Blood Play (Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan)

by Pendleton, Don

  Helms grinned. “Based on your word and a number on a cocktail napkin? I’d rather have some kind of contract.”

  “Triple what Orson was paying,” Kissinger bartered. “Take it or leave it.”

  “Sold.”

  Kissinger excused himself and ventured outside, punching numbers into his cell phone. By the time he’d wandered clear of the doorman, he was in touch with Barbara Price back at Stony Man Farm. He got straight to the point.

  “Have you picked up anything on a shootout at the reservation?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” Price told him.

  “The report I just heard said there were no survivors,” Kissinger said.

  “No known survivors,” Price corrected. “They’re still trying to piece everything together and figure out what happened.”

  “Has Striker checked in?”

  There was a pause on the line, then Price somberly replied, “No. No, he hasn’t.”

  Cochiti Lake, New Mexico

  CHRISTOPHER SHIRALDI HELD ON TO the edge of the large rattan gondola holding one of his balloon pilots as well as a honeymooning couple from Winona. Raising his voice to be heard above the roar of the balloon’s twin propane burners, Shiraldi gave his standard spiel about safety concerns, then wished the couple bon voyage and stepped clear of the basket. The tether ropes had already been cleared and slowly the large bulb of inflated nylon lofted into the patchy blue skies overhead. Inscribed on its sides, appropriately, were the words Just Married. Twenty yards away, another crew was preparing yet another balloon for takeoff. The gondola was tipped on its side, cool air from a generator-powered fan slowly inflating the ripstop nylon envelope. The awaiting passengers, a family of three, were taking photos of the process and Shiraldi volunteered to take their pictures while they stood before the crew.

  “I’m so excited!” the mother said as she posed for the camera.

  “You should be,” Shiraldi told the woman. “Right after a good rain’s the best time to go up. You’ll be able to see for miles.”

  “How many times have you been up in one of these things?” the father asked.

  Shiraldi took a couple pictures then handed the camera back to the father, telling him, “I stopped keeping track after five hundred, and that was a while ago.”

  Ballooning had been a weekend pastime for Shiraldi since his early thirties. Now, in the wake of his fall from grace as senior partner of Shiraldi Management, the forty-nine-year-old Harvard Business School graduate had turned his hobby into a full-time job. The portly, bearded owner of Aerial Grand Adventures made only a fifth of what he’d been earning as President of Operations at the Roaming Bison, but Shiraldi had never been happier in his life and he often claimed the sorry debacle he’d been caught up in had turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.

  “Call for you, boss,” a young man in his early twenties called out from the doorway of the motor home that served as Shiraldi’s base of operations. AGA was a nomadic business venture made up of the motor home and two semitrailers carrying Shiraldi’s inventory of balloons, gondolas, propane and other gear. Shiraldi moved freely about the state throughout the year, usually setting up shop near public gatherings likely to draw the sort of well-heeled visitors most inclined to splurge on his services.

  “I’ll take it over here,” Shiraldi called back, heading for the nearest of the two semis. His cell phone was in the front seat of the cab. As he picked up the unit he stared up at the newlyweds, who were already drifting their way over the easternmost edge of a nearby golf course.

  “Aerial Grand Adventures,” he said, reflexively launching into his company’s slogan. “We’re full of hot air and we like it that way.”

  “Mr. Shiraldi, it’s Leslie Helms again. The private investigator?”

  Shiraldi’s peaceful expression quickly soured.

  “I’ve already told you, Ms. Helms. I have no comment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I—”

  “Please don’t hang up,” Helms pleaded. “Something’s come up. I need just a minute to explain.”

  Shiraldi was about to disconnect the call but caught himself. He sighed and told the investigator, “It’s not likely to change anything, but go ahead.”

  “When you were charged with skimming profits from the casino, you counterfiled saying you were framed,” Helms said, restating the crux of their earlier conversation a few days before. “Afterward the charges against you were dropped, and you dropped your countersuit as well.”

  “We’ve been through this,” Shiraldi said impatiently.

  “Let me finish. You don’t have to answer this, but I’m guessing some kind of deal was made. You agreed not to fight for reinstatement in exchange for some kind of settlement that stipulated that you keep silent about anything related to the corruption charges.”

  “No comment,” Shiraldi repeated. “Are we finished?”

  “To a lot of people, you did the equivalent of copping nolo contendere,” Shiraldi said. “Those people still think you were guilty.”

  “I don’t care what some people might think,” Shiraldi said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s all water over the dam.”

  “What about the people who framed you?” Helms asked. “You’re content that they got away with it? At the expense of your reputation?”

  “What did I just tell you?” Shiraldi snapped. “That’s all over and done with as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I’ve just made contact with some people who are looking into things from another angle,” Helms said. “With your input, they could nail whoever set you up without it looking like you had anything to do with it.”

  “What people?”

  “They’re with the Justice Department.” Helms went out on a limb and bartered, “They’re willing to guarantee you won’t be connected.”

  “If they’re going at it from another angle, why do they need me?” Shiraldi countered.

  “The right information could speed up their investigation,” Helms said. She was improvising, but she knew Shiraldi was going for the bait and wanted to make sure he bit. “Not only that, they’d be able to pursue things in a way that wouldn’t tip anyone off. It’d be a shame if they got the people who screwed you over in their sights only to find out they’d fled the country.”

  Shiraldi was silent a moment. He could feel his stomach knotting the way it had during all those months of scandal. Damn her, he thought. He knew she was right; no matter how much he insisted that his ouster from Roaming Bison was in the past, he was lying. And the idea of payback? What he wouldn’t give to see that happen.

  “I’ll have to think about this,” he finally told the woman.

  “Of course,” Helms responded.

  Shiraldi could detect the confidence in her voice; she knew she had him. Frustrated, he threw down the phone and drew in a deep breath, then shook his head miserably.

  “Damn her,” he repeated, this time whispering the words aloud.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Albuquerque, New Mexico

  Jack Grimaldi paced the sodden ground twenty yards from the seething floodwaters of Tijeras Arroyo. There was a glimmer of morning light on the far horizon but it was still dark along the stretch off University Boulevard where the Stony Man pilot and his colleagues had gone into the channel a few hours before. Fending off the darkness were the harsh beams of two high-powered halogen lamps running off a generator half as loud as the Pratt & Whitney turboshafts powering a CH-54 Skycrane that hovered over the rain-soaked terrain like some disemboweled aerial predator. A handful of Albuquerque police officers shared Grimaldi’s vigil near the water; another three were back up on the main road, where tattered remnants of crime-scene tape fluttered off gnarled sections of guardrail.

  Soon a pair of Water Search and Rescue divers surfaced from the brackish water and quickly grabbed hold of a towline drawn tight across the channel to keep them from being swept along by the current. Each man held a large caliper affixed to a length of stee
l cable an inch thick. Up on the embankment, an officer next to Grimaldi switched on a flashlight and signaled to the Skycrane’s pilot. Moments later, the ninety-foot-long chopper eased down closer to the water, feeding out its own hook-ended cable. Once the hook was within reach of the divers, they attached the two calipers and tested them to make certain they were secure, then gave the main line a quick tug. While the Skycrane slowly rose a few yards, taking up the slack in the feed lines, the divers used the towline to make their way to the embankment. There, Grimaldi and one of the other officers helped the divers out of the water and quickly untethered the towline.

  As soon as the officer with the flashlight gave the Skycrane pilot another signal, the chopper continued its slow ascent. Grimaldi watched with morbid fascination as the submerged taxi was slowly pulled from the arroyo. Water spewed from the broken windows, and bits of debris clung to the muddied chassis, then fell free as the cab’s weight shifted, tilting it slightly.

  “That’s one sorry sight,” the cop next to Grimaldi observed.

  Grimaldi said nothing. He knew that if the Reaper had decided to call in a few markers there could well have been three bodies inside the vehicle, including his own.

  Within a few minutes, the taxi had been hauled clear of the flood channel and set down on the barren landscape near the men who’d watched its retrieval. Grimaldi silently went about the quick task of going through the vehicle and removing the tote bags belonging to him and his Stony Man cohorts. He was able to find his pistol as well as Kissinger’s, but Bolan’s Beretta was nowhere to be seen. Grimaldi didn’t realize it was an omen until he stepped back from the car and saw David Lowe making his way down the slope from the main road. The homicide detective had just come from speaking to the widows of the two officers slain at the site earlier.

  “I gotta tell ya,” Lowe said, once he caught up with Grimaldi, “whoever the hell you are, you’ve got some friends in high places.”

  “How’s that?” Grimaldi asked.

  “I just got orders to hand you the keys to the Skycrane,” the detective said. “Seems one of your buddies has gone missing.”

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  “HEY, HEY, SCORE ONE FOR the Barbster!” Akira Tokaido called out from his work station in the Annex Computer Room. Huntington Wethers and Aaron Kurtzman glanced up from their computers. They were the only other ones in the room; Carmen Delahunt had clocked out already and Barbara Price was presumably still back at the main house having breakfast after taking a few hours off to sleep.

  “You got hold of the phone records?” Kurtzman asked.

  Tokaido nodded. “Both Colt’s and Orson’s.”

  “And the last time they spoke to each other was right before Orson’s blog rant?” Wethers queried.

  “Twelve minutes, give or take a few seconds,” Tokaido said. “Considering Orson lives out in the boonies, that’s not enough time for him to have gone running errands.”

  “Sounds right to me,” Kurtzman said.

  “Actually, it depends,” Wethers countered. “I’ve checked, and there are a few shops near the airport just down the road from his place. If Orson went there to run errands instead of into town, he could’ve gone and made it back during that twelve-minute window.”

  “Nice, Hunt,” Tokaido muttered. “I give Barb some props and you rain on the parade. What’s up with that?”

  “I’m just saying we can’t positively rule out that Orson wrote the blog before he was killed.”

  “Okay, then, answer me this,” Kurtzman challenged, eyeing his computer screen. He’d secured authorization to tap into computerized updates from the Taos officers investigating Orson’s murder, and the latest dispatch had just come in. “Some forensics geeks went through Orson’s computer to check on timeprints. Turns out somebody flash-drived all his files right after the blog was written.”

  “That could still have been Orson,” Wethers replied. “It fits his profile to be a little paranoid. And if he was just robbed, it makes sense that he’d make a copy, no matter how upset he was.”

  “Gotcha!” Kurtzman said.

  Wethers frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Think about it,” Kurtzman said. “Better yet, put yourself in the perp’s shoes. You sneak into Orson’s place, whack the guy and his dog and decide to make off with everything worthwhile. Why not the computer?”

  Wethers nodded thoughtfully, then asked, “Was it a desktop by any chance? Maybe locked or anchored somehow?”

  “Negative on both counts,” Kurtzman said. “It was a laptop, no strings attached, so to speak.”

  “I think he’s got you, Hunt,” Tokaido said. “If they took the computer, there’d be no way to make it look like Orson wrote the blog, ’cause he wouldn’t have had anything to write it on. And you gotta figure they knew there’d be valuable stuff on the hard drive, so there’s no reason for them to leave it behind except to plant the blog.”

  “No apparent reason,” Wethers corrected.

  “I’m with Akira on this one,” Kurtzman said. “I’m saying the perp wrote the blog and then flash-drived the computer so he could leave it behind.”

  “Who are we talking about, then?” Wethers said. “Going by your theory, it can’t be Donny Upshaw. There’s no reason he’d do this and then write a blog pointing a finger at himself.”

  “No apparent reason,” Tokaido said. He grinned at Wethers. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

  Wethers smiled blandly. “Touché,” he conceded. “Now, assuming you and Bear are right, the obvious—”

  “Hang on,” Kurtzman interrupted, his eyes drawn back to his computer screen. “There’s still more coming in.”

  “Nice to know we aren’t the only people who work around the clock,” Tokaido said.

  A troubled expression came over Kurtzman as he read the update. “We’ve got oursevles a double whammy.”

  “They found Upshaw?” Wethers asked.

  “Yeah,” Kurtzman said, “but not Donny. His old man. He just turned up dead behind the wheel in his driveway on the reservation. Shot to the head at close range.”

  “Ouch,” Tokaido said. “That’s not where I saw this going.”

  “What caliber?” Wethers asked.

  “It’s a .25,” Kurtzman said, skimming back over the dispatch. “Same casing as the ones they found next to Orson.”

  Tokaido whistled. “Man, this throws everything off.”

  “His father was head of the Pueblo, right?” Wethers recalled.

  Kurtzman nodded. “And I don’t know what kind of relationship he had with Donny, but you’re right. We need to reconsider things. His kid might be the perp after all.”

  “What else did they come up with?” Tokaido asked.

  “That’s the second part of the double whammy,” Kurtzman explained. “Remember when you were talking earlier about Donny having a drug relapse? Well, the cops there just did a second pass on the guesthouse where he was staying. They came across a loose floorboard and found a kilo of heroin tucked in the crawl space beneath, along with a fix kit. The stuff hasn’t been cut and the kit had been used.”

  “Sounds like he sampled the wares,” Weathers said.

  “Wait. An uncut kilo?” Tokaido said. “We’re talking more than a hundred grand. Where’d he get that kind of money?”

  “Not mowing lawns,” Kurtzman said. “I’ll tell you that much.”

  “The inventions and Orson’s backup data,” Wethers said.

  “That’s gotta be it,” Kurtzman responded. “My guess is they’re worth at least that much. Probably a hell of a lot more to the right people.”

  “This is getting crazier all the time,” Tokaido said.

  “I was thinking just the opposite,” Kurtzman said. “To me it’s starting to fit.”

  “Yeah, maybe some of it,” Tokaido admitted, “but come on, we’re talking some major loopholes here.”

  “Such as?”

  “Just look at what we’ve got. Donny goes off the wagon a
nd scores a kilo from somebody who’ll take Orson’s gizmos as payment. Okay, no problem. I get that. Same with him whacking Orson and the dog, especially if he’s strung out and they’re in the way. So far, so good. But what does he do right after he whacks them? Does he hightail it out of there and get the goods to his dealer ASAP? No. We’ve got him hunkering down at Orson’s computer, taking the time to log on to Orson’s blogsite, then writing a tirade that makes it looks like Orson’s fingered him as the killer. Um, somehow I don’t think so. And if that’s not loony tunes enough, what does he do next? Now does he get Orson’s loot to this dealer—a dealer who’s already given him a hundred grand worth of powder without being paid up front?”

  “You’re right,” Kurtzman said. “It never works that way.”

  “It could be he delivered the inventions first, then got the heroin and brought it back so he could hide it,” Wethers suggested. “Maybe that’s when he killed Orson.”

  “Nice try, but it doesn’t fit the time line,” Tokaido reminded his colleague. “Orson had his stuff with him when he talked to Colt. The blog’s written twelve minutes later. No time to go visit the friendly neighborhood drug dealer.”

  Wethers thought it over, then nodded to himself.

  “What if the dealer was there the whole time?” he theorized. “What if he helped Donny kill Orson and the dog, loaded Orson’s inventions into the pickup and then handed over the heroin?”

  Kurtzman grinned at his counterpart. “Not bad, Hunt.”

  “That’s still not it, though,” Tokaido insisted. “It doesn’t explain the blog, for starters.”

  “How about this?” Wethers suggested. “As soon as Donny gets the smack he goes off to hide it. All along the dealer’s been thinking of a way to avoid being connected with Orson’s murder, so while Donny’s away he sees an opportunity and goes with it.”

  “He writes the blog blaming Donny and then leaves,” Kurtzman said.

  “That or maybe he doubled back once he saw Donny heading for the guesthouse,” Wethers said. “Either way, he’s there within that twelve-minute time frame.”