Damage Control

by John Gilstrap

  Tristan just stood and watched as his rescuers moved on to the rest of their jobs. The Big Guy messed with the control surfaces of the airplane while Scorpion loaded stuff into the back of the plane. Their bulky backpacks went in first, followed by the other two rifles they’d taken from the dead Mexican soldiers.

  The two of them moved with a precision that seemed to be practiced, though it wasn’t possible that they’d stolen a lot of airplanes together. Or maybe they had. Given the way the last few days had gone, absolutely nothing was out of the question anymore.

  It was almost as if the two men thought each other’s thoughts. Tristan envied that kind of friendship.

  Oscar stirred. Then he moaned miserably. Tristan went to him and kneeled by his side. “You okay?” He spoke at a whisper, but he had no idea why.

  Oscar groaned, “Ungh. What did he hit me with?”

  “His hand,” Tristan said. He tried to keep the admiration out of his voice. “Really, his hand. Not even his fist. You’ll be okay, though. Scorpion said your jaw didn’t break.”

  Oscar moaned again, and his shoulders twitched as he tried to move his hands. “Handcuffs are a nice touch,” he said. “They’ll help sell the story.”

  “What about your backpack with the money?” Tristan asked. “Do you want me to hide that somewhere for you?”

  Oscar shook his head and winced. “Shit, it’s like my brain is bruised,” he said. “No, leave the backpack where it is. I always have it with me. If it was missing, they’d be suspicious.”

  A shadow fell over them, and Tristan knew without looking that it was Scorpion. “Hey, kid,” he said. “Howya feeling?”

  “Like you tried to kill me and missed,” Oscar said.

  “Yeah, well, your face looks like hell,” Scorpion said. “In a half hour, I doubt that you’ll be able to see out of your left eye. Don’t worry about it when it happens. It’s just the swelling. I don’t think I broke anything, so if you can handle the headache, you shouldn’t need any medical time at all.”

  It seemed like the appropriate time for Oscar to say thank you, but Tristan understood that that would have been weird.

  “You ready to go?” Scorpion asked Tristan.

  “Sure,” he said. As if any other answer was possible.

  “All right, then,” Scorpion said. “Mount up.”

  Tristan rose from his haunches and waited for a few seconds for Scorpion to come with him.

  “You go ahead,” Scorpion said. “Give me a minute with Oscar.”

  Tristan felt himself blush. He didn’t like being dismissed like that. What did Oscar do to deserve alone time? He realized that it was foolish to think such things. He should be champing at the bit just to get the hell out of here. It shouldn’t matter to him who Scorpion talked to or what he said when he did. Still, what made Oscar special?

  He approached the airplane from the front, but stopped when he saw the Big Guy’s arm waving at him through the open cockpit window, motioning for him to go around the back side to get to the door that was on the opposite side—the right-hand side—of the airplane.

  Readjusting the body armor for the thousandth time, Tristan followed directions. He’d only gone a few steps when the engine started to turn, and the propeller caught, launching a hurricane of dust and grass back at Tristan.

  The inside of the airplane looked like the backseat of an old car that had been packed for a long vacation. Tristan’s seat was too small with all the shit they made him wear. He had difficulty getting his seat belt fastened. Up front, the Big Guy made the pilot seat and the controls look like they’d been designed for a child.

  “Put your seat belt on,” the Big Guy instructed.

  “Already done,” Tristan said. “How long a trip is this going to be?”

  “A little over five hours. Call it five and a half. More, if the winds don’t cooperate.”

  Tristan scowled as he remembered a previous conversation. “And how much fuel do we have?”

  “Barely enough.”

  Tristan considered letting it go, but in the end, he couldn’t. “Doesn’t that mean we’re going to run out?”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  “It’s a probability, isn’t it?”

  The Big Guy caught Tristan’s eyes in the mirror. “The boss says we only tell the truth, so are you sure you want to hear it?”

  No, he thought. “Yes,” he said.

  “I give us a forty percent chance,” Big Guy said.

  “Of landing or crashing?”

  He responded with just a look.

  “Oh,” Tristan said. “Shit.”

  “Cheer up,” Big Guy said. “It ain’t worth doing if it ain’t exciting. And relax. It’s not like we have a better option.” He reached onto his lap and lifted his night vision goggles onto his head, with the eyepieces tilted up out of the way.

  Off to the right, Scorpion arrived at the door and climbed in, closing it behind him. With only one door for everyone to climb in and out of, it took some maneuvering for him to make his way to the right front seat. All the weapons didn’t make it any easier. Once he’d settled, it took him maybe two seconds to read the mood in the plane. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “The kid asked about the fuel situation,” Big Guy said. “So, I told him the truth.”

  Tristan thought he saw the boss’s jaw twitch, but it was gone in an instant.

  “Oh,” Scorpion said. “Okay. Let’s go, then.”

  The Big Guy reached forward with his right hand. The engine noise built to a crescendo, and they started to roll. “Thank you for flying Rescue Airways,” the pilot yelled over the noise. The runway, such as it was, was made of grass, and the plane bounced like an old stagecoach as it gained speed. Bright lights from the wings illuminated their path as they sped toward the line of trees that blocked the far end of the runway.

  “Our cruising altitude this evening—if we ever get this piece of shit off the ground—will be about thirty feet, at a cruising speed of one hundred eighty knots.”

  The wall of trees approached at an alarming rate, and as the plane moved faster, it didn’t seem to be getting any lighter. Without thinking, Tristan pressed himself deeper into his seat. Up front, he could see Scorpion doing the same thing.

  It’s hard to judge distances at night, but on the approximate scale of close to very close, Tristan had them pegged at a distance of holy shit when the wheels finally lifted off the turf and they gained altitude.

  As they closed to within holy freaking shit the trees still had more altitude than they did.

  Just inches short of holy freaking shit, we’re all going to die, the plane finally found whatever it was that planes found to give them real altitude, and they were airborne.

  For the better part of a minute, no one said anything.

  The Big Guy broke the silence. “Okay,” he said. “That was exciting. Now, sit back and enjoy the flight.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Sometimes, Dom D’Angelo wondered what the bishop would think if he knew the real details of how he sometimes tended to his flock. This was one of those times. As he climbed down the stairs of the private Gulfstream jet that had delivered him to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport, he wondered how many of his seminary classmates had even seen the inside of such an aircraft.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when he stepped down onto the tarmac and into the car that was waiting for him. If he’d waited for a commercial flight, the earliest he could have arrived in Phoenix would have been tomorrow morning, and the nature of his business couldn’t wait that long.

  His FBI seatmate in the back of the nondescript Ford said little, allowing him to absorb the details of the file he’d been given. He’d get only one shot at this, so he needed to get it right. He told himself that God would understand the lies that he would have to tell to put the plan in action, and that the deception was for the greater good.

  If God didn’t understand, well, Dom would have to take that up wi
th Him later.

  “We’re getting close,” the agent asked. “Do you have any questions?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dom said. “I just hope that I don’t screw it up.”

  “If you play it like we discussed, things should go just fine,” the agent said. “But if things go terribly wrong, we’ll be close by.”

  Dom gave a tired smile. If things went terribly wrong, close wouldn’t be close enough.

  The Georgens’ house looked like so many other houses in Scottsdale. Where there should have been bushes, there were cacti instead; where there should have been grass, there was white gravel. Even with the sun gone, the air was oppressively hot—103 degrees, according to the thermometer in the dash of the car that delivered him. That should be a noontime temperature, not a nighttime one.

  Judging from the number and brightness of the security lights, the Georgens were a paranoid lot. Once Dom stepped from the street to the walkway that led to their front door, every corner of the single-story Spanish-style ranch erupted in the light of double floods. The suddenness of it startled the crap out of him.

  “Are you okay?” Venice asked in his left ear, startling him.

  “I’m fine,” he said. Apparently, he’d yelled out, though he didn’t remember doing so. “Security lights.”

  “You’ll do fine, Father,” she said. “But you need to relax. I can hear your breathing. I’ve got tape rolling here in case you need it, and I’ve got the panic number preprogrammed into the phone. If anything starts to sound wrong, I’ll call in the cavalry.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “And you need to quit talking to me. It’ll look like you’re talking to yourself. Worse, it’ll get people thinking that you’re wearing a wire.”

  Which, of course, was exactly what he was doing. He had two of them, actually. One was disguised as a pen in his pocket, and the other was the audio feed that Venice was running via the bud in his ear.

  Venice was right, though. He needed to get control of his fear if he was going to pull off this ruse. The plan was to make an end run around the Constitution of the United States by performing a warrantless search. It would be illegal for the FBI to record the conversation that he was about to have, but in Arizona, it was legal for private citizens to surreptitiously record conversations so long as one of the parties knew that it was happening. A thus-legally obtained recording of damning evidence, once turned over to the FBI, then becomes actionable. Dom supposed that this sort of manipulation occurred all the time, but deception had never been his long suit.

  And the outright lies that lay in his immediate future made his mouth go dry.

  He forced himself not to slow as he approached the front door and rang the bell. Following the instructions he’d been given, Dom stepped back from the door to allow himself to be seen, Roman collar and all.

  Lights came on inside, and he saw movement beyond the beveled glass that doubled for a center panel as the occupants moved cautiously toward the door. Visitors at this hour were unnerving for anyone. For that visitor to be a priest had to add an even more drastic spin.

  The bevels bent all the images looking in, and he could imagine it did the same for someone looking out. A man’s face appeared in the glass, a hand cupped to the side of his right eye. Dom recognized it as belonging to Eric Georgen, Bill Georgen’s father.

  “It’s a priest,” the man said. He turned two dead bolts and pulled the door open a crack. He wore a blue terry cloth bathrobe, and perhaps nothing else.

  “I’m sorry to be calling so late at night,” Dom said. He kept his hands in front of him, fingers lightly interlaced, as if in casual prayer. “Are you Mr. Georgen?”

  The man’s confusion morphed to a scowl. “Who are you?”

  “I am Father Daniel LaFrada,” Dom said, invoking the name of a seminary friend who had passed away a few months ago. “I need to speak with you if you have a few moments.”

  “I’m not Catholic,” Georgen said.

  “It’s about your son, sir,” Dom said. “Bill.”

  A woman materialized out of nowhere to join the man. This was Tammy Georgen, Bill’s mother, and she wore a bathrobe over a nightgown. “Is Billy all right?” she asked. Judging from her perfectly coiffed big hair, she hadn’t yet lain her head on a pillow. “Is he hurt?”

  The question meant that the boy wasn’t home, and that brought a sense of relief. “We need to talk,” Dom said.

  “Is he hurt?” Georgen asked, building on his wife’s budding panic.

  Dom kept his face noncommittal. “May I come in, please?”

  Husband and wife searched each other for an objection, and then stepped aside to let him in. The house wasn’t large, but it was well-appointed. Lots of polished hardwoods, granite, and original oil paintings. Dom led the way to what he supposed they called their family room, where a beamed cathedral ceiling towered over a leather conversation group that was designed to give maximum viewing efficiency for the enormous flat-screen television that was mounted over the wood-burning fireplace.

  “Please answer our question, Father,” Georgen said, pulling up the rear of the small parade that landed on opposite ends of the curved sofa.

  “For now, the answer is yes. Bill is fine.”

  “What do you mean, for now?” Tammy was wrapped tighter than a watch spring.

  Dom took his time, both for dramatic effect and to gather his thoughts. “The way it was put to me, Mrs. Georgen, was, What goes around, comes around.”

  Tammy recoiled while Georgen blanched. “What does that mean?” Tammy asked. She looked to her husband. “Eric?”

  “I have no idea what he’s talking about,” Georgen said, but everything about his demeanor screamed that he was lying.

  Dom turned to Tammy. “Have you seen or spoken to Rachel Wagner recently?”

  “Tristan’s mom? No, why? What does she have to do with Billy?”

  Georgen squirmed.

  “Tristan and Bill were supposed to go on a missionary trip together, weren’t they?”

  “No,” Tammy said. “Well, yes and then no. Eric decided that Mexico was too dangerous a place to go right now. You know, with the drug violence and all. We told the church that he wouldn’t be going. I don’t understand what any of this has to do with you.”

  Dom shifted his gaze to the husband. “How about you, Eric? Do you see any connection here?” Agent Boersky had made it abundantly clear that the words needed to come directly from Georgen in order for them to be useful in court.

  “Of course not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Tammy saw it, too. “Eric, what’s going on here?”

  “The Wagners know, Eric,” Dom lied. “They know the details, and they’ve vowed to make it right.”

  Tammy reached for her husband’s hand, but he flinched and pulled it away. “What’s Father talking about?”

  Georgen shot to his feet and towered over Dom. “Get out of my house,” he said.

  “I don’t think I will,” Dom replied. “The name Abrams mean anything to you, Mr. Georgen?”

  Even more color drained from the man’s face.

  “You know that they’re all dead, don’t you?” Dom said.

  “Who’s dead?” Tammy said. “Oh, my God, Father, what is going on?”

  Georgen sat heavily onto the sofa. “That’s not possible. They swore.”

  Tammy brought both hands to her mouth as realization dawned that something truly awful was unfolding in front of her. Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, my God, Eric, what have you done?”

  “I haven’t done anything,” he snapped.

  “Tell Tammy the real reason why you pulled Bill off of that trip to Mexico.”

  “Eric, what is he talking about?”

  A fine line separates self-righteous anger from all-out panic, and Dom could tell that Eric was toeing the line. If this was going to get violent, now would be the time.

  Tammy rose from her seat and walked to her husband. “Eric,
is Billy in danger?”

  Georgen looked like a trapped animal, his eyes wild and red as they darted from one corner of the room to another, either looking for an answer or a weapon.

  Dom rose to join them. “You can get in front of this,” he said. “If you go to the police before the police come to you, I think the Wagners will feel a sense of justice. Confession goes a long way toward counteracting betrayal.”

  “Eric, tell me.” Tammy said. “Look at me and tell me.”

  Georgen pushed her gently away and started to pace, nervously adjusting the belt on his robe. “I just want you to know that I told Reverend Jackie that this was a bad idea. I thought it was desperate. She countered that these are desperate times. And Abrams guaranteed that the missionaries would be safe.”

  Tammy reflexively reached out for Dom’s arm. He covered her grasp with his other hand.

  “What went wrong?” he asked Dom.

  “First tell Tammy,” Dom said. “You owe her that much.” He walked her to the sofa and sat her next to her husband.

  Eric started with a huge breath. “This man named Abrams approached us with a plan.”

  “Approached whom?” Dom interrupted. He needed specifics.

  “Reverend Mitchell, I think. I showed up for a board of directors meeting and he was there. Toward the end of the meeting, she asked all but the executive committee to leave the room, and then Abrams made his pitch. We were to allow the missionaries to be taken captive, and when the ransom demand came in, we were to walk through a series of very specific steps to arrange for a particular person to rescue them.”

  “Oh, my God,” Tammy gasped.

  “It sounds worse that it was,” Georgen said. “Honey, you know how strapped the church has been for cash since ... well, since the incident. This man—this Abrams—gave us the money for the ransom, with more to spare—millions of dollars—to keep us afloat.”

  “You’re talking about endangering children,” Tammy said. Dom sensed that if he hadn’t been sitting on the other side of her, she’d have pulled away from Georgen.