Hard Fall

by Ridley Pearson

  Praise

  Praise for Hard Fall:

  “Pearson excels at novels that grip the imagination. Hard Fall is an adventure with all engines churning.”

  —People magazine

  “Mesmerizing urgency.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “Nifty cat-and-mouse caper. Crisply written tale.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  Praise for No Witnesses:

  “Tough and intelligent.”

  —Fort Worth Star Telegram

  “Up-to-the-nanosecond techno-thriller.”

  —New York Times

  “Infused with astonishingly effective overtones.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Good old-fashioned storytelling.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “A serious, well-researched, complex thriller.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  Praise for The Angel Maker:

  “Exceptionally gripping and full of amazing forensic lore: a top-flight offering from an author who has clearly found his groove.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A chilling thriller.”

  —Dell Publishing

  DEDICATION

  For Colleen

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Praise

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments/Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Other Works

  Copyright

  1

  * * *

  Cam Daggett shook his watch, questioning its accuracy, and glanced a quarter-mile ahead at the dirty, exhaust-encrusted sign that indicated the lane change for National Airport. Heat waves rose in fluid sheets from the pavement, distorting the distance, carrying gray exhaust into the canopy of smog. Given this traffic, they would never make it in time.

  News radio explained that the congestion was the result of a three-car pileup with injury. Daggett checked the rearview mirror, wondering if he could pull some stunt with the car. He feared that if he didn’t, there might be a hell of a lot more injury to come. And it wouldn’t be a few cars on a highway; it would be the burning hulk of an airliner spread over several acres.

  “What about a helicopter? We could call for a helicopter.”

  The big man on the seat next to him mopped his forehead and said nothing. Daggett’s anxiety threatened again. He felt boxed in. By the traffic. By this obese man sitting next to him. He could feel his hair turning gray.

  A yellow hamburger wrapper replete with golden arches fluttered like a bird with a broken wing and dove into traffic, adhering to the side of a Mercedes where it smeared catsup across the side panel doors like blood from an open wound.

  He felt wounded, too, if pride could be wounded. Marcel Bernard had escaped FBI surveillance six days earlier in Los Angeles.

  Now, through a fluke, a stroke of luck, they had the man in their sights once more. Daggett had no intention of losing him again. Bernard built bombs for a living. He was one of the best, or one of the worst, depending on which side of the interrogation table you sat. The interrogation. Impatience gnawed at Daggett like a stray dog at the mailman’s heel. A bulging file back in his office at Buzzard Point contained a grainy black-and-white photograph of what had proved to be a portion of Bernard’s thumbprint. Laboratory evidence. As good as a noose around the neck. Hopefully, the gallows might be traded for information vital to Daggett’s continuing investigation into the downing of EuroTours flight 1023. The man who built the bomb was one thing; but the man who planted the bomb—he was the real killer.

  Up ahead, a driver climbed out of his car and popped the hood. The August heat and humidity had claimed another victim.

  “Twenty-two minutes,” he announced through clenched teeth to the overweight Bob Backman, enthroned in the seat next to him. Behind his back, they called him Falstaff because of his enormous gut. Coat off, wheezing like an asthmatic, Backman was soaked through in a sweat. “That plane goes in twenty-two minutes,” Daggett repeated.

  Backman attempted to appear calm. He was a bad actor. Perhaps he intended to part the traffic, a fat Moses at the George Washington Memorial Parkway.

  Daggett had the leathery features of a major league first baseman. He had a hard brow, dark, intimidating eyes, and a prominent nose. His lips didn’t move much when he spoke, a holdover from wearing braces during his adolescence. He was soft-spoken—a family trait—though by his build one might have expected more of a growl.

  “Why exactly did you come along?” Daggett asked Backman.

  “I wondered when we would get to that,” Backman admitted, blotting a drip of sweat from his double chin. Backman was a bookish man, with a receding hairline and chapped lips. He tended toward shirt collars a size too big and suits a size too small. “You’re not debriefing him. I am.”

  Backman conduct an interrogation? Impossible. It was like asking Ty Cobb back into the batter’s box. Daggett gripped the wheel tightly in frustration. His Casio read: MON 8–13.

  Backman said, “I suppose you think I’m trying to steal your thunder. You do all the legwork, I do the debriefing and take the credit. That’s not how it is.” He struck a pose, imagining himself a heavy, but this attempt also failed.

  Daggett was thinking: To come all this way—to within a mile or two of finally interrogating Bernard—and now this loaf taps me on the shoulder and steals the dance. Again.

  He and Backman had long since parted ways. Trust formed the cornerstone of any relationship, especially FBI agents working the same case; Daggett would never trust Backman again. A year earlier, Backman had pilfered a file from Daggett’s desk, hand-carried it to the Special-Agent-in-Charge, and claimed credit for its authorship—a file that connected Bernard with the little-known West German terrorist group Der Grund. In that one move, he had effectively stolen eighteen months of Daggett’s life. Afraid it might backfire on him, Daggett had not attempted to correct the injustice—authorship of such files was difficult, if not impossible, to prove.

  As a direct result of this stolen credit, Backman had been promoted to chief of the foreign counterterrorism squad. The man was nothing but a lazy, unimaginative parasite who grew fat on the hard work of others. Over the past twelve months, he had developed this into something of an art. Everyone in the C-3 bullpen now took their files home with them out of habit.

&nb
sp; When the chief of C-3 had climbed into his car thirty minutes earlier, Daggett had experienced an immediate déjà vu. The more things change, he thought. How many times had they ridden together like this? It seemed like ages ago. Despite his assertion to the contrary, Backman was here for only one reason: to claim credit for the apprehension of Bernard and any information gleaned through interrogation. Daggett plotted a way around this while Backman wheezed in the seat next to him, and lived up to his reputation as the human pork belly.

  Backman knew little, if anything, about Bernard, and hadn’t conducted an interrogation in at least a year, maybe longer.

  “Nineteen minutes,” Daggett said bluntly, wanting some action. “Neither of us is going to debrief him if we don’t get him off that plane.” He yanked on the door handle. He could run a mile in seven or eight minutes. He ran every morning of his life. He could escape on foot and conduct the interrogation himself. He had no intention of watching Bernard’s plane take off overhead while he sat trapped in a car breathing in Backman’s body odor.

  “You wouldn’t want to miss a chance to get Kort, would you?” the fat man asked.

  Daggett pulled his foot back inside and shut the door. The dome light went off. He felt chilled.

  “You’re the one who gave us Bernard. You deserve to hear this.” He nodded at Daggett with something like respect. The heat was obviously getting to him. Fat people had more trouble than most with the heat. “The Germans raided Der Grund last night.” Daggett felt wounded: this was not the schedule he had hoped for. This had been his investigation, and now it was running away from him.

  “They didn’t get Kort,” Backman added in a voice filled with regret and failure, yet tinged with a hint of apology.

  Daggett nodded and coughed up nervous laughter, and along with it, a bitter taste at the back of his throat. Blood or bile; all the same. Nothing could hurt him now; he had gone numb. He tugged at his shirt collar. The button popped loose. It slid down his shirt and rolled down his leg. He grabbed for the button but missed, which held significance for him.

  His pursuit of Bernard, his passing of information about Der Grund on to the Germans—the last two years of his life—had all been directed at but one aim: to apprehend Anthony Kort. The carrot at the end of the stick that had kept him going. And now …

  Backman interrupted his thoughts. Backman always interrupted. “Are you following this, Michigan?”

  Daggett nodded, annoyed that Backman felt free to use the nickname. They called him that because of the college-letter jacket he lived in. It was a lucky jacket. If one looked real closely at the right-hand pocket, a small gather of thread about the size of a bullet stuck out there. There had been no Bible carried in Cam Daggett’s pocket on the day he had been shot at, but instead an autographed baseball he had intended to present to his son on the boy’s fifth birthday. The baseball now resided on Duncan’s shelf, the hollow-point slug lodged deeply within it, and Duncan wore the jacket whenever possible. Daggett’s friends called him Michigan, not people like Backman.

  “If you think Bernard can get you Kort, you’re dreaming,” Daggett said. “The Germans shouldn’t have gone ahead with the bust. How many times did we discuss that with them? Kort would have shown up sooner or later. ... There would have been a lead of some sort. We’re fucked. We’ll never get him now.”

  “Bernard—”

  “Bernard won’t know squat about Kort. We don’t know squat about Kort. A name, that’s all. What else do we have? No face to attach to it, no file. Just the name from an untrustworthy squeal. We put too much faith in that in the first place. Who knows if there even is an Anthony Kort?” Depression caved in on him. The air in the car had gone impossibly stale.

  “Of course Kort exists,” Backman said angrily. “You know that as well as I.” But you could hear in his voice that he didn’t believe it.

  “He’s a starting point,” Backman insisted, grasping at straws. “In all likelihood, Bernard built a detonator in his Los Angeles hotel room. Right? And now, thanks to you, we have no idea where that detonator is! If we did, we might find Kort yet.”

  The Los Angeles Field Office had fouled up the Bernard surveillance, not Daggett. As the case-agent-in-charge, he was only indirectly responsible. It was a cheap shot and both men knew it.

  Daggett argued, “We don’t know that Bernard built a detonator. We don’t know shit. And if you think he’s just going to offer up the information—”

  “It’s my interrogation, Michigan. Mine, and mine alone. Got it?”

  Bernard was Daggett’s only hope. At all costs, Backman had to be prevented from conducting the interrogation. He reopened the car door, overwhelmed once again by the fumes. “Sixteen minutes.” He still had a chance.

  Attempting to sound calm, Backman said, “The Airport Police are on notice to keep that plane on the ground. The passengers will be told the delay is for mechanical reasons. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You think a stunt like that will fool Bernard? You think the Airport Police can handle Bernard?” He slapped the car keys into Backman’s damp, pudgy hand. “I’m going on foot.”

  “You’re what?”

  He hurried from the car before Backman could object.

  To his complete surprise, only seconds into his run, he heard the heavy thump of a car door behind him, and knew without looking it was Backman. So it was going to be a race, was it? He lengthened his stride, lifted his chin, and pushed on toward the exit, far in the shimmering distance.

  As Daggett ran, his body fell into the familiar rhythm, and his anger lifted. Running had a way of cleansing him, even in the heat and smog of Washington in August. Running to the airport, to an interrogation—how was that for dedication to the job? If the boys in the bullpen ever found out, he was sure to be razzed. At least he was running away from Backman—that much was in his favor.

  His gun thumped at his waist annoyingly. A dozen sea gulls flew overhead, in search of landfill to plunder. Maybe one of them would shit on Backman.

  Soaking wet with perspiration, Daggett reached the dingy Airport Police office on the ground floor of Terminal One, where he was greeted by two men in permanent-press suits who introduced themselves as detectives. Airport Police, a private company, had no legitimate connection to the metropolitan police force. These men were not detectives.

  The security at any major airport consisted of a cruel assortment of various levels of authority. Metropolitan Police—real cops—had the power to arrest; their presence was typically small, confined to a half-dozen cars and twice that many men; city budgets didn’t allow for the policing of airports on a large scale. That task was passed on to Airport Police, a private company that had the authority and necessary licenses for their patrolmen to carry arms, though these patrolmen could only detain individuals for later arrest by the proper metropolitan boys. Airport Police ran about a hundred men and women. Security, the people in blazers at X-ray machines, represented yet another private contract. They had virtually no authority, other than to search personal property; they passed their problem passengers into the hands of Airport Police, who then passed them on to Metropolitan Police. Communication between these various private and public organizations was as good as could be expected. That bad.

  The FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration, and a half-dozen other investigative agencies fit into this command structure somewhere so difficult to define that they were viewed both suspiciously and often with a good deal of contempt by the private companies. Daggett felt this fully as he reached out his hand, and the two men facing him shook it reluctantly.

  Following these uncomfortable introductions, they all headed off at a brisk pace toward the gate. By the sound of his voice and the color of his teeth, the taller of the two was a smoker. He didn’t offer a name. Daggett sensed immediately that these guys carried chips on their shoulders. They acted nervous and falsely overconfident. The Smoker was gravel-voiced and rough-skinned; he moved frantically, gesticulating wildly, the kind
of man who probably ground his teeth in his sleep.

  His sidekick—Daggett thought he heard the name as Henderson but wasn’t sure—looked like an Italian version of the Leakey ape. He was hard-featured and stood firmly planted in well-worn shoes. He had almost no hair. Daggett saw him not as Henderson, but as Hairless. He had the look of a veteran field agent, stoic and inquisitive, the kind to ask questions, not answer them.

  The airport was old. The basement corridor connecting the terminals was walled with a red carpet wainscoting. The ceiling was yellowing acoustical tile, the floor linoleum. A few brightly lit and recently remodeled concession areas seemed incongruous with their surroundings.

  They climbed the unmoving steps of a broken escalator and approached the security check. “You’re going to have to leave your piece with one of our boys at the security check. It takes a fucking mountain of paperwork to carry past the checks.” The Smoker pointed to an armed cop in uniform who stood off to the side, intentionally distancing himself from the people who ran the X-ray machines and conveyor belt. “He’s ours,” the Smoker said, as if Daggett cared. All Daggett could think of was Bernard on that plane. “The blue coats are Security,” he added distastefully. Daggett handed the cop his weapon, and the three hurried on.

  The Smoker explained in his sandpaper voice, “We’ve got both the terminal and the plane covered. Six people in place: two women as flight attendants, a passenger in row nineteen, two maintenance guys, and a baggage handler.” He paused. Daggett was thinking: And a partridge in a pear tree. This guy was full of self-importance. “Bernard’s in eighteen-B—window exit to his left. We’re told he bought both seats. I suppose that window exit is his way out if he needs one.” He paused. “Don’t worry; we got it covered.”

  The gate drew closer. Daggett’s throat was dry and his heart was still pounding hard from the run. A commotion erupted behind them. It was Bob Backman. He looked as if he’d been swimming with his clothes on. He was refusing to surrender his gun.

  Daggett said, “He’s ours,” mimicking the Smoker’s expression, but in a tone of voice that disowned Backman.