by Dan Hampton
“John Barrett Kane,” Axe breathed quietly and looked out the window. “God help us.”
He’d been here before, long ago. A windy, late-summer day that had outwardly been bleak and cold. But he’d been happy. His daughter had been a baby then, fat and happy. And despite the chill, he and his wife had walked along the beach dangling the little girl between them. They’d eaten she-crab soup, drunk wine, and enjoyed the simple pleasure of being a small family. A pleasure he’d never known.
Or would again.
The mercenary’s hands tightened on the wheel. No payback was equal to the lives they’d stolen but it was all that was left. He couldn’t have continued knowing they were living and breathing in the world and his family was not. They were all gone now, those who were responsible for this. Passing through Williamston, he slowed and stopped at a T intersection and waited for the light.
They were dead.
All but one.
As the light changed, he turned left on Highway 17, north for the Virginia state line.
“You’re certain.” For once General Sturgis looked straight into Axe’s eyes. “No doubt?”
Doug Truax slowly nodded his head. “I knew the man, General. We were in three separate squadrons together—including the Kosovo fiasco and the Second Gulf War. We also went through Fighter Weapons School together. You don’t forget someone like that,” he added.
Sturgis leaned back, eyes closed. “Major Dwyer, refresh our memories.”
The aid cleared his throat and referred to the folder spread out on his knees. “Yes sir. John Barrett Kane. Commissioned a second lieutenant after graduating from the University of Maryland. Pilot training at Vance . . . standard RTU and survival courses. Arrived at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, in the fall of 1988. Normal officer performance reports. Awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor and some Air Medals in the ’ninety-one Gulf War.”
“Did you know him then, Truax?” Sturgis interrupted, still sitting with his eyes closed.
“No sir. I first met him at Nellis.”
Dwyer went on. “He, uh, attended the Defense Language School at Monterey for Arabic and then did an exchange with the Moroccan air force. Graduated Fighter Weapons School . . . did a tour at Hill AFB, then back to Nellis with the Aggressor Squadron.”
“Was that normal?” Karen Shipman asked. “Seems he should’ve gone off to a staff at that point.
“Too young,” Axe said. “Stormy came up real fast. Besides, the Gomers—sorry, the Aggressors—really wanted him. That’s where we met up again. His combat experience and language ability made him a natural, though he only did it for a year before they snagged him at the 422 Test Squadron.”
“I remember that now,” Lee chimed in. “That was when the Block 50 version of the F-16 was finishing development.”
“Right. Stormy was one of the very few F-16 Patchwearers who’d been a Wild Weasel. They needed him.”
Sturgis waved a hand and Dwyer went on. “Superb OPRs . . . lots of awards. Squadron Officers School . . . by correspondence.” The little shit smirked at that and Axe wanted to punch him. Stormy, like most fighter pilots, had been too busy doing real work to attend the silly academic course the Air Force made all captains go through.
“Masters degree in aeronautics,” He looked up, “from Duke. More flying. Shaw, Kunsan. Air Command and Staff College . . . and back to Shaw for the Second Gulf War.” He whistled. “A Silver Star and two more Flying Crosses with Valor.”
“A complicated man,” Karen Shipman remarked quietly.
“So doubly dangerous.” Axe nodded. “Yeah . . . Stormy was always a bit different.”
“In what way?” she asked, and Axe was surprised to be annoyed at her interest.
“Oh, he could drink and sing and cause trouble like the rest of us, but . . . I don’t know, he never lost control or just completely cut loose. Wild enough, but in a sort of quiet way.”
“I only met him once,” Jolly volunteered. “Just before he left Shaw. His wingman ground aborted, so Stormy took off alone and fought the four of us by himself.”
“How’d he do?” Axe chuckled, already knowing the answer.
Lee looked at him, smiling sardonically. “He got us all . . . the last two using only the gun.”
Axe chuckled. “Gun” shots, using the 20mm cannon, were extremely difficult against other jets moving three-dimensionally at 400 knots or so. “He did that sort of thing all the time.”
“But why is he here, now, killing Air Force officers?” Karen asked. “It wouldn’t be random.”
“No, it wouldn’t. There has to be some connection between him and the others.”
Sturgis got up suddenly and stood facing the window, gazing out at the brick buildings and overcast sky. He felt a drop of sweat roll down between his shoulder blades and was glad to be wearing the blue dress coat. He knew. Now that the man was identified, he knew. The others were watching him, surprised.
“There is a connection,” Sturgis took a breath and turned around. “Me.”
No one spoke.
Finally, Jolly Lee cleared his throat. “Ah . . . maybe you’d explain that, sir?”
The general sat down heavily and stared at the far wall. Axe noticed that his normally red cheeks were several shades lighter. “A little over, what, five years ago, I was the Director of Requirements here at Langley.”
“And for my benefit, what’s that?” David Abbot asked.
“This directorate within the staff, called A8, that establishes future requirements and the budgets that match them. Equipment and weapons . . . that sort of thing,” Jolly Lee answered. “
“And aircraft.” Axe was looking at Sturgis. “That’s probably the biggest piece of it.”
The general nodded somewhat absently. “Right. Well, Jimmy Neville was the division chief of A-8T, the section of A8 that dealt with the F-22 Raptor.” He cleared his throat. “The Raptor had been having . . . difficulties . . . so the branch that was responsible for the testing had a lot of . . . pressure . . . to, ah, solve the problems.”
Axe shook his head slowly. To justify the enormous budget and excuse the cost overruns, Langley tried making the Raptor into a multi-use fighter. The F/A (Fighter Attack) -22. It hadn’t worked. And would never work. The aircraft wasn’t designed for it, and in any event, dropping a fifty-pound Small Smart Bomb from thirty miles away wasn’t close air-support.
“ . . . so we needed an expert to make that happen,” Sturgis continued. “The A-8TT branch chief knew an officer with the, ah, right qualifications.”
Truax remembered. “John Kane.”
Sturgis looked around at him. “Right. He was a Patchwearer. An F-16 weapons officer with probably the most air-to-ground combat time in the Air Force. He was also right here, finishing up a staff tour and waiting for his next orders. An ideal choice, really . . .” His voice trailed off.
The FBI agent was looking back and forth between them. There was plainly more to the story than this. “So?”
“So the branch chief forced the issue—needs of the Air Force and all that—and we kept Lieutenant Colonel Kane here.”
“And the branch chief was . . . ?” Karen Shipman asked.
“Mike Halleck.”
Axe saw it all now, clear like the ringing of a single chime on an enormous bell. “Son of a bitch . . .” he exhaled.
“What?” Karen looked at him strangely.
�
�The reason he was waiting for his assignment to come through . . . There was a sexual-harassment claim brought against him, Axe quietly said. “Some woman in an O’Club claimed he groped her. The woman had a shitty reputation but was married to a full colonel who knew a general here at ACC and they pressed the matter. Even so, the case had been dropped by the time this thing with the Raptor came up.”
She saw it too. “So they used it, didn’t they? They used this harassment issue to keep him here.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” Axe replied, the bitterness plain in his voice. “And then . . . his wife . . . there was an accident.”
“I heard about that too,” Jolly said. “A car wreck, wasn’t it?”
“Not exactly. His wife was about seven months pregnant and some medical nobody told her she had to use a hospital across the James River someplace. Well, Stefanie, that was her name, was young and didn’t know the military and Stormy wasn’t here to cut through the bullshit. So, she and their little girl—maybe three years old—start across the bridge and she hemorrhages. Stefanie got the car stopped and was calling 911 when a truck hit the back of her car and sent it into the river.”
Karen inhaled sharply and John Lee looked away.
“A hemorrhaging pregnant woman and a little girl in a car seat . . . they had no chance at all.” Axe added quietly.
“What did Kane do?” David Abbot asked after a moment.
Truax glanced at Sturgis. The man was expressionless. He went on. “Nothing, outwardly. I mean, he wasn’t emotional anyway . . . not the kind of guy you could ever really read. But . . .”
“But you knew him,” Karen said, her eyes softer than he’d ever seen them.
Axe nodded. “I suppose so. Better than anyone else anyway. I mean, he wasn’t unfriendly and the guys liked him. Just always a bit . . . aloof, I guess. But yeah, I knew him. He was torn up—bad. You see, Stefanie had made a human out of him, and the little girl—Rachel was her name—she was everything to him.”
“When I was over at their home a few times, he was a different man. Relaxed, even joking. I was amazed ’cause I’d never seen that side of him. But when they died . . . well, he just kind of checked out”—Axe tapped his chest—“here. I never saw him smile again,” he added.
“That’s a terrible story,” Karen nearly whispered. “How would you get over something like that?”
“I don’t have to,” Axe answered. “And he never did.”
The agent had listened carefully. This explained a great deal—at least by way of motives. But he still had questions. “You said at first that Kane was dead. How did he die?”
“Flying accident, the first report said. Fuel starvation or spatial disorientation.”
“But you don’t believe it?”
Axe snorted. “John Kane could fly a jet fighter in the worst combat conditions imaginable and come out okay. I saw him do it. No, I don’t believe it. A guy like that isn’t going to get turned upside down in a Cessna and fly into the water.”
“That’s what happened?” Karen sat back and tried not to look at General Sturgis. She’d actually admired him at one time for his apparent dedication and drive. Now she realized it was a sham that covered a much worse man than she’d have thought possible.
“That’s what the FAA initially supposed. He’d taken off from someplace around here, at night, under an IFR flight plan. About thirty minutes later they lost contact with him, though the plane stayed on radar, flying a big, slowly descending circle.”
“Where?’
Axe pointed over his shoulder toward the coast. “About five miles that way . . . at the entrance of the bay. Then they found the wreckage. Some of it anyway. The pilot’s door had a bullet hole in it that the crime scene wizards said was fired from inside. So he became a suicide. That’s what the second report concluded.”
“But a body was never found?”
“No body. But that’s where the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean come together, so no one was expecting it. As for the suicide”—he looked away—“I don’t know. Under any other circumstances I’d emphatically say no . . . but Stormy was never the same after . . . after the accident. I mean, he still functioned, but it was more by rote than anything else. And he became even colder than he’d been before. Even to me.”
Everyone was silent, absorbing what had been revealed.
David Abbot looked up, a thoughtful look on his face. “The Smiths . . . who were killed two days ago. Where were they during all this?”
“Randolph.” Sturgis spoke and they looked at him. “Heidi Smith was the woman who brought the charges against Colonel Kane.” He sighed and swiveled around to look out the window again. “She was always . . . loose. But we didn’t have any reason to doubt her, in this case.”
“Except there were three other witnesses who said Heidi was drunk, pawing at Stormy and finally openly belligerent when he gave her the brush,” Axe retorted. “He let me read the report. Besides, if there had been anything to it, he would’ve been hammered legally, not just kept here against his will.”
Sturgis flushed but said nothing.
“You were the general at Langley her husband called?” Abbot asked.
He nodded slowly, then became conscious of the stares and his face hardened. “The man was a loner . . . not a team player. He resented authority . . . he . . .”
“ . . . was someone you needed here,” the FBI agent replied.
“Service Before Self,” Axe said bitterly.
“That’s right!” the general snarled, spinning around and glaring at him. “There were bigger issues at stake here beyond one man’s career. It’s not like he was going to be a general someday. The needs of the Air Force come first.”
No one said anything to that. Axe was plainly contemptuous and Karen Shipman looked appalled. Even Jolly Lee, company man that he was, seemed uncomfortable.
“Halleck and Neville’s butts were on the line because the Raptor was such a cluster fuck. Kane was their way out. Except it didn’t work out that way, did it?” Axe nearly spat it out. He was dangerously close to insubordination but frankly didn’t care.
Sturgis didn’t reply.
“Why not?” David Abbot asked. “What happened?”
“Stormy wouldn’t play ball,” Axe replied. “He wouldn’t massage the data and give them the bullshit evaluation of the Raptor that they wanted.”
“I never knew that was him,” Jolly looked thoughtful. “I heard about all the big stink it caused but never knew who was responsible.”
“Big stink.” Sturgis sat up. “Damned near cost us the whole program. All because some pissant lieutenant colonel wouldn’t see the big picture.”
“You mean an aircraft that will actually work in combat?” Axe replied.
Sturgis’s eyes went all piggy as he stared at Truax. “Those issues would’ve been fixed.” He was angry now, and raised his voice. “Everything would’ve been fixed. But we had to keep the program alive to do that. Kane”—he stabbed a finger at Axe—“was just like you! A black-and-white kind of guy . . .”
Abbot was surprised and it showed. Karen Shipman was too. Dwyer looked openly shocked at seeing his boss lose his cool. The general stood up, breathing hard, then abruptly strode out of the room. It was suddenly very quiet except for the methodical clipping of a gardener outside the window.
“Wow,” Abbot finally said and looked at the military officers. “Guess you don’t
see that every day.” Standing up, he walked over to the coffee bar and poured a cup in the plain white mugs the Air Force loved so much.
“Most of this makes sense now. So here’s what we know. We know the ‘who,’ certainly the ‘how,’ and now we know the ‘why.’ We don’t know exactly how he got from Texas to South Carolina and probably won’t. Nor do we know where he is at the moment. Abbot turned, stirring his coffee and looked at them. “But if we assume this was all motivated by revenge, then we now know where he’ll go next.”
“Right here.” Lee said bleakly. “No wonder General Sturgis is worked up.”
“Simple enough,” the agent replied. “He just gets out of town.”
Major Dwyer spoke up then. “He won’t do it. He can’t.”
“Why is that?”
“The ACC Commander’s conference starts Wednesday morning and General Sturgis is giving the keynote address.”
“And that’s more important to him than his life?”
Dwyer shrugged his shoulders. “I couldn’t answer that. But his participation sets the schedule and without him there’s no conference. It’s the centerpiece of his tenure at ACC.”
“Is there any safer place for him to be than on a military base?” Lee mused. “I mean, now that we know about Kane, how could he get on a base that’s alerted for him?”
“I dunno.” Axe got up stiffly and stretched. He hated offices. “But he’s been a few steps ahead of us the whole time, so I wouldn’t doubt he’s already considered that.”
“Not a comforting thought,” Karen Shipman remarked. “But I think you’re right. In any event, we can’t take the chance with a man like this. How did he know where all these people were going to be anyway? Seems an awful risk to take on speculation.”
A man like this. . .
Axe’s head came around sharply and he stared at her. She’d said that before. His eyebrows knitted together . . . what was it? Suddenly, his eyes widened at the thought; the implausible, utterly simple answer to both questions.
