The Three-Nine Line

by David Freed

  “I appreciate the offer, but I’m really not looking for anything like that right now, Larry.”

  “Copy that. But before you say no, I’ve seen this gal, okay? Easily an eight, eight-plus—definitely a nine, depending on how many beers you’ve had. Kinda reminds me of Cindy Crawford, only Cindy’s mole is smaller—not that this chick’s mole is gonna destroy Tokyo or anything. Just fair warning, it’s definitely there. Just so you don’t get shocked or nothin’ when you see her, okay?”

  “Destroy Tokyo?”

  “Okay, forget I said anything about the mole. I’m probably making more of it than it deserves.” Larry lowered his voice: “Listen, between you and me and the wall, I’d do her in a heartbeat if I didn’t think the wife would find out and blowtorch my crotch.”

  I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. And it’s not like I was particularly happy spending my nights alone with my cat. It’s just that I wasn’t ready to have dinner with any woman other than the one I’d lost.

  “Please thank your wife for me,” I said, “but I have plans tonight.”

  “Plans? What plans? Go home to that cat of yours? That cat’s a menace. He has it in for you. Come on, Logan, come to supper. It’ll do you some good.”

  “I’ll take a rain check. How’s that sound?”

  “Sounds like I’m gonna be in big trouble. I promised the wife you’d come.” Larry puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. “Oh, well, you can drag a horse to water, right? Can’t say I didn’t try. Catch you mañana, Logan.”

  “Mañana, buddy.”

  I watched him walk back to his hangar, wondering if maybe I’d erred in not taking him up on his offer. The fact was, though, I was busy that night—only not in a way I could’ve ever anticipated.

  V

  “N-32 . . . N-32.”

  The old man leaned over the bingo machine and extracted another randomly selected ball with a number on it. He was all dentures, hearing aids, and glasses, a living cadaver in red golf pants and a yellow golf shirt. He probably wasn’t a day over ninety. On second glance, maybe he was.

  “All I need is one more number, just one more,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said with her pink bingo dauber at the ready, surveying the five cards spread out on the table in front of her as we sat in the ballroom of the Rancho Bonita Elks Lodge. “C’mon, O-66, O-66, baby, O-66 . . .”

  “O-65 . . . O-65.”

  “Oy, so close!” She shook a fist and hollered at the geezer running the machine. “Hey, Mr. Bingo, let’s have some good numbers for a change.”

  None of the players looked up from their cards. They were all apparently used to such outbursts from my Brooklyn-born landlady, a retired junior high gym teacher who took her bingo as seriously as she did televised football games. I’d agreed to drive her to her weekly sessions at the Elks in lieu of anything else to do in my free time. Looking around the crowded ballroom, I realized I was easily the youngest person there by thirty years.

  “I-17 . . . I-17.”

  I glanced down at the lone card I was playing, saw I-17, and said, “Bingo.”

  “We have a bingo. The youngster sitting with the ever lovely Mrs. Schmulowitz.”

  Groans of disappointment drifted up from the crowd. Mrs. Schmulowitz gave me a congratulatory pat on the knee—“Way to go, bubeleh”—while the cadaver in the golf shirt shuffled over, reviewed my card, confirmed aloud that I had, in fact, a valid bingo, and handed me a twenty-five dollar gift certificate to Arby’s.

  An old woman sitting across the table from us in a wheelchair sucked in her sallow cheeks and smirked. “Arby’s? That’s not even roast beef. It’s roasted llama. Or kangaroo. Good lord, even my dog wouldn’t touch that stuff.”

  “Come off it, Edith,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said. “I’ve seen you at Arby’s. You’re just jealous you didn’t win.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are, too.”

  “Why don’t you just go to hell, Mrs. Schmulowitz?”

  Fortunately at that moment, my phone rang.

  “This is Logan.”

  The unmistakably gravelly voice on the other end of the line said, “How’s your scrotum?”

  Relieved that I wasn’t about to intervene in a catfight between two octogenarians, I stood and quickly headed for the door. The caller was my old buddy, Buzz. We’d served together in Alpha, a since-disbanded Tier One counterterrorist group whose mandate had been to revoke the get-out-of-jail-free cards of jihadists and miscellaneous other miscreants. In theory, we were supposed to take them into custody after hunting them down. In truth, they usually never made it that far. Buzz, a former Delta Force operator, had later gone to work for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency. He was now in charge of a small, newly formed covert organization, the name of which and mission specifics he’d repeatedly refused to share with me unless I agreed to come work for him. After pondering his offer for a week, I declined. My thoughts had remained scattered after losing Savannah, my mind too distracted to return to the razor-edged world of black ops. Now six months later, he was calling again. Only this time, he said, he wasn’t offering. He was demanding.

  “This is not a drill, Logan. I need you to un-ass yourself from whatever mindless civilian activity you’re presently engaged in and report for duty A-SAP.”

  Two old men were milling about outside the entrance to the Elks Lodge, puffing fat cigars. I walked past them and into the parking lot, far enough away that they couldn’t hear me.

  “I’m listening, Buzz.”

  “I’ve got a C-37 inbound to the Rancho Bonita airport as we speak. He’s due in to Signature Flight Support at 0630 Zulu. You will be onboard that aircraft, copy?”

  Zero-six-thirty Zulu. That was a half hour before midnight, local time. I checked my watch: the jet would be landing in less than ninety minutes.

  “What’s the op?”

  “I’ll give you the full dump when you get here. We can talk money then, too.”

  “Where’s ‘here’?”

  “You don’t need to know that right now, Logan. All you need to know is that your country needs you.”

  I laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You couldn’t come up with something less cliché than, ‘Your country needs you?’ ”

  “Bite me. It’s the truth. I won’t take no for an answer, Logan. I can’t. Not this time.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. Buzz was a force of nature whose judgment I’d come to trust implicitly. When he wanted something done that he deemed important, it invariably got done.

  “I’ll have to reschedule a few things,” I said.

  “Fine, do whatever you have to, but do it quick. I’ll be waiting for you when you get here. You’ll be gone for about a week. And don’t worry about bringing a weapon. You won’t need one.” A pause, then he added, “Hopefully.”

  Buzz snorted like a pig—his version of a laugh—before the line went dead.

  I slipped the phone back in my jeans and realized that my hand was shaking ever so slightly with adrenaline in much the same way it did when I was with Alpha, those anxious butterflies that always disappeared the moment you felt that first bullet whiz past and muscle memory took over. I dug the feeling. It reminded me that my time on this planet was not without purpose, that my life still had meaning beyond merely taking famous movie stars and their girlfriends whale watching.

  TWO

  Mrs. Schmulowitz offered to feed Kiddiot, as she invariably did when I left town. I gave her a list of my student pilots’ names and their numbers as I drove her home and asked her to call them in the morning to postpone their flying lessons until I returned. She didn’t ask where I was going. I was grateful for her discretion; I couldn’t have answered her questions anyway.

  “I’m gonna try a little scientific experiment on that cat of yours while you’re gone,” Mrs. Schmulowitz said as I steadied her by her elbow, helping her from my truck and onto her front porch. “He won’t eat any cat food you serve him, am I right?”
/>   “True.”

  “So, my theory is he won’t eat cat food because he knows it’s cat food. The problem is, he doesn’t think he’s a cat. He thinks he’s Donald Trump, this cat! So what I do is, I go to Whole Foods, okay? I get a quarter pound of tuna salad. It’ll cost me twenty bucks, but what do I care? I’m loaded. My second husband, he saw to that, may he rest in peace. Then I come home. I make sure the cat’s not watching. I take the tuna salad. I put it in another bowl and I put the bowl in the fridge. Then I take the Tender Vittles that he won’t eat. I put the Tender Vittles in the Whole Foods container that had the tuna salad in it. I wait until he sees me, wave it under his nose, give him a little smell, right? Then I make a big deal of spooning the Tender Vittles out of the Whole Foods container into his bowl. He thinks he’s getting tuna salad from Whole Foods. It’s gonna work, I guarantee it.”

  I wished her luck and went to pack. Per Buzz’s directive, I left behind my reliable, two-inch, .357 Colt Python that had been my backup weapon with Alpha, a revolver I carried as a civilian whenever the need arose.

  Kiddiot came to see me off as I threw my duffel bag into the back of my truck. Anyway, that’s what I assumed he was doing as he hopped out of the cat door of our converted garage apartment and sauntered toward me—only to keep going, tail straight up, squeezing through Mrs. Schmulowitz’s backyard gate and disappearing down the alley.

  That’s gratitude for you.

  V

  It was nearing midnight by the time I got to the airport. An unmarked Gulfstream V executive jet, known in air force parlance as a C-37, was parked on the ramp in front of Signature Flight Support, one of two luxury, fixed-base operations that cater to the many showbiz luminaries and corporate bigwigs who call Rancho Bonita home. I pressed the intercom button next to the glass front door.

  “May I help you?” The voice on the speaker box was female and surprisingly pleasant, given the lateness of the hour.

  “Cordell Logan.”

  The electric lock on the door clicked open. I passed through a hangar occupied by a single-engine Pilatus and entered a well-appointed reception lounge that fronted the flight line. Two men wearing the ubiquitous black slacks and white short-sleeved dress shirts of corporate pilots put down their Styrofoam coffee cups and stood as I walked in.

  “Mr. Logan?”

  “That would be me.”

  I handed my driver’s license to the one with the four captain’s bars on his shoulder epaulets. The receptionist sitting behind the counter, a young blonde in a dark blue skirt and blazer, gave me a toothy smile while he studied it.

  “We’re good to go,” he said after a long moment, then handed me back the license.

  The blonde buzzed us through the door leading to the flight line. The pilots and I walked out to the jet. I asked them our destination but they ignored me, closing the cockpit door behind them. Waiting at the top of the stairs with his burly, tattooed arms folded was a bearded, dark-haired young man in a tight-fitting black T-shirt, tan pleated Dockers, and tan, lace-up combat boots. Holstered under his left shoulder was a .50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol.

  “Welcome aboard, Mr. Logan. My name’s Best. I’ll be your flight attendant this evening.”

  “Normally I flirt with the flight attendants, but in your case, I think I’ll make an exception.”

  He grinned. “I need you to raise your arms for me, please.”

  “I’m not packing, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “It’s S-O-P, sir. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  I complied. He frisked me down quickly but efficiently, then searched through my duffel bag. When he was finished, he pulled the jet’s cabin door closed.

  “You want something to drink before we launch?”

  “I’d like some fresh-squeezed guava juice, please.”

  “It’s a government flight. How ’bout some fresh-squeezed bottled water?”

  “Got any coffee?”

  “How do you take it?”

  “Black.”

  He disappeared into the aft galley. The jet’s passenger cabin was as swank as any Fortune 500 boardroom: creamy leather recliners and sofa, soft lighting, plush carpet, and fold-out, burl-wood tables for dining and writing. I plopped down into a recliner and peered out the window. We were rolling toward Runway two-six. I could see the Ruptured Duck where I’d tied him down in front of Larry’s hangar. My plane might’ve been nearly as ancient as I was, what with his sun-faded yellow and orange paint job, his outdated avionics and ragged upholstery that looked like a jilted lover had taken a razor to it, but he was still a good and reliable bird.

  I’ll be back soon, old friend. We’ll go flying then.

  Best brought me my coffee and took a seat across the aisle from me. Inked on his left forearm, amid a miasma of other military tattoos, was a fragmentation grenade.

  “Army?”

  “Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment,” he said. “How’d you guess?”

  “Marine tats usually aren’t nearly that classy.”

  We bumped fists. The jet turned smartly onto the runway, engines spooling up, and swiftly thundered into a moonless sky, pushing me in my seatback. Within a minute, we were banking left and heading out to sea, followed soon after by another climbing left turn to the east.

  “I need you to write down what size clothes you wear,” Best said, handing me a retractable pen and slip of paper across the aisle. “Chest, neck, sleeve length, inseam, the whole nine yards.”

  “What for?”

  “To buy you a new wardrobe.”

  “Say again?”

  “I don’t ask, Mr. Logan. I just do what the boss tells me.”

  You learn not to ask too many questions of those higher up the food chain when you’ve been in the military. That’s just the way it is. I jotted down my measurements.

  “Would you like me to make up the bed for you?”

  “The bed?”

  Best nodded toward the leather sofa. “It folds out. You can catch a few z’s en route. From what I hear, you’re gonna have a long day.”

  I watched him turn the sofa into a bed, replete with a down comforter and two foam pillows. I handed him my empty coffee cup and climbed in between satin sheets. Man, talk about living large. I was racked out in my own private jet, winging to some top-secret location to discuss a highly classified intelligence operation. Was I feeling self-important? You bet your bottom I was—and also feeling a little guilty. True Buddhists believe that a man can only achieve genuine compassion and enlightenment after learning how to check his ego at the door. I realized as I lay there between those satin sheets at 35,000 feet that I still had a fair bit to go in that department.

  V

  There are three rules to making consistently smooth landings. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are—including, apparently, the two pilots at the controls of the Gulfstream in which I was sleeping. The first bounce jarred me awake. The second nearly separated me from my molars. We finally settled onto the runway and the guys up front stood on the brakes. Eventually we slowed and turned off the runway, but not before Best shot me a grin that said he thought the landing sucked big time, too.

  “Any landing in which you can reuse the airplane is a good one,” I said, yawning.

  “Welcome to Cleveland,” he said.

  I glanced outside. The sun hadn’t been up very long. You couldn’t see much. “Are we stopping for fuel?”

  “No, sir. This is it.”

  “Cleveland? That’s our top-secret destination? Seriously?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I put on my hiking shoes while we taxied toward the executive terminal at Cleveland’s Hopkins International Airport. There was a black Chevy suburban with Ohio plates and tinted windows standing by on the tarmac, engine running. Best lowered the jet’s cabin door and stood aside. The pilots kept the cockpit door closed, probably too embarrassed to show their faces. I would’ve done the same, given the quality of the touchdown.

  “You
can leave your bag in the plane, Mr. Logan,” Best said. “We’ll see you on the flip side.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I stepped onto the tarmac empty-handed. The air was cool but not cold. The Suburban’s front passenger door was locked. I rapped on the impenetrably dark window and waited, but got no response. I tried the right rear passenger door. It was unlocked. I got in. A tinted partition blocked my view of the driver.

  “How’re you doing? Listen, you mind stopping off at Arby’s on the way? There was no food on my flight and I’ve got a twenty-five-dollar gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket. Which is to say, I’m buying.”

  No answer.

  I pulled the door shut and off we went.

  I’d like to share with you my specific destination that early spring morning in the city of Cleveland, but that would be violating operational security, which the federal government tends to frown on. Suffice it to say, it was a commercial building of some height somewhere in the greater downtown area, where one of the office suites listed on the directory in the lobby said one thing, and where the actual business conducted in that suite was something altogether different.

  The Suburban driver—I never did catch his face behind that tinted glass—dropped me off in the underground garage, then motored on. Buzz was waiting for me as promised. His hair was styled in that high-and-tight boot-camp style he favored. His unibrow was untrimmed, as it always was, and he wore a perpetual frown I suspect he’d been born with. Except for the black pirate patch over his right eye (courtesy of some shrapnel he’d caught on an op once outside of Tripoli when we were both with Alpha), he reminded me a little of Bert from Sesame Street.

  “Logan, you’re as goddamned ugly as ever.”

  “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

  We shook hands and slapped each other on the back.

  “How was the trip?”

  “No complaints. Except your guy wouldn’t stop at Arby’s on the way in.”

  “Arby’s?” Buzz squinted at me with his one good eye. “The only time I eat at Arby’s is when I’m in the mood for kangaroo.”