Mr. Sandman: A Thrilling Novel

by Lyle Howard

  Mason let his left arm dangle out of the window. Even a warm breeze was better than no breeze at all.

  “I can hear them talking … nothing significant … just directions and comments on the weather.”

  Mason raised an eyebrow cynically. How could Travers know what was significant or not? He wasn’t even sure what he was supposed to be listening for.

  “I can’t tell what either of them are wearing ” Travers went on. “I think the man is wearing a baseball cap.”

  Mason nodded in agreement. The passenger was defi­nitely wearing a baseball cap.

  “We’ll report in again when they’ve reached their destination … yes, sir,” Travers said as he signed off.

  Mason, still casually pursuing the Bronco, turned east again onto a smaller avenue bordered by royal palm trees. Now the sun was directly in their faces, prompting both men to flip down their visors.

  “Well? What did they have to say?” Mason asked indif­ferently.

  “What do they ever say? Just report in on their move­ments and if it looks like they’re trying to skip out, stop them. Same shit … different day … that’s all.”

  Mason floored the accelerator pedal so he wouldn’t get caught by a changing yellow light. “They’re not going anywhere … look at them … they’re tooling along like they own the world. Are they still talking?”

  Travers pressed the earpiece against his ear. “Still giving her directions and rambling on about the weather.”

  Mason rubbed his palms along the top of the steering wheel. “This guy seems to be giving a helluva lot of direc­tions, don’t you think?”

  Travers shrugged. “Maybe the broad doesn’t know her way around town.”

  Mason squinted to see inside the rear window of the Bronco, but it was much too far in front of them. “Yeah … maybe.”

  “Just stay with them.”

  Mason gnawed on his lower lip. “I’m on their butts like a butterfly tattoo. How long since we left the house?”

  Travers glanced at his wristwatch. “Maybe three-quarters of an hour.”

  Mason reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a pair of sunglasses with mirrored lenses … standard agency issue. “I wonder where this hospital is.”

  The Bronco made a right onto the access lane for north-bound Interstate 75 with Mason following, four cars and one concrete truck behind. “They still talking?”

  Travers nodded. “He’s still giving her directions.”

  Mason shook his head in disbelief. “Aw, this is ridicu­lous.”

  Travers shrugged. “If they thought they were being fol­lowed, wouldn’t they be trying to lose us?”

  Mason scratched his head. “Who the hell knows? Let her drive in circles for all I care … the government’s paying for the gas, anyway.”

  Twenty minutes later, Julie Chapman flipped on her right turn signal and exited the interstate at the Florida Turnpike.

  “She’s taking the turnpike north,” Mason announced.

  “I can see that … just stay with her,” Travers instructed.

  Mason lifted the sun visor out of his way. “I can’t believe I actually get paid to do this.”

  Travers massaged the back of his neck to relieve a muscle cramp. “I can’t believe you’ve been doing it for as long as you have.”

  “It’s just a job.”

  “Always as boring as this?”

  “Sometimes … sometimes not,” Mason said as he rolled down his window and showed a toll collector his credentials. “I’d rather be doing this than doing her job,” he added in deference to the toll taker.

  Travers nodded, but then alertly put his finger to his ear. “He just told her to get off at the next exit.”

  Mason sat up in his seat. “Well, it’s about damned time!”

  Travers checked his watch again; it was almost eleven a.m. They had been tailing the couple for nearly two hours. “Stay close, we’ve come this far … we don’t want to lose them now.”

  “I’m on them.” The Bronco passed a sign welcoming them to the City of Pompano. The streets here were busier, cluttered with convertibles filled to excess with teenagers heading for a day of sun and surf at the beach. Mason had his hands full just keeping the Bronco in sight as it weaved in and out of traffic. Travers craned his head out of the passenger’s window as the van pulled in behind a tractor-trailer from one of the local supermarket chains. “Can’t you get around this guy?”

  Mason looked into his crowded side view mirror. “What do you want me to do … carry us on my back?”

  Travers could just see the Bronco, ten or twelve cars ahead. “I think … he just told her to make a right at the next corner.”

  Mason moved into the right-hand lane. “This guy is just chock-full of directions, isn’t he? Who does he think he is, Christopher Columbus?”

  “Just stay close.”

  Mason turned the corner. “I am … I am.”

  Two blocks south, the Bronco turned into the parking lot of the Pompano Community Hospital. It was a seven-story building, indistinguishable from thousands of hospitals just like it. Mason waited for the Bronco to park in the visitors’ lot before he pulled into a parking space across the street.

  From this viewpoint, both men had an unobstructed view of the Bronco. Mason reached down at Travers’ feet for his camera. Quickly, he snapped off four shots of the Bronco and the surrounding territory.

  “They still talking?” Mason asked.

  Travers shook his head. “She’s fumbling with her keys.”

  Mason looked through the telephoto camera lens. “She’s getting out.”

  “Both of them?”

  Mason scanned the immediate area around the Bronco. “Nope … just her.”

  Travers frowned. “That’s weird, don’t you think?”

  Mason followed Julie into the hospital through his viewfinder until she disappeared from sight. “Do you think one of us should follow her inside?”

  Travers rubbed his bottom lip lightly as he contemplated his options. “It’s the guy we’re after. Let’s just sit here a few minutes and see what he does.”

  Ten minutes turned into fifteen, and fifteen turned to twenty.

  “He still hasn’t moved,” Mason said, looking through his lens.

  Travers took the camera from the older man. “Let me see.” For almost two minutes, he studied the dark silhouette through the Bronco’s tinted window. “This is not good.”

  “What?”

  “He hasn’t moved an inch. I mean … not an inch!” Both men looked at each other like two strangers trying to place each other’s face.

  “Uh-oh,” Mason sighed.

  In unison, both men jumped out of the van and dashed across the street. Mason nearly got blindsided by a pickup truck as he sprinted around the front of the parked van. The driver of the pickup slammed on his brakes and cursed at Mason in some foreign tongue that was totally unfamiliar to the senior agent.

  Travers was more agile of foot and made it across to the visitors’ parking lot without incident. Slowly, he crept around to the far side, the passenger’s side, of a Lincoln Continental two cars away from the Bronco. He motioned for his partner to stay down and join him. When Mason finally caught up to Travers he was panting for every breath.

  “You’re wheezing like a steam engine!”

  Mason clutched at his chest. “I’m not used to all this running.”

  “All this running? You’ve just trotted less than a hundred yards!”

  “So? A hundred yards is an Olympic event, isn’t it?”

  Travers rolled his eyes. “I say we just knock on the car door and tell him we’re with hospital security.”

  Mason pointed to his rolled-up shirt sleeves. “With no uniforms?”

  “You’ve got a better idea?”

  Mason nodded. “I’m just gonna walk by the car like I’m strolling into the hospital, and take a gander inside.”

  Travers liked the idea. “I’ll wait here.”

 
Mason stood up and tucked the tail of his rumpled shirt back into his trousers. After clearing his throat, he began casually walking toward the four-wheel drive.

  Travers watched his partner closely. If there was going to be any trouble, they might have to take Cutter right here.

  As Mason squeezed his paunchy torso between the Bronco and the car next to it, he cursed under his breath at the red-haired woman for having parked so snug. Passing by the passenger’s window, he unpretentiously glanced inside the car. Then he stopped, turned slowly on his heels, and re­mained motionless, gawking in incredulity.

  From two cars back, Travers cupped his hands around his mouth. “Being a bit conspicuous, aren’t we, Harvey?”

  Mason lifted his left leg and rested his shoe on the Bronco’s fender. With the wave of a single finger, he gestured that it was alright for Travers to approach. “Check it out.”

  Travers stared at his partner. “What are you talking about?”

  Mason pointed at the passenger with his thumb. “See for yourself.”

  Travers shaded his eyes with his hand and looked through the front windshield. A stuffed shirt, with old clothes bulging out of the sleeves, crowned by a hideous plastic Halloween mask packed with clothes the same way, sat on the front seat sporting an old baseball cap. On the driver’s seat, Travers spotted a portable tape recorder.

  “Wanna guess what’s on the tape?” Mason asked sarcas­tically.

  Now Travers recalled hearing Cutter reciting all of those directions back at the garage. He wasn’t giving them for the woman’s benefit … he was recording them.

  “You’ve got the seniority,” he said, gutlessly to Mason, “I’ll let you make the call.”

  The old man looked forlornly at his younger partner. “And exactly how do you propose I tell them that Lance Cutter’s been on the loose for almost three hours?”

  THIRTY

  It was hard for Lance to believe that just over fifty years ago, Homestead Air Force Base … this city within a city … was nothing more than a dense thicket of mangrove swamp. Once a breeding ground for rare American crocodiles, gentle manatees, lumbering sea turtles, and species of fish too numerous to consider, the natural wildlife was now displaced by miles of concrete and tons of steel. Where once the great white herons patrolled the azure sky, their feathery wings banking gracefully on rising wind currents, sharp-nosed F-16s now prowled the same territory with plumes of orange fire blazing from their sleek silver tails.

  Camouflaged by the overgrown fronds of a sawgrass hedge, Lance felt isolated yet strangely suited to the harsh environment of the Everglades. Well into the height of mosquito season, and standing in the ankle-deep brackish water, he was starting to feel like a smorgasbord for the biting, pesky insects. Reaching into his knapsack of provi­sions, he poked around for a can of bug repellent and sprayed it liberally on all of his exposed skin. The base was less than half a mile to the south of his secluded position, past more wetlands and through an abandoned strawberry field lying dormant until the fall planting.

  Through the thicket, he watched the heat rise in rippling waves off the tarmac as a C-130E military transport settled to the ground and then taxied out of his line of sight. He had no apprehension about coming here, but he had no plan of action, either. He was drawn to the mysterious rendezvous tomorrow like metal shavings to a magnet, sensing that all the explana­tions he sought were lying somewhere beyond the barbed-wire fence surrounding the well-guarded installation.

  Reaching into his trusty knapsack again, he pulled out a pair of high-powered binoculars and a hastily made peanut butter sandwich. While he studied the perimeter of the base through the glasses and ate his lunch, he couldn’t help but laugh to himself. With Julie’s help, dodging his pursuers had turned out to be child’s play. After she had left the house with the van following her, Lance waited another fifteen minutes, dashing around from room to room, quickly gath­ering all the items he thought he might need over the next twenty-four hours. It was only as an afterthought that he had decided to make himself a few sandwiches, and now he was glad he did. He only hoped that the van had followed Julie long enough, and far enough north, before the men inside realized that they had been hoodwinked.

  Before abandoning his county-owned Chrysler in the crowded parking lot of a shopping center about three miles north on U.S.I., Lance had stopped into a gas station and purchased a road map of the area. He was disappointed that it didn’t show the Air Force base in very much detail, only pointing out a few of the main streets, and the territory immediately surrounding the camp. It would have been better if he could have learned a bit more about the layout of the complex, especially the location of hangar twelve, before he tried anything reckless.

  Through his binoculars, he scanned the horizon to the west and spotted a banner stretching over the base’s main entrance. The banner was flapping wildly in the substantial breeze, but Lance could just make out the dark red letters. The massive sign was advertising something about the base’s fiftieth anniversary celebration early next month. For all intents and purposes, it looked like business as usual on the military post.

  In the distance to the east, through a network of tan sheds and maintenance buildings, he could see what looked to be the base’s residential quarters. Everything seemed relatively normal there, too. An occasional jeep would scurry through his field of view, but most of the base’s heavy activity appeared to be centered on the base’s single east-west run­way. The pride of the base, the 31st Fighter Wing, consisted of seventy-two F-16s and an assortment of other aircraft. From what Lance could tell, most of the squadron was either in a long procession readying for takeoff, or being rolled out of their protective hangars in preparation for departure.

  Lance watched and waited, ate, and drank lemon-lime Gatorade from a plaid Thermos. Plane after plane screamed skyward. He followed the repetitious course of each fighter as they climbed through the clouds and banked northward, until they were nothing more than a speck on the frontier. Over the next three hours, thirty more jets shook the earth as they roared airborne in a steady stream. Not since the C-130E’s arrival early that morning had another plane landed. The reason that they were all leaving in such a hurry was something that mystified him.

  Lance was so intent on pondering the logic of the mass exodus of the fighters that he never heard the wailing of another engine streaking up from behind him. From seem­ingly out of nowhere, a white jet helicopter with Metro-Dade County police markings swooped low over the field, making the sawgrass thrash and flatten all around him. The helicopter never hovered like it had spotted him, but swung upward and away, as though it were the weight on some giant invisible pendulum. Lance dove to his stomach as the chopper reached the zenith of its arc, turned back from the sun, and made a second low pass overhead.

  Lance pulled his knapsack against his body and rolled, seeking the cover of the underbrush. Stagnant-smelling water sprayed against his face and arms like thousands of tiny needles as the turbulence from the rotors battered the foliage concealing him. He pulled his knees into his chest to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible. The chopper made a third pass, low enough that Lance could see a man’s leg dangling out of the opened side hatch. Pressing himself flat to the ground, he reached up for a section of sawgrass and bent it over him. The helicopter hung momentarily in place and spun slowly on its axis, giving the passenger a full 360 degree view of the dense undergrowth. Lance didn’t know why, but he didn’t need to, he held his breath anyway.

  The chopper sluggishly rose above him, pivoting back and forth as if the pilot or the passenger couldn’t make up their minds in which direction to proceed. Lance turned his face to the ground, never looking up again until the sound of the engine was just a remote rumbling to the north.

  The stifling heat of the late afternoon was pouring over the tropical timberland like a coat of wet paint. Lance sat up and pulled his saturated shirt from his body … he was soaked from head to foot. His blond hair was spattere
d with mud. A strand of thin, mossy substance resembling seaweed hung from his left shoulder. He picked it off and threw it as far away as possible.

  Right now, a swamp was the perfect place for someone looking the way he did. Cautiously, he got to his feet and parted the sawgrass in front of him. There was no sign of the helicopter anywhere.

  As he inspected the contents of his knapsack for water-seepage, one question nagged at him: Why would the Metro-Dade Police be looking for him, anyway? Maybe they were trying to find him, maybe they weren’t. Ordinary thieves were notorious for hiding out in these marshes until the excitement of a recent heist died out. It would have been just his luck to arrive down here while a manhunt was in progress.

  As he crouched solemnly in the underbrush, covered in muck, he reflected upon his expectations. He wasn’t really sure of what he had hoped to see beyond the base’s well-guarded perimeter. Some elaborate trap being set up in his honor, perhaps? That was crazy. Unless he considered the mass departure of the F-16s as being curious, and he doubted that it had anything to do with him, then nothing else was happening down here. He was tired, wet, and frustrated. Plus, he wasn’t sure if the helicopter would be coming back. Discouraged and mentally fatigued, he decided that it was time to call it a day.

  It was a three-mile slosh back to the shopping center for the change of clothes he had tossed into the trunk of his car. Judging by the amount of time it had taken him to reach this location, the afternoon sun would be sinking well over the western horizon before he ever made it back to the parking lot.

  Lance was reminded of the saying that went: “the longest journey begins with a single step.” He doubted if the origina­tor of the expression had a trek through the swamp in mind when he coined the phrase. Lance pressed on northward, keeping the setting sun to his left, trying to walk as straight a path as possible. Brittle mangrove roots crackled beneath his feet, and his shoes sucked at the soft soil while the din of the departing jet fighters slowly faded behind him.