Signature Wounds

by Kirk Russell

  “The work I was doing. But honestly, I don’t fucking know why. It’s not like we were going to talk about the valve for the urinal. But he made it sound like it was important.”

  “How did he contact you?”

  “He got my phone number from the office and texted me.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t see any real reason to meet with him?”

  “That’s about right.”

  We’d already read the text messages the plumber received during the month prior, but Korb kept working it. He worked it, and the plumber was effusive about how unfair it was to be held there on the holiday by the owner for no good reason.

  “What do you think now?” Korb asked.

  “Well, the dude is Muslim right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He just wanted to say he met with me.”

  Korb nodded as if that made sense, but steered the interview to the white panel van that had delivered the wine refrigerator. He went slowly with the plumber through his recollection of the man wearing a hoodie who had installed it. The man had walked funny. From behind, the plumber saw him walk away wheeling a green dolly. His left foot was possibly pigeon-toed or injured. It made his gait awkward. That and clean fingernails that looked manicured to the plumber. The guy had said something when he came in. He might have had an accent. All were new details.

  Smith had wanted an ENERGY STAR–rated appliance—a 30" wide × 32" tall × 29" deep wine refrigerator made by LG. He included the model number in his first e-mail to his supplier. The bomb was in an LG, a different, more available model, less efficient, but one that fit the size requirement.

  Now came questions about the man in a suit who’d shown up just minutes before the plumber left. He was still there when the plumber drove away. Korb went after the plumber on that.

  “Your boss thinks you were the last one there. You were supposed to lock up. Last time you told us you did.”

  “I didn’t want to get fired. I can’t get fired right now. I’ve got another kid on the way.”

  “Correct the record.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In the last interview, did you lie to us about locking up the building?”

  Korb made it sound very serious, although we’d figured it out two days ago. When the plumber was slow answering, Korb unloaded. We watched the plumber’s face turn white as Korb told him the criminal implications of lying in a terrorism investigation. His face paled, but his stubborn streak was unfazed. Instead of confessing that he’d lied, he said, “I told that guy I was leaving and was supposed to lock up. He said he was meeting the owner about wineglasses. He showed me a text. What was I supposed to do?”

  “When you left, was that man still there?”

  The plumber nodded.

  “I need audio,” Korb said. “I need you to talk.”

  “He was still there when I left.”

  “You told your boss you locked up.”

  “I don’t remember saying that.”

  “You told him that and lied to us. You’re flirting with danger here. I want you to set the record straight and explain on tape why you lied. Then you’ll sit with a sketch artist again.”

  As the interview ended, I returned to my desk. As agents were doing with the main investigation, Lacey and I were tracking any local leads that might take us to the sleeper cell suspected of being in the general Vegas area. At my desk I read transcripts from an Omar Smith interview I’d missed.

  Smith flew back to Vegas from Houston in the afternoon of July 4. He’d gone to Houston to convince a new investor to buy two of his properties, but that went badly and he didn’t have the energy to go by the Alagara and deal with the plumbing repairs, so he’d gone straight home. At home he ate, showered, changed clothes, and then went to Bar Alagara, ostensibly to make sure everything was ready and so he could be there when Melissa Kern arrived. It was clear he had some attraction to Melissa or was chatting her up to get information about the drone pilots. The strong feeling in here was most likely the latter.

  Where Smith had stayed, who he saw, where he ate, his flight home—everything was examined in the first twenty-four hours. Agents were deep into his text messages, e-mails, voice mails, everything. But there were still unaccounted hours and gaps in Smith’s compulsive texting and the tweeting he did to promote Hullabaloo. He was also very active on Facebook. All of the feed came from Smith. That he was so active made his electronic fingerprints easy to track, but activity doesn’t translate to answers.

  Sorrow reached deep into me as I sat there with disparate pieces. I lost my focus, as I had many times since the bombings. I stood. I drank some cold water and took a couple of aspirin, and checked the time: 3:30 and no call yet from the surveillance team. As of this afternoon, Omar Smith was cleared to go back into his building. I wanted to be there or show up while he was there, but I didn’t want to clear that with Venuti. I’d end up with five agents there with me. Any element of surprise would be lost. So I was quietly communicating with the surveillance team watching Smith’s house. I checked in with them again.

  “I’m headed there now,” I said.

  I brought along the blast report from TEDAC, the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center, which is the FBI center at Quantico that analyzes terrorist explosive devices. The report was preliminary, but the detonator had been reviewed in detail. An ion mobility spectrometer had confirmed C-4, and earlier I talked with a TEDAC analyst about that. They were all but saying a cell phone was the likely trigger device. I also got the runback from the ATF Arson and Explosives National Repository. Nothing new there.

  The reinterview of the plumber, the TEDAC report, and the somewhat varying accounts of Omar Smith’s Fourth of July visit to the Alagara ahead of the party provided more of a timeline. Also, there were more details about the alleged salesman Smith met with at the Alagara just ahead of the party. That individual was yet to be located, a fact that further heightened suspicion of Smith.

  At the Alagara I stood out on the patio rereading the TEDAC report, and then moved out into the lot. I read about the overlap from the secondary explosion and the conclusion that the bombs were well designed. I checked out the flowers. Many had wilted and browned in the heat. I was back in the building when my phone rang.

  “Grale here.”

  “Grale, it’s Dietrich.”

  “What’s up?”

  “He’s on the move. Are you at the Alagara?”

  Dietrich was the agent in charge of the surveillance teams watching Smith. He was no-nonsense but also very intuitive. I trusted him.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” I said.

  “He’s backing out of his garage in a red Audi A8. Looks like he’s got a place in mind. Maybe he’s coming your way.”

  Another call from Dietrich came five minutes later.

  “Drifting your way.”

  I walked out, moved my car, and Dietrich called again.

  “Less than a mile from you and speeding up.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “You won’t have to wait long.”

  23

  Hard-soled shoes clicked on the concrete floor of the bar and echoed in the restroom, where I waited in darkness. They stopped, and Smith let out a low, eerie wail, perhaps shocked at how much damage there was. A rush of Turkish words flowed from him, and then a long silence followed by footsteps. His shadow passed by in the corridor. Minutes later and after I had eased out of the restroom, I heard what sounded like a cordless drill start and stop and start again. I walked quietly toward the sound.

  Smith’s back was to me as he removed trim and wainscoting to reveal a wall safe. He had spun the dial and opened the safe before he felt my presence near the office door. I saw him react then continue removing bundles of one hundred dollar bills from the safe. He glanced up but wouldn’t look at me as he talked. It was as if he were talking to the bundles of cash he fed into a backpack.

  “This is my money. This is my building again as o
f today, and this is my money. I have proof of this. I must make a payment today. This is why I take it out now.”

  He finally looked at me. “The men who loan to me rob me with high interest.”

  “Where are these men?”

  “In Istanbul. Businessmen.”

  “How much do you owe?”

  “More than I have. But how much is it your business to know what I owe?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us about the wall safe?”

  “Why would I? I opened my home and my office to the FBI. Do I owe you everything about my life because of these terrorists?”

  “The money could have been removed and taken to a bank.”

  “With all the police, it was safer here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at it. It’s cash.”

  It was a lot of cash. If these bundles were all C-notes, it was hundreds of thousands and we’d want to get the Secret Service or Treasury to run the serial numbers. I told him that.

  “You cannot do that to me. You must not do that. I mean this. I cannot explain, but it is very important I make a payment.”

  “What’s the payment?”

  “I can’t explain.”

  “That’s not going to work, Omar.”

  “My lawyer said wait until the building is returned to you. It’s mine again and everything here is mine as it was before the bombs.”

  “It’s not going to work that way with this money.”

  “It has to.”

  He continued loading bundles into a dark blue backpack, and then in a gesture both impetuous and condescending, tossed a bundle of one hundred dollar bills at me, as if that should buy my cooperation. I caught it and laid it on the desk.

  “I have to make this payment. It is an imperative. You must allow this.” He dropped the remaining bricks of money into the pack and pulled his phone. “I’ll call my lawyer.”

  He didn’t reach the lawyer. He tried twice more as his face reddened and sweat glistened on his forehead and the sides of his nose.

  “If it’s clean, we’ll return it in a few days,” I said.

  “Please don’t do this. This payment is late. I couldn’t get to the money.”

  “You could have asked us at any time. Where did you get so many one hundred dollar bills? What’s the payment about?”

  “Please!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He was shaking when he left the backpack on the desk and walked out the door.

  24

  July 7th, early evening

  “You’re going to like this French pilot, man. She’s hot. The drone pilots are following me. They’re right behind me, and we’re not that far away,” Eddie said. “Hey, your shitstorm is spilling into my life. The FBI came to see me. They’re looking into my business because of you. That’s not good for you or me. You need to call your FBI friend and ask for a favor.”

  “Doesn’t work like that, Eddie.”

  “Everything works like that. You call him before I get there, okay? Don’t fuck with me on this. You figure out what to tell him.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “Who else is going to get you work when the company you’re working for, Strata Data Mining, cuts you loose? Who’s going to hire you?”

  “I’ll flip burgers, Eddie.”

  “You’ll flip burgers? You flip burgers and I’ll come eat there. The fuck you’ll flip burgers.”

  Beatty broke the connection and looked at the cleft in the mountain rock where the wind funneled from the west and swept over the airfield. No one thought enough about these bony-ass mountains when this land was leased for the training airfield. He watched the neon orange windsock trying to rip itself off the pole. Then his phone rang again. Had to be Eddie, but it wasn’t. Turned out to be a vice president from the Strata Data Mining Houston office named Anna Lee Peale.

  “I hope you don’t mind me calling you directly. I didn’t tell Edward Bahn I would be calling you, but I think it’s right. Are you okay with talking directly to me?”

  “Sure, I work for you.”

  “Mr. Bahn has told us you want everything to go through him.”

  “He didn’t get that from me.”

  It did surprise him she was going to do this herself, but maybe it was Eddie’s idea of how to handle it.

  “How do you like the airfield we built?”

  “I like it.”

  “We hope to use it year round. We’re converting to drones and we’ll train pilots from all over the world where you are. This will sound crazy, but I wish I was out there with you. You’re on the edge of the new world and I’m in an office in Houston.”

  “Come on out.”

  She laughed. It wasn’t a bad laugh, but neither was it real. Here it comes, he thought, and Eddie didn’t have the balls to say. Or he wanted the call made to Grale first. More likely that; what an asshole.

  “You can appreciate it’s a difficult situation we’re all in,” she said, “and we believe you’ve taken appropriate steps to exonerate yourself. But we also have to pay attention to public perception. We’re pursuing mineral rights leases of US government land, and we don’t want a politician grandstanding and accusing us of anything that we can’t defend ourselves against. Polling data that we’re using says 44 percent of the public believes you had a role in the bombings, 17 percent says no role whatsoever, and the other 39 percent are undecided. It may be morally reprehensible, but we have to pay attention to this.”

  “Forty-four percent think I had a role?”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s the data I have. Of course, that can change fast. If the FBI clears you, I’m sure that number will be cut in half overnight.”

  “If the FBI clears me? There’s nothing to clear me of.”

  “We’re moving on a secondary strategy to speed up the training there. This will involve another instructor as well as you. That instructor is on the way. He’ll arrive within the next forty-eight hours.”

  “You’re trying to get my replacement here as fast as you can.”

  “That’s not how I would phrase it, and I want to propose higher pay for you in return for longer teaching hours in the near term. Would you be open to that idea?”

  “Work harder so I can be fired sooner?”

  “You could be fired today, but we’re trying to avoid that.”

  After she hung up, he looked down the black asphalt of the runway and into the desert dusk. He looked at the darkening mountains and thought, Come on, dude, you knew this call was coming. Don’t let it get to you. Concentrate on the drones you’ll fly with these pilots tomorrow. Best time to fly will be very early morning before thermals start kicking off these baked mountains. Strata had done a really smart thing that was going to help. They’d approached the FAA years ago and wound through the bureaucratic process to get special dispensation to fly above the regulation ceiling of four hundred feet. That would get them longer, safer hours in the air. You’re a pilot, dude. It’s what you are and they can’t take that away. So, longer hours, fly early, teach them faster, and then get fired. Hurry up and get fucked. Could it get any worse? Laugh about it, dude. You’ll get cleared on this bullshit, and you’ve got enough money to get some gear and disappear for a while. Life will go on.

  Bahn’s pickup led the others in. A white Jeep Cherokee followed. Headlights washed the two-inch-deep white gravel in front of the flight trailer, then the Jeep crunched through it and parked. The pilots climbed out of the jeep and evaluated Beatty as hard as he did them. He got a cold stare from the one Bahn said was from Eastern Europe, Balkans, Ukraine, or someplace. Eddie didn’t know, but he was a big guy. Hard grip. Then a Saudi pilot who’d been in the Saudi Air Force, or his father had—Eddie couldn’t get his story straight. The last was a French woman. She got her own trailer. Lights came on in it and then the other trailer.

  An hour later a new black Land Cruiser with two soldier types in it showed up and said they were the security team—all smiles, dead eyes, an
d news to Beatty. He didn’t know what they were going to secure. There was nothing out here but trailers, drones, and a runway. One of the men was short and made up for it by lifting weights. His name was Tak. He did the talking. The other one was quiet, tall, and huge. His name was Big John. Comic book names, but definitely former soldiers, mercenary types, and watching him like he was a problem. Beatty pulled two beers out of the flight-trailer refrigerator, then went out to find Eddie.

  “Come on, Eddie, let’s go talk.”

  They walked out to the temp drone hangar and sat on rocks nearby. The rocks still radiated heat. He handed a beer to Eddie and took a long pull of his.

  “It’s Nevada, home of the drone pilot, Eddie. How come you didn’t find pilots here? She’s from France. The big guy is from somewhere, you don’t know where, but you got a cut for his hiring. How much did you make for that? The last one is a former Saudi Air Force pilot or his dad was. Which is it? How much did you get paid to say they’re trained drone pilots?”

  “Did you make that call to your FBI friend?”

  “I don’t have friends, Eddie, and I don’t make those kinds of calls. I’m done with everything, Eddie. The old ways are over. You and I are done.”

  “I’ve got money for you. It’s your piece for vetting these pilots.”

  “Say what? Vetting pilots? No fucking chance. You hired them. I just met them twenty minutes ago.”

  Eddie laid an envelope on the rock. The dude was just a hustler. Money was a fix-all for hustlers. They were all the same that way. Fuck me, he thought. How did I ever sign up with this guy? What happened to my life? How did I ever get this low?

  “Keep your money. I’ll get the drones up tomorrow. I’ll teach these pilots until the replacement shows up. We’ll finish this clean, but we’re totally done, as in forever, Eddie.”

  “Man, that’s alcohol talking. I’ve got a job in Hawaii you could take. You talk to your friend in the FBI, and if everything works out and they stop looking at you, you go to Hawaii.”

  Beatty looked away at the horizon, but felt Bahn studying him.