by Jeff Gulvin
Harrison phoned the office and Penny came out to pick them up from the airport. They dropped Jean back at the hotel and Harrison stood on the sidewalk while Penny waited in the car. ‘You gonna be around tonight, Miss Lady Mam?’ he asked her.
She nodded. ‘What’re you planning to do?’
He blew out his cheeks. ‘I don’t know yet. There’s things I gotta figure, things I gotta talk to the gang squad about. We’ve latched on to something here that’s a lot bigger than just a New Orleans deal, honey. I got to talk to people about it.’
She touched his face then, her palm suddenly warm against his cheek. ‘Thank you so much for coming with me,’ she said.
Harrison stood watching her as she went into reception, feeling the sensation of her hand on his skin—the first hint of affection he had received from a woman in a long time. His eyes misted a fraction and he knew then he really was. getting old. In the car, Penny squinted at him. ‘You OK, Johnny Buck?’
Harrison looked through the windshield. ‘Sure I am,’ he said.
He sat at the table in the tiny conference room at the gang squad’s office, waiting for Mike Hammond to finish his meeting. Swartz told him that he was interviewing another guy from the state police, who had applied to join the task force. Harrison stared at the white screen wall, at the tape machine and headset, and the pad of notes scribbled by the last agent who had been listening to Little Nate on the phone. When he came back from Washington, he had been determined to quit this job and go find himself a life before he got too old, or croaked from all the cigarettes he had smoked. But now, after having been up north with Jean, having seen her face when the three of them hit those old freight yards, and having witnessed the pain in her eyes as she cast a long glance over the open-topped boxcars and imagined, as she must have done, her young boy lying in one with his brains blown out, he had faltered. Something about this had got to Spinelli so much, he had a whole filing system set up on FTRA members going back five years. He had members from each of the three crews, had identified the leadership chain and the wrecking squads they employed to keep discipline. With a bit of concerted effort, they might bust this thing wide open. Up until now, however, nobody cared enough, which bothered him for its own sake. Hoboing had always been a rough life, but not one where you feared for it every time you jumped on a train. Not only that, it was probably the last outpost of the kind of freedom America represented, and should be preserved for that in itself. His mind was wandering and where it was going bothered him, because he was old and it was dangerous, and he questioned his motives for even considering it.
Hammond opened his office door and showed out the detective from the state police. When he came back, he laid a hand on Harrison’s shoulder. ‘OK, JB. I’m all yours.’
Later, Harrison and Penny had a beer together at Pat O’Brien’s. ‘What happened to Swann?’ Harrison asked.
‘They seconded him to Washington after that bomb in Arlington Cemetery.’
Harrison raised his eyebrows. ‘For a limey, that boy gets about.’
Penny looked out of the corner of his eye at him. ‘So what’s eating you—apart from the English lady?’
Harrison stared at him. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Come on, Harrison. It’s written all over your face. You got it real bad for that gal.’
‘You think so?’
‘You know you do.’
Harrison was silent for a moment. ‘You figure that’d cloud my judgement?’
‘I don’t know.’ Penny pondered that for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I spoke to Hammond about the Spokane thing, and he’s talking to the field office up there and the VICAP people in Virginia. I figure these guys could be running dope all over the country, Matt. That’s a big deal and it’s probably why so many hobos have turned up with bullet holes in their heads.’
Penny looked at him. ‘You think that’s what’s going on?’
Harrison nodded. ‘We don’t know for sure. Hell, until the other day, we never knew how Little Nate was getting supplied.’ He lit a cigarette and flapped out the match.
‘So where does your judgement come in?’ Penny asked him.
Harrison blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. ‘I was gonna leave the job, Matt. After Mackon dropped me from the SWAT team. Hell, I’m fifty years old and I don’t have a whole lot in my life besides this.’
‘Sounds like a mid-life crisis to me.’ Penny sipped beer. ‘If this is all you got, why give it up?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I must be restless for something else, is all.’
‘So what’s the deal, then? You said you were gonna quit. You changed your mind now?’
Harrison sighed. ‘Matt, I figure we’re gonna look into this dope scam big time. We scratched at something till it bled and now it Won’t stop.’
‘So?’
‘So, you know what I’m saying. How’re we gonna figure out what they’re doing? How’re we gonna collect enough evidence to do something about it?’
Penny looked stiffly at him. ‘Take a train ride, I guess.’
They sat round the table on the twenty-second floor. Charlie Mayer, the special agent in charge, was there, along with Hammond and Swartz from the gang squad, Harrison from the special ops group, and two members of the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program from Quantico. On conference phone lines were the ASAC from Seattle, the chief of police from Spokane together with Spinelli and two other detectives who had done work on the railroad murders, the man in Texas that Gary Hirstius had spoken to, and another cop from Arkansas.
Harrison sat quietly while they debated, thinking about Jean, already pretty positive what the upshot of the meeting would be. It was the only reason he was here, and looking round the table it was more and more obvious. They looked like Feds—either wearing suits or polo shirts and jeans, sneakers or the soft-soled black boots the SWAT team wore. They were clean-cut Middle Americans all of them, and he looked like a rapidly ageing surf bum. He had told Jean about the meeting and she had wanted to attend, but he smiled gently and told her that she couldn’t. He was due to meet her later that evening and report back, however.
He sat there and watched: Mayer chairing the thing, talking on the phone to Spokane, Texas and Arkansas. Harrison chewed a plug of tobacco and spat every now and then into an empty Coke can. He wore a T-shirt, faded Levis and a dusty pair of boots. The gun itched in its holster against his shin and he was sure the air conditioning was not working properly. For an FBI meeting, the decision was made pretty quickly. Matt Penny would act as the contact agent, with Swartz running the case from New Orleans. There would be constant liaison with the other people involved and a task force would officially be formed. The whole thing would be co-ordinated by the specialists up at Quantico. All it needed now was the undercover agent.
Silence round the table, nobody looking at anyone else. Harrison sat there aware of the tingling sensation against his palms. He had experienced it before, in similar circumstances, on three occasions in the past. Only this time, he had promised himself never to go there again. He was too old and it was too dangerous. His reactions were slower now and he was not sure he could keep up the pretence for a prolonged period.
‘So we need somebody to go undercover,’ Hammond said at last. He gazed directly across the table at Harrison. ‘What about it, JB?’
Harrison looked at him and spat into the Coke can.
Jean was waiting for him, talking to Dewey in the bar, when he arrived at Nu Nus Café. It was dark outside and had been raining all afternoon. Harrison got a ride back to his apartment when the meeting finally broke up, showered and changed, and took a cab down to the waterfront. The rain hissed against the pavement and nobody was on the street. The café across from Governor Nicholls Wharf was empty and nobody was in Coop’s Place or the Palm Court: a really dead summer’s night in New Orleans. Jean looked up as Harrison came inside, shook his clothes and sat down on a bar sto
ol. Nobody was eating and Lydia, the waitress, was reading an Anne Rice novel at one of the tables. Dewey whipped the top off a bottle of beer and changed the music over. Harrison took Jean to a table by the door and looked into her expectant face.
‘What happened?’ she asked him.
He sipped beer and plucked a cigarette from his shirt pocket. ‘We’re going for it,’ he said. ‘I’m going undercover. I shouldn’t tell you, but I figure America owes you that much. You can’t tell anyone, but I’m gonna try and infiltrate the FTRA in the South.’ Her eyes sparked, but he shook his head. ‘We won’t find your son’s killer, Miss Lady Mam. Or if we do, we’ll be very lucky. I’m doing it so that we can try and bust their drug cartel.’
Jean’s hair fell across her forehead to kink at her right eye, a dark oval eye, soft and gentle, and suddenly full of something for him. He felt his heart beat in his chest and all at once his hands were clammy.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and, for the second time in her life, she lifted her palm and laid it across his cheek. He looked into her eyes, and he saw the softness of her face and neck. The cleft of skin where her clavicles met was warm and brown, and he had to fight off the urge to lean forward and kiss it.
‘I want to help you,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘There’s nothing more you can do. When I’m under, the only contact I’ll have is with one other agent.’
‘But I need to help, John. D’you understand? I really need to.’ Her face had clouded again, the darkness troubled now in her eyes. ‘My son is dead and he was all I had. I have to do something.’
‘Jean, you’ve done enough already. If I hadn’t met you and you hadn’t hassled everybody, none of this would’ve happened.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not enough. Not enough for me: I need to do something tangible.’
Harrison sat back and thought about it then. There was something she could do and in a way it was better than the alternative, but it was dangerous for her and dangerous for him, and again, he questioned his motives.
‘No way, JB. Not a cat in hell’s chance.’ Hammond sat on the other side of the desk and shook his head. ‘Shit, I can’t believe you even told her you were going undercover.’
‘Mike, she’s got a right to know. If she hadn’t shown up down here, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
‘Maybe, John. But come on. You know how it is when we set something up like this. Nobody gets told.’
‘You’re not listening to me, Mike.’ Harrison rested both fists on Hammond’s desk. ‘She’s the last person on the planet to shoot her mouth off. And she’s the only reason we have it set up.’ He sat back. ‘Besides, if she’s up for it, and it makes sense—what’s the …’
‘I don’t care what she’s up for. She’s a civilian. She cannot be part of any FBI investigation, let alone one as delicate as this is.’
‘But she’s perfect fucking cover.’ Harrison whacked his hand on the desk. ‘What am I gonna do, hobo along to meetings with Penny?’ He shook his head. ‘This is gangland at the very bottom of the pile, Mike.’
‘Hey.’ Hammond jabbed a finger at him. ‘Don’t talk to me about gangland. I know fucking gangland.’ He gestured at the successes the task force had had, spread on the wall behind him.
‘Yeah, with confidential informants, controlled purchases and wire taps. We’re talking UC, Mike. Deep cover. I’m gonna put my neck on the line here. You figure that? It’s my neck. I’ll be the asshole riding the fucking boxcars with a bunch of shitkickers from Nowheresville. If one of those mothers sees me with somebody who looks like Penny, I’m dog meat.’
Hammond stared at him now.
‘This ain’t like anything I’ve done before, Mike. Every other time I’ve been under, I was still in the regular world. This ain’t the regular world. Hobos do not frequent the company of clean-cut anybody.’ He paused then, licking the spittle from his lip. ‘But if they see me with a woman, hell, everyone gets a piece of ass now and again.’
‘A Chinese piece of ass, Johnny?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Even the Klan fuck black women.’
Hammond sat in silence for a long time then, gently kneading a balled fist with the fingers of the other hand, ‘I’m not gonna sanction this, John. No matter how you put it to me.’ He broke off. ‘But, she’s a civilian and I assume her visa’s in order.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I guess she can go any place she wants to.’
The Cub sat next to the terrorist who had been to Harrow public school in England, the barrel of the AK47 pressing him under the ribs. The boy was driving the jeep full tilt along the tunnel of rock where no light could get in. Still, there was no sound from behind them. The Cub looked at his watch and counted down the seconds; and then the explosion sucked at the air and he felt the shattering sound in his ears as the pressure wave compressed rock behind them. The boy jerked his head sideways at him. The blast was too far back to knock the jeep off course, but the army truck had been close to the entrance of the tunnel and The Cub hoped some damage had been done. That might slow up the inevitable pursuit. The most important thing, however, was that they would not know where the blast came from, which would give them vital seconds. The Cub’s camera case had been left behind, along with the tiny global positioning system and signalling device. He had a ‘one-time pad’ in the pocket of his shirt and the code in his head, but no means of sending it. So it would be just him, the boy and the desert.
They exited the far end of the tunnel and were on the dirt road that twisted like a bad roller coaster all the way through the mountains. The Cub was thinking back over the journey up here and calculating the distances he had mentally plotted between the sporadic bursts of gunfire, which would tell him when they were likely to encounter trouble. They would be contacted immediately. Al-Bakhtar was no fool. He wondered how long they would torture Moore before they killed him. Moore was unfortunate: he was an innocent with an overactive sense of curiosity. The Cub would have liked to have got him out of there, but there was no time and no chance, and the bottom line would always be self-preservation. He could smell the chilled air of the high desert at night and for a moment was back in Chad, or training in the Namib, listening to lions roaring far off in the night. The desert was his terrain. He was no Afghan mountain man, but five years with the 2nd REP’s covert reconnaissance team was the next best thing. He knew he could survive longer than almost anyone else.
‘How much gasoline have we got?’ The Cub’s accent was gone now and the boy sneered at him.
‘American.’ He curled his lip.
‘Don’t judge. Drive. How much gas?’
‘Enough. All the vehicles are kept stocked.’ The boy spat into the wind. ‘In case we have to flee all of a sudden.’
‘You knew Bin Laden wasn’t there, didn’t you.’
The boy smiled then. ‘Of course. We had just come from the mountain. He hasn’t been there in months.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Oh yes. I’m really going to tell you that.’
The Cub laughed then. ‘Son,’ he said. ‘You may think you’re some kinda mujahedin tough guy looking for early martyrdom, but believe me, if you know—you’ll tell me.’
The boy did not look at him. He kept his face forward and concentrated on driving. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Just drive until I tell you not to.’
The Cub settled back and considered his options, which as usual were few. But he had a vehicle, a driver who presumably knew the country, and a weapon. He looked at the boy again. ‘How much water have we got?’
The boy spoke without looking round. ‘A gallon.’
Enough. The Cub thinned his eyes against the horizon. There was a good moon tonight, which had not been visible from the amphitheatre. The desert scrub of the uplands that bordered the twisted road was shadowed and grey, darker here and there, where boulders jutted or the hillside fell into nothingness.
‘What are you—CIA?’ The boy spoke over the wh
ine of the engine as he took another corner quickly. The Cub ignored him. He was doing calculations in his head—not far now until the first set of watchers in the hills. ‘You ought to give yourself up,’ the boy said. ‘We won’t make it off this mountain.’
The Cub was studying the road ahead and trying to remember the layout of the landscape when the last burst of gunfire and angry voices had hit them. It had been night, though, and he had not been able to see. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him and he sat more upright. ‘Have you got a radio?’ The boy did not reply. The Cub shook his head and leaned over the back to where tarpaulin covered the trunk area. Keeping the rifle pointed at the boy’s head, he tore back the tarpaulin and smiled. Not only was there a short-wave field radio, but a box of US-made grenades which must have been left over from the war.
Ten miles further, they were halfway down the mountain and the night was brighter still. The wisps of cloud that had threatened to cover the moon a little while earlier were gone now and The Cub’s night vision was focused. He worked well at night and once his eyes were accustomed, they picked out features that other people did not see. Many times he had been deep behind enemy lines with the commandos de renseignements et de l’action, where every move they made had been under the cover of darkness, often without NVGs. He had learned to operate almost as effectively as he could in the light. There were many advantages with night, the most important being—you were harder to see. He figured they were close to the area where the guards had been now and he put the gun to the boy’s head. ‘Pull over.’
‘What?’
‘Stop the jeep.’
The boy pulled over and killed the engine. The noise died away and without the movement of the vehicle, so did the wind. The Cub sat in absolute silence and listened.
‘OK,’ he said, pointing to the short wave. ‘I assume you can work that thing?’
The boy thought for a moment, then nodded. The Cub eased sideways out of the jeep and motioned for him to do the same. ‘Get it working.’