by Jeff Carson
“Screw the rail yard—it won’t tell us anything. The nearest place they have a customs office and off-load anything from a rail car is in Grand Junction. I know a guy.”
Wolf looked over at Luke. Her eyes were closed, and Wolf wondered whether she really was awake.
“Take a right on Fifth,” she said.
Wolf cruised for another block and followed her instructions, taking a right on Fifth Street. “Now what?”
“Go to the truck yard at the end and park in the visitor lot. I’m going to rest my eyes.”
Wolf saw the entrance to the truck yard.
“It’s a half-block away,” Wolf said.
“Mmmhmm.”
A few seconds later he parked in front of a low white building and looked over at Luke.
She opened her eyes and leaned forward with a groan.
Wolf shook his head. “Stay here. I’ll go inside. Then we have to get you back to the hospital.”
She smiled and opened the door.
Wolf leaned over and got ready to stop her from toppling out onto the black top, but she shook her head slightly and seemed to come alive. She slid off the seat, landed, and shut the door in a quick move.
Wolf watched through the window as she stretched her arms over her head, still waiting for her to crumple unconscious to the ground. After a few seconds, and an expectant look from Luke, he got out of his own door.
The parking lot smelled like tar and truck exhaust, and the black asphalt radiated heat up the pant legs of his jeans. Semi-truck engines rumbled beyond a chain-link fence where a line of trailers were backed up to a long warehouse with gaping rollup doors.
Luke walked across the lot, pulled open the entrance door, and held it open for Wolf. They walked into a cool office space that had four messy desks with three women and a man sitting behind them. “Free Bird” came out of an old boom box that sat on top of a file cabinet against the wall. Above it was a Hang in There cat poster. It smelled like air freshener and grease.
A large woman with curly brown hair looked up and smiled wide. “What the hell you doin’ here, darlin’?”
Luke smiled and walked up to the woman. They embraced in a long hug and then parted.
“Mel, this is … Sheriff Wolf.”
Mel eyed Wolf and then gave Luke a glance, and then Luke’s face reddened.
“We’re working a case together,” Luke added.
“Oh, okay. I thought you two were—”
“Can I talk to Bob, please?” Luke asked, glaring at Mel.
Mel smirked and sat down. “He’s in the back.”
Luke walked through the office, nodding at a skinny guy with glasses who stared at her after she walked by. She opened a wood door, uncorking a cacophony of sounds, and walked through.
Wolf followed her into a warehouse that was hot and full of the reverberating beeps of forklifts and the gurgle of diesel engines, which belched fumes straight into the high interior while industrial-sized fans swiveled and attempted to blow them back out.
Luke walked straight to a glass enclosure along the back wall. Inside sat two men, both pecking on dirty desktop computers.
“Kristen! What the hell are you doing here?” one of them said, standing up from behind his desk.
“Hey, Bob. How are you?”
The man beamed and pulled up his bifocal glasses, revealing blue eyes that were bloodshot. He ran a hand over his gray Elvis hairdo, wiped it on his greasy blue overalls, then extended it to Luke.
Luke shook her head and gave him a hug. The man closed his eyes and tilted his head into her hair, putting a lot of tenderness into the embrace, and then they parted.
“Bob,” she said, “this is Sheriff Wolf of Sluice County.”
Wolf took the man’s hand. It was slick with grease and scratchy with calluses.
“David,” Luke said, “this is a good friend of the family’s.”
“So, how’s your mother doing?” Bob asked.
“She’s … she’s doing okay,” Luke said. “Listen. Can you help me with this?”
Luke set the RF ID tag on his desk.
Bob pulled his glasses down off his head and looked at the wafer-like piece of plastic; then he looked up at Luke. “Help, how?”
“Can you read it?” Luke asked.
“This is a GAV active ID tag. It’s battery operated, so we’ll need the internal battery to be juiced in order to read it. And, of course, you need a proper scanner.” He looked up at Luke and didn’t blink. “And, of course, I have one.”
“My hero,” Luke said with a straight face.
“What’s this from?” Bob asked.
“A shipping container,” Luke said. “We need to know where it came from. When. Who. Etcetera.”
Bob walked past them and out of the office into the warehouse. “Come,” he said.
Wolf and Luke followed him across the smooth concrete floor and between five-tier metal shelves. Forklifts whirred across aisles in front of them with flashing lights, men shouted, and the same classic rock station as out in the front office blared from overhead speakers.
“Brad!” Bob yelled over the noise.
A huge guy with a hard hat and a flannel shirt looked up from a clipboard.
Bob walked up with the RF ID tag in hand and held it out to him. The big man pulled a scanner gun from his hip and scanned it, then looked down at the display on the back of the device.
Bob pulled out a pen and tiny notebook from his breast pocket, then stepped close to the other man and scribbled a note.
“Thanks.” Bob walked away, and Wolf and Luke followed him all the way back to the office.
“Apparently the battery still had juice.” Bob sat back down in his chair with a grunt and pulled himself against the desk. He tapped the grease-laden keyboard for a few seconds, then clicked the mouse and looked up at Luke. “You talk to him lately?” he asked, apparently waiting for the computer to react to a command.
Luke scoffed in response, and this seemed to be an expected answer for Bob, because he nodded once and looked back at the screen.
A few seconds later, Bob twisted the monitor toward them, sending a pencil onto the floor. “There we have it.”
Luke bent down and looked at the green typeface on the screen. “What are we looking at here?”
Bob pointed at the screen. “There’s the origin, there’s the contents, there’s the destination.”
“Origin, Bagram Air Base,” Luke said, reading the screen. “Afghanistan. Contents, Combat Dry Goods? Destination, Grand Junction, Colorado.”
Luke and Wolf exchanged glances.
Bob pointed again. “Looks like it was air freighted out of Bagram, then shipped ocean to Tacoma, Washington. Then railed to Grand Junction. Then … then, that’s it, I guess. No other information.”
Wolf bent down and pointed at the screen. “Here. Here’s what we need.”
He was pointing at a single line. It said, World Cargo Airlines, Flight Number 638.
Chapter 42
Wolf and Luke drove to the FBI field office and parked next to Wolf’s vehicle. He eyed the SUV as they got out, calculating that it had been sitting in the parking lot for two nights unattended, except for the few minutes he’d dug inside of it the previous night. There were no parking tickets and no signs of vandalism. Not that he’d expected any. As for his Toyota pickup truck, he had basically abandoned that vehicle.
“What’s wrong?” Luke asked.
“Nothing,” Wolf said, turning away from his SUV. “Just thinking about my truck at the Garfield County Sheriff’s Department.”
“Oh yeah, your truck. I think they’ll take care of it. You want me to … call someone?”
Wolf shrugged noncommittally. “I’ll figure it out.” Figure out something that didn’t involve a few hundred bucks for a tow back to Rocky Points, he thought.
They walked to the front entrance and Luke scanned an ID card. The door clicked open, and they walked along the terrazzo floor to the elevators, and p
ushed the button.
Next to the silver elevator doors was a sign listing all the tenant businesses of the building. There was an insurance company, a construction company, and a law firm.
“Kind of strange to see a field office inside here,” Wolf said.
“Yeah, not exactly Chicago,” she said.
They rode to the second floor, and Wolf followed Luke down the hallway to the pair of unmarked wooden doors. She walked in and approached the reception desk.
The receptionist looked up over her glasses and fixed a suspicious eye on Wolf.
“Gwen,” Luke said, passing without slowing.
Wolf kept on her heels and tapped the counter on the way by. “Gwen,” he said.
Luke and Wolf entered into a large common office area. A few agents sat behind desks on phones or pecked at keyboards. It looked more subdued that afternoon compared to the morning before.
“How many agents are stationed here?” he asked.
“We’ve got nine.” She looked around; only four other agents were in the room. “This is one of those field offices that will be first on the chopping blocks if funding gets cut.”
“Then it’s back to Chicago for you?” Wolf asked.
Luke shook her head. “Anywhere but Chicago.”
Luke stopped at her desk and sat down, and then dug into her drawer and pulled out a bottle of aspirin and took two. She produced a bottle of water from the same drawer, took a sip, and then held up both to Wolf.
Wolf raised his eyebrows and took them.
“Take a seat,” she said. “I’ll check out World Cargo.”
Luke fired up her computer and got onto the internet; a few seconds later she pointed at the screen.
“There we go,” she said, and she picked up the desk phone and dialed a number.
Wolf sat back in the chair and glanced around the office. He saw one man glare over at them, and another stare longingly at Luke, until he realized that Wolf had caught him. Wolf wondered how aware she was of these types of looks that followed her wherever she went.
The glaring guy, not the staring guy, stood up and sauntered over. “Hey, Luke. What you got shakin’?”
Luke tucked the phone against her shoulder and tapped the keyboard. “Hi, this is Special Agent Kristen Luke with the FBI, I need to …”
“I’m Special Agent Upton.” The man turned to Wolf unfazed by Luke’s clear snubbing and held out a hand.
Wolf shook it. “Sheriff David Wolf, Sluice County.”
Upton raised his eyebrows, pulled down the corners of his mouth, and then appraised Wolf’s shoulder sling for a moment. Then he looked at Luke, who was now deep in a conversation on the phone, and turned around and walked back to his desk.
Wolf watched as the agent picked up the desk phone and looked at Luke through the corner of his eye. He mumbled something into the phone and then hung it up.
Luke picked up a pen, clearly excited about what she was hearing. “Captain, yes, okay. Clark. And can I have his address of residence again, please? Thanks.”
A few seconds later she ended the phone call and looked up at Wolf. “Captain Ryan Clark. He’s our guy.”
“What’d they say?”
She looked down at her notes. “World Cargo Airlines, flight 638 was a 747 400 that originated from Denver. The first officer on board was from Joplin, Missouri. The onboard mechanic, from Helena, Montana, and the captain?” She looked up at Wolf. “The captain was Ryan Clark, of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. He’s been a pilot for World Cargo for eleven years.”
Wolf sat back and stared into nothing. “Let’s check him out.”
Luke nodded and clicked the computer mouse a few times, then tapped the keyboard.
A few seconds later a voice came from behind Wolf. “Special Agent Luke.”
Luke kept her eyes on the computer screen. “Sir.”
Wolf turned around and saw a short man with black hair and a tan complexion glaring at Luke. He flicked a glance at Wolf but didn’t offer a hand or an introduction.
“I need to talk to you,” the man said.
Luke nodded, clicked a few more buttons, and then finally looked up. “Sir, we are kind of in the middle—”
“Now,” he said, and he walked away down the hall at the end of the room.
Luke rolled her eyes and looked at Wolf; then she looked over at Special Agent Upton, who was now wearing a satisfied expression, staring at his own computer screen instead of them.
Luke grabbed the monitor in her hands and twisted it ninety degrees so Wolf could see it.
“There he is,” she said quietly. Then she got up and walked away.
Wolf leaned forward and studied the screen, starting when he saw the picture. It was the man he’d shot in the head at the campfire. The image was unmistakable. Clark had closely cut light-blond hair with pale skin, and there were moles underneath his mouth.
Captain Ryan Clark had four addresses listed for his previous residences. The first was a Carbondale, Colorado, address, a few miles down the highway toward Aspen. The second was Delta, Colorado. Delta. The third was an address in Denver, and the fourth was Glenwood Springs, Colorado—the current address that Luke had just written down on her piece of paper.
The next few lines were interesting. Apparently, he had changed his name in high school, while he was in Delta, Colorado. The next line gave an explanation. His parents were deceased, both killed in an automobile accident, and he had moved to a foster home when he was twelve years old. While he was there, he’d changed his name from his original name of Jenson to Clark, taking the name of his foster parents.
Wolf stopped reading and looked up.
Special Agent Upton had stood up from his desk and was staring again in Wolf’s direction.
Wolf straightened and sat back, meeting his gaze.
Upton sat back down slowly, giving Wolf a courteous nod.
Wolf was contemplating ignoring the man, going to talk to him, or waiting for Luke, when she arrived and sat back down.
“Sorry,” she said and pulled her chair forward.
“No worries,” Wolf said, finally peeling his eyes off Upton. “Everything okay?”
“Good as they’ll ever be.”
Wolf pointed at the screen. “Captain Clark. Originally from Carbondale; his parents were killed in a car crash. He went into a foster home at age twelve, in Delta, Colorado, where he changed his last name from Jenson to Clark. Moved to Denver for thirteen years, and just recently he’s moved to Glenwood Springs.”
Luke exhaled and clicked a few buttons. She minimized Captain Clark’s window and Wade Jeffries’s file, complete with picture, flashed up on the screen.
“Look here,” Luke said. “Wade Jeffries and Ryan Clark went to the same high school in Delta.”
Wolf nodded. “That’s the connection. That’s how the EOD team were helped out of Afghanistan. The EOD team gets the gold and fakes their deaths, holes up in a container, and the pilot smuggles them out.”
“How could a pilot do that? He just flies the plane, right?”
“He would have had someone in on it,” Wolf said. “Someone at the air base. Probably a loadmaster … someone who would be able to put the container on, change the documents. I don’t know the logistics, but this wouldn’t be an impossible task. Difficult, but not impossible.” Wolf stared out the windows of the big room.
“What is it?” Luke asked.
Wolf sat thinking for another few seconds.
“What?” Luke slapped him on the knee.
“I’m just trying to reconcile the math. There were four members of the EOD team that went missing—Your brother, Chad Hartley, Marcus Quinn, and Wade Jeffries. Jack and I saw Wade Jeffries on the trail and then later heard the two rifle shots that killed him. Our airline captain Ryan Clark was at our campfire, and two men were with him up on the mountain.”
She frowned. “Yes. So … it could have been the rest of the EOD team. Maybe there were three men after you. Maybe one of them dropped ba
ck before reaching the parking lot, leaving two in a shootout with your son. The math works.”
Wolf said nothing.
“You would have been chased by my brother,” Luke said, “Chad Hartley, and Marcus Quinn, after they already left Wade Jeffries dead on the trail.” She stared into space. “Which means my brother must have killed off Hartley and Quinn later on, leaving Hartley’s body inside the cabin and Quinn inside the CHU.”
Wolf stared for another beat and shook his head. “But … you saw those bodies. How long do you think they had been there?”
Luke tilted her head. “Couple days I would think. The insects had set in pretty good on Hartley’s body inside that cabin. Then there was Wade’s body, who looked like he’d been shot two nights ago. Quinn’s body? Hard to say.”
“Hard to say,” Wolf said. “But certainly none of those men were killed this morning, right?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I’m not sure I’m following.”
“I’m thinking about the guy Jack shot, and the slack arm of the guy chasing me last night. And the faster guy with him. Your brother’s fingerprints were at your house. So who was the other guy?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yeah. You’re right.” She pulled out her phone and stabbed at the screen. Putting it to her ear, she said, “Hey, it’s me. You guys have a preliminary time of death on those three bodies up there?”
She waited, pulling her eyebrows together as she listened. “Okay. Thanks.” Hanging up and pocketing her phone, she said, “Our forensics lead is saying he’s not sure the exact TOD for the three bodies up there. But he is saying it’s at least forty-eight hours.”
Wolf nodded. “So … we’re missing someone.”
“Who?”
“That’s the question,” Wolf said. “Let’s go to Clark’s, see what we can find at our airline captain’s place. We’ll need a team.”
They both looked in Upton’s direction, then back at each other.
“I’ll call Brookhart,” Luke said. “And I’ll see where Danny is.”
Chapter 43
“What I don’t get is the way the state keeps giving money to expand the forces, but when it comes to money to improve the facilities we have in place, they don’t know what the hell is going on.”
