Overture to Disaster (Post Cold War Political Thriller Trilogy Book 3)

by Chester D. Campbell

  Manuel held the chair for her and then poured the wine. Smiling brightly, Elena inquired, "What did you think of the ranch?"

  "Fabulous. Just like the lady who runs it."

  "Oh, you liked Rosa?" she said, eyes twinkling.

  "You know who I'm talking about. You run a big operation. I'm impressed."

  "Think I could talk you into coming aboard?"

  His eyes contemplated her from beneath a rumpled brow. "Are you serious?"

  "Of course I'm serious. I don't joke about business."

  A disturbing thought suddenly hit him. Was she only interested in him for his companionship? Might he become simply a "kept" man? That didn't square too well with his sense of machismo. "What would I do?"

  "Be my pilot, for one thing. And be someone I could bounce ideas off. I often need a man's point of view, but I want someone I can trust to have my best interests at heart, rather than his own. I can't count on getting that from my relatives."

  "But you've only known me a couple of days," Roddy said. "What makes you think I would be so trustworthy?"

  She gave him a confident smile. "I've always been a good judge of character. And I'm quite handy at analyzing where people are coming from. You, my dear friend, are having a difficult time deciding between me and someone else, most likely your former wife back in the States."

  Roddy stared in disbelief. Was she a mind reader? "What makes you think that?"

  "You're very open and generous with your affections. But at a certain point, you tend to rein them in. It appears you're uncertain whether you want to commit completely." Placing her palms together, prayer-like, fingertips touching her chin, she leveled her eyes at him. "I want you to commit to me, Roddy."

  He watched her silently for a long moment, more than a little disturbed at being so readily dissected and laid bare. But the offer she had put on the table was a tantalizing one, to be personal pilot and personal confidante for a dynamic lady who controlled a sizeable fortune. Although he was retired from the Air Force, he was still too young to retire from the business world. It would mean a major career step he hadn't even imagined and would probably require taking up permanent residence in Mexico.

  Manuel had returned to the kitchen, and as Elena held up her empty glass, Roddy took the wine and poured.

  "This is a bit overwhelming," he said, cocking his head to one side. "Do I have a little time to think about it?"

  She gazed at him over the top of the wine glass, her dark, intense eyes sparkling in the candlelight. "I don't need an answer tonight."

  "Thanks. You know I'd have to get the government's permission to work for you. I'm not a permanent resident."

  "Remember my mentioning an old friend of my husband's, Rafael Madero, the politician? I had a call from him after I got home this afternoon. He assured me if I ever had any problems with the government, he would be happy to take care of them."

  The owner of the property Bryan Janney had been concerned about, Roddy recalled. He couldn't resist the casual comment, "Don't suppose he said anything about what was going on at his cabin in the barranca?"

  "No. I didn't inquire about that," Elena replied, eyeing him curiously.

  Roddy found the meal outstanding, the cook worthy of one of Guadalajara's best restaurants. It ranged from sopa de flor de calabaza, or squash flower soup, to a white fish concoction with a variety of vegetables. After leaving the job offer to simmer in Roddy's mind, he and Elena tacitly agreed to keep the dinner conversation on the light side. Afterward, he called home to check his answering machine and found two messages. Herb Derry reminded him that Friday was the next scheduled breakfast for the former boys in blue, and Pablo Alba called to alert him about a charter flight for ten in the morning.

  "Looks like I might as well set up a regular schedule to Tequila," he told Elena. "Pablo says I have another gringo interested in flying up that way tomorrow morning."

  Later that evening, in the intimate darkness of Elena's bedroom, Roddy was determined not to be perceived as holding back. If she had thought him hesitant before, now she found him as aggressive as a hungry tiger. An instinctive lover, he probed the depths of her passion. When he found a touch or a movement or a flick of the tongue that brought an ecstatic murmur, he repeated it, replayed it, revised and refined it until he had her body writhing as though she were on fire. When the lovemaking finally subsided, she lapsed into contented slumber.

  Elena had opened the doors to the balcony, letting in the cool night air and the muffled sounds of the city. Sometime after midnight, Roddy lay awake, the silence of the room broken only by her deep, slow breathing and the periodic tolling of a church bell somewhere in the distance. He thought of Karen and of his promise to let Lila know if he would make the pilgrimage back for the Fourth of July holidays. A part of him wanted to say yes, it's time to break with the sorrowful past. But another part admonished that he had already made the break when he accepted Elena's invitation to dinner.

  39

  Roddy arrived at the airport shortly before ten and found his passenger waiting. The man had told Pablo Alba he was from Atlanta, Georgia, though the operations director said he hardly sounded like a Southerner. He had insisted on leaving earlier in the morning, but Alba had patiently explained that the chopper was undergoing routine maintenance and would not be ready to fly before ten o'clock.

  "I am Ivan Netto," said the passenger, handing over his business card.

  Based on the accent, Roddy judged him to have come originally from one of the Slavic countries, probably Russia. He attributed the weary look to someone who had been traveling too long and too far. After a glance at the card, he stuck out his hand. "Roddy Rodman, Mr. Netto. Where did you want to go around Tequila?"

  Netto gave him an apologetic smile. "I am not sure."

  "Pardon?" Roddy frowned. How the hell was he going to fly this guy somewhere if he didn't know where he wanted to go?

  "What I would like to do may sound a bit strange," Netto said, "and, perhaps, useless. You can tell me if that is so. You see, I am looking for a yellow dump truck. I was told I might find it in the Tequila area. Would this be difficult to accomplish from a helicopter?"

  Roddy shook his head. He had heard some wild requests, but never one quite like this. "I used to fly search missions while I was in the U.S. Air Force," he said, folding his arms thoughtfully. "It's no big deal. You simply set up a pattern to cover the area you want to search, then fly back and forth at low altitude. A yellow dump truck should be easy to spot. But Tequila isn't all that big a town. It would be just as simple, and certainly a lot cheaper, to do it on the ground, in a car."

  Netto nodded, but persisted. "The area I was advised to look at is not in the town of Tequila. It is to the north."

  Roddy thought immediately of Elena's ranch. He recalled a couple of small towns not far north of there, one on the Río Grande de Santiago, the river that wound through the mountains, cutting deep gorges on its way to Guadalajara. "I was up that way yesterday. Beautiful country. We can make a thorough sweep of the area." He didn't normally pry into his passengers' business, but his curiosity got the best of him on this occasion. "What's with the yellow dump truck?"

  "I am in the importing business, Mr. Rodman. I bought some valuable silver items on a trip to Taxco, then came here to check on other matters. I made the mistake of leaving things in my car. Someone broke in and stole the silver. I learned that the thieves were driving a yellow Ford dump truck that had been seen in the area north of Tequila."

  Roddy took the story at face value. It was really more explanation than he had expected. And knowing the Mexican justice system, it struck a sympathetic chord. "I presume you aren't counting too heavily on the police to recover your silver. Can't blame you. Well, let's go have a look."

  He fired up the chopper, radioed the tower for takeoff clearance and soon had the whirling rotor blades beating a noisy path through the bright morning sky toward Highway 15. He steered past the jutting crater of Volcano Colli, ove
r the maguey cactus fields and north of the larger Tequila volcano.

  When they were in the vicinity of Elena's ranch, Roddy consulted his chart of the area. The village of Santa Teresa lay off the highway to the northwest. He pointed it out to Mr. Netto.

  "We might try around here first," he said, indicating its location.

  The aeronautical chart was much more detailed than a road map, but after studying it for a moment, Netto poked a finger toward a particular spot. "I believe this is the area I was told to check out."

  Roddy's eyes narrowed. "Are you sure?"

  "Quite sure."

  The point he had indicated was no more than a kilometer from the entrance to the barranca where Rafael Madero's cabin was located. Roddy began to get some disturbing vibrations from the passenger sitting beside him. Who was Ivan Netto? Was he really an importer looking for silver someone had stolen from him, or was he something more insidious? Was he someone sent by Adam Stern to test the chopper pilot's knowledge and interest in the remote mountain cabin?

  Roddy decided to play along and see what happened. If Netto was not involved in whatever activity the Foreign Affairs Roundtable had cooked up for that secluded canyon, they could do a quick fly-by and move on to a more likely area to seek the yellow truck. It had been about a week since his discovery of the cabin with Bryan Janney. And since Stern had long since returned to New York, probably nothing was going on there now anyway. Nevertheless, he approached the barranca warily, coming in from the west, away from the dirt road that led into the canyon.

  The forest-covered folds of lava appeared as an undulating green carpet as the chopper cruised along a few hundred feet above the treetops. Roddy spotted the swift-moving stream that had carved out the barranca over countless millennia just before crossing over the precipitous canyon rim. At the most he expected to see a four-wheel drive vehicle or two, a few horses tied up behind the house, maybe some cowboys doing chores. But what caught his eye nearly stopped his heart. It was an almost instantaneous series of flashes. They appeared beside the stream at the other end of the gorge, beyond the cabin. Moments later, several small explosions erupted just below the chopper's flight path.

  Startled, Roddy stared down at the smoke and dust and debris rising from the canyon floor, then back in the direction of the flashes.

  "What the hell was that?" Netto yelled into the intercom.

  His pulse racing, Roddy stared for what seemed an eternity, though it was actually only seconds, until the sight was indelibly etched into his brain. Men on the ground gesturing wildly at the chopper, pointing rifles toward it. He reacted instinctively, applying maximum power, racking the helicopter into a tight one-eighty. As the small Bell craft raced for the top of the canyon wall, a well-aimed bullet from a 7.62mm automatic rifle crashed through the deck, streaked just behind the seats and exited with explosive force through the door beside Netto.

  "Shit!" Roddy blurted when he finally released the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "That was damned close."

  Netto stared, ashen-faced, at the jagged hole beside him. "We could have been killed."

  "Lucky we didn't catch the mortar fire."

  "Mortar fire?"

  "Yeah. It's something you don't forget. I damn near became a mortar target in Vietnam. Did you see where the fire came from?"

  Netto nodded, the color just beginning to return to his cheeks. "The back of a truck—"

  "A damned yellow dump truck!" Roddy's voice blasted through the earphones. "Who the hell are you and what's going on around here?"

  He checked his instruments. Everything seemed to be running normally, no indication of damage to the engine or controls. He glanced at the compass and swung onto a direct heading for Miguel Hidalgo Airport. He didn't intend to tarry en route.

  Roddy saw the man called Ivan Netto rub his forehead and close his eyes, obviously shaken by what had just happened.

  "What do you know about Adam Stern?" Roddy demanded.

  Netto gave him a puzzled look. "Who?"

  "Adam Stern, with the Foreign Affairs Roundtable."

  "I know no such person. The other name, Foreign Affairs something, has no meaning for me."

  The man certainly sounded sincere, Roddy thought, but he had suddenly become much more critical in his assessments. It was too big a stretch of the imagination now to accept that story about the theft of silver objects. "Where the hell did that truck come from?"

  As he considered where things stood, Yuri Shumakov realized he had just run out of options. Obviously his hopes of cornering Major Romashchuk had suffered a severe setback. All those people firing rifles at them. The KGB man was now surrounded by a veritable army. Reluctantly, he accepted that he could no longer count on carrying out his ambitious scheme alone. And what he had just witnessed convinced him that this whole business with the former state security apparatus was getting out of hand. He had an obligation to warn someone. But who? And how?

  He looked at the pilot, the short brown hair, the open, sincere face. Though understandably infuriated now, he had earlier exhibited a relaxed, easy smile. Could he risk revealing the truth to this man? Rodman was a former American Air Force officer. He knew that was about as good a recommendation as he was likely to find.

  Yuri had known from the start that it might come down to this. And he realized there were no guarantees. All he could do was go with his instincts, and his instincts told him that Roddy Rodman was a man he could trust.

  40

  His agonizing decision made, the Minsk chief investigator opened up like a penitent seeking absolution. "My real name is Yuri Shumakov," he said. "I come from Minsk, Belarus, not from Atlanta, Georgia."

  Rodman nodded, his eyes shifting suspiciously. He kept the chopper climbing until they had an unrestricted view of both the Atemajac Valley and its surrounding airspace.

  "The man who brought in the yellow truck is a Ukrainian," Yuri explained. "He was a major in the old KGB. I followed him to Guadalajara from Veracruz, where he took delivery of a large crate that arrived on a ship from Gdansk, Poland."

  "Are you a cop?" Roddy asked.

  Shumakov shook his head, the pain showing in his face. "I was an investigator for the Minsk prokuratura, the city prosecutor, until two weeks ago."

  "What happened?"

  "I was accused of a murder I did not commit."

  As they flew toward Guadalajara, as fast as Rodman could push the bulbous chopper, Yuri related sketchily how his brother Anatoli had been killed and his recent pursuit of the facts behind the explosion. He decided, at least for the present, to skip the tie-in with General Borovsky's investigation and Chairman Latishev's fears that had brought it on. He was still no closer to an answer to that knotty puzzle. Anyway, it was apparent that Rodman would have enough difficulty coping with the account of the stolen weapons. There was no need to complicate things further.

  "You're telling me this Major Romashchuk has some lethal chemical weapons down there?" Rodman asked.

  "In mortar shells."

  "Damn! I'm sure those weren't chemical rounds we saw. It must have been a dress rehearsal for the real thing. What the hell would he use them for?"

  "I have no idea."

  "With only a few rounds, you couldn't make a concerted attack on anything but a small installation," Rodman said. "I once hauled some counter-terrorist agents who knew all about such a setup. They mentioned an IRA attack against a police facility in Northern Ireland. Seems the IRA fired rounds from homemade mortar tubes mounted on a flatbed truck. It isn't the most accurate kind of artillery barrage, but, hell, with nerve gas, you'd only need to get close."

  Rodman contacted the Miguel Hidalgo tower as they approached the airport and requested landing instructions. While he was making his letdown, Shumakov pulled a photograph out of his briefcase.

  "This is Major Romashchuk," he said, holding out the photo.

  Rodman glanced at the picture, did a double take, and almost lost control of the chopper. "I've seen that face. He
was at a bar with Adam Stern last week."

  When they reached the Aeronautica Jalisco ramp, he shut down the engine and stripped off his earphones. Circles of perspiration discolored his shirt beneath his armpits.

  "I guess I'd better explain," he said, turning to Shumakov. "Adam Stern is just as dangerous a bastard as you describe your Major Romashchuk. He works for an outfit in New York called the Foreign Affairs Roundtable. They've got to be involved in this deal somehow. And that spells real trouble."

  "Trouble for who?"

  "For me. And probably for you."

  "But how? Nikolai Romashchuk does not know—"

  "I took another passenger up to that canyon last week. He was a writer, working on a book about the Roundtable. He told me a bit about the group. Particularly about Adam Stern. That night, Stern tracked him down and killed him. I can't prove it, but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. Evidently Stern found out I was the pilot who flew him up there. He came looking for me, but I hid out a couple of days until he was gone. He's bound to have told this Romashchuk about me. The Major could be on his way here right now. I'm sure he'd like to know if I'm the guy who flew over there this time, and who was with me."

  Shumakov quickly unbuckled his seatbelt. "Then I suggest we find somewhere else to talk."

  Instructing the investigator to meet him in the lounge, Rodman stopped by Alba's office to explain the bullet holes. He suggested that it may have been caused by a stray shot from a hunter. Back in the lounge, he headed for the telephone.

  "I have a friend who may be able to help us," he said as he dialed Elena Castillo Quintero.

  Her cheery voice was reassuring. "Back from Tequila already?" she asked.

  "Damned glad to be back," he confided. "My passenger and I have some real problems. He wanted to fly over that barranca your friend Madero owns. I'd like to come over there and tell you about it, but I need to stop by my house first."