Chalk’s phone skirled a bagpipe riff from Scotland the Brave. He had switched it over to a cloaked satellite network. The cellular coverage out in the Chesapeake was anemic.
This call was welcome. Chalk was suffering from a news blackout. He had no idea what the clients were actually doing right now. Yusef was sleeping with his forebears, so he was useless for further intel.
Chalk answered. “Go.”
A weary man spoke up on the other end of the line. “Mr. Chalk. Everything good?”
Chalk’s contact on his B-Team was Farron MacDonald. MacDonald knew how to send a storm of bullets downrange. Deft work was not his long suit unless he was on a surfboard.
“Sit-rep.” Chalk had no time for shit-chat with this stoner. News was all he wanted.
MacDonald got to it. “Pura vida, my man. Okay, so late last night we located the pilot of an airplane chartered by our boy, Chase.” MacDonald let the news sink in.
Chalk shook his head in admiration. Of course. Dick Blackshaw had bought time for electroplating the lead dummies by using a plane instead of a truck to move more than two tons of gold, and get to his rendezvous early. So simple.
“And? What else? Spit it!”
MacDonald was making Chalk work for his news. That meant Chalk was losing MacDonald’s respect. The employee sensed his boss was in a tight spot and was enjoying making him wriggle. Chalk would tune him up properly when he got through this. Smug little MacPrick. And God damn Dick Blackshaw for good measure.
“The pilot’s been detained,” said MacDonald.
“How many hours?” Chalk knew how Farron MacDonald’s interrogations worked. He could assess the likelihood of getting useful intel just from the amount of time his agent had his hands on the flyboy.
“Two hours. We really just got rolling.”
“Two bloody hours? You’re slipping, Farron. Is this guy a merc? Is he Company? What makes him so tough?”
“He was in a mondo bad way when we recovered him.”
“I don’t follow.”
To hear better, Chalk climbed down out of the wind-whistling cupola into the watch room below where Slagget, Clynch and Gavin slouched and smoked.
MacDonald explained. “What I mean is, we weren’t the first to chat with him. Somebody else is, like, interested in what he knows. Really interested.”
Chalk’s blood thinned a little. This was the first actual sign of the parties of the first and second part: the clients in the deal. Somehow, they already knew the deal was FUBAR, and they weren’t waiting around for him to fix it. They hadn’t even called to reason with him. Things were much worse than he imagined. Senator Morgan had probably ratted him out, and said he’d gone rogue with no intent to follow through brokering the exchange. It’s how he would have played it. That’d just about guarantee he would be collateral damage in this deal.
Chalk turned his back to the men and went sotto voce. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“What I’m saying is, when we tracked this guy down he was in custody of another group. In a motel room in Wilkes-Barre.”
Fucking Wilkes-Barre? Chalk could not believe this. The clients were out ahead of Right Way. How much they knew now was anybody’s guess. He asked, “How’d that go down?”
MacDonald tried to sound chagrined, but his pleasure beamed across the connection. “Things got a little wet, no lie. We dressed out like Homeland Security on an interdiction assignment. Turns out the other folks had been working on the pilot for a while already. But hey, we shook ’em loose before they snuffed him. So that’s cool, right?”
“Tally me bananas.”
“Yeah. Not so hot there. Baker’s gone. A round in the neck.”
Damn neck wounds. Never good.
MacDonald was still talking. “Oh, and Duncan took one in the foot. Should have seen him hopping around bleeding like an idiot. It was superfuckinggay. He’ll make it through fine, but no way he’s coming back to work all gimped up.”
“The other side. Cuantos?”
“We figure there were nine to start. Down to six or seven now. Maybe a couple walking wounded.”
“Okay, but where’d they go? The other guys.”
“They boogied into the woods behind the motel. I think they had wheels stashed there. Like an escape route. Real pros. Could be anywhere. Like I said, still no way to know what they got out of the pilot. Maybe nada.”
On the contrary, Chalk now had to assume that the clients could show up at any moment. And they’d be packing serious firepower. He had to get left of this situation ASAP. Good thing he had cleared most of his team off Smith Island proper. Tug Parnell was still at the Harris’s to watch in case Blackshaw’s brat showed. Chalk briefly debated going back for him. To hell with Parnell! LuAnna was the key.
Now they were bunkered in a hundred-year-old lighthouse adobed in gull guano. Waves shook the tower as if it might fall into the soup any second. At least there were no marsh monkeys with shotguns loitering for a chance to bust a load of double-ought up his butt-crack.
Chalk ordered, “I want that pilot singing, and I mean yesterday.”
“Right. Cool. Thing is, Mr. Chalk, we’ve spent the last two hours trying to keep Sky Captain alive and out of the World of Tomorrow. The work the others did on him was real crude. I think they were seriously cranking on him around the time we got there. Dialed up the heat way bad. Then there was our rescue. Mister Pilot was collateral in that. Not good. Bad scenics.”
“You plugged the pilot? The pilot we need to talk to?” Chalk was going white with anger.
“Super sorry. Yeah, like I said, the whole thing went down wet and dirty, sir. Could’ve been anybody’s bullet. Da fuh-shiznit was flying righteous.”
“Prognosis?”
MacDonald said, “See, that’s the problem. It’s abdominal. Entrance, lower left quadrant. Of course the round tumbled and fragmented inside him. A piece exited through the top of his right shoulder. You believe that? We got him in a safe house and we’re doing everything we can. Truth is, he’s leaking like a sieve inside. We’ve got large-bore lines pumping Ringer’s like crazy.”
“For Christ’s sake! He going to live?”
“Long enough. My word on that.”
“Dammit, Farron! You make him sing pretty.”
“Aye-aye, sir. Roger wilco.”
A thought struck Chalk. He had to ask. “Are you damn certain that Tom Chase wasn’t there? Got any surplus dead white guys laying around?”
“Except for Baker, no. Both enemy stiffs are Arab ethnics. One of them called for his ma-bird in Shirazi Farsi by the sound of it. And no, dude, he kicked before we could squeeze him. I know me and the whole B-team have a jinormous order of regret about that one.”
Chalk would not be placated with anybody’s regret just now. “Work the hell out of that pilot. I want every scrap of intel in his brain even if you have to hold a séance. You hear me?”
“We’re on it, Your Chalkness.”
Chalk thought for a moment. Farsi. Iranians. The ones trying to buy the bomb. “Say, Farron?”
“Mr. B?”
“About Duncan. That foot of his. You say he’s permanently benched?”
“Never rumba again, sir.”
“Too bad. Okay, Farron I want you to retire Duncan. Pension him off. Understood?”