The Second Shooter

by Chuck Hustmyre

  "But what does any of that have to do with Jake?" Caroline pleaded, a note of hysteria creeping into her voice.

  "We don't understand his connection to Favreau," Garcia said, "But it appears that whatever his reason, your son is helping him."

  "Appears?" Lee Miller said. "So you're not sure?"

  "No," Garcia said. "We're not certain. There is a possibility that your son is acting under duress. Perhaps as a hostage. But we won't—"

  "Of course he's acting under duress," Mrs. Miller said. "If you think my son would ever do anything to help a...a terrorist, then you're just plain crazy. Jake would never..." But her voice broke into a sob as she started crying.

  Lee Miller looked at Donahue. "She's right. My stepson wouldn't do anything to compromise his integrity or that of the Bureau. He's dreamed of being an FBI agent since—"

  "Stepson," Garcia interrupted. "Jake Miller is your stepson?" He turned to Donahue for confirmation. The FBI agent shrugged. Clearly this was news to him too.

  "He's Caroline's son," Lee Miller said.

  "Why don't I know this, Lee?" Donahue said.

  "It's in his security packet."

  "But you never mentioned it to me."

  "Who's his father," Garcia said.

  "I am," Lee Miller said. "I raised him like he was my own son. Sent him to Georgetown."

  Garcia stared at Lee Miller, waiting for the answer to his question. But it was Caroline Miller who spoke up. "His name is Gordon McCay."

  "What does he do?" Garcia asked.

  "He's a writer," Caroline Miller said.

  Garcia saw Lee Miller's face tighten with distaste. Clearly, this was a subject he preferred not to discuss. "What kind of writer?"

  "He's a conspiracy kook who's never had a real job," Lee Miller said.

  His wife's response was quick and sharp. "That's not true."

  "Stop defending him," Lee Miller said. "He's a deadbeat. We both know that. And he never sent a nickel to help raise his...to raise Jake."

  Garcia thought that if Jake Miller wouldn't run to his retired FBI stepfather when he got into trouble, maybe he would run to his real father. "Where does he live?"

  "Wherever debt collectors can't find him," Lee Miller said.

  Caroline Miller ignored her husband's remark. "He used to send Jake cards for his birthday and at Christmas. Along with a copy of his latest book."

  "All that stopped years ago," Lee Miller said.

  "What does he write?" Garcia asked.

  Mr. Miller waved a dismissive hand. "Conspiracy nonsense."

  "Specifically," Garcia said.

  "His favorite topic is the Kennedy assassination," Lee Miller said.

  Garcia couldn't help but remember what he'd told Agent Donahue in his office just one hour ago. Favreau is a meticulous planner. Nothing he does is random. He has some connection to your agent. Now the fog was clearing.

  "He writes about other things too," Caroline Miller said.

  "Yes, he does," her husband said. "Like Big Foot, UFOs, and the Loch Ness Monster."

  Caroline Miller looked at Garcia and shook her head. "He's never written about the Loch Ness Monster."

  "How would you know?" Lee Miller said. "Have you ever read any of that bunk he writes?"

  "I've read all of his books," she said.

  Garcia asked Caroline Miller, "Where was he living the last time you heard from him?"

  "Costa Rica," she said. "He thought..." She seemed embarrassed. "He has a very active imagination."

  "He thought what?" Garcia prompted.

  "That the U.S. government was after him," Lee Miller said.

  Fixing Mr. Miller with a stare, Garcia said, "Do you know where he is now?"

  Miller glanced away. He knows, Garcia thought. "Mr. Miller, do you know where Gordon McCay lives now?"

  Miller nodded.

  "Where?" Garcia asked.

  The silence hung for a moment. Then Miller sighed. "He sent some letters. A few parcels. Books, I guess."

  "When?" Caroline Miller said, her tone sharp.

  Lee Miller didn't look directly at his wife when he spoke. "Last couple years."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  Now he looked right at her, taking the moral high ground. "Because I threw them away."

  "What!"

  "I was helping Jake. Once he applied to the Bureau, I couldn't see any good coming from him keeping in touch with that...screwball."

  "That screwball is his father," Caroline Miller snapped. "And he has every right to contact his son."

  Garcia cleared his throat. Both Millers looked at him. He focused on Lee Miller. "Was there a return address?"

  "No," Miller said. "Just a postmark."

  "From where?"

  "A little town in Oklahoma." He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, trying to recall. "Sandy...Shady...Shady something." Then he snapped his fingers. "Shady Point. Shady Point, Oklahoma."

  Chapter 24

  "Keep in mind that I had never even heard of Shady Point, Oklahoma, in my life. And I had no idea why he wanted to go there. Everything was a secret with him. He only gave out as much information as he absolutely had to."

  ***

  The Samuel R. Kerr Municipal Airport was located in rural Le Flore County, Oklahoma, five miles from the little town of Shady Point. The airport consisted of a single runway and a lone hanger. Attached to the hanger was a tiny office with a faded wooden sign nailed to the door that identified the space beyond, in slightly grandiose terms, as the Flight Operations Center.

  In reality the office was more of a lounge, a place where pilots could check the posted weather reports and fill out their logbooks. Free coffee was available and a pair of vending machines dispensed soft drinks and snacks. There was one telephone, but you couldn't make long distance calls on it. And no Wi-Fi. So not much in the way of true flight operations actually went on inside the office, not that it mattered much because Sam Kerr Airport had no control tower or radio. The airfield was strictly VFR-visual flight rules-with no navigational aids whatsoever. Pilots about to take off or land simply broadcasted their location and intention on a common radio frequency and proceeded with due caution while hoping other pilots in the area heeded the message and steered clear.

  At 8 a.m., Andre Favreau taxied onto the apron and killed the Cessna's engines. Even before the propellers quit turning, Jake climbed out of the cockpit door and onto the starboard wing. Every muscle in his body was sore from being chased, beaten up, and Tasered, and that soreness had only been compounded by the long flight in the cramped cockpit. He stretched to get the circulation back into his stiff limbs; then he reached down and took Stacy's hand to help her crawl out of the back seat.

  "Thank you," she said as she stood on the wing beside him.

  "You're welcome," Jake said, his eyes scanning the airport. Near the hanger a couple of pilots were tinkering with their airplanes. Both were single-engine propeller aircraft. In fact, all the planes parked on the apron were propeller driven, and only one was a twin-engine.

  "What are you looking for?" Stacy asked.

  "To be honest, a SWAT team."

  She smiled. "Not exactly the answer I was hoping for."

  "What were you hoping for?"

  "A restaurant."

  Jake cleared his throat. "Listen, Stacy..."

  She looked up at him, and he noticed for about the thousandth time how beautiful her eyes were.

  "Given our situation," he said, "I know how inadequate this sounds, but..."

  "What?"

  "I'm sorry."

  "For what?"

  He gestured with both hands at the small airfield. "For this."

  "You mean about there being no meal service during our cross-country flight?"

  "I'm serious," Jake said. "I really am sorry I got you involved."

  "You didn't get me involved. I got myself involved. There's something going on here, Jake. I don't know what it is. Not yet, but—"

  "Neither do I
, believe me."

  "I do believe you. And I think that whatever it is, it's either illegal...or it should be. Whoever was in that helicopter almost killed us, and that can't be justified as part of a covert operation no matter how important it is to national security."

  Jake touched her arm. "Thank you."

  "For what?"

  "For believing me," he said. "When even Chris didn't."

  "Can I tell you something about Chris?" Stacy said. "I know he's your best friend and all, but..."

  "What?"

  "He's a jerk."

  Jake laughed.

  "What?" she said.

  "I've heard that before," he said, "especially from women."

  "Well, he's a jerk in that regard too, but I'm talking about what he did before we got to the park. As your friend, he at least owed it to you to listen to what you had to say before he reported you to the bosses. He should have trusted you."

  "Why did you trust me?"

  She traced a finger along his cheek. "Because I know you, Jake."

  From inside the cockpit, Favreau said, "Can you two lovebirds make some room so an old man can get out?"

  The Cessna 310 only had a starboard cockpit door, and Favreau was climbing over the right seat trying to extricate himself from the tight space.

  Jake jumped down from the wing, then reached up and took Stacy's hand. Her breasts brushed against his arm as she hopped to the ground. She looked into his eyes and smiled.

  As Favreau climbed out onto the wing, Stacy turned so she could look at both him and Jake. "So is this it?" she said. "Is this the world famous Shady Point International Airport?" Her tone carried a light-heartedness that Jake was sure she didn't feel, couldn't feel, not with the weight of a huge chunk of the federal government pressing down on them. He sensed she was faking it for his benefit. He really liked her. She was one in a million. Unfortunately, they were probably both federal fugitives by now.

  Favreau waddled toward the trailing edge of the wing with a groan, and both Jake and Stacy reached up and gave him a hand as he stepped to the ground. He held Stacy's hand and gave her a chivalrous bow. "Madam, we have indeed arrived at the Shady Point airport, although I am not certain that there are any international flights." Then he released her hand and stretched like a man without a care in the world. When he finished limbering up, Favreau glanced around. "Now all we need to do is find ourselves a car."

  Jake shot him a stern look. "We'll call a cab. No more borrowing from your friends."

  Favreau shrugged. Then he smiled.

  Chapter 25

  Inside a darkened room at a rundown roadside motel on the outskirts of Dallas, a man using the name Frank Walsh sat in a chair facing the room's single window. The thick curtains were drawn together so that only a thin strip of daylight shown between them.

  It was 8:30 a.m.

  Walsh was in his second hour of peering through a Leupold 15-45X variable-zoom spotting scope that was mounted on a tripod and aimed out the window through the gap in the curtains. What Walsh was looking at as he stared through the spotting scope was another crappy roadside motel, similar in almost every respect to his motel, except that it was on the opposite side of the four-lane divided highway.

  Both motels had been built in the 1950s, and typical of the period, they were low-slung single-story buildings, with all the guest rooms facing the road. Before the advent of the Interstate Highway System, these motels had probably attracted travelers of all kinds, but now they catered exclusively to the low end of the socio-economic scale: hookers, dope fiends, grifters, drunks, and assorted other scofflaws, people who were basically only a week or two this side of living in a cardboard box or under a bridge.

  Walsh sharpened the focus on the scope as a man dressed in old work clothes and a cap stepped out of room seventeen across the highway. The man's name was Ray Fluker. He was in his late twenties. He had a full beard and wore a Texas Rangers baseball cap over his buzz cut hair. The beard didn't quite hide the scars on his face. Carrying a battered aluminum lunch pail, Fluker walked to the bus stop in front of the motel. Walsh tracked him with the spotting scope.

  The cellphone lying on the table at Walsh's elbow gave a shrill ring. Walsh turned away from the scope just long enough to reach the phone. "Yeah," he said as he returned his eye to the rubber cup that surrounded the ocular lens.

  "Has he left?" asked Gertz, who was Walsh's partner on this operation. Gertz was a German. His name wasn't really Gertz, of course, but in this business no one ever used real names. Gertz spoke perfect English but with an accent. Walsh didn't know enough about Germans to be able to identify what part of Germany the man calling himself Gertz was from, but he really didn't want to know. Another thing about this business, most of the time, the less you knew the better. Walsh knew all he needed to know about the man. Gertz was a specialist, brought in for this one mission. Walsh had never worked with him before and never would again, not after this. Neither one of them would ever be able to work after this.

  "He left his room thirty seconds ago," Walsh said as he watched Fluker. "Right now he's waiting on the bus."

  "Did he go anywhere last night?"

  "He never does."

  "At least he's consistent," Gertz said.

  "You making the pitch today?"

  "After he gets off work."

  "Good luck."

  "Luck has nothing to do with it," Gertz said. "Success is the inevitable result of proper preparation."

  Walsh opened his mouth to respond, but before he could get a word out he heard the line click as Gertz hung up. Walsh shook his head. "Prick."

  Gertz never offered a greeting or said goodbye on the telephone. Always straight to business. Maybe it was a German thing. If so, they sure were a bunch of arrogant assholes.

  Walsh laid the phone on the table and pressed his eye to the spotting scope. Across the highway, a bus was pulling up. Through its windows, Walsh tracked Fluker as he climbed up beside the driver, swiped his bus pass, and shuffled down the aisle to an empty seat.

  The bus lurched away in a cloud of diesel smoke.

  ***

  The taxi that picked them up at the Samuel R. Kerr Municipal Airport was a battered Mercury Grand Marquis with at least ten hard years on it. The driver was somewhere between forty and seventy, and fat, with greasy, gray-streaked hair that clung to the back of his neck and left stains on his frayed collar. He was missing a few teeth and the rest were stained the color of tobacco. Favreau sat up front with the driver while Jake and Stacy sat in the back. Stacy held Jake's hand.

  After a fifteen-minute drive, the cab driver turned off the two-lane highway into a small trailer park. The peeling sign out front read 'HAPY VALLEY'. Jake couldn't help but notice that the trailer park wasn't in a valley and nothing about it looked happy.

  About forty mobile homes sat in various states of dilapidation on concrete pads around a horseshoe-shaped gravel driveway. Weeds sprouted along the edges of the pads, and many of the trailers didn't have skirting and were showing rusted axels and stacks of cinderblocks. Mixed in among the mobile homes were a dozen recreation vehicles, none of which, Jake thought, seemed to be in the midst of any kind of recreational activity. Shady Point, at least this spot on the jagged edge of Shady Point, could not by any stretch of imagination be considered one of the garden spots of Oklahoma.

  The cabbie took them around the driveway, leaving behind a contrail of dust, until he found lot number thirty-six. The Mercury's worn-out front brakes ground metal-to-metal as the driver stopped in front of a battered Winnebago so old it made the taxi cab look brand new. A big antenna that looked a lot newer than the motorhome jutted up from the Winnebago's roof.

  "What are we doing here?" Jake asked.

  The driver looked at Favreau. "That'll be thirty dollars. Plus tip."

  Favreau turned back to Jake. "I'm a little short."

  "How short?" Jake asked.

  "All I have is a credit card?"

  "No credit cards," the d
river said.

  Jake turned to Stacy. "They took my wallet...at WFO," he said.

  Stacy pulled two twenties from her pocket and handed them over the seat to the driver. "Just give me a five back."

  The driver spit tobacco juice into a dirty plastic cup and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Sorry, miss, but I'm temporarily out of small bills. All I got is twenties."

  Stacy shook her head. "Keep it."

  As soon as they climbed out of the cab, the driver left them under a pall of dust. Jake looked at the motorhome's faded paint and rust spots. "Someone lives in this thing?"

  "I hope so," Favreau said, "or else we just went to an incredible amount of trouble for nothing."

  On the side of the motorhome, two retractable steps led up to a thin aluminum door with a window set in its upper half. A sheet of yellowed newspaper covered the glass from the inside, and an extra set of rusted hinges indicated there had once been a screen door.

  They walked closer to the motorhome. Favreau stood next to the steps and knocked on the door. A few seconds later, they heard footsteps and saw the motorhome rock slightly. Then the door opened. And Jake got the shock of his life.

  The man who stood in the open doorway was about sixty, clean-shaven, with a thatch of salt and pepper hair. He glanced at Favreau and Stacy, then stared at Jake, his face showing total amazement. "Jake?"

  Staring back at the man, Jake felt the ground fall out from under him, leaving him without any anchor points except for the eyes staring back at him. Eyes that looked just like his. "Dad?"

  Chapter 26

  The true ownership of the Gulfstream V twin-engine corporate jet that Max Garcia and Bill Blackstone had boarded at a small private airport outside DC would have taken a forensic accountant six months to unravel. The bottom line, Garcia knew, was that the CIA, through a web of interconnected front companies, owned the jet and leased it to a security consulting firm called Dynamic International, which was the company Blackstone and his men worked for, or at least where they got their paychecks.