Breaking Point

by Dana Haynes

  Broom said, “Nope.”

  The quick answer startled him. “Just like that? You’re for sure?”

  “By international treaty. A revamping of the old START talks. At an arms convention in Bruges, Belgium, the United States became a signatory to the ban on EMP weapons.”

  “How come?”

  “Nuclear proliferation. If our Strangeloves invented a pulse weapon, other countries’ Strangeloves might be tempted to counter with suitcase nukes. The Bruges Accord even bans research into pulse weapons.”

  Ray felt let down. The fake cause of the crash—the short circuit in the cabin—was the tent pole of their theory. If no such weapon existed, the theory was shot.

  “Okay. Well, thanks, Mr. Broom.”

  “You sound like you wanted a bicycle for Christmas and got knitted socks.”

  Ray chuckled. “That obvious? Yeah, you busted up a pet theory. Listen, I appreciate the help.”

  “No sweat. Good luck.” They rang off.

  Ray thought about the problem for a while. Tommy’s description had been so vivid! He looked up the speed-dial number for his boss, Henry Deits, and hit Send.

  Henry was in. “How is it there?”

  “Way fewer casualties than the Oregon crash,” Ray said. “Look, we’ve got a puzzle.”

  He described the power loss, told Henry what the CIA analyst had relayed regarding the Bruges protocols.

  “We got a guy we sometimes use as a source,” Henry said. He sounded glum. “I’m not happy about it, but the guy’s been pretty good about predicting theoretical weapons. Stuff that’s on the horizon. If anyone’s experimenting with pulse weapons, he’s the guy we should talk to.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Conspiracy nut in the Valley. He’s got an online magazine, calls it Pentagon or Pentagram? Stanley Katz. The guy’s full of hokum when it comes to who killed JFK and Elvis, but when it comes to predicting weapons, the guy’s eerily accurate. He called that Syria was designing FAJR 7s for Hezbollah. He called the new generation of BM-28 Grads in Chechnya.”

  Ray wrote it all down, thanked his boss, and hung up.

  He checked his cell. He’d missed one call. It was his DEA contact. He called the man back.

  “Son of a bitch, Calabrese. I got a hold of Gibron. Believe it or not, she said yes. Follow these directions.”

  TWIN PINES

  Jack and Hector got back to Twin Pines and dropped Lakshmi off at the makeshift morgue, then headed over to the auto-parts-storage facility. They got there at the stroke of 7:00 A.M. Monday. The smoke was definitely worse today. The police officer guarding the parts store unlocked the padlock and pulled back the rolling gate to let them in.

  Hector said, “You understand, Peter fired me.”

  Jack said, “I understand it’s his first time as Investigator in Charge. He was wrong to fire you and I’m going to talk him out of it. Now, c’mon. I need your help.”

  They walked around the Quonset hut, then gasped.

  The Claremont sat in the middle of the back lot, as if teleported there from the forest. Battered, wingless, paint scratched, aluminum either dented or fully rent. Casper the Friendly Airship still loomed overhead. Jack’s crews hadn’t removed the massive, metal-mesh belts tethering the airship to Flight 78.

  “That,” Hector whispered, “is the stuff of legend.”

  “No kidding.”

  They borrowed a hammer and chisel from the auto-parts stockyard and got busy opening all the locked luggage retrieved from the forest floor and the cargo deck. Their actions were legally dodgy but they didn’t see a lot of options.

  The FBI agent and the two crash survivors had offered up a theory that was far too improbable to be true. But the Go-Team’s job was to follow the evidence, no matter how unlikely the outcome.

  Hector Villareal came up with the first cell phone. He hit the Power button and waited.

  Nothing happened.

  Jack found a man’s toiletry kit with an electric shaver. He thumbed the On switch.

  Nothing.

  Hector and Jack exchanged glances. Hector whistled, high-low.

  Jack said, “Keep looking, man.”

  * * *

  Ray Calabrese, ex-air force, used his military service record and his FBI connections to get the Montana National Guard to fly him to San Diego in a B-1B Lancer. It was his first time in the sleek bomber and he loved it.

  From San Diego, he grabbed a new rental and badged his way across the border into Mexico.

  TWIN PINES

  Lakshmi Jain entered the converted meat shop to check for electronic devices that had been with the corpses. She nodded politely to the deputy guarding the front door, which he unlocked for her.

  “Ma’am? Are they talking about evacuating the town?”

  The question startled her. “I have no idea. Should they?”

  The deputy shrugged, but he looked worried. And now, so, too, did Lakshmi.

  She started to enter the freezing building when an SUV pulled up and a man rolled down his window. “Pardon?”

  He stepped out. He wore a somber black suit and black tie. He produced a folding wallet with a shield.

  “You’re with the NTSB team?”

  Lakshmi nodded.

  “Bob Sonntag, U.S. Marshal’s Service. Hi.”

  “Hullo.”

  “I’m checking up on some paperwork regarding the crash. Do you know if any of the luggage was recovered before the fire got to it?”

  “Yes. All of it.”

  The big man did a double take. “Beg your pardon?”

  “I am told that the fuselage was secured, including its contents.”

  Deputy Sonntag said, “Wow. I didn’t think that was possible.”

  Lakshmi waited.

  “Do you know where the plane is being held?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t.” She pointed. “The rest of our team is in a real estate office, two blocks that way. You will find it by looking for a large collection of rental cars.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. Hey: this is where the bodies are being stored?”

  She nodded.

  “Have you uncovered a saddlebag? Actually, a messenger bag, but it looks like an old, scratched-up saddlebag?”

  She said, “Not that I recall. What did you do to your hand?”

  The big man with close-cropped silver hair looked at the bandage on his right hand, shook his head with woe. “Stupid. Tried to clean grass out of my lawn mower, sliced me up good. Anyway, thank you.”

  HELENA

  The red message light was flashing on Renee Malatesta’s hotel-room phone. She read the directions on the phone, then dialed her voice mail.

  She had sixteen requests from reporters for follow-up stories regarding the company and the defense contract. A lot of reporters were chasing Amy Dreyfus of the Post, it seemed.

  Renee took two Vicodins and washed them down with rum. She called the concierge desk and asked if the hotel had a conference room and if she could schedule a press conference for later in the day.

  TWIN PINES

  Teresa Santiago had just hit the edge of Twin Pines when she realized she was out of cash and deeply in need of a chocolate fix. She’d noticed a convenience store a few blocks away and decided to hit the ATM and get a stash of M&Ms.

  She was climbing out of her car when she noticed that the smell of smoke had grown stronger. A white haze was visible when she looked at buildings three or more blocks away.

  An SUV pulled into the parking lot next to her, window descending. A silver-haired man flashed a badge across the top of her car. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

  “Yes?”

  “Bob Sonntag, Marshal’s Service. Do you know where they’re storing the fuselage?”

  He was good-looking, she thought. She crossed to the passenger’s side of her car, rested her hands on his driver’s side window. “Auto-parts facility, right at the town border on the main drag. You’re part of the investigation?”

  He smiled. “Nine
-tenths of what I do is paperwork. Just crossing Ts, dotting Is.”

  She laughed and tossed her hair. The deputy marshal looked to be in good shape and his hair was cut short and well kept. She liked that in a man. The silver hair gave him …

  Her smile guttered.

  He said, “You okay, ma’am? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  In her mind, she heard Agent Calabrese’s description of the assassin.

  “I’m good. I’m fine. I’ve got to get back to the team.” She began backpedaling but quickly bumped into the side panel of her rental car.

  Calendar’s eyebrows rose in concern. “Everything’s okay?”

  “Yes. Of course. I…” She shrugged.

  “Who’s your Investigator in Charge?”

  “Peter Kim.”

  “Is he around?”

  She nodded. Calendar pulled a business card out of his breast pocket, held it out between two extended fingers of his left hand. “Give him this, ask him to call me. ’Kay?”

  Teresa reached out for the card. Calendar grabbed her wrist and yanked. She stumbled forward into the driver’s door, the force sending his MAC-SOG combat knife so hard into her chest that it broke her sternum before breaching a full five inches into her heart.

  She gasped, eyes wide, looking down at the polymer handle sticking out of her blouse, thinking, What’s this?

  Calendar held on to her arm and laughed at something, as if she’d just cracked him up. He held her there until a passing car turned out of sight. Still holding her tight against the side of the car, he scanned the windows of the convenience store. A clerk had her back to the parking lot. The lot was otherwise empty.

  Teresa’s mouth fished open but no sound emerged.

  Calendar opened the door, holding Teresa’s body taut against the metal, sidled out, opened the driver’s side back door, and shoved her in. He was back in the driver’s seat and pulling out as Teresa took her last breath and died.

  Because Calendar had kept the sturdy combat knife pressed hard against Teresa’s chest, she’d bled internally but hardly at all externally. He drove out into the rural countryside, into farmland. He found a ditch surrounded by trees and dumped the body.

  But he retrieved the knife first. He loved that knife.

  26

  RAY MET DEA AGENT Gustavo Rojas in Ensenada. Rojas was a nondescript man, small-boned, in clothes that seemed two sizes too large. He chewed his fingernails and had a smoker’s pallor. He fit nicely into crowds, which made him an exceptional undercover agent. They had known each other for a dozen years and had never been friends.

  Rojas said, “Calabrese.”

  Ray shook his hand. “Thanks for doing this.”

  Rojas scanned the dusty streets, a toothpick between his lips. “J. T. Laney at ATF just about shit a brick when he heard you were here. You are not the most popular guy in Mexico today, Raymondo.”

  Ray climbed into the man’s Explorer. “Since when did this job become about being popular?”

  * * *

  Rojas checked in both with ATF’s Wild Boar Brigade and with his own bosses at the DEA, but not with the corruption-racked Mexican Army or police. He confirmed to the friendlies that he was ferrying a federal agent across Mexican soil. He and Ray took Mexican Highway 2 past La Joya and Playas de Rosarito, cutting inland and climbing quickly to one thousand feet, to the town of San Jeronimo. They didn’t chat.

  It’s possible that the village of San Jeronimo had never had its heyday, but, if it had, it was decades ago. The streets showed the vague remnants of once being paved. The “downtown” was a gas station, a bar, a city hall, a bar, a grocery store, and a bar. Other than Rojas’s truck, the only other vehicles were steel-reinforced jeeps favored by the narcotraficante. Plus, a tireless El Dorado on its rims.

  It was easily ninety-five degrees at noon. Ray, in a polo shirt and jeans, climbed out of the Grand Cherokee with a mismatched right front quarter panel. Rojas picked a copy of The New Yorker off the floor of the cab and said, “I’ll be here.”

  Ray walked into El Perro Fumando, sat at the empty bar, and ordered a tequila with lime juice.

  It was an odd place to find a former Israeli soldier and spy. Then again, this was Daria Gibron. A lot about her was odd.

  Ray had just finished the first sip of his drink when two beefy, unshaven men entered and took tables at the far end of the saloon, flanking him. He recognized them as the men who’d been positioned outside the bar when he’d tried to find Daria a week or so ago. Both wore untucked shirts.

  Ray nursed his drink.

  Thirty seconds later, the saloon-style doors opened and Daria Gibron entered.

  Daria, always dark-skinned, had grown more tanned. She wore her black hair cut very short and a bit spiky, making her round face look even more so. She wore a sleeveless tank that revealed sharply muscled arms and shoulders. Her khakis and hiking boots were well worn and dusty. She looked tougher than Ray remembered. Harder.

  Ray started to say hello but the word stuck in his throat. He opened his mouth, closed it.

  Daria gestured to the bartender, who brought two shot glasses and a bottle of Tequila Uno. She poured, downed hers in a gulp. “Is good to see you, too.”

  TWIN PINES

  Jack and Hector tried cell phones. They tried MP3 players. Cameras, computer game stations, travel alarm clocks, digital audio recorders, laptops, electric razors. Hector even unearthed a vibrating dildo. He hid it from Jack and tested it.

  But it, like all the rest, was inoperable.

  Hector said, “You don’t think…?”

  Jack scratched his head. “I didn’t two hours ago.”

  * * *

  In the makeshift morgue, Lakshmi Jain found the same results. But she found something far more disturbing.

  She went to the front door and the officer whom Chief McKinney had posted. “Excuse me. Other than myself, who’s been in here?”

  “Todd from the coroner’s office. Him and one of the EMTs loaded up some more bodies this morning. Also, that tall looker you brung yesterday.”

  Lakshmi said, “No one else?”

  “Not on my watch.”

  “Very well.” She adjusted her ear jack. “If you could avoid sexist comments around me, I would appreciate it.”

  “Um … okay?”

  She stepped back inside.

  “This is Kim.”

  “Mr. Kim. It’s Lakshmi Jain.”

  “You’re bringing me a working cell phone? One which I can then use to beat Tomzak over the head with?”

  “No. They’re all dysfunctional. But there’s something else. These bodies have been searched. Their pockets are turned out.”

  SAN JERONIMO, MEXICO

  Daria Gibron looked comfortable in the heat. Her taut skin was dry. Ray’s cornflower-blue polo shirt was soggy with sweat.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Last time you showed up, you weren’t looking for conversation. No?”

  “I’d had you under surveillance for four days. I saw the holes in J. T. Laney’s plans that you could drive a tank through. I didn’t see a way to talk him down, so…” Ray shrugged.

  “I am grateful you were there.”

  “You haven’t answered my question. What are you doing?”

  She smiled, cocked her head. “Finding loads and loads of guns.”

  “And selling some, too?”

  She shrugged and knocked back a shot of tequila. “We like to call it chumming the waters. They said your friends were in a plane crash?”

  “Yeah. Tommy’s got a mild concussion and Kiki’s banged up a little.”

  Daria shook her head. “They investigate crashes. How—”

  “Will you believe me if I say there’s no variation of that conversation I haven’t had? They did. Both are okay. Do you remember Isaiah Grey?”

  “The pilot in the Mojave.”

  “Yeah. He died. And we’re not sure it wasn’t murder.”

  She no
dded. “Tell me.”

  “I will. But … how are you? Are you good?”

  She smiled wryly and nudged Ray’s shoulder with her own. She felt densely packed and solid. Ray’s heart fluttered and his poker face tried to hold still. She poured more amber booze. “I am alive. Sitting in L.A., in posh clothes, translating for princes and bankers, I was going fucking insane.”

  With her Israeli accent, she had always had trouble with that word. It came out fakking.

  “Down here … you Americans have a saying about being in one’s element. Yes?”

  Ray said, “Yes,” and sipped his drink.

  “What do you need?”

  “Kiki and Tommy have a theory that someone brought down their plane and an assassin was waiting in the woods to pick off any survivors who could prove that the cover story—a cockpit malfunction—was a hoax. Whoever did this had the juice to create false black boxes, too. The assassin was a guy, six feet, six-one. Close-cropped silver hair, put together like an athlete. Probably late forties, early fifties. Handsome. Wondering where I’d start looking for a guy like that.”

  Daria said, “Thailand. He lives there. His nom de guerre is Calendar.”

  Ray wiped sweat off his neck. “No way. You know this guy?”

  “There are few people in the world who can do what Calendar does. He’s expensive. I was involved in a CIA situation, six months before you and I met. He handled the wet work.”

  She sneaked a glimpse at her burly handlers, sitting behind them. Softly, she added, “My new friends occasionally need a woman with—how do you say—a certain skill set. That is me. Once or twice, when they need a man with the same skill set, they hire Calendar. But I charge a lot less, I think.”

  Ray’s blood pressure spiked. He forced his fingers to relax around the shot glass. “These ATF assholes have you playing assassin?”

  “Not playing, no.”

  Ray downed his drink, hearing a hum inside his ears. “And this Calendar works for them.”