Calamity (Captain Grande Angil Mysteries)

by Robert G. Bernstein

  “I’m waiting,” Hadley said.

  “All right,” I said. “Picture this. It’s the late sixties. The war is in full swing. So is the antiwar movement. When Nixon gets to the White House in nineteen sixty-nine, all he thinks about is what the hippies and the peace movement did to Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. So he calls a cabinet meeting, and he asks for ideas, a way to discredit the powerful antiwar movement. You got the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, maybe a few more we don’t even know about, all these covert ops groups together in one room coming-up with weird, half-baked ideas. One of these ideas involves flying a quantity of experimental drugs into upstate New York and distributing it at the Woodstock Music Festival. You with me so far?”

  “How do you know this shit?” Hadley said.

  We were riding in traffic along the Parkway in a heavily treed section between the Potomac and the Donaldson Recreation Area, doing a steady forty-five miles per hour.

  “I know this shit because my client gave me access to Allen Bowers’ files,” I said. “Apparently, Bowers had written a legal brief to the Justice Department requesting a certain group of files be desensitized. What we can deduce from the two pages we have is that the plan to bring this stuff in from Asia was denied by the Deputy Director of the CIA. I had a friend look into this. The guy would have been a long time Nixon ally named Robert Cushman. He died in nineteen eighty-five. Anyway, guess what? Approved or not, somebody went ahead with the mission. Flew this militarized stuff halfway across the globe. But the plane crashed in the Gulf of Maine, and that very night they salvaged the thing, scrubbed the mission and wiped the books.”

  Hadley frowned and swerved into the passing lane to get around a tour bus. He accelerated hard and turned back into the right lane, tucking in close to the front of the bus. Just before he made the maneuver I saw him glance twice at his rear view mirror.

  “Here’s how I figure it,” I said. “Thirteen years ago, Allen Bowers is asked to be Chief Council to the President. He agrees. Except, he has a condition. He knows somebody who tried to poison and maybe even kill thousands or tens of thousands of innocent Americans. He wants this person brought to justice. He files a legal brief requesting information and he starts his own personal investigation. Then, before he can assume his new position or complete his inquiry, he’s killed in a mysterious fire.”

  “A fire with no material evidence of foul play,” Hadley said.

  “Correct. Now fast forward a few years. Allen’s oldest son, Aaron, who survived the fire, grows up an angry, mixed up kid, in one foster home after another. He doesn’t understand why his mother had to leave him and he hates her for it. He reaches an age where he becomes aware of certain things and he asks or demands that his mother give him access to his father’s stuff. She gives him permission to look through his father’s papers, which Allen Bowers had arranged to be placed in private and very secure storage. Aaron studies the papers and learns of this plot. He moves to Maine and starts searching for the site of the plane crash. He meets up with Tanner and the two of them dig around. I think they found something.”

  “So this suspect,” Hadley said, “he gets rid of Allen Bowers and later finds and kills the son?”

  “Killed the father and the younger son and maimed Jenny, but I don’t think he killed Aaron. I think Aaron is alive, or was alive. The whole fishing boat accident was a ruse. They used it to make Aaron disappear. With Aaron in hiding, he was safe, and so was Tanner. Our suspect wouldn’t do anything to Tanner for fear Aaron would come forward, and they couldn’t find Aaron. Tanner might not have even known where Aaron was. He could have taken off for a sail around the world.”

  “Then why kill Tanner now?” Hadley said.

  I liked Zeke for the Tanner murder, and I was almost positive he squirreled Jenny away. He just about admitted it to me on the phone. Could he be in league with SafeOps? With English? What about the fire and the death of Jenny’s husband and Aaron’s little brother, not to mention what the tragedy did to Aaron? Waves of unanswered questions floated through my head.

  Part of me suspected Zeke in a big way. That part wanted Zeke to sweat out a confession in a police squad room. The other part of me couldn’t give him up. Not yet. I wanted to believe he was still one of the good guys.

  “Maybe they killed Tanner to smoke out the kid,” I said. “I don’t know. Maybe they killed him because he got too greedy.”

  “I see where you’re going,” Hadley said. “You think there was a big payoff, the kid and Tanner split it, then the kid disappeared. Six months to a year later, Tanner gets hungry and goes back for more money.”

  “Why not?” I said. “Kid’s gone. He doesn’t know where he is. Maybe he does know where he is, or he’s killed him. Whichever, he has the mark over a barrel. So he thinks.”

  “Could be they both got greedy,” Hadley said.

  “Then how’d Tanner get the money to him, and how long would it take a former spook to trail it?”

  “Could be that’s what happened. Could well be they did trail the money. They got to the kid, then they got to Tanner. Now all they got left is the mother. The last loose end, except for you.”

  “And they left her the phone,” I said. “To lure me in. Shit.”

  “Oh, right. You said before. She still has her cell phone.”

  “I called her on it. She answered.”

  “Give me the number. Maybe I can get a GPS fix on her position.”

  I gave him the number.

  “How long will it take?” I said.

  “Could be a few minutes. Could be half a day. Depends where she is. Depends if the phone’s on, if she has the feature disabled. We don’t even know if she has a phone with that feature.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Not exactly a sure thing.”

  “Not hardly,” Hadley said. “But if it works, and I get this info and give it to you, and you head down there, you realize you’re probably walking into a trap. Makes sense. With the kid and Tanner dead, you and the woman are the last two loose ends. This suspect, if he’s done what you say he’s done, killed or arranged to kill four people and maybe more, he has a lot to protect.”

  “The guy I’m thinking of has more to lose than you can ever imagine.”

  “Hollyoake?”

  “Why not?

  “Man like that can be very dangerous. Probably has allies all over the place.”

  I shrugged. Hadley glanced at his rear view mirror, then turned to face me. “You carrying?” he asked, suddenly looking very serious.

  Not the question I wanted to hear from a cop.

  “Why?” I said.

  “I want to show you something.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small aerosol canister. “Latest thing.”

  “What is it?” I said. “Pepper spray? Mace.”

  “Oh hell, this stuff here makes mace look like a bottle of Visene.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Can I have it?”

  With remarkable speed for an older man, Hadley shoved the canister toward my face and sprayed me right in the eyes. Last thing I remember before I lost consciousness was him saying: “Boy, you got about as much sense as a blivit.”

  39

  I woke up in the back of a cargo van with my hands bound behind my back and my legs wrapped tight with duct tape. My sinuses pounded, and I had a lump on the back of my head the size of a walnut. I didn’t know where I was, where I was going, or what the hell a blivit was.

  We were riding on a major highway, cruising at seventy or better. It was warm, about forty of fifty degrees, and pitch black in the back of the van.

  I rolled to my right and left and tried to feel around for my phone and wallet. Pockets were empty. So was my holster. Hadley. That son-of-a-bitch. He sure could act. An Oscar worthy performance. If Preston Mellville ever walked this earth for real, I doubt he and the Special DHS Advisor to the Governor ever considered each other friends.

  I used my aching head to maneuver myself into a seated position. It took a while and stung
but I finally situated my back against the hard metal side of the van. There were no windows, and the cab was separated from the rest of the vehicle by a steel bulkhead. Both sets of doors, the one in the back and the one on the side, had special handles that needed keys to open. There was a substantial amount of heavy steel in the van, more than usual. I got the feeling it was a stripped-down armored vehicle, like a Brinks truck.

  There was a strange burning pain on the skin of my abdomen. I used my forearms to move my jacket and pull up my sweatshirt and T-shirt. Two round burn marks the size of eraser heads were just below my rib cage. They looked like indented bee stings, or a vampire bite. Taser marks, no doubt. My abductors weren’t taking any chances, or maybe they were just mean.

  Eventually, the van was going to stop somewhere, probably deep in the woods. Two guys would get out. They would open one of the doors and shine a bright light into my eyes to blind me. They’d make me walk, because that’s one of the advantages to being over six-foot three inches tall and weighing two hundred forty pounds. Nobody wants to carry you anywhere.

  They’d probably rough me up a little to make me do what they wanted. Beat me on the head a few times, not enough to knock me out, just enough to make me pliable. I doubt they’d use the Taser, which, by the way, still hurt. I’d been shot before, once in the leg when I was seventeen and another time at twenty-three, coincidentally in almost the same place. This Taser burn hurt more than either one of those gunshot wounds.

  The way I figured it, I didn’t have much choice. I was going to have to make my stand in the van. I would have to kick and squirm and bite and do whatever I could without the use of my hands and feet. I doubted they would fall for the playing possum routine. Even if they fell for it, they weren’t going to give me the opportunity to kick them both silly.

  It didn’t look promising. If I was lucky, and I kicked and squirmed and made a nuisance of myself, they’d have no choice but to shoot me in the van. I would go to my maker knowing I had left them a bloody mess to clean. To top it off, they’d have to carry my sorry ass to a shallow grave. Ha! I’d show them.

  I jostled myself into the corner, as far to the front of the van as I could get, and started wiggling my hands and legs back and forth, trying to get some freedom of movement. They had taped over my shirt cuffs and pants and that gave me a little bit of a head start. While I worked at my bindings, Hadley’s last words repeated in my head, irritating me to no end, not because Hadley turned out to be a lying, two-faced, cowardly son of a bitch. Nope. That wasn’t that. What bothered me was that I might never know the difference between a blivit and a blowfish.

  A few hours passed, during which I made some progress on the tape around my legs. I now had the wiggle room to slide my feet back and forth six or eight inches. Stretching backwards and using my hands and fingers I was able to yank my trouser legs upwards. This brought the tape to just below my knees, a good thing because thirty years of commercial and sport diving helped me to build a pair of hefty legs. Not fullback hefty per se, but strong enough to weaken and stretch my bindings another inch or two.

  At some point we turned off onto another road, probably by way of an exit ramp. We didn’t slow down much but the new road was a lot bumpier. I got tossed hard a few times. Thirty minutes later we made another turn, onto dirt this time. I could hear rocks and pebbles flinging against the wheel wells. I figured this was it.

  It suddenly occurred to me I had only one chance. I scrapped my plan to throw a tantrum in the van and stood-up. With some difficulty, I steadied myself dead center against the partition, my head wedged against the roof for balance.

  I studied the van’s two sets of doors and prepared to charge either set.

  The driver slammed on the brakes and the van came to a dirt-sliding stop. Had I not been positioned with my back against the partition I would have been flung across the deck.

  I waited for what seemed like forever but was probably only twenty minutes. Then I heard the engine shut down . . . and voices.

  “How you want to play this?” It was from the passenger side.

  “Call the boss again,” driver said. “See if he got a hit on the cell.”

  There was a pause.

  “It’s me. We’re here.”

  Another pause. Longer this time.

  “Great. We’ll finish-up and meet you.”

  I heard shuffling. Putting the phone away.

  “New suit?” It was the driver again.

  “Brooks Brothers. Six hundred with the fitting. Got the shirt and tie, too.”

  “Silk?”

  “Of course.”

  “Nice. OK, what’s the deal?”

  “We don’t have to tune him up. They got what they wanted. Look, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not get the suit dirty.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Fuckin’ right you will. Gimme the Taser.”

  Shit. The Taser.

  I heard the front doors open and the two guys step out. My heart pounded like the pistons in a two-cylinder donkey engine. I hyperventilated, held my breath, and when the back doors unlatched, I ran at them, on my toes, taking ten to twelve-inch steps as energetically as my feet would let me. I hit the doors with my right shoulder and pushed with all my might, landing hard on the ground after stepping off the end of the van.

  It was dark and warm. The ground felt dry and gravely. I used the momentum of the fall to get myself rolling for the edge of the dirt road, toward the woods. It hurt, moving like a worm over rocks and stones and sharpened pieces of timber. I was focused, and heard nothing, not a sound, until . . . two shots rang out, then two more.

  I got on my knees and used a tree to prop myself upright. Keeping with the baby step motif I hustled deeper into the woods. Unfortunately I couldn’t see a damn thing and soon found myself tripped-up and flat on my face. I lay there, in a rut, mouthful of dirt, trying not to twitch a muscle or pant too loudly.

  “Hey Angil!”

  The voice sounded familiar.

  “Angil. Where you at?”

  I was perpendicular to the dirt road, lying on my stomach and facing in the wrong direction to see anything.

  “Goddammit, Cap.”

  I lifted my head and spit out some dirt.

  “Zeke? That you?” I yelled. “You planning to shoot me in the back?”

  “Shoot ya? Why would I do that? I just saved your sorry ass.”

  40

  I stood about four feet away from the van, not far from the two bodies, one of which looked very dapper in a charcoal gray Brooks Brothers suit with matching shirt, and silk tie. You hardly noticed the two bullet holes through the breast pocket. Zeke, wearing black slacks, black turtle neck and a black leather jacket looked equally dapper. And menacing. He used a jackknife to cut the tape on my legs and arms.

  “You OK?” he said.

  I ripped the tape off my pants and shirt cuffs. “Sore head, burn marks on my belly, assorted cuts and bruises, twisted ankles. Nothing compared to what they did to my ego.”

  Zeke smiled.

  “You did all right. Knocked ‘em both to the ground. Trust me. They was hurtin’ bad when they got up. Looked like a pair of beat-up rodeo riders. If you had found a stump or sharp stick out there, you coulda cut yourself free, caused them some trouble.”

  “Yeah, well, the way I figure it, I’d be out there in the woods covered in leaves if it weren’t for you.”

  “Let me tell you, brother, the dang truth is, you probably wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place if it weren’t for me.”

  He was hangdog, staring at the ground. He still had the pistol in his hand, the one he had used to blast my abductors.

  “They have her cell number,” I said.

  “It was that Fed, wasn’t it?”

  “Hadley. He played me like a fiddle.”

  “Won’t happen again.”

  “Nope,” I said. “Never.”

  “You too trusting. In this busi
ness. Everybody lies.”

  “We have to get her,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “Check the van. Don’t leave anything here. My car’s about three-hundred yards up the road.”

  I found my Warthog under The Suit’s waistband. My phone, wallet and keys were in the cab.

  “Don’t use your phone,” Zeke said. “Is it on?”

  I looked. “No.”

  “Leave it off. They got the number now. They can track us through it. Matter o’ fact, take the battery out.”

  I did as suggested. Then I took the keys out of the ignition and threw them in the woods, shut both van doors with my shirt tail and headed toward the back of the van. I wiped down the cargo area, turned around and shut the back doors. The interior light went out and it got very dark.

  “Where are we?” I said.

  “South Carolina,” Zeke said. “It’s a national forest.”

  “And Jenny? Where’s she?”

  “At a spa about three-hundred-fifty miles from here. Get some branches. We need to wipe away our footprints.”

  We cut branches off of pine saplings and brushed out our tracks around the van, then we started walking toward Zeke’s rental. Each of us carved a path in the woods, about ten feet left and right of the edges of the road bed.

  “Will they make a run at her?”

  “I think so,” Zeke said. “Maybe not right away. They gonna take precautions.”

  I stumbled over a root and almost fell. My ankles hurt with every step, and my head throbbed. On the other side of the road, Zeke pushed through the woods like a Cat D-9 bulldozer.

  “It was you, wasn’t it, Zeke,” I said, “set that fire?”

  I heard a grunt from across the road, or a cough.

  “It’s not like you think.” His voice cracked. It was a little shaky when he continued. “They gave me something to give to the kid, a toy. I thought it was a bug.”

  “It wasn’t a bug, was it?”

  “No.”

  Zeke was huffing and puffing through the woods. He was also crying. I had to speedup to keep pace.