Greg McKenzie Mysteries Boxed Set—Books 1-4

by Chester Campbell

  “How fascinating,” she said. Then, as he darted the light past a reddish object, she stopped him. “What was that?”

  Reluctantly, he shined the flashlight on the small jar. “An old clay pot.”

  She worked her way over to it and turned it around in her slender hands. Then she looked back with a mischievous grin. “You know what this is. Even I would know that. Let’s take it outside.”

  Khaled’s heart was thumping. He hesitated, then handed her the flashlight and carried the jar outside.

  She examined the container closely and turned to him with a curious frown. “It looks like there has been something inside. What happened?”

  Khaled sat down on the dusty hillside and buried his face in his hands. He began to tremble. “I can’t tell you. It was too horrible.”

  Yolla sat beside him and put her arm around his shoulders. She spoke in a soft, urgent voice. “This is what has been troubling you, isn’t it? Please tell me, Khaled. I want to help you.”

  Chapter 25

  Sometimes, when the world starts falling apart, it just crumbles. That was my world to a T. I left Golan Heights Jewelers in a daze. Ted Kennerly told me what happened after the lights went out. He turned the table over, sending both Zalman and Lipkowitz off balance. Then he held his gun on them, ordered them to revive me and warned they had best clear out in a hurry unless they wanted to become residents of an American jail. I told him he was lucky to be alive.

  “Can you see okay, Boss?”

  “A bit blurry, double focus, but it’s clearing.”

  We had just climbed into Ted’s car when a silver Toyota 4Runner swerved around from the rear of the building. Zalman was behind the wheel. I blinked at it.

  “Damn,” Ted muttered. “That’s the SUV that got between me and the panel truck on I-65. He pulled off behind Nazari when I got flagged down.”

  “That tells us how they got Jill and who torched the Palestinians.”

  After my vision cleared I thought back on Zalman’s parting advice, taking satisfaction in his busted nose.

  “You should bring the scroll to Jerusalem where it belongs,” he’d said, “if you want your wife back. Contact the Temple Alliance and ask for Moriah.”

  As we drove away from Golan Heights Jewelers, Ted did his best to prop up my spirits. He started talking about getting the Air Force to scramble a couple of fighters and intercept the corporate jet–it would be simple to get the identity and tail number of a recent flight out of Nashville. There were no fighters based near here, but they could make an intercept before it reached the coast.

  “What would they do?” I asked. “Threaten to shoot the plane down?”

  I had enough sense left to know getting approval of a mission like that would take clout, requiring the help of the FBI director, who would have to call the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense. It was more clout than we possessed.

  Ted’s beeper went off. He checked the number and looked at me, his eyes widening.

  “It’s Colonel Erikson’s private line. Not a good sign.”

  Ted got on his cell phone, which operated on a secure circuit, and called his commander. All I heard was:

  “Yes, sir...yes, sir...I’m sorry, sir...I’m on my way, sir.”

  He looked at me and winced.

  “There’s been a terrorist threat at Arnold. He wants me back there an hour ago.”

  “I understand.” I looked down at my hands. I missed holding hands with Jill. Then I got back on track. Ted had taken chances on my behalf. “Thanks for all you’ve done, Ted. You have no idea how much I value the help you’ve given me. Just take me back to my car.”

  He banged his fist against the steering wheel. “As soon as I get back to base, I’ll call Detective Adamson and corroborate your account of what happened.”

  “I’m afraid it’ll take more than a phone call. At this stage of the game, I’m sure he would want to talk to you face-to-face, check you out thoroughly and ask a lot of questions. No doubt I’ll need you to back me up later, but right now I have to figure out how to get to Israel in a hurry.”

  “You’re going to try to take that scroll–”

  “I don’t have any choice, Ted. I’ve got to get Jill released.”

  His look said he didn’t like the idea but his silence said he had nothing better to suggest.

  As I eased the Jeep out of the machine shop parking area, I knew the wick on my candle was burning low. I rubbed the tender side of my jaw. I had few options and even less time. In about an hour, an already irritated Detective Adamson would be ready to declare me Public Enemy No. 1 when he failed to hear from me and I wasn’t in front of his desk at Metro Police Headquarters. It would take him no more than a couple of twists on his swivel chair to label me a fugitive and send law enforcement officers all over Middle Tennessee chasing after me. State Troopers would be put on alert to watch for my auto tag number. And if Adamson decided I was probably guilty of abduction or murder–the most likely scenario–the FBI would be asked to track me down as a suspect unlawfully fleeing to avoid prosecution. That could bring a check of airline reservations, particularly international flights.

  Police agencies did not always act as rapidly as television screenwriters portrayed them. But since Adamson knew all about my background, I figured he might make a special effort in this case. I couldn’t take any chances. Jill’s life still lay in my hands. And judging by what the two former Mossad agents had perpetrated on Nazari and his cohorts…I cleared that fear from my mind.

  Whatever I was going to do, and at this point my thoughts were still too jumbled to reach any conclusions, my impulse was to heed the nesting reflex. I had to get home. I raced out I-40 to the Old Hickory Boulevard Exit, pushing the speed limit but alert for darkened policed cruisers, and headed for Chandler Road.

  I killed the lights and coasted into our driveway. I couldn’t see anything amiss, no wheel tracks from the fresh rain. Things looked safe. The sight of our cherished log cabin gave me a feeling of warmth that lasted about two seconds. Then the reality of Jill’s absence, that she was getting farther and farther away every second, chilled me like an icy hand gripping my throat. A last look around, noting a small break in the clouds overhead, then I parked in front of the house, grabbed the taped-up scroll package, and hurried inside.

  The only consolation was a halfway decent look to the place, due to my straightening up.

  I felt some guilt at scrapping Dr. Welch’s meticulous efforts to preserve the sheet of parchment, but the only chance I saw of getting that scroll back to Israel was to roll it up and replace it in a can like the one I had paid four bucks for in Jaffa. Locating a canister in the kitchen, I treated the scroll as gently as I could and pushed it inside. Then I grabbed what clean clothes I could find–Jill had not had a chance to do any washing–and threw them into my bag along with the scroll. I found another small padlock in my desk, which I used to replace the one cut off by Kamal Nazari’s men at JFK Airport in New York. Reluctantly, I left my Beretta in the bedside table, took out my hacksaw blade knife and left it as well.

  We had made it back from our trip with several hundred dollars in travelers checks. I stuffed them with my passport into my inside jacket pocket, which was secured by a zipper, and checked my watch.

  Three-forty.

  I had two calls to make. Grabbing the phone directory, I turned to the blue pages and ran down the number for the control tower at Nashville International Airport. When I inquired about a corporate jet that had departed an hour ago, presumably for Israel, I got a quick:

  “Yeah, a slick-looking Astra SPX–it’s made in Israel, you know. They filed for Ben Gurion at Tel Aviv.”

  “Do you have the tail number?” I asked. I wrote it down as he called it off. “Any idea about the name of the owner?”

  “I’d say it was Imperial Diamonds, or something like that. I watched him take off. Was a white aircraft with ‘Imperial’ and a big blue diamond–you know, like a cut stone–painted o
n the side.”

  I thanked him and then looked up the number for Air National Guard Base Operations, located at the opposite end of the field from the commercial terminal. A sergeant answered.

  “This is Colonel McKenzie,” I said, staring at Jill’s photograph. “I’m a retiree interested in doing a little travel. Colonel Detchler told me you folks sometimes have space-available seats on flights here and there. I wondered if you might have anything scheduled today?”

  The colonel was full-time commander at the 118th Airlift Wing base. I had met him there back in the spring while working a case for the DA’s office.

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “We have a C-130 departing for McGuire...”

  My hopes soared. McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey was the jumping off point for air transport flights to Europe. The Air Mobility Command people checking passports would not be looking for a fugitive from Nashville. But my high-flying plans were quickly dashed back to earth as the sergeant finished his message.

  “...But unless you’re somewhere close by, you’d have a hard time making it. The flight is scheduled for a four-fifteen takeoff.”

  I glanced at my watch. No way I could be there and checked in by that time. “Anything else coming up?” I didn’t hold out much hope.

  He gave a slight chuckle. “Well, if you’re interested in a little ice fishing, maybe. We’ve got a flight to Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan. It leaves in about an hour and a half.”

  I hadn’t been to Selfridge since it was deactivated by the Air Force back in the early seventies. It was on Lake St. Clair north of Detroit. I would be heading in exactly the wrong direction–north, not east toward Israel. “What’s up there?”

  “The Air Guard flies F-16s out of Selfridge. Also C-130s. We’re hauling some surplus equipment up there. Nothing else scheduled except local flights.”

  It was getting perilously close to four o’clock. I wasn’t thrilled at the thought of flying off to the icy shores of Michigan, but I didn’t see much choice in the matter. I needed to get out of Nashville without using my Jeep Cherokee, and the farther away I could land, the better it would be.

  “I’m sure I can find something interesting up there,” I said. “Put my name down. I’ll be out within forty-five minutes.”

  Before loading my bag, I made one last check of the house, including a walk through the kitchen. When I reached the door, I felt a flutter in my chest at a glimpse of what looked like Jill’s dark, fluffy hair along the wall near the stove. Turned out it was only a shadow cast by a low-slanting shaft of sunlight coming through a curtain, but it left my knees weak and a deep, hollow feeling inside. As I looked around, I could hear the lilt in her voice as she patiently chided, Slow down, Greg, and eat something. If you want your brain to work right, you’d better feed it.

  I found a can of vegetable soup with chicken and rice, popped the lid in the can opener, put it in a bowl, zapped it in the microwave and gulped it down with buttered toast and a glass of milk. I don’t know whether that’s brain food, but it helped me relax. It also provided a few extra moments to consider what lay ahead. It was while smoking my after-dinner cigarette that I got the idea of heading for Canada.

  Chapter 26

  My arrival at the ANG Base on Knapp Boulevard was accompanied by a bit of a shock. I recalled from my previous visit that since the World Trade Center disaster tighter security had been put into effect. The gate to the hangar area, normally wide open except during drill weekends, was now manned full time. But as I pulled up to the guard shack, I saw that besides the man inside, a Security Forces vehicle sat nearby with a grim-faced airman beside it clutching an M-16 rifle. My first thought was they had been warned to be on the lookout for a fugitive Colonel McKenzie.

  If I had noticed this from the street, I would have had second thoughts about pulling in. Now it was too late. I had stuck my ID card in my shirt pocket to keep it handy, but I was reluctant to pull it out as I stopped beside the shack and lowered the window.

  “Can I help you, sir?” asked a tall, husky sergeant. I noticed his eyes switch quickly to take in the interior of my Cherokee.

  “I’m headed for Base Ops,” I said, smiling. “Some kind of exercise going on? Looks like you’re expecting trouble.”

  “Could I see your ID?” he asked, businesslike.

  That didn’t leave me any choice, so I pulled out the card and handed it over, holding my breath as he studied it. After popping a quick salute, he handed the ID back.

  “There’s been some trouble down at Arnold, Colonel. They’ve put us on maximum alert here.”

  Of course. The terrorist threat that had sent Ted racing back toward Tullahoma. I nodded and drove toward a parking area out of sight of the main road, which I felt would keep me fairly safe from prying Metro eyes.

  The sergeant at Base Ops checked my ID card, put my name on the manifest and introduced me to a young black captain with a mustache that reminded me of Tom Selleck as Magnum. He stuck his pencil in a pocket of his baggy green flight suit, on which a name plate said GRUBBS. He grabbed my hand in a firm grip.

  “Glad to have you with us, Colonel. Sorry I can’t offer you an easy chair, but all we have are the usual web seats. Shouldn’t be too bad, though. Weather looks smooth. We’ll be there in a couple of hours. Gonna snow, though.”

  “No loops or spins,” I said. “I have a delicate stomach.”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry. We specialize in straight and level.”

  We headed out to the ramp and our silver-colored aircraft. I figured my Jeep was out of sight, but I didn’t relax until the bulbous, four-engine Hercules roared down the runway and nosed up into the sunlight above a low cloud deck. Then I was only uncomfortable because of the green nylon webbing. And the side of my face where the Israeli had clobbered me. I rubbed it gingerly. Nothing apparently showed to get the attention of sentries.

  I wasn’t alone. An airman with sandy hair and a body like a weight lifter sat beside me. A weekend warrior with the 105th Airlift Squadron, he had just come along for a joyride. Mostly, he seemed to enjoy talking, although it was more like yelling inside the noisy cargo bay. All I caught of his name was Steve. As it turned out, he was a little more attentive to mine.

  “Where are you headed?” he asked as the turbofans droned.

  “I’m thinking about visiting a friend who has a cabin on the lake,” I said. It sounded as good as anything. I didn’t say which lake. Besides St. Clair, there were Lake Huron and Lake Erie nearby, plus Lake Ontario a couple of hundred miles to the east.

  Steve launched into an account of his day job of babying computers for a Nashville law firm. When that subject was exhausted, he started in on his studies at night law school.

  “What year are you in?” I asked.

  “Second. It’s getting more interesting. I love the criminal law part. A couple of guys in our firm are big-time defense lawyers.”

  I smiled. “I helped put away a goodly number of lawbreakers during my Air Force career.”

  That perked up his interest. “What did you do?”

  “I was an OSI agent.”

  He looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded. “OSI. Isn’t that the Air Force version of the FBI?”

  “Something like that. It’s the Office of Special Investigations. We handled criminal investigations, counterintelligence and force protection.”

  Something obviously clicked in his head and his eyes widened. “What did you say your name was?”

  I knew I had said too much, as usual. But it was too late to go back. “Colonel McKenzie.”

  “Yeah, McKenzie. You worked for the DA’s office. Got canned over the Peterson case. You really think he’s innocent?”

  “You’re the budding defense attorney,” I said. “Isn’t every defendant innocent until proven guilty?”

  “Sure, but you know what I mean. Do you believe he’s innocent?”

  I nodded. “Frankly, yes. I know only too well how the police departmen
t is capable of heading off in wrong directions.”

  I had screwed up. My watch showed 6:30. My case probably hadn’t made the six o’clock news, but Detective Adamson could inform the media for the evening’s round-up at ten. This flight would have returned to Nashville by that time, and my seat-mate would likely learn exactly what the police department was accusing me of now. As a soon-to-be “officer of the court,” he would no doubt feel honor bound to report what he knew. That could bring law enforcement officers in Michigan sniffing at my heels damned quick.

  Chapter 27

  The countryside glowed a ghostly white as the C-130 descended through the swirling snow. For me it was an interesting scene. After so many warm winters in Nashville, I had forgotten what snow could do. Snow that piled high. Jill was not a snowbird, but I sort of missed it. There was obviously plenty of it here to greet me at Selfridge.

  Captain Grubbs greased the old Hercules onto the runway and taxied over to a parking spot on the ramp that had been bulldozed clear. Steve offered to help with my bag, but I waved him off with a smile.

  It was 7:30 p.m. when we walked in. I dragged my wheeled bag that was now crusted with snow. Base Operations was busy. Aircrew types were all over the place, checking maps and weather and chatting in small groups.

  I caught up with Captain Grubbs, who had entered just ahead of me. “What’s going on? Shrine convention somewhere?”

  He grinned. “It’s part of Operation Rescue Ready. Practice missions for the next Somalia or Kosovo or Mozambique. We’ll be involved in it in the next couple of days.”

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said. I reached out to shake his hand. “Great landing.”

  He shrugged. “You know the cliché. They’re all great, long as you can walk away.”

  When I inquired at the counter about transportation into town, I was directed to a second lieutenant over in one corner. He sheepishly admitted he would be heading that way in a few minutes. He had forgotten to bring his passport. While waiting, I borrowed a Yellow Pages book and looked up car rental agencies. I figured I would be safe in letting the lieutenant drop me off there. By the time any law enforcement officers got this far, he would be winging his way to the Caribbean or Africa.