* * *
After making a quick stop at Sara’s home, they drove to National Airport and parked. Fiske tugged the trench coat around him and pulled his hat down tightly over his head as the rain began to fall harder. He opened a big umbrella and covered Sara with it. They went to the general aviation terminal, and then out the other side to the boarding area, where they climbed in a sedan with tinted windows. A couple minutes later the car pulled away from the curb.
Behind them were two FBI agents, one of whom was already communicating this development to his superiors. Then he went over to the service counter to determine the destination of the flight Fiske and Sara were about to get on. The other agent went out and watched as the sedan pulled up to the private jet.
Inside the sedan, Fiske and the driver, Chuck Herman’s copilot, were busy switching places. The driver put on the trench coat and hat. From a distance he would look like Fiske. Their plan was to have Sara stay on the plane for an hour, during which time she would attempt to contact Fiske’s JAG friend, Phil Jansen. Then she would leave. They knew the FBI would question her about Fiske’s disappearance, but they would have no grounds to detain her.
The FBI agent watched as a thin, white-haired man came down the steps from the plane and greeted Sara and the man whom he assumed was Fiske as they climbed out of the car. The group went up the steps and into the plane. The sedan pulled away. The FBI agent kept his eyes on the plane as the sedan passed by him and continued on to the main road leading out of the terminal.
Driving the sedan, Fiske let out a deep breath as he pulled onto the George Washington Parkway. Within ten minutes he was headed south on Interstate 95 toward Richmond. Traffic was heavy; it was almost three hours before he pulled the car up to his office building. He had already checked in with Billy Hawkins. Josh Harms was in surgery at MCV. It didn’t look good, Hawkins had told him. Fiske parked the car and went around to the office’s rear entrance, just in case.
He made his way to the lower level and approached the supply room. Please be there, he urged Rufus. He tapped on the door. “Rufus?” he said quietly. “It’s John Fiske.”
Rufus cautiously opened the door.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Rufus gripped his arm. “How’s Josh?”
“He’s in surgery. All you can do is pray.”
“That’s all I been doing.”
They went out the rear entrance, walked quickly to Fiske’s car and climbed in.
“Where we going?” Rufus said.
“You want to tell me about the letter from the Army?”
“What about it?”
“They wanted to follow up on the phencyclidine testing, right?”
Harms stiffened. “Phen-what?”
“You know, PCP.”
“How did you know about that?”
“Same thing happened to another guy in the Army named Stanley, who was in a bogus program. They used LSD on him.”
“I wasn’t in no damn PCP program, even if they said I was.” He pulled out the letter and gave it to Fiske.
Fiske took a moment to read it and then looked at him. “Tell me about it, Rufus.”
Harms sat back as much as he could. He was so large that his knees touched the dash and his head brushed the car’s ceiling. “They’d been out to get me for a while. Tremaine and Rayfield.”
“And Dellasandro? Corporal Leo Dellasandro?”
“Yeah, him too. I guess they didn’t take too kindly to me sitting nice and snug in the States, even if it was in the stockade.”
“They didn’t know about your dyslexia?”
“You seem to know a damn lot.”
“Go on.”
“I’d had plenty of run-ins with that group before. Tremaine got thrown in the stockade with me one night for drinking. He told me real directly what he thought about me. I guess they planned this thing out. They came in the stockade one night. Leo had a gun. They made me close my eyes, get on the floor. The next thing I knew, they stuck something in me. I opened my eyes and saw the needle coming out of my arm. They all stood there laughing, waiting for me to die. I could tell from what they said, that was their plan. OD me on the stuff.”