Free Fall

by Kyle Mills

  Without thinking, he opened his mouth to identify himself as an FBI agent again, but then closed it as his arms were forced behind his back and the familiar sound of ratcheting handcuffs assaulted his ears for the second time this week. He really just had to get his fucking job back one of these days.

  He jumped as they pulled him to his feet, startling the five men and one woman surrounding him, and probably almost getting himself shot. They slammed him back down to the ground, this time on his back, as he tried to find Darby Moore in the mental snapshot he’d taken of the people crowding the concourse.

  His concentration was broken when one of the guards started feeling around in his jacket, finally making his way to the pistol he had convinced a sympathetic Maine cop to let him on the plane with.

  “Gun!” he heard the man exclaim excitedly as he pulled it out of its holster and held it up like a prize.

  “But sir,” the young airport security guard said. “I recognize him. This is Mark Beamon. The FBI agent who—”

  “I don’t give a shit, son.” The man sitting on the edge of the desk in front of Beamon spoke in a deep voice that didn’t sound entirely natural. He was apparently in charge and seemed to take his job, and himself, fairly seriously.

  “Nobody runs through one of my security checkpoints with a gun.” He punctuated his words by glancing down at the .357 lying next to him on the desk and within easy reach of Beamon’s recently freed hands.

  “You understand that now, don’t you, Beamon?”

  When he didn’t answer, the man resumed pawing through Beamon’s wallet “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  Everyone had come to a consensus as to Beamon’s identity within three minutes of his arriving in the security office—it hadn’t been a particularly difficult piece of detective work since Beamon had told them his name and handed them his wallet. Following that revelation, the two younger security guards reacted in the only reasonable manner—they had become visibly nervous. They, like Beamon himself, were anxious for him to be gone and to never think about the incident again.

  Their boss, Buckaroo Bob, though, had seen things differently. Beamon had expected him to do the sensible thing and simply turn him loose. When that started to look unlikely, he had assumed that he would call the local FBI office—which, as luck would have it, was run by a decade-long drinking buddy of Beamon’s.

  What he hadn’t expected was for this moron to take it upon himself to carry out some kind of half-assed interrogation. Based on the clock above Ol’ Tex’s head, he’d already been droning for nearly twenty minutes, never moving from his physically elevated position on the desk and never once wavering from the John Wayne slur that must have been meant to be intimidating.

  Beamon blocked out the meaningless words drooling from the man’s mouth and started sorting out where he stood.

  Not coming up with the courier angle faster had been a major screwup. If he actually still had a jurisdiction, Darby Moore was on her way out of it at about five hundred miles per hour right now. And that was a problem. While he had enough contacts and know-how to find just about anyone in the United States, in Asia he doubted he could find his ass with both hands. About all he would be able to do over there was walk around in a pair of Bermuda shorts and look for Caucasian faces. Hell, he’d be lucky not to get shot in a food riot or the endless abortive civil wars that constantly started and fizzled out all over that region.

  Darby, on the other hand, had spent years over there, probably had fifty friends spread out over ten countries Beamon couldn’t even pronounce, and most likely spoke the fucking language.

  “…in a lot of trouble.”

  Beamon looked up at the man hovering above him and screwed up his face. “Are you still talking?” He stood and casually picked up his pistol from the desk, surprising the security guard enough to actually get him to shut his mouth for moment. Beamon flipped open the wheel of the revolver and checked to see that it was still loaded. No one else in the room seemed to be breathing.

  “Sorry to cut this short,” Beamon said, punctuating his words by slamming the wheel back closed. “But I’ve really got to run. If you have any concerns about what happened here tonight, contact the local SAC. Use my name and he’ll take your call.” Beamon holstered the pistol and snatched his wallet off the desk. “If there’s anything else, I should be home in a few days. Have the office here patch you through to me—they have the number.” He could see the relief on the faces of the two younger guards as he passed by them. Roy Rogers’ face was blank.

  “Tommy? It’s Mark,” Beamon said, cupping his hand over the receiver of his cell phone in an effort to drown out some of the airport noise.

  “Mark? Where are you?”

  “L.A. Hey, you still keep in touch with that guy who runs the police over in Thailand?”

  “Somporn Taskin? He’s retired now, but yeah, I still hear from him now and then.”

  “Does he still have juice over there?”

  “I don’t know, things are pretty unstable politically, but if anybody does, it’s him.”

  “There’s a girl flying into Bangkok on Thai flight 775 in about fifteen hours that I’d like to have somebody keep an eye on. Someone good—it’s important.”

  “So you found her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll give Somporn a call. He owes me. I’ll see what he can do.”

  thirty-six

  Mark Beamon flipped open the small cardboard box in his lap and exposed a steaming, Frisbee-sized pizza. He was about to tear off a slice when the background noise that seemed so constant in the L.A. airport faltered and then went completely dead. He looked at the people around him through the thick haze hanging in the lounge that kept the airport’s smokers separate from the decent folk. The faces were all turned up toward the television bolted to the wall and all wore an intense expression of concentration.

  Beamon abandoned the pizza for the moment and followed their gaze to a report just starting on CNN. He’d already seen the meat of it at least five times—everyone had. But that hadn’t reduced its impact. Each time it was aired, the version was slightly modified with additional footage or a minor clarification in chronology as the splicing of the various source tapes was improved.

  It started quietly with David Hallorin speaking to a group of workers at one of his factories. Then the powerful blast muffled by the microphones’ limited capabilities. The picture shook violently, making Hallorin’s image dart around the screen for a few moments, and then stabilized as the cameramen regained their equilibrium.

  Hallorin’s image was enhanced now, encircled by a patch of artificial light that set him apart from the rest of the action and made him stand out against the billowing smoke. Despite himself, Beamon felt a faint tickle in the back of his throat as Hallorin pushed his Secret Service men away and jumped into the crowd shouting orders. It grew to almost a lump when the unnatural ball of light followed Hallorin toward the fire and finally disappeared into the smoke. A moment later Hallorin reappeared with the little girl everyone now knew hadn’t survived.

  It seemed that Roland Peck had been right about being a little behind on stepping up Hallorin’s corporate security capabilities.

  Beamon turned and scanned the faces of the people around him again. They were all wondering the same thing he was—would they have reacted that way? Would they have jumped off that podium and run into the fire, or would they have let the Secret Service drag them out the back, stuff them into a limo, and spirit them away?

  Beamon turned back just in time to see the photograph that was by now branded into the minds of probably half the earth’s population. David Hallorin was on his knees in the parking lot. The dead girl’s head was still in his lap and the smoke was still curling from his manufacturing plant’s open bay door.

  But those dramatic elements weren’t what drew you into the photograph. It was Hallorin’s face—the dazed expression had been captured with precisely the right mix of power
lessness, confusion, and pain. It was a Pulitzer Prize-winning image—a combination of the one that portrayed Nixon leaning against his desk and the one of the naked Vietnamese girl running from her napalmed village.

  When the screen flickered to a room of press people lined up on folding chairs in front of an empty podium, the silence in the airport lounge deepened.

  It seemed that Beamon’s far-fetched theories of campaign conspiracies had been proven wrong. Hallorin had risked his life—his life—to save a single young girl who probably came from one of the families that he was supposed to so disdain. The incident hadn’t changed Beamon’s general impression of the man—Hallorin was an elitist who saw others as failed copies of himself: too lazy, unmotivated, or morally bankrupt to do what be had done in life. But that was just an overinflated ego—something Beamon had been accused of having more than a few times. The question was, would the man on the television above him kill to improve his chances at the presidency? Beamon was no profiler, but his gut said no. The declassification program, the Maine trooper, the impeccably timed job offer had all just been one of those strings of coincidences that sometimes popped up and threw a wrench into things.

  Beamon felt around for the Coke balanced on the arm of his chair, unwilling to take his eyes from the screen as David Hallorin appeared at its edge. He watched the man’s face as he strode confidently toward the lectern, trying to find in it what he had misjudged so badly.

  He was still certain that Tristan Newberry wasn’t killed by a poorly timed flash of PMS and a handy ice axe. In fact, he still tagged the political angle with a fifty percent probability. If the missing FBI file did exist, could the guilty party be someone who had been immortalized in it? Someone who wanted it suppressed? Someone who had known of its existence and been afraid of what Hallorin’s declassification program might turn up?

  Beamon found his Coke just as Hallorin positioned himself behind the microphones on the lectern.

  “Thank you all for coming,” he said, shuffling the papers in front of him. “I’m not here to make a speech, because there is really nothing I can possibly say that will make any difference to those who were injured and to the families of those who were killed in this incident. All I can do is tell you that they will be in my prayers and, I’m sure, the prayers of the American people.”

  Beamon missed his mouth with the straw as Hallorin did a little more paper shuffling.

  “A very preliminary report by a group of independent experts that I hired at my own expense suggests that this was an accident involving the buildup of natural gas in a malfunctioning mechanical system—”

  The press on the screen exploded, as did the people around Beamon in the airport. Hallorin held his hands up, quieting everyone involved. “You’re going to ask me if I’m sure. I’m not. Obviously many of the policies I support would significantly damage the ability of Middle Eastern countries to purchase weapons systems and wage terrorism. If there is a connection to any terrorist organization, it will be found….”

  The hands of the press shot up at Hallorin’s pause.

  “I know you have a lot of questions and I’ll answer a few. I’d ask that you not question me about the cause of the explosion, because I just don’t know any more.” He pointed to a woman in the front

  “Senator Hallorin. How did you feel when you discovered that you couldn’t save the young girl you pulled from the fire?”

  Hallorin looked down at the floor for a few seconds. When he raised his head, he simply pointed to another reporter—this time in the middle of the throng.

  There was a disgusted rumbling around Beamon aimed at the woman who had posed the question. Beamon turned and looked at the people behind him, sucking Coke through his straw. It was the first time since the crash of the economy and the leaking of the Vericomm tapes that he’d heard even a hint of public reaction moving against the press and in favor of a politician.

  “Senator Hallorin,” the second reporter started. “With only ten days left until the election, this morning’s polls show your numbers skyrocketing. Do you have a comment?”

  Hallorin sighed quietly into the microphones in front of him. “This is the kind of image-based decision-making that I’ve been trying to get people away from. Look at what I believe, look at how I intend to run this country, and cast your vote based on that.”

  He pointed to a woman at the back.

  The stock market and the dollar have risen sharply since the incident—”

  Hallorin held his hands up. “Hold it. This is turning into politics, which is exactly what I didn’t want to happen. Whatever the cause, this has been a horrible tragedy—but one that is completely irrelevant to the election. Just because I’m stupid enough to run into a burning building when everyone else is running out, doesn’t mean I’ll make a good president”

  Beamon drew in a breath fast enough to suck some of his drink into his windpipe and start a violent coughing fit He got to his feet and walked out of the smoker’s lounge, struggling to breathe in the relatively clean air outside. A couple more violent coughs more or less cleared his throat and left him standing, dazed, in the middle of the concourse.

  The quote was exact. Precisely the one he’d read from that notepad in Roland Peck’s office before their meeting, a full day before the explosion. The one he’d taken for an economic metaphor.

  Beamon felt the sweat start to break across his forehead. Hallorin had blown up his own manufacturing plant as a publicity stunt He’d run into the chaos, knowing that the fire wouldn’t spread, that the smoke wasn’t noxious, that the building was still structurally sound. He’d killed those people—that little girl—for nothing more than a fucking photo opportunity. And like all things political, his reaction had been carefully considered and written out for him beforehand.

  Beamon pulled out his cell phone and dialed Roland Peck’s home number. It rang a couple of times before Peck’s irritating voice came on the line.

  “Hello?”

  “Roland. Mark Beamon. I’ve decided not to take your job offer.”

  “Marie, let’s ta—”

  Beamon pressed the OFF button on the phone and stuffed it back in his jacket.

  Thirty-seven

  “C’mon, Darby,” Sam said, still trying to mask the worried expression he’d had since she arrived. He took a few more steps away from the trees and out onto the white sand. “Hello!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Can anybody hear me?”

  There was no answer, just the soft breeze and the quiet slosh of the waves as they gently folded over one another behind him. Darby adjusted her position slightly so that she could see through a hole in the dense foliage, mindful of the deadly snakes that liked to snooze in the leaves that she was standing on. As her friend had promised, the beach was deserted.

  The last time she’d been there—two or so years ago—it had been packed with young Europeans and Americans sunbathing on the soft sand, drinking cheap beer in open-air bars, and climbing the limestone monoliths that littered this part of southern Thailand.

  Darby sidestepped again, putting herself in a narrow band of sunlight that burned into her. It was only seven in the morning, but the heat was already nearly unbearable, with humidity levels that kept everything just slightly damp all the time.

  Sam motioned dramatically up the beach in the direction of a particularly impressive orange-brown cliff face that jutted some six hundred feet into the blue sky. “I’m telling you, Darby, I haven’t seen a single square inch of Caucasian skin in two months. Shit, even the Thais don’t come here anymore. No tourists means no money, and no money means you can’t get here.”

  Darby kept her eyes moving along the shoreline but knew he was right. The normal clutter of long-tailed boats and their loud, pushy captains was completely gone. If Sam hadn’t come to get her in his own boat, it would have taken her nine hours of bushwhacking through snake-infested jungles and over sheer cliffs to get there. It was a remote corner of the world made livable only by high-
tech communications and transportation—two things that had completely broken down along with everything else in Asia. Railei Beach had, once again, become the middle of nowhere and a perfect place to hide.

  “It’s anarchy, Darb. There’s no one in control.” Sam pointed behind her in the direction of a small enclave of houses set up on stilts. “If anyone was, they’d have probably nationalized my house by now. Come on, let’s go. You can tell me what the hell’s going on on the way.”

  The plan that had seemed so right sitting in Wyoming wasn’t as perfect now that she was in Thailand. The relief she’d expected to feel when she arrived at the nearly empty Phuket Thailand airport hadn’t materialized. The normally friendly Thais seemed dangerous now, their eyes lingering on her longer than they should, wondering who she was and what she was doing in a country that had been all but abandoned—and in their minds destroyed—by the West It really was chaos. Buses didn’t run anymore, traffic drove over sidewalks and median strips unchallenged. Groups of unemployed men stood on street corners looking for opportunities. Any opportunities.

  The customs agent who cleared her and her gear had lingered for almost a minute over her passport, the suspicion obvious on his face. After only about twenty seconds she’d wanted to break and run. But to where? Back to the safety of the States? It had turned out that all he’d wanted was ten American dollars. She’d parted with it grudgingly because she had no other option. Her funds were dwindling quickly.

  She’d hoped that getting out of the immediate path of the men who were so efficiently tracking her would clear her mind, give her time to work things out But it hadn’t. She still felt like everything was out of control. Her normally unshakable calm had completely failed her in the face of the unfamiliarity of it all. She’d come to terms with the mountains trying to kill her long ago. It was just the balance of things; there was no malice involved. But this was something completely different. She felt herself getting paranoid.