The Mercenary

by Dan Hampton

  The base was a beehive as grown men and women played war. At least, their version of it. Everywhere, people were jumping into tents designated “simulated” shelters—taped-out squares on the grass.

  “EXERCISE, EXERCISE . . . ALARM BLACK . . . ALARM BLACK.”

  Taking Halleck’s keys from his desk, he opened the private back door, slung the gas mask over his shoulder, and stepped out. The crowd on the grass was too busy putting on plastic hoods and cinching up straps to notice him, which was precisely what he wanted. Crossing the ten feet to the blue staff car, he slid in, started up, and drove away in a matter of seconds. Pulling out onto Lance Street, he glanced in the rearview mirror and was pleased—everyone on base would be too busy for the next thirty minutes to give their wing commander much thought. He did not see the secretary, Cindy, standing at her office window staring after him.

  Taking a left on Shaw Drive, he drove carefully—but not too carefully. Alarm Blacks usually lasted about fifteen minutes, so he had about seven minutes remaining to get off the base. Not that anyone would bother a staff car with a Stan Eval colonel inside. Still, once the Black condition passed, roads would be blocked off and extra security checkpoints set up to “play the game.”

  No, heading straight off the base was the safest and quickest plan, so he followed Shaw Drive all the way out, past the chapel and the aircraft static displays to the main gate. The security cops were focused on people coming in, not going out; nevertheless, the mercenary flipped the sun visor down and sat up a bit higher in the seat as he passed through. They never even turned their heads.

  Accelerating to the right, he merged onto Garner’s Ferry Road and eased into the left lane. Past Patriot’s Parkway about a quarter mile, he turned around in the same place and came back in the eastbound lane of Garner’s Ferry Road. Pulling back into Lulu’s, the mercenary drove around to the back side and parked under the trees.

  Pulling off the chem gear, he got out, dropped it in the trunk and locked the car. Leaning against the back bumper, he looked around, then kicked the license plate off and picked it up. To a casual observer, it was just a plain blue car sitting in a quiet lot. Taking the plate and pocketing the keys, he strolled over to his own vehicle, unlocked it, and got in.

  Sitting a moment with his hands on the wheel, the Sandman gazed out at the distant air base. It had once been his home. He’d devoted nearly six years of his life to this place, the mission of the Air Force, and the people who did it. For a moment he felt a twinge of regret when he knew he’d never see this place again. Maybe this was enough. Maybe it was time to disappear and leave forever.

  Pausing by the road he looked both ways. He could turn left, head back into Columbia or Atlanta and be gone within hours.

  Then he saw their faces again. His wife and little daughter.

  No. It was never enough for that.

  Turning right he joined the midday traffic that would eventually take him to Interstate 20 near Florence, South Carolina.

  From there, he’d head north. To finish.

  Chapter 21

  “Trendco Logistics.”

  “What’s that?” Doug Truax looked up and blinked. He’d put his head down for a few minutes and woke up seeing David Abbot.

  “Trendco Logistics. It’s an LLC registered in Delaware.”

  His brain still fuzzy, Axe yawned. “And I care about this . . . why?”

  “Because it used Carter Aviation, an aircraft broker right here in Virginia Beach, to buy a Cessna. Incidentally, a SkyMaster holding an N931SM registration number.”

  Axe sat up now, wide awake. “So I was right?”

  The agent shrugged. “No way to tell for certain yet. But the missing 310 was found in Ohio—corporate owned and belonging to a televangelist who was off ministering to the needy.”

  “What needy?”

  “A few very needy call girls outside Cincinnati who regularly receive the . . . blessing of the Reverend Timmy Childress.”

  Axe put his head back and laughed. Childress ran an extremely large, very profitable nonprofit organization dedicated to a god that required heavy funding. Evidently a different God than everyone else knew.

  “And the local doctor with the Baron?”

  “Medical convention at the Biltmore in North Carolina. Verified.”

  “Just because the SkyMaster hasn’t shown up doesn’t mean it’s our guy.”

  Abbot smiled. “I thought you’d say that.” He opened his notepad. “Trendco Logistics used an accommodation address here in Suffolk. A post office box.”

  “Even so . . .”

  “ . . . that claimed three pieces of mail the day Neville was killed.”

  The pilot thought about that, then shook his head. “I’m sure people got mail all over the country the day. They couldn’t have all had grudges.”

  “True.”

  “So why do you look pleased?”

  Abbot chuckled. “Because we traced the claim checks back to the sending addresses. One of them was to an incorporation service in Delaware that proved remarkably uncooperative until faced with several unsmiling FBI agents in their offices.”

  “Guns and badges.”

  “Right—this company registered two LLCs in Delaware about a week apart. The first was Trendco and the second was Green Mountain.”

  Axe was interested now. “Paid for . . . how?”

  “Ah, yes. Always follow the money. Apparently both were paid for by Green Mountain Transport—and its account was opened with an international wire.”

  Clever.

  “So it’s a dead end.”

  “Not really. Foreign banks have become much more cooperative under U.S. pressure after 9/11. Amazing how much influence we still wield. Anyway, we’re working with the Justice Department to trace the wire origin and we’ll get it. May take a day or so though.”

  “So what do we have, then?”

  “Two companies, formed under non-traditional methods, doing business in the United States that no one seems to know about. Two companies that had mail picked up thirty miles from Colonel Neville’s murder scene and within ninety minutes of his death.”

  Axe pursed his lips and stared at the FBI agent. “And one of these companies bought an aircraft that left this area the same day and hasn’t been located.”

  “Well, yes and no.” Abbot smiled again. “It did leave but we have located it. At least one of its stops anyway.”

  “Where?”

  Abbot unfolded the same chart they’d all looked at earlier. “Your estimate of the radius was pretty accurate.” He tapped a speck on the map. “Here. Someplace called DeWitt Municipal Airport . . . in Arkansas.”

  “How’d you track it down?”

  “By N number—931 Sierra Mike was filed out of DeWitt to Seward, just west of Lincoln, Nebraska.”

  Truax frowned. “But flight plans don’t necessarily mean that’s where the aircraft went. But it was physically at the airport in Arkansas?”

  “I spoke to the airport manager himself. He remembers the plane. And”—Abbot looked up—“he remembers the pilot.”

  “Good enough to compare to pictures?”

  The agent nodded. “They’ve already been sent to the field office at Little Rock and a pair of agents are on their way to the field.”

  Axe whistled softly. “Lucky break.”

  “You take what you can get. As I said, there has to be a starting point in any investigation, and this one had nothing at the crime scene. All of this,” he waved a hand over the chart, “could be circumstantial . . . probably is. But we have to chase down everything remotely connected or suspicious. This is”—he looked up at Axe—“a very smart and
dangerous man.”

  “Seems fairly promising though,” Axe replied hopefully. He’d woken up by now and was staring hatefully at the coffeemaker. “How about a real lunch? There’s a little pub in downtown Hampton Roads I know . . . great shepherd’s pie. We’ll be back for Sturgis’s P.M. meeting.”

  Abbot shook his head. “I’ll stay. I want to see what else we can get from this. Also, I’ve got to keep after the mercenary case.”

  “You’re on,” Karen stood and stretched, both men staring at the tight sweater as it pulled across her chest. With her eyes still closed she said, “your car keys aren’t in my sweater. You find them and you can drive. “

  “Is the boss in?” Colonel Scott Richards walked across the office, headed for Halleck’s door.

  “No.” Cindy didn’t look up from the papers she was reading. “He’s missed two calls, one appointment, and didn’t bother to tell me where he was going.” She sounded peevish, as only a secretary can sound.

  Richards rattled the door anyway and frowned. “That’s strange. We were supposed to decide together when to kick off the exercise,” he jerked his head toward the window. “But it’s plainly started.”

  “Looks like he doesn’t consult you any more than he consults me.” Cindy sniffed.

  “He’s scheduled to fly this afternoon too. Maybe he went down to the squadron to help plan the mission. If he does check in, let me know, will you? Ask him to buzz me. “

  She shrugged and went back to reading.

  Richards gave up and walked back to his office. It was 1230.

  “So?” Axe said, sitting gingerly on a wet, metal chair outside O’Dowd’s Irish Pub. It was on a side street in the historic section of Hampton Roads, and was the sort favored by yuppies, lawyers, and military officers from Langley.

  She waited for the waiter to leave, then said, “At DIA one of the areas I worked related to approval for the sale of American weapons to foreign buyers.”

  “What? Like ITARS?”

  International Traffic of Arms Regulations were the Bible for arms dealings for any defense contractor or government organization wishing to sell American-made weaponry.

  Karen shrugged. “ITARS is for deals done by the book. There are plenty that aren’t.”

  “Like Saddam Hussein’s endless supply of ‘agricultural credits’ back in the eighties?”

  “Exactly. If he was willing to kill Iranians, then we kept him happy.” Axe understood it from a practical point of view but in his case, much of that same stuff had come back at him during the Gulf War.

  “Anyway,” Shipman continued, “Our concerns didn’t just deal with hardware. American expertise is also considered a very valuable commodity. So we kept tabs on certain . . . defense consultants and extended-training specialists.”

  “Mercenaries.”

  She shrugged again. “It’s just semantics. Most of these men had the tacit approval, or in some cases the outright sanction, of our government.”

  “Iran–Contra.”

  “And many others.”

  “You said most of them.”

  She sipped her drink. “A few years back, the Israelis had a problem, and for reasons best known to them, decided to use the services of a professional mercenary. When the operation was complete, they decided his knowledge of the whole affair was too much of a liability so they killed him.”

  “Sounds like an occupational hazard in that kind of business.”

  “Right. Except we don’t think he really died.”

  “Why not?”

  Karen looked out over the street and wondered how much she should tell him. He had the right clearances but up till now hadn’t had that elusive “need to know.”

  “Well . . . the incident in China, to begin with.”

  He leaned back and stared at her. “You mean you think you know who might’ve done this? And you’ve known all this time?!” His voice came up a level.

  “Lower your voice,” she took another drink and glanced around. “I didn’t say that. We’d become aware of this man due to the Israeli situation and, working backward, were able to probably assign four other high-level operations to him. Ops that no one had claimed credit for and no one could be tracked.

  They looked at each other a moment and Axe noticed again the tiny flecks of brown in her green eyes.

  “He’s that good?” the pilot said at last and Karen nodded.

  “He’s that good. And cagey enough to make the Israelis believe that they’d killed him. Otherwise he’d spend his life looking over his shoulder.”

  “So where do we fit in?”

  “I wasn’t certain there was a connection until we had Womack’s files and I saw that one of the document sets was from Nevis and St. Kitts.”

  “And this means something?”

  “Maybe. When we investigated this Israeli affair one of the only clues about this man lay with some old documentation he’d used . . . years before.”

  “And it was from the Caribbean?” Axe put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.

  “Nevis and St. Kitts.”

  He whistled. It could be a coincidence. It could be an error or a dozen other things. But his gut said it was real. “Is that all?”

  “No,” she took a bigger swig of Guinness and stared at his face. “The rumor going around was that he was an American.”

  Chapter 22

  “What the hell do you mean, he’s missing? How is that possible with fucking satellites and surveillance gadgets out the wazoo?” General Kenneth Allen Sturgis glared at the FBI agent then at everyone else. “How?!”

  David Abbot sighed and leaned back in the big leather chair. “We don’t have all that stuff pointed at NoWhere, Arkansas, General. The information only came in this morning. Barely enough time to get a field agent out there, much less change a satellite’s orbit.”

  Truax said nothing. He was still mentally reeling from Karen Shipman’s revelation about the American mercenary. It was 1:30 P.M. on Monday and he wished he was on a boat someplace drinking mai tais.

  “So what do you know for certain?” Jolly Lee asked, glancing at the general’s red face. “I mean, we do know that plane was there, right?”

  “Right. SkyMaster N931SM landed at DeWitt Muni around seventeen thirty, local time. The airport manager was getting ready to leave for the night but said the pilot was very accommodating. Just wanted gas and a cup of coffee.”

  “So there’s a fuel receipt?”

  Abbot shook his head. “No. He paid cash and left a big tip. Said he was in a hurry to meet a lady in Omaha.”

  Sturgis snorted.

  “What about a flight plan?”

  “There was one filed. To Seward Airport, outside Lincoln. But it was never activated.”

  “Takeoff time?

  The agent flipped a piece of paper over, then gave it Truax. “I can’t read these things.”

  Axe scanned it rapidly. “Eighteen thirty local.” He pulled the chart across the table. “Assuming this is our guy, he’d have to make the approximate takeoff time in case the airport manager happened to check. Also, any witnesses would say that a light twin did depart around that time.”

  “Why is that important?” Karen Shipman asked.

  “To throw people like us off the trail.” Axe was nodding his head. “I bet he even headed north before turning in case anyone was watching.”

  “Turning where?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Axe extended his pinky and thumb into a straight line and used his right hand like a ruler. “Certainly not north, and why would he come back east? So my money is on south or west. Four hours at two hundred knots gets him anywhere along this radius.” He measured
it out and slowly moved his hand in a circle, then abruptly stopped.

  “Son of a bitch . . .” Jolly whispered softly.

  “What is it?” Sturgis leaned forward to try and see the chart, and David Abbot smiled.

  “San Antonio, Texas.”

  Shit. Captain Jon Matheson swore silently and slowed down. He looked at the “no signal” message on his cell phone, glanced in the rearview mirror, and swerved into the right lane. Pulling into Lulu’s parking lot just west of the base, he was rewarded with enough bars to call, and hit the redial button. “Sorry baby.” He drove slowly around to the back and stopped. “Listen . . . I should be back in a few hours. I didn’t know anything about it . . . It’s a No Notice kind of . . . evaluation.”

  He was trying to sound upbeat for the woman on the other end but was seething inside. He’d specifically taken leave for the next week and his fiancée had flown all the way in from Alaska. Now this. He’d been recalled, leave canceled, and told to report by 1400. As the squadron’s weapons and tactics officer, there wasn’t anything he could do but comply. He’d have to take whatever silly scenario they gave him and plan his squadron’s response.

  Wasn’t it enough that he’d missed the past three Thanksgivings and Christmases because of Middle East horseshit? Wasn’t it enough that he worked at least twelve hours every day and usually the weekends too?

  Now this.

  “Thanks . . . I’m sorry.” He listened and smiled slightly. “You’re a good sport. I’ll call back as soon as I can.”

  Hanging up, he sighed. She’d understood but the disappointment in her voice was plain. Shaking his head with disgust, he pulled around and caught sight of the blue staff car parked back in the corner.

  “Fucking bastard,” he muttered. “Recall all of us to the dirty work and you sneak off to Lulu’s for pancakes. Prick.”