Cold Harbor (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 3)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  Jenn came down the ramp and knelt beside him. Her hand wrapped around the grip of her MP7, and for a moment Gibson thought she meant to add the Scandinavian to her résumé. The Scandinavian must have believed it too, because his jaw snapped shut.

  “You stop holding hostages, Norrgard, and I’ll stop filling body bags with your men. How’s that?” She snatched up the loadmaster’s clipboard and flipped through the cargo manifest. “George isn’t on board,” she said to Gibson.

  “What?”

  “He’s not on board,” she said again, the frustration ringing in her voice.

  She held out the clipboard. Gibson took it and ran up the ramp into the plane. They didn’t have a lot of time.

  The cargo bay of a C-130 was nine feet high, forty feet in length, and ten feet across at its widest point. Down the center of the hold sat pallets of equipment wrapped in plastic and tethered in place by thick straps. The pallets were shoulder height, and narrow pathways had been left on either side. Gibson worked quickly, scanning the cargo manifest and comparing it against the pallet tags.

  “Replacement parts for vehicles.”

  “Ammunition.”

  “Medical supplies.”

  “Computers.”

  Customs had signed off on the manifest. Everything looked official. There was no sign of George.

  At the bulkhead behind the last pallet, Gibson found where the two pilots had made their stand. They lay, one on top of the other, like two brothers wrestling on the living room floor. Brass casings lay all around in the grease and blood. One had died instantly, but the second had clung to life until he’d bled out. Gibson saw where Jenn had tried to administer first aid.

  Gibson stepped over the bodies and went up the cockpit ladder with the absurd hope that George Abe would be there waiting to be discovered. Nothing. He went down the other side of the aircraft, praying for a miracle, but finished his lap around the hold without spotting anything that Jenn had missed. He hated to think that they’d done this for nothing. Killed two men. Jenn had kept it bottled up tight, but he knew her well enough to see that she’d gotten her hopes up. How would she respond if she’d missed again? And how had they? Had Calista been wrong or had Eskridge smelled a rat?

  Was this a trap?

  “Anything?” Jenn asked, looking up the ramp at him. She still knelt beside Norrgard. Her hand still rested on the pistol grip of the MP7.

  “Nothing. What about him?” Gibson pointed to the big Scandinavian. “What does he have to say?”

  “Says he doesn’t know.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I think I need to ask him another way.”

  Gibson didn’t like the sound of that. Jenn had experience as an interrogator from her time in the CIA. At a time when the country’s definition of torture had been far more flexible than it was now. Given her state of mind, Norrgard would be lucky if it stopped at enhanced interrogation.

  Gibson said, “We don’t have that kind of time.”

  Jenn checked her watch and grimaced. “Maybe they’re bringing him in at the last minute?”

  “And maybe the pilots called for reinforcements. Maybe this is a trap.”

  “You don’t know that,” Jenn said.

  “We don’t know anything. That’s my point. We’re into wishful-thinking territory here,” he said, even as he felt himself losing her attention. “Jenn. It’s time to leave. We have to stick to the plan.”

  Jenn looked despairingly from the aircraft to the hangar doors and back. Her eyes settled on Norrgard.

  “Where the fuck is he?”

  “Where you’ll never find him. The colonel is on to you, bitch.”

  “Bullshit,” Jenn said and pressed the muzzle of the MP7 to his head. She asked her question again. Over and over. With each repetition, a little more of the humanity drained out of her voice. Gibson recognized it—his father’s ghost’s voice in the days leading up to taking Damon Ogden.

  Duke scoffed. “Don’t try and pin this on me.”

  “I’m only going to ask you one more time,” Jenn said, her face an unreadable mask.

  “Jenn!” Gibson said.

  “What?” she screamed back.

  “We have to go. Now.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. Jenn pulled away. She looked pale and shell-shocked. Staring at nothing. If hope was a cancer, as Dan Hendricks insisted, then Gibson thought Jenn might be a terminal case. He feared that she would curl up and surrender. He said her name again but got no response. It was like standing outside a dark house, ringing the bell, unsure if anyone was even home. He tried again, and this time he saw the lights flicker on in her eyes.

  “Jenn?”

  She drew a deep breath and finally met his eyes. “All right. We’ll go.”

  The C-130 lumbered down the runway and rose reluctantly into the night sky. It should have been a great feeling. Against all odds, they’d come through an impossible gauntlet unscathed. They’d broken dozens of laws, killed two men, and pulled off an epic heist, stealing an airplane right off a runway at a Cat X airport. It was the stuff of legend.

  Except it wasn’t. It had all been for nothing, and now Jenn had no choice but to flee the country. That had been the plan all along, but she was doing so without George. They’d failed, and as the ramifications of that failure sunk in, Jenn retreated further and further into a shell.

  Gibson watched her carefully. Military C-130s flew with a flight crew of four. Cold Harbor had gotten by with three, combining the flight engineer and navigator into one position. It was definitely not an aircraft designed to be flown solo. It could be done, but a pilot would need to be focused. That was not how Gibson would describe Jenn at present.

  He needn’t have worried. Whatever disappointment she felt, she didn’t allow it to affect her professionalism. She took the plane to ten thousand feet and leveled off. According to the flight plan that Cold Harbor had filed, the first leg took them to Caracas, Venezuela. The two-thousand-mile flight was right at the edge of the C-130’s operational range, but Caracas was exactly Titus Eskridge’s kind of lawless. He could refuel away from prying eyes before making the next leg to Fortaleza, Brazil.

  Their arrangement with Calista called for them to divert to a small airfield in Virginia. There they would turn over the C-130 and its cargo to Calista. A second aircraft would fly Jenn and George out of the country.

  No chance that would happen.

  Calista had been an ally, but it was an arrangement that had run its course and would not outlive the night. She was every bit as ruthless as Eskridge. Gibson still hadn’t discarded the idea that Calista had used George as bait to get them to do her dirty work. This was Calista—anything was possible.

  Jenn’s true intention, which they had devised during their morning jogs, was to keep to Cold Harbor’s original flight plan for three hours before filing a new flight plan that took them to an airfield in southern Florida. There they would scuttle the C-130 so that neither Eskridge nor Calista could claim its cargo. Jenn had arranged their own transportation out of the country from Florida. Gibson intended to wait until the last minute to tell her that he wouldn’t be coming with her. Although now that they were missing George, he didn’t know what she would do.

  He tried several times to start the conversation about their next move, but she rebuffed him.

  She engaged the autopilot and stood up.

  “What are you doing?” Gibson asked.

  “We’re over the Atlantic,” Jenn said, her voice flat and affectless over the headsets. The engines made it hard to be heard without them.

  “So?” he asked, finding that somewhat ominous. “Jenn? So?”

  “So I’ll be right back.”

  “Jenn. We should decide what we’re going to do.”

  “I know that.”

  “So where are you going?” Gibson asked.

  “To clean up my mess.”

  “Let me help you.”

  “No. One of us has to be in the cock
pit at all times. Stay here and don’t touch anything.”

  “I’m not a child,” he said, realizing how petulant it made him sound. But he was tired and disappointed too.

  “Everyone’s a child in a cockpit.”

  Gibson followed her down the ladder to the cockpit door. Concerned about her mental state, he wanted to keep an eye on her. The absurdity of it wasn’t lost on him. A crazy man looking out for her mental health. Although, now that he thought about it, he felt more lucid than he had in a long time. His sanity had faded in and out since his release. During his preparations to take Damon Ogden, he’d mistakenly thought he’d been improving. But he’d crashed and crashed hard immediately after. He’d felt the same improvement working with Jenn but didn’t trust it to last. He didn’t feel that way now. Even though the job was over, he still felt in focus and almost like himself again. Hijacking an airplane might have been a bad idea, but it didn’t feel like a crazy one.

  Now if he could just get rid of his dad.

  “Dream on, son,” Duke said from the copilot’s seat. He didn’t have a headset, but Gibson could hear him just fine.

  One at a time, Jenn dragged the bodies the length of the cargo bay. Rigor hadn’t set in, but the narrow pathway made it a difficult obstacle course. She lowered the ramp. Wind whipped through the plane, and the temperature dropped thirty degrees in an instant. It hadn’t been all that warm to start.

  She hauled up the first body and sent it tumbling into the night. At ten thousand feet, hitting the water would pulverize the body. Mother Nature would take care of the rest. An undignified kind of funeral. Gibson wondered what his name had been. If he’d been married or had any children.

  “Go after him. Ask him,” Duke suggested.

  “Go to hell.”

  “No, I’m serious. You’re going to turn yourself in anyway, right? They’re going to execute you for what you’ve done. So what’s the difference? Why don’t you die with a little dignity instead of tied to a table, turning blue while Ogden watches from the audience. His smug fucking face will be the last thing you’ll see. And when it’s over, he’ll take his girlfriend’s kids out for ice cream and never think about you again.”

  “No, he’s willing to make a deal.”

  “A deal . . . what is that? Take a leap. Fly. It will be beautiful. At least that way, Ogden suffers too.”

  “No, I’m not going to be that man.”

  “You’re not a man at all.”

  It wasn’t the first time the ghost of Duke Vaughn had voiced such a sentiment, and each time it had knocked the wind out of Gibson. Not so now. Now his words meant nothing to Gibson. Duke sensed it, faltered, fell silent.

  A buzzer sounded in Gibson’s ear. An incoming call on Cold Harbor’s sat phone, which had been wired into the aircraft’s control panel. It could be only one person. Gibson punched a button on the console and connected the call. No one spoke. Gibson wasn’t in the mood for games, so he hung up. The phone rang again a minute later.

  “Hello, Titus,” Gibson said. “Fancy hearing from you.”

  “Dan Hendricks. I should have killed you two years ago.” Eskridge’s voice was smooth and untroubled.

  Hendricks didn’t sound anything like Gibson, but over the roar of the engines, it would be hard to identify voices. It made sense that Eskridge would assume Gibson was Hendricks.

  “Dan is in California,” Gibson said.

  “No, you’re not,” Eskridge said confidently. “Where is Jennifer Charles?”

  “She’s feeding the fish. What do you want?”

  “I want my aircraft.”

  “Yeah, we kind of like it, though.”

  “You can’t stay in the air forever,” Eskridge replied.

  “Who’s to say?”

  “As if you have the fifty thousand to refuel it. And even if you did, it’s my aircraft. I can track your location anywhere in the world. There’s nowhere you can land that I won’t find it. And you.”

  “Yeah, but it’ll be a smoking wreck when you do. Or maybe we’ll start rolling cargo into the ocean. There’s got to be something irreplaceable on board.”

  That provoked a long pause. Gibson could almost hear Eskridge trying to compose himself before replying.

  “What do you want?”

  “Maybe we could work out a trade,” Gibson said, floating the idea. Perhaps there would still be a way to get George back safely. If Calista was at least right about Eskridge smuggling classified materials, then it might be valuable enough to exchange for George.

  “And what exactly is it you want?” Eskridge asked.

  Gibson started to say “George Abe,” but he caught himself. The din made it hard to read tone of voice, but something about Eskridge’s question rubbed Gibson the wrong way. It should have been ironic and knowing, but Eskridge had almost sounded sincere. As if he didn’t know the answer. Gibson decided to bluff.

  “Well, we’ve got George, but we could really use a relocation fund to help him get settled. I’m thinking something in the mid-seven figures.”

  Jenn appeared in the cockpit door with a questioning look on her face. Gibson put a finger to his lips. This was the moment of truth.

  “That’s high, but I think we can come to an accommodation. I can go as high as two million.”

  “Three.”

  “Can you guarantee Charles will agree?”

  Gibson pretended to think about it. “I’ll convince her. Let me call you back.”

  Gibson hung up and grinned at Jenn.

  “What?” she said.

  “Eskridge just offered me three million for the plane.”

  “So?”

  “So, I think George is on board.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Convince me,” Jenn said with the skepticism of someone who’d opened her front door to a pushy salesman.

  Gibson described his impromptu negotiation with Eskridge. The strangeness of Eskridge asking what they wanted for his aircraft. “He didn’t miss a beat when I said we had George.”

  “Maybe he was bluffing too.”

  “Why? It’s a dumb bluff. What does he gain?”

  Jenn thought about it, wary of getting her hopes up again so soon. Gibson pressed her.

  “Let’s divert to Florida now. Get on the ground as soon as possible and go through all the cargo containers. He’s got to be in one of them.”

  “No. That we’re not doing,” she said.

  Jenn took Eskridge’s threat seriously. Without a doubt, Cold Harbor had a GPS tracking device on board in addition to the aircraft’s transponder, but finding it, much less deactivating it, would be impossible in flight. It was a key reason they’d always planned to ditch the plane. The moment the C-130 set down, Eskridge would scramble whatever Cold Harbor assets remained on the Eastern Seaboard. The clock would be ticking, and she didn’t want to get caught on the ground searching for George.

  “So what’s the alternative?” he asked.

  “We search them in flight.”

  He didn’t like the answer and told her so, then he told her again, but in the end, they did it her way. It was an incredibly bad idea and a recipe for getting themselves killed. The pallets and their cargo were lashed to the deck and secured with heavy tarps for good reason. A patch of heavy chop could turn an unsecured container into a sledgehammer, its contents into shrapnel. Jenn wanted to be the one to conduct the search, but she needed to stay in the cockpit and guide them around any rough stuff. That was how Gibson came to find himself unstrapping and uncovering pallets while the C-130 was still midflight.

  Gibson started at the aft end of the hold and worked his way forward. The first few pallets held a mixture of aluminum ULD (unit load device) containers of various sizes. He had only two hours before they were scheduled to divert to Florida, so he did his best to streamline the process—eliminating any containers too small to hold a man. It was still slow going, as, once he’d gone through a pallet’s containers, they had to be resecured before he could move
on.

  It didn’t help that Jenn demanded constant updates. It made him tense, and as he worked his way methodically up the hold with nothing to show for it, he began to second-guess himself, replaying Eskridge’s words in his head. Had he read something into them that he’d only wanted to hear?

  The heaviest pallet on any flight would always be positioned between the wings. In this case, it was ordnance. Through the clear plastic tarp, Gibson saw ammunition cans and crates of claymores. The only way George would fit in there was in pieces. A morbid thought, but he gave the ammunition cans a second look. From what he knew of Eskridge, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Gibson skipped checking further. For now.

  The power of positive thought in action.

  Something about the fifth pallet struck him as odd. Unlike the others, it held only one large ULD container. Externally, it looked no different from the others, but when Gibson rapped the butt of his knife against the side, it felt different. Denser. He wished he could hear the sound over the engines, but even so, he felt a familiar and fearful hopefulness.

  “What is it?” Jenn said in his ear. He’d been talking steadily, narrating his progress, and she’d heard him fall silent.

  “Nothing yet. Hold one.”

  “Gibson!”

  “Give me a minute.”

  He worked his way around the container, loosening the ratchet straps, and threw back the tarp. The ULD was even bigger than he’d assumed. The size of a prefab shed that you might find at the end of a garden. With fingers crossed, Gibson opened the double doors. A wall of computer-monitor boxes greeted him. He double-checked the manifest—sure enough, pallet five should be nothing but computers. But better safe than sorry.

  First he unpacked the monitors. Threw them aside, only to reach another wall of equipment. This time boxes of tower computers.

  Frustrated, he almost quit. He had to cut corners where possible to save time, considering how much more he had to do. But on a hunch, he pried out one box and reached through the gap it left in the wall of boxes. He touched something smooth and metallic . . . with rounded edges. The cargo bay was dimly lit, and the interior of the ULD was virtually pitch-black. He shone his flashlight through the opening—whatever it was, it wasn’t more computer boxes.