Captain Taylor tooted the horn twice and waved.
“Geez, it’s like showing up at Indy in a clown car,” Tony winced. “How ’bout if I hijack a Humvee?”
“You can’t. You’re clearly the late-thirties heartthrob who plays by the rules.”
“How come you’re twenty and I’m my real age?”
“Because age doesn’t matter for men in the movies any more than it does in real life.”
“Really? Sweet.”
Twenty-Five
When things went wrong for Nola growing up, her father, a veteran wounded in Grenada of all places, would smile and ask the same simple question: “Is anybody shooting at you?” She never got further than, “No, but . . .” before he’d kiss the top of her head and say, “Then it’s fine. You’re going to get through it.”
The five young men and two women in Dr. Waxman’s PTSD therapy group had been shot at. They’d been strafed by bullets, blown up by IEDs, and shipped home as hollow-eyed insomniacs with nerves as raw as sushi.
They were all in their twenties, but for once Nola wasn’t jealous. Her crinkly eye, elbow-droop, westward-ho inner-thigh expansion was nothing compared to the nightmare memories these fractured kids were dealing with. Terrifying images popped up in their heads like whack-a-moles; reason one away and instantly a new one appeared to take its place.
Dr. Waxman had been trying to slay the Imagine Dragons in their heads using his own variation of Stolorow’s phenomenological approach to the treatment of trauma, and according to at least one member of the group, a soft-spoken female airman from Oklahoma, it was helping. The mental scars that kept her alert as a cat 24/7, fearful of any change in the frequencies of the world around her, were starting to abate. The others nodded in agreement, but their expressions were anxious. Whatever progress Dr. Waxman had made in reducing their stress levels was slowly eroding due to the shock of his sudden death. Nola wished she could help them disarm and diffuse, but fear of saying the wrong thing in front of Captain Taylor had upped her own stress level to “situation critical, danger Will Robinson.”
She and Tony stuck to their game plan, keeping their inquiries vague, with no mention of weapon inventories, SE40, or Dr. Waxman’s smashed hand. If Captain Taylor had an inkling that they suspected a member of the group was the source of the press leak, he was doing a first-class job of playing Clueless Joe from Kokomo — no clouds in the forecast for the rest of the week.
No one in the group knew where Dr. Waxman was going after their last session. He hadn’t mentioned a midnight nature hike, but they wouldn’t put it past him. Thanks to his example, Tasha now carried a reusable water bottle, and Pooch recycled his Kentucky Fried Chicken bags. Nola tried not to look horrified as the cute African-American Airman First Class described his favorite comfort food: two deep-fried chicken breasts stuffed sandwich-style with mashed potatoes and cheese. She knew it would be cold comfort in his forties, when his back fat gave him lat boobs, but at twenty-two, still military fit, Pooch was far too innocent to see that freight train coming. Knowing what she was thinking, Tony shot her a sideways whisper. “Mention bad calories and I’ll plunge my pen in your thigh.”
As the group went on talking, Tony and Nola’s cop-dar zeroed in on Rohit Kodical, a strikingly intelligent senior airman, as the person most likely to have been Max’s co-conspirator. A survivor of a missile attack on his convoy in Afghanistan, Ro had undergone three surgeries to repair the physical damage hidden under his fatigues. He was a good-looking young man with warm cocoa skin and eyes to match. Nola wondered if self-consciousness over his scars made him too shy to flirt with women. It would be a tragic miscalculation, but he might not realize it at such a young age.
Ro hadn’t been overly vocal or suspiciously quiet during the interview, and no obvious tells had given him away, but something about him hinted at Indian-American Boy Scout. The kind of guy who would risk his career and a court-martial to blow the whistle on two canisters of high-grade poison gone missing. Since he was their chief suspect, Nola and Tony actively avoided drawing any undue attention to him, lest it spike Captain Taylor’s curiosity.
As they wrapped up the interview, Tony maneuvered Taylor into diversional chitchat so Nola could hand out her card with a promise that any information discussed privately would be kept in strict confidence.
On their ride back to the main gate, Captain Taylor played tour guide. “See that rocket up ahead? That’s the Falcon Heavy Space X. She can lift fifty-three metric tons into orbit. Imagine your average jetliner full of passengers with a herd of hippos riding on its back.”
Nola eyed the massive space-age phallic symbol gleaming on its launch pad and laughed. “Okay, boats I get, but why would you refer to a rocket as she?”
Tony volunteered a theory. “Maybe because they’re sleek, complicated, and sometimes for reasons no man can understand, they suddenly go haywire and blow up in your face?”
“Thanks, but I was asking Captain Taylor. I mean, why call something she when it’s so clearly shaped like a giant intergalactic space penis?”
Captain Taylor blushed like a schoolmarm.
“Sorry, Captain,” Tony said cheerfully. “We try to make her act like a lady, but she just keeps getting worse.”
“Oh, come on,” Nola said, pressing her argument. “It’s long, cylindrical, and thrusty. You wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, look, there’s the Washington Monument, isn’t she lovely?’”
Captain Taylor cast another look back at the big rocket. “I guess you’ve got a point at that, ma’am.”
Tony grinned. “Happy now, ma’am?”
Captain Taylor’s radio crackled. “Okay, roger that,” he answered, and the little golf cart cut a wide left and headed toward a row of giant hangars. “Slight change of plan, Detectives. Before you leave, Major Burnell has requested a word.”
For no logical reason, Nola’s heart skipped a beat.
Twenty-Six
The golf cart pulled to a stop in front of Igloo 8. ROTC70, SE40, Igloo 8 — Nola was starting to wonder if the key to all the nefarious goings-on lately didn’t lie in math, which, contrary to what Throwback Barbie once said, was actually pretty easy for girls. Captain Taylor took her arm as she stepped out of the golf cart and kept his hand lightly on her back as he escorted her inside. In spite of her earlier vulgarity, he remained the consummate military gentleman.
What the Air Force called an igloo was actually an enormous hangar stacked end to end with precision-guided weaponry. Nola gazed at the impressive array of munitions like a kid in a Delta Force candy store. When Captain Taylor stepped outside to speak to the duty guard, she picked up an M203 grenade launcher, hoisted it on her shoulder, and pointed it at Tony. “Quick, take a picture with your phone for my Facebook page.”
“Yeah, not doing that,” he replied. “Put it back, GI Jane.”
“Afraid I’ll blow my head off?”
“No, but that’s how I’ll make it look if you don’t stop pointing it at my crotch. I’m guessing the military frowns on civilians in miniskirts playing with their anti-tank weapons.”
“Relax, Grandma. If I break it, I’ll buy it.”
“Actually, Detective, if you break it, I get buried in a mess of piss-ass paperwork.” The soothing airplane-pilot voice was unmistakable. Major Bryan Burnell was in the building.
FML, Nola thought. Already self-conscious about her short skirt, she’d hoped to make a serious first impression on the Major, but as usual, her curiosity had passed go without stopping to collect two hundred dollars. When she turned around, she was doubly surprised to see how close he was to her. The man must be half panther, she thought as she offered her lame apology.
“Sorry, Major, but barring any highly unlikely twists in my life story, this was probably going to be my one and only chance to even pretend to fire a weapon this powerful.”
“That’s a very disarming excuse, Detective, but I’m still going to have to ask you to put down my gun.”
“I guess that
makes us both disarming,” she said with a smile.
The Major didn’t smile back; he just waited.
“Right. I’ll just put it back now,” she said sheepishly.
She put the grenade launcher back where she found it, while Tony and Major Burnell shook hands.
“Detective Angellotti,” Tony said, “and my gun-happy partner here is Detective MacIntire.”
“I really am sorry I was shouldering your weapon, Major,” she said, in her serious-as-a-heart-attack cop voice. “Normally I’m very safety conscious.”
Stepping away from the grenade launchers, she bumped into a metal shelf stacked with machine guns and nearly lost her balance until Major Burnell reached out to steady her.
It’s a funny thing about life. One minute, middle age is creeping up on you like a psycho killer at a slutty teen beach party, and you’re comforting yourself by shooting alcohol-infused whipped cream straight into your mouth and focusing on work — then a man you’ve just met catches you in his arms and sets off a spark that dissolves the arthritic candy coating that’s been building up around your nervous system, and a message goes rocketing axon over dendrite, telling your brain that you’re sixteen again.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine. Great. Well, maybe just a little bruised around the ego.”
She’d been tempted to say something more flirtatious, but what would be the point? Men like Burnell didn’t fall for aging blondes whose Christmas accounts went straight to their dermatologists. They went for the golden girls, whippet thin with expert French manicures, who didn’t swear or lose their shoes or play with grenade launchers in skirts that were two inches too short for their age group. Which was actually a good thing under the circumstances. This was no time to lose focus. Why would Burnell ask to speak to them, unless he thought they knew something about the leak? She was going to have to play it cool, Miss Frozen Foods Aisle. If he touched her again, he’d get freezer burn.
“So, why did you want to meet with us, Major?” Tony asked.
“Well, first to show you that all twelve canisters of SE40 are present and accounted for.”
The Major led them around the machine-gun shelves, past a cache of stinger missiles, to a pallet in the far corner of the hangar. Two large steel crates held six canisters each. They were clearly marked and in plain sight. Nothing hinky, as Captain Taylor would say. Nola wondered if the canisters were, in fact, the same twelve that had originally been sent from Livermore, but she kept her doubts to herself. Tony lied and assured Major Burnell that they had no doubts, and that their presence on base that afternoon was purely coincidental, but Burnell wasn’t buying it.
“Really?” he said, more amused than angry. “Because I think we’ve all made the same connection between Dr. Waxman’s therapy group and the false press leak, and that’s exactly why you’re here today.”
Friendly, but direct. It was a sound tactical maneuver. He was deploying the same I’m not mad but aren’t we all above this silly pretense smile that Nola used on recidivist criminals and her twin eight-year-old nieces. The criminals usually cracked, the twins rarely did. Like high cheekbones and ridiculously small pinky toes, the wide-eyed, “it wasn’t me” look was encoded in the MacIntire family DNA. Nola held it in reserve for moments just like this one.
“Actually, Major, we were just doing a routine background check,” she said, with a face as innocent as an Easter basket.
“Just needed a few facts to fill in the paperwork,” Tony threw in casually.
The Major’s handsome face stayed smooth as glass. “Uhhuh.”
After a minute standoff that felt like an hour, Nola opted to call an audible. “Hypothetically, Major, if a soldier had discovered two of the canisters had gone missing, wouldn’t it be his or her duty to bring it to the public’s attention?”
“No, Detective MacIntire, their duty would be to report it to their superior officer so rapid-response measures could be implemented pronto.”
“But, hypothetically again . . . what if their superior officer was in on the plot? Wouldn’t they be putting their life in danger by reporting it?”
“Possibly. But by disregarding the chain of command they would be, hypothetically, giving whoever stole the weapon time to deploy it. Isn’t that putting the lives of thousands of people in danger?”
Major Burnell was sexy enough when his argument was debatable, but devastating when his reasoning was sound.
“Well-intentioned or not,” he continued, “whoever leaked the information made a serious and potentially disastrous miscalculation, so if you’ve got a suspect, I really do need to know who it is.”
He had a valid point, but Nola and Tony only had a hunch that Rohit Kodical was the leak. More importantly, even if it was Ro, they felt sure he hadn’t done it out of anger, sour grapes, or a cheap bid for fame. After three operations to get shrapnel-free, the guy deserved at least one shot at a do-over.
Nola felt bad about lying, but what she said was only half a lie — the second part she pretty much meant. “Honestly, Major, we don’t suspect anyone of being your leak. Believe me, if I thought you had another Edward Snowden on your hands, I’d figure out how to fire that grenade launcher and frag him myself.”
“You know, Detective, I believe you might.” The sixteen-kilowatt smile lit up like an incendiary shell. If the guy got any hotter, he’d set off the stack of short-range air-to-airs, and they’d all go up in flames.
Tony made their apologies, saying they had two other cases that needed their attention back in Santa Barbara, and the interview was suspended.
Major Burnell ushered them out to the golf cart where Captain Taylor was ready at the wheel to whisk them away. Nola was sure he still thought they were lying, but with no leverage, he had no choice but to let them go and pursue his leak through other channels.
When they said goodbye, Burnell shook Nola’s hand with the same heart-pounding result as when he’d caught her in his arms. As the cart pulled away, she felt like she was leaving the last glass of wine on the road to prohibition. But she kept her stoic poker face right up to the minute he called out after her.
“Hey, Detective MacIntire, if you’re serious about wanting to learn how to fire that grenade launcher, give me a call, and I’ll find us some time on the range.”
Nola hoped Captain Taylor was too busy driving to notice the deep suck of breath she took in. The kind she usually reserved for squeezing into her skinny jeans. The involuntary surge of excitement that was scrambling her prefrontal cortex had to be shut off. It was dangerous to feel this excited, dangerous to feel this good. Burnell was flirting with her, but guys flirted with her all the time. There was no real intention behind it. To make herself calm down, she mentally repeated the saddest thing she could think of: Sick kids, sick kids, sick kids. It was a macabre trick she used whenever she became momentarily overwrought. She hated being overwrought; why couldn’t she ever be just the right amount of wrought? For the thousandth time, she realized she really ought to forgo a few hot yoga sessions and put the money toward a good shrink, or at least some helpful pharmaceuticals.
Twenty-Seven
Major Burnell’s tossed-off offer to meet Nola on the firing range had created a problem that, if not dealt with swiftly, would make the trip back to Santa Barbara a nightmare. All the way to the T-bird, Tony had sat beside her in the golf cart humming “Home on the Range.” She had no intention of taking Major Burnell up on his offer to go shooting, so if she didn’t want to hear a whole big harangue about it on the ride home, she’d have to resort to trickery.
She had the satellite radio tuned to SportsCenter before Tony’s butt even hit the driver’s seat. Two bobble-headed analysts were nattering on about the latest breaking-bad basketball news. Like a masculine moth to a testosterone flame, Tony was immediately absorbed in the burning saga of who was trash-talking whom, as if the future of the planet was riding on the outcome.
It was sneaky and sexist, but it was the only sure way
she knew to keep him from pestering her with annoying questions, like: “Are you going to call him?” “Why not?” “Why don’t you check under the sofa cushions — maybe your self-esteem got lost down there with the loose change?” Unfortunately, radio sports was only a temporary fix. When the jock-opera topic switched to soccer, Tony lost interest and turned his busybody best-friend attention her way.
“So are you going to call him?”
“Yes. Yes, I am,” she lied.
“When?”
“I thought I’d wait till we hit the Lompoc tunnel. Then, when he tells me he was just having a laugh, I can wrest the steering wheel from your aging hands, and we can both go out in a fiery crash, instead of me just dying alone from embarrassment.”
“Yeah. That’s just the no wine talking. Ask him to dinner, drink a couple of appetizers, and you’ll be fine.”
“Right. Not happening. So, how ’bout that sports team you like? Or don’t like? That guy who did that thing must have really made you mad. Let’s talk about it in detail.”
Tony wasn’t in a mood to be amused. “I don’t get it. You’re wearing your ‘do me’ skirt, your dream guy says, ‘Okay, I’m in,’ and now you’re pussying out. I would really like to know why?”
Nola stared up at the sky and sighed. “For starters, my dream guy isn’t prettier than me, so Major Burnell is definitely not my dream guy. And second, he wasn’t really asking me to call him. It’s just something guys say.”
“Yeah. When we want to get with girls.”
“Yes. Girls. Not admittedly adorkable cops of a certain age.”
“Okay, beautiful, I’m sorry, but that age you speak of is way too old to use words like ‘adorkable.’ You and I both know that was a serious invitation, so why are you making that skirt into a liar?”
“Hasn’t it occurred to you that Major Burnell knows we were lying to him and that he thinks if he charms me a little, I’ll go all weak in the knees and tell him who we suspect is the leak?”
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