The Vulture

by Frederick Ramsay

  The phone line hummed in his ear. He hung up and muttered.

  “I will have to do something about him before too long. He’s too eager. But first things first. This means the woman is still out there. We need to find out where and finish what we started. People need to know that it is not a good thing to cross me. What else does that mean? Damn, they know something. How much? If they knew to set up that blind, did they know about the tower? No, how could they? Still…time to call in a few IOUs.”

  He picked up the phone again and dialed a series of numbers with Washington, DC area codes.

  ***

  It promised to be a long night for several people who would have to search their consciences and weigh their political and financial futures, their survival, against assuming some of the responsibility for the certain destruction of one or more people they’d never met. In the end, personal survival would win, but in fairness to one or two of them, there were a few qualms before the storm.

  The next morning, phones began to ring across Foggy Bottom—in senator’s offices, the FBI, NSA, and the White House. Charlie received a heads-up from the director.

  “I don’t know who you pissed off, Charlie, but the proverbial fertilizer is about to hit the fan. I hope your pals are tucked away someplace safe.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Ike’s Vulture nearly flew into the rotors of the approaching helicopter. The drone’s guidance system was capable of challenges of all sorts, wind shear, rain, even lightning, while doing things bird-like, but to spot an aircraft and avoid it was not one of them. Fortunately, prop turbulence knocked it to one side and into a dive. Its programming recognized that the craft was off course and losing altitude. It recalculated its flight path and the adjustments the bird’s software needed to reset. Within seconds, it had wheeled about, regained altitude, and returned to its pre-programmed vector. People on the ground who happened to witness the near collision, laughed and wondered aloud what, if the bird hadn’t dropped when it did, would “chopped buzzard” have looked like splattered all over Mr. Pangborn’s new toy?

  The tiny five-by-seven-inch screen restricted Ike’s view of what happened. He had a sudden sinking feeling that he’d lost his bird and then what he might have to say to Charlie. Charlie told him he needed the drone back and in one piece in three days’ time. What he would say if Ike shipped him a crate full of diced Styrofoam? Nothing repeatable in church, certainly. In the next instant he recognized that the drone had righted itself and cleared the chopper’s path. He breathed a sigh of relief when the drone leveled out and resumed its preprogrammed course. He made it wheel away and “disappear” for a few minutes and then had it return following a different flight pattern.

  “Something big is happening,” Sam shouted. Her voice traffic had escalated quickly in the last few minutes.

  “I’ve got it,” Ike shouted. “A helicopter just flew in and landed. I have our bird changing its altitude and flight pattern. I want a peek at the passengers. Any idea what the chatter on the phone lines is about?”

  “Software is still installing. Another couple of minutes and we can listen in, but right now, I have nothing.”

  “Why’d it take so long for the spooks to release it? Never mind. I can guess.”

  “From my experience at NSA, they are not good at sharing. Charlie can do only so much.”

  “Right.”

  Ike checked to make sure the Vulture was recording and resumed squinting at the screen. With any luck they would be able to grab a few usable face shots and run them through facial recognition programs. He reckoned he already knew who it would be, who he hoped it would be. If they could get the author of all this craziness on the ground and close, he could end it. Ike did not think he’d bother to wait for an arrest warrant if that were the case. All this assumed, of course, that the dots, when correctly connected, led to Martin Pangborn.

  “Software is up and running. I will have some transcripts from the earlier calls for you in fifteen minutes.” Sam sounded excited. Then Ike remembered that she had always sounded that way when some new techno-goodie arrived for her to play with. She piped in the live conversations.

  “Star Two is on the ground,” the digitalized voice reported.

  “Star Two? Assuming that is the tag for whoever just landed, who or where is Star One?”

  “Remember when I looked at the analysis of the Fifty-first Star? Someone named Drexel Franks was described as the head of it. I didn’t see his name anywhere else in the material, though.”

  “You sound disappointed, Ike,” Ruth said. She had come into the room when the shouting started.

  “If I assume Star Two is the second in command, Star One must be the Mister Big I’m after and the guy I’m interested in. I hoped he was the one who got out of that chopper, that’s all.”

  “Well, perhaps this is the advance party.”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. From what Sam just said I’m thinking it’s more likely the real brain behind all this is smart enough to put a patsy in as titular head. That would be this Franks character. Then if there were any serious breakdown, people would naturally go after him, that is Franks, not the actual manipulator of the organization. He, in turn, would glide away into the miasma and disappear.”

  “He?…Miasma?”

  “I’m assuming the person behind all of this is male and Star Two is our friend Pangborn. I could be wrong. It could be the Dragon Lady, or Meryl Streep having a bad hair day, or Drexel Franks, but my money is on Pangborn. Miasma…fog, mist with an ominous or foreboding valence. Miasma.”

  “My ass to you, too. Don’t go all English as a Second Language on me, Schwartz.”

  “Sorry, Doc. But you see what I mean. If we are going to bring this thing to a close in this decade, we need the players correctly identified and located where we can get at them, not lost in a fog by any other name.”

  “And if they all show up here, what will you do?”

  “Take care of business. I will make sure they know that I know and that there are always consequences for seriously screwing around with me and mine.”

  “Bravely spoken, sir. There is just one problem with that. You have no hard evidence that Pangborn or Meryl Streep, if your second guess is correct—”

  “She was a joke.”

  “I got it. If he/she is in fact in play, you got nothing to justify going all Rambo.”

  “Evidence is a vague sort of concept, don’t you think?”

  “You went to law school. You tell me. Or does your sense of righteous outrage trump due process?”

  “What’s up with you? You said you wanted to put an end to this. You said you understood that bad things might happen, but you were tired of having a target on your back. You know me by now. So what is the problem?”

  “I said all those things and I meant them, and I do, indeed know you. That is the problem. I also said a lot of other things over the years, some of it on reflection I am not proud of and would take back if I could. Other stuff…well. Now I am saying this to you, Ike. I do not want justice at the expense of losing you. I’ve already come too close to that, if you recall. Whether from friendly fire, bad guys getting off a lucky shot, or more likely a judge who has little or no patience with vigilantism putting you away for twenty to life, I will not accept losing you because you can do what you do. I want these monsters brought down the right way. That’s all.”

  “Wow. Well, at least you didn’t drop the F bomb. I’m proud of you.”

  “I was tempted. If ever there was an occasion.”

  “Okay, I hear you.”

  “Hearing isn’t enough. I want a promise that you won’t go all Lone Ranger on me and ruin what we have just to drop one slimeball.”

  “The Lone Ranger was the good guy.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You do understand that if we play straight arrow
, we might never get this guy. If the source of this continuing nightmare is who we suspect, he will not be easy to nail. People like him have layers around them like an onion on steroids, to prevent anyone from getting close. And he is connected to all sorts of powerful people.”

  “Ike…”

  “Let me finish. Do you remember when the financial collapse hit a while back and banks had to be bailed out and General Motors teetered on the verge of bankruptcy? Some were considered ‘too big to fail’ so the bozos who engineered that fiasco not only got a pass, but to add insult to injury, gave themselves performance bonuses for their monumental incompetence. Some of what they did was clearly criminal yet, they were too big to go to jail. So, it appears there are some people in this society who are permitted to skate on moral thin ice because they are just that—too big, too important, too connected, or too rich, to bring down. They will have alibis, fall guys, high-priced lawyers, and friends in high places who will grease the skids for them. Or enough money to flee the country to a venue with which we have no extradition treaty and, by the way, take their money with them. This guy is one of those people. He might be impossible to bring down the right way.”

  “So, you will do it your way?”

  Ike sighed and said nothing. What could he say? Any answer he gave would be a lie—to himself or to Ruth. There was no middle ground here.

  “Okay, then. I have a pot of stew on the burner. You and Sam need to eat. You can plot and scheme with Dinty Moore. I’m going to settle for a tall scotch and water and leave you to it. Just this, I don’t like it.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Pangborn Enterprises occupied a suite of offices in mid-town Chicago. More prestigious addresses were available, but Pangborn thought a status address rarely justified its cost. Business started early, as much of the company’s competition was located on the east coast, and in consideration of the west coast business, it ended late for the same reason. Starting at five in the morning, the hunter/gatherers that made up his staff busied themselves on their telephones and computer screens. There appeared to be no evidence that the news about the men who’d been assigned to track down and dispatch Ruth Harris-Schwartz and had now dropped out of sight had set off alarms.

  Pangborn made a point to keep his business separate from his involvement with the Fifty-first Star. Thus, the company’s flinty eyed employees, handpicked by Pangborn personally, continued their planned rape and pillage of the economically vulnerable commercial sector.

  Three struggling companies were targeted for the next round of acquisitions. Two companies, currently on the books, were methodically dismembered and their viable parts sold off at an enormous profit, the marginal units dumped on the scrap heap of American capitalism. Previous owners took what they were offered, happy to have avoided ruin while their employees, who’d been persuaded to take pay cuts so that the company could keep going, now found themselves on the street without warning and wondering where they would find a job, the cash to make their next mortgage payment, and how to explain to their families what had just happened. Few, if any could have identified the source of their personal disaster. One or two would try.

  His flight department was the only exception to the separation of the corporate body and the Fifty-first Star. He kept a Global Explorer hangered at Teeterboro and a small fleet of Bell helicopters in varying configurations at the FBO at Martin State in Maryland. Their fuselages were all marked with a star with the number fifty-one in its center. The Explorer and the helos he leased through a subsidiary, Fifty-One Sky Star. He also kept an executive Bell at Chicago’s Midway for his personal use. It was the latter that had carried him to the ranch. He’d left the offices that morning because he did not want to be available when the obvious questions were raised by the recipients of the calls made the night before to people who owed him their allegiance or who, for one reason or another, feared him.

  He arrived at the New Star Ranch in the late afternoon and retired to his personal residence. From the outside it looked like the all the other buildings which were arrayed in two rows on the site. Inside there was a remarkable difference. Whereas the others were spartan in their appointments, some even configured like army barracks with rows of cots and lockers, his residence was sumptuous. He and his guest settled in and called for brandy and an update. He would listen to his chiefs for the remainder of the afternoon, have dinner, and then he and Senator Connors would amuse themselves in a more commodious way. It was his word, commodious. Some would say, rhymes with odious. But to do so would be judgmental.

  Neither he, nor any of his men or women domiciled on the ranch had spotted Ike’s drone, except, of course the two or three who’d believed it was the buzzard they thought had nearly decorated the helicopter. They could not know that it had returned, equipped with infrared sensors, and in its alternate coloration or lack thereof. Matte black, it noiselessly circled the ranch buildings, recording everything that occurred on the ground for the next eight hours.

  ***

  Charlie Garland had had a busy day, considering the fact that ostensibly neither he nor the CIA had anything to do with the investigation into the apparent death of Sheriff Schwartz, late of Picketsville, Virginia. Facial recognition identified the men at the gates of New Star Ranch as former Army or Marine enlisted men. Three of the four had less than honorable discharges. One was a person of interest in an open case in Nevada involving a missing child. The second batch of images verified that Martin Pangborn had taken up residence at the ranch along with Senator Oswald Connors. The men taken into custody in Maine had still not said anything, insisting they had a right to an attorney and they wished to exercise it. The FBI, which would be brought in later would agree and then, as Charlie would report to Ike, “When the lawyers show up and eventually find their clients, the cat will be out of the bag.” As it happened, there would be some annoying delays before the attorneys latched onto their clients. They might get lost in the system and didn’t Ike just love that expression?

  In the meantime, he suggested Ike should consider dropping deeper into the dark. Ike thought he’d had enough playing at being someone else and if even the slightest hint linking Pangborn to his situation was verified, he would end it. Charlie worried how that might play out. It was one thing to erase a low level spy, a compromised diplomat, even a decorated military figure with alternate views of the Constitution. Taking on someone with Pangborn’s connections and backing was another thing entirely.

  The analysts finished their examination of the dash cam images and reported that they were able to reconstruct a scrap of a bumper sticker on the car carrying the shooter to positively identify it as a rental. They would have more in a few hours. Charlie sent that off to Frank Sutherlin in Picketsville. Ike’s deputies were feeling frustrated at being left out of the hunt. It would give them something to work on. As an afterthought, he also sent the names of the men identified by facial recognition from the various sweeps and scans the Agency had done.

  Charlie managed to get Ike on a secure line and they talked for two hours about what they knew. Most of the time was spent discussing the possible connection between Connors and Pangborn, beyond the obvious, political one. Now, little doubt remained in either of their minds that the impetus for the bomb came from Pangborn. It appeared equally clear that the chance of making that case before a Grand Jury were slim to none. What that left them with Charlie couldn’t say.

  “Ruth says I am not to act alone on this.”

  “She’s right, Ike. There is no way anyone can protect you from what will happen if you’re caught and, given the obvious linkages you and he now have, you will not be able to avoid some smart prosecutor from nailing your hide to the wall if you so much as cause him to break a nail.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You need to tell me again what you think the connection is, or what you think Pangborn has on Connors.”

  “I will, but first tell me how the drone is working. The VP
for sales has been on the phone every couple of hours for an update.”

  “It is a thing of beauty, Charlie. You should buy some. At the moment it is circling the ranch in night mode. From vulture to bat, you could say, and recording whatever is going on down there. I will look at the tape tomorrow and give you an update.”

  “Good. Please try not to break it. The Agency does not know they are on the hook for it. Okay, repeating, this is what I think might, emphasis on ‘might’ be the thing that binds Pangborn to Connors. It could be nothing but coincidence but the FBI file marks it as a possible problem at the National Security level.”

  Charlie discussed the allegations Karl had uncovered in the FBI file on Connors, speculated the possible ramifications and how it could impact Ike’s situation. Ike listened, asked a few questions and finally wanted to know when the people recruited to staff the fake real-estate agency would arrive.

  “You should have them early tomorrow. Are we done here?”

  “Are we? I don’t know. We have a possible blackmailer and…let me think a minute. No, not quite finished. Charlie, what do you know about health and safety regulations as they apply to privately run retreat centers, specifically in the state of Idaho?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Neither do I. Could you have one of those smart people you’re sending to me come prepared to play expert in that area?”

  “Health requirements for community housing and/or camps? Sure. What are you thinking?”

  “A couple of things. I need eyes on the ground. The Vulture is great, but the perspective is wrong. I want to know how the ground is laid out. I might need…no, I will need to know the points of access into that compound and my guess is that night would be the best time to slip in there, if at all. The other is a hunch. Either way, I will need some fake IDs made on short order.”

  “That’s it?”