“Don’t tell me he got away.” Mayfield leaned back in his chair.
Now why does this make me a little happy?
He laced his fingers behind his head. He needed a haircut. And now, at the stench these two gave off, he needed a shower.
The smile was wiped off Warren’s face like cold cream wiped off a whore’s red lipstick. Warren was sizing him up, and Mayfield could tell he wasn’t intimidated in the slightest. This made Warren and his Petty Officer Carlisle the III dangerous. And desperate.
“This time. But we arrested an accomplice.” Warren Hilber said.
“And who would that be?” Mayfield asked.
“Sergeant Wilbur Hoskins, retired.”
“Gunny. You got Gunny. Good job, boys. I hear women halfway around the world have been looking for that son of a bitch for years.” Everyone in San Diego knew about Gunny and his legendary gym. He wasn’t much as a husband, preferred his wives to not speak English, but he was still a hell of a guy and a rock in the community. Mayfield wished he were a cigar smoker. He’d have lit one up in celebration and laughed these two out of his office.
Carlisle piped up. “Detective Mayfield, I got it on good authority Gunny is aiding and abetting these criminals, these rogue SEALs.”
“Well, Carlisle,” Mayfield said as he stood up and looked out the window, showing his profile to both men standing before him. He knew it wasn’t lost on them that Mayfield was almost a foot taller than either of them. He intended for them to squirm a bit. He looked down on Carlisle as he finished his sentence. “I’ve never heard Gunny pick a fight in the twenty years since I’ve known him. In fact, he’s the one the guys call to stop the fights, or to come clean up the pieces. But aiding and abetting? That’s a stretch, don’t you think?”
He finished, looking out the window. When he turned, Warren was peering down at his report. Mayfield sat down and put a file over it. A slight frown fell over the deputy’s face.
Warren and Carlisle looked at each other. Mayfield continued his lecture. “Fellas, it’s like firing the school janitor if the student’s test scores drop.”
Mayfield could see it got to Warren, who was trying to make nice, with a wolfish grin that was all mouth and no eyes. Lots of attitude oozing through.
“Sir, I understand he isn’t the primary target. But I think we can use him as bait. Lansdowne will have to surface. He’ll contact Gunny. The Feds are releasing him this afternoon, just holding him as long as they can. Everyone Kyle knows should be under surveillance.”
“Well, we’ve talked to the girlfriend, and I don’t think she knows anything either, Warren,” Mayfield said. At the expression on Carlisle’s face, he wished he hadn’t revealed so much, and Hilber had been way too interested in that report lying on his desk.
“That where he was last seen, at her place?” Warren asked.
“Yes. Nearby.” He didn’t want to give the girl’s location, specifically. He hoped Hilber hadn’t read it on the report sheet. His antenna was beginning to trace.
“He’s going to want to go back,” Carlisle said. “He’s a real ladies man.”
So Carlisle thought he was aiding the investigation and was trying to earn his stripes, a way to get on the police force somehow. Mayfield saw his hatred of the young SEAL as plain as the tattoo of an anchor he wouldn’t let his wife get years ago.
“And just what are you talking about, sailor?”
That actually made Carlisle blush. Warren kicked him in the shin and saw the man start.
His words directed more at Hilber, the Navy man tried to explain further. “They all do this, hang around the ladies. Drinking and raising hell. No sense of decency. I’ve had him cited for service unbecoming for years. The Navy’s just looking for an excuse to boot his sorry ass outta here.”
Mayfield wondered what in the stars was out there to get young Lansdowne in the crosshairs of so many assholes. Why were these two so anxious to bust him? Why was he in the middle of shit between the feds and the Navy?
All he had to do was put in another five years and collect a good retirement. He needed all this controversy like he needed another ulcer. Or another girlfriend.
Maria, I’m so sorry you had to hear that. He spoke to his beloved dead wife, only gone ten months now. Mayfield felt she saw everything that rattled around in his brain, including his need for some recreational female companionship.
“We’ve got some work to do, sir. And I can see you’re busy and got your hands full with the press. We’ll get out of your hair.” Warren gave a bitter smile and dragged Carlisle out through Mayfield’s door.
A pair of regulation assholes.
Mayfield had the sense if he didn’t solve this case soon, there would be further violence. Something that wouldn’t reflect well on the Department or the Navy. Something that could affect his retirement.
Big time.
Chapter 19
Kyle was temporarily holed up at Fredo’s apartment, trying to stay out of sight. He’d sent Fredo to go check on Gunny, who had sustained some injury and was being held overnight at the hospital. A morning paper had been delivered, so Kyle was reading an article about the explosion at the cabin and the purported murders. He knew they were murders. He didn’t like the fact that members of a SEAL team were implicated. Although the article didn’t mention him or his team by name, he knew it was only time before he was found to be a link. If the local authorities knew about the SEAL connection, they’d get to him sooner or later.
His cell rang.
“Gunny’s pissed he has to stay longer. They’re not going to release him today like they promised,” Fredo squawked on the phone.
Kyle nodded. He’d guessed as much. “How long?”
“They’re running tests. Doesn’t know.”
“And so that means we break him out, right?”
“Damn fuckin’ straight. He said tonight, when they change shifts.”
“He hooked up to anything?”
“Heart monitors, things that drive him crazy. He tries to take them off and then the nurses come running in, thinking he’s having a heart attack. Has nothing to do with what they did to him last night. They’ve found something else.”
“If Cooper says he’s okay, then we take him. Tell him that, Fredo. I’m not taking him if it’s going to risk his life.”
“Roger that. I’ll tell him. Not that it would make any difference.”
“Not going to happen. Don’t care how much he begs. I’m not going to have his death on my conscience.”
It was one thing to have the deaths on his hands of the good men he led into battle, but then they’d signed up and knew the risk. Another thing entirely to have a civilian suffer. Someone who’d already paid his debt to his nation. Who’d earned his retirement.
Fredo had obtained Gunny’s truck keys. They made plans to meet up with Coop and the three of them would go to Armando’s to retrieve his stash of weapons. No need having that potential discovery adding thickness to the goo they were already in. But first, Kyle had a number of things to do before they carried out Gunny’s mission of mercy.
He called Cooper.
“Did Fredo say whether or not he is under house arrest?” Coop asked.
“Nope. I’m guessing yes, but really depends on who.”
Cooper whistled. “That’s a fact.”
“Fredo will follow in his car. I’m going to get the beater. Pick you up in about twenty?” Kyle asked his medic.
“Roger that.” Cooper hung up.
It surprised Kyle there wasn’t anyone guarding Armando’s house, or at least no guards that they could see. He doubted the guys who had trashed the house earlier in the week would resort to anything complicated, as far as surveillance went. That meant this wasn’t an organized unit.
They parked both vehicles on the block behind and made short work of slipping along the side of a house that was vacant and for sale, then over the rear fence to Armando’s rear yard. They disabled the slider lock and stopped ins
ide the kitchen, listening for anything.
Deathly silence greeted them. The mess all over the house was just as Christy had described. Coop and Fredo were swearing. With their gloved hands, they began picking up some of Armando’s broken picture frames and things that might have been important to the man in happier times.
“Don’t get your aprons on yet, ladies,” Kyle said. It earned him the finger from Fredo, whose idea of housework was moving to another apartment rather than cleaning.
Kyle made it back to Armando’s bedroom as images of that day he’d been naked on the bed when Christy found him. That was barely a week ago, but how things had changed.
No time for those thoughts.
He sprung to the corner, relieved nothing looked disturbed, and peeled back the blue carpeting, revealing a square cut-out with a metal loop handle embedded in the plywood underlayment. He opened the two-foot wide hatch and flashed his penlight into the cubbyhole, revealing black powder-coated weapons and boxes of ammo. Fredo and Cooper were right behind him as he carefully extracted the weapons, including an .88 Karl Gustav rocket launcher. One at a time, amid admiring whistles and profanity from the two team guys, they reverently lay everything on the bed. Enough fire power to start a revolution.
Start one. But couldn’t finish the job without help.
In Armando’s closet was an empty duty bag. They loaded the equipment, except for the Karl Gustav, which had to be wrapped in a camouflaged laundry bag, then carefully put back the hatch opening and carpeting.
Kyle searched the street through the closed living room curtains and didn’t see anything of interest. All of a sudden, a San Diego police car cruised by, but the two occupants were not slowing down and kept looking straight ahead. He took it to mean a random coincidence.
In the hot afternoon sun, they silently made their way alongside Armando’s pool. Kyle noticed the buildup of leaves had gotten worse. Once over the fence, they checked the street again and found nothing that interested them, so they remounted their vehicles, Kyle stashing the bag of weapons under the rear seat in Gunny’s truck. The launcher was precariously laid on the floor behind and he threw a windbreaker over the protruding tip.
Except for the grinding of gears and lugging of an overworked motor, they left the neighborhood quietly.
They stopped by Kyle’s Hummer that he’d left in an alleyway behind a local warehouse for lease. There were no windows from which anyone could watch them transfer Armando’s firepower into the Hummer. Kyle wasn’t comfortable with letting them out of his sight, and stored his own gear there all the time. With two locking steel boxes bolted to the frame beneath the second seats, unless they were looking, there’d be no way to find them. The Gustav was another problem, and they had to resort to keeping it wrapped, lying on Fredo’s rear seat, fully covered.
They parked Fredo’s car in the garage at his apartment complex, unloading the CG and stashing it in Fredo’s locked gun locker. They took Gunny’s beater over to the base. Cruising past the guard gate on their way down the strand, they could see Cooper’s van seemed untouched.
“If they was looking, they’d have everything out all over the tarmac,” Cooper said to Kyle.
“I don’t think Carlisle has seen it back in the lot. But he will.”
“Yup,” the farm boy replied.
Kyle’s thoughts drifted Christy’s way. He wished he could clean up things with her. Maybe he would give her a call later.
Maybe not such a good idea. He shelved that pleasant thought for now.
Cooper was to go into the hospital first. He wore a white lab coat and stethoscope around his neck, and was using his military nametag from his rotation at the burn unit in Texas. He wasn’t going to say he was a doctor, but his height and confident good looks Kyle knew would help give him the air of authority. Kyle wanted him to look like he belonged strolling down the corridor.
Kyle and Fredo watched him go, then they turned into one of the housekeeping closets and were in luck to find several stacks of scrubs. They picked ones big enough to go over their clothes. Fredo found a box of paper caps, along with some foot dusters. Kyle couldn’t help but whisper, “I’ll have two tacos please, amigo.”
“Yeah, you get the one I spit in, man.” At Kyle’s chuckle, Fredo added, “They do that, man. Got a cousin who works at a hospital in LA. You wouldn’t believe what they put in the food sometimes.”
“Confirms my thoughts about hospital food.”
They walked down a deserted hallway, looking for signs of a police presence. Luckily, Gunny was on the first floor, just around the corner.
Fredo stopped Kyle as they passed by a room with an opened door. He pulled out a wheelchair that was collapsed just inside the doorframe. “The nurse’s station is at the end of the hall before the turn. We gotta go one at a time. Here,” he told Kyle. Fredo handed his LPO a tall plastic garbage can on wheels. “You take this and walk up and down the hall while I go toward the room. If anyone comes, pretend you’re changing the plastic liner.”
“Fredo?”
“Uh huh, boss?”
“How much time you spend in hospitals?”
“Don’t ask. More than your average Mexican.”
Kyle would leave it at that. Although they shared personal details of their past, there were some things that would be left unsaid. It wasn’t helpful to say too much. Those that felt the need to spill their guts never made it through the training.
Fredo made easy work leering at the nurses as he walked past the station. He had a way of making women turn away from him as he focused on their body parts, on purpose this time. He rounded the corner and Kyle didn’t hear a flutter.
Within five minutes, Gunny was grinning from ear to ear, seated in the wheelchair, followed by his personal physician with a metal clipboard, and pushed by a Mexican orderly. Cooper nodded to the ladies.
“Taking him to X-ray.”
“Hold it. You mean that way,” Kyle heard.
“Nope, going to take him by the service elevator. Hallway’s jammed up there,” Cooper answered without stopping.
Kyle abandoned the garbage can and pushed the automatic doors open to go get the truck. He pulled up and Fredo immediately helped Gunny into the rear seat, while Cooper argued with a very large, belligerent head nurse who seemed to know the picture was all wrong. She was pointing at his nametag, saying, “If that’s even your real name.”
Cooper barely had time to step inside the truck before they sped off in a cloud of dark gray smoke, leaving a bevy of white uniforms behind.
“Sorry, Gunny. But sure as shit they’ve got your license plates.”
“Hey, you hear me complaining? I’m so fucking glad to be out of that house of pain and death. That was a close one.”
“You feeling up to this?”
“You kiddin’? All I need is a pair of pants.”
Kyle hadn’t noticed Gunny was in his shorts, having tossed the hospital gown.
Fredo added, “And man, a T-shirt, too. No way I’m gonna stare at those tits of yours, Gunny.”
“Your fuckin’ body will do the same, Don Juan.” He sighed. “I got extra clothes at the gym. I’ll quickly grab them.”
“So why were they keeping you?” Fredo asked.
Kyle exchanged a look with Gunny through the rear view mirror.
“Something,” Gunny began. “They found something they didn’t like.”
No one said a word. It was Gunny’s information to share, if he wanted, and Kyle knew he didn’t want to.
“You know how it is, fellas. The mind is willing but the body has other plans.”
Coop and Fredo nodded while Kyle shared another look with Gunny in the mirror but kept his mouth shut.
“So, after I get dressed, where are we going? Where are they keeping Armando?” Gunny asked.
Kyle had no idea.
Chapter 20
Christy had just returned from the gym. She’d asked for Marla, but no one had seen her all day. The light under the tr
ainer’s locked office door had been turned off, however.
So was everything else just part of Christy’s active imagination? Being in the gym in the middle of the afternoon didn’t scare her at all, but she was going stir crazy seeking answers to all her questions about the news reports of last night and today.
She was missing her extra passkey, and it bothered her. She looked through her gym bag and all her sweats but came up short.
She needed a couple of things at the store, but she liked the safety of her place.
Still in her sweats, she made herself a turkey sandwich and checked her emails. There were a couple of property searches she completed and sent off to clients. Then she updated her database for search matches against new listings. She heard another tap on her front door.
Now what?
Through the peephole, Christy saw two men in different colored uniforms. The blue Navy camis didn’t catch her eye, but the gold badge did, so she slipped on an oversized sweatshirt to hide her skimpy workout wear. Opening the door, she hoped they’d have news about Kyle.
He was barely taller than Christy, dressed in a wrinkled sandy-colored shirt and matching pants with a beige stripe—the uniform of the local sheriff’s department. He looked like he was coming down with the flu. His eyes were rheumy and red. Or maybe he was a drinker. His holstered gun was snapped in place. He held a small sheaf of papers in his right hand. Healthy and freshly rested, he might have been a handsome man, if she liked short ones, but there was something about the way he looked at her she did not care for. Sort of feral, predatory.
But then, she didn’t like the way most men looked at her. Especially now, in her exercise pants that hugged her ass like a second skin.
“Ma’am. Sorry to bother you,” the deputy said. Regular Navy looked directly at her rack. She knew those kinds of guys couldn’t help themselves. Gentlemen who knew it was inappropriate and didn’t care were the truly scary ones. This guy had a gun, too.
This is definitely about Kyle.
“I’m Deputy Sheriff Warren Hilber, and this is Petty Officer Carlisle.”
Accidental SEAL (SEAL Brotherhood #1) Page 17
