War Lord

by David Rollins

  This apology seemed to confirm Alabama’s worst fears and her hand went to cover her eyes as her face crumpled.

  ‘Agent Cooper,’ Morrow said, offering a quick handshake as he ushered Alabama into the meeting room. Morrow was Texan, longhorn cows in his drawl. ‘Good of y’all both to come on over.’

  He guided Alabama into one of the expensive-looking aluminum and black mesh chairs arrayed around a table, the top of which had been made to look like the skin of an airplane – white, powder-coated and riveted aluminum – the winged NAB logo in the center. I took the chair beside her and put the ice chest and bag on the floor. Morrow sat opposite, hands clasped together in front of him.

  ‘So, what’s the latest from the authorities?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing new, I’m afraid,’ Morrow said. ‘Randy departed Henderson International slightly ahead of schedule, after taking the required break. He was vectored into the airway, cleared to twenty thousand feet. Local air traffic control handed him on to the flight information region for southwest vectors, and he flew on his way. He made all the scheduled stops on his flight plan, as well as all mandatory radio calls, and no problems were reported. Everything was normal until he failed to make the appropriate radio calls approaching Darwin. I received notice that he was missing late yesterday.’ Morrow glanced at Alabama. ‘Ah’m sorry, honey,’ he said again.

  ‘He make any calls in that sector?’ I asked.

  ‘No. The standard ones departing Henderson Field in the Solomons, but nothing after that.’

  ‘No Mayday call?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t phone me from Hawaii or anywhere,’ said Alabama, blowing her nose with a tissue, her face red, her eyes redder. ‘He always phones me.’

  ‘There’s a search underway,’ said Morrow.

  I didn’t ask where they were searching. Haystacks didn’t get much bigger than the Pacific. Ask Amelia Earhart.

  ‘Randy was a great guy and a hell of a pilot,’ Morrow continued, issuing the last rites.

  ‘What kind of plane was he flying?’ I asked.

  ‘A Hawker Beechcraft Super King Air 350.’ He opened up a folder, took out a color photo and passed it to me. ‘That’s the actual aircraft. Eighteen months old. Practically new. The type has an unbeatable reputation for reliability.’

  A reputation Randy had just dented. I glanced at the photo. The King Air was a large, sleek-looking twin turboprop with a T-tail. Windows down its side indicated that it could take maybe a dozen passengers. ‘What’s the range of a plane like this?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s a 350ER – ER for extended range. Two thousand two hundred nautical miles, plus reserve. He also carried an internal bladder in case of headwinds. The leg from LAX to Hawaii was right on the aircraft’s range.’

  ‘So fuel was going to be tight.’

  ‘Randy’s problem wasn’t going to be fuel, it was boredom. The King Air’s no jet. He was in the air a lotta hours.’

  I had nowhere to go, but then I wasn’t an experienced aircraft accident investigator. The flight had originated on US soil, which meant the NTSB would be putting this one under its microscope.

  Morrow made a huffing sound, an ironic smile on his lips. ‘What’s up?’ I asked him.

  ‘I was going to send someone else. Randy wanted the job, practically begged me for it. Said he’d never been to Australia before.’

  Alabama bit a knuckle.

  ‘How many hops did he have to make?’ I asked.

  ‘Quite a few. He was going to do it over an eight- to ten-day period, depending on the weather. Flying conditions were good, by the way.’

  ‘Did he have a co-pilot?’

  ‘No, flew solo.’

  ‘Long solo flight.’

  ‘Randy had the option of taking a co-pilot, but he chose to go it alone. As I said, boredom was going to be an issue.’

  ‘Any idea what might have happened?’

  Morrow shook his head. ‘None whatsoever.’

  Alabama had recovered a little composure. I stopped asking questions so that she could ask a few of her own.

  Morrow beat her to it. ‘So you’re OSI?’ he said, my card in his fingers.

  I nodded.

  ‘Local? From Nellis?’

  ‘No, out from DC.’

  ‘Randy was a civilian – no longer Air Force. Are you on this official-like?’

  ‘No. Just a friend of the family’s. Have the authorities told you what happens next?’

  Morrow dropped my card in his folder. ‘They said all we can do is wait, see what the search turns up.’

  ‘I know Randy’s alive,’ said Alabama. ‘I can feel it.’

  Morrow gave her a pitying smile. ‘I’m sorry, honey,’ he said, clearly not a believer in Alabama’s instincts.

  ‘I’d know if Randy was gone,’ she said, bolder this time, assured by her own conviction. ‘Is there a chance he could have had some trouble and put down near an island somewhere?’

  ‘I guess anything’s possible, but . . .’ The look he gave us said there was more chance of relieving Sleeping Beauty out in reception of her jackpot.

  ‘What about the plane’s electronic locator beacon?’ I asked.

  ‘It had one. As far as I know, it didn’t light up.’

  ‘Isn’t that unusual?’

  He shrugged. ‘ELBs are electronic gadgets – they can fail like any other electronic gadget. There’ll be an investigation. All we can do is wait and see.’

  I leaned down, picked up the ice chest and put it on the table. Time to let Randy’s boss know that there might be more to the disappearance of his aircraft than he or the authorities thought.

  ‘What you got there?’ Morrow asked, half a smile lifting part of his face.

  ‘Several days after your King Air departed LAX, Ms Thornton here received this.’ I opened the chest and turned it around.

  Morrow leaned forward and peered inside. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed, that tan of his appearing more like badly applied makeup as the blood drained from his cheeks.

  ‘This is what brought me to Vegas,’ I said. ‘After we leave your office, we’re taking it to the metro PD. If you look carefully, you can see an Air Force Academy ring on its pinky that we believe belonged to Randy. The package also came with a greeting card asking for a ransom in exchange for Randy’s life.’

  Morrow sat back in his seat, mouth open and probably dry. ‘Jesus,’ he repeated, whispering it the second time around. The guy was in a state of shock. Perhaps giving him a peek at Thing was a little on the melodramatic side, but he had to know that there might be another angle being played here. ‘Is that Randy’s . . . you know . . . his . . .’ Morrow asked, voice cracking.

  ‘His hand?’ I said. ‘No, but you can see the problem, right? Alabama here was understandably concerned when she received this home delivery, but reassured because, one, this wasn’t Randy’s hand and, two, he was supposedly flying a plane to Australia. But now the place she thought he was safely tucked away in – your King Air – has disappeared.’

  Morrow’s face had gone a splotchy white.

  ‘Are you okay, sir?’ I asked. I didn’t want the guy having a heart attack.

  ‘If Sweetwater’s not in that plane, the . . . the damn insurance company won’t pay out,’ Morrow stuttered under his breath, the full force of the implications suddenly hitting him in his wallet.

  And those who say you shouldn’t prejudge just don’t know shit from ice cream.

  *

  I called ahead and asked Detective Sergeant Ike Bozey to meet Alabama and me at the desk sergeant’s area and escort us through. I wasn’t keen on getting searched. I could warn the guy at the x-ray station that there was an amputated human hand on my person, but police I had no connection with were likely to get jumpy about this and I had no desire to be forced onto the floor at the point of a quivering Glock.

  ‘Hey, Cooper,’ said Bozey in a voice full of gravel. ‘Good to meet you. And this is Alabama, right?’
>
  Alabama waved.

  ‘Coming through,’ said the detective sergeant, beckoning at us to come past the usual search procedures. ‘These people are my guests,’ he announced loudly.

  ‘On your head be it, Bozey,’ the desk sergeant called out, making a note.

  ‘Get a dick in your ear, fatso,’ Bozey replied loudly. The sergeant he was referring to was on the skinny side of scrawny, his neck filling his shirt like a straw fills a glass.

  ‘Fuck you,’ came back at him.

  In an aside, Bozey said, ‘He’s married to my sister . . . Makes for an interesting Thanksgiving.’

  Alabama and I fell in behind the detective sergeant, a former light-heavyweight boxer who walked like one. The guy also came with a heavy New York accent and buzz-cut brown hair, tending to gray. A wide scar was clearly visible meandering over the crown of his skull. He’d taken a bullet there that, according to Arlen, had exposed a part of his brain. It happened the day he took on five thugs attempting to sexually assault a fifteen-year-old girl in broad daylight, after dragging her into a back alleyway. One of the perps had fired a .38 at Bozey, the slug digging out a piece of his skull, but the guy had kept on fighting, even madder. Three of the five perps ran off after Bozey had knocked the other two out cold. When the cops turned up they found him sitting on one of the alleged attackers, trying to fit the pieces of bone back into the hole in his own head. When Bozey finally got out of hospital, he joined New York’s finest, only to quit a couple of years later to move west with his sister. Vegas was the place he decided to put down roots, after she met and married – the desk sergeant, I assumed – and Bozey joined the force again.

  We rounded the corner. ‘Arlen said I should lend you every assistance. So, here I am, lending.’ We came around another corner and this time the hallway broadened into open-plan office space populated by a mixture of uniformed and plainclothes police. The sound of computer keyboard clatter dominated, punctuated by several phones that rang and rang and rang.

  ‘How do you know Arlen?’ I asked him.

  ‘Can’t say,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘’Cause it happened here in Vegas, and there are rules.’

  ‘I’ll ask him.’

  ‘Won’t do you no good.’

  We arrived at a cubicle-sized space that reminded me of my office at Andrews: gray partitions and one entire face covered with papers and photos and sticky notes and maps, some of them hand-drawn. It felt like home.

  ‘I hear you work at Bally’s,’ Bozey said to Alabama.

  ‘That’s right,’ she told him as he pulled in a chair for her to sit on.

  ‘That’s a good clean show.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘And that’s a damn shame,’ he said, giving her a grin full of mischief. He cleared his throat and took a seat. ‘Now, what can I do for you folks?’

  ‘Arlen told you nothing?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a word, except that you was family.’

  ‘That mean you’re gonna start calling me names?’ I asked.

  He grinned. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Okay, well, Alabama received this in a FedEx box,’ I said, handing over the ice chest.

  ‘Do I want to know what’s in here before I lift the lid?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a body part,’ I warned him.

  Bozey opened it, took a peek inside, sucked his lips into a seam and raised an eyebrow. ‘Right,’ he said.

  ‘There’s a note.’ I took the letter, now protected in a clear plastic ziplock, from the Bally’s bag and passed it to him.

  ‘When did this arrive?’ he asked, reading it through the plastic.

  ‘Getting on for six days ago,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not helpful. Six days lost, fourteen to go, according to this. Why not bring it in sooner?’

  ‘I was scared,’ Alabama admitted. ‘If I contacted the police and the kidnappers found out . . .’

  ‘Doll, these people don’t want you contacting the police because they’re scared. They’re scared there’ll be no payday; they’re scared their asses will get stomped on by law enforcement; they’re scared they’ll spend the best part of the rest of their lives eating someone else’s dick in Club Fed . . . Sorry, just don’t get me started.’

  ‘Any other hot buttons we should know about?’ I said.

  ‘I’ll tell you after you push ’em. Has any further contact been made?’

  ‘No,’ said Alabama. ‘And this is not Randy’s hand.’

  I took it from there and filled Bozey in on what we knew – that perhaps the ring was the boyfriend’s and that, at the time his kidnappers claimed they were sawing pieces off him, he was supposedly flying a plane to Australia. I then told him the news we’d received last night: that Randy’s plane had gone missing and was now presumed crashed in the Pacific, somewhere between the Solomon Islands and Darwin.

  ‘Could be an elaborate con gone wrong,’ the detective concluded without hesitation. ‘What’s the ransom?’

  ‘Fifteen million,’ I said.

  ‘And you don’t got it,’ he remarked, looking at Alabama.

  ‘On what we make at Showgirls?’

  Bozey shrugged. ‘Honestly? Not a lot of what you’re saying makes much sense to me. But until something else turns up, I can see pretty clearly that you do have one small problem.’

  ‘To go with the big ones,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. As far as we know, this hand could have come from a university cadaver. My problem is, well, I can’t see where the crime has been committed – nothing I can investigate, anyway.’

  ‘I figured as much,’ I said.

  ‘Then how can I be of assistance?’

  ‘CSI – forensics. Put the hand through the wringer. It might turn up something to go on. There’s also the note.’ I motioned at the Bally’s bag. ‘And in here is most of the original packaging everything came in.’

  The sergeant rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know . . . Vegas is a pretty busy port of call, forensically speaking, and we don’t have a lot of those kinds of resources to splash around here.’

  ‘Oh, sure you do,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen the TV show.’

  Six

  Alabama said she was tired so, as there was nothing more we could move on, I drove her home to Summerlin with a promise to call if anything else turned up, then took myself back to my hotel for a swim.

  It was maybe a hundred and ten in the shade down in the pool area, the place surrounded by glass buildings focusing the sun’s rays like a magnifying glass picking out bugs. In the pool it was virtually standing room only, packed with college kids come to Vegas to get drunk, get laid, lose all their money and go home with sunburn, a hangover and a misspelled tattoo across their backs – the usual.

  A loud alcohol-fueled bikini contest was coming to a conclusion, the music and the bar pumping, as I wandered around the crowded sunbaking area in search of an empty sun lounge. A leggy black college kid was showing the crowd her moves, egged on by the DJ. The masses in the pool applauded when she gave her hips a workout. And when she turned, bent over and wiggled her money-maker at the audience, it rewarded her with waves of hoots and applause. Up next, a large white woman in a high-cut green one-piece costume with deep scallops out of the sides, her ample upper thighs the shape of ice-cream cones and just as dimpled. She didn’t seem to care though, and moved as dirty as any woman I’ve ever seen, which seduced roars of approval from the spectators. A woman in her early twenties won the contest when her tiny gold bikini top suffered a wardrobe malfunction, something I firmly believe everyone except network executives appreciates.

  I circumnavigated the pool area twice before finding a sun lounge in the process of being vacated. A woman in a Bally’s shorts-and-tee ensemble came and took my drink order, while I waited for a heavily tattooed jock to pack up and leave. It had been a while since my bare skin received a dose of sun, and I had a bunch of reasonably new scars that were still pink, so I figured I had maybe half an hour b
efore I got second-degree burns. I stripped off my top and rolled it into a headrest then lay face down. The sun’s heat immediately went to work on my back and I exhaled loudly, feeling relaxed, on vacation at last.

  I’d only drifted off to sleep for maybe five minutes when a cold shock between the shoulder blades woke me with a start. I looked up, ready to get all indignant, and saw that it was Sugar. She was standing beside me, her shadow across my face, the sun a corona behind her head, a cheeky smile on her lips. A Heineken, my Heineken I supposed, hung from her hand and swung beside her leg. She held it out to me. ‘This yours, I think.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I rolled onto my side, propped my head on my hand. Her bikini was a knitted orange number. It didn’t hide much, and what it did I’d pretty much seen already. She wore heels, slip-ons, which made her look taller and maybe just a little hotter, if that were possible. A multicolored canvas satchel hung casually off a shoulder.

  ‘You bin banged up some, ain’t you.’ She leaned a little toward me, peering at my body over the top of her Ray-Ban Aviators. ‘You bin in a car accident o’ somethin’?’

  Or something probably covered it best. The last few years had left their marks – several bullet wounds and nicks, a little shrapnel mauling here and there, some barbed-wire tears, a few stitches. I could remember when, where and how I’d received each and every one, but that was a private litany I wasn’t prepared to share poolside. ‘Yep,’ I said, keeping it loose.

  ‘Hey, is ’Bama okay? I heard Randy’s in some kinda trouble.’

  ‘You’ve got a lot of interest in Alabama and Randy.’

  She smiled. ‘You jealous?’

  I parried her smile with one of my own. My beer was looking neglected, so I took a moment to give it some attention. Sugar began digging around inside her bag. ‘The sun gonna turn you into a crawfish. You want some cream on?’

  I thought about saying no, but only for the nanosecond it took to change my mind. ‘Thanks,’ I said and rolled onto my stomach.

  ‘Move over a little.’

  I wriggled across and she sat beside me on the sun lounge. Looking under my arm I saw her knitted bikini bottom wedged against my hip. Seconds later I heard the splodge of the lotion squirting from the bottle, and a cold wetness on my back. I smelled piña colada. Her hands went to work immediately, moving the lotion around in circles.