So why was he on edge? Over the years he had calmly pulled more than his fair share of stakeout and surveillance assignments. He should be sitting back waiting for events to unfold, not prowling restlessly back and forth under the camouflage netting. Like a spasm the thought hit him that he had no business putting himself in potential danger, not with Sara in a war zone. What if Patrick lost both parents in the line of duty?
What in the hell had he been thinking? he asked himself angrily.
The door to the four-by-four opened. Leo eased himself out and handed Kerney a headset. “Time to plug in. Fowler is in position.”
“Let’s hope we’re not wasting our time.”
Beyond the landing strip headlights flashed into view and dipped out of sight.
“I don’t think we are,” Leo said.
Walt Shaw made a hard turn at the fence line, sped to the gate at the foot of Chinaman Hills, and ground the van to a stop. Buster jumped out to open the gate and Shaw went with him, shining the beam of a flashlight on the rutted dirt road. The recent rain had washed away all the old tracks and there was no fresh sign that any vehicles, horses, or people had passed by.
Shaw gunned the van through the gate and Buster had to pull himself inside on the run.
“We’re gonna be way too early,” he said, trying to make small talk. He’d never seen Shaw so uptight.
“Not tonight.” Shaw downshifted as the van bounced through a sandy trough in the road.
Buster put his hand on the dashboard to brace himself as the van jitterbugged down the road. Through the windshield he could see the flashing warning lights of the plane as it came over the Big Hatchet Mountains.
Shaw stopped at the end of the eighteen-hundred-foot dirt strip and blinked the headlights. The plane banked, descended, and engine noise filled the night air. It touched down, taxied to a stop, and the pilot cut the engine. Buster walked to the cargo door and cranked the latch. The hold was empty.
“There’s nothing here.” Befuddled, Buster turned and looked at Shaw.
Shaw laughed in his face and shot him twice in the chest at close range.
Through his night vision goggles Kerney watched Buster go down. In his headset he heard Fowler swear as Shaw picked up Martinez and dumped him in the airplane.
“Everybody go, go, go,” Leo yelled to the teams. “Lights and sirens.” He ground gears, jumped the four-by-four out of the arroyo, and hit the gas.
Engines revved and roared in concert with the slow thud of chopper rotors and first whine of the airplane propeller cranking up. Sirens wailed, adding to the din. Emergency lights splintered the darkness. For an instant Shaw stood frozen in the glare of the van as the backwash from the propeller rippled over him.
“I’ve got a head shot on the shooter,” Fowler said.
“No, disable the plane,” Kerney said.
“Ten-four,” Fowler replied.
Kerney counted seconds as he watched Shaw scramble into the open cargo hold. The plane swung around for takeoff, but before it could gather speed, Fowler put three rounds in the engine and two in the front landing-gear tire. The engine sputtered, died, and the plane tipped forward. Shaw and the pilot bailed out and ran for the van.
Behind Kerney the chopper went airborne, its floodlight washing over the four-by-four. The teams from Chinaman Hills and the windmill bore down on the landing strip. By the time Shaw and the pilot were in the van and moving, they were boxed in.
Leo skidded to a stop on the landing strip. Kerney rolled out the passenger door, crouched behind it, and leveled his weapon at the van windshield.
Under similar cover Leo grabbed the radio microphone and hit the PA switch. His voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Throw out the weapon, turn off the engine, drop the keys on the ground, and exit the vehicle with your hands clasped behind your heads. Do it now.”
Slowly the men complied, and Leo put them through a by-the-book felony takedown. Surrounded by officers, they were cuffed and pulled into a sitting position. While Leo checked the pilot’s ID, Kerney went to the airplane and took a look at Buster Martinez. He was facedown, leaking blood, and very dead.
He walked over to Shaw, hunkered down, and looked him in the eyes. “Six officers will testify that they saw you murder Buster Martinez in cold blood,” he said. “I seriously doubt any lawyer could mount a defense against such overwhelming evidence. Want to tell me what this was all about?”
Chapter Fifteen
Walt Shaw wasn’t talking, so Kerney decided to take a crack at the pilot of the airplane, Craig Gilmore. He walked Gilmore to Leo’s unit in handcuffs and sat with him in the backseat.
A man in his fifties, soft in the face with a dimpled chin, Gilmore looked like the arrest had hit him hard.
“Is that your airplane?” Kerney asked.
Gilmore looked out the window at the disabled aircraft. “Yeah, I bought it ten years ago when business was good.”
“What kind of business is that?” Kerney asked.
“I own a regional wholesale cigarette and tobacco company in El Paso. But I almost lost everything when the tech stock bubble burst in 2000. I took a real beating.”
“How do you know Shaw?”
“We were in the navy together and stayed in touch over the years. I brought him in on the deal.”
“When did you partner up with Shaw?”
“Four years ago. It was either that or declare bankruptcy.”
“Tell me how your scheme works,” Kerney asked.
“It’s real simple,” Gilmore replied. “I forge documents showing that American-made cigarettes have been exported, and then sell them at cut-rate prices to several distributors in New Mexico and Arizona. Because custom and state taxes aren’t levied, we make a substantial profit on each pack.”
“How much profit?”
“It depends on the state, and we split it sixty-forty with the distributors. In New Mexico our cut is fifty-five cents a pack, and in Arizona it’s seventy cents.”
“How many packs have you sold?”
“Eight million, more or less.”
Kerney did a quick mental calculation. Gilmore and Shaw had each cleared seven figures from the scheme. “Domestic cigarettes are sold with state excise stamps,” Kerney said. “How do you get around that?”
Gilmore leaned forward to ease the pressure of the handcuffs that ground into his wrists against the seat back. “The local distributors mix the unstamped stock in with the taxed goods and charge full price to the retailer. Nobody pays any attention to the stamp when they buy smokes.”
“Where do the goods wind up for sale to the public?” Kerney asked.
“Convenience stores, gas stations, smoke shops, small grocery chains, mom-and-pop stores.”
Because Gilmore and Shaw weren’t bringing counterfeit cigarettes into the country, legally it wasn’t smuggling. It was a theft, fraud, and contraband operation. “Who are your distributors?” Kerney asked.
Gilmore named them.
“Why run the risk of flying the goods here yourself?”
Gilmore snorted. “Until now there wasn’t any risk. Customs doesn’t give a damn about general aviation planes that stay north of the border. It’s a hell of a lot safer to use a plane than to try to truck the product through the highway checkpoints around El Paso.”
“Do you warehouse your inventory in Virden?”
Gilmore nodded. “Yeah. We keep fresh stock of the most popular brands on hand there for the Arizona run. It’s our biggest moneymaker.”
Kerney opened the door. “Okay, you’ll need to make a complete statement to the sheriff.”
“What will I be charged with?”
“Murder one.”
Gilmore looked shocked. “I didn’t kill anybody. Can you help me out here? I’ll tell you everything.”
“Then tell me this,” Kerney said. “What were you going to do with Martinez’s body?”
Gilmore flinched at the question.
“Well?” Kerney prodded.