“Nothing—no . . . wait. There’s a picture of him, much younger, winning some kind of prize or award as an alumnus of the University of Michigan back in the seventies.” She turned the screen so that I could see. “Isn’t that him?”
“Yep. Put in automobile industry.”
She tapped a few more keys. “Here he is again. He worked for GM for most of his early career.”
“And was involved in engine and acoustical tile development?”
She nodded. “Yeah. And exhaust systems.”
“Stainbrook mentioned that the first time they stumbled across this stuff was when they were developing polymer exhaust valves that were supposed to be as strong as steel.”
“Shit. I’m betting he was in on developing it first.”
“Yep, or at least got it started.”
She slumped back in Nutter’s chair. “Why wouldn’t you just patent this stuff and sell it to the government for bags of money. I mean, the CIA wanted it.”
“Just from the small amount we’ve gleaned from this, I don’t think Nance has a very good opinion of the federal government, especially as a business partner.”
“So, he gets Tichenor to advance the polymer further and then gets rid of him when he hands it over to research and development.”
“Torres.”
“And then when he’s got a workable material, he gets rid of him.”
“Or somebody does.”
“C’mon, Walt, the guy is Professor Moriarty—he’s leaving bodies around like the Black Plague.”
“Well, by getting in bed with the Tre Tre Nomads via Delshay and Bodaway, he’s certainly been introduced to the criminal element.”
“Introduced?” She touched up the lipstick at the corner of her perfect mouth with the tip of a pinkie and stared at the computer screen. “Hell, they’re fucking engaged.”
• • •
“So, what have we got?”
My undersheriff leaned against the front counter of the office, the three of us enjoying the brief lull. “Well, it’s complex.”
Corbin nodded and chewed his sandwich. “I figured.”
I leaned on the other side of the patrolman and came clean. “It’s looking more and more like Nutter’s friend Bob Nance may be involved in all of this.”
“Nance involved with Kiddo?”
“I think it’s all connected to the investigation the ATF has been working on and why Agent Post was murdered.”
“What’s the deal?”
“Plastic guns.” Vic went on to explain, adding Nance’s industrial background as the last piece of the puzzle.
“But now we have to come up with some kind of concrete evidence that connects Kiddo to Nance. Henry and I did a little snooping in Billy ThE’s shop, but there was nothing advanced enough to indicate that he was doing anything out of the ordinary, other than modifying bikes to carry either samples of the plastic or prototypes of the guns themselves.” I stepped away from the counter and turned to look at Corbin. “Does Nance have any other properties around here where they might have a facility large enough to produce the ASPs?”
Having lost his appetite, he set his sandwich down. “I have no idea.”
“I assume we’d have to go down to Sundance to go through the records and find out where all his real estate holdings are.”
“Yeah, I guess.” He thought about it. “Wait, you’re looking for some sort of connection between Kiddo and Nance, right?”
“Yep.”
“Well, Eddy worked for Kiddo for about two years before Billy ThE fired him this last winter.”
Vic was incredulous. “Our Eddy—the drunk Viking?”
“Yeah.”
“Go get him.”
We could hear Dougherty’s keys jangling as he disappeared into the back holding cells where the lawless awaited transport to the Crook County jail in Sundance.
Vic walked over with her head down, speaking softly as she chewed a nail. “I am having trouble thinking of a less reliable informant.”
“Me, too.”
Dougherty returned with Eddy and sat him on a chair, his Viking helmet a little askew. It looked like Corbin had woken him up. A little goggle-eyed, he glanced at my undersheriff. “Is she going to show me her tits?”
“Probably not.” I placed my hands on my knees and bent down to look him in the eyes. “Hey, Eddy?”
“Yeah?”
“You worked for Billy ThE Kiddo for a few years, right?”
“Yeah.” He belched. “He’s a prick.”
I glanced at the others. “Yep, we kind of got that.”
Still quite drunk, his eyes wobbled around the room. “Fired me. Said I didn’t know shit. I told him—”
“Eddy.” I reached out and took his chin to try to hold his attention. “Do you remember if Kiddo had another shop that he worked in?”
“Prick.”
“The Chop Shop, Billy’s place; was there another one?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
“What about a guy by the name of Bob Nance—did Billy ThE ever have any dealings with Nance?”
“The rich prick?”
I tried to keep from laughing. “Could be.”
“Asshole lives on a golf course. Has a jet that we went for a ride in. Went all the way to Daytona. . . . Fast, man.”
“So, what did Kiddo do with Nance?”
“Stuff, man. He did stuff.”
I grabbed his chin again. “Did Billy ThE work for Nance, and if he did, where? Did you ever go to his house?”
He pulled loose and flapped his hands in an attempt to keep mine away. “Yeah, man. I did a couple of times, and then we went to that bunker thing of his.”
I stood, glancing at the others and then back down at him. “What bunker thing?”
“The hut, man. That half-round thing that sticks up out of the ground.”
“A Quonset hut?”
“Yeah—I mean, that’s what it started as.”
“Where?”
He threw a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing toward who knows where. “On that road.”
“What road?”
He gestured in another direction this time. “To the airport—the airport road.”
“In Rapid City?”
“No, man. Here.”
I turned to look at Dougherty. “Hulett, with a population of under four hundred people, has an airport?”
• • •
“It’s the only airport in Crook County—took ten years to get it built.”
Driving past the clubhouse, we headed south along the ridge where Vic had won the skeet event. “The only way to get to the airport is this road through the golf course?”
“Yeah.”
“Convenient for Nance.”
Vic slowed the Challenger and stopped at the precipice where we could see the 5,500-foot runway angling southwest to our right about a mile.
Corbin pointed toward a branch road that led north around a ridge. “That’s the only other road, so it must be up there.”
“Vic, park at that pull-off and we’ll hike. I don’t see any reason to advertise.” She did as I said, and as we all piled out, I glanced at Dougherty. “Do you have any binoculars with you?”
He reached into a shooting bag and produced a pair in a plastic case. “Believe it or not, I use them for bird-watching.”
Vic struck out in front. “I believe you.”
We weaved our way through the pines that gave the Black Hills their name and up a wash where the hillside must’ve collapsed after the road had been put in. There was some brush at the top and a lot more trees, so we could move without being seen toward the southern point of the high ground.
When we got there, I kne
eled down and studied the small box canyon below. It was a relatively impossible site to sneak up on, with rock walls on three sides, and if I were a betting man, I would’ve guessed that the canyon had started out shallow but had at one point been excavated and used as a quarry, the walls now creeping up quickly around the structure.
If Nance was looking to build an impregnable fortress, he could’ve done worse. The bunker that Eddy the Viking had made reference to was about halfway up, and if it had started as a Quonset hut, it had evolved from there. The building was a concrete fortress with no windows and a razor-wire perimeter, and there were concrete vehicle blockades leading toward the entrance down by the main road.
“Hell.”
Dougherty handed me the binoculars, and I lay down on the edge to take a closer look. There were security guards in black polo shirts near the entrance and down by the gate, including Frick and Frack, the same men I’d seen at Nance’s house and the shooting event.
There were a couple of black Jeeps parked close to the building, black being the new black, but nothing else out in the open. “So, what could Nance be doing down there that’s so important that he has to have armed guards around the place?”
Corbin was the first to respond. “Something worth a lot of money.”
Vic was more succinct. “Something illegal.”
Tired of resting my weight on my elbows, I rolled over onto my back and handed the binoculars to my undersheriff. “It’s the Alamo.”
She held the glasses up to her eyes and kept them there for a long look. “Then let’s go get a couple hundred thousand Mexicans and take ’em.”
“No, this is where we hand the stick off to Stainbrook and the ATF—they’re set up for this kind of foolishness. We’ll head back into town and tell them to get a task force out here to shut down Nance and Kiddo’s operation.”
Vic continued to focus the binoculars on the compound below. “I’d say just Nance’s operation, ’cause it sure looks to me like they’re taking Billy ThE Kiddo for a proverbial ride.”
I rolled back over. “What?”
She handed the binoculars back to me. “Isn’t that shit-for-brains getting loaded into one of the Jeeps?”
I focused in and sure enough, Frick was stuffing the Hollywood biker into the passenger seat of one of the Wranglers as Frack climbed in the back. “Could you see if Kiddo was handcuffed?”
“Yeah, he was.”
I watched as they pulled out, were let through the gate, and then headed toward the main road. I turned to Dougherty. “Where do you think they’re going?”
“This way, I’d imagine; the only thing in the other direction is the airport.” We stood and hustled back toward the Dodge. “You think they’re going to fly him out of here?”
“If he’s lucky.”
When we got back to Vic’s rental, you could clearly see down the hill and there was no Jeep Wrangler coming our way.
“They must be going to the airport.” Corbin opened the door and tossed his bag in the back. “Nance has a jet, one of those twin-engine Cessnas, so we’d better hustle if we’re going to catch them.”
Vic was already in the driver’s seat, and I threw myself in in the nick of time, the Dodge roaring sideways as we shot by the precipice and down the long slope. “Slow down when you go past the cutoff; we don’t want to draw their attention when we go by.”
Dougherty hung between the bucket seats. “The cutoff to the bunker is past the airport road, so just slow down when you get there. You can’t see the hangars from the bunker, either—it’s too far up the canyon.”
We slowly turned at the airport and drove down into the parking lot. I drew my .45 as we did a quick circle around the half-dozen buildings, still seeing no Jeep.
“You think they’re inside one of the hangars?”
“Not with the kind of aircraft you described. They would have to have that thing out here and warming up with a crew.” I glanced at the gravel road that ran alongside the runway. “Where does that road go?”
He looked through the windshield past us. “There are a few hay fields down that way and some dirt roads that peter out into the forest before you get over to 24 or 183.”
Vic turned to look at him. “So, there’s nothing down there?”
“Not really.”
She gunned the Challenger and laid a twenty-foot black strip on the tarmac. “They’re going to kill him.”
We swung around another corner as Vic leveled out the Dodge and lit up all the cylinders, bringing the Hemi on line like an orange javelin. Dougherty flew across the backseat and crashed into the other side.
“I’d put my seat belt on if I were you, troop.”
The big straightaway along the airport gave us the advantage by allowing the muscle car to flex and catch up with the cloud of dust roiling from behind what we assumed was the Jeep. “I sure am going to be disappointed if we’re following some rancher on his tractor.”
She put her foot even farther into the Dodge’s accelerator. “I’ll tell you here in a second.” There was another turn, and I had to admire the way she flat-tracked the Challenger, throwing it into the gravel curve and keeping her foot in it the whole way as she focused on her prey. “Oh, you are mine, chickenshit.”
The vehicle ahead had followed the road to the left and quickly passed over an elevated bridge, where I could see that it was, indeed, the Wrangler. “It’s them.”
Vic sawed the wheel, and we shot off the road into the hay pasture, taking a more direct route to the bridge. “Got it.”
Even though we were pounding the undercarriage of the low-slung muscle car, we made time, but I wasn’t sure what was going to happen when we attempted to get back on the elevated gravel road or, worse yet, the bridge.
We screamed along, the bridge appearing to be approaching at an alarming rate; if we missed it, we would most certainly end up crashing into the guardrail buttresses or flying into the creek.
I braced a hand against the dash. “. . . Vic.”
“Got it.”
The Dodge flew up the embankment, skipped the edge, and, slamming onto the road’s uneven surface, slid completely sideways, the buttress of the bridge looking more and more like a gigantic, swinging cudgel. “. . . Vic.”
“Got it.”
From the back, Corbin’s voice sounded surprisingly conversational. “We are all going to die.”
Whipping the wheel to the right, she nosed the hood of the car forward into the narrow aperture. We all held our breath as the tires pulled free, but the car met the road and blistered the wood planks, soared over the downgrade, and blew into the hundred feet of remaining gravel road before thundering over a cattle guard into an expansive hay field still scattered with the thousand-pound square bales.
The Wrangler, traveling at a slightly more sedate pace, was running along to our right. Frick turned and looked at us as if we were crazy.
“I think we’ve caught up to them.”
The Jeep swerved, and one of the hay bales, very green with alfalfa, shot between us. On the other side, we regained sight of each other, and I could see Frick had his window down and was giving us a questioning look.
Hoping to avoid anything dramatic, I pulled my badge wallet from my pocket and flashed it at him about the time that Vic swerved to miss another bale.
My hopes of keeping things civil were dashed as the back window on the Jeep began rolling down, and I could see Frack brandishing some sort of automatic machine pistol.
I gave it one last try, yelling over the noise of the two engines. “Absaroka Sheriff’s Department—pull over!”
Frick ignored me, and Frack pointed the pistol at us.
“Vic.”
“Got it.” She locked up the brakes on the car and then swung hard, careening behind the Wrangler and then gunning it and coming up on the other side.
&nb
sp; Corbin’s voice rose from the back. “Won’t the doors stop bullets?”
“No, they won’t; even a .22 will go through most modern car doors, and maybe through the other side as well. Roll your window down—it’ll give you another layer of insulation, if it makes you feel better.”
“The window will stop a bullet?”
“Can’t hurt.”
Thank goodness the hay field was relatively smooth from years of plowing, and thank more goodness it had just been swathed, so that Vic could at least see where the really rough patches were. She swerved around another bale and angled toward the Jeep as he attempted to steer clear of her.
I could see that Billy ThE was handcuffed to the dash and didn’t look too comfortable with the situation. It was about then that the rear window on the other side of the Jeep began rolling down and the automatic pistol made another appearance.
“I don’t think they want to talk.” She sliced around another bale and came in hard this time, clipping the back quarter of the Jeep, but Frick corrected and continued on.
Dougherty swung up between the seats again. “Do you want me to shoot?”
Vic and I both answered as one: “Just put your seat belt on!”
Pulling to one side, I slid my Colt from the holster just as Vic handed me her Glock. “Shoot ’em.”
“I’m going to give them one more opportunity to stop.”
“You’re going to get us killed.” She slid in behind the Jeep as Frick began a slow turn to the left in an attempt to stay in the field. “Hopefully Frack won’t shoot out of the back.” Watching Frick slalom through the bales, Vic stayed close but then swung out again, positioning us on the left as I hung my badge out for them to see.
“Absaroka County Sheriff. Stop the vehicle. Now!”
We hit some bumps, and there was some noise, but it was only when I saw the barrel of the automatic smoking that I realized that Frack had fired.
I glanced into the rear and could see that Corbin’s eyes were wide as he looked at the holes punched in the interior panels of the car. “Are you hit?”
“No, and I’d just as soon not be.”
Vic swerved around another bale, and I turned to see that Frack was aiming at us again. I extended both of my arms, a weapon in each hand, aiming low at the Jeep’s tires, and began pulling the triggers until there was nothing left.
An Obvious Fact Page 23