Sweepers

by P. T. Deutermann

  Train was astonished. He hadn’t pulled a data dump from the NIS database for three years, not since the Malone case over at the Naval Research Labs. “Should I be calling you database or Big Brother?” he said. “Since when does NIS have this level of detail on a guy?”

  “Since the government became a customer of the telemarketing data banks, just like everybody else is. Total access on demand. Shit, that’s not the half of it. You wanna talk about people who keep score, those sumbitches know everything, and I mean everything. Scary, isn’t it? You wanna know where he went for the past year? We’ll take a look at his gas credit cards. How about how well hislemme see, here-his Kawasaki Vulcan Eight Hundred runs since he’s owned it? He’s used a Visa card at the auto-parts store there in Triangle three times this year alone. Wanna know what he bought?”

  Train just shook his head. “Orwell was right,” he muttered.

  “Who’s this Orwell guy? You wanna see if he’s in the system?”

  Train smiled. “That’s okay. Look, right now I need to know where Sherman lives, and, if possible, where he works.”

  “Right. He lives in an area called Cherry Hill. Th#t’s near Triangle, Virginia. No property-tax records on him, so he’s a renter. Hang on one and lemme check something. Stand by. Yup, here’s a catalog listing. For guns, no less. Good deal, huh? Now lemme find out which delivery service delivered and when.” There was another minute’s pause.

  “Right. The guy’s actual address is number four Slade Hill Road. He also has a PO box at the Triangle, Virginia, post office. Now, work address: the helicopter-repair activity at the Quantico Marine base.”

  “What’s he do there?”

  “Lemme get his tax return up here. Stand by. Okay. His most recent tax return lists his occupation as rigger. Hminm.

  The W-2 doesn’t show a govemnwnt check. Not sure what a rigger is.”

  “General roustabout job, usually on the flight line. If he’s in maintenance, he’ll be the guy in the tractor, pulling air craft to and from the maintenance hangars. Something like that. “

  “Okay, ‘lemme check current wants and warrants.

  Hmmm. He’s lucky to have a government job, given this DUI record.”

  “Oh yeah? A boozer?”

  “Two offenses, one prior license suspension, now lifted.

  But carrying nine points even now on his license. And on a motorcycle, too. Brave dummy, drinking and driving a bike.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Train said. “Shoot me a summary this afternoon if you can. The locators were the urgent part.”

  Train hung up as Karen came back downstairs, now in her uniform. “Who was that?” she asked, brushing her stilldamp hair as she came into the kitchen. He almost lost his train of thought. She looked divine, her complexion glowing, her damp hair suggestive of what she might look like after some more convivial physical activity. His speculation on the nature of which specific strenuous physical activity caused him to hesitate just long enough for her to raise an eyebrow in one of those “Hello, did you hear my question?” looks. He had to work at it to find his normal voice.

  Damn woman noticed that, too.

  “That was NIS database. Jack Sherman works down at the Marine Corps airstrip at Quantico. What do you say we go pay him a visit?”

  “Yes, I think that’s next. I wonder, should we take the admiral along?”

  Train shook his head. “I think not. There’s no love lost there. Besides, isn’t the admiral supposed to be meeting with the police auditors today?

  Hell, maybe that’s why he’s on leave. No, I think we-move first, see what we’ve got here.

  I’ve got pretty good locating data.”

  “That was fast,” she said, looking around for her uniform hat and purse.

  “They had him on file?”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” he replied. “And you might not want to.

  Let me get Gutter situated. Then we can I I go.

  Because Train knew the base, they went in his Suburban.

  On the ride down to Quantico, Karen briefed Train on what Admiral Sherman had told her about his son. Then she wanted to know more about sweepers. Train was quiet for almost a minute.

  “Sweepers don’t officially exist, any more than the people they are used to control officially exist. I heard about them when I was on loan with the FBI, and even those guys talk about them as if they were myths. But supposedly there are only about a dozen of them, all embedded in deep cover at strategic locations around the world. Washington, Tokyo, London, Berlin-hell, probably even in Moscow. Wherever there might be a need for ‘wet work,’ as they call it, there’s probably a sweeper hidden in a hole somewhere. During the Cold War, the other side had them, too.”

  “All men?”

  “Don’t know. Probably not. These are individuals with no identities other than the ones they assume-people with a wide range of prepositioned assets at their disposal. I’m talking cars, safe houses, surveillance equipment, cash. Because if those people turn a sweeper on, they’re usually in a hurry or in a mess.”

  “And they go after operatives who’ve gotten out of control somehow?” p “Not just any operatives: -They go after the operatives who kill people.

  This isn’t everyday work. These are specialists who hunt down other specialists.”

  “And do what?”

  “I heard an FBI guy once say that the term of art was extinguish. They extinguish the runaway asset. Make the problem go away. Probably in such a manner as to attract zero attention.”

  “Why not bring the runaway asset, as you call him, back for disciplinary measures?”

  “How do you discipline an assassin, Karen? Take him to court? Look, I don’t believe the U.S. government keeps a big stable of assassins. But I do believe it keeps some, depending on the international climate and the nature of our country’s enemies at any given time. There are even fewer sweepers.”

  “And you think Galantz is a sweeper?”

  “My FBI friend does. And he says that the agency in question is going quietly ape-shit over the fact that this guy is killing civilians.”

  “Well, if that’s true, why on earth don’t they tell the Navy and get Sherman off the hook?”

  Train thought about that as he turned the big vehicle off the interstate and headed down toward the base. “That’s what’s puzzling me,” he said.

  “Johnson said the Navy had been warned off-throug4 the DNI. But I don’t know whom he’s talked to. If it was Carpenter, the admiral sure as hell didn’t tell me-other than some mumbo jumbo about what he was going to order me to do.”

  “And this is a guy with one hand and one eye? Isn’t that how Sherman described him?”

  “A guy with one hand and one eye who crawled out of the Rung Sat secret zone with a regiment of VC on his U-all, endured a year in a Saigon jail, and lived to tell about it.

  And if he’s been working for those people for twenty years, he’s an experienced sweeper. I think I’d prefer dealing with any number of KGB colonels.” -

  It was Karen’s turn to be silent as they approached the main gate of the base and showed their identification. Train drove through the base, remembering his Officer Candidate School days at Quantico back in 1970.

  The airstrip was primarily a helicopter operating area, situated at the base to provide helicopter training services to the various Marine basic-training operations. There was a single main strip paralleling the river, five main hangars, a maintenance admin area dominated by Quonset huts, a fuel farm, and a standard flight line and tower complex. Train drove down the flight-line perimeter road, staying clear of two Marine CH46E helicopters that were turning up on the pad in front of the operations building. He pulled up in front of the largest Quonset hut, which had a sign indicating that the maintenance division was housed inside. Even there, several hundred feet down the flight line from operations, the noise of the two helicopters was nearly overpowering.

  Inside, they faced a counter that ran the width o
f the Quonset hut. They produced their identification, and Karen asked a bored-looking civilian woman to see the officer in charge.

  “Do you have an appointment?” the woman asked.

  Karen just looked at her.

  “Do we need one?” Train asked, his tone of voice clearly expressing his incredulity.

  “I’ll see if Mr. Myer is available,” the woman said. Train rolled his eyes at Karen as the woman headed reluctantly toward the back of the open room, where a large red-faced warrant officer sat. Karen just shook her head. The warrant officer saw the clerk and then Karen and Train, and he stood up. The clerk indicated that they should come back. The warrant remained standing in deference to Karen’s three stripes.

  “We need to interview a John L. Sherman,” Karen said.

  He supposedly works as a rigger on the flight line here?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the warrant said. “I know him.”

  “What can you tell us about him?”

  The warrant looked over Karen’s shoulder at the clerical area and lowered his voice. “He’s kind of a shitbird, Commander. Makes like a biker hood most of the time. He’s on the wrapper team.”

  “Rapper team?” Train asked. The warrant looked over at him, sizing him up, big man to big man.

  “Yeah. They fly the forty-six echoes in here that’re going to dopot-level maintenance up in Pennsylvania. We do the baseline check, strip the rotor blades, and then shrink-wrap the birds for the train ride up north.”

  “Where can we find him?”

  Myer turned back to Karen. “Best thing to do is to go down to the wrap hangar. Last one on the line. You wanna maybe just peek through the side door, make sure they’re done, before you go in there, okay? It’s messier’n shit in there when they’re wrapping.”

  “This guy Sherman, he a real biker? A hard guy?” Train asked.

  Myer snorted. “Naw. Real bikers would put a guy like that in panties and turn him out in a heartbeat. I can’t believe that guy was ever in the Corps, you know what I mean?”

  They -went back outside and got in Train’s car to drive down the flight line to the maintenance hangars beyond the Quonset hut. The last hangar in the line was smaller than the others. There were two helicopters already encased in the white shrink-wrap coating parked out in front.

  Without their rotor blades and tail rotors, they looked like giant grasshoppers that had been dipped into a can of gray-white paint. The insect look was accentuated by the bulging blisters covering the front windshield of the aircraft.

  As they parked and got out, they could hear a loud hissing noise from inside the hangar. The front door of the hangar had been lowered to within one foot of the sill, and there were signs up warning of flammable fumes and telling people to keep out of a hazardous-spray area. They went to the side door, as the warrant had suggested. When they cracked the door, the hissing noise was much louder. A reek of paint solvent wafted over them. A crew of three men, fully suited up, were standing on a pipe stage platform and operating what looked like a small cannon that was spraying a white foam over the front end of a large helicopter. Most of the body was already encased and they were focusing the spray on the final front quarter of the aircraft. One man operated the nozzle while the other two tended supply lines. Two stainless-steel bottles the size of barbecue propane containers fed the spray. A large six-foot-diameter exhaust fan built into the back of the hangar was roaring away to extract the strong fumes. They watched for a few minutes through the cracked door as the team finished covering the front of the aircraft. The foam seemed to dissolve upon contact with the aircraft’s skin, solidifying into a thick white second skin.

  The team shut down the spray unit but left the big fan going.

  “Help you people?” a voice asked from behind them, startling both of them.

  “We need to see Jack Sherman,” Train said, producing his credentials.

  “NIS to see Jack, huh? What a surprise.” The man was heavyset and in his forties. There were bits of foam stuck to the. outer edges of his beard where the mask had left marks on his skin. His spray suit was covered in the stuff and it stank of chemical solvent. “He’s the skinny guy, running the spray gun. I’ll tell him you’re here. Be about tenn-minutes.

  You-maybe want to wait out front, okay? Fumes are gonna be strong in here, they shut that big fan down.”

  “That’s some amazing stuff,” Train said, indicating the cocoon material.

  “Tougher’n nails, I’m here to tell you,” the man said.

  “Takes me a week to get this shit outta my hair.”

  “How do they get it off at the rework facility?”

  “Really big knives. You all better move now.”

  It was fifteen minutes before Jack Sherman walked out of the hangar bay.

  Train sized him up as Jack slouched his way across the concrete apron in front of the haar. Fiveng six, maybe five-seen in boots, scrawny, wearing ancient v’t black jeans, a wide black belt hat was mostly there for decoration, and a stained white T-shirt. A pack of cigarettes was twisted into the upper-right sleeve of the T-shirt, above pronounced biceps. He carried a black leather jacket slung casually over his shoulder. Train could see some facial resemblance to the admiral in the young man’s face, but a lot of the character was missing. Pale, white face, over which a scraggly black beard wandered uncertainly; long, bony nose; thin black eyebrows; and a weak, not quite chinless mouth set in what looked like a perpetual sneer. He had muddy dark brown eyes, with the purple-stained pouches of the confirmed boozer. The eyes were now appraising Karen Lawrence’s body with a casual, “I’d like to take your clothes off with my switchblade” stare. Train revised the height to maybe five-eight as Jack got closer, and he resisted the urge to smack this kid for the way he was staring at Karen’s body.

  “So who wants to see me?” Jack said to Karen, his voice surprisingly thin, the voice of a teenage boy on the verge of breaking. Definite boozer, Train concluded. Jack flicked a quick glance in Train’s direction, as if he had read Train’s thoughts. Train flipped out his credentials.

  “My -name’s von Rensel, from the NIS. This is Commander Lawrence, Navy JAG.”

  “Squid stuff. Big deal. So why should I give a shit?” Sherman said, fingering the package of cigarettes out from under the twist in the sleeve of his T-shirt. Camels, no filter, Train noted.

  Tough guy indeed.

  “This concerns your father,” she said.

  The change in Jack’s face was dramatic-an immediate hardening. With the cigarette poised to go in his mouth, he stopped and looked at Karen as if she had just invoked the devil. “Then it don’t concern me, lady,” he snapped.

  “We think it does,” Train said. “We want to know why you made an appearance at Elizabeth Walsh’s funeral, and again at the Naval Academy cemetery during Admiral Schmidt’s funeral.”

  Jack made a slow business of sticking the cigarette in his mouth and getting it lit. Then he exhaled a solid stream of smoke in Train’s direction, an insolent look on his face. “Who says?”

  “I saw you at Saint Matthew’s Church,” Karen said.

  “Last Wednesday evening. On a motorcycle. Your father saw you, too.”

  “And I saw you at Annapolis. Up on that hill. You left on a motorcycle.”

  Jack shrugged. “Beats me. I get around. It’s a free country, last time I checked. How about you, lady? You free?”

  Train moved in closer, staring down at the kid’s sneering face but turning slightly sideways so that his left forearm was in position to block any sudden moves. “Let me put it this way, Sherman,” he said.

  “We’re helping the Fairfax County Homicide Section investigate two homicides. So far, they don’t know about your little cameos at the funerals.

  You can either talk to us or talk to them. But’let me tell you something. You don’t know hassle until you’ve seen homicide hassle. Now, why were you there at those ‘funerals?”

  Jack didn’t budge an inch under the physical force o
f Train’s massive presence. But his eyes betrayed him as they darted from Train’s looming face to Karen and back. Then his expression changed again. “Maybe,” he said with a crafty smile. “Maybe I was celebrating. Yeah. That’s it. I remember now. I was celebrating.”

  “Celebrating?” Karen asked. “Celebrating what?”

  Jack looked at her, then stepped back away from Train.

  Then he looked again, a studied, staring, lascivious appraisal, from her shoes to her hair, point by point, as if he was sizing up a piece of meat, or a whore. Train got that itch in his palms again.

  “Celebrating that bastard’s loss,” Jack continued. “You know, he lost some things of value. Yeah, that’s it, man.”

  ““Some things of value,’ “

  Karen repeated, focusing on the familiar phrase. She looked over at Train.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “And I suppose you’re the new main squeeze, huh, lady? Commander, I mean. Excuse me. Commander, ma’am. Or is it ‘sir’?

  Naw, it’s ‘ma’am.’ ” He stared intently at her breasts. “Those are definitely hooters.

  Ma’am.”

  Karen. never saw Train move, but suddenly Jack was stumbling forward, toward the Suburban, his right hand enveloped in Train’s left hand, his middle finger bending backward and his feet arching up against the pain, cigarette and jacket failing to the ground as he, was spun up against the Suburban. Train clamped down hard and put his face an inch away from Jack’s grimacing features.

  “You … watch … your … mouth … dickhead,” he growled. “That is your name, right? Dickhead? Yes? You agree? Nod your dick head, dickhead!” Jack was almost kneeling now as Train bore down on the finger, bringing tears to the kid’s eyes. Train could see Karen off to one side, staring at him. “Good boy, dickhead. Now listen to me. Listen real good. We know you’re in this. Tell your buddy Galantz we know you’re in this’ That the whole god damned government knows what this is all about. And you dickhead, are a stupid little patsy if you’re helping him: understand? Think about this, dickhead: What’s he going to do to you when he’s done screwing around with your father, huh? You think he’s gonna give you a medal, huh?” Train bent down, getting eyeball-to-eyeball. “Now you talk to me, asshole. What’s your piece of this?”