The Englishman turned. “‘Ere … wot's your fuckin' problem, mate …?”
“OSI,” I said. I held my shield in his face. I could tell his eyes were having trouble focusing. My mind went blank at this point. Where to from here? My reflexes were aware, even if my brain wasn't, that someone had to do something before two teams of trained killers quite possibly put that training into practice on each other.
“Yeah… and…?” One of his buddies pushed forward into my space as I let his friend's wrist go.
“We've been looking for some tourists — civilians — who took a Humvee for a joyride,” I improvised. “Couldn't help but catch your accents.”
“Yeah? And just where were these tourists from?”
“New Zealand,” I said.
“ New-fuckin'-Zealand? Can't you tell a fuckin' Englishman when you hear one, Mr. Plod?”
“Watch your language, buddy,” I said. “Ladies present.” In fact, the two ladies had vacated the area. I also noticed that the band had stopped and that several SOC Neanderthals were now standing behind me, shoulders interlocked, in case I called for backup.
“This is bullshit, boss,” said one of the three Brits, a short guy with no lips and a busted-up nose, the only one of the trio aware that the attention of the whole bar was fixed on our little show. “The music's fucked and the buggers don't even have football up on the telly. More fuckin' hockey. C'mon. It's time to fuck off out of here anyway…”
I glanced over my shoulder at one of the aforementioned “tellys.” Ice hockey was playing. Ice hockey. Canadian ice hockey. What was wrong with the NFL? Hell, I'd even settle for croquet over Canadian ice hockey. Maybe the guy had a point. Maybe I should leave, too.
The three Englishmen pushed past with a drunken swagger. I could ignore attitude much easier than a swinging pool cue. I kept an eye on the door to make sure no one else followed them out. No one did.
“Hey, nicely done,” said one of the SOC guys who'd backed me up.
There was something familiar about the guy's face. I knew him from somewhere. As I was trying to sort through the Identi-Kit pictures in my head, he said, “Hey — it's Vin. Vin Cooper, right?”
I still couldn't make the connection.
“Drew McNaught,” he said. “Remember?”
The dime dropped. “Yeah, Drew… Didn't recognize you there for a second… How ya doin', buddy!”
“It is you!” McNaught and I shook hands. “Goddamn it. Long time, Vin. What you doin' round these parts, brother?”
I told him about OSI. He told me he was instructing static line parachute jumps.
We got past the small talk and current affairs — the events in San Francisco — and moved on to old times. McNaught and I had been in combat together back when I did completely stupid things. As part of Operation Allied Force, we'd jumped onto a hill in Kosovo to plant an aircraft navigation beacon so that our airmen would be able to pin the tail on the donkey. Trouble began the moment we landed. The weather unex pectedly closed in and our extraction was canceled. Also, a platoon-sized band of Serb militiamen saw us put down and tried to outflank us. From the way they moved, we guessed they were farm boys and were most probably out to settle old scores with their neighbors, but that didn't make their bullets any less lethal. They outnumbered us seven to one, and took potshots at us as we retreated toward UN ground, severely wounding one of our guys. McNaught was the ranking non-com on that mission, a hard and fearless man. On the second night of our retreat, he crept into their bivouac and killed five of them, taking their heads, without being discovered. The Serbs broke off the engagement that morning. Perhaps they no longer liked the odds.
On a more personal level, McNaught was also the father of twins and cried in movies, if my memory served me correctly. But that was a long time ago and maybe he'd toughened up. He introduced his buddy Marco. I shook the guy's hand, which was calloused, and felt like a brick in my palm.
The band hung around till about eleven p.m. and so did McNaught, Marco, and I. A couple of interesting facts emerged by about my sixth or seventh single malt. The first of which — and perhaps the most surprising — was that McNaught had divorced and come out of the closet, and that he and Marco were on a date. The other interesting thing I learned was that one of the Limeys I'd shown the front door to earlier was Staff Sergeant Chris Butler, the same man who'd possibly helped Master Sergeant Ruben Wright on his one-way ride to the refrigerator.
EIGHTEEN
Early the following morning, I found myself beside an area the size of a basketball court outlined with yellow crime-scene tape. Colonel Selwyn didn't end up making the trip. Her son had come down with something, and so company was limited to a map and a hand held GPS. It was reasonably open ground peppered here and there with scrub and low trees, surrounded on three sides with thick pine forest and a cleared hill on the fourth. The air was thick with the smell of pine sap, wet grass, and decaying peat. It might once have been a dump but nature was doing a reasonable job of reclaiming it. I put on the sterile over-boots so that I could walk around the scene without introducing anything new to it, though my caution was probably unnecessary; in the open air, new material was being brought into the site and taken away constantly by the wind and insects. Proving my point, a couple of squirrels scampered about, picking up bits of foliage.
I ducked under the tape. I had no idea what I was looking for. Maybe the missing knife. Or maybe it was just to let Ruben's ghost know that I was on the case. This was not a Road Runner cartoon and so there was no depression in the ground where my former squadron buddy had come to rest, although there was a white spray-painted outline on the grass around a small bush that had been flattened, its thin green trunk snapped off at ground level. Presumably it had done its best to break Wrong Way's fall. Its best hadn't been near good enough.
Two hours later, I'd found nothing inside the tape, but I did firm on my theory that if the knife had come down here, it wouldn't have been just lying around waiting to be picked up. The earth was soft and loamy. The knife would certainly have kept going, burying itself well over the hilt and pulling the dirt in behind it. The sun was out, but the air was cool and still smelled of rain. I had no pressing engagements so I began to walk the area outside the tape. I needed the exercise. I hadn't been able to do my usual morning run for over a week. And also, the walk gave me time to think. Colonel Selwyn was right, there really was only one possible theory that fit the facts we had: Wright had been cut out of his chute. It couldn't have happened in the plane on the climb to the drop zone. It would have happened on the way down. Special Forces, especially SAS and CCTs, do a lot of aerial work — they are highly adept parachutists. The sort of maneuver required in midair of the assailant would have been difficult, but not impossible. The unanswered question was whether it was murder or an unfortunate accident. Perhaps there'd been a collision. It had been a night jump. Maybe Wrong Way had just been plain unlucky. But if that's what had happened, why would the men who jumped with him hide the truth?
More than a hundred and fifty feet from the taped area, I scuffed my shoe over a tuft of grass and something caught my attention. It caught my attention on account of it was red where everything else around it was green. I pulled an evidence bag from my pocket and used it as a glove to remove the object. It was a sliver of plastic. If this was a supermarket parking lot, I'd have said it was possibly part of the remains of some housewife's brake light. Maybe it was nothing, but, this close to a crime scene, maybe it was something. A tearing sound, far overhead, distracted me. I knew that sound.