He was slender and handsome, with the kind of smile that impressed with its sincerity and made people want him to smile more. It wasn’t until Meadows had introduced himself, shaken their hands, and they were all seated in comfortable leather chairs in a corner of his expansive office that Callen realized that both legs and his left hand were prosthetics. They moved almost like natural limbs, and didn’t seem to inconvenience him in the least.
Meadows noticed him noticing. “DARPA is my favorite government agency, not counting the Rangers,” he said. He raised his left arm, scratched his head with electronic fingers, then lowered it again. “It’s not the same as my own, but it’s close. I think it, and the arm does it.”
“You get it in the sandbox?” Sam asked.
Meadows nodded. “IED. I was dismounted. Happened to so many of us. I was lucky enough to be wearing ballistic boxers, so my—anyway, that’s enough about that. You didn’t come here to talk about my junk.”
“We came to talk about Hal Shogren,” Callen said. “You served with him, right?”
Meadows sighed. “The Rangers is a great organization. ‘Rangers Lead the Way’ isn’t just an empty motto. Most of those who serve in it are among the finest people anywhere. But you know what they say, there’s a bad apple in every batch, or something like that.”
“Shogren was a bad apple?”
“Nobody could tell, at first. He was just one of the guys. Distinguished service record. Tried out for the Rangers, made the cut, got through Ranger School with high marks. It wasn’t until we were under fire that I saw anything wrong.”
“What’d you see?” Sam asked.
“Just little things, at first. He’d maybe hang back a little when the rest of us were pushing ahead. You want to stay close to your battle buddy, to have his back and make sure he has yours. But Hal didn’t always seem to do that. He acted like he expected everybody to have his back, but he didn’t have anybody’s.”
He considered his next words carefully, the prosthetic hand rubbing his chin just as a biological one might have. “Then it got worse. In combat, people sometimes lose themselves, right? They lose the best parts of themselves, anyway, and it’s hard to get that back. So they do things that they never would’ve imagined, never would have done back in the world. Shogren was that way, too. He was a hell of a marksman, but I saw him take shots he didn’t have to—shots that would kill slowly, instead of fast. I tried to tell myself he’d just missed the sweet spot, but I couldn’t convince myself after a while. Then there were rumors of other things. Worse things. Torture, maybe rape. I don’t know for sure, but that’s what some people said.”
“Were you there when he died?” Sam asked.
“No,” Meadows replied. “I’d already been wounded. I was either in a hospital in Germany, or in Walter Reed. I wish I could be clearer, but a lot of that time is still a little fuzzy. I know he had left the Army by then, and gone to work for one of those contractors offering beaucoup bucks for Special Ops soldiers.”
“Given what you’d suffered, a little fuzzy is probably an understatement,” Callen said.
“What I heard is that he was riding in an MRAP. They had a makeshift Rhino out front—literally, a toaster on a long pole. It was on all the time, generating heat, to try to set off heat-triggered IEDs before the vehicle itself was in range. But this time, it didn’t work. Everybody in the vehicle bought it. Shogren was reportedly one of them.”
“Reportedly?” Sam repeated.
“Like I said, everything’s a little vague. Somebody told me once that they’d seen him after that. That he wasn’t in the MRAP at all. There had been rumors that he had money, that sometimes he paid other guys to take his place on missions. I didn’t necessarily believe it. A lot of guys look alike when they’ve been in the shit for a few weeks. Everybody’s dirty and unshaved and it’s not hard to mistake one guy for another. Plus, I might have dreamed the whole thing. He got shipped home and buried, right, so I guess it must have been him.”
“How long were you in the hospital?” Callen asked. Not that it had anything to do with Shogren, but he was curious about the man’s remarkable recovery.
“Three years. And, you know, I still see a doctor and a shrink, but now I can afford ones in private practice.”
“Looks like you’ve done pretty well,” Sam noted.
“I came out here because a buddy from the Rangers recommended me to consult on a movie about the war. I did that, then took on some other consulting gigs. Eventually, I started to produce. Got a couple of features out, and now I have two TV shows.” He gestured toward posters hanging on the rustic wooden walls. “Bionics is a physical challenge show for vets who have prosthetics—kind of meant to prove that we can do anything anybody else can do. And Homeward Bound is a drama about military families on the home front during what we used to call the Global War on Terror.” He grinned, and once again Callen was struck by how infectious it was. “There’s talk of an Emmy nomination for Bionics. Can you believe it? An old soldier like me, chewed up and spit out, bringing home one of those little statues?”
“Congratulations, man,” Sam said. “I hope you win.”
“You and my momma both,” Meadows said.
“Let me ask you this,” Sam continued. “If Shogren was alive, do you have any idea where he’d be? Where he’d go if he was in trouble? Who he might turn to?”
Meadows’s smile faded. “No clue,” he said. “Like I told you, I was out of it when he died. If he did. And he wasn’t part of the unit anymore. So I don’t know who his friends were, there at the end, if he had any. I remember being kind of glad, when I heard it, that he wasn’t a Ranger anymore. That’s petty, right? I’m a miserable excuse for a human being.”
“Not at all,” Sam said. “Unit integrity is key. Can’t have that if you’ve got someone who’s not pulling his weight. That puts everybody else at risk.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Meadows said, his gaze downcast. Then he looked up again. “Hey, this doesn’t have anything to do with what they’re talking about on the news, does it? Something about an ex-Spec Ops soldier on the run, with a hostage?”
“Couldn’t say,” Callen said. “Would it make a difference if it did?”
“Only in how much sorrier I am that I can’t be much help. If that’s Shogren and he’s still alive, all I can say is that I hope it’s not for much longer.”
“If that’s him,” Sam said, “you wouldn’t be the only one who feels that way. Thanks for your help, Mr. Meadows.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Meadows said. “Any excuse to show off my parts.”
“Sounds good,” Callen said. “And good luck with the Emmys. We’ll be watching.”
41
“A helicopter?” Deeks asked.
“What?” Kensi replied, looking at him in surprise. They were, after all, at a helipad and a helicopter waited on the pad, props spinning. Her hair was in a ponytail, but his wasn’t, and he was starting to look like he sometimes did when he woke up, when it seemed like he’d styled his hair with an eggbeater. “You’ve been in choppers before.”
“Ooh, chopper. That’s a better word. Or maybe ’copter. Or what about whirlybird?”
“Call it whatever you want. Are you coming, or not?”
“If you’re going, babe, I’m going. I’m just saying, flying in a whirlybird on a nice day is one thing. But flying over a mountain range that’s basically entirely on fire is something else altogether. I thought they’d actually closed it to helicopter traffic, because of—and I’m quoting the TV weather infant here—‘treacherous updrafts.’”
“They did,” Kensi said. “But Hetty pulled some strings and got us cleared.”
“So basically clearance to kill ourselves in a ball of flame that, in light of the incredibly more huge ball of flame formerly known as the Hollywood Hills, won’t even be visible to anyone except possibly us. Until the point that our eyeballs melt.”
“You can look at it that way, Deeks. Point is, we nee
d to get going. We don’t have all day.”
“No, I suppose if we’re hurtling toward our doom, we should do it while the light’s good.”
She’d had enough. She stalked toward the waiting aircraft. The pilot sat in it, watching, and when she started to climb in, he gave her a big grin and a thumbs up. “He coming, too?” he shouted.
“As far as I know,” she replied, strapping herself into a rear seat. “But don’t wait for him.”
“You’re the boss,” he said. He opened up the throttle and started pulling up on the corrective. When Deeks saw the helicopter lifting off the pad, he ran toward it, waving his arms.
“Okay,” she said. “Let him on.”
“Roger that,” the pilot said. He set the bird gently down, and held it there while Deeks clambered aboard.
“Welcome,” she said. She had to shout to be heard.
“I thought you were going without me.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I told you, I go where you do.”
“I thought that was hyperbole.”
Deeks took her hand and squeezed it. “Kensilicious, it’s one hundred percent true. Never leave me behind.”
It was a touching moment, but badly timed. “Fasten your harness,” she said. “We’re going.” She tapped the pilot’s shoulder and jerked her thumb skyward. He grinned again, nodded once, and put the bird in flight.
“Why are we doing this, again?” Deeks asked as they raced toward the mountains.
“We’re looking for a rock formation,” she said. “Doing it from the air is a lot more efficient than on the ground. Particularly when the area’s closed to vehicular traffic.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” he said. “But it’s also closed to helicopteral traffic, and that’s not stopping you.”
“It’s the efficiency part,” she said. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to find it, but we have a far better chance from up here. While we’re at it, we should keep our eyes open for a gold-colored Buick LeSabre, and a red pickup truck, possibly pulling a trailer.”
“The Buick belonging to the Peabodys,” Deeks said. “And the pickup?”
“Being driven by Owen Granger, presumably.”
“Oh. Then we should definitely watch for that one.”
“We will.” She pointed toward the pilot. “He already has the GPS coordinates for where the truck is. Or was, a little while ago. If he moves much, Ops will let us know.”
“But no GPS for the Peabodys’ Buick?”
“I think we’re lucky it’s not horse-drawn,” Kensi said. “I’m not sure where the boundaries of ‘Luddite’ are, but I bet they’re borderline.”
She settled back and watched the pilot. He seemed to have absolute control over the aircraft. He held the cyclic steady, plunging forward as Los Angeles whipped by beneath them. Every now and then he adjusted his path slightly with the foot pedals. As they closed in on the hills, the air shifted from clear to brown-gray, and the stink of smoke filled the craft. “Sorry,” the pilot called back. “Nothing I can do about the smell.”
“We’ll cope,” Kensi replied.
Deeks was quiet, watching out his window at the city below, occasionally glancing forward at the thick clouds of smoke. He wasn’t as neurotic as he came off sometimes, she knew. If he had been, she never could have fallen in love with him. It was in part a comedy shtick for him, and it had worked so he clung to it. And it was in part a persona he put on that helped him deal with stress.
The job they did was about as high-stress as they came, and everybody had to deal with it in their own way. She found that it fueled her, gave her energy that she had to burn off with action. For him, the sometimes goofy persona deflected it. When he let it fall, as he had now, he was calm even in the face of things that would terrify most people.
He’d been right, they were flying into a seriously dangerous situation. The updrafts made it hard enough to fly low over those hills at the best of times. During a massive wildfire was far from the best of times. The winds the fire generated could topple a helicopter right out of the sky, and the best pilot on Earth couldn’t do a thing about it.
But Shogren was up there somewhere, with Betsy Peabody. Owen was there, too, and the fact that he’d been there so long without getting in touch implied all manner of things Kensi didn’t want to think about.
The ’copter carved through the smoke like a hot Mixmaster through butter.
“Where to first?” the pilot called back.
“Head for those GPS coordinates you were given,” Kensi told him. Owen was a survivor, and she was worried sick about poor Betsy Peabody. But because they had a good idea where Owen was, it made the most sense to take care of that first, then do the more difficult search.
“Roger that,” the pilot said. He corrected course slightly, skimming over the luxurious homes of Beverly Hills. The Beverly Hills Hotel passed beneath them, and then they were in the hills. The streets were weirdly empty. She understood—even here in the lower elevations, homes had been evacuated until the fire could be brought under control. She saw police cars prowling for looters, and staging areas for the firefighting crews. Then they were over the Franklin Canyon Reservoir, its water level far below the historical average. Despite that, until helicopter flight had been discontinued, choppers had been scooping water from the reservoir and dumping it on the flames.
Past the reservoir, the smoke was thicker, and she could only see glimpses of rugged hillsides, latticed with dirt roads. The aircraft lurched and bounced. Kensi didn’t have problems with airsickness, usually, and she loved the fast rides at Magic Mountain, but this was getting to her. The pilot’s back and shoulders were tense, the muscles in his neck standing out like steel cables. When he called “Getting close!” he didn’t turn his head, as he’d done before, but held it rigid as he fought the controls.
“Any update on the GPS coordinates?” Kensi asked Eric over the earwig. He read off some numbers, which she reported to the pilot. He made another minor course correction. Approaching a ridgeline, he pulled up on the corrective to get some more altitude, but a powerful updraft caught the blades and heaved the helicopter higher. On the other side, it plummeted until the pilot got the descent under control.
“Sorry about that!” he called. “Now you know why they’re not letting helis up here anymore.”
“Did you call it a ‘heli’?” Deeks asked.
“Yes, sir,” the pilot said. “I usually use ‘helicopter,’ but sometimes I abbreviate it.”
“Not chopper?”
“Choppers are motorcycles. Or teeth.”
“Whirlybird?”
“Maybe pilots called them that fifty years ago. But I wasn’t flying fifty years ago.”
Deeks turned to Kensi. “Not choppers. Helis.”
“I heard,” Kensi said.
The aircraft started sinking again, slowing down. “Are we there?”
“Just about,” the pilot said.
“Take it as low as you can. We’re looking for a red pickup truck. Maybe towing a trailer.”
The pilot nodded. All of his focus was on the controls, and Kensi was fine with that. The winds were batting them around, like a kitten lying on her back playing with a ball of yarn.
She watched out her window, and noted Deeks peering through his. Smoke hung in tendrils between the aircraft and the ground, and when it got low enough, the downwash caught the smoke and blew it into circular shapes that looked a little too much like targets for Kensi’s liking.
The pilot spotted it first. “Red truck, dead ahead!” he shouted.
Kensi rose up in her seat as far as her harness would allow, and saw it through the front windshield, climbing a ridge on a primitive dirt road. It looked just as Hetty had described it, and it was indeed pulling a horse trailer. “That’s got to be it! Let him know we’re here, and try to get into a position where I can see the driver.”
“Will do.” He took the craft down lower and buzzed the top of
the pickup, kicking up clouds of dust from the road. A little ways beyond it, he made a wide turn, approached the truck again, then hovered ahead of it. Kensi and Deeks both looked out the windshield, and saw Owen Granger sitting at the wheel, an expression of deep annoyance on his face.
“That’s him,” Deeks said. “And we’ve pissed him off.”
“There’s no place to put down, so I hope you’re not expecting to pick him up,” the pilot said.
“No. I doubt he’d come, even if we tried. He’s as stubborn as they come. But I need to get this to him.” She held up a heavily padded cloth bag.
“Just toss it out the cabin door,” the pilot said. “But make it quick, I can’t hold her here much longer.” Even as he spoke, he was gaining altitude, and furious winds were buffeting the aircraft.
Deeks was closer to the door. “Here,” Kensi said. “Toss this down in front of the truck. Not so close that he’ll run over it, though.”
“What is it?”
The helicopter gave a sickening lurch. “Hurry!” the pilot shouted. He pulled up, and the aircraft rose still higher.
“Just do it!” Kensi said. “Before we get too high!”
Deeks took the bag, opened the cabin door, and gave the bag a gentle toss. They were maybe forty or fifty feet off the ground now, higher than Kensi had anticipated, and she hoped the padding in the bag was sufficient.
As Deeks closed the door, the helicopter lurched again, and started to turn. The pilot fought to control it. “We—we’re gonna have to get out of here,” he said. “These updrafts are gonna kill us!”
“Does that mean we can’t do the rest of the search?” Kensi asked.
“Sorry. Later, after the fire’s out, I’ll fly you anywhere you want. But the safety of this aircraft is my responsibility, and the risk is too great.”
Disappointment washed over Kensi. She was glad to have seen Owen, although the danger he was in was all too apparent. But she hated the idea of flying away without locating Betsy. She felt responsible for the woman’s predicament; if it hadn’t been for her suggestion, the Peabodys would have been nowhere near Shogren when he went on the run.
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