The First 48

by Tim Green

  “I’ve got to drive,” Tom said, draining the small glass of beer. “I think that’s it for me.”

  “First cheesecake from New York,” Slovanich said, signaling the waitress and holding up his empty snifter. His words were slurred. “Is famous this restaurant. And Folgers coffee from Italy.”

  “I need to find Mark,” Tom said, shaking his head. “Mark Allen.”

  “So you go get him Galloo, no?” Slovanich said. “This why I eat. He do this many time. Mark Allen is very big shot.”

  “I don’t really know how to get there,” Tom said. “If you could give me directions, I could drive over and get him and bring him back.”

  This sent the doctor into a new fit of heavy laughter and tears. The waitress set down a fresh grappa and looked at him sideways.

  “You have car with wings?” the doctor said when he could talk. He slugged down more grappa. “Boat or plane. You no Party member. No. You hunt Galloo to be big shot. Galloo is island. Little Galloo, birds and shit. Big Galloo, duck birds and other kind shit. Boat or plane is all you go. Very big shot. They fly plane.”

  “What about Filoviridae?” Mike said suddenly.

  The doctor stopped and closed one eye. He looked around and leaned closer to them.

  “You no talk this bug,” he said in a low drunken voice. “You drive truck for Mark? You do that only. No talk bug. Very stupid American talk. No talk. No.”

  The doctor clamped his mustache down tight against his thick lower lip and folded his arms across this chest. Tom tried to pump him some more about Jane and the island and Mark Allen, even Carson Kale. But, either because of Mike’s mention of Filoviridae or because of the grappa, the doctor remained virtually silent.

  By the time they reached the airport, Tom’s watch read 05:05:08. The wind was strong enough now that Tom had to fight for control of the Intrepid’s wheel. Munch was inside the airport’s small lounge. He’d found a dirty magazine somewhere. He sat on the torn couch with his feet on a chair and a Fanta grape soda on the cushion beside him.

  “Do you know where Galloo Island is?” Tom asked.

  Munch looked over the top of his magazine and shook his head no.

  “Is there anyone around here?” Tom asked.

  “Ground handler over in the hangar. Cute girl. Got her name,” Munch said with a wink. “Alison. She’s it until the morning.”

  “Come on,” Tom said. “Show me.”

  Munch sighed and got to his feet.

  Beyond Kapp’s jet was a corrugated metal hangar bearing a faded sign: BROWDIE’S AIR SERVICE. As they approached, the girl named Alison came out of the office door in red coveralls. Her face was round and pleasant and she had dark shoulder-length hair that matched her eyes. “Galloo Island,” Tom said to her, raising his voice above the wind. “Do you know where it is? How long will it take to fly there?”

  Alison held the windswept hair out of her face and looked at them sadly and said, “It’s a seven-mile-long right foot with a long big toe. A five-minute flight due west, if you could do it.”

  “Strip too small for the Falcon?” Mike said.

  “No,” she said looking at Mike. “They fly charters in there for duck hunts in the fall all the time. There’s a thirty-five-hundred-foot strip. You guys have that Falcon 50, right? You could make it in, but not in this.” Her eyes swept the sky.

  “But it’s possible, right?” Mike said.

  “Anything’s possible,” she said.

  “Yeah, too bad our pilot is a little capon,” Tom said.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Munch said.

  “Rooster without stones,” Mike said. “Don’t worry, I’ll fly us. Just give Mr. Kapp a call and tell him we needed a big man to do the job.”

  Alison bit her lip and covered her mouth.

  “Hey, fuck you both,” Munch said, throwing his shoulders back and glaring up into Mike’s eyes.

  Tom looked up and around, “Yeah, not fair. I don’t see a single bumblebee out in this stuff.”

  “Okay, you two stupid motherfuckers,” Munch said, rolling up his magazine and turning toward the plane. “You want to go for a little ride on the Wild Mouse? Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 48

  When Dave saw the howling dogs tied off to the big hemlock, he spit a command for them to heel up.

  Jeb came up behind him, out of breath, and said, “What the fuck?”

  When the little bitch emitted a yap, Dave whipped out his nickel-plated .45 and shot her in the head. The other three dogs rolled their yellow eyes and whimpered. Their tails were pinned to their backsides. The shot echoed through the swamp and back. The big male had scuffed his neck against the rope down to the meat.

  Dave cut that rope away, cursing Mark Allen out loud.

  “You think it was him?” Jeb asked.

  “Don’t be so fucking stupid,” Dave said as he cut the last dog free. “Who the fuck else do you think did this? The girl?”

  “I guess she don’t know them dogs,” Jeb said quietly.

  “I fucking knew something was wrong,” Dave said. “I told you they didn’t sound right. God damn, I’ll strip the skin off his fucking back.”

  His face felt hot and his breath choked. The sun was gone. The red wound that stretched across the dark horizon had bled itself nearly dry. The trees above him hissed and swayed in the wind. He’d need a flashlight before long; he felt mocked by the coming darkness.

  At the sound of engines, his eyes darted into the sky. A small white jet passed overhead. Dave squinted as it banked out over the water and disappeared toward the north.

  He took the radio off his belt.

  “Carson, do you read me? Carson?”

  There was no answer, only static. Dave tried again, then put the radio back on his belt.

  “Come on,” he said to Jeb. He began jogging toward the footpath that ran up the west side of the island. It was a rough track, but without his jeep it was the fastest way to both the airfield and the main house.

  “Who do you think it is?” Jeb asked as the plane circled over them again, this time slower and with its landing gear down.

  “No fucking idea,” Dave said.

  The dogs were skittering along at his heels. Massive as he was, he still leaped through the woods with the grace of a young Iroquois brave. When they reached the rocky footpath, Dave took out his flashlight and turned to the north. The water crashed against the shore, throwing up the rich smell of fish and seaweed into the wind. Ten minutes later, he cut the light and pulled up short at the edge of the airfield. Jeb was still huffing along the trail.

  The sky above was black, but there was still a weak yellow glow from the west that allowed Dave to differentiate the long grassy strip from the dark woods that bordered it. At the other end of the airfield, the white jet rested in front of the small hangar with its running lights on.

  Dave saw no sign of anyone. He held his finger to his lips and motioned with his head for the exhausted Jeb to follow. As he skirted up the tree line, he could see that the stairs to the jet were down. Warm light spilled out onto the grass in a perfect rectangle.

  “Stay,” he said to the dogs. “Quiet.”

  To Jeb he said, “Stay right here and cover the stairs to that jet.”

  Jeb nodded and took the shotgun off his back. Dave took out his pistol and circled the hangar. He entered through the back door and listened. Only the wind. He flicked on the light and swept over the big shapes of a tractor and an old Cessna 187. Satisfied no one was there, he slipped back out into the night and rounded the corner of the hangar to where the jet was parked. Sitting up in the cockpit was a man reading a magazine.

  Dave shook his head. It wasn’t unusual for the important executives Carson hosted to fly in on their own planes. A jet, he hadn’t seen. The Falcon 50 was the only one even remotely capable of landing on their short strip.

  He stuck the gun back into his pants, circled the plane, and quietly mounted the steps. His hand crept close to the pearl-han
dled pistol. He peeked into the open cabin. On the leather couch in back, someone lay under a blanket with just the top of his blond head showing. Dave narrowed his eyes and sniffed. Something fetid lingered in the air. The smell of fear. Nervous sweat.

  He looked toward the cockpit, gripping the pistol firmly now.

  “Hello,” he said.

  The pilot—he looked like a kid—jumped and spilled his magazine to the floor as his hand flashed away from his body. Dave detected shiny pages and the pale images of flesh. He smiled at the red-faced boy.

  “Hey,” the pilot said, bumping his head. “I’m Will Munch. You kind of caught me with my hand in my pants.”

  Munch came out of the cockpit and extended his hand.

  “Who’s that?” Dave said, disregarding Munch’s hand and heading for the back.

  “Hey,” Munch said. “That’s not— Can I help you? Hey, you can’t go back there.”

  Dave ignored him. He tugged the blanket off the figure lying on the couch and sucked in a sharp breath of air. He knew that face, had seen it before. A guest of the lodge . . .

  But the black Star Trek T-shirt and the duct tape and the swollen nose? Dave had an impression of arrogance, but these eyes were wide with fear and eager obsequiousness. The head bobbed as though anchored by a cheap spring. He studied the dark plugs of hair sprouting from the scalp. Dave snorted at the bad hair transplant.

  Then he knew.

  “Gleason? What the fuck?”

  The words came out of Dave’s mouth low and soft. The senator’s head bobbed wildly. His eyes straining and moist. An urgent wheezing escaped his throat. It sounded like “Help me.”

  “Hey,” Munch said. “No one’s supposed to go back there.”

  Dave turned and smiled. Munch was standing there in the galley, averting his eyes, a well-trained soldier. Or just scared shitless at what he’d seen.

  “That’s okay,” Dave said. He removed his gun from its holster and pointed it at the kid. “Who else is with you?”

  Dave moved closer, putting the gun up to the kid’s ear. Munch’s eyes widened, then he winced.

  “Hey,” he said, straightening and backing away. “My clients are none of your business.”

  “You just sit the fuck back down and read your girlie magazine,” Dave said.

  Munch sat down, and Dave leaned his head out the hatch and hollered. Seconds later, Jeb stamped up the stairs with his shotgun ready.

  “Watch him,” Dave said. “I’ll be back.”

  Even if he could get Carson on the radio, he wouldn’t relate what he’d found over the airwaves. He put his gun away and descended the stairs. He had a lot to think about. Mark Allen. The girl. Whoever Munch’s “clients” were, not that it mattered much. After what he’d seen, Dave knew they were outlaws. Most likely they were headed down the road toward the main house. On the footpath, even with their head start, Dave would beat them by half an hour.

  He whistled to the dogs and started off down the runway at a steady jog.

  CHAPTER 49

  The massive stone dining room was long and cool. Carson’s fork shimmered in the light of the chandelier. He said nothing, just stabbed at a piece of red meat and put it in his mouth. A fire crackled behind him in the fireplace. Dave stood waiting. His stomach rumbled quietly, and he felt the saliva begin to pool up under the back of his tongue. Carson swallowed the meat and reached for his wine. He let it linger in his mouth, savoring it, before he swallowed. Dave had to admire the coolness with which he’d received the news.

  Dave cleared his throat. The fire snapped.

  Carson wiped his mouth on a lace napkin, then finally looked up and told him what to do.

  Dave tried to keep from smiling, but couldn’t because of the beauty of it.

  “Your moonlighting can finally come to some good,” Carson said. He sniffed.

  “I could have killed Gleason from the start if you wanted,” Dave said.

  “You don’t just kill a U.S. senator,” Carson said. “But whoever brought him here did our work for us.”

  “Can I use your Land Cruiser?” Dave asked. “My jeep is at North Pond.”

  “Of course,” Carson said, then turned his attention back to his plate, as if Dave had simply inquired about which side of the island he wanted to drive on a deer hunt.

  Dave left through the kitchen. Danny, the cook, and his young wife Katrina were sitting on stools at the butcher block, having dinner before they left for their home on the mainland. They looked up from their plates without speaking. Dave smiled at them as he grabbed the remainder of the roast up out of the pan and began tearing away at it with his teeth as if it were a loaf of bread.

  “Not bad,” he said, his mouth full and nodding their way. He tore a paper towel away from the roll by the sink and headed out the back door, wiping grease from his hands and letting the screen door slam behind him.

  In the Land Cruiser, he returned to the kennel and put up the dogs, then went to the bunkhouse and beeped his horn.

  Vern stumbled out in an apron, drying off a frying pan.

  “Get a gun,” Dave said.

  Vern looked at Dave in surprise. He was sixty-two, an infantryman in the Korean War. Like the rest of Dave’s crew, he’d done some time in the brig. But he was the one who did the cooking and cleaning, not one of the young Turks who helped guide the hunters and run the weapons.

  “I don’t know where the hell Curly is,” Dave said. “Jeb’s got a post. Quentin’s half-dead.”

  Vern nodded. He came out of the bunkhouse moments later with a heavy goose gun, an Ithaca .10-gauge. They got into Carson’s vehicle and set off toward North Pond.

  “There’s four people on this island that we can’t let get off,” Dave said as they bounced along. “Mark is one of them.”

  “Mark?”

  “You heard me,” he said, glancing over.

  “Carson knows?”

  “You worry about me,” Dave said, glowering. “There’s the girl I’m huntin’, and a couple of other strangers that I don’t know nothing about—just that you can shoot them if you see them.”

  “I can shoot any of ’em?” Vern said. “But you don’t want me shooting Mark?”

  “You shoot him in the leg, Verny,” Dave said. “I’ll do the rest.”

  “I don’t know about shooting Mark,” Vern said, mumbling to himself.

  Dave whipped out his pistol and put it under Vern’s eye. “You do as I say, Vern. That’s a direct fucking order.”

  Vern’s eyes grew wide and teary.

  “I didn’t mean nothing,” he said.

  “Good,” Dave said. He stuffed the pistol back in his belt.

  They rode in silence the rest of the way to the Coast Guard Station. Dave backed the Land Cruiser up to the building he used as his warehouse. He went inside and came out with a long wooden box. Vern helped him load the box into the back of the Land Cruiser, then took up his position in a rocking chair on the porch of the main house.

  “What if this storm hits?” Vern asked.

  Even with the glow from the headlights of the truck, Dave could barely see him in the dark shadows of the porch.

  “You just sit tight until I get you. I don’t give a damn if it starts raining buckets of shit,” Dave said. “You got your radio on channel two?”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay, don’t use it unless you see someone,” Dave said, climbing into the Land Cruiser. “And don’t you forget what I said, Vern. There’s still a warrant for you on the mainland and if someone gets by you, I promise you’ll be spreading your saggy cheeks for half the cell block in Attica. Even crooks don’t like a child molester.”

  Dave continued to scan the roadside in the headlights of the truck as he bounced along toward the airstrip. He picked up his radio.

  “Carson,” he said, “this is Dave. Everything okay?”

  “This is Carson. Just fine.”

  “No sign of our guests?”

  “Not yet. I’ll be sure to let you
know.”

  Dave pulled the Land Cruiser right out onto the airstrip next to the jet, nose in toward the hangar. Jeb leaned out of the hatch as he got out.

  “Everything okay?” Dave asked.

  “Miss July ain’t too bad,” Jeb said. He raised a can of beer in the air.

  “I’m glad you made friends,” Dave said, climbing the stairs.

  He looked at the unconscious senator lying on the couch before he said to Munch, “Okay, time for you to leave now.”

  “What?” Munch said, blinking at him and smiling. Two empty beer cans lay on the floor of the cockpit.

  “Time to go,” Dave said. “You heard me.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t really give a fuck,” Dave said, “but you’re trespassing, so you’ll have to leave.”

  Munch’s smile faded. “But . . . I can’t.”

  Dave put his .45 up to Munch’s ear. The cabin resounded with the metallic click of a hammer being pulled back.

  “O-kay,” Munch said, slowly reaching for the control panel and flipping on some switches, “as long as you promise to take care of my clients. They’ll need to get back somehow.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Dave said. “We’ll take care of them for you.”

  “Okay,” Munch said. “Well, I can’t stay if I’m trespassing.”

  “No,” Dave said. “That would be unhealthy.”

  “It’s pretty rough weather.”

  “Yeah. Bad night to fly. Be careful.”

  Dave and Jeb went down the stairs and then, as Munch retracted them up into the plane, Jeb gave him a friendly wave.

  “Pretty good kid,” Jeb said at the door.

  “What are you, the fucking welcome wagon?” Dave said. “Help me with this box.”

  The jet’s engines were whining loudly now, blocking out the sound of the heavy wind in the trees. Munch turned the plane around, facing it into the west and the wind.

  “And they were never seen or heard from again,” Dave said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Dave flicked up the metal latches on the wooden box.

  “Jeez,” Jeb said. “That’s one of them Stingers for the Indonesians.”