The Pressure of Darkness

by Harry Shannon

  "Cary, I have been instructed to ask you to shut things down for the duration of the crisis."

  "Damn it, that's my point," Ryan bellowed. "There is no crisis! Someone has drummed this up to keep us out of the way."

  "Aren't we being just a bit paranoid?"

  Ryan decided to put it all on the line. He tapped the screen with a finger. The case officer flinched as if touched. "I want to speak directly to the Secretary."

  "He's fishing in Montana," Burwell replied. "You can try him on the secure line tomorrow, maybe you'll get lucky."

  "That's too fucking late and you know it."

  "No, I don't know it. That's the point. We have nothing to go on but your suspicions."

  "I have to talk to him."

  Burwell opened his palms as if to say 'what can you do?' "Well, none of the powers that be are willing to send a plane into the canyon and piss him off over evidence as flimsy as what you've provided us with so far."

  "One or more of the powers that be are in this bastard's pocket. Believe me, I'm going to find out who it is when this is all over. Even if it turns out to be you."

  "Major," Burwell snapped. "That had better not be a threat."

  "If you're a mole for Buey or this fucking cult, then you're damned right it is."

  "That's it." Burwell appeared genuinely insulted. "I have to go."

  Ryan was flabbergasted. "You're tying my hands."

  "I'm not doing anything of the kind." Burwell was losing patience. "I am relaying what I have been told to say. You will shut down, Major. Cease any and all operations with respect to Mexico until further notice. And this is an order. Is that understood?"

  Before Ryan could respond, Burwell turned off the camera and vanished into a wall of static. Cary Ryan sat facing a dead monitor.

  And a dead mission.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  The compact, four-person helicopter veered north. It skimmed along a ridge of pinkish stone that surrounded the city of Chatsworth, in the northernmost reaches of the San Fernando Valley. The machine was remarkably quiet for a rental. Peering down from the pilot seat, Father Benny watched the rippling shadow of his chopper swim along the streets of the housing tract like a sleek black fish. His stomach felt reasonably calm today. Benny was grateful to God for the respite.

  After a low pass, Father Benny checked the time. He adjusted the foot pedals and turned for home.

  The Van Nuys airport was jammed, but the vast majority of pilots were flying small planes. Benny circled low and to the south. He eased over the helipad low enough to stir up leaves and trash in the lot behind the diner. Today, he had the magic touch and set her down like a rose pedal. Benny grabbed his clipboard and noted the required information from gauges on the instrument panel. When the engine finally died and the blades whirred to a stop, he was grinning wide and high. He unzipped his Miami Dolphin windbreaker, opened the cockpit, and stepped down onto solid ground.

  "Going to barf this time?"

  "Jack! What are you doing here?" Burke was hunched over the wheel of a Ford van with panel doors. His features were grim. Father Benny's chubby face sagged. "Oh, my, do I owe money again already?"

  Burke smiled, despite the circumstances. "No, it's something else. Get in here, Father. I need to talk to you."

  Puzzled, Benny waddled around the front of the vehicle, trailing one hand along the hood to keep his balance. Puffing, he climbed onto the passenger seat and slammed the door. "Is this about that girl again?"

  "In a way, yes."

  Father Benny clucked. "Oh, son. You need to let go once and for all."

  "Maybe I'll do that," Burke replied. "But not yet." He started the engine and drove the van out onto a slender dirt road that paralleled the dusty tarmac. A green Cessna sank down out of the sun and wobbled in for a landing. As Burke accelerated, it paced him down the runway. "You told me once that you believe in facing your fears."

  Benny, confused. "Where are we going?"

  Burke gunned the engine and headed south, for Sherman Way and the 405. "Benny, did you mean that? About facing fear?"

  "Yes." They cut into traffic and earned the long blare of a horn. Benny looked up nervously. He didn't care for Burke's driving. "But that doesn't mean I have a damned death wish, excuse me, Lord."

  "I need your help with something, Benny. It's important. And it is going to be dangerous."

  Benny stared, his anxiety momentarily forgotten. "Is this something for the government?" He seemed excited by that prospect.

  "Yes." Burke wove in and out of traffic. "It's top secret."

  Benny nodded eagerly. "You can count on me."

  "Wait. Hear me out, first. Then decide." Burke honked at an elderly woman in a Dodge, cut around her and roared up the ramp. He checked the rearview mirror out of habit. Was that white Ford truck behind us at the airport?

  "Red, where are you taking me?"

  Benny awaited an explanation. Burke kept his hands clenched tightly on the steering wheel. His knuckles were white. "We're going to stop by a restaurant to see a friend of mine, run an errand or two, and then we're driving to a small ranch in Arizona, near the border. I am assembling a crew to help me with a very dangerous, very off the books mission. This one is a black op we're hiding from the folks who pay for the black ops."

  Benny started to ask a question, hesitated. Burke continued. "Here it is. I need you to fly me over the border to a specific place in Mexico."

  "Okay." That sounded easy enough. Benny relaxed a little.

  "This will be an illegal run, in the dark and low to the ground."

  "Okay." A bit less sanguine, now.

  "Benny, we may get shot at."

  "What?"

  "This is the deal. I need you to drop me at an LZ for a rescue mission. I'm going to free a prisoner, blow some charges, go back to the fixed point and wait. You drop me, fly the bird where the mission commander instructs you to go, and get back to the LZ to bring us home."

  "In the dark. Low. While getting shot at."

  "Maybe nothing will go wrong."

  "Burke, did I hear you correctly? Did you say something about how you were going to 'blow' the place?"

  "Sky high."

  "Shit. Excuse me, Lord."

  Burke noticed the off-ramp he wanted. He forced his way into the right-hand lane. More honking. He checked the rearview mirror, spotted a flash of white paint but was not certain it was from the same truck. His pulse was racing. Benny had to agree to do this. Burke had no time and no other option. He exited the freeway and took surface streets the rest of the way.

  Benny coughed, shell-shocked. "Let me back up a bit. This whole deal will be highly illegal, right? Even the people who plan such things won't know about it?"

  Burke shrugged. "Some will. My friends. Nobody else, though."

  "And people will get killed."

  "Only the bad guys. We hope."

  Benny shook his head, began searching for viable excuses. "I can't leave the church for very long, Red. You know that."

  "Benny, you can call in and tell your assistant you're away on a personal matter. You'll be home in less than forty-eight hours." Burke ripped his eyes from the street. He faced Benny, pleading. "I need your help. I don't have time to find somebody else." He glanced in the mirror again. The white vehicle, whatever it was, seemed to have vanished into traffic.

  Benny's right hand slipped into his pocket, seeking rosary beads. "I'll help you, Red. You know that. But I guess that's why you came to me in the first place, isn't it." It was not a question.

  A warm rush of gratitude. "Yeah. That's why I came to you."

  "Okay, okay."

  "Thank you, Benny."

  "One good thing about being a priest," Benny whispered. "You don't really need to make a last will and testament."

  They pulled into the parking lot behind Fredo's. Father Benny's eyes darted. He looked even more confused than before. "We're going to lunch?"

  "Not this time," Burke said, unbuckling. "We need to
move faster than that."

  The tall, broad-shouldered bodyguard eyed Benny's white collar with suspicion. He allowed the two men to enter the restaurant.

  Tony Monteleone was seated in his usual booth, long fingers scratching noisily on the red and white checkered table cloth. He had a bottle of Chianti open and three glasses filled. Monteleone half-rose, winked and motioned expansively for Father Benny and Burke to join him. The dazed expression on the priest's face was comical.

  "It's good to meet you at long last, Father," Tony Monteleone said, with a welcoming smile.

  "Should I know you, sir?" Benny sat down heavily, grabbed a glass of wine. He slurped like a camel gone dry.

  Burke sat at the edge of the table, in a wooden chair. He hated having his back to the room, but Benny had accidentally left him no option. "Benny, this is Tony. He represents the people you still owe a lot of money to."

  Benny blanched whalebone white. "You're him?"

  "Your friendly neighborhood bookie."

  Burke patted Benny's trembling hand. "Relax, Father, he's not half as dangerous as he looks."

  Monteleone had a small note pad in his shirt pocket. He opened it. "I see you still owe me four large and change, Father."

  Father Benny's head wobbled. He wondered if he'd been set up. "And I will pay it back, every penny. Haven't I been keeping up with the vig?" He glanced at Burke. "With some help, of course."

  "You've done fine," Monteleone said. He made a show of taking a pencil from the same pocket and crossing out the amount. "And if you go through with helping out my friend here, despite some hits I've been taking lately, I will agree to erase your entire debt. You and I, we'll just call it even."

  Benny gaped. "It's not necessary, sir, although I would certainly be grateful if that turned out to be the case."

  "Consider it done," Monteleone said. He winked. "Call it tithing."

  "Of course, now I really have to go through with this, don't I?" Benny was trying for a joke, something to lessen his own growing tension. Burke and Monteleone chuckled politely and then Burke pressed on.

  "Everything else we talked about ready to go?"

  Monteleone referred to his notes again. "Father, you rent your helicopter from a parishioner named Timothy O'Reilly, is that correct?"

  Benny nodded, sipped more wine. Despite the alcohol, he seemed startlingly close to one of his patented vomiting episodes. "Usually for a couple of hundred dollars an hour, yes sir." He raised a guilty eyebrow. "It is my only indulgence, you see. Other than a penchant for profanity, that is."

  "And unwarranted confession," Monteleone said. He produced a flat sheet of paper. "Well, some of my people had a conversation with Mr. O'Reilly a few moments ago, and he faxed over this document."

  Father Benny read it and guffawed. "He donated the helicopter to the parish? But why?"

  Monteleone rolled his shoulders and scowled. "I made him an offer he couldn't refuse. I told him his brains or his signature would be on that document in sixty seconds." When Benny gasped, Monteleone grinned. "I've always wanted to use that line. Even if the fucker is dumb enough to talk about it, nobody is going to believe him."

  "But I can't possibly . . ."

  Burke adjusted his chair and it screeched. Having his back to the room made him edgy. "After this is over with we don't care what you do with it, Benny. Give it back, sell it, whatever. Believe me, the guy got a good price for it."

  Monteleone nodded. "In cash."

  "This is unbelievable." Benny was shaking his head, pouring more red wine, doing his best to adjust.

  "It's about to get worse."

  Burke's shoulders went tense. He started to slide his hand down from the table but the familiar voice came again. "Don't."

  Tony snarled. "Who the fuck are you?"

  "Turn around, man. Keep your hands in the open."

  Burke turned. A man wearing a ski mask had the taller bodyguard by the throat and was pointing what appeared to be a silenced Mini-Uzi machine pistol. The Israeli weapon holds between 25 and 40 nine-millimeter Parabellum rounds. Burke's eyes zeroed in on the combination safety catch and fire selector on the top of the pistol grip, just above the man's hand. The weapon was set for automatic fire.

  Burke recognized the voice. "Scotty, talk to me. Brothers, right?"

  Scotty Bowden ripped off the mask, spun the bodyguard, kicked the back of his legs and drove him to his knees. The big man was shaking, although it was difficult to know whether from anger or terror. Bowden palmed a weighted sap in his left hand and expertly crashed it down on the back of the man's skull with a rich thwack. The bodyguard collapsed into a heap. "You used my name, Red," Bowden said. "That was stupid. Nobody had seen my face."

  "Now I guess now you'll have to kill us all."

  Bowden sighed. There was true grief in his reddened eyes. "I don't want to do this, man."

  "Then don't."

  Scotty closed the distance. Burke knew him well, could see him sizing up the three men by location, height, body weight. He was preparing to spray them down rapidly.

  Father Benny folded his hands and started to mutter the rosary.

  "A priest, Scotty? You're going to kill an old friend and a priest?"

  Tony Monteleone, for his part, seemed less concerned. "Get one thing straight, dickhead," he barked. "You do me and there will be nowhere on earth you can hide. You may as well blow your own brains out right now."

  Bowden's hair was mussed and his clothes looked like he'd slept in them. Then, eyes fixed on the three men before him; he moved a chair away from a nearby table. He flipped it, sat down backwards. The small Uzi was rock steady, and so close Burke could read the Hebrew script on the side of the blue-gray metal above the stock.

  "Can it, greaseball. Because of you two the truth is I just may have to shoot myself next, so shut the fuck up."

  Burke forced himself to reach for a wine glass.

  "Don't."

  But Burke did, sipped to buy some time, turned to face Bowden fully. "Talk to me, Scotty. Who's got you by the balls?"

  Bowden shrugged. "What difference does that make?"

  "Maybe we can help."

  "A priest, a Guinea, and the mark I'm supposed to hit? What a joke." He raised the weapon. Even Monteleone gasped for air.

  But Burke noticed a slight tremor in the hands that translated to reluctance. "I'm working on something right now, Scotty," he said, quietly. "It's big. In fact, it's big enough that it might interest you."

  "Save it." Bowden was steeling himself to pull the trigger.

  "Two minutes, then go ahead. Hear me out. I've been getting messed with a lot lately, okay? I think a cult is behind it all, a cult with members placed carefully in industry and government. They have a lot of money behind them. Any of this sound familiar?"

  Bowden tilted his head. "Go on."

  "I believe man named Mohandas Pal leads them. They had Stryker murdered. They also had Doc killed, and are also responsible for the death of at least one homeless woman he e-mailed me about. A drug dealer named Buey is tangled up with them. He hates my guts. There seems to be a virus of some kind, something really lethal. They'd do anything to cover up the fact that it exists and that they're manufacturing it. Anything."

  Bowden was feeling pieces come together like clicking tumblers, the parts he didn't know. He lowered the gun. "Okay, I'm listening."

  "I think these same people took Pal's wife, a lady I care a lot about, down to Mexico, where Buey is helping them culture the virus. They intend to kill her, Scotty. We are going to stop them."

  "We?"

  Burke winked. "You and me, bro. With a little help from the padre here and some friends of mine that still collect paychecks from Uncle Sam."

  Bowden lowered the gun to his side. He closed his eyes like a man inviting a firing squad. His face crumbled into exhaustion. "Red, they are going to hurt my little girl."

  Monteleone grabbed his cell phone. "Give me her name. Then be quiet and wait a few minutes before you g
o and blow up our shit."

  Burke poured a glass of wine. He was pleased that his own hands were still rock steady. He extended a glass to Bowden. "Here. You look like you could use a drink."

  Eleven long minutes later the cell phone rang. Monteleone listened intently, grunted approval, and closed the phone with a flourish. "Your kid and her mother will soon be on their way to Vegas for an extended vacation. All they'll be told is that they won a prize package and chips from the casino."

  Bowden's face showed hope for the first time. "But what if . . ."

  "Some of my folks will stay with them night and day. They are pretending to be a film crew. They won't tell the truth unless they absolutely have to."

  "We should be back long before that becomes necessary." Burke glanced at Father Benny, who had finished praying and seemed calm. He nodded approval.

  "Back from where?"

  "We're doing one last op, pal. We're going to fuck with the guys who did Doc. Just you and me, okay?" He offered a clenched fist. "Brothers."

  They slammed knuckles. "Brothers."

  "But the truth is that we may not make it out this time. Does that sit okay with you?"

  "That's fine. Does it pay?"

  "Not half what it ought to considering the risk."

  "I want two hundred and fifty large life insurance on me, with my daughter as the beneficiary."

  Tony made a note. "Okay."

  "Then I'm in." Bowden finished the wine, but to Burke's pleasure did not ask for more. "What about the rest of the members of this . . . cult, or whatever it is. Won't they still be in place afterwards, despite whatever we do?"

  Burke offered a low-key smile. "You know the game I'm in. I have friends who are very good. These people might try to run, but they will be found, and they will be dealt with."

  "Your way," Monteleone said, quietly, "or mine."

  "It's a done deal."

  The bodyguard began to stir and moan. Monteleone called over to him: "DeMartini, get up and get the fuck out of here. And by the way, you're fired."

  Bowden rose, the Uzi dangling on his left. He approached the table and extended his right hand to Monteleone. "I'm in your debt."