The Stronger Chase

by Cap Daniels

  “I wish they would,” she said. “Being a bank teller’s gotta be better than twelve hours a day on my swollen feet.”

  We finished our meal and left Tammy a nice tip, but there was nothing we could do for her swollen feet.

  “Do you have any idea what the parkway is, or what resort she was talking about?”

  Clark looked off to the east at the green sloping hills. “I’d bet the parkway is the Blue Ridge Parkway that runs across the top of those mountains, but I don’t know the resort.”

  We headed off toward the parkway in search of the mysterious resort. It didn’t take long to find what we were looking for. The asphalt roads covered with muddy tracks of dump trucks and construction vehicles gave it away. We pulled into one of the houses that appeared to be ninety-percent complete and asked for Brian.

  “He’ll be down at the trailer,” one of the landscapers said. “It’s a mile back down that way. You’ll see a gravel road cut off to the right. Take that road back a quarter of a mile, and you’ll see the staging yard where we keep building materials and stuff. Brian’s trailer is the second one on the right when you go through the big metal gate.”

  “Thanks. We appreciate that. Say, do you know how much these houses are bringing?”

  “Yeah, they start in the three twenties for the little one like this, but up on top, some of ’em are close to two million bucks. Are you guys house shopping?”

  Clark laughed. “Do we look like the kind of guys who can shuck out two million bucks for a house?”

  The landscaper shrugged. “Hey, you never know.”

  We thanked him again and headed for the staging yard. It was where the landscaper had said. We knocked on the door of the construction trailer.

  Someone yelled, “Come on in. It’s open.”

  Clark led the way, and we saw a stocky man leaning over a drafting table going over some blueprints. Protruding from the left leg of his blue jeans was a metallic prosthesis disappearing into the top of a well-worn work boot. The man must have heard us come in.

  He glanced over his shoulder until we could see his face in profile. “What can I do for you guys?” When he’d finally turned to face us, his eyes lit up with surprised recognition. “Holy shit! If it ain’t Baby Face Johnson. How the hell have you been, and what are you doing all the way up here?”

  “Hey, Captain. It’s good to see you again. How are you getting along?” Clark subconsciously eyed the man’s prosthetic leg.

  “Ah, it’s going pretty good. I can’t complain.” He tapped on his leg with his knuckles. “At least I’ll never have to worry about varicose veins. Who’s this?”

  “I’m sorry. Captain Brian Garner, meet my partner, Chase Fulton. Chase, meet Captain Brian Garner, the only Ranger I know who’s ever left an airplane with two legs, landed with one, and still killed half a dozen bad guys before sunrise.”

  I shook his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Captain Garner.”

  “Ah, it’s just Brian now. Those days are gone . . . thank God. It’s nice to meet you, too, Chase.”

  Small talk and a decade of catching up ensued before we got down to business.

  “So, what is it you said you do now?” asked Brian.

  “We’re in the lost and found business,” Clark said. “We find people who’ve either decided to get lost, or who’ve gotten lost in some sinister event—if you know what I mean.”

  Brian eyed me and Clark, slowly sizing us up. “So, you’re some kind of bounty hunters?”

  “No, not exactly. We’re working for the same people you and I worked for when we dressed alike and I had to salute you every morning.”

  “Oh, you’re feds. Nice,” Brian said, a touch of envy in his tone.

  Neither of us answered. Sometimes it’s best to let people believe a lie they’ve told themselves.

  “So, who are you looking for all the way out here in Shenandoah?”

  “We’re actually looking for a tall, gorgeous blonde with a Russian accent,” I said.

  Brian slapped my shoulder. “Aren’t we all?”

  “This one’s not the type you want to put the moves on. She’s dangerous, to say the least.”

  “Well, guys, you may have come to the right place. I may know where you can find one tall, gorgeous, Russian blonde in the Shenandoah Valley. Come on, we’ll take my truck.”

  Thank God for Clark’s former company commander.

  Brian walked with a noticeable limp, but it didn’t slow him down. It appeared he’d adapted well. After climbing into his brown, four-door Garner Construction pickup, we shuffled around two dozen rolls of blueprints and a thousand fast food bags, trying to find a place to sit.

  “Sorry for the mess, guys, but I don’t usually carry people around. This is a work truck, and as you can see, we’ve got a lot of work going on up here. We’re building forty houses right now with two hundred more to go after that. Business is good.”

  “I see that,” said Clark. “It’s good to see you doing well, Captain.”

  “Quit calling me captain, Sergeant.”

  We drove through some of the most beautiful country I’d ever seen. The mountains were incredible, and some of the streams looked like something off a postcard. I made a mental note to come back to the Shenandoah Valley someday when I wasn’t chasing anybody . . . or being chased.

  Twenty minutes later, we veered off a paved road and onto a gravel one that led us through a grove of evergreen trees I couldn’t identify, and finally to a locked security gate.

  Brian rolled down the windows and pointed up the drive beyond the gate. “See that house back there to the right of that stand of trees? That place is owned by some company nobody’s ever heard of, and that company is owned by four other companies nobody’s ever heard of, and the only cars that ever go back there are blacked-out Chevy Suburbans.”

  “Let’s get out of here before a camera gets a good look at us,” said Clark.

  “I’ve been trying to buy this piece of property and every parcel it touches for ten years,” Brian said. “One of my trucks poking around out here is common. They’ve stopped sending out their minions to shoo me away, so if you guys need a Garner Construction sign for your truck, I’m sure I have a couple lying around.”

  “I like the way this guy thinks,” I said to Clark.

  “He’s a Ranger. What else did you expect?”

  I’d never be a card-carrying member of that elite club, but I respected and admired them more with every encounter.

  23

  Looking Down

  We tossed a pair of magnetic Garner Construction signs in the back seat of our rented truck, and headed off to do a little recon work. We’d found our safe house . . . or at least we’d found a safe house.

  There was one clear entrance and exit to the property, and that meant one thing: there had to be another exit that wasn’t clear. There’s no way the CIA would set themselves up without an emergency egress plan. Finding that other way out would be the key to turning my idea into a plan.

  “How else could they get out of there?”

  “Well,” said Clark, “there’s a couple of ways from my perspective. One, they could have a chopper. That would make a lot of noise, but it wouldn’t matter. If emergency egress became necessary, their cover would’ve already been blown. And two, there could be a tunnel.”

  “That would have to be a tunnel big enough for a vehicle,” I argued.

  “Not necessarily. It could be just big enough for a man to run through to get to a stashed vehicle.”

  “Good point,” I conceded. “We need a plane.”

  Clark spun around in the seat, grabbed one of the Garner Construction signs, and punched the telephone number into his cell phone.

  “Hello,” he began, “may I speak with Brian Garner, please?” He paused, listening to the receptionist make an excuse. “I’m Clark Johnson with the Environmental Protection Agency, and we’ve discovered a problem at the resort site where you’re building. I need to know your n
ame and position so I know who will be receiving the subpoena.”

  I couldn’t hear what the excited woman was saying, but in less than ten seconds, Brian was on the line.

  “Brian, it’s Clark. . . . No, I don’t have your cell number. I had to say that to get you on the phone. Listen, I need an airplane. . . . No, Chase and I can fly anything. . . . A couple hours at most. . . . That’s perfect. . . . Thanks, Brian.”

  Clark tossed his phone back on the seat. “They have a Cessna Two Ten set up for aerial surveying and photography, a King Air, and a Falcon Jet.”

  “And you picked the Falcon Jet,” I joked.

  “If we were trying to get to The Bahamas, I would have, but since we want to do some snooping around and maybe even take a few pictures, the Two Ten will be on the ramp at nine a.m. at Shenandoah Regional Airport. All we have to do is fill ’er back up when we’re done.”

  “It’s good to have friends,” I said.

  “It’s better to have friends with airplanes,” Clark corrected me.

  We found a hotel with one room still available. Apparently, there was some sort of visual arts gala going on downtown, so we were lucky to find a room at all.

  The Cessna 210 wasn’t your typical aerial photography airplane. She was flawless. Most photo birds are tattered and torn with forty-year-old paintjobs that barely resemble paint at all. The Garner Construction boys obviously liked their airplanes. I wondered what the King Air and Falcon looked like if the 210 was any indication.

  There was no coaxing required. The engine started the third time I saw a propeller blade pass the windshield. Since I didn’t know how to operate the camera equipment, I drew flying duty while Clark fired up the electronics.

  “This is impressive,” he said from the back seat.

  “It certainly is,” I returned.

  “No,” he said. “I mean this camera equipment. This is state-of-the-art stuff. We’ll be able to look right down their chimney and tell what time the fire went out.”

  “That’s great,” I said, “but this cockpit isn’t second-rate either. They’ve got everything up here. This is definitely not just an aerial photo bird.”

  “Never look a gift bird in the bush,” he said, laughing at his own joke.

  “You’re quite the wordsmith, Mr. Johnson.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said with mock humility. “I’m a poet and my feet show it . . . they’re Long-fellows.”

  “Cut it out and let me know when you’re ready to fly, photo boy.”

  “I’m ready.”

  I made the necessary radio calls and blasted off from runway five in the light northeasterly wind. We headed southeast for the safe house site.

  “What altitude do you need?”

  “It looks like twenty-one hundred AGL would be perfect.”

  I quickly did the math to add twenty-one hundred to the ground elevation of around thirteen hundred feet. I set my altitude bug to thirty-four hundred MSL and activated the autopilot. The big Cessna pitched up to achieve the four-hundred-foot-per-minute climb rate I’d selected, and took the controls. I managed the throttle and prop while the autopilot did the rest.

  “Okay,” I said, “there’s the safe house at two o’clock and five miles. What speed do you want?”

  “Let’s do one-twenty. That should be slow enough to get some high-quality images.”

  “How many passes?”

  “I think we should do two. More than that would rouse suspicion, and we don’t need that.” He carefully watched the landscape on the digital display. “Chase,” Clark said ominously.

  “Yeah, what is it?”

  “There’s someone in the pool behind the house. It’s a woman.”

  I shut down the autopilot, chopped the throttle, and shoved the prop full forward. The airplane started a descent, and I rolled left to put the pool beneath my window.

  “Chase! Damn it! Climb! I’ve got the video, now get us back up to altitude and stick to the plan.”

  I added power and got us up to thirty-four hundred feet and back on track. I set the prop and reactivated the autopilot.

  “I’m sorry, man. I shouldn’t have done that.” I was furious with myself for whatever I was trying to accomplish.

  “Don’t be sorry. Be better!” he demanded. “That’s the kind of shit that could blow the whole operation at best, and at worst, get us both killed.”

  “It won’t happen again,” I promised.

  We finished two passes, and Clark suggested we take some higher altitude shots to get a better feel for the terrain and potential avenues in and out of the area not specific to the safe house site. I climbed to eighty-five hundred feet and Clark took several stills and miles of video.

  “That should do it.” He shut down the cameras. “Now all we need is a fast computer with some good graphics software.”

  “I know just the place.” I circled back for the airport.

  The 210 landed as beautifully as she flew. I put her back as I’d found her and instructed the lineman to fill the tanks and keep the change. Clark had pulled the memory cards from the cameras and pocketed them before we left the plane.

  “So, who do you think has the computer and software we need to get a look at these?”

  “I’m sure your buddy Brian does, but I think we’ve involved him enough already. There’s a visual arts gala going on in town this weekend. I’m sure someone there has what we need.”

  “Great idea. I don’t want to drag Brian into this any deeper than absolutely necessary, even though he’s one of those ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ kind of guys.”

  “Damn right I am,” Brian said.

  I hadn’t noticed him walking out of the hangar.

  “What else do you need?”

  I started to protest, but Clark held up the memory cards. “We need to take a look at these, but we don’t want to get you involved any more than you already are.”

  “In for a penny, in for a ton,” he said.

  “Did you guys learn to screw up metaphors at the same school?” I asked.

  In their best Bill Murray impressions, the two Rangers said, “Army training, sir.”

  * * *

  Back at Brian’s office, we loaded the pictures and video onto his computer. Like the airplane, his computer lab was top-notch and the screens soon filled with crystal-clear images. Of course, I wanted to see the woman in the pool.

  Is her hair long and blond? Will she have nine toes?

  We pored over the video until we’d watched every minute of it a dozen times. Nothing popped out at us. There was no place to hide a helicopter and nothing within tunnel-running distance that looked like a stash site for a vehicle. The house backed up to a grove of trees and had no outbuildings.

  Clark rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know, Chase. I’m starting to think this isn’t a CIA safe house at all.”

  “It certainly doesn’t look like any safe house where I’d choose to put a high-value asset for any length of time. Do you have any more ideas?”

  “I know this marine up at Langley who’s one of the best aerial photo analysts in the world,” Brian said. “He used to teach at the Defense Mapping Agency Cartography School. He can see things in aerial shots no one else can. Do you want me to give him a call?”

  “Absolutely!” I said without hesitation.

  Brian already had the phone in his hand. “Ryan, this is Brian Garner from down in Staunton. . . . I’m doing great. How are you? And how’s that gorgeous girlfriend of yours? She’s too good for you, you know. . . . Listen, I need a favor. I’m helping out an old Ranger buddy of mine and we need somebody to take a look at some aerials we took this morning. Would you have time? We need a good set of eyes on this. . . . Perfect. Thanks, Ryan. Their names are Clark and Chase. They’ll be in the King Air, and they’ll be at Fort Meade tomorrow at ten. Thanks, buddy. I owe you one. . . . Yeah, you’re right. I owe you another one.”

  “It’s too much, Brian. We can’t let you get wrapped up in this,” said C
lark.

  “Yeah, it is too much. It’s too much for me to be wrapped up in without knowing what’s really going on, so now I’m in for a King Air—in for a mission brief.”

  Clark blinked at me, silently asking, “What do you think?”

  I shrugged. “Well, he is in for a King Air. I guess the least we can do is give him a mission brief.”

  “Sit down, Brian. This is going to be a long story.”

  Clark laid it out for him, and Brian listened silently.

  “So, gorgeous blonde, bad decisions, pretended to defect, got shot, Russian colonel, kidnapping, gutshot, crazy old Padre, CIA DDO, Staunton safe house, set trap, kill colonel. Does that about sum it up?”

  “Yep,” I said. “That pretty much does it. We’re setting the trap now. The killing-the-Russian-colonel part comes soon. Are you still in for that penny?”

  “Hell, I’m in for the Falcon Jet if you need it.”

  “Thanks,” I laughed, “but the King Air is ante enough.”

  If the Cessna 210 had been impressive, the King Air 350 was astonishing, inside and out.

  “Hey, this is a three-fifty-E-R,” I said. “I thought this model was only available to the Federal Government.”

  “They made a few available for specialized commercial use,” said Clark. “I have no idea how Brian’s family ended up with one, but I’m not going to—”

  “I know, I know,” I interrupted. “You’re not going to look a gift bird in the bush.”

  “No, I was going to say I’m not going to question a good thing, but now that you mention it. . . .”

  We ran through the start-up checklist and were airborne at eight minutes past nine a.m. That would give us plenty of time in case we got a rerouting around D.C.

  At nine forty-seven, the wheels touched down at Tipton Airport in Fort Meade, and we were shaking Ryan’s hand at ten on the dot. He led us into the pilot’s lounge where he’d set up an impressive array of computers and monitors.

  Clark watched Ryan load the cards into the computer. “What we’re looking for is—”

  “Stop!” Ryan demanded. “I don’t want to know what you’re looking for. I want to tell you what I see. If I know what you’re looking for, I’ll be tempted to manufacture it. No preconceived notions. That’s always the best approach in photo analysis. If you’re looking for a cat, sooner or later, everything starts to look like a cat. You’re not looking for a cat, are you?”