"It's enough."
"You know what he's talking about?"
I nodded. "It's local legend. I was seven… I sneaked off from Al Thompson out at Mossy and climbed into a wagon full of freshly picked cotton. The wagon got hitched up and headed for the gin in Itta Bena with me inside."
"Why Itta Bena? The Morgan City gin's closer."
"The Judge owned part of the Itta Bena gin."
"I get the picture. So, what scared you so badly?"
"Well, I was seven and being all alone in the wagon was bad enough. Then knowing I was in trouble for sneaking away But when they pulled the cotton wagon under the tin overhang and cranked up the huge suction hose that pulled the cotton into the main ginning section, I wet my pants.
"There was a place, an observation port, showing all the whirling cogs stripping the fibers off the seeds. I had watched it any number of times and seen the workers suck up an entire wagonload of cotton with that giant vacuum hose in what seemed like seconds.
"So, when they got to my wagon, my seven-year-old brain visualized every inch of my doom… sucked up through the hose and shredded by the gin."
"Obviously that didn't happen."
"Obviously. The suction hose is probably a foot in diameter and I would never have fit."
"But they played you like a violin."
"Oh, yeah. Made sure I wouldn't do it again. When the Judge found out I had wet my pants, he figured that was punishment enough." I smiled at the memory. "So anyway, we know where to meet Shanker. The big problem is how do we avoid cops until then. They're out there and the fog can't last forever. We can't just park somewhere. We can't call anybody you know, and I don't know anybody here any more."
"Let's think about that while we see if this key fits." Jasmine held up the sniper's rental-car key.
"Remember: John's calling 911. We better be gone before the first vehicles arrive." She nodded. We got out and made our way to the SUV. Jasmine tried the key in the driver's door; it opened easily.
"Start the engine," I said. "If we have gas, let's take this one and leave John's here."
Jasmine got in and started the engine.
"Three-quarters of a tank."
"Okay: I said. "Open the back." I grabbed my duffel and one of Jasmine's bags from the back of the pickup. Jasmine opened the back of the SUV, and when I saw what was inside, I nearly dropped our luggage in the mud.
"Whoa!"
I set the bags on the tailgate and jumped in. The first thing I picked up was a Night Quest PVS-14. I held it up.
"What?"
"This is serious night-vision gear." I put it down, then picked up the Raptor nightvision scope. "This is the civilian version of a heavy-duty night sniper scope." I put the scope down and peeked into the other bags.
"There's a freaking armory here!" An empty hard-sided rifle case lay open, then next to it another one with an M21 rifle and Leupold scope. "She's not working alone. And from the looks of things, she's got military backing.
"We need to move fast," I said.
Jasmine opened her mouth to reply, then the first faint notes of a siren made their way through the fog. She lunged for the driver's seat and put the SUV in gear as I slid in and slammed my door.
CHAPTER 60
Dan Gabriel squinted against the gusting wind and made his way along the treelined sidewalk of Higuera Street toward the heart of old San Luis Obispo. Tourists and summer-school students from Cal Poly jammed the sidewalks along with an army of panhandlers trolling for spare change.
The street threw off heat like a griddle. The wind had shifted since his run and howled in now from the east, a Santa Ana, wind special-delivering desert heat and Central Valley pollution. A Santa Ana often sparked forest fires and tempers.
Dan felt the dark spots grow around his armpits and soak through the lower back of his knit shirt. He stopped for the light at Osos. At the foot of a shade tree, a battered old man with undisciplined hair and a matted beard coaxed a ragged tune from his guitar. Gabriel hesitated for a moment, then recognized a man in far worse shape than he was. The light changed. Dan pulled a five from his wallet, dropped it in the man's open guitar case, and stepped off the curb to cross the street.
Half a block down, Gabriel pushed open the glass door of the Chinese buffet and made his way to the host's podium. High-backed, leatherette booths, dark walls, dim lighting, and a massive steam table dominated the center of the roam. Gabriel needed this dim anonymity to conduct a meeting that didn't happen. He looked at his watch. Noon straight-up.
The host seated a couple of elderly ladies with flowered dresses, refilled the iced tea glass of a lone student with a thick textbook, and finally made his way toward Gabriel. Suddenly a waving hand emerged from the shadows across the room, then the dim outline of a familiar face.
Dan waved back, nodded his greetings to the host, then made his way to shake Jack Kilgore's outstretched hand.
"You're looking trim these days, General." Kilgore's voice carried a deep, booming authority that inspired fear or confidence depending on whose side you were on.
"Thanks," Gabriel said as he slid into the booth facing Kilgore. "General."
"Yeah, hell, they'll probably take the freaking star if I tell the padded asses at the Pentagon to stuff it one more time, now that I don't have you and Braxton as my point men."
Gabriel's laugh was genuine.
Jack Kilgore had been a member of Task Force 86M for nearly fifteen years and its commander for five. He had been Gabriel's first and only choice for the top slot. Kilgore had a reputation for cutting through BS to get a job done. Right. The first time. But his disdain for paperwork and bureaucracy had earned him enemies among the paper-pushers. His bold operational plans made others nervous and branded him a cowboy.
"It only looks risky when you don't understand the situation," Kilgore explained time and again. "And the upholstered assholes in Washington don't have enough combat experience to understand which end of their freaking M16 gets pointed which way." Kilgore had an enormous capacity to hold every single one of the important elements of a situation in his head all at the same time and to look at things as a whole rather than just piece by piece.
Few officers had this gift, and that was one of the two reasons Dan had called on Kilgore. The other was obviously firepower and intel.
"You're right," Gabriel said when the lightness of his laughter gave way to the real reason for the meeting. "But that's not why I called."
"Didn't think so."
"Like I said before, this is a conversation we never had."
"Most of my conversations these days are like that," Kilgore said. "Problem is sometimes I can't remember whether I forgot a conversation because I was supposed to or because I'm getting old." He smiled, but Gabriel didn't pick up on it.
"We have a problem which may need some extracurricular activity."
"Uh-huh. Another training mission?" Kilgore used his fingers to put quotes around training.
"Maybe. It's about a secret operation called Project Enduring Valor." Dan waited for a look of recognition, but got only a frown. "It's a high-priority effort. Braxton says it's got some bad history."
"How bad?"
"Enough to blow his presidential bid out of the water."
Kilgore made a low whistle. Then: "You hungry?"
"A little."
"It sounds like you're going to need some time to fill me in." Dan nodded.
"You paying?"
Gabriel nodded.
"Then I'm hungry too."
Kilgore slid out of his seat and headed for the buffet. Gabriel followed him.
For the next forty-five minutes over food made banal enough for the average middle-American palate, Dan laid out the situation. Kilgore ate quietly, rarely interrupted, as he absorbed the connection between the illegal experiments, My Lai, Frank Harper, and Braxton's head wound.