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I saw clearly what was in his mouth.

“He’s got a lit cigarette, John! Run!”

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SAMPSON AND I SPUN around and sprinted toward the hangar, taking quick looks over our shoulders. Hawk had the pickup zigzagging away from us, the tanker trailer swinging wildly behind him.

We reached the hangar door just as the trailer’s linkage broke free of the tow ball and flew sideways toward the parked jets. The front end gouged into the tarmac, stopping it about a hundred yards from us, fuel trickling out from a bleeder port.

Hawk hit the brakes, threw the F-450 into reverse, and came back at the hangar.

Sampson ran into the building, bellowing at the mechanics inside, “Take cover! Call 911! Call for fire trucks!”

The former Special Forces operator skidded his truck to a halt halfway between the tanker trailer and the Caravan, some five feet from the avgas gushing onto the ground, revved the Ford’s engine so high that the vehicle shuddered, then released the brake and peeled away, heading toward the main runways.

As he did, he flipped his lit cigarette out the window.

The cigarette hit the fuel, which erupted in blues and greens with the sound of wind. The flames raced in two directions, and I knew what was about to happen as I dove for cover behind stacks of boxes and tires in the hangar.

Air traffic controllers in the Dulles towers later said the flames reached the tanker first, and it went off like a heavy bomb. Pieces of shrapnel from the tank hit everything around, including the stacks of boxes and tires, which tumbled down on me a second before the fire reached the hose dangling from the Caravan.

The flames evidently stalled there a second, then found a fresh puddle of avgas and shimmied up the hose to the handle and the plane’s open fuel tank. The explosion shook the building, tore holes in the aluminum walls, blew out windows on the far right, and vaporized the back half of the Caravan.

I felt that eruption like a punch to the head.

The stench of spent fuel was everywhere. I got woozy for a moment before Sampson pulled the boxes and tires off me. He was bleeding from a gash on the side of his head and another on his right arm.

I was dizzy. My ears were ringing, but I could hear sirens in the distance.

“You okay?” Sampson shouted.

“I think so, but I got my bell rung,” I said, hearing my own voice as if I were underwater.

He helped me up. I gazed dumbly around, shocked at the destruction.

The jets inside the hangar were pocked with holes and cuts. Two of the mechanics were lying wounded on the ground with their coworkers helping them.

I was still somewhat out of it as we walked from the hangar. The Caravan was still on fire, belching foul gray smoke that hung in the air like opaque curtains. With its entire tail section missing, the forward fuselage scorched, and the nose angled upward, the aircraft looked like a crippled black crane. Or so it seemed to me in my addled state.

Many of the planes and jets closest to the tanker had pieces of their tails missing or their windshields damaged. Two were burning. I heard more sirens in the distance and turned to see that the windows of the airport’s office had been blown out.

I could see the Clouds, the couple from Hilton Head who had been waiting on the Caravan, standing inside looking dumbstruck and streaked with blood from facial lacerations.

It was only then that I remembered who had caused the destruction.

“Where’s Rodriguez?” I shouted at Sampson, who was also looking a little wobbly now. “Where did he go?”

Sampson shook his head, peering out through that caustic smoke. The desk clerk, Nancy Brinker, came running out to us, holding a walkie-talkie. She seemed okay but had several cuts on her face and ears. She gestured with the radio toward the thickest smoke.

“The tower says Hawk’s out on one of the taxiways. We can’t see him from here because of the smoke, but he’s up on top of the tanker doing some kind of dance.”

That snapped us both back to reality. Sampson grabbed the two-way at his hip and turned it on before we drew our weapons.

He called dispatch, told them we were on the scene of the explosions at Dulles and were closing in on the suspect. Then we held our breath and ran through the smoke, skirting the blast sites and coming out of the haze to see the fuel truck parked in the taxiway about a hundred yards from us.

The scene reminded me of what Hawk had looked like on top of the ghost ramp a few days before: All but obscured by the caustic fog hanging over the area, he was spinning slowly on top of the tanker, his head rocked back, arms and palms raised to a sky that the smoke had turned sullen and angry.

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