes in the helicopter's fuel tanks, and suddenly the aircraft became one huge fireball. The M60 kept chattering away, finally running out of ammo seconds before the flaming mass of steel and aluminum slammed into the trees at over 200 MPH.

"What the fuck?" the pilot of the second helicopter said as he heard the noise behind him and swung his aircraft around to see what was the problem. His jaw dropped in horror and disbelief as he watched the flaming wreck fall out of the sky.

"They're on fire!" he screamed into the microphone as he gave his engine full throttle and increased the pitch on the collective to stop his descent. "Davis is on fire and he's-"

The pilot's transmission was cut off as Henry's second shot penetrated the left side of the #2 aircraft and detonated on the engine's turbine scroll housing. The turbine wheel was spinning at tremendous speed, and when its structural integrity was destroyed, it disintegrated like an overrevved flywheel. The resulting shrapnel tore through the helicopter, killing one passenger instantly and wounding the others. The chopper fell two hundred feet and tore through the top of a 60-foot oak tree. Then it caught on fire.

The lead helicopter had been about fifty feet off the ground when the pilot of the second aircraft had broadcast that the third was on fire. When the transmission had been cut off in mid-sentence, the pilot of the lead chopper had swung ninety degrees to the left to see what was going on. Both the National Guard pilot and ATF Agent Jaime Hernandez saw the explosion in the woods to their left, and the other fire burning several hundred yards behind it. "Get us out of here!" Agent Hernandez screamed at the pilot. The door gunner dove onto the floor, and the fourth man curled into a ball next to him.

The chopper pilot was good, but he was up against the laws of physics. He'd had almost zero forward motion because he had been setting up for the landing. Now he needed as much horizontal speed as possible, and he did the only logical thing, just as Henry had anticipated. The pilot flattened the pitch of his rotor blades, gave his engine full throttle, and dove for the edge of the quarry pit, trading what little altitude he had for horizontal speed.

In the two hours he had lain on the hill, Henry Bowman had calculated leads and holdovers for various target speeds and ranges. One of the scenarios he had considered was a hovering helicopter over the landing site suddenly trying to get away as quickly as possible. Henry had reasoned that in such a situation, the aircraft would not be able to accelerate to more than sixty miles per hour before he got off a shot. Sixty miles per hour was eighty-eight feet per second. This dictated a forty-foot lead at 425 yards if the helicopter was flying straight across his line of fire, and less if the aircraft was angling towards him or away. In the angled case, the holdover would change slightly, but not enough to matter.

The pilot had the chopper's nose angled down and was aiming for the spot at the far end of the water-filled pit, where there were no trees. That heading put him on a left-to-right path that was not quite at right angles to Henry's position. Henry Bowman got the fleeing chopper in his sights, maintained a lead that was a little less than one helicopter-length in front of the aircraft's nose, and squeezed the Solothurn's trigger for the third time.

He had been hoping to hit the helicopter's engine bay, but Henry Bowman had picked up the target more quickly than his earlier calculations had assumed, and the chopper was only accelerating through 40 MPH when the S18-1000 fired. The bullet went well forward of the engine bay, hit the plexiglas side window, and detonated as it was entering Jaime Hernandez's shoulder.

The explosion killed Hernandez and the pilot instantly. The rotor tips touched the surface of the water, shearing off both blades and sending the helicopter cartwheeling across the surface, its engine screaming. The door gunner broke his neck when his head slammed into the pilot's seat upon impact, but the fourth passenger was still alive, paralyzed with a broken back, when the aircraft began sinking towards the bottom of the limestone pit one hundred twenty-eight feet below the surface.

The trapped ATF agent tried to use his arms to extricate himself, but the impact had knocked the wind out of him, and he was disoriented in the sinking tangle of metal. Unwittingly, he used his last bit of strength to pull himself farther inside the helicopter, away from the opening in the fuselage where the gun was mounted. The wreck continued to sink towards the bottom.

By the time the doomed man could hold his breath no longer and began inhaling water, Henry Bowman had picked up his three fired cases, started his BMW, and broken his Solothurn down into its three main components. Ten minutes after that, the BMW was in the locked garage, the Solothurn was stowed behind him with the rest of his gear, and Henry was easing back on the yoke of the stolen Skyhawk, lifting it off the grass runway.

Henry had the radio set to the UNICOM frequency, 118.3, that was used by pilots in uncontrolled airspace. He keyed the mike, put a North Carolina twang in his voice, and spoke excitedly.

"Mayday! Mayday! Midair and they're in the woods, burning! Two west of the river, going to investigate." He released the TRANSMIT button and listened. Sure enough, chatter overlapped on the channel. Other pilots tuned to the frequency had caught snatches of the hurried transmission and started talking, asking for more info.

By the time the local police and fire departments had responded to the reports of what was variously reported as a forest fire, a gas explosion, and a plane crash, Henry Bowman was twenty miles west, climbing through an altitude of six thousand feet.

Henry leveled the Skyhawk at 10,500 feet, which complied with the FAA-approved even-thousand-plus500 feet guideline for westbound flights. He fiddled with the throttle setting and mixture control until he had the engine at 2000 RPM and what he judged was 40% power, then looked at his portable GPS receiver.

GPS stood for Global Positioning System, which had come into widespread use around 1990. It referred to a series of orbiting satellites that were used for navigation. The Garmin 95XL GPS receiver was about the size of one of the larger personal cassette decks worn by joggers. Henry had bought it in late 1994 for less than $1000. When he had switched it on before taking off, it had taken about thirty seconds to receive signals from the three nearest satellites. It had used the data to triangulate, and then had displayed his exact position on the liquid crystal screen. The GPS receive r was accurate to within about thirty feet.

Now that Henry was in the air and moving, the GPS receiver's internal computer continually sampled data from the satellites and calculated his true heading as well as his groundspeed, and displayed both on the 2" screen. The groundspeed function was especially useful, for winds aloft could cause huge differences between a pilot's true airspeed and the progress he was actually making across the countryside.

The receiver Henry held in his hand had the coordinates of all U.S. airports loaded into memory, as well as information about each one, and also had a map function. The map mode displayed all airports within a user-specified radius from the airplane's position. Perhaps most importantly for in-flight emergencies, the GPS receiver had a 'nearest airport' function, which listed the five closest airports at any given instant, the distance to each one, and the heading to take to get there. The user could specify a minimum runway length for the function, so that the receiver would not list airports with 2000' runways for a pilot flying a corporate jet.

Looking at the GPS screen, Henry compared the figures he saw there with those on his instrument panel. Getting a little push to the north he thought when he saw that his compass heading was twelve degrees less than what the GPS receiver showed as his true course. Eighty-two knots. That's not bad, for burning a little over four gallons per hour. Ought to be there before they get their reconnaissance planes off the ground.

Henry Bowman had taken the plane up high where the air was thin and set up an extremely low power setting to minimize fuel burn and maximize miles per gallon, willingly sacrificing cross-country speed. He had a long way to go, and he did not want to land a stolen airplane at an airport unless he absolutely had to.

Satisfied that he was on a course that would take him over no Terminal Control Areas, Henry reset the autopilot and took his feet off the rudder pedals and his hands off the yoke. In ten minutes, his heading was unchanged, as was his altitude. Satisfied, he pulled a U-shaped piece of foam from under his seat, fitted it around his neck, and switched his sunglasses for a pair that had duct tape over the lenses.

Henry Bowman then did something that few lone pilots have ever done intentionally while flying an airplane: he fell asleep.

"Damned lucky they got the fire stopped before half the county was turned to charcoal. Those volunteer guys ought to get medals for what they did," Sheriff Krause announced.

"They'd probably prefer beer," the deputy answered. Then he motioned the sheriff over. "Take a look at this, Skip." The Jefferson County Sheriff turned and walked towards the wreckage of the helicopter. "What you got, Dee?" the big man asked.

"This make any sense to you?" the younger man said, pointing at a spot inside the twisted hulk of the helicopter. The coroner's office had already removed the charred bodies of the three men that had been inside. The shattered carcass of Calron Jones lay undiscovered in the woods almost a quarter mile away.

"Bullet holes," Krause said immediately. "Thirty caliber, looks like to me," he added, moving to look at the outside of the aircraft, where the shots had exited. "Lots of 'em, and close together, too." "And they're all on the inside, going out," the younger man pointed out. "No entrance holes on the outside skin anywhere."

"Mmm-hmm," he said, poking through the ashes on the floor of the helicopter. He came up with a symmetrically bent piece of charcoal grey metal. "M 60 link," he announced. "Sift through these ashes, we'll find more, I bet. Brass, too. Other chopper's got a mag box fulla cook-offs. This one's empty."

He bent to inspect the gun, which was still locked into the pintle mount. The plastic forearm guard and buttstock had melted in the fire. The sheriff peered inside the bore from the muzzle end. "Purl* near plated with copper," he stated, then swiveled the gun in its mount and nodded his head.

"What you thinking, Sheriff?"

"I think the damn thing ran away on 'em."

"You think maybe this chopper shot itself down? From the inside? What about the other one?" Up until that moment, the discovery of the two crashed helicopters in the middle of a forest fire had spelled Midair Collision to the men who arrived on the scene.

"I don't know," he said slowly. "And even more than why they crashed, I'd sure like to know what two helicopters with M60 door guns and a bunch a armed guys in 'em were doing over Henry Bowman's place while he's on vacation." He squinted and looked around the burned area. "Yes, I surely would like to know that."

No one knew about the third helicopter, which was lying at the bottom of the flooded quarry pit.

June 10 It was past midnight, Missouri time, when Henry Bowman finally awoke from his slumber. Damn he thought when he looked at his watch. Almost eight hours. Just like a transatlantic commercial flight. Guess I really did set a course that didn't hit any TCAs or MOAs he told himself. The alarm on the GPS which sounded when getting too close to restricted airspace had remained silent the entire time.

A quick glance at his compass, altimeter, and gauges confirmed that the autopilot had kept him on the proper heading and at the same altitude, and nothing was amiss with the engine. The fuel level showed less than 1/4 of the original 40 gallons remaining. About 4.2 gallons per hour. Right on spec he thought with a smile.

Having ascertained that he was on-course and that everything was running smoothly, the well-rested pilot fumbled for an empty half-gallon orange juice jug and set about attending to the next most pressing matter on his agenda: his bladder.

Much better Henry thought as he screwed the lid on the plastic jug and carefully zipped up his trousers. Now let's see where the hell I am. He addressed the Nearest Airport function on the GPS receiver and found that the closest field was almost 40 miles away. Bridgeport, Nebraska. Well, that's no surprise Henry said to himself, though he was nonetheless relieved to learn that he really was still on course. He hit up the airport identifier for Arco, Idaho and pressed the GO TO key. The screen informed him that it was 517 nautical miles to that airport, and he needed to change his heading by nine degrees farther to the north.

After making the slight heading correction, Henry turned on the Skyhawk's faint cockpit light. Now for the tedious part he said to himself as he reached down on the floor beside him where the passenger seat had once been and selected the materials he would need for the next phase of his plan.

Henry Bowman had chosen a Cessna 172 Skyhawk as the plane in which to make his escape for several reasons, all of which were important ones. The first was that the Skyhawk was the most common private plane in the world. On top of that, the factory had never been much on changing the paint schemes. White with blue trim or white with red trim covered 90% of the 172s in the country, whether the plane had been made in 1959 or twenty-five years later.

The second reason Henry had chosen the 172 was that it was known for its reliability, stable and forgiving flight characteristics, and load-carrying ability. Four normal-sized adult passengers and their luggage was the standard payload in a 172. Pilots with cavalier attitudes toward such matters regularly overloaded their Skyhawks or flew them with the CG past the aft limit, and usually got away with it.

Third, later-production 172s had 150-horsepower Lycoming engines just like the one that had been retrofitted to Henry's Cub when the wings spars were cut. Henry knew exactly what that motor's fuel consumption was at all power settings, including those that were lower than the lowest ones listed in the operator's manual.

Last of all, the Cessna 172, like Henry's Cub, was a high-wing aircraft. The fuel in the wings did not need a fuel pump, but used gravity to get to the engine. Furthermore, there was a crossover fuel line above the windshield which joined the two tanks, just like in Henry's Cub. In the Skyhawk, the line was covered by plastic interior trim, but that had taken less than a minute to remove when Henry had prepped the plane back in Missouri.

After he had exposed the crossover line, Henry had spliced in a tee fitting and connected a hose and hand pump to it. The tee fitting had come off his GSXR Suzuki. The hand pump was the one he normally used to pump Union 76 high-octane race gas for his Typhoon and motorcycles out of the 55-gallon drums it came in. Now he was going to use it to refill the main tanks from inside the aircraft.

After draining his GMC, his Kaiser 715 one-and-a-quarter ton, all his motorcycles, and the partially-full drum of race gas, and then topping off the 172 on the ground, Henry had been left with fifty-three gallons drum of race gas, and then topping off the 172 on the ground, Henry had been left with fifty-three gallons gallon jerrycans in the back of the plane, as well as a round 6-gallon unit marked 'Race Gas Only', one 2 1/2-gallon metal gas can, nine round metal screw-top containers that 24 hours earlier had each held eight pounds of pistol powder, seven one-gallon milk jugs, four half-gallon orange juice jugs, and a 1952 Moet et Chandon Jereboam that Walter had given Henry (empty) for his fifth birthday because the boy had liked bottles.

The fuel containers, along with his Solothurn and other important gear, were where the rear seat had been. Henry had unbolted the rear and passenger seats, cut them up with a reciprocating saw, and packed them into the luggage area at the back of the plane at the same time he had made the fuel line modifications.

Henry reached back, grabbed one of the 5-gallon plastic jerrycans, and slid it up next to him. He unscrewed the lid and poked the loose end of the hose into the mouth of the can. The other end of the hose was attached to the suction side of the hand pump. Henry unsnapped the Vise-Grip pliers he had clamped onto the spliced-in line, and began to operate the pump. / think this thing's only rated for twenty or twenty-five gallons an hour Henry silently reminded himself. Then he laughed.

"Hell," he said out loud, "it's not like I've got a lot of better things to do."

"Three National Guard helicopters left St. Louis a little after three o'clock yesterday," Sheriff Krause announced after he had hung up the phone. 'They were on loan to the Treasury Department," he added, "as part of some quote 'comprehensive, multi-part mission' unquote. The mission coordinator of this comprehensive, multi-part mission, according to the guy I just talked to, is a fellow named Wilson Blair, who is based in Ohio."

"Ohio?" one of the deputies said immediately.