Crashers

by Dana Haynes

  The man approached. The swap-out pilot said, “Isaiah Grey, NTSB. Ray Calabrese, FBI. Ray, Isaiah.”

  They shook hands. Isaiah put a smile on his face. “FBI?”

  Ray said, “You the IIC?”

  “No, but he’s here in Portland.”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  They turned and found Kiki Duvall dashing up the stairs. She wore a navy-issue T-shirt under a blue denim shirt, unbuttoned and untucked, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her long, rusty hair was pulled back and tied with a leather thong, and she wore almond-shaped sunglasses. “What’s this? Did you say FBI?”

  Ray said, “Yes, ma’am. Ray Calabrese.”

  Kiki said, “You guys get around. There was FBI at Good Sam Hospital and John said they were at the Salem Hospital, too.”

  Isaiah tried for nonchalant, got pretty close. “Really?” He appraised Ray.

  Ray shrugged into his sport coat. “We’re just one big, happy federal family. If someone can direct me to your IIC . . . ?”

  34

  THE GARGANTUAN FLATBEDS AND cranes arrived before 2 P.M. Walter Mulroney was a taskmaster that afternoon, running his troops at full speed, as the ominous, low clouds marched eastward, pregnant and bulbous with rain that hadn’t begun to fall in earnest yet. When it did, everyone knew, the field would become significantly tougher to maneuver in.

  The agricultural consortium that owned the field was represented that morning, along with their insurance provider. They stood on the right-hand, northbound lane, once again closed to traffic, and watched tires as tall as a man gouge rough trenches out of their cash crop.

  The trucks and cranes made a slow, straight line for the biggest piece of the wreckage, the middle of the fuselage. Under Walter’s watchful eyes, specially trained crews heaved metal-mesh belts around the jet. Another crew carefully carved away the remaining wing—it would be reattached later: moving the Vermeer with one wing sticking out would be impossible.

  As the first drops of rain splattered onto the ground, crews dug trenches under the fuselage and slipped the heavy belts underneath at four places. The belts were attached to the cranes.

  Walter wore rubber boots, oilcloth trousers and jacket, and a cowboy hat. It was his standard bad-weather getup. He carried an electric bullhorn in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other. His NTSB-issued ear jack was in his jacket pocket. When he gave the nod, the cranes began gingerly lifting the body of the jetliner. It groaned, protesting under the new pressure points formed by the metal belts. But it didn’t break up any further. That was vital.

  With infinite care, the cranes set the fuselage down onto one of the massive flatbeds. As soon as it was down, Walter lifted the megaphone to his lips, his voice echoing across the field. “Okay! Empennage and tail cone are next! This weather’s only getting worse, people! Let’s get to it!”

  He put down the bullhorn, picked up the walkie-talkie, and thumbed the Send switch. “Truck. How’s the catalog going? Over.”

  FIELD OF GRASS

  A long panel truck the size of the largest U-Haul, with the NTSB logo on both side-sliding doors, sat on the edge of Interstate 5. In the back sat five computer operators with five computers. Displayed on each of the five monitors was a section of the grassy field, the edges of each section denoted by neon-green lines that didn’t exist in reality but that marked the infrared tags on the global-positioning-system transceivers. The computer operators stared at small squares of the field, each being videotaped live by five automated cameras, mounted on the roof of the truck. Each operator wore a headset with a microphone.

  A walkie-talkie stood upright on one of the monitors. When Walter Mulroney’s voice sounded, the computer operator said, “Okay, time out,” into his microphone, then picked up the walkie-talkie and keyed it for transmission. “Truck here. We’re a little ahead of schedule, boss, but that’s good. Over.”

  “Roger that.” Walter’s voice came back flat, harried. “Keep them at it, but don’t let them get careless. We pick up everything. Over.”

  “Roger. Out.”

  The operator set down the walkie-talkie and jiggled his voice mike into position. On his screen, he could see two men and a woman standing in his prescribed sector of the field. The operator had stuck masking tape on his Dell terminal, and had scribbled 5J onto the tape: that was his sector. All three of his team were holding something in their hands. He said, “Okay, Tammy, whatcha got?”

  He squinted at his monitor. The woman in the field held up something he couldn’t define from that distance. Her voice came back over his headset: “It looks like a bundle of coax wiring, three wires colored blue, red, and green. They’re connected to some kind of junction box, about the size of a paperback.”

  The operator logged that information into the Dell and said, “Roger. That’s marked Five-J-eighteen. Paulie, what’ve you got?”

  One of the men in the field held up something white. “A roll of toilet paper,” he said. “Never been used. The end’s still adhered.”

  “Toilet paper. Five-J-nineteen. Right. Bill?”

  “Um, got an arm bone here. A femur, maybe.”

  “Femur’s in the leg, Bill. We’ll call it a long bone, human. Five-J-twenty. Check. What’s next?”

  Around him, the other four operators were going through the exact same drill, each with three of their own people standing in the rain. By the end of the day, they hoped to pick up and catalog every item of debris in the field.

  FIELD OF STRAWBERRIES

  A mile and a half away from the flatbeds and cranes, the searchers from Peter Kim’s power-plant crew began finding bits and pieces of the missing Patterson-Pate engine number three, strewn among the plants ruined by the rain of jet fuel.

  COVINA, CALIFORNIA

  Donal O’Meara, Johnser Riley, and Daria Gibron stepped off a bus, drawing no particular attention, except for glances from a few women who recognized the expensive cut of their suits.

  Reaching the sidewalk, Daria realized, to her amazement, that O’Meara hadn’t tried to kill her. Yet.

  She had fully expected to be attacked before leaving the porn czar’s mansion that morning. If O’Meara was any sort of tactician, he would have taken advantage of her skills to get out of Los Angeles, then should have taken her to a quiet, isolated alley, broken her neck, and left her. Or at least he should have tried that. One of them would have ended up on the ground in that alley, and Daria was pretty sure it wouldn’t have been she.

  But he hadn’t tried to kill her. Daria wasn’t sure why she was alive, but she was having a hell of a good time.

  She studied the little row of storefronts on San Bernardino Road. Three doors down was a hotel that featured a sports bar called Hot Shots. Johnser’s eyes lit up when he saw it.

  “What now?” the big man asked.

  “Find a car we can steal,” O’Meara said, squinting into the afternoon sun. The temperature had spiked that morning, and it was already a dozen degrees warmer than Tuesday’s high. “We have half a day to kill before we meet up with the others.”

  “That’s a long fucking wait,” Johnser groused.

  “Find hotels,” Daria said. It was the first time she’d spoken since leaving the mansion. “Two of them. We need to split up again.”

  The two men looked at her. They looked at each other. Then back at her. With a shrug, Daria stepped over to a kiosk vendor outside a drugstore and started rummaging through sunglasses on a spinner rack.

  Johnser leaned in to O’Meara and said, “Why split up?”

  O’Meara backhanded him on the arm. “Gobshite. It’s so we change our bloody profile again, isn’t it.” He drew a cigarette out of his pocket, eyes narrowed and never leaving Daria.

  It had been Daria’s idea to send the other two—Feargal Kelly and Keith O’Shea—on a different route to their final destination, because finding four big, tough, fair-skinned men and one small olive-skinned woman would be a “walk in the forest,” as she’d called it, for the police. �
��Walk in the park,” O’Meara had corrected her, but got her gist. She was right. Again.

  So now the three of them were in Covina, waiting for . . . what? Daria didn’t know and didn’t ask. At the kiosk, she wondered how O’Meara would play it. He’d obviously enjoyed the sex back at the mansion and probably wouldn’t mind some more time alone with her. But he also didn’t trust her and, Daria sensed, he was beginning to lose his trust in himself. He should have killed her some time ago and they both knew it. But he hadn’t and he didn’t know why and it bothered him.

  She picked a pair of tiny round sunglasses with blue lenses; they were either very 1960s or very 1880s, she wasn’t sure which. She had found plenty of money stashed in the porn czar’s home, and each of them was carrying close to five hundred dollars. She paid for the glasses and returned to the men, as O’Meara took a deep puff of his cigarette, exhaling slowly.

  “All right, then. Johnser, you and the girl take that one.” O’Meara pointed to a little mom-and-pop hotel at the southern end of the block. He covertly handed Johnser the handcuffs and the key. “Here. Use these if you don’t trust her.”

  Johnser grinned. “That’s a bit of all right.”

  O’Meara stepped up to the bigger man, nose to nose. Johnser took a hesitant half step back. “You don’t fucking touch her, do you, boy. No, you don’t. That’s right.”

  Johnser nodded. There was absolutely no question who the alpha male was here. Daria tried hard not to grin, although she was enjoying the testosterone fest.

  “Right.” O’Meara checked his watch. “Two hours. I’ll meet you right here.” And he stalked off to find another motel.

  Johnser glowered down at Daria. “Come on, you.”

  FBI, LOS ANGELES FIELD OFFICE

  The FBI’s liaison with the Los Angeles Police Department and the California Highway Patrol reported back to Lucas Bell, saying he had nothing to report back. No one had seen a sign of the four Irishmen or the Israeli woman who could pass for Lebanese.

  Lucas took the news stoically but he could feel his stomach acids working their way up to a lovely ulcer.

  He called FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. and it took him five transfers, five can-you-holds before he got his opposite number.

  “About damn time,” he said. “We’re on a clock here.”

  “Yeah, and we’ve got a low-pressure storm hitting the coast like the Packers’ front line. No power from Florida to the Carolinas, and we’re next.”

  “Okay,” Lucas cut in. “I understand. Have you heard anything on the Ireland-watch front?”

  Four more transfers. Four more can-you-holds. Nothing.

  Next, Lucas called the various Ireland watchers again, both in the United States and Europe, to see if anything had broken.

  MI5—British Military Intelligence, domestic side—was the only agency with a nibble. “The IRA and Ulster types are quiet,” the soft, Eatonian voice over the phone assured Lucas. “However, did you know we had an American lawmaker in Dublin and, briefly, in Belfast?”

  “Who?” Lucas reached for a notepad and a pen.

  “Let’s see. A, ah, Representative Dan Riordan. Californian, so it says. Republican, which I take to be the equivalent of a Tory.”

  “Right. What’s he doing in Belfast? Business or pleasure?”

  “Business. Met with some of the delegates from both sides. While in Dublin, your congressman stayed to himself. Rarely surfaced. Even turned down an invitation to lunch with the Taoiseach.”

  Lucas chose not to ask what the hell a tea-sack was. “Do you have a checkout date for the congressman?”

  “Yes. Leaving this evening. Dublin to Heathrow, Heathrow to Washington, D.C., Washington to Los Angeles.” He pronounced it with a long “e” in the last syllable. “He should be off the ground by nine, GMT.”

  Lucas did the math: leaving Dublin at 4 P.M., Pacific Standard Time. He asked about a flight number and jotted that down, too. “All right. I’ll do a check on the congressman, see if he’s had any strong ties to The Troubles. Thanks.”

  He hung up and called Assistant Director Henry Deits. “This is a pretty weak lead, sir, but Representative Riordan of California is in Dublin. He’s flying back to L.A. this afternoon. Should I run a check on him?”

  Deits said, “Sounds like warm beer to me, but what the hell. Do it. Also, alert the state police. I’ll call the field office in Sacramento, fill them in.”

  Lucas said, “Got it,” and hung up. He looked up an extension in the building directory and called a friend in the politics-watch section, asking for a standard backgrounder on a Representative Dan Riordan, Republican from California. He hung up.

  Within ten minutes, the collective eyes and ears of the FBI began turning to Sacramento and Los Angeles International Airport.

  Neither of which is anywhere near Covina.

  35

  SUSAN TANAKA.”

  “Susan?” It was John Roby’s even-keeled voice, coming over her satellite-linked headset. “John here. There’s a bit of a complication you should know about.”

  Susan had just arrived at the staging area and was standing in the rain, under an umbrella, watching the cranes lift the tail section of the Vermeer 111 slowly off the now-muddy ground. She wore a long, belted raincoat, the collar turned up, and a beret. “Now what?”

  “I just heard from Kiki. The swap-out’s here, but it came with a passenger, didn’t it. FBI agent. Says he wants to speak to Tommy.”

  Susan’s radar for trouble snapped on. “FBI. And not local. Oh, hell.”

  “There’s more. I found the Bureau volunteering to help interview survivors at the Salem Hospital. Kiki found the same at the hospital in Portland.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm when he said “volunteering.” “Kiki and Isaiah sent this new lad on to see Tommy. Thought you should know.”

  Susan was no longer watching the cranes. She was climbing into her rented Nissan Sentra. “I’m on my way, John. Thanks.”

  COVINA, CALIFORNIA

  The hotel room was an exact replica of ten thousand other rooms up and down the West Coast. Windows facing the San Gabriel Mountains and a fine layer of air pollution the color of a manila folder. There was a couch and a bed and two chairs and the small table. The TV was chained down and came with a complimentary HBO monthly guide.

  Johnser Riley opened the door with the swipe key he’d gotten from the office. He shrugged out of his suit coat, revealing the Glock he wore in a shoulder holster with no chest strap.

  “Sit,” he growled and slipped the chain lock on the door. He pulled a chair up to the TV, turned it on, and started scanning channels.

  Daria said, “I have to use the bathroom.”

  Grumbling, Johnser rose and led the way into the bathroom. He checked the window, which couldn’t be opened without shattering it. The bathroom would have been tight with only one of them in there; with both, it was very snug. Johnser sidled past her to get out, their bodies touching. Daria made a point of looking up at him, over the tops of her tiny sunglasses and through her long, black lashes. Johnser paused, turned a little bit pink, but kept on going.

  Daria stripped to the waist and washed her face, neck, and shoulders in the sink. She studied her reflection. She’d availed herself of a hot shower at the mansion, after having sex with O’Meara, but she didn’t have on any makeup. Her hair was short enough that she could get away with toweling it dry and brushing it.

  Daria had picked up a Furla purse at the mansion and, rummaging through the half-dozen bathrooms, managed to find a lip gloss that would suit her skin color, a used eyeliner, and a little tube of balm. She applied the lipstick, the eyeliner, and shrugged at the just-okay eff ect. She opened the tube of lip balm. She climbed up onto the bathroom counter, on her knees. She held the balm to the mirror and wrote her name at the very top of the mirror. She climbed down, walked back and forth, checking to see if it was visible. The distortion was there if you were looking for it, but tough to see if you weren’t. And she’d writte
n it up high, higher than either Johnser Riley or Donal O’Meara would naturally look.

  The balm letters were invisible now. But take a shower and steam up the room, and everything on the mirror—starting at the top—would turn misty. Everything except her name, which would stand out in sharp relief. It was a trick she’d learned in Israeli intel.

  Climbing back up onto the counter, she wrote, “Emergency. Call FBI,” along the top of the mirror, followed by “Calabrese” and Ray’s L.A. telephone number.

  It was a message in a bottle, with lots of opportunities to never be seen. What if nobody rented this room for the next two or three nights? What if they didn’t shower? What if the maid cleaned the mirror first? It was a long shot, but that was okay. Daria was enjoying playing cloak and dagger with these Irishmen until Ray caught up to them. She didn’t mind dragging it out a bit.

  She wondered idly what the Irishmen had done or were planning to do. What had drawn the wrath of the FBI? Bank robbery, she thought. They were a bit too thuglike to be terrorists. In the Middle East, criminal types and terrorist types were vastly different creatures. She assumed it was the same everywhere.

  She ran a hand through her hair, then returned to the other room, waiting to button the black and charcoal sweater until Johnser Riley could see. Playing head games with the big man seemed like a fine diversion. She found Johnser planted in front of the television, arms folded over his barrel chest.

  Something was amiss, although it took Daria a minute or two to realize what it was. The TV. It wasn’t turned to sports. Instead, the big man with the penchant for betting on athletics was watching CNN. Daria pivoted around the bed to see what the story was. They were covering the ongoing investigation of a jetliner crash on the West Coast somewhere. She watched for a couple of seconds. The footage had been taken from a news helicopter, the scene showing monstrous flatbed trucks and daisy-yellow cranes lifting the tail section. Words scrolled across the screen: 111 DEAD; 35 INJURED.