Now, I’m not saying I ever personally relied on those kinds of tactics, techniques, or procedures. Nor am I saying I saw others use them. I’m not saying that at all. I wouldn’t want to spend the next several years in federal custody. But I’ve heard that much good actionable intelligence can be quickly derived by shooting off a toe, or a finger. You’d be amazed how swiftly that can get somebody’s attention.
Or so I’ve heard.
My phone rang. It was Marlene from the airport.
“Gordon’s here.” Her voice quavered with nerves. “He says he’d like to meet with you.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Does he own a gun?”
She lowered her voice. “Not that I know of. Gordon can be a little gruff sometimes, but I don’t think he’s capable of real violence. He’s a real teddy bear inside.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.”
I called Streeter as I drove to brief him about what I’d learned, but he wasn’t in. His machine picked up. I left a message.
Marlene was standing outside without a coat, eating cookies, one after another. The temperature hovered in the low forties, but the wind chill factor was closer to freezing. Still, I could see sweat rings under the arms of her tan Summit Aviation T-shirt.
“It’s been one heckuva day,” she said. “You want a cookie? I just made some fresh.”
Eating sweets was the last thing on my mind. I strode past her, toward the office door.
“He’s not in there,” Marlene said.
“Where is he?”
“Down the way.” She pointed. “In one of our hangars. We’ve got a big charter coming in. There’ll be a lot of people in the office. He just thought it might be better if the two of you could talk in private.”
I followed her down the flight line. The walk seemed to tire her. She was breathing hard, perspiring even harder.
“Gordon says he’s got nothing to hide,” she said without looking at me.
“We’ll see.”
We passed two rows of prefab metal hangars painted aquamarine. At the third row, Marlene took a right turn. I followed her midway down the line, to the door of a hangar that was partially open. She paused before stepping inside and glanced back at me.
“I just feel so bad,” she said, “what’s happened, all of this.”
Something didn’t feel right. Maybe it was her words, or the way she said them, how the left corner of her mouth turned down, her downcast eyes. In combat, you learn to heed that inner voice that tells you when there’s unseen trouble ahead. But I hadn’t been in combat in a long time. I ignored the voice. The only one I wanted to hear was telling me that Gordon Priest was on the other side of that door, waiting for me to prime him like a pump handle.
I followed Marlene into the hangar.
The first thing I saw in the dim light as I looked past her was a green van, then various office desks and chairs that looked as if they’d been randomly dumped inside the hangar. Leaning perpendicularly against one of the desks was an aluminum sign painted red, white and blue, about three feet long, the kind you hang outside a place of business. It said, “Patriot Flow.”
I sensed movement and turned to glimpse a blur that came up on me fast from behind, partially blocked from my sightline by Marlene’s wide body. I brought my right arm up in a defensive position, but too late. Something hard and heavy came crashing down on the left side of my head.
I could feel myself falling.
In Hollywood, people get knocked unconscious all the time. A karate chop to the neck, a jab to the jaw, and you’re incapacitated for hours. In truth, it usually takes considerable effort to turn off most people’s lights for more than a few seconds, mine included.
The blow that felled me didn’t knock me out completely, but it did leave me stunned and incapacitated long enough that I could feel my arms being yanked behind my back and handcuffs being slapped painfully around my wrists.
There was nothing I could do.
My vision had blurred temporarily from the blow. As my eyes cleared, I fully expected to see Gordon Priest, especially given the handcuffs and what I knew to be his sexual predilections.
Only it wasn’t Priest.
The man with the weather-beaten face standing over me, stuffing a .40-caliber Glock into his belt, which he’d apparently just used to club me silly, wore hiking boots, jeans, and a battered straw cowboy hat.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?”
It took me a second to read the name stitched on his denim work shirt:
Dwayne.
“The Roto-Rooter guy,” I said.
“G’day mate,” he said in a mocking Australian accent. “Glad you could make it to our little party. Might have to throw another shrimp on the barbie, eh?”
He ordered Marlene to go close the door. She was biting her left index finger and fighting back tears.
“I don’t like this.”
“I don’t care what you like or don’t like,” Dwayne said. “I told you to shut the fucking door.”
Cowed, Marlene did as ordered.
Dwayne squatted down beside me.
“You had your chance, dickhead,” he said, the accent gone. “You could’ve left it alone, done what I told you to do, and your lady would be alive today. But you blew it. You blew it bad.”
He stood up and booted me hard in the ribs.
“Dwayne, don’t, please,” Marlene pleaded.
“You shut your mouth.” He glared at her. “You’re the reason we’re in this goddamn mess, Marlene. I can’t believe I’m married to a cow like you.”
“I never wanted this to happen. I just thought we could make some money, that’s all.”
She began to sob.
“You stop that, Marlene, right now. Stop it or so help me God…” He cocked his fist like he was about to hit her.
Marlene recoiled, shielding her face, clearly used to it.
“I’m going to thoroughly enjoy killing you,” I said.
Dwayne paused and redirected his focus on me.
“You’re gonna enjoy killing me?” He laughed, then bent down beside me, his hands on his knees. “Seems to me, friend, that you don’t fully comprehend what’s happening here.”
“Maybe you can enlighten me.”
“Well, number one, you’re gonna disappear. Forever, OK? And this whole shit storm, which I only got involved in with that punk, Chad, because my sweet ‘little’ wifey here told me how we could turn a quick buck salvaging some airplane? It’s all gonna blow over like a bad dream.”
Dwayne was one of those guys who didn’t know when to shut up, the kind who couldn’t help but remind everyone how brilliant he was, and how he could’ve been wildly successful in life, if only the Vatican and the Jews and the Trilateral Commission hadn’t conspired to screw him over.
He said that after his wife, Marlene, told him about the crashed plane, they decided there might be some money to be made by salvaging a few choice aircraft parts and selling them on eBay. Marlene knew that Chad Lovejoy was familiar with the area, so they got him involved. Dwayne had served in the navy, aboard a nuclear-powered, ballistic missile submarine, which often made port of call in Australia. It was his naval training, he boasted, that allowed him to instantly realize the fortune to be made after he and Chad found the Twin Beech and made the unexpected discovery of the crated, weapons-grade uranium that had sat untouched inside the wreckage for decades.