“Morning,” said Louis taking a step toward the van. Lots of clients remembered Louis, but it wasn’t always so easy to remember all of the clients.
The driver lowered his voice. “I’ve got a message for you from Kit.”
Louis registered surprise, then shuffled up to the van, a bit wary. “And who would you be?”
“He’s a good friend, Louis,” said Kit crouched down behind Buzz. Kit and Louis could see each other through a small space between the driver’s seat and the window.
“Kit, are you okay?” asked Louis, excitedly stepping closer to the van.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m so sorry about what happened to your mom and sister, Rick and Maria….”
“We’ll all get through this. Don’t worry.”
“The police, the feds searched the facility, like we’re some kind of criminals. They come every day. They’re watching the company. Probably there now.”
“Just ignore them. But right now, I need your help,” said Kit.
“Name it.”
“You know the business as well as anyone. Open every day and run things as best you can.”
“Okay.”
“As soon as Julio comes in this morning, have him gas up the twin Cessna and tow it over to Dave Tallichet‘s old hangar. Tell him to put it inside, that Mike Matthews is going to borrow it to fly to Cable Airport. You got it?”
“Got it.”
“Sorry to ask you to lie to Julio, but you can’t let him or anyone else know you saw me and that I’m taking the plane. Okay?”
“Okay. But Kit, what about Staci?” pleaded Louis. Louis had been looking after Staci like he would his own daughter for the last several years. “Kit, I’m so worried about her I can’t sleep.”
“She’s alive. And I’m going to find her. I promise you that.”
“There’s the old man,” said CID Agent Flood, watching through binoculars as Louis Kraminski unlocked the doors to Wheels Up Aviation. Flood polished off the last of a maple donut, then found a paper napkin in the messy rented sedan.
Kraminski’s cell phone and the company phone lines and e-mails were being monitored, without a court order, thanks to Flood’s buddy in the NSA. The same cyber-spook had taps on other phone lines, including Detectives Bobby Chan’s and Ron Franklin’s. And minutes earlier, the contents of Chan’s work computer had been e-mailed to the CID agents. Agent Bates was right now examining Chan’s case files.
Bates looked up from his laptop as other Wheels Up employees followed Louis inside. Bates sniffed. “You know what it smells like in here?”
“Donuts?”
“No. Ass.”
“Well, that would be your ass, not mine,” said Flood.
“So what do you think about this aviation connection? Maybe Wheels Up was ferrying dope for the Russian mob and they had a falling out?”
“Makes sense to me. The Russians got screwed over, so they decided to kill everyone connected to the company. That’s how Russians operate.”
“So what’s with Bennings and the Russian chick from Moscow?”
Flood shrugged. “Maybe she works for a different mob.”
Bates nodded as he checked his computer. “Your NSA pal just sent me an audio file. From the tap on the Bennings house.”
“But no one’s in the house,” said Flood.
“Answering machine, remember? Somebody left a message.”
Flood and Bates had already conducted an extensive illegal search of the home in Chino Hills. Bates opened the file and played it once, then turned the volume up all the way and replayed it. The voice was just barely audible: “Las Vegas, south of the Rio and Palms, third-floor apartment or hotel. A dump. Help, Las Vegas…”
The two agents looked at each other. “Could that be Bennings’s sister?” asked Flood.
Bates reached for his cell phone and punched in a number.
A small convoy of AT&T utility trucks and repair vehicles snaked their way on a dirt track toward the blast site in Wyoming north of Interstate 80.
The lead pickup truck was driven by the crew’s foreman, Chuck McNair, and he skidded his vehicle to a stop when he saw the seventy-five-foot-diameter depression in the ground.
McNair put on his hard hat and walked to the edge of the depression. Soon other men joined him.
“Damn, what do you make of this?” asked McNair to no one in particular.
“Somethin’ like a sinkhole,” said a worker.
“Sinkhole?” said Danny Jones, a lanky technician with a mocking tone. “I didn’t work as an EOD guy in Iraq, but that looks to me like something blew up underground. Like some bomb was buried and they blew it.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” asked the worker.
“Hell, how do I know?” asked Jones. “The Taliban? I mean, crap, take a look. The main northern fiber-optic communications cable is toast. Who would do that except terrorists?”
“Okay, just everybody settle down. We don’t know that a bomb went off.” McNair started to take cell-phone snaps of the depression, then quickly sent them onward over his phone.
The 1969 Cessna 401A holding five occupants taxied within one hundred yards of CID agents Flood and Bates, who sat parked outside a steel hangar at Chino Airport. The army investigators had no idea Kit Bennings was the plane’s pilot. No flight plan had been filed and the transponder was switched off. Bennings had even refused to tell his team where they were going and why. Three and a half hours later, the Cessna touched down at Moriarty Municipal Airport outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The Albuquerque safe house was a vacation rental near Kirtland Air Force Base that had been hastily arranged by Kit over the Internet during the flight in. Two Nissan Pathfinders, rented using a phony name but a working credit card, sat parked in the driveway.
By about two in the afternoon, Kit, Buzz, Angel, Jen, and Yulana had stashed what little gear they had left and reconvened in the living room. They all looked exhausted.
“Okay, we’re here in Albuquerque, but why are we here, since Popov and Travkin are in Los Angeles?” asked Jen.
“Because Sandia is here, right, boss?” asked Angel.
“Popov has yet to explain what he wants Kit to do.” Buzz chewed on his pipe, thinking, then looked to Yulana.
She shrugged. “I don’t know why we’re here, either, but the mountains are beautiful.”
“So I guess it’s unanimous,” said Buzz. “Why did we come here?”
Before Kit could answer, his phone rang, startling him.
“That’s not your sterile phone ringing. Do you have another phone?” asked Jen.
“That’s my satellite phone.” He checked the incoming number… Staci! “It’s Staci’s sat phone calling.”
Kit signaled to the group. They all saw the anticipation on his face and fell silent. He answered and put the call on speaker.
“Go ahead,” said Kit.
Silence on the other end, then…
“You are no longer needed. Your participation has ended. Should you or your friends do anything in a public way, any more killings, attacks, any action that draws attention from the authorities, I will kill your sister without hesitation. If you so much as get a parking ticket, she’s dead. Go to ground, hide, hunker down, whatever you want to call it. Stand down or she dies, and I mean she dies horribly. Do you understand?” said Viktor Popov.
“It was you who attacked me this morning, General.” Kit practically spat out the words with venom. “And you accuse me of bringing attention from the authorities? You order me to stand down?!”