The Mercenary

by Dan Hampton

  Chuckling good-naturedly, he turned his head and grinned at the captain. “And maybe I’m just here to give you a No Notice check.”

  “Ouch!” One of the others said. But the captain stared him right in the eye and replied, “Let’s do it, sir! I’m always ready.”

  The mercenary’s smile widened. The perfect answer and the kid seemed to mean it.

  “Good . . . maybe you’ll get your chance.” He nodded at the pilot’s right shoulder patch. It was a fanned-out deck of cards, sevens and Aces. “Might hafta pay the Gamblers a visit. Good patch.”

  All three of them beamed with the genuine pride of belonging to a top fighter squadron.

  “I want one like that, sir.” The older one dipped his head toward the Sandman’s left shoulder. “I was the alternate on this last board.” The other two pilots also stared at the black-and-yellow Fighter Weapons School patch on the mercenary’s arm—there was no higher achievement for a fighter pilot than to graduate from that six-month-long course. It was essentially a PhD in tactical aviation and the art of killing. Each fighter wing sent its top instructor pilot out to Nellis AFB to be torn down and remade. It was a brutal school, and the Patch, as it was called, was the prize a grad would wear for the rest of his career.

  “So did I when I was sitting in your seat,” he said calmly. “More than anything.”

  They all nodded. They could all understand that.

  “So you really are here for the ORI, right, sir?”

  The mercenary added sugar and stirred his coffee again. “Well, I like Shaw but I wouldn’t be here for the sights.”

  “What sights?” One of them laughed.

  “Exactly. So yes, I’m here for the exercise. The one, incidentally”—he looked around at them with a bemused expression—“that none of you are supposed to know anything about.”

  The older one snorted. “Well, when we have a Dash One party, pencil whip the nonflying training bullshit, and the cops stack up orange cones everywhere, it’s not too hard to figure out.”

  They all laughed again. Making paperwork pretty was part of any evaluation, so Stan Eval in each squadron usually got all the pilots together to go through their individual flying publications prior to a big inspection. This included checklists and systems manuals, called Dash Ones, and all the gradebooks containing permanent records of their flights.

  “Yeah . . . there aren’t any secrets in a fighter wing. But”—he glanced at his watch—“I’d say you guys don’t hafta worry for a few hours yet.”

  “Well that’s good news,” replied one of the others, a stocky redhead. “I’ve got a flight physical this morning.”

  “He just can’t wait to get Doc’s finger up his pooper,” the other pilot said, then winced when the redhead slugged him on the arm.

  “Closet Eagle Driver, huh?” The Sandman deadpanned and the others grinned. F-15 pilots were always the brunt of any homosexual joke due to one isolated but highly discussed old incident. But he saw his opening.

  “If you guys are headed in, I’d appreciate a lift. Gotta run by the flight doc too, and my rental car bit the big one.” he jerked a thumb toward the parking lot.

  “No problem, sir. We’re about to head out right now—0830 Mass Brief.”

  He nodded. Some squadrons still did that, especially on Mondays, to get everyone together and discuss the upcoming week. Throwing a ten-dollar-bill on the table, he stood up. “Thanks, I’ll run get my things then.”

  Minutes later the pilots filed out, flipping on their blue flight caps and stuffing change in their pockets as they strutted toward a dark blue BMW.

  “Shotgun!” one of them called, for the comfort of riding in the front seat.

  But the driver, the redhead, said, “The colonel gets it, numbnuts.”

  Smiling broadly, the mercenary shook his head and put his hand on the back door, away from the driver’s side. “Fair’s fair. He called it. Not sure I wanna be that close to him if he’s think’n’ about fingers up his butt.”

  Hooting loudly, they all piled in.

  The line to the gate had thinned out a bit. As they crept up to the waiting security policeman, the Sandman pulled a plain black notepad from his backpack and began scribbling. The redhead passed his ID to the cop, who looked at the front and the back and scanned it. He glanced at the reader, then bent down and peered into the BMW. Seeing three other uniforms, he straightened, gave the ID back and snapped a salute.

  “Thank you sir, have a good day.”

  “Same to ya.” The redhead casually returned the salute, replaced his ID, and slowly drove through the main gate of Shaw Air Force Base. Sliding his notepad into a leg pocket, the mercenary gazed out the window and listened to the pilots talk about their upcoming day.

  The main drive split around an immaculate white wooden church and they veered off to the right on Houston Avenue.

  “You know, I should drop in on the OG before heading to the flight doc. How ’bout dropping me there on your way past?”

  “No sweat, sir.”

  The Operations Group commander was responsible for flying combat operations. Since it was his neck on the block for the ORI, then it seemed normal that a visiting evaluator would pay him a visit. As the BMW careened into the little parking lot next to the flight line, the Sandman punched the driver’s arm. “You guys rock, and thanks for the lift. Won’t forget it.”

  “So I suppose we’ll see you later, sir?”

  The mercenary got out and smiled. “You never know, now, do you?” He stepped back and waved as the car drove off. It was 8:16.

  “So what’s the latest?” General Sturgis said without preamble. In twenty minutes he had his normal 0900 Monday-morning “look ahead” meeting to go over the coming events of the week. He knew there’d be questions about the Neville investigation and the latest incident in Texas.

  Lieutenant Colonel Lawson, the Security Forces commander, took the plunge. “Sir. In conjunction with the local police, TSA, and FBI, we’ve eliminated, as suspects, all commercial airline passengers from Norfolk International, Patrick Henry, and Richmond International airports for the period of Colonel Neville’s death.”

  “Murder.”

  “Yessir. Murder. Also one thousand fourteen out of one thousand one hundred fifty-two AMTRAK passengers have also been eliminated.”

  “How?” Jolly Lee asked.

  “The lists were initially cut down by about seventy-five percent by discounting anyone under twenty and over sixty, all females, and anyone physically handicapped.”

  “He could be feigning a handicap—been done before,” Axe added.

  Lawson looked up. “We verified each case with a relative or physician.”

  “And the remaining train passengers?” Sturgis asked. “What about them?”

  “The last thirty-eight are being located through their credit-card companies, state IDs, or passport information.”

  “And if they paid cash and didn’t use an ID?” Axe asked again. Like a professional would do.

  “They have to show some ID to board a train, and all train stations have security cameras. If we can’t identify someone, then we’ll frame-check the cameras from the stations in Newport News, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach against the face the FBI will provide. Then we’ll have a face, a name and a train to start from.”

  That sounded pretty thin to Doug Truax, and glancing at some of the others’ faces he saw they felt the same.

  “What else?” Sturgis looked at his watch.

  “Rental-car companies have all cooperated and come up negative. As for charter aircraft”—he flipped a page over—“all but two have accounted for their passengers.”

  “What’s their story?”

  “Well, one of them left for South America—Brazil, I think—the day after Neville’s death. If that was our killer he’s long gone. The other one, Sundo
wner Aero, is a mom-and-pop outfit with one aircraft, and neither principal can be located.”

  “Sounds promising.” Sturgis sat up, interested in this.

  “Sounds like a fishing trip to me, sir. Or a weekend in Atlantic City.”, Axe said.

  John Lee shot him a warning glance as Sturgis’s eyes went beady. “But getting the jet’s N number should be easy. It would have to be on any flight plan filed, and the FAA would have a record of it.”

  “Unless he killed the owners, dumped them in the back, took off VFR, and flew to the Bahamas.” Axe frowned at Jolly. Staff work had made him stupid.

  Sturgis held up a hand. “Okay. It’s not failsafe, but it is something.” He looked at Lawson. “Find out what the FAA has. Anything else?”

  The cop shook his head.

  “Anyone?”

  Axe looked around, and despite another glare from Jolly Lee said, “What about private aircraft and boats?”

  “It’s a long way to Texas on a boat.” Karen Shipman finally joined in.

  “He doesn’t have to go to Texas. Just out of state . . . say North Carolina or Maryland, then catch a flight from there while we’re all searching Virginia.”

  “That’s pretty clever,” Lawson replied, and Axe tried to keep his eyes from rolling. The sky cop had no imagination. One of those who only thought in black-and-white, and colored inside the lines.

  “He’s a professional, Colonel. We can’t afford to discount any of these possibilities.”

  To his surprise, Sturgis was nodding his head. The general had just seen his nice tidy options blown away and knew he had to cover his ass. “Colonel Truax is right. Cover both angles.” He stood up and so did everyone else. “I’m done at noon and we’ll meet back here then to hear what you’ve learned. And someone find the FBI by then.”

  The Sandman passed an hour sitting quietly in a gazebo near the flight line. There were four or five of these, mainly for families, scattered between the OG building, fire department, and alert facility. A lieutenant colonel walking around an air base would get someone’s attention, but sitting here within sight of the runway looked completely normal.

  It was all familiar.

  There were cars heading down the road toward the fighter squadrons, firefighters washing one of their trucks in the morning sun, and small groups of enlisted kids wearing plain white T-shirts running in formation.

  And the spine-tingling whine of jet engines. Farther down the flight line, the morning missions had gotten cranked up. Crew chiefs surrounded each plane, checking and rechecking while the pilots ran through their myriad of systems checks. Strobe lights flashed and engines spooled up as other F-16s began the taxi to the runway.

  He knew it all intimately.

  He’d been out there once.

  He’d been out there on a day like today when his wife died.

  She’d called the hospital at Langley Air Force Base complaining of pains and bleeding. She was seven months pregnant with another baby girl. Young Sergeant Nobody had told her that she wasn’t covered for any hospital other than Fort Eustace, an Army base thirty-seven miles up the peninsula. Langley, of course, didn’t have the facilities. They were sorry, but it was, after all, her “primary provider.” TRICARE, the military answer to health care, said so. And the sergeant, like a lot of sergeants, was incapable of independent thought.

  A newlywed and unfamiliar with the military, his wife thought she had to do what they said. And they never bothered to tell her any different. It wasn’t in their Standard Operating Procedures. Their Brain in a Book.

  And he wasn’t there to tell them to fuck off. To hell with reimbursement and primary providers and all that bullshit. He was a colonel and could afford to send his wife wherever she needed to go.

  He’d been flying and she couldn’t call him. She wasn’t due for another five weeks so it seemed all right. He’d gotten recalled in flight. Knowing it had to be his wife, he flew home just under the speed of sound and landed in a rush of speed brakes and smoking tires.

  The rest was a blur. She’d hemorrhaged, they’d said, trying to drive all the way to the hospital at Fort Eustace. She’d managed to stop on the shoulder and call 911. He’d heard the tape. Heard it cut off by the tractor-trailer rig that had clipped the SUV and sent it, and his family, spinning into the James River. And no one had stopped to help her. All the good people of the world that he’d protected for so many years. They’d done nothing.

  Oh, she’d been rushed to a real emergency room, not a military base, but it was too late. The little girl had drowned and the unborn baby, another little girl, had died with her mother.

  He shouldn’t have even been there. His assignment had been canceled and he’d been kept at Langley to test and evaluate the F/A-22. He’d told them all it was underperforming and overpriced—that it would never be the fighter attack aircraft they wanted it to be. His section chief, a lieutenant colonel; his division chief, a colonel; and the general in charge of his directorate had all ignored the data and recommendations. He hadn’t realized that they were doctoring the test reports to give the Pentagon what it wanted—true or not. They’d canceled his follow-on assignment because no one knew that mission like he did. His professional credibility was beyond question and they needed that. He hadn’t realized how badly the lieutenant colonel wanted eagles, the colonel wanted to be a general, and the general wanted another star.

  He stared unseeingly at a taxiing F-16. There were three other hospitals within ten miles of their home. But they hadn’t told her that because those hospitals weren’t on the “approved” list. They would cost the government more money than was authorized for “dependent medical care.”

  More money.

  Each fucking F/A-22 cost upwards of $190 million and still didn’t work as advertised. Yet people mattered so little to military that they went cheap on medical treatment. He’d looked it up months later—$119.26. That was the difference in cost to the government to use a civilian facility.

  $119.26.

  The mercneary breathed out slowly until his eyes focused. Two of the three were dead and the third one would be soon. Turning, he stared at the headquarters building a quarter mile away. Killing his target was never an issue. But altering his plan to get on the base now meant he needed a way off the base since he had no vehicle.

  Mentally discarding options, he watched a group of medical folks setting up a simulated field hospital in the grass beside the headquarters. As a blue staff car pulled into the command parking lot and two officers in flight suits got out, a slow smile crossed the mercenary’s face.

  He knew what to do.

  Chapter 20

  “All right, that’s it then.”

  All around the long, polished table, men and women pushed back their chairs and stood up. As they gathered up papers and Day Planners, Colonel Mike Halleck slipped out and headed back to his office. One of the perks of being wing commander was a private bathroom adjoining his big corner office. A sanctuary where he could retreat, not answer phones and not listen to the endless stream of complaints and demands on his time. It was 1020 and he had ten minutes before his next meeting—long enough for a cup of coffee and trip to the head.

  Nodding to Cindy, he tried to pass through the outer office unscathed but had no such luck.

  “Sir, there are messages . . .”

  “Yeah. I’m sure the Rotary Club is desperate for me to speak, some pro jock wants a photo op, and my wife called.”

  Cindy regarded him through layers of makeup that she still thought kept her perpetually twenty-eight years old. “No jocks, sorry. Actually the Rotarians did call. So did General Sturgis.”

  That stopped him. “Himself?”

  “Well, no . . . it was his exec. But the general would like to speak to you when you’re done this morning. I
told him you’d call at noon.”

  Must be some heads-up on the ORI, he thought, nodding. Sturgis was a bomber toad and a prick, but he was also the ACC commander. Halleck knew him from Langley, when they’d both been part of the Directorate of Requirements.

  “Right. I’ll do it.” He ducked toward his office.

  “Oh, Colonel . . . your wife called.”

  The Sandman walked into Wing Headquarters a few minutes after 1100. Carrying his black notebook like everyone else, he glanced up at the ceilings and hallway corners as he made his way to the lavatory.

  No cameras.

  There hadn’t been a few years ago, but the War on Terror had changed many things. He washed his hands until the other two men left, then looked at his watch. It was 1109. The last round of pre-lunch meetings had started and most everyone was occupied.

  It was time.

  The building’s interior was laid out in two concentric squares. The outer square held the commander section offices on the edge closest to the flight line. The other two corners were cube farms: lots of people at computers doing vital stuff. The inner square was mostly the enormous conference room, where Colonel Halleck now sat with twenty other officers planning something crucial to the wing’s combat readiness. Like a morale picnic or sexual harassment training.

  Lucky Mike Halleck.

  Not so lucky today, he thought.

  Stepping back into the hallway, the mercenary walked a few feet into an alcove containing a coffee bar. This was mainly used for visitors waiting to see someone in Headquarters. Everything was just as he’d remembered it. A major wearing ACUs, the Air Force version of battle fatigues, was stirring a cup of something when the Sandman walked in.

  “Good morning, sir. Care for a cup?”

  “You didn’t make it, did ya?”

  The other officer chuckled. “No sir. Kathy, our secretary would shoot me if I messed with her pot.”