Unintended Consequences

you can land this airplane there?” she asked.
    “Oh, yes, there’s a paved runway.” He didn’t explain that it was only 2,450 feet long.
    “How long will it take us?”
    “Less than an hour.”
    “And it would take eight hours to drive?”
    “Right.”
    “An airplane is very convenient to own,” she said.
    •   •   •
    H alf an hour later ATC gave him his descent, and he began pointing out things to Helga. “The bay in front of us is Penobscot Bay,” he said, “the largest in Maine.” He changed the range on the map display, and the island got larger. Twenty miles out he canceled his instrument flight plan, then made his final descent to Islesboro. He checked the windsock to see which end of the runway was favored and he lined up on it, dropping the landing gear, adding full flaps, and slowing dramatically. On such a short runway, a pilot did not want to land hot.
    Suddenly they were on the ground, and Stone was using the speed brakes to dump lift and braking hard.
    “That was wonderful,” Helga said. “Now what do we do?”
    Stone turned the airplane around and pointed to a man leaning against a 1938 Ford station wagon. “That’s Seth, my caretaker. He’ll drive us to the house, and his wife, Mary, will give us our meals.”
    Stone parked and set the brakes, then went through the engine shutdown checklist. Then he, Dino, and Seth transferred the luggage to the station wagon, and he introduced Seth to everyone.
    They drove to the village of Dark Harbor, then to the house, which was situated on the little harbor, within sight of the small yacht club.
    Mary greeted them and showed the guests to their rooms.
    Stone grabbed a pair of binoculars and walked out onto the porch overlooking the harbor. He looked at every boat moored there, remembering that his friend Jim Hackett, the founder of Strategic Services, had been shot on this very porch on a calm day by a sniper eight hundred yards out on a boat. He saw nothing unusual, but still, he went back into the house to his study and got the keys to the secret room that the Agency had built and equipped for his cousin, Dick Stone. Dick had recently been appointed deputy director for operations when he was murdered. Lance Cabot succeeded him.
    Dino came down the stairs and found him there. “I thought you’d be in here,” he said, looking at the half dozen weapons hanging on one wall. “What are you going to give me?”
    “Can you still hit a man at a thousand yards with a good rifle?”
    “I can.”
    Stone took down a military sniper’s rifle with a large scope and silencer and handed it to him, along with a loaded magazine. “I’ve had a look at the harbor, and I didn’t see anything, but I think we need to keep our people off the porch.”
    “You’re remembering what happened to Jim,” Dino said, sighting through the rifle and checking its condition.
    “I certainly won’t forget that. He was sitting right in front of me when he was hit.”
    Dino placed the rifle behind the living room curtain, while Stone found himself an assault rifle and did the same.
    Everybody came down for drinks at five. Stone and Dino were one ahead of them.

49
    S tone was awakened in the wee hours by a small noise. He disentangled himself from Helga without waking her, grabbed a robe and a pistol, and padded slowly down the stairs. When he reached the living room he could see in the moonlight that the door to the back porch stood open. That had been the noise.
    Silently, he checked that there was a round in the chamber, then he made his way across the living room, checking around him for company, until he came to the open door. He looked around the porch and carefully stepped outside. The chilly night air crept up his bare legs.
    “You couldn’t sleep?” a voice asked.
    Stone jerked in its direction, the pistol out in front of him.
    “Relax, pal.” Dino was sitting in a corner of the porch, hidden in a shadow made by the moon, the sniper’s rifle across his lap.
    “You scared the shit out of me,” Stone said.
    “I got up to pee and thought I saw something in the harbor.” Dino got up, walked over, and handed Stone the binoculars. “See the buoy way out there? Check the third boat to the left of it.”
    Stone stuffed the pistol in the pocket of his robe, took the binoculars, and trained them on the buoy for focus, then swung slowly to his left, to a third boat. “Looks like something fast, around forty feet. There’s a rubber dinghy aft,