the Second Horseman (2006)

by Kyle Mills

  As promised, the plane hit hard, driving the side of his head into the floor and causing him to slide uncontrollably toward the cockpit until the cargo net went taut. He closed his eyes as the plane bounced wildly down what he suspected wasn't really a runway, opening them only when they had come to a full stop.

  "Up and at 'em," Catherine said, grabbing him by the front of his down parka. She pulled him to his feet and dusted him off. "You okay, Brandon? You look kind of pale."

  He nodded, but didn't say anything. The closer death came, the more chipper she seemed to get. It was, he hoped, a trait explainable by the fact that she was actually some kind of supersecret agent able to kill a man in a thousand different ways without wrinkling her skirt. More likely it was just blissful ignorance.

  He'd once known a guy who got sideways with the Ukrainians. They'd killed him and his whole family -- his daughter's poodle alone had thirteen separate stab wounds. Brutal, but not unheard of. What set this particular incident apart was that they had pulled his fish out of their tank and carefully stomped on each and every one.

  "Let's go," she said, jumping nimbly through the door behind their pilot. Brandon followed reluctantly, sitting on the threshold and sliding delicately to the ground.

  "Where are we?"

  He could see only general outlines illuminated by a sliver of a moon. Otherwise there was just darkness and silence.

  "Ukraine," the pilot replied.

  Brandon was about to tell him just how fucking helpful that piece of information was, but then thought better of it. Their pilot was an evil-looking bastard that neither he nor Catherine had ever seen before. His skin was a dark brown and he had a thick accent that wasn't Arab but something close. Brandon guessed he was a Serb, but wasn't sure since he'd never met one.

  "Did anyone bring a hibachi?"

  "Shhhh!" Catherine hissed, putting a hand on his arm and freezing in a mannerism that reminded him of a hunting dog locking onto a duck. A few seconds later, he heard it, too. The distant hum of a motor. No, motors -- plural.

  They stood their ground, listening to the sound grow louder, until something burst from a stand of trees a few hundred yards away. Then another and another. Brandon began backing toward the plane, but wasn't fast enough to avoid being surrounded.

  None of the All Terrain Vehicles had their lights on, but his eyes had adjusted to the point that he could make out a few details. Each driver was wearing a thick jumpsuit, a helmet, and elaborate night vision goggles. The overall impression was of something out of Star Wars.

  The engines wound down to a low rumble, prompting Catherine to take a step forward. "Do any of you speak English?"

  No response, other than for one of the men to jump off his vehicle and rush to them. He ignored Catherine and the pilot, bringing his thick goggles to within a few inches of Brandon's face. Whether or not he was satisfied wasn't entirely clear when he spun Brandon around and began frisking him. That seemed to be the signal, and the other two men jumped off their ATVs in order to carry out a similar search of Catherine and their pilot.

  When they'd finished, the man standing behind Brandon pointed to the ATVs. Catherine started toward one of them, but Brandon blocked her with his arm.

  "Money's in the plane, dude. Where's our stuff?"

  The man pointed toward the ATVs again.

  "Hey, fuck you. We came through on our side of the deal and we're not going anywhere." He kept his voice even, oozing practiced calm all over the place. "So why don't you and the rest of the Darth Vader squad here run off and get our warheads? Then we can just get the fuck out of each other's lives."

  This time the response was a bit less ambiguous: The man pulled a .45 from his holster, cocked it, and pressed it against Brandon's forehead.

  The trip took what seemed like hours, but since Brandon hadn't thought to bring a watch with illuminated hands he wasn't sure. His injured shoulder ached from holding on as they pounded their way along what seemed like impassable fields of rocks and roots. When they finally slowed and the engines died, Brandon had completely lost his bearings. Undoubtedly, exactly what was intended.

  The three men who had brought them there walked over to a large dead bush and pulled it back while their pilot leaned against a tree and looked on. For some reason, he reminded Brandon of those pictures of Old West villains propped against a wall in their coffins. God, he missed Daniel.

  "Is this normal?" Catherine whispered in his ear.

  "You mean, is this the way it went down the last time I bought a bunch of atomic bombs from the Ukrainian mob?"

  She rubbed her sides through her down parka. He couldn't really see her face in what little moonlight could fight its way through the trees and instead watched the icy vapor of her breath as she spoke.

  "Yeah. That's exactly what I mean."

  "I'd say they're probably going to torture us to death and then take the money." He nodded toward the pilot. "Where'd Scanlon dig him up?"

  "Don't know. None of our guys were qualified to fly that plane. You should have seen that landing from where I was sitting. I thought we were dead."

  "We probably are."

  "Not exactly a ray of sunshine today, are you? What were you lecturing me about in the truck? Something about not worrying about things you can't control?"

  Brandon pretended not to hear, squinting into the darkness as one of the men disappeared into the ground.

  "The entrance to the cave," Catherine said.

  They moved closer and Brandon peered at the small hole the man had slipped into. It was probably only two feet in diameter and more black than anything he'd ever seen.

  "No fucking way."

  The Ukranian standing next to him said something indecipherable and jabbed a finger toward the hole.

  "I said forget it."

  This time when the man aimed the gun, Brandon just stared defiantly into it. "What are you doing?" Catherine said, gripping his arm. "Come on, this guy isn't screwing around."

  "I've got a little bit of a problem with confined spaces."

  She let out a choked-off laugh. "Are you kidding? You're a thief. You make your living crawling through things."

  "Windows. Once in a while heating vents. Not holes in the ground."

  "Relax, Brandon. Okay? I'll go first. How will that be? You just follow. Can you do that? Follow me?"

  It was at least another two hours before they stopped again. Led by a man with a single, dim flashlight, they'd climbed down ropes, waded through ice-clogged streams and squeezed through passageways so tight Brandon had been certain he'd get hopelessly stuck and die there in the cold, still darkness. But he'd managed all of it with only one panic attack -- freezing when the back of his jacket hung up on the jagged roof he was slithering beneath. Catherine heard him hyperventilating and somehow managed to turn around and get him unstuck, offering words of encouragement with her face close enough that he could feel the heat from it.

  Now they were walking through a natural amphitheater that seemed to swallow their guide's light. An improvement, but even if he couldn't see it, Brandon could still feel the millions of tons of stone and dirt between him and the sky.

  "What now?" Catherine said, when the man leading them stopped. Her voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

  Brandon didn't answer, shoving his hands into his pockets and trying to absorb himself in the pain as they thawed out. It was time for him to get his shit back together. If he could think, they might get out of this. Probably not, but maybe. If he couldn't, they were almost definitely screwed. Catherine seemed totally in control, but this wasn't her world. It was a criminal transaction and that was his thing.

  "Brindoon!"

  They all spun in different directions at the butchering of his name, unable to tell where it was coming from. A moment later, a light appeared, rocking back and forth as the man holding it rushed toward them.

  His face seemed to float inside the fur-trimmed hood he wore, pale to the point of being ghos
tlike and dominated by a deep scar that twisted his mouth into something between a deranged smile and the baring of teeth. There was no gun on his hip, but instead a long knife in a badly stained sheath. Stained with what, Brandon didn't want to know. God, he hated the Ukrainians.

  "Brindoon!" the man said again, pushing past Catherine and their pilot to grab Brandon by the shoulders and kiss him firmly on both cheeks.

  "Cash! Yes! Of course! California!"

  Brandon smiled uneasily, looking into the man's glistening eyes and not liking what he saw there. This guy wasn't a little nutty, he was the-voices-told-me-to-do-it crazy.

  "Cash," Brandon said. "Yes, we have cash."

  "I must apologize for my brother. His English is quite poor, even when he's not overexcited."

  Brandon looked past the man still holding him by the shoulders and spotted a taller, thinner man in a carefully preserved military uniform.

  "He's been an admirer of yours for quite some time," he continued. "It seems that you stole from a brokerage company in Ohio some years ago. Pyotr heard about it and used your idea on a bank in Moscow. It worked very well and he made a great sum of money."

  "Uh, yeah," Brandon mumbled. "That was a good job. I came out of that all right, too."

  "Good job! Yes! California!"

  "Huh?"

  "He means San Francisco. The American news programs have been very much telling the story of the Federal Reserve."

  "Really? That story broke? Are they mentioning me by name?"

  "Oh, yes. Very much so. The details of the theft haven't been made public, though, and my brother is most anxious to hear them."

  With that, Pyotr slung an arm around Brandon's shoulders and led him into the darkness.

  Chapter THIRTY-SIX

  After two drinks with Edwin Hamdi and three more since he arrived home, it was time to admit that they weren't helping. Or maybe it was the television that was the problem.

  Richard Scanlon muted the volume and watched the correspondent speak silently from Damascus. It had been inevitable, of course. After the Mall of America explosion, and the recent incident at that New York synagogue, someone was going to get bombed. And Syria was an easy target. Next time he saw Hamdi, he'd have to ask if they'd had any hard intelligence or if they'd just attacked whatever was at hand. No, on second thought, he didn't want to know.

  Scanlon turned off the television and wandered into the kitchen of the modest suburban home he'd never gotten around to moving out of. A quick search of the refrigerator netted a bowl of leftover pasta, some pie, and a salad that had wilted almost to the point of no return. He got as far as setting it all out on the counter before he realized he wasn't hungry.

  By now Catherine and Brandon had landed in Ukraine and, as expected, were completely incommunicado. He wished he'd been able to send them off with someone he knew, but none of his men were qualified to fly a cargo plane, particularly under the difficult nighttime conditions the mission demanded. The pilot was Hamdi's contribution, and he'd given his word that the man was top-notch. For some reason, though, that didn't make Scanlon feel any better.

  It was still hard to make himself believe that any of this was going to work. Through all the planning, the problems, and the desperate solutions, the idea of success had never seemed like much more than a well-formed dream. But now it was almost within reach.

  At first, Scanlon thought the knocking was his imagination, but when the doorbell rang, he gave his watch a curious glance and started down the hallway. The sad truth was that no one really ever came to his door -- particularly after ten o'clock.

  He pulled open the door without looking out first, preoccupation overpowering caution, and found Steve Ahrens smiling uncomfortably on the porch.

  "I thought the FBI was a strictly nine-to-five outfit these days," Scanlon said.

  "You know what they say: Neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night."

  "That's the post office."

  "The truth is that I was in the neighborhood and I saw your light."

  An obvious lie. Scanlon knew he should tell the man to come by the office in the morning when he was fully sober and better prepared, but the idea of some company -- even dangerous company -- was fairly attractive at this point. Anything to take his mind off not knowing whether Brandon and Catherine had made it to the meeting, whether they had the warheads, whether they were dead . . .

  "Well, in that case, I guess you should come in. Can I get you a drink?"

  "No, thanks, I'm driving."

  "I've been watching it all play out on TV."

  "The heist? It was bound to leak. Too big and too many people involved."

  "The press seems to have already pinned it on Brandon Vale."

  "Yeah, that didn't come from us, though. Some reporter who used to be a Vegas cop broke that and everybody jumped on it like a pack of wild dogs."

  "What they aren't saying is how he did it." Scanlon motioned toward the sofa and took a slightly elevated position in a chair.

  "No, we've managed to at least keep that part quiet. It looks like he hijacked the truck, the chase cars, and the helicopter when they were refueling and brought in a duplicate truck."

  "But the GPSes . . ."

  "You're going to love this," Ahrens said with a hint of admiration audible in his voice. "He had all four vehicles drive really close together and then used guys on ropes to put Budweiser stickers on the truck with the money. Then he parked that truck right next to the Fed while the fake one went in and dropped off a trailer full of basically nothing. Then, when everyone called in a safe delivery and turned off the tracking equipment, he just drove away."

  Scanlon remained silent for a few seconds, acting as though he was working through the scenario. "I told them to upgrade their GPSes to read out on a map. To give them more precise locations. They didn't think it was worth the expense."

  "Honestly, it probably wouldn't have mattered. With the Fed, the chase cars and the copter all calling in delivery, a little deviation in the reading probably would have been written off as an electronic glitch."

  "Sure you don't want a drink?" Scanlon asked.

  He shook his head. "The whole thing is kind of fascinating, don't you think? Vale escapes -- with help -- and disappears. Then this."

  "Well, if you're asking if I think the press is right and there's a connection, I'd have to say yes," Scanlon said.

  "Yeah, I don't think there's any question at this point. It's amazing that he was able to pull it off with you and the security company changing so many of the procedures after he went to prison."

  He was clearly leading to something, but was mindful of Scanlon's political position and the fact that he regularly played golf with the head of the Vegas FBI office.

  "Oh," Ahrens continued, a little too casually. "I almost forgot. Bill Crane says hello. He says he bumped into you a few months back and that you guys kind of rekindled your relationship."

  There had been no way to get the information Brandon needed other than to "bump into" the guy in charge of securing the shipment. Scanlon had been as subtle as he could, but it had still left him hopelessly exposed.

  The bottom line was that if this operation went south and he didn't get the nukes, he was going to take a fall. And while he wasn't happy about that, what choice had there been? To turn his back on his country?

  "He mentioned that you and he had talked about the transfer recently. It's a shame that when you were going over the details you didn't restructure it again. Then maybe Vale couldn't have pulled it off."

  Ahrens ended with a polite smile, but the accusation was clear in his eyes.

  "So you think I did it?" Scanlon said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms in front of him. "That I fed Brandon the information he needed?"

  The expression of horror that spread across the young agent's face was clearly intended to look affected. "Hey, I never said--

  "I'm not sure you've fully thought this through, Steve. I'm already rich, and all I
do is work." He motioned around the threadbare house. "What would I do with the money? New curtains?"

  "You know, it's interesting. The timing of those friendships you rekindled kind of coincided with the government walking away from a two hundred million dollar contract with your company Funny how that's about how much got stolen."

  Scanlon didn't bother to hide his surprise. "I'm impressed. The funding of companies like mine isn't exactly in the public record."

  Ahrens shrugged. "I hear things."

  "Well, I'm not sure how much you know about my company, but if you dig deep enough, you'll see that we're in a fairly strong position financially and that the government is happy with the job we're doing. The funding snag hit everyone after the Mall of America explosion. It isn't going to last. And even if it does and my company goes belly up, I've got enough personal wealth that . . . Well, let's just say I wouldn't starve."

  Ahrens chewed his lower lip for a moment. "Yeah, I've looked into all that, and what can I say? You're right. You aren't on the hook for any of the company's debt and you have a personal net worth in the ten-million-dollar range."

  "So what's my motive, Steve? Boredom?"

  Another noncommittal shrug. "Your old coworkers at the casino say that when Brandon Vale worked for you, you two were pretty close."

  "Have you ever met Brandon?"

  "No."

  "As much as I hate to admit it, he's a pretty likable guy. Smart, too. If he wasn't so set on being a crook, he probably would have ended up being my boss."

  "I'll tell you, Richard, everywhere I look on this thing, I find something that fascinates me more than the last thing. I did some reading on that diamond heist you helped send Vale away for. Sloppy. Nothing like the precision operations he'd been suspected of pulling before. Not so much his MO."

  "No?"

  "You've never been married, have you, Richard?"

  A smile spread slowly across Scanlon's face. "So I'm gay now? Brandon and I had a lover's quarrel, and I framed him for the diamond heist? Then, just recently, I realize that I can't live without him and I break him out of prison. And to make amends, I help him steal two hundred million dollars."