by Dan Hampton
Standing a moment, he breathed in the clammy morning air and glanced up and down the flight line. He’d gotten back to Huber a little after one A.M. and found his plane undisturbed except for a credit-card receipt for fuel taped to the window. Leaving the rental car in the little parking lot, he’d gotten airborne by 1:20 and flown north at 1,200 feet without squawking or talking to anyone. Staying well east of Dallas/Ft. Worth, he’d also avoided Oklahoma and Kansas City air traffic control centers to arrive in Missouri from the south. The weather had forced him to climb up and shoot the ILS instrument approach into Buck Ridge, but no one had tried to contact him.
No one knew he was here.
The hangar was leased through Green Mountain Transport and paid in advance for six months. Like the plane, purchased by Trendco Logistics, any paper trail would end with a single bank account and a properly registered company in Delaware. There was nothing to connect one to the other and absolutely nothing to tie them to a hangar on an obscure airfield in southern Missouri. Giving the door a final tug, he turned and strolled across the wet concrete.
As he cut through the back behind Razorback Air, the smell of yesterday’s garbage mingled with aviation fuel. Airfields were all the same. Pausing, he looked and listened. It was only 6:45 and nothing was due to open here officially until 8:00, but one never knew. Early charter, motivated student pilots . . . someone having a fight with his wife.
But there was nothing but the hollow chirping of birds and the distant sound of some heavy equipment coming from the nearby town. Hopping the chain-link fence, he walked around to the front of the next little building. Painted a faint yellow, it had a large Hertz sign wired to the fence.
Removing the folded piece of paper again, he stepped up on the porch and looked around for the lockbox used for after-hours vehicle pickup. There. As informed, it was set back in the corner to the left of the door. Squinting to read the faded numbers on the keypad, he punched in the code and the little door popped open.
Nothing.
He felt around carefully, but the box was completely empty. Turning around, the Sandman stood with his back against the corner and facing out. There were two rental cars parked in the lot and nothing across the road but a half mile of empty, rolling land before the town.
Relaxing slowly, the mercenary decided he was overly suspicious. This was a backwater flyspeck in rural America. It wasn’t even seven A.M., and he’d figured that noon, San Antonio time, was the earliest anyone could discover the bodies. Any earlier was a remote possibility, but even so, there were no clues and no way to trace him.
Looking at the cars, the Sandman considered his options. He could simply wait here until the office opened, play the irritated customer and get the car. But that would take at least another hour and leave someone here with a memory of him. He could also start walking and certainly get a pickup at some point. But that was uncertain and would again leave a memory of his presence.
Or he could steal one of the rental cars. It was likely that no one saw him land this morning and even if they did, how would blame for a missing car attach itself to him? The plane was safely locked up and out of sight, so to all intents and purposes, he wasn’t even here.
But a rental car would be missed immediately, so he’d have to think of something else. There were half a dozen cars parked in the Razorback Aviation lot. Since nothing was open, they’d plainly been left by pilots who had planes here and were off fishing or traveling. Two caught his eye. A dark-colored SUV and a silver four-door Audi. Both had sunscreens pulled across the dash, so they were probably here for an extended stay. That was it then: a private car could be missing for any number of reasons and would almost certainly not be missed for the few hours he needed.
Striding over to the lot, he decided against the Audi—it was sure to have an alarm and although he could disable it, it would be faster to avoid the problem altogether. Besides, someone could drive up at any time.
The SUV was older but the tires looked good and it was clean. Peering in the window, he saw no blinking LED lights from an alarm. The back side window had a smaller separate pane and, after a quick look around, he shattered it inward with his elbow. It didn’t actually break, but fractured enough for him to push the safety glass inside and get his arm through the hole.
Three minutes later, the engine was running and his bags were on the seat beside him. The gas tank was about a third full, which was enough, and he pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road heading north. As he did so, a tan pickup truck came over the rise with its blinker on. As they passed, the other driver gave a cheery wave that the Sandman returned. From the rearview mirror he watched the truck turn in at the airport and stop. Then he was over the hill.
He’d already been on the road when the truck appeared. But if he knew the SUV and knew it had been parked at the airport . . . the driver’s wave could’ve just been a friendly one but maybe he also knew the owner of this car.
Continuing north, the Sandman decided there was enough indecision or supposition this early in the morning to permit him the sixteen miles he needed to cover. He’d take the chance and after that it wouldn’t matter. So with the fuzzy sun peeking over the tree line to his right, the mercenary held the speed at 5 mph over the limit and headed north.
“If NSA had gotten wind of this, then why wasn’t anything done?” Doug Truax sipped the lukewarm orange juice and grimaced at the plastic taste. Airline service was crap. At least in Coach.
“Because none of it could be correlated to an individual. We had no name, no pictures, and no hard proof.”
“More has been done with less.”
Karen nodded appreciatively. “Very true. But the stakes were higher.”
“And this isn’t high stakes?”
She shrugged. “So there’s one more mercenary in the world. This particular one never acted against the United States and even, occasionally, removed a few, ah, thorns from our side.”
“But not always?”
“No. But the additional contracts, the ones we know about anyway, had no bearing on our national interests, so it was left alone. Again,” she added, “we had no idea of who this man really was. Or is.”
“What about the ‘Others’?”
She glanced at him and chuckled. “You really are a babe in the woods with the intel world, aren’t you?”
Axe didn’t much like that, but despite himself, he was interested. And actually learning something from this woman. Besides, she wasn’t exactly difficult to look at. Fleeting whiffs of some vanilla-scented lotion or light perfume occasionally floated his way and he tried not to lean too close. If she noticed at all, Karen Shipman gave no indication and continued. “If CIA, DIA, or any of the Others knew anything, they certainly wouldn’t spread it around.”
“So much for information sharing and the Patriot Act.”
“So much for it.”
He stayed silent a few moments and stared out the window. The blue-green waters of the Atlantic had faded into the distance and he guessed they were somewhere over North Carolina. In theory the Patriot Act was supposed to foster inter-agency cooperation and promote the sharing of information. In practice, intelligence agencies remained notoriously territorial.
“Then why bring it up?”
“Because I happened to believe it. And this attack in Taiwan didn’t just have to be done right—which is a given for this type of man—it had to look right, and there aren’t many who cou
ld do that. I think this might be the same man. And,” she added, “I think he may be one of ours.”
“Which may be the real reason the powers that be left him alone.”
Karen Shipman shot him a quick, appraising glance that he didn’t see. Among other things, she was learning, Doug Truax had a sharp mind, and that was hardly surprising. She’d never known a fighter pilot who wasn’t a sharp thinker. Usually brash, very often arrogant, but never slow. However, this one, despite the façade, had an analytical turn that she found encouraging. And, she admitted, appealing.
“That’s right. I came to the same conclusion.”
“Of course you did.” He snorted. “And no doubt much faster.”
“True. But only because I knew about it before you did.”
Axe chuckled. She was quick and didn’t take any shit. She managed to do it without the chip that most military females seemed to carry permanently on the their shoulders. Risking a sidelong glance, he admired her chest and decided there were worse people to spend the weekend with.
“Bad news about Colonel Neville.” She sipped her tomato juice and reached for the in-flight magazine. “Were you working on that too?”
“I was, but this is a higher priority.”
“That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of the guy.”
He shrugged. “Hey—what goes around comes around.”
“Meaning . . .”
Axe looked at her. “You know the score. In many ways the military is no different than any other really big organization. A tiny fraction of guys get ahead by sheer competence and the rest . . .” He let it hang.
“Okay, so he was hardly a warrior. Did he, or anybody, deserve to die like that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. There are worse ways to go than having your necked snapped.”
“You know what I mean. Killed in the toilet and left with his head in pee stains.”
“Piss stains. Men don’t say ‘pee.’ ”
“I’m not a man.”
Certainly not, he thought again. She was watching him and half smiling. Like most divorced men, Axe was cautious with women. That is, women he expected to see on a regular basis. He knew this was not a woman to make a casual pass to. Not in the usual sense anyway. And her type would smell bullshit an ocean away. Don’t even think about it, dumbass, he told himself. He hated rattling around his big, empty house and he missed the little things most women did. But not enough to want another one around.
Clearing his throat he said, “So . . . Dan Morgan. Why did he make your short list?”
“Same reason he made yours.”
“Maybe. Any harm in comparing notes?”
Karen Shipman pursed her lips. “Princeton, class of eighty-six. Son of commercial developer who made a fortune buying up old marinas along the Chesapeake Bay, renovating them, and reselling at a five-hundred-percent profit. Officer’s Candidate School and straight into flight training.”
“Well, after the platoon leader’s course and all that other grunt stuff.”
“Right.” She nodded. “He was a Marine.”
“Is a Marine. Retired or not, the Corps gets into these guys and never really leaves. Worth remembering when talking to one.”
“He has a grudge.”
Axe nodded. “And that is exactly why he made my short list. And the fact that at one time he was probably the best Hornet driver in the world.”
Karen nodded, thoughtful. “And he was part of the merc world and may know something helpful.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t think he’d help us?”
“That’s not what concerns me.”
She looked puzzled. “What then?”
“Why did he agree to see us at all?”
The Sandman handed his boarding pass to the gate agent, smiled, and got one in return.
“Welcome aboard, Mr. Tobin. Seat 3A.”
With just two small bags, he eased quickly into his seat and watched the boarding ritual without amusement. Unfortunate couples struggling with baggage and kids; the inevitable idiots who still hadn’t grasped the spatial relationship between the size of their bag and the capacity of the overhead bins. He leaned back to avoid several bulging buttocks that were wider than the aisle. A few minutes later as the door closed, the Sandman shut his eyes and sank back into the seat. He was tired—and hungry. First Class got breakfast, so he’d wait to sleep.
It had taken nearly an hour to get up the road into Branson and he’d pulled into the long-term parking garage at 7:55. This was not the type of airport that took pictures of car license plates and he could see no other external cameras. Again, not that it mattered. If his luck held, neither the missing SUV or the bodies in Texas would be discovered for at least four more hours and by that time he’d be long gone.
If it didn’t, no one could find him anyway. Any string leading to Missouri was cut, and a new one, totally unconnected to the plane or hangar, had started. He’d switched identities and Dan Tyler, the retired colonel from Texas, had gone in pieces into a small river halfway to Branson along with the Green Mountain Transport and Trendco Logistics credit cards. The AirTran reservation to Atlanta had been made in the name of Matthew Tobin and paid for by Latham Consulting.
Breakfast was an omelet, hash browns, and two glasses of orange juice. After it was cleared, the mercenary lowered the window shade, leaned back, and was thinking about the final part of his mission when he fell asleep.
“Flight’s on time and we should be in Valparaiso by sixteen hundred.” Karen Shipman sat on the stool next to him and produced two cups of coffee. They were in the café next to T.G.I. Friday’s in Atlanta Hartsfield’s B Terminal.
“You mean four P.M.” He didn’t see the point of using the twenty-four-hour clock outside of a military context. It annoyed him.
“Right. Sixteen-hundred hours.”
Hopeless. “Good. Should give us plenty of time to catch up with Dan Morgan at Benny’s.”
“Favorite hangout? Cheap drinks and teenage bimbos?”
“I don’t go for that.”
“Which one?”
“Cheap drinks. Grey Goose martinis for me.”
“But the bimbos are okay?” She flashed him another of those half smiles that always seemed to make him look twice.
“Well, yeah. I am a man after all.”
She switched gears. “So we assume that this mercenary is real. I mean, it could have been done by a Chinese pilot but . . .”
“Or a Taiwanese one.”
“Right. But we both think this was an outsider, hired by either of those two governments.”
“Or our own.”
She shot him a strange look, then shook her head. “That’s the problem with the spook world, you begin to suspect everyone and everything.”
“All right—it’s a thin possibility but still a possibility.”
“The point is, we agree he exists. Men like this don’t train themselves and there is nothing beyond a military—and a top-tier military at that—that could produce one.”
Axe hated circular discussions and preferred to come straight to the point. “Exactly why we’re on this plane together on a Saturday to see the ex-Major Morgan.”
She ignored the testiness. “My point is this: these men don’t advertise, nor are they readily available. They all use other types of folks called fixers, who arrange these contracts.”
“A middleman.”
/> “A very trusted middleman. One who is sufficiently well connected in global business and foreign governments to put such contracts together.”
Axe stared at his coffee thoughtfully, then took a sip. “So you want to ask Morgan about these fixers first . . . before we start talking about other mercenaries?”
“I think we might learn more than we already know by beginning there.”
“That’s encouraging, since we don’t know squat yet.” He braced his arms on the table and leaned back. “For all we know, this guy may be friends with our mercenary and would clam up rather than speak.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. The few we have dossiers on are very reticent. Very low key. There’s not much at all,” Karen admitted. She looked very serious and not optimistic.
Axe finished his drink and picked up his carry-on. “C’mon, let’s head to the gate. Cheer up—if it was easy, then he wouldn’t be our man. I mean, if there were a truckload of known details, how good could he be?”
“I don’t need a truckload of details—just a few would do.”
Truax chuckled and slung his bag over his shoulder. “Yep. A location would be nice too.”
Thirty yards away, the Sandman came from the other end of the B Terminal. With his sports jacket, dark slacks, and leather bag, he looked like any other weekend passenger on his way someplace. Crossing in front of the Candy Kitchen, he disappeared down the escalator to the train platform.
Two stops later he stepped out and was funneled up the escalator with the rest of the crowd. Passing through the big, sunny atrium, he slung his jacket over one shoulder, kept his head slightly lowered, and strolled over to a café on the south side. Buying a paper and a coffee, he leaned against the narrow bar and quietly surveyed the crowd and the television monitor displaying CNN Headline News.
