The Fifth Rule of Ten

by Gay Hendricks

The office was closed as well.

  I looked up. The light was too bright to find, much less follow, the moon.

  Brittany and her friends weren’t here, and neither was anyone else on my radar.

  I leaned against the Neon’s overheated flank. The last of the toxic water had pooled underneath the chassis. It spread across the pavement like poisoned ink.

  CHAPTER 59

  A white Dakota pickup pulled into the campground. The tall, fit man who climbed out wore a camouflage uniform. It was an odd color, more aqua than army green, although that might have been my eyes playing tricks on me.

  “Lieutenant Smith?”

  “Bobby, please.” He started for my right hand, spotted the cast, and switched to my left. His grip was firm.

  “Thanks for coming to the rescue. I think my radiator is cracked.” I nodded toward the Neon, its hood popped.

  “That’s not good.” Bobby eyed the pond of coolant. He ducked under the hood with a Maglite and reappeared with the oil dipstick. It was coated with gunk.

  “Not just the radiator. Head gasket’s blown. My opinion? She’s a goner.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “There’s a junk yard’ll pick her up from here for free. I can call them in the morning.”

  “Sold.” I’d never completely committed to the relationship, so the demise of my second beater car, unlike my first, was not painful.

  Anyway, who needs a Neon when you own a Vyrus?

  I went to retrieve the suitcase and almost dropped it.

  “Let me take that,” Bobby said. “Jesus, what have you got in here? Rocks?”

  “One rock. A meteorite,” I said. I left it at that.

  Visalia was about half an hour from Lemoore. Enough time to learn how special Kim’s brother was. Every nation has its warriors, its Kshatriya class, but not every person is right for the job. Bobby, as far as I could tell, had found his true dharma.

  “So you enlisted right out of high school?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And while you were serving, you earned a college degree.”

  “Yup. Online, through SOCNAV. Took about seven years.”

  “And then, what, more training?”

  “OCS. Officer candidate school. Hardest twelve weeks of my life, including my first tour in the Gulf of Oman. Then six weeks of air indoctrination in Pensacola, followed by flight training, flight training, and more flight training.”

  “Wow.”

  “I was motivated. No other way to get my hand on the throttle of a Super Hornet. Here we are. Home sweet home.”

  I was too exhausted to register much about getting onto the base, except that gates and guards were involved, and Bobby had to flash his ID more than once.

  The pullout sofa in the living room was lumpy, but I fell into a hard and dreamless sleep, too tired to mind.

  Then it was morning. I knew, because slanted squares of sunlight were warming up my face. I could smell coffee and hear voices in the kitchen, including a child’s piping trill. I reached under the pillow for the burner phone to check.

  No texts.

  Panic licked at the edges of my brain. I treated it with a deep cooling breath.

  Kim walked in.

  “Buenos días, Mr. Norbu. I brought you coffee.” She handed me a mug imprinted with a dashing top hat. I’d seen the same image on a patch on Bobby’s shoulder. “It is nice to see you.”

  “Same here.”

  “Hasta luego.” She left the room.

  I had slept fully dressed. I found a small bathroom, my anxiety mounting. Today, or rather tonight, was Saka Dawa Duchen. I had no idea where to go. And on the off chance I was texted a location, no immediate way to get there.

  Bobby, Kim, and three others were in the kitchen. I assumed the statuesque African American with the gray cloud of hair was Mpingo Draper, and I was right.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “But sorry for the reason.”

  Bobby’s wife, Ramona, was caramel skinned, her thick black hair braided into a twist. She wore a camouflage flight suit like Bobby’s. In daylight it was still more blue than green. She caught me staring.

  “Like the camo, do you? Around here, we call it aquaflage.”

  “Ramona’s nurse’s corps,” Bobby said, putting his arm around her. “She works at the Hornet Health Clinic.”

  I tucked that information away.

  A little girl in pink shorts and a pink shirt stared at me from the corner. Her hazel eyes and hair matched.

  “Hola,” I said. “I’m Ten.”

  She hid behind her mother.

  “We’re off.” Ramona met my eyes. “I’m glad you came. Brittany is Kimmy’s favorite babysitter, isn’t she, Kimmy?”

  Kimmy nodded.

  Ramona’s face clouded with concern. She took Kimmy’s hand and led her away.

  “Kimmy goes to Kindergarten,” Kim announced. “Sometimes I walk her there.”

  I turned to Bobby. “I need to meet with Brittany’s parents. As soon as possible. There’s not much time.”

  “Her mother works in Hanford,” he said. “But Commander Pritchard’s waiting.”

  We drove across the naval base. Pink and white oleander bushes partially masked the barbed-wire fencing. We passed more military housing, a shopping center, offices, and decommissioned aircraft skewered on metal stands.

  Bobby rattled off the base services. “Beauty salon, Starbucks, commissary.” He motioned. “Lemoore’s divided into two areas, admin and ops. We’re heading into Air ops.”

  The security measures were tighter on this end, and I soon saw why. We had entered strike fighter territory. Gunmetal gray fighter jets peppered a tarmac ocean, tailfins raised. They were still and dangerous as sharks.

  “F/A-eighteens,” Bobby said.

  A distant rumble grew loud, louder, until the roar took on a life of its own. It pummeled my hearing like a fist.

  A pair of Super Hornets whooshed overhead in tandem, so close to each other their wings could kiss. The roar faded away. A bird chirped, brave again.

  “That sound.” I shook my head in awe.

  “We call it the sound of freedom.” Bobby looked away, suddenly shy.

  Now a single F/A-18 flew over us, shadowed by its ghost below. It completed two slow 180-degree turns, then lowered wheels-first onto a narrow runway. The landing gear barely brushed the tarmac before the machine lifted off and sped away.

  A second strike fighter followed the same path, and I saw more planes strung out behind.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Developing habit patterns,” Bobby said. “Lemoore’s in the boonies. That means we can actually fly low enough to mimic landing on an aircraft carrier. This fleet is practicing touch-and-gos.”

  “Looks tricky.”

  “As soon as you touch down you have two seconds to attach a tail hook to a three-inch-wide arresting cable, on a seesawing flight deck, while at max power, because if you miss, you have to take off immediately or bad things happen. So yes. Tricky.”

  He guided the Dakota between metal maintenance hangars, each bearing its own VFA number, squadron name, and insignia. Maybe 20 in all. Bounty Hunters. Vigilantes. Black Knights. Their painted emblems—snarling dragons, red-eyed skulls—were not that different from gang symbols, only these warriors were better equipped, more skilled, and far more dangerous. I was glad they stood on the side of honor.

  The Tophatter hangar was halfway down to the right. I spotted the same jaunty black hat.

  “Your VFA-14 squadron symbol is different,” I said.

  “We’re the original,” he smiled. “Nineteen nineteen. The oldest and the boldest.”

  A door in the hangar opened, and a man strode in our direction, as if he’d been watching for us.

  “Commander Pritchard,” Bobby said. “This is Detective Tenzing Norbu.”

  “Commander.” I waved awkwardly. “Sorry, I can’t shake hands.”

  “Appreciate you coming, De
tective,” he said.

  He was well over six feet. His eyes were blue steel, and his hands were compact, the fingers blunt and thick. He wore leather work boots, a peaked khaki cap, and a winged insignia on a patch over his heart, his name and rank embroidered in gold. He’d be the picture of calm competence, were it not for the bruises of worry under his eyes.

  Inside the hangar, plane parts were spread out on plastic sheets, awaiting repair, perhaps. Pritchard led us upstairs to his office. An aeronautical chart was laid out on the desk. I could see purple Magic Marker lines hand drawn over the grids.

  A framed picture showed a smiling lieutenant commander in full dress uniform, medals decorating his chest like confetti. One arm was wrapped around a pretty teenage girl in ripped jeans, her expression half-sullen, half-hopeful. She’d attempted to dye her hair blue, but the result was more like aquaflage.

  I picked up the photograph. “Tell me about Brittany,” I said.

  “She’s a pistol,” Pritchard answered. “Always has been. Two older brothers, but she can hold her own. Complete tomboy. Which was fine, until all her girlfriends changed, and she didn’t. It’s not that she’s . . . she likes boys. She’s just not that interested yet. Girls this age can be cruel. She was feeling pretty isolated by the end of last year.” He shook his head. “All that early moving around didn’t help.”

  So the pattern of vulnerability was there. Again.

  “What is she interested in?”

  He smiled. “Stargazing. Yoga. Rock climbing. Shooting. She’s a crack shot.”

  My antennae went up. “Tell me more about that.”

  “Well, I started her off skeet shooting a couple years ago, here on the base. She was so good I took her to Rankin Field in Tulare for her sixteenth birthday. Gave her my granddad’s rifle to try out.”

  “What kind of rifle?” The nape of my neck already knew.

  “Hunting rifle. A bolt-action Browning. She took to it like a duck to water. She can shoot better than me now, and I’m a pretty good shot.”

  So Brittany hadn’t been aiming to kill, she’d been aiming to scare. More gaslighting.

  Bobby was poring over the charts. “Have you seen this?” he said to me. “The Mojave Desert’s like a wasp’s nest of these ley line things.”

  I was still focused on the rifle. “Commander, Bobby mentioned Brittany was in Los Angeles earlier this week.”

  “That’s right. Britt’s been testing us like crazy. She’s gone AWOL a lot lately. We grounded her the minute she got home from L.A. But when the opportunity to be with these girls came up, we just thought . . .” He slammed the desk with his fist. “Damnit! Where is she?”

  “Do you know where the Browning is?”

  “Of course. I keep it in a gun locker in the garage.” His eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting?”

  My iPhone vibrated and I pulled it out of my front pocket. Julie. We hadn’t spoken in almost two days.

  “I should take this,” I said, but Pritchard was already making his own call. He walked outside, talking rapidly.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “He . . . love,” Julie said. “We . . . ing . . . to . . . tree.”

  “Sorry you’re cutting out.”

  “’fic bad,” she said. “Ther . . . three . . . s.”

  “Sweetheart, I can’t hear you.”

  I lost the call.

  I sent her a text: WHERE ARE YOU. I WILL CALL YOU LATER. MARRY ME.

  My phone buzzed again, a London number.

  “Hello?”

  “DCI Garfield here. Thank goodness you answered. I’ll make this short. My man at Customs and Immigration called. Several more groups like Colin’s have been flying into LAX over the past few days. Not just from Heathrow—they’re coming from all over Europe. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.” A ringtone interrupted. Mike.

  “Sorry, I just have to . . .” I switched lines. “Mike?”

  “Boss, did you get the text?”

  The throwaway phone in my left back pocket dinged. I tucked Mike’s call between my shoulder and ear and lifted the burner to my eyes: RAJARAP FULL MOON BHAKTI SATSANG. MAHA MUDRA AND FRIENDS. SPECIAL GUEST.

  In my ear, Mike said. “It’s in Joshua Tree. I’ll come pick you up.”

  “Don’t. I’m not home.” I kept reading: FREE ADMISSION. GA-NACHAKRA CAMP GROUND. RAINSHADOW LANE. JOSHUA TREE.

  “Shit, you’re not? Where are you, man?”

  My throat closed as I read the final few words of the text: 9PM UNTIL FOREVER. IT’S TIME.

  “Call Bill and tell him. You’re in charge of Tank,” I said, and ended the call.

  I switched back to DCI Garfield, but he was long gone.

  Pritchard hurried back in, his face white. “Detective, the rifle’s not there. Brittany must have taken it.”

  Ding. A text landed from Julie: DRIVING BOYS TO JOSHUA TREE FOR CEREMONY. TRAFFIC TERRIBLE. AND THE ANSWER IS STILL YES.

  I groaned out loud.

  “What’s going on?” Bobby asked.

  “Hold on.” I texted Julie back: DO NOT GO TO JOSHUA TREE!!! TURN AROUND. GO HOME.

  I pressed “send” and felt better.

  “I need to get to Joshua Tree,” I said to Pritchard. “As soon as humanly possible.”

  Pritchard’s eyes narrowed as he ran scenarios. He’d switched from concerned father to pure tactician.

  “Bobby, you’re FAA certified, right?” he asked.

  Bobby nodded.

  “Who do you rent from usually? Chip?”

  Bobby nodded again. “Chip Lancaster,” he explained to me. “He’s a vet. He runs Eagle Air, a flying school out of the FBO airport in Visalia. I rent his Cessna one fifty-two.”

  “Two-seater, or three?” Pritchard said.

  “Two.”

  Pritchard’s face tightened in disappointment.

  Bobby had his phone out and was scrolling contact numbers as he talked. “It’s a two-hour flight to Joshua Tree, give or take. I’ve done it before. We should leave here within the hour, Ten—Chip likes his planes back before dark.”

  “Anything else you need?” Pritchard asked me.

  I pointed to the framed photograph of Brittany and her father. “Can I take that, commander?”

  Pritchard handed it over.

  I mentally ran down the list.

  “I also need a barber, a doctor, and some strong coffee.”

  He didn’t blink.

  “You’re in the right place,” Pritchard said.

  CHAPTER 60

  Eagle Air’s headquarters was a corrugated shoebox. The outside awning barely shaded a metal picnic table and two plastic chairs.

  I eyed the three banged-up prop planes parked nearby while Bobby finished the paperwork inside. We’d booked the Cessna 152 for four hours, at $135.00 an hour. It seemed like a bargain, until I saw the actual planes.

  I should talk. My right arm was wilted and vulnerable without its fiberglass splint, and hung by my side like a limp rag. I ran my other palm over my hairless crown. I hadn’t been this bald since Dharamshala. Or thin. I was an excellent candidate for ascetic training school.

  Bobby marched into the shimmering heat, followed by Chip, a squat man with fierce eyes and a bushy white hermit’s beard. He barely glanced at me, which I found impressive given my red robe, naked scalp, and suitcase from another century.

  “Let’s do this,” Bobby said.

  Though the Cessna was a two-seater, its propeller didn’t look like it could lift much more than a newborn.

  May I be safe and protected. Healthy and strong. May I be happy and peaceful.

  May I survive.

  As Bobby checked his instruments, I checked to see if Julie had texted me back.

  There was a red exclamation point by my text to her.

  It had never been sent. I tried to send it again.

  I pulled out the burner phone and sent the same message.

  I swore under my breath. The battery was running low on both phones,
and we were about to take off.

  “FYI,” Bobby said, “we’re landing at the F-22 airfield. It’s privately owned. Very close to where you want to go. Recently closed, but it should be okay to land.”

  “Closed?” That didn’t sound good.

  “Also, we’ll be cutting through strike fighter training areas en route. We’ll be lower and slower, of course. Don’t worry. It’s not against regulations.”

  I put on my headset so he’d stop talking. Bobby adjusted his mic and exchanged codes and instructions with an anonymous air traffic controller.

  We taxied onto a short runway, the propeller emitting a chopping sound of complaint. I kept telling myself that Bobby was a crack pilot—he could tailhook a cable with a killer machine while moving at 250 knots—but my nerve endings weren’t buying it.

  I closed my eyes and didn’t open them until we were airborne.

  The fields below were like scraps of old brown carpet.

  I heard a roar overhead. Two strike fighters streaked by, three times as fast and five times as high.

  I sank lower in my seat. Two hours. I could make it through anything for two hours.

  I must have dozed off, which was shocking.

  Bobby’s voice roused me, urgent in my headset.

  “Ten. Look.”

  The desert was vast and stark, a desolate plain pocked with rock piles and knotty vegetation. But he wasn’t talking about the landscape.

  “What road is that?”

  “Twentynine Palms Highway,” he said.

  The four-lane highway divided the terrain like an asphalt scar. One side, the side that connected to a bigger freeway and the jeweled lights of civilization, was almost empty.

  The opposite side, heading into bleak nothingness, was wall-to-wall with cars.

  CHAPTER 61

  I don’t recommend landing on the unlit runway of a closed airfield in semidarkness, but if you’re going to do it, have a Super Hornet pilot at the controls. The Cessna kicked up a storm of dust and bumped over a few potholes, but otherwise brought us safely to a halt.

  “You sure you don’t want me to come?”

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  “Anything else I can do for you?”

  I hesitated. But I might not get another chance to say this.