I nodded to him. "Just try to land as close as you can to the airport. We'll coordinate with the state troopers. We might draw fire," I added.

"Understood," the pilot said.

I started to discuss our options with Wade and Moriarity. Should we try to land at the airport itself, or nearby in the desert? Had either of them fired their weapons before, or been fired on? I found out that they hadn't. Neither of them. Terrific.

The pilot turned to us again. "Here we go. Airport should be coming up on our right. There."

Suddenly I could see a small airfield with a two-story building and what looked like two airstrips. I spotted cars, maybe half a dozen, but I didn't see a red Bronco yet.

Then I saw a small private plane taxiing and getting ready for takeoff.

Shafer? It didn't seem likely to me, but neither did anything else so far.

"I thought we shut down Wells?" I called to the pilot.

"So did I. Maybe this is our boy. If it is, he's gone. That's a Learjet 55 and it moves pretty damn good."

From that moment on, there was very little we could do but watch. The Learjet shot down one of the runways, then it was airborne, winging away from us and making it look ridiculously easy. I could imagine Geoffrey Shafer on board, looking back at the FBI helicopter, maybe giving us the finger. Or was he giving me the finger? Could he know that I was there?

A few minutes later we were on the ground at Wells. Almost immediately I got the jolting news that the Learjet was off radar.

"What do you mean 'off radar'?" I asked the two techies inside the tiny Wells control room.

The older of the two answered. "What I mean is that the jet seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. It's like it was never here."