by Dana Haynes
“Screw Walter!”
Delevan Abraham Wildman was one of the most feared and respected administrators in the aviation industry. The FAA and DOT had headhunted him for years, but he remained loyal to the board. He was known alternately as The Bear and The Old Man, but to his face he was Mr. Wildman to most people, Del to a few, and sir to the world at large.
Nobody yelled at him. Not ever.
Susan Tanaka actually stomped her foot as if Del Wildman could see it. “God damn it!” she boomed into the cell phone. She paced the stage in short, choppy strides that threatened to buckle the wood under her Gucci calfskin boots.
“Susan, I—”
“Tomzak was my choice for IIC and he’s done a sensational job, Del. I’m the best intergovernmental liaison you’ve got, and if Tommy goes, so do I. Get your ass out from behind that desk and get out here to relieve me yourself, or else put Tommy back in charge and let me do my job!”
“Walter—”
“Blow him!” she boomed—as much as a petite woman can boom. “The jet pancaked in at eight forty-one local time. We had an IIC on site and controlling the rescue parties forty minutes later! That’s a record, Del! The scene is in mint condition. The rescue teams were kept on a tight leash. This is the finest day one I’ve ever seen, and that wasn’t because of me or because of Walter Mulroney. It was Tommy Tomzak. He’s done a fantastic job and you can’t just undermine his authority, not to mention my authority, by pulling crap like this! You can’t!”
When he didn’t respond, she plowed on through the silence.
“So Tommy was IIC for the Alitalia crash in Kentucky. So that was never solved. Are you thinking that Tommy was at fault? Are you questioning the actions of that Go-Team?”
“No,” Wildman shot back. “Not at all. That was an awful crash. Nobody could have coaxed any secrets out of that pile of rubble.”
“Right. Tommy drew the short straw, and his name will forevermore rest on a document that says: ‘we don’t know.’ But he still ran a good investigation there, and he’s got this crash site in excellent shape. I made the call and I back it up. Now, is Tommy in charge or do I head back to the airport and debrief my replacement?”
She stopped pacing, crossed her arms under her breasts, and held her breath.
The last thing in the world she expected to hear was the low, throaty chuckle of Del Wildman.
She said, “Hello?”
He kept laughing. When he could, he drawled, “Don’t hold back on my account. Tell me how you really feel.”
Susan said, “I always do.”
“It’s your scene. I won’t pull Tomzak. Y’all do what you have to do. Find out why the bird’s down.”
She said, “Done. Can you stay on the line a minute?”
Tommy, Kiki, John, and Isaiah entered the theater through a side door, escorted by a Salem police patrol officer, just in time to see Susan march up to Walter and hand him a cell phone.
“It’s for you.” She smiled politely, turned on her heels, pointed to Tommy, and said, “You. Over here. Now.”
Tommy glanced at John, who shrugged. “Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle,” Tommy whispered, but did as he was told.
Tommy noticed that more than two hundred people were getting into their seats. A table had been set up over the closed orchestra pit with coffee, water, and pastries. He nodded to the crowd as he joined Susan.
“Good showing for so early.”
“A midevening crash meant everyone was home from work, done with their commutes,” she explained. “It saved us a day, contacting people.”
Tommy rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “What’s going on?”
She spoke for his ears only. “I picked an IIC and Walter Mulroney got bent out of shape because it’s not him. He went behind my back, called Del Wildman.”
“No shit?” Tommy frowned. “Gotta say, you shoulda gone with Mulroney. He’s good.”
“He has no imagination.”
Tommy nodded, conceding the point.
“I’m the best there is at this.” Susan said this as a matter of common knowledge.
“Hell yes.”
“Don’t you think my pick for Investigator in Charge should be respected?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, Del agreed. He’s backing my play. I just wanted you to know.”
“Okay, well . . . thanks.” He hugged her. And because he was so addled from lack of sleep, it didn’t even dawn on Tommy to ask who her pick for IIC was.
At 9 A.M. sharp, Susan stepped to the microphone and said, “Let’s start by introducing ourselves. Larry? Want to kick this off?”
A man in the third row stood and, around him, twenty-three more people stood. “We’re CascadeAir,” he announced. He pointed to his people, who included some high-ranking brass, a few engineers, public relations specialists, the marketing department, and attorneys; lots of attorneys.
Tommy and the three he’d rode in with had stepped off the stage and were helping themselves to coffee and pastries.
Twenty-nine people stood and identified themselves as representing Vermeer Aircraft. The pilots’ union was next, followed by the flight attendants’ union and the engineers’ union. People from Patterson-Pate Electric, who made the engines, were there. The insurance carrier for CascadeAir was present, as were the insurance carriers for the unions and for Patterson-Pate. The Federal Aviation Administration sent its representatives, as did the federal Department of Transportation and the Transportation Safety Administration. The Department of Homeland Security sent two people, just to observe. The Portland office of the FBI sent one woman. All air crashes are initially investigated by the NTSB until someone can prove that a crime was involved, at which time the case gets handed over to the FBI. The governor of Oregon had sent a handful of people to report back. And, of course, Marion County had sent Sheriff Alfredo “Al” Escobar and District Attorney Adele Bergman-James. The aircraft had crashed in Marion County, and if a crime could be proved, it actually fell under the purview of local law enforcement and prosecutors—as the constabulary in Lockerbie, Scotland, knew only too well.
The janitorial staff and the principal of McNary High School sat in, too.
It took twenty minutes for representatives of all the stakeholders to stand up and introduce themselves. In the past, NTSB investigations had begun by kicking all these people out, but it had been learned that pissing off the participants too early actually slowed down the investigation. So Del Wildman’s now-infamous Allthings had been invented: first-day gatherings of all the “clans” to speak out, be heard, and feel appreciated.
From this day onward, these groups would be cut out of the link substantially. And they knew it. This was their chance to be heard.
“Thank you,” Susan said into the microphone. “I’d like to thank Principal Mike Aleman for the use of this auditorium.”
The principal waved to her from the back of the audience.
“Okay. I’m Susan Tanaka, intergovernmental liaison for the Go-Team leadership. These three are my people.” She waved to three twentysomething assistants who stood off to the side. “Go through them to get to any one of us. You have their business cards with their cells and e-mail addresses. Before we get going, I’d like to introduce our Investigator in Charge.”
Tommy took a very large bite of a bagel with cream cheese, and was wiping cheese off his Austin City Limits sweatshirt just as Susan waved to him and said, “Ladies and gentlemen: Dr. Leonard Tomzak.”
An Allthing meeting generally can take two, maybe two and a half hours. Tommy really didn’t want to wait that long to kill Susan Tanaka.
14
RAY CALABRESE STOPPED AT a drinking fountain on the third floor of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office and took a sip, holding his tie carefully against his chest. He stood up straight, his lower back protesting a little, reminding him that he’d been slacking off at the gym lately.
Through a doorway halfway down the hall, he caught a glimpse of an agent sitti
ng at a desk. He paused, then walked down that way, rapped twice, and entered.
The agent sat with his wingtips up on the desk, reading through a fat court transcript and marking passages with a yellow highlighter. He looked up and smiled. “Hiya, Ray.”
“Hey, Phil.” Ray perched on a corner of the desk. “Got a sec?”
Ray retrieved the snapshot from his suit-coat pocket and handed it over. “You used to work the Ireland book. Recognize this guy?”
Phil stared at the photo for about three seconds, then frowned. His eyes took in the tattoos on the man’s forearms. He shouted, “Yo. Lucas?”
Lucas Bell, a black man in a natty suit and an Oxford tie, strolled in. He slapped Ray on the shoulder. “Ray Calabrese. The Kid Complete.”
Phil looked at Ray and said, “Please, for the love of God, don’t ask about his tie.”
Ray turned to Lucas Bell. “Nice tie.” It was, in fact, a damn fine tie. Lucas could put together a suit like nobody else in the Bureau.
Phil said, “You’re killing me here, Calabrese.” He handed the photo to the newcomer. “Who’s this look like?”
Lucas took the photo, blinked several times.
Ray said, “You know him. See, this is why I like playing poker with you.”
“Tell me that’s O’Meara!” Phil said, a little shock in his voice.
Lucas said, “How the hell’d you get a photo of this guy?”
“I have a source who knows him as Jack, that’s all.”
Lucas Bell studied the bigger man for a second. “Since when do you have contacts in Belfast?”
Ray’s stomach dropped. He had a very bad feeling. “This source is in L.A. So’s your boy here.”
“Bull!”
Ray shrugged. “This guy’s trouble?”
Lucas said, “This guy’s Ebola on a bad day!”
PORTLAND, OREGON, PEARL DISTRICT
Dennis Silverman wanted to watch his masterpiece unfold but he wasn’t stupid enough to show up at the crash site. No one knew there’d been a crime yet, but he had no intention of getting photographed as a rubbernecker anyway.
He sat in his recliner, wearing boxers, fuzzy slippers, and a flannel robe, the remote in his fist switching between the ABC and NBC affiliates, then to CNN. All three offered aerial views of the crash, with the fuselage separated into three sections; the aft and wing, the fore section, and the crumpled remains of a cockpit. The brown, burned trail behind the jet was obvious for all to see. There seemed to be something missing, and it took Dennis a few minutes to realize that it was a wing.
That engine he’d cooked must have blown the entire wing to kingdom come, he thought, and snickered.
The phone rang. Dennis hit the speakerphone function, his eyes locked on the TV.
“Denny?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“What are you doing at home? Aren’t you going to work?”
“No,” he said, eyes on the screen.
“Den-ny,” she said, drawling the name out, which she did whenever she was annoyed with him. Which was always.
“I’m on flex time,” he explained for the thousandth time. “I’m working at home today. Telecommuting. They understand.”
“This is a corporation,” she wheedled. “Bosses notice who’s at the grindstone and who isn’t, Denny. How do you hope to advance if you don’t get noticed?”
He switched from ABC to CNN, which had a better helicopter view of the crash.
“Denny?”
“Hmm?”
“I asked, how do you hope to advance if you don’t get noticed? Because you’ve been with the company for eight years now, and you’re still just an engineer.”
He tried the CBS feed. Yes, that was better. His cell phone ding-donged. He picked it up from the end table. Incoming text message.
“It’s important to move up, Denny. You move up or you move down. That’s life. That’s how it is. God knows your father tried to teach you that.”
Dennis okayed the acceptance of the text message and glanced at the television. Fire trucks lined the freeway for almost half a mile, he estimated. Troopers were trying to keep the traffic moving but it was at a snail’s pace. He wondered why three RVs were parked so close to the scene.
He looked down at the cell and grinned. His bank in the Cayman Islands confirmed that his account had just ballooned by one hundred thousand dollars.
“You know Irene, from temple? Her husband works at Intel. He moved from engineering to marketing, what was it? Three years ago? He’s the assistant manager now. He drives a Lexus.”
Dennis hadn’t been to his mother’s synagogue in twelve years and didn’t know any Irene. He squinted, noting that several people wore dark blue windbreakers with words stenciled on the back, but with the overhead views, he couldn’t tell what the words were. He switched to ABC.
“. . . And he’s no smarter than you are, not by a long shot. It’s just that he has drive, Denny. . . .” He wondered if she was going to stop talking anytime soon. He used to wonder that a lot, growing up. She’d talk and talk and talk, and sometimes, when she wasn’t even there, he’d hear that same nails-on-chalkboard voice, talking and talking and talking. He’d be in the wooded ravine beyond their house, watching some neighborhood dog he’d caught in one of his traps, being electrocuted to death in his ingenious devices. I’m Dr. Doom, he’d think. You’ll never escape my trap this time. And the squeals of the dying animal would morph into his mother’s voice, talking and talking and talking.
“. . . And drive is what makes it. I mean, I do what I can. I scrimped and I saved for you. . . .”
Scrimped and saved. It was her favorite expression. Dennis thought back over the years, tried to remember when she’d scrimped on anything. Or what scrimped even meant. He made a note to look it up. He couldn’t read the words on the jackets from that angle, either. Back to CNN.
“. . . Always the best clothes. Always the most expensive shoes. And you outgrew everything so fast. Now look at you. Stuck in the same job, year after year. That’s why it’s important to get to the grindstone, Denny. Get in there and show them how hard you’re working. Let them know you’re interested in advancement.”
NTSB. That’s what the jackets said. Of course, makes sense. Dennis wondered when they’d arrived.
“So you’ll go in? Today? You’ll get to work, let them see you? Denny?”
“I’m on flex time,” he said. “I’m telecommuting.”
“Den-ny!”
15
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR HENRY DEITS of the Los Angeles FBI field office turned a corner with a cup of decaf in one hand and a cheese Danish in the other to find three of his agents waiting outside his conference room. It was 10:15 A.M.
“Did I miss a memo?” the AD asked.
“No, sir,” Agent Lucas Bell said. “But we’ve got something to show you.”
The conference room had a computer-generated overhead projector and a document scanner. A minute later, the photo of Jack kneeling over the gun safe dominated one wall. Three more top brass had been called into the impromptu meeting.
“Donal O’Meara,” Lucas said. “He’s a known terrorist with a long list of assassinations under his name. He served time in Britain’s Maghaberry Prison and, we thought, he’d been holed up in Belfast for the last year or so. But Agent Calabrese here has a contact who shot this photo of O’Meara last night in Los Angeles.”
Assistant Director Deits sipped his coffee and said, “IRA?”
“Other side. The Red Fist of Ulster, a hardline Protestant group that opposed the Good Friday Accord and the power-sharing agreement. O’Meara runs his own cell, or he used to.”
“My contact says he’s traveling with three other men, all with Belfast accents,” Ray cut in.
One of the brass asked, “Who’s your source?”
Ray played with his legal pad for a moment, knowing that he really had no option but to answer. “Daria Gibron.”
Two men gawked at him. The others vaguely recogn
ized the name but couldn’t remember why.
AD Deits said, “Are you out of your mind?”
“No, sir. I’ve been in contact with Ms. Gibron, on and off, since she came to the States.”
“She’s a drug addict!” Deits laughed. “She’s unreliable!”
“With all due respect, sir, she’s not a drug addict.”
“Your own report said so, Calabrese.”
Ray reined in his annoyance. “No, sir. My report said she has an addictive personality. She smokes too much, drinks too much. She works too hard and plays too hard. She doesn’t jog, she runs marathons. She doesn’t do calisthenics, she kickboxes at a competitive level. If she’s addicted to anything, it’s adrenaline. And granted, that makes her dangerous and unstable. But not wrong; not this time.”
One of the other brass said, “I remember something about Vicodin?”
“Yes, sir. She was shot badly when we brought her to the States. After her recovery, she developed an addiction to painkillers. She’s beaten that.”
Deits turned to Lucas and said, “Could this photo be wrong? Could it be someone who looks like your whatsisname?”
Lucas paused, and Ray cut in. “She ID’d his accent as Belfast; that’s why she brought the photo to my atten—”
“An adrenaline addict.” Deits sneered. “What’re the chances she was schtuping this guy, didn’t like how it ended, and turned him in to her pet FBI agent?”
Ray let his anger settle before answering. His poker face never wavered. “I don’t think so, sir. As you may recall, ATF started using Ms. Gibron and a cover that she’d established when she was with Israeli intelligence. She hooks people up with guns; guns that can be traced and, if need be, have been LoJacked. I’ve got a call into the ATF to see if they tracked this guy last night. Ms. Gibron said he calls himself Jack and is from Dublin but she recognized the accent as Belfast. I showed this photo to Agent Bell and he immediately recognized a known terrorist from Belfast. That’s evidence enough for—”
“Okay, okay.” Deits stood and buttoned his suit coat. “Ray, drop everything else and get going on this. I want to know if we’ve got a serious threat here or if we have an overly horny ex-spook who’s about as stable as a hyperactive eighth-grader.”
