by Glenn Cooper
“For helping Henry. His ticket’s punched for day after tomorrow. You’re letting him go out scratching and clawing instead of watching the clock. Personally, I’d like to go out in the sack with a swimsuit model.”
Will patted Dane on the shoulder. He was a good egg. “I hear you.” He thought about it while Dane cut through the blackness of the plains. No, he was quite sure he’d make a different choice. He’d choose to go out with Nancy.
Dane clearly didn’t like dead air, so he started moving his mouth again. “I’m going to tell you something that’s off-the-charts classified, okay?”
“Okay. Why?”
“Cause it’s burning a hole in my tongue. I think I know why they’re putting the full-court press on to suppress you. You’ve opened up to me with a ton of intel tonight, my friend, and I’m going to reciprocate. We’re both in deep shit anyway.”
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“Something really big’s going to go down in about three weeks. Down in Caracas, Venezuela. They’ve known about it for a long time, but about two years ago, the CIA drafted up an action plan to exploit the situation and as of when I left Groom Lake, it was fully green-lighted.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“The mother of all Latin American earthquakes. Centered on Caracas. They’ll have over two hundred thousand casualties in one day. At least the eggheads think it’ll be an earthquake. Nothing else fits the probability profile.”
Will shook his head. “That’s a lot of people.”
“I don’t have to tell you that Venezuela’s got two things that makes Uncle Sam sit up and pay it attention: oil and Commies. We’re going to use the disaster to mix things up.”
“An overthrow?”
“Basically. From what I heard, it’ll go down as a humanitarian mission. There’ll be a flotilla of tents, cots, food, and medical supplies ready to drop in the minute the dust settles. They figure it’ll be total chaos. Their government’s going to be overwhelmed. Their president survives, but a lot of his people don’t. We’ll have the pump primed with the opposition parties, who’ll be ready to roll. The Colombians and Guyanese will do their parts by grabbing disputed border zones. The US, British, and French militaries are supposed to be ready to go in as peacekeepers. The bad guy is going out on his ass. One of our guys takes over and lets all the US and European oil companies back in. That’s the plan as poor little old me understands it.”
The drone of the Beechcraft engines drowned out Will’s low whistle. It all made sense. Their insane interest in the missing book. Their coldly calculated decision to kill the Cantwells and his in-laws. Their determination to take Will Piper out of the equation. Frazier and his masters were fighting with a furious determination to keep a cover on the ultimate covert op: the overthrow of an unfriendly, oil-rich country using predictive data from the Area 51 Library. There was only one thing Will knew for sure: the full weight of the government would be used to crush him into dust.
As Dane started his descent toward the Nebraska plains, Will suddenly felt small. The twin-engine plane was only a speck against the vast night sky, and he was only one man going into battle against a very large machine.
Chapter 32
They finished their journey the next day, the California sun dirty-yellow in the noontime smog. Will slept the entirety of the last leg and awoke only in time to see the endless expanse of L.A., dreamlike in the haze.
“End of the line,” Dane said when he saw Will stirring.
“I don’t know how you stayed awake.”
“Maybe I was on autopilot!” Then, “Just kidding! I’ve been chatting with every female voice I could find on the radio. Like a flying trucker.”
On the tarmac of the small airport, Will stretched in the sun like a dozy iguana as he waited for Dane to get his plane squared away. It was breezy, in the high seventies, and the air felt good on his skin, like a warm balm. He checked in with Nancy. She was doing all right, still anesthetized by grief, but all right. She had taken Philly down to the dock early in the morning, perched herself on a big flat breakwater stone, and rocked him back to sleep to the lapping of the waves.
The agenda was simple. Dane would rent a car. If Will used his own credit card, he’d be traceable. Then, while Will did his business, Dane would take a nap in a nearby motel. Later in the day, they’d meet up at the airport to make the quick jump to Las Vegas to see Spence and Kenyon. At least, that was the plan.
Will gave Dane a wave at the rent-a-car lot and turned south toward downtown L.A.’s Pershing Square.
Frazier was watching.
He was leaving nothing to chance. He’d flown in more men from Groom Lake to put three teams of three in play. One team led by DeCorso followed Will’s rental, Frazier’s command car backed up DeCorso, and a third team, led by an operative named Sullivan, stayed with Dane.
Frazier spat an order into his mouthpiece as soon as his car began to move. “Sullie, roll with the pilot and keep me in the loop. And when it’s time, knee him in the nuts for me.”
The midday traffic was light enough for Will to reach downtown in under half an hour. He parked in a municipal lot opposite the art deco Central Library and jaywalked across 5 ^th Street with the assertiveness of a New Yorker.
The last time he’d been at the library was fifteen months earlier, but it seemed like no time had passed. He remembered the taste of fear in his mouth that day. He had just survived thirty seconds from hell in a close-quarter shoot-out at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He had left four watchers spilling blood onto the plush, pastel carpet of one of the bungalows. Shackleton’s brains were bubbling from a wine-cork-sized head wound. Will had a memory stick in his hand with a copy of Shackleton’s purloined database, all the DOBs and DODs of everyone in the US through the horizon. It was his insurance policy, his lifeline, and he needed a place to hide it. What better place than a library?
Will bounded up the library steps and pushed through the entrance doors, unaware that two young watchers were on his heels. Frazier kept DeCorso back, bestowing on him the indignity of being the wheelman. He wanted younger men doing the chase, and he knew that DeCorso’s number was up. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know when precisely. But he didn’t want any screwups.
Will fast-walked past the information desk and the elevator bank to the main stairs, and he began to descend to the third sublevel. In the sickly raw fluorescence of the basement, he plunged into the stacks, heading for a particular case in the center of the room. The watchers timed their descent perfectly, concealing themselves but keeping Will fleetingly in view as they split up and zigzagged the stacks. Luckily for them, there were at least a dozen patrons using the sublevel, so it was relatively easy to blend in.
Will found the spot he remembered so well, then stood there in confusion. The last time he’d been there, the entire stack had been a sea of ragged tan-colored books, the complete collection of Los Angeles County Municipal Codes, spanning seven decades. He had picked the collection because it looked pathetically long neglected and untouched.
The 1947 volume, the chosen one, wasn’t there.
None of them were there!
He urgently moved from row to row searching in vain. He swore under his breath. He started to trot through the stacks, growing increasingly upset.
There was an unmanned information desk with a telephone against one of the walls. Will picked up the phone and waited until a library assistant answered. “Yeah, I’m down in the third sublevel looking for the LA County Municipal Codes. They were down here before.” One of the watchers was listening from behind a nearby stack. “I’ll hold,” Will said. In a minute he was speaking again. “You’re kidding me, right? No, I can’t wait six weeks! Can you give me the address so I can talk to them directly? What’ll it hurt to give me the address? Thank you. I appreciate it.” He hung up, shaking his head in frustration, and pounded up the stairs.
Frazier got this whispered transmission in his ear. “He was looking for a copy of the LA County M
unicipal Codes. For some reason they’re not at the library anymore. He was given an address. He may be going there.”
Will ran back to his car and unfolded the rental-agency map. East Olympic Boulevard was only about three miles away, and he was relieved he wouldn’t have to haul himself big distances. He pulled out of the lot and drove down 5 ^th Street toward Alameda. In under ten minutes he had crossed the concrete-banked Los Angeles River and entered a bleak industrial terrain of single-story warehouses. Frazier and DeCorso followed at a safe distance.
He found the Olympic Industrial Center and pulled into a visitor’s space. He did not have a good feeling. It was rotten luck that his book was in a cache of volumes sent out to be digitized, a joint program between the L.A. County library system and an Internet search company. Now he had to deal with this nonsense.
When Will disappeared into the reception lobby of one of the warehouses, Frazier began to panic. He needed complete control over the situation, and now he had no eyes or ears on Piper. Across the parking lot he saw a big brown UPS truck. His mind moved fast. He dispatched the two watchers with him and told them he wanted one of them inside the warehouse in under a minute. The eager young men sprang out of the car.
The warehouse lobby was depressingly drab. A single bored receptionist sat behind a long counter. There were some plaques on the wall celebrating corporate accomplishments, but that was it. Will waited patiently for the girl to get off the phone and when she did he launched into a florid explanation of why he had to have access to one of the books they had in for scanning. She listened with noncomprehending eyes and he wondered if she spoke English until she finally said, “This is like a warehouse and scanning facility. We don’t lend out books here.”
He tried again, slowly trying to charm her into helpfulness. Her desk plate said her name was Karen. He used her name liberally, silkily, to try to make a connection, but whatever he was selling, this girl wasn’t buying.
A UPS deliveryman came in, wearing a brown shirt and shorts that seemed awfully tight. Will could see he was a muscular guy, a lifter, but after a moment’s pause thought nothing more of it. The young man waited a respectful distance away. Inside the UPS truck the man who fit the uniform better was lying among his packages, unconscious from a sleeper hold to his neck.
Will was begging now. “Look, I came all the way from New York to get this book. I know it’s not something you guys do, but I would be personally grateful.”
She stared at him icily.
He took out his wallet. “Let me make it worth your while, okay?”
“This is a warehouse. I don’t know why you’re not understanding that?” She looked past Will to the UPS man. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah,” the deliveryman said. “I’ve got a package for 2555 East Olympic. Is this it? I’m filling in on this route.”
“This is 2559,” she said, pointing. “It’s over there.”
A warehouse employee came in, waved to the receptionist, then pressed a white security card from his retractable belt clip against a black magnetic wall pad. The door clicked open. As the UPS man dawdled for a while before leaving, Will noticed the same type of security card sitting on the counter next to the receptionist’s keyboard with an AUTHORIZED VISITOR label. The girl looked up at Will with an exasperated are-you-still-here expression.
“Let me speak to the manager of the facility, all right?” Will demanded. Nice hadn’t worked, so he got menacing. “I’m not leaving till I speak to him. Or her. You got my drift, Karen?” This time he made her name sound like an epithet.
She nervously complied with his demand, made a call, and asked a man named Marvin to come to the desk. Will stood and waited, his arms so tightly folded across his chest he felt like he was bound by a straightjacket.
From the back of the UPS van, Frazier’s man changed his clothes, checked on his still-breathing victim, then briefed his boss via their communicators.
The receptionist was relieved to see her plant manager as if the slight, bespectacled man could protect her from the hulking menace standing at her desk. She got up to whisper something to him, and when she did, Will reached over, snatched the security card, and palmed it.
Marvin allowed Will to repeat his pleas, but the man was adamant. This facility was not open to the public. There were no procedures for accommodating his request. They weren’t authorized to locate individual books. And by the way, he added, sarcastically, wouldn’t it be easier to find another copy of the 1947 LA Municipal Codes in another library? It wasn’t like they had the only copy in existence.
Will ran out of string. The conversation was veering toward if you don’t leave, we’ll have to call the police territory. He stormed out, pocketing the security card. There was another black magnetic pad on the outside entrance. He’d be back.
Frazier watched through binoculars as Will walked back to his car empty-handed. When Will drove off, he followed, wondering, where the hell he was going now.
Will hadn’t planned on it, but he had time to kill, and when the idea came to him, it seemed right. It smacked of symmetry and closure. At a traffic light, he checked the road map again. It might take an hour to get there, but he couldn’t return to the warehouse until the evening. And then he’d be praying the scanning shop didn’t run a second shift or have a security guard. He’d let Dane sleep, but sometime in the afternoon, he’d need to call to let him know there was a delay.
Will hopped on Highway 710, with Frazier in slow pursuit, the traffic flowing like molasses. Will used the sluggardly journey to call Nancy and share his frustration. She sounded better, stronger, and that made him feel better and stronger. She had enough fortitude to egg him on.
When 710 became the Long Beach Freeway south of the 405, it dawned on Frazier where Piper was heading. He announced into everyone’s radios: “I don’t believe it. He’s going to Long Beach. Guess who’s in Long Beach, boys and girls?”
Chapter 33
The Long Beach Chronic Care Hospital made a weak attempt at cheeriness by placing a few clay pots of colorful annuals by the entrance. Otherwise, the low, white-brick complex looked its part: an industrial depository for the hopeless and helpless. You checked in, but you never checked out.
Even in the lobby, there was a stale smell of illness and antisepsis. Shackleton, Will was told, was in the east wing, and Will walked the dingy lime-colored corridors past visitors and staff, everyone moving slowly, nothing worth the rush. No one seemed happy to be there. The ocean was only half a mile away, fresh and vital, a world apart.
Frazier was parked outside the hospital, contemplating his next move. Should he send someone in and risk being made? What was Piper up to? Was it possible he somehow needed Shackleton to retrieve the database? That didn’t make sense. He knew from Piper’s own postincident interview that after the shoot-out in Beverly Hills, he had purchased a memory stick at a Radio Shack and hid it somewhere in L.A. Now they knew he’d stashed it inside a book at the Central Library. Shackleton wasn’t on the critical path. “This is just a social visit, a time killer,” Frazier told his men. “I’m sure of it. We’ll just wait.”
He contacted his man, Sullivan, and asked about the pilot’s status. Dane, he was told, had put up a pretty good fight at his motel before being injected and stuffed into a laundry cart. He was on a Learjet heading back to his old stomping ground at Area 51, where he’d be interrogated and held till they figured out what to do with him. Frazier relaxed and dispatched one of his men to find coffee.
The nurses’ station was vacant, and Will tapped his fingers against the desk waiting for someone to appear. A plump young woman stuffed into a starched uniform finally emerged from the lounge area with a smudge of something red and sticky at the corner of her mouth.
“I’d like to see Mark Shackleton.”
She looked surprised. Will could tell there wasn’t much demand for him. “Are you a relative?”
“No. An old friend.”
“It’s relatives only.”
“I’m from New York. I came a long way.”
“It’s the policy.”
He sighed. The pattern of the day. “Can I speak to your supervisor, please?”
An older black woman was summoned, a tough, no-nonsense gal who looked like she probably had the rule book tattooed on her arm. She began explaining to Will the hospital’s visitor policy when she suddenly stopped and gave him a closer look over her half-rimmed glasses. “You’re the one in his photograph.”
“Am I?”
“His only photo. He doesn’t get visitors, you know. Occasionally someone from the government with a special pass who’s in and out in a minute. You say you’re a friend?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me. I’m going to make an exception.”
The sight of Shackleton in his bed was shocking because he had gotten so small and inconsequential. There had never been much in the way of meat on his bones, but a year of coma and subsistence nutrition had produced a living skeleton with waxy yellow skin and sharply protruding bones. Will could have lifted him as easily as he could his infant son.
He was on his side, staged in a daily rotation to prevent pressure sores. His eyes were open but clouded over by a film, and his mouth was fixed in a permanent oval gape, showing brownish teeth. A filthy Lakers cap was tight on his bald head, covering up the indentation from his devastating wound. He was covered by a sheet from the waist down. His chest and arms were concentration-camp-thin, his hands flexed into claws. His chest moved dramatically, each breath a sudden gasp. One plastic bag drained into his body: white liquid dripping into a gastric feeding tube. One plastic bag drained out: urine from a catheter.
On his bedside table there was a single framed photo. The four college roommates at their twenty-fifth Harvard reunion. Jim Zeckendorf beaming on one end, Alex Dinnerstein at the other. In the middle, Shackleton with a forced smile wearing the same Lakers cap, standing next to Will, who was a full head taller, photogenic, and easy.
