“Hey, guys,” Stensen said and put a hand on one of Whelan’s thick shoulders. “This is an old friend of mine. He says he’s come all the way to Hāna just to kick your asses. Says that, other than me, there’s nothing but fairies in Hawaii.” Stensen paused then said, “You guys gonna let him get away with that?” The red dots were much larger now.
Several men slowly stood up, all native Hawaiians, all massive. Their facial expressions were impassive, but their eyes smoldered with anger. Whelan counted twelve of them. His mind processed and weighed all options at the speed of light. Suddenly, his right hand flashed out toward Stensen’s head in a back-fist strike. A man lacking Stensen’s genetic gifts would have caught the blow square in the side of his head, possibly a deathblow. At the very least, he would have suffered a concussion and possibly a snapped neck.
Stensen, however, was almost as quick as Whelan. He was moving down and away when the blow struck. It caught him high on the side of the head and sent him flying into the jukebox. He sagged to the floor, tried to get up, then sat back down, shaking his head to clear the stars that were spinning through it.
It was one of those proverbial “you could hear a pin drop” moments. The people in the bar, like everyone in Hāna, regarded Stensen as almost god-like. It was unthinkable that any mere mortal, regardless of size or other qualities could drop him as easily as this stranger with the odd reddish blonde curls had.
Whelan looked at the crowd and said, “He’s right. We do go way back. But I never made those comments. And he’s never been able to kick my ass. Guess he forgot.”
Most of the men sat back down, but one, the biggest man in the bar, remained standing. “So what you want with us, Brah?”
“Just a cold beer and a few kind words will do,” Whelan said with a disarming smile.
“You got it, Brah.”
Moments later Whelan was holding an ice-cold ale. “And my buddy needs one, too.” He nodded at Stensen, who was just getting up off the floor, but still wobbly.
“And there’s one other thing I need,” Whelan said.
“Just say it, Brah.”
“I need to get across the channel to the Big Island.”
The big man smiled. “I got a boat. I take you there. When you wanna go?”
“Soon as I finish this beer.”
31 J. Edgar Hoover Building
Christie sat at his desk staring out his skinny window. It was another snowy day in Washington. Mentally, he reviewed everything he knew about the Harold Case matter, Operation Sleeping Dogs, and Brendan Whelan. But it was his conversation with Bill Nishioki that nagged at him. His gut told him there was something big, maybe huge, involved in all this, but he couldn’t connect the pieces yet. There was too much still missing.
A knock sounded at his door startling him from his thoughts. He swiveled his chair. Jim Franconia stood in the doorway. “Got a minute?” he said.
“Yeah, sure.” Christie pointed to a chair. “What’s on your mind?”
“I just wanted to tell you that the Agency hasn’t come up with anything new on that black ops thing, the Sleeping Dogs. Your guys made any progress?”
Christie brought him up to date, including his recent talk with Nishioki. Franconia seemed amused by the part about Whelan being seated next to Christie on the flight to San Francisco.
“You think the bastard was taunting me?” Christie said.
“Not likely. He’s supposed to be an exceptionally smart guy and a stunt like that would be pretty dangerous. If there was any taunting, it was the Fates telling you to listen to your wife and get out of this business.”
“There’s something very different about this case. Others are involved, too. Someone picked Whelan up in San Francisco. We had footage of the car on freeway cameras, but lost it when it turned into a residential section. Whelan must have switched cars there, because he doesn’t appear to be in it when the cameras picked it up later on the way to Sacramento.”
“What about the parking garage at the mall in Sacramento?” Franconia said. “Did the security cameras pick anything up?”
“Yeah, a fat, frumpy woman got out and disappeared into the mall.”
“Disappeared? How?”
“Clearly she—if it was a she, could have been a man for all we know—was wearing a disguise. Whoever it was must have ditched it at a spot in the mall where there weren’t cameras.”
Franconia shook his head and whistled. “Too freakin’ weird, man. This is no lone wolf on a solo cross country tour.”
“No shit. This thing just keeps getting bigger. You got any ideas?”
Franconia tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. When he looked back at Christie he said, “What about the two older guys, Levell and McCoy? Got anything new on them?”
“Let’s remember who these guys are. We’re not talking about a couple of senior citizens hanging around a shuffleboard court.”
“Right. One was the Agency’s Deputy Executive Director for Direct Actions, reporting only to the DCI. The other is the current Commander of MARSOC.”
“We had people watching them, but they haven’t given us anything that would raise suspicions.”
“You monitoring their telecommunications?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Christie said impatiently. “We know the drill as well as you Agency spooks do.”
“Probably because we taught you,” Franconia said with a smile.
“Bullshit.”
Franconia’s smile broadened and he laughed. “Did you ever think maybe we taught you everything you know, but not everything we know?”
“More bullshit.” Christie said. “To make matters worse, out of the blue, a directive came down this morning. We were told to stand down on the surveillance.” He shook his head. “I know those guys are somehow involved, but now my hands are tied.”
“Where did the directive come from?”
“The AG’s office.”
“That’s too weird. All the pressure that’s on to solve this mess, and the AG stymies the investigation. So, what did you do?”
“What the hell do you think I did? I obeyed orders and terminated the surveillance activities. Most of them”
“Bummer,” Franconia said.
“The stonewalling from above is pervasive. It’s almost like there are elements in the government that are protecting them, while other elements are hounding my ass to speed up the investigation.”
“So that’s your fallback position? Conspiracy theories?” Franconia was grinning.
Christie reached into the upper right-hand drawer of his desk and got out a bottle of antacid. He shook it several times, took a big gulp and put the bottle back in the drawer. “There are parts of me that are too damn sensitive,” he said and patted his stomach. “Having to limit surveillance damn sure doesn’t help. What’s going on in the rarified atmosphere of the upper levels of our government that they would order me, the SSA, to shut down what might have been one of our best avenues for developing solid leads?”
“Dunno,” Franconia said. “Ours not to reason why. But moving right along, other than Whelan holding your hand on the flight to California, is there any other news that might tie into this case?”
Christie rubbed his jaw. “Funny you should ask. There was a dustup in Tampa the other day. Somebody beat the crap out of a thug who calls himself a bail bondsman. Then the same guy seems to have sat in on a bar fight in which the guy he was with all but killed five pieces of trailer trash with his bare hands.”
Franconia was sprawled out in his chair, a leg hanging over one of its arms. He raised both eyebrows. “Ah, the mean streets of America. And your theory is?”
“Based on the bondsman’s statements and those of the witnesses in the bar, one of them could have been Whelan.”
“And the other one?”
“Sounds like he’s as bad or worse. If that’s the case, then there may have been others who survived the plane crash…if there was a plane crash.” Christie leaned back i
n his chair and put his feet on his desk.
“Oh, there definitely was a crash. I saw the Agency’s files. Photos and statements from the attempted rescue operation. But remember, no bodies were found.”
“So someone arranged the crash to look like they all perished, then set them up with new identities and homes? And they’ve been living among us ever since? Hiding in plain sight?”
“Well,” Franconia said, “let’s not make it sound like these guys are space aliens or something.”
Christie stared at the ceiling, thinking. “If they did survive, and if we can figure out where one or more of them may have gone to ground, we might be able to apprehend at least one of them.”
“Sounds like the old needle in the haystack thing to me.”
Christie shook his head. “Not necessarily. We know Whelan was born in Ireland. He knows the people, the culture, the lay of the land. Probably had relatives there. And Ireland’s a hell of lot smaller haystack than the U.S.”
Franconia shrugged. “Sounds like a waste of time to me. Resources might be better used elsewhere”
Christie leaned forward and picked up his phone with one hand and buzzed Lou Antonelli’s office with the index finger of his other hand. When Antonelli picked up, he said, “Lou, it’s Mitch. I got an idea. Gather all the info you can get on Whelan’s Irish roots and work through the office of the AD in our International Operations Division. Get a team in London to follow up. Have them circulate the sketch. Maybe we can pick up this guy’s trail.”
32 San Diego
There was an airport on the west side of the Big Island, at Kona, but Whelan chose not to use it. Kona was on the side of the island favored by tourists. Using his identification as David C. Taggard, and wearing his fat costume and facial prosthetics again, he flew from the airport at Hilo back to Los Angeles, then connected with a flight to San Diego.
In San Diego, he picked up a rental car that had been prearranged for him. He drove south on the 5 toward Chula Vista and pulled into an automotive dealership just off the Interstate. He asked someone in the service department where cars were being detailed and was directed to an area in the dealership’s back lot.
As he approached the area, he saw two young people detailing a silver Chevrolet Suburban. One was a black male wearing a dark blue visor with a white bill. The word “CHARGERS” and a lightning bolt were stitched above the bill. The other person was a disturbingly thin white female with red hair pulled back in a frizzy ponytail. Her pale face was heavily freckled. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse. Her bony arms were covered with tattoos. Both people were dripping with sweat.
A stocky white man with bushy gray hair and a face full of gray whiskers was sitting in a ragged canvas chair in the shade of a small umbrella, watching their progress. He was sipping a can of diet cola and smoking a cigarette. He looked like he could have been an entrant in the annual Hemingway look-alike contest in Key West.
“I’m looking for Colonel Sanders.” Whelan said with a smile as he walked up to the man in the chair.
The man took a long, deep pull on his cigarette and blew it out before turning to look at Whelan. His eyes were a washed-out shade of blue, as pale as Whelan’s, but not as pale as Larsen’s or Stensen’s. He was younger than Whelan, though he looked much older. His skin was wrinkled like that of man in his seventies. His coarse, wavy hair was long and almost solid gray. It looked as if it hadn’t been washed in awhile. After studying Whelan for a few moments he said, “Well, look what the cat dragged in. You look gay with those stupid curls.”
“And you look like a homeless old fart,” Whelan said.
Raphael Almeida snubbed out the cigarette on the top of the soda can, set it on the ground beside the chair and stood. He was several inches shorter than Whelan and had developed a noticeable paunch since they had last seen each other. Twenty years ago, Almeida had had a problem with substance abuse. Whelan wondered if that explained his premature aging or if it was something else, something programmed by gene expression changes or a medical condition such as progeria.
The two young people had stopped working and were watching Whelan and Almeida. “What the hell are you staring at? I don’t pay you to stand around. Get your asses back to work,” Almeida yelled.
“It’s hot out here, boss,” the young black man said. He took his visor off and wiped his brow with a forearm.
“Yeah,” the girl said. “It’s break time.” She pointed to her bony wrist, as if indicating a watch.
After a moment’s hesitation, Almeida jerked his thumb toward a large metal building that housed the dealership’s service department. “Take fifteen, and not a fuckin’ second more or it’ll come out of your pay.”
The two workers tossed their cleaning rags onto the hood of the truck and strolled off toward the building. The girl lit a cigarette as she walked away.
“Punk kids,” Almeida said. “Can’t find any good help these days and the turnover is awful.”
“Maybe it has something to do with your bedside manner.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you smartass college types have all the answers.” Almeida paused to light another cigarette. “So why are you dressed like a fat fairy with a big nose and shaggy eyebrows? Halloween’s a long way off.”
“It seems we’ve been outed. The Feds are on to us…on to me anyway.”
“That why Levell wants us back together?”
“That’s part of it.”
“There’s more?”
“Yeah. There’s a mission.”
Almeida tugged at his whiskers for a few moments. “So, Levell and General Ball-Buster expect us to just drop everything and come running when they snap their wrinkled old fingers.”
“Something like that.”
“Well, they can shove it.” Almeida waved his arms around. “Look at this. I got responsibilities. I’m a business owner. I can’t just drop all I’ve worked years to acquire and run off on some half-ass mission.”
“Looks to me like you’re hanging on by the skin of your ass. You look like you’ve been living in a cardboard box. You smell like a billy goat. There’s booze on your breath at ten o’clock in the morning, and you’re probably still abusing every recreational drug you can get your nicotine-stained hands on, Colonel.”
Almeida brought his clenched fists up to chest height. “I could kick the shit out of you. And stop calling me Colonel. I hate that fuckin’ name.”
“Have drugs fucked up your memory, Rafe? Fighting me never worked out for you in the past. You never even landed a punch. It’ll go even worse for you now. Look at you. Pot-bellied, boozy, old before your years. If I was Levell, I’d tell you to go fuck yourself.”
Almeida’s body sagged as if the spirit had leaked out of him like air from a punctured tire. He looked off into the distance and said, “Truth is things ain’t gone so well for me in recent years.”
“So it appears.”
“I got married some years back, but my old lady run off with a guy used to be a friend of mine.”
“You abuse her?”
“Only when she needed it.”
“So you’ve gone from being an elite warrior to what? A misogynist?”
Almeida gave Whelan a puzzled look. Clearly, he didn’t know whether he’d been insulted. “I got to drinking and doing shit more and more. Only work I know how to do is detail these damn cars. Anymore, I don’t feel good enough to do the detailing myself. Have to get these fuckin’ druggy kids to do it, and if one lasts a week it’s a fuckin’ miracle.”
“Abuse them, too?”
“Only when they need it.”
“You’re a real prince, aren’t you, Rafe?”
“I’m scared, Whelan. I feel like I’m running short on time. I need to score some money. Real money.” Almeida’s face brightened and he looked up. “Hey, what’s Levell going to pay us for this work?”
“That’s between you and Levell.”
“Bastard better pay me same as he’s paying you. I ain’t settlin
g for hind tit no more.”
Whelan gave Almeida a hard stare. “If he pays you what you’re worth, you’ll end up owing him money.”
“Horseshit! I want whatever you have.”
Thoughts of Caitlin and their two sons flashed through Whelan’s mind. “Rafe, you’ll never have what I have.”
Almeida stared at him. He didn’t know what to say.
“My best advice to you is to be where Levell tells you to be. And on time.”
“Yeah, and if I don’t want to go?”
“Levell will send someone, maybe the Man With No Neck. He’ll bring you back dead or alive. Or maybe he’ll send Stensen. Then the alive option is off the table.”
There was genuine fear in Almeida’s eyes. “Stensen? That crazy bastard still alive?”
“Very. I was with him yesterday. So make it a point to be where you’re told to be…and don’t be late.”
Almeida shook his head. “I ain’t got any money, man. How’m I supposed to go anywhere?”
“Levell’s people will be in touch.”
33 Fairview Beach, Virginia
Fairview Beach was a small, isolated town on the banks of the Potomac River. It was almost due south of Washington, D.C. and less than two hours by car. Only a few hundred people lived within the town limits—predominantly young, working-class, Southern Baptist and Republican. The countryside surrounding it was heavily wooded, interrupted only by a few narrow, paved two-lane roads that connected the town to Highway 218, also known as Caledon Road. A number of dirt roads snaked off of it and back into the woods.
At the end of one of these dirt lanes, in the middle of an eighty-acre tract, was a nine thousand square foot, two-story building known as the Lodge. It’s exterior was made of large logs with a brick chimney at either end of the structure. Signs were posted, declaring it private property. Would-be trespassers were cautioned not to enter in five different languages. An ultra sophisticated electronic and video system provided twenty-four hour surveillance of the entire tract. Nothing moved in the eighty acres that wasn’t instantly detected and responded to. The security staff was made up of highly trained former military personnel.
Sleeping Dogs: The Awakening Page 15
