Guns (John Hardin series)

by Phil Bowie

  There was a scheduled stop at Denver so Strake could meet briefly with a potential customer. As they approached the jagged horizon-wide belt of the Rockies on a cloudless morning Cowboy found himself wondering about those souls back in the frontier days who had plodded across the plains, day by day watching that formidable range grow closer and higher, undaunted by the prospect of crossing through those awesome peaks, some over two miles high, on steep rutted trails in overloaded wagons or on foot, drawn by the dream of finding some verdant fold of land beyond to claim as their own, or of discovering a long gleaming sprinkle of yellow flakes in the bed of some magical California stream. They had to have been some tough people, he thought as he began the descent into Denver, which from the air looked like just another smog-shrouded city, albeit this one perched a mile high.

  At the FBO Strake and Davis took a courtesy car and left for the business meeting. After a half-hour of sitting in the FBO lounge with the quiet Elaine, both of them leafing through well-thumbed magazines, Cowboy asked her politely if she’d like to walk a short way to an on-field restaurant for an early lunch.

  “No, thank you. I’d better stay here,” she said, but gave him a slight smile.

  “The man on the fuel truck told me they make the best egg salad and tuna salad sandwiches he’s ever had, and cinnamon coffee, with homemade pies for dessert. We could be there and back within an hour. I’m buying. I’ll just put it on my expense account. What do you say?”

  “Well it is pretty boring just waiting here, and I didn’t have much of a breakfast. All right, but we’d better not be gone too long.”

  The food was as good as promised and they both enjoyed the lunch. They made light conversation and he managed to draw her out somewhat.

  “I grew up in Binghamton, New York,” she said. “My father worked as a salesman for Louis’s father.”

  “Mr. Strake is an impressive man.”

  She looked at him seriously, something hidden behind her eyes. “Yes. He’s successful and likes to live well. So do I.”

  “Do you travel with him often?”

  “Occasionally. We’ll be going to the Bahamas sometime soon. It’s very pleasant there. What do you do besides flying?” Her green eyes were cautiously appraising.

  “Not much. I try to stay in shape. I like to read, and watch old movies. I like good music.”

  “Classical?”

  “Yes, some of it.”

  “I studied fine arts at Syracuse,” she said. “I paint abstracts in watercolor and acrylics. One day I hope to establish my own gallery in the city. A place for really unusual art. Where good unknowns can be showcased.”

  “I don’t know much about fine art, but I have the impression it must be a tough way to make a living.”

  “It is. This is not a world where art of any kind, even the best of it, is easily successful. You have a few writers, sculptors, and painters making insane money way up there in the stratosphere, and then you have those starving thousands back down here on Earth. My gallery would be a place for talented artists to break in, and I believe it could be a commercial success.”

  “It sounds great. I hope it all works out for you.”

  They were eating wedges of hot apple pie crowned with melting vanilla bean ice cream along with refills of cinnamon coffee when Strake came into the small restaurant with Davis following. Strake’s eyes were depthless black marbles and there was a tick in his left eyelid. He stood erectly and looked steadily at Cowboy but said, “Elaine, go get in the plane.”

  She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin, unhurried but obviously nervous, then got up without a word or a glance, leaving the food unfinished, and went out.

  “Mr. Strake,” he began, smiling, “we were just having a bite of lunch here—”

  “Shut up. You listen to me very carefully. You are hired help. You are not to associate with my wife.” His eyes glittered darkly. “Is that clear?”

  He met Strake’s glare with a steady calm gaze but said nothing. Standing off to the side, Davis smiled and idly inspected a thumbnail. A couple at a corner table stopped eating and looked their way. The waitress stopped wiping the counter. The room was still.

  After several long seconds Strake motioned to Davis and said, “Montgomery, go pay the check. We will be leaving now.” He turned and walked out of the restaurant as Davis went over to the woman behind the counter, tugging his wallet out. The couple at the corner table went back to their meals.

  Cowboy watched Strake leave. He finished the slice of pie and the coffee, taking his time. Davis came over, grinned with a raised eyebrow, and said, “See? Like I said, sooner or later they all step on their own dicks. I think we better go now, hotshot. That is, if you want your job.”

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin and got up, leaving a good tip.

  When he boarded the King Air Elaine was sitting in the rearmost seat, gazing out the window. Strake said nothing to him for the remainder of the flight.

  The weather in Vancouver was light rain falling from low cloud cover and he followed the vectors and altitudes dictated by Vancouver approach with precision, aware of the mountains hidden nearby in the swirling grayness. He captured the ILS and broke out at six hundred feet, the airport just south of the city suddenly materializing as if by magic, and made a light touchdown on the wet pavement.

  Strake had a large modern house northwest of the city on several wooded acres in the Coast Mountains looking out over an arm of the bay and massive Vancouver Island beyond. Davis told Cowboy to take one of the two small rooms above the garage.

  During the month-long stay Strake hosted two large house parties crowded with a diverse mix of people. They made trips down the coast to Los Angeles and San Diego, Cowboy waiting in the FBOs each time as Strake went off with Davis in tow to conduct business. During his off times, Cowboy explored Vancouver, which he found to be fascinating and beautiful, with many parks scattered among the busy streets and skyscrapers. Along with a rich mix of English, Germans, Sikhs, and Musqueam Indians, there was a strong Asian presence, and he discovered a restaurant he particularly liked amid the glitter of Chinatown.

  He went on five-mile runs along the tide-lapped beach perimeter of Stanley Park, which jutted out into the water, separating Vancouver Harbour from English Bay where several freighters were always anchored, waiting to be loaded with grain from Canada’s vast plains. It was autumn and front after front swept in from the Pacific to keep the city veiled in mist. He enjoyed his solitary runs and always found Stanley Park, like the other green areas of the city, to be clean and absolutely free of litter.

  On a rare sunny morning Davis curtly told him he would be free for the day so he dressed in jeans and a denim shirt and took a cab to Stanley Park for a run on the beach. He had gone about a mile, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face, when he glanced back to see a man gaining on him with smooth tireless strides. Within a quarter mile the man drew abreast and slowed to match his pace.

  “Good day for it,” the man said. He was in his middle thirties and obviously fit, dressed in green sweats and good foot gear. He wore a white band that held his longish brown hair back, and large amber shooter’s sunglasses.

  “Sure is. One thing about all the rain, it makes you appreciate a day like this.”

  “So they call you Cowboy.”

  They ran on. He was eyeing the man now. He said, “Do I know you?”

  “My name is Nolan Rader. No, we’ve never met but I know a great deal about you. For example you work as a pilot for Louis Strake, but he seems to be grooming you for more. You’re due to fly him back to Teterboro the day after tomorrow.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the BATF, based in D.C. I’d appreciate a few minutes of your time right now. There’s a bench coming up just ahead. Let’s take a break. Enjoy the view for a while.”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “You don’t have to talk. Just listen. What
have you got to lose?” He smiled. “Come on. If you don’t you’ll only wonder what the hell it was all about, right? Ten minutes, no more. Hear me out and then I’ll jog away.”

  “Ten minutes then.”

  They sat on the iron bench, Rader wiping at his face with his sleeve. He said, “This man you work for. I’m going to assume you don’t know the full scope of his business yet. He’s a criminal and he’s a killer.”

  “I don’t think so. He sells light weapons. It’s a legitimate business. He’s not responsible for what people do with what he sells.”

  “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people, right? Like the bumper sticker. That’s the line he spouts in so many words. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean he is a killer. Just like that bodyguard of his. Montgomery Davis has a long sheet going back eighteen years. Assault. Loan sharking and protection racketeering when he worked for the Chicago syndicate. Arrested for murder once and weapons charges twice, and he’s suspected in two unsolved homicides. He’s slippery, though. Only done a total of three years inside during his long and lucrative career. But he’s down at the bottom of the food chain.

  “Your Mr. Strake, now, he’s right up there at the top. His father ran a more or less legitimate business. Louis does not. He may have started out pretty much that way, but since his old man went to the big arsenal in the sky, and since more and more governments have passed more arms control laws, junior has ventured further and further into a lot of gray areas and done more than a few downright illegal deals. The more he gets away with the more he seems willing to try. He’s like a lot of your top bad guys. They don’t print enough money to satisfy him. He’s ruthless and he’s cunning. And he is a killer.”

  “If you know all of this, why don’t you arrest him?”

  Rader put his hands on his knees, leaned back on the bench, and tilted his head slightly to look at the sky. He said, “They killed fifty million people in the Second World War. How many conflicts would you say there have been since? I mean those in which significant numbers have died.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a hundred.”

  “That’s more than most people would estimate. There have been three hundred major conflicts—in places like Lebanon, Biafra, the Yemen, Katanga, Cambodia, Argentina, and so on—that have killed a total of twenty-five million people. Let’s put that in some perspective. Imagine Fenway Park filled to capacity—a vast sea of faces.

  “A hit squad comes in and starts killing them all. Every last fan. Every man, every retiree, every pregnant mother, every child. They shoot some, blow some up, make some kneel in front of pistols The squad works hard but it still takes hours. Then tomorrow they fill up the park and do it all over again, and the next day, and the next. They keep it up seven days a week. For two years. That’s how many have died in major conflicts since the Second World War. And the vast majority of those human beings, folks not so different from your friends, your relatives, the skinny kids you see on a playground who couldn’t even spell politics, have died—and an untold number of millions have been wounded—by light weaponry. Rifles, pistols, submachine guns, mortars, shotguns, grenades. The sort of merchandise Worldarms has been marketing.”

  Rader paused and then said, “Name one of the biggest recent wars.”

  Cowboy said, “I don’t know. Desert Storm?”

  “That little fracas only killed four hundred Allied troops and maybe ten thousand Iraqis. Fact is, every year since Desert Storm this tired old planet has seen an average of ten conflicts that have each killed ten thousand or more. Georgia, Sudan, Tadzhikistan, East Timor, southeast Turkey. In under a two-year span half a million Angolans died from war or war-related starvation in the most brutal ways you can imagine.

  “Oh, I know there are festering feuds and deep-rooted political and ideological and religious differences among people all over the place. Differences that can’t easily be resolved, some that may never be resolved. But when you take a country, or two bordering countries, where there are already intense arguments and you sprinkle a couple hundred thousand AK-47s, a few million rounds of ammo, and maybe ten thousand grenades into that pot it more often than not will boil over into bloody carnage. Everybody stops arguing and they just start shooting.

  “The shooting doesn’t have to go on for long before violence becomes a way of life. And life becomes cheap. People think that can only happen in some podunk country you can’t even point to on a globe. But it can happen anywhere. There are over two hundred and ten million guns circulating in the States and six million more are produced or imported every year. We’re beginning to see more drive-by shootings in the ghettos, Interstate gunnings just because somebody gets pissed off in traffic, more homicides out there in the suburbs. Your average Joes can get concealed carry permits all over the place. Look around the world and see where too many weapons have led other countries. The Rwandan Army casually killed thousands of civilians, anybody even remotely suspected of disagreeing with them, using AK-47s routed to them through Egypt. In the Iran-Iraq war they sent children out in waves across mine fields. Can you imagine that? Kids in rags blown to bits like so many small animals just to clear mine fields. Can you hear them screaming?

  “Take Colombia. They’ve been fighting internally for so long it’s routine now. Kids are born into it so they don’t know anything else. Leftist guerrillas against right-wing paramilitary groups supported by the remnants of the drug cartels and to hell with whoever gets in the way. There are a hundred thousand well-armed private security guards in the country. A million permitted weapons and maybe five million illegal ones. A family argument, a shouting spat over traffic, a debate over a soccer match, any incident can turn into a shootout in a heartbeat. In a six-year period there have been a hundred and fifty thousand homicides, only ten percent prosecuted. In Cali and Pereira upper-class teenagers ride around at night shooting beggars, the homeless, drug addicts, and prostitutes from their cars for sport. In Bogota the police kill the same kinds of people—the desechables or the disposable ones—but they call it social cleansing. The U.S. arms the Colombian National Police with more sophisticated weapons so the guerrillas want upgrades, too. Keeps the black market demand right up there.

  “You know why your boss has been to Venezuela three times in the past six months? He’s been black-marketing guns, ammo, and night vision equipment to a particular well-financed Colombian guerrilla army through a Venezuelan contact. He bought a load of government-owned AR-15s in Panama from corrupt officials a year ago, for example, and recently smuggled them into Venezuela labeled as drilling equipment on a container ship. The Venezuelan thugs he’s been dealing with got them across the border into Colombia. A Venezuelan investigative reporter named Armando Ramirez found out about the deal and was about to put the story out when Strake and Davis killed him. Not had him killed, but I mean killed him, up close and personal. We don’t think it’s the first time something like that has gone down. You see, I don’t think your Louis Strake is completely sane.”

  “This is interesting and educational, but I’ll say again, if you know all of this to be fact why isn’t somebody arresting him?”

  Nolan thought for a time, gazing skyward, then said, “Sometimes our government does things that are near impossible to understand. Do you remember when they hired the Mafia to get rid of Castro? That was a case in point. How about funding the Contras through the Sultan of Brunei? Old stuff, right? How about a little more recent stuff? How about fifteen of the nineteen Nine-Eleven hijackers being Saudi? But we aren’t supposed to think about that, are we? Got to have all that Saudi oil, right? What if the hijackers had been from North Korea or Iran? Politics and international dealings have gears within gears. Who the hell are we to figure it all out?”

  “What has all this got to do with Strake?”

  “Not much, after all, I guess. Just rambling. As far as Strake goes, knowing and proving are not real close cousins. This is where you come in. We think you’re a basically honest dude. We need so
mebody on the inside who’s willing to feed us just a little information. Who Strake meets. Where he goes and when. Small crumbs he drops here and there.”

  “You’re wasting your time with me.”

  “True loyalty these days is a real rarity. It’s downright refreshing to witness. But misplaced loyalty doesn’t make any sense. Your boss is moving more and more in the underground, down where the sun doesn’t shine. He specializes in South America but has dealt all over the world. He bribes government officials, pays off customs people, doles out percentages to a number of criminal contacts all over the place. Brokers all kinds of shady deals. There’s a whole international underground economy now that trades in designer drugs, product knock-offs, raw gems, computer chips, toxic wastes, a lot of valuable contraband, and guns. Always guns. There are entire networks of ghost companies and we-don’t-kiss-and-tell banks for laundering the proceeds. Your boss is right down there in the thick of it. Dealing in death. The longer you work for him the more you’ll see that.

  “Anyway, suppose we leave it this way.” Rader pulled a plain business-sized card out of his fanny pack. There were no names on the card, just three hand-printed phone numbers. “Here’s how you can reach me at any time, day or night. The top number is my cell phone. The second, the toll-free one, is my office. The last is my home. Use a pay phone. I may not answer but just tell whoever does that you’re Cowboy and you need to speak with me. Nolan Rader.”

  “I really can’t help you,” he said.

  But he took the card.