War Lord

by David Rollins

  ‘I thought you were going back home to DC.’ It was Petinski. She sped up and fell into step beside me.

  I shook my head. ‘No. Some unfinished business.’

  ‘The severed hand, the ransom note?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said. In fact, my intention was just to give Alabama the courtesy of a face-to-face report on what I’d seen in Australia, and officially come off the tit of her Visa card.

  ‘Staying in town long?’ Petinski asked.

  ‘Long enough to lose a little more cash to Sleeping Beauty.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Friend of mine,’ I said. ‘I’ll be heading back East tomorrow. You?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  Sure she wasn’t sure. ‘You’re gonna pay Ty Morrow a visit at Nevada Aircraft Brokers, aren’t you?’

  ‘I think I told you – I’ve got some questions. Hey, I’m glad you’re feeling better,’ she said, deflecting, as she stopped at the escalator. ‘That’s all you took with you, right?’ She motioned at the overnight bag by my side.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Well, I guess you don’t take a hair dryer when you travel. I have to go and collect my baggage.’ A smile sputtered across her face like sparks that failed to light a fire, and she held out her hand to shake. A delicate hand with slender fingers – clipped nails, no rings. All business. ‘Goodbye, Cooper.’

  ‘Petinski.’ Unlike the first time we shook, this time her grip was warm, dry and firm. Somewhere along the way she’d changed into clean work clothes – black slacks and a blue and white casual shirt, both fitted. She stepped onto the escalator and I watched her descend. Her hips were narrow, but perfectly in proportion to her legs and tiny waist. She was, well, built like a gymnast. I asked myself whether she could do the splits like her friend Emanuel.

  Bells chimed electronically through a thin rattle of coinage. I turned and walked past a bank of slots in the center of the wide corridor. They formed an island on which a handful of departing vacationers were temporarily marooned while Vegas siphoned off the last of their money.

  I made a beeline for the cab rank and gave the driver the address for Nevada Aircraft Brokers over on the other side of McCarran. Petinski wasn’t the only one who had questions for Morrow. And, as I had no luggage to collect, maybe I’d get there before her.

  A short while later, my cab pulled into the forecourt outside the familiar white box with its gold windows. I paid the driver. A new black pickup with heavily tinted windows and big chrome wheels was parked by the front door, opened out, oddly, to let in the morning heat. Something felt different about the place. I stood with my overnight bag in the parking area and wondered what it was. A sheet of paper wafted out the open front door. Through the mesh cyclone fence cordoning off the ramp from the public, I saw a guy run to a small twin-engine plane, climb up onto the wing and jump in. A vehicle turned into the forecourt behind me and parked – a beige Ford Focus. Petinski got out. She’d made it here quicker than I expected. Must have had a rental ready and waiting. She and her frown stormed toward me.

  ‘What are you doing here, Cooper?’ she demanded. ‘I thought you were done.’

  ‘Satisfying my curiosity.’

  ‘And who’s paying for it now?’

  An aircraft engine chugged, coughed then fired into life nearby, followed by a second engine. The plane on the ramp.

  ‘I’m here on my own time – just interested.’ I was interested because Randy Sweetwater was a guy I’d shared a laugh or two with in a war zone, over a crate of a superior officer’s illegal single malt, and bonds like that run deep.

  Two Latino types in boots, shorts, tattoos, undershirts and tightly plaited hair appeared in the doorway carrying Sleeping Beauty between them. They heaved the slot up onto the pickup’s bed. An air of panic: that’s what was different about this place now.

  ‘You wanna continue this later?’ I suggested. ‘I’ve got a feeling we should maybe go in and see what’s up before the whole place gets hauled away.’

  Petinski was about to say something but changed her mind and gave a curt nod instead. We squeezed behind the pickup as it inched forward and went in through the open door behind it. The reception area was empty this time, having lost its couch, cappuccino machine and the aforementioned slot. Shouting was coming through the walls and glass of the boardroom, and I could see darkened areas where several parties were standing and pointing at each other as they argued. While I could make out the details of the conversation and the names mentioned, none of it meant anything to me, other than I had no doubt that the tension had been triggered by Randy Sweetwater’s disappearance and the events linked to the crash in northern Australia. I was nosing around the reception desk awash with papers and folders for a bell or buzzer with which to announce our presence when the door to the boardroom swung open. Carol the receptionist came out, looking a little disheveled and distressed, strands of brassy hair escaping from the bun on top of her head and her tan caftan rumpled and askew.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  Petinski said, ‘Investigator Kim Petinski from the National Transport Safety Bureau and Special Agent Cooper, Air Force Office of Special Investigations, here to see Mr Ty Morrow.’

  From the look of horror on Carol’s face Petinski might as well have said, ‘This lizard and I are from outer space and we’ve come to conduct experiments on your unanesthetized body. You must accompany us immediately before we decide to probe you here and now.’

  My cell buzzed against my leg to let me know that I’d just received a text. I ignored it.

  The loose skin quivered under Carol’s chin, her mouth moving a couple of times without sound coming out. She swallowed, her throat working up and down like a pump action chambering a round. When her voice box finally kicked in, she said, ‘I’m sorry, but Mr Morrow . . . Mr Morrow has gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’ Petinski asked.

  ‘We think he just . . . we think he just left.’

  ‘Left to go where?’

  ‘I . . . we . . . No one knows. Everyone’s wondering what’s going on.’

  ‘You’ve got no idea?’ Petinski said.

  ‘Last night, around six-thirty, Mr Morrow received a phone call. It made him nervous as hell. Next thing I know he’s taking files, shredding papers. Then he . . . he jumped into a Citation and just, you know, took off.’

  I glanced at Petinski.

  ‘Can you give me the aircraft’s registration?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, certainly.’ Carol riffled through paperwork on her desk, then provided Petinski with the numbers and letters.

  ‘Carol, I’m going to have to ask you to touch nothing, okay?’ Petinski said. ‘Do you have a key for your filing cabinets?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I want you to lock them and give me the keys.’

  It appeared that Carol was about to protest this, but her objection was quickly wrestled to the ground and hogtied by common sense. She opened a drawer, took out some keys on a ring, secured the cabinets behind her and put the keys on her desk.

  Petinski scooped them up and pocketed them. ‘Thank you. Now, please turn off the computer and write down any user names and passwords.’

  ‘Before you do that, Carol, can you print out the flight plan submitted to the FAA by Randy Sweetwater?’ I interrupted.

  ‘Yes,’ said Petinski, hurriedly chipping in. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  Carol nodded, her hands shaking.

  ‘Hey, it’s okay,’ I reassured her. It probably wasn’t, but I doubted any of it would touch her, at least in a legal sense.

  The boardroom door opened. A middle-aged man walked out wearing khaki work clothes and black boots. His head was down. He glanced at us when he stopped at Carol’s desk. The way he was dressed suggested that he could be the company’s licensed aircraft mechanic.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to him. ‘You the crew chief round here?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  I showed him my ID, as d
id Petinski. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Dewy Baker.’

  ‘Your boss left in a hurry, Dewy. Got any idea why?’

  ‘Yeah – money.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ said Carol.

  Dewy ignored her.

  ‘Money?’ Petinski echoed.

  ‘The Super King Air was worth seven big ones and the person supposed to be flying her wasn’t at the controls, right?’

  Petinski nodded.

  ‘That means the insurance company won’t pay out. Morrow didn’t own the plane. And the boss didn’t have a lazy seven mill clogging up his bank account. Like everyone else in this game, he’s in it on a wing and a prayer – literally.’

  ‘If you want me, I’ll be out back,’ Carol said, departing angrily through the door in the partition behind her desk.

  ‘Anyone else leave in a hurry?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re referring to Stu Forrest, my two-eye-cee, who took off in the twin just before you got here?’

  ‘Where’d he take off to?’

  ‘Don’t know, but I’d put money on Mexico. Sell the plane, live in a beach shack . . .’

  ‘You got its registration numbers handy?’

  The mechanic reeled them off from memory. Petinski took them down and asked, ‘Why’d he go?’

  ‘Don’t know that, either. For what it’s worth, Stu was the King Air’s crew chief.’

  ‘Did anyone witness the King Air’s departure?’ I asked. So far, we hadn’t placed Randy at the controls when he left.

  ‘No one except Stu. The takeoff was at three-thirty a.m.’

  ‘Why so early?’

  ‘Avoid the early-morning traffic out of LAX.’

  ‘The NTSB investigation team following up, and probably the FAA, will want to talk with you. You’ll make yourself available.’

  ‘Do I got a choice?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I have to get another job – got kids, two ex-wives, three cats.’

  ‘No one’s stopping you,’ said Petinski. ‘Just make sure your contact details are up to date, don’t take anything when you go, and don’t leave the country.’

  He nodded, dug his hands deep in his pockets, picked up a folder from Carol’s desk.

  ‘Maybe you should leave that,’ said Petinski.

  He shrugged, put it down and trudged off out the back door.

  Petinski asked, ‘You got any connections with local law enforcement in this town, Cooper? We need this place locked down.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s going to take me an hour at least to work up the affidavit, find the judge on call in this town and get the warrant issued. I need someone in uniform here while I go off and do all that – unless you want to hang around and wave that pay check you got from your topless dancer friend as your legal authority.’ Petinski was getting more agitated by the minute. She wrung her tiny hands.

  ‘What’s going on your affidavit? You got grounds? It mightn’t have been in Morrow’s interest for that plane to go down, but a desire to avoid creditors doesn’t look like probable cause to me.’

  Petinski lost patience. ‘Look, if I have to get this place sealed up on a freakin’ building violation, then that’s what I’ll do. You want to find out what happened to Sweetwater same as me, and my intuition tells me this is the rock to look under.’

  ‘You’re federal. Why don’t you call in Homeland Security?’

  ‘Cooper, we – or rather I – need someone here now.’

  She was right about HS. Before doing anything, those guys would first set up a task force, otherwise known as a committee, and we both knew how fast they moved. ‘You seem pretty tense about this, Petinski.’

  ‘I take my job seriously.’

  As far as I could tell, Petinski took everything seriously. ‘You might want to see if your FAA pals know where Morrow took off to. Same for Forrest. Check their flight plans.’

  ‘I know what to do, okay?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘What about getting this place closed up? Can you help, or not?’

  I retrieved my cell. ‘As you ask so nicely, I do happen to know someone local.’ The screen told me I had a text each from Arlen and Alabama, as well as a voice message from a number I didn’t recognize. They could wait. I extracted Ike Bozey’s number from the phone’s memory and dialed. ‘Detective Sergeant Bozey?’ I asked when the call went through.

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Vin Cooper.’

  ‘Hey, Cooper. You’re a mind reader. Called you half an hour ago. Spoke with Arlen. Welcome home. How was Australia?’

  ‘Hungry. That place eats people.’

  ‘Hey, I heard you didn’t find your guy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Long way to go for no.’

  Maybe, but it was the best answer for Alabama. It meant she could continue to believe in that feeling she had about her boyfriend being out there somewhere, breathing, all his bits still attached. ‘We need a little assistance. Wondered if you could help us out.’

  ‘Who’s us? You including that cute showgirl pal of yours?’

  ‘No, an investigator from the NTSB.’

  ‘Whadaya need?’

  ‘We need premises at McCarran sealed, pending a federal warrant.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To stop any more evidence here flying away before the NTSB team looking into the plane crash arrives.’ I gave him a brief rundown.

  ‘The federal courthouse is down on South Las Vegas Boulevard, near the old casinos. You could get it done in an hour or two.’

  ‘Yeah, but in the meantime we’re gonna need someone to babysit the place.’

  ‘See what I can do. Should be able to get a black and white over there within the next ten to fifteen. That suit your schedule, Cooper?’

  I crooked the cell phone under my cheek and signaled ten minutes to Petinski, who nodded. ‘Yep, that’s good for us,’ I told him.

  ‘Any pal of Arlen’s . . .’

  I gave him the address. ‘Say, while I got you – the amputated hand. Anything come through from pathology?’

  ‘You have been watching too much TV, Cooper. I doubt it’s even made their to-do list yet. I’ll go talk with them, see if leaning on ’em will speed things up.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t thank me. Leaning on them usually makes them go slower. Stay in touch.’

  I said I would and the line went dead. Petinski’s hands were on her hips, scoping the room like she was wondering what to do next. ‘When did you call Morrow?’ I asked her.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘In the coroner’s office back in Darwin, you said you had some calls to make. Was one of them to Morrow?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Simple question, Petinski. What time did you call him?’

  ‘Look—’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Around eleven.’

  ‘Eleven a.m. in Darwin, six-thirty p.m. in Vegas. You talked to Morrow and within minutes he’s shredding documents.’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘You tell him the dead pilot who flew his wrecked King Air wasn’t Sweetwater?’

  Her blue eyes flashed, did that squid thing. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why the hurry?’

  ‘Did you call your topless dancer client?’ she asked, fighting back.

  ‘I got around to it eventually, but that’s what I was being paid to do – identify the remains and notify her. I’m still not clear on what it is you do?’

  Petinski took a deep breath. ‘Okay, calling Morrow was a mistake,’ she admitted. ‘I should’ve had someone arrive here with the news and the warrant at the same time.’

  Imagine that – a mistake. Petinski was human after all.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Cooper?’ It was Carol. She’d reappeared with a wad of paperwork, which she handed me. ‘A copy of Mr Sweetwater’s flight plan.’

  I thanked her and opened it up, Petinski looking on.

 
‘LAS, LAX, OGG, CXI, FUN, HIR, POM, DRW,’ the investigator said. ‘McCarran, Los Angeles, Kahului, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Honiara, Port Moresby, Darwin.’

  ‘No wonder he took so much reading material,’ I said.

  ‘Randy flew to LAX, gave his wallet, watch, license and other ID to the Brazilian stand-in, who took it on from there,’ said Petinski.

  ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t – not for sure. But that would work.’

  ‘You don’t know if Randy gave up the pilot seat willingly.’

  ‘No, but LAX is way bigger than any of the other airports in the flight plan. You could do a lot of things at LAX and no one would know or care. On Kiribati, for instance, you’re going to be the center of attention. If it happened, it happened at LAX.’

  ‘So then, by that reasoning, he could have been shanghaied in LAX, his documents stolen and so forth.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Petinski reluctantly, a little annoyed. ‘Yes, that’s possible. It just doesn’t feel like that’s what has happened here. But I can’t explain why.’

  Maybe she’d been reading tea leaves. The cell buzzed in my pocket again, reminding me about those unchecked messages.

  Two uniform cops walked in through the front door. I’d hung up on Bozey maybe five minutes ago. These guys should deliver pizza. The uniforms checked out the room, thumbs hooked into their utility belts, looking around to see what was what. Petinski motioned that she was going to have a word with them. I nodded okay and took the opportunity to check my cell. There was the voice message from the blocked number. I hit the button and listened to Bozey asking whether I was back in the country yet and how it all went. Old news. I touched the text from Arlen. It read, St Barts. Amazing place. So is Marnie. Am here two more days. You’re still on vacation – come on over. Marnie has friends. The message concluded with a smiley face. There was a photo attached. I opened it and felt my heart stop. Like I said, Marnie was the spitting image of Anna, and here she was practically falling out of a tiny emerald-green bikini. Arlen had his arm around her tan shoulder, his hand an inch from a breast. He looked a lot older than her – a bit of a gut, lecherous. He should be wearing a raincoat. St Barts was the one place I wouldn’t want to be.