CHAPTER 37
Nantucket Memorial Airport
The men could have been any of the many itinerant workers who flocked to the island every summer. The ones who toiled the fishing boats or tended the lawns or performed any of the backbreaking manual labor needed to keep this island of the super-rich functioning.
These three men happened to be Mexican. They had arrived a year ago on visas purchased with the help of a man in Paris. Since then they had been sharing a one-bedroom apartment on the island and working as truck drivers, hauling away the trash of the wealthy.
Tonight they drove toward the airport in their big green garbage truck, then pulled off the road on a dark stretch away from any streetlights.
The first man looked at his friends, checked his cell phone, then jumped out of the cab.
He walked to the back of the truck and reached underneath the bags of trash to retrieve his gear.
He grabbed the military-issue green duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder.
He headed down the street in the direction of a motel.
The motel maids were his neighbors, and he had easily gleaned from them the intelligence that this was where Senator Harrison’s Secret Service agents stayed when he was on the island.
The agents slept in shifts, four to each of two adjacent rooms.
He looked at his watch. It was 9:55 p.m. In five minutes, he would kill all the infidels.
The second man jumped out of the truck and walked across the road toward the airport, stopping by a cluster of small trees.
The full summer foliage would shield him from the streetlight but still afford an unobstructed view of the control tower.
A clear line of sight meant he had a clear shot at the structure, which housed the communications equipment necessary to direct incoming and outgoing aircraft. He checked his watch. It was 9:58 p.m.
The last man drove the garbage truck at a crawl, turning off the headlights as he approached the airfield’s last utility gate.
The chain-link fence was secured with a heavy gauge lock that held the gate shut and denied intruders access to the runway.
He reached behind his seat and pulled out a pair of bolt cutters.
His was the easiest job of all. When given the signal at the appointed time, all he had to do was drive the garbage truck onto the tarmac and park it at the intersection of both runways.
So positioned, the huge garbage truck would effectively block any fixed-wing aircraft from landing on the island.
The last man was also armed with thermite grenades and a dozen lightweight antitank weapons—all of it stolen equipment that had been earmarked for destruction two years prior, before disappearing from a National Guard armory in Brownsville, Texas.
Records of the subsequent investigation had been lost.