Hard Fall (12 page)

“How is it you can remember those things?” she asked, her voice dreamy. “Are women so much the same?”

Did he dare to tell her that between Frankfurt and now there had been only one woman, and that it had been a complete disaster? Did he dare give her that kind of power over him? He thought not. Once you've gained the higher ground, you don't voluntarily surrender it.

“You wouldn't kiss me,” she said, touching his swollen cheek.

“Be glad I didn't. I need a dentist. Badly. It's infected. But it will have to wait. There isn't time.”

“It must hurt.”

“I will live.”

“You don't know that,” she said. And they fell silent for a time.

“We survived Frankfurt,” he reminded.

“That was different,” she contended.

“Not really so different.”

“We were but two of a team in Frankfurt. We had the support of the entire team. Now … It is not the same at all.”

“Not so different as all that.” He felt good. She had put him in a good mood.

“Where will you go after this?”

“Arrangements have been made—for
both
of us, if need be.”

“I like it where I am,” she said. “Will I have to leave?”

“Maybe not,” he lied. “We'll see.”

There wasn't time for him to shower. He toweled off and reapplied some deodorant.

“You had better dress,” he said, checking his watch. He dabbed some Anbesol into the hole left by the pulled tooth, cringed and waited for it to take effect. When the open sore began to numb, he said, “It's time we get started.”

The Los Angeles suburban sprawl swallowed them in blocks of matching three-bedroom homes with attached garages. Many of the lawns had gone brown, the result of the prolonged drought. Two young blond boys, shirtless and tanned, raced by on roller blades. Kort was pleased to be in the comfort of the air-conditioned van. “It was a good choice for a rental,” he said.

“You said it should be big.”

He nodded. He hated small cars.

“Are you going to tell me what it is we're doing, or am I expected to be clairvoyant? Who is this Dougherty?”

“A mechanic for AmAirXpress. Being part of the cargo group, the AmAirXpress flights use a different runway. That's important to me.”

“But
I
can get you onto the field, Anthony. It's all been arranged for weeks. You've hired us as consultants. Why did we bother establishing all that if we're not going to use it?”

“We
are
going to use it.”

“But why Dougherty then? I don't understand.”

“The new security measures they've enacted.”

“The head-counting?” she asked.

“Exactly. You can get me onto the field, but I still need a properly coded ID badge to enter the AmAirXpress maintenance yard from the field side. I could
never
get into AmAirXpress through their worker entrance. Not carrying what I'm carrying. Besides, the AmAirXpress security guards must know Dougherty by face. So it has to be from the field side. It's only machines on the field side. Computerized entrances. With his ID card they can be tricked into thinking I'm Dougherty.”

“We're going to steal his ID badge?”

“Providing the Greek's information is correct—and it was in Seattle—then Dougherty is a drinker. Recently widowed. So we're going to borrow his ID badge and leave him with a hangover.”

“I think you've overestimated their abilities. During any given shift, there are literally
thousands
of airport and airline personnel on the field side. Have you ever looked out the window of an airplane?” She grinned. “Oh, that's right, you don't like to fly.” When he didn't say anything she started talking again. Her constant talking bothered him now; it meant she was nervous. “Sure, they have this new head-counting rule, but no one's paid much attention to it. I know we haven't. Airport Police know they're vulnerable from the field, but their security is very tight from the passenger side, which is their greater concern. There's very little anticipation of a plan as thought out as this. They just aren't ready for it.”

“That may be but I'm not taking any chances.”

“And how do I fit in at Dougherty's?”

“You are my assistant,” he informed her. “A man and a woman together are much less intimidating than a man alone.”

He stopped talking and went about preparing the syringe, hoping she would be quiet. He had to tell her twice to keep her eyes on the road. He had been alone for far too long. It was unnerving the way her mouth went on.

“What is it you're giving him?” she asked, once he had the syringe filled and the plastic cap back over the needle.

“Grain alcohol. One hundred and eighty proof.”

“It looks like a lot.”

“If I've correctly guessed his weight it won't kill him.”

“And are you so good at guessing weight?” she asked, tugging on her blouse.

He looked her over. “One hundred and six,” he answered.

She placed both hands on the wheel and looked straight ahead. She was blushing. “You won't kill him,” she said.

After that, she was quiet.

They drove past a group of children clad in Day-Glo swimsuits dancing in the roaring plume of hydrant water. As Monique steered clear of them, Kort raised his hand to block his face. He worried about Monique's apparent lack of these instincts. The van bounced over trenches of hard-packed dirt and mud that cut across the road. Sewer work. Kort's sun visor fell down, and he pushed it back into place. As they passed the number 11345 stenciled in yellow paint on the curb, he signaled Monique to pull over.

The tract house had all the charm of a shoe box with windows. The postage-stamp lawn and the property's sole bush were victims of neglect. A rusted television antenna leaned rakishly on the roof.

Monique tied a white chiffon scarf in place and donned a pair of sunglasses.

“Okay,” he said, feeling his own excitement in his chest. “Here we go.”

He opened the van's door, and stepped into an oven. His throat burned. His eyes stung. The air was toxic. It only served to reinforce his allegiance to
Der Grund
. The people and the politicians treated the environmental issues as if they could be solved without effort—as if twenty or thirty years were available to think up solutions. It was time for action.

They approached the front door side by side. A garden snail had smeared its trail of slime across the width of the cement stairs that rose to the front door. Kort applied his toe to the snail and ground it to a paste. As Dougherty answered the door, Monique was still staring down at the brown goo.

Dougherty had the hard, crusty hands of a fisherman. He had bloodshot blue eyes and looked as if he was either battling or working on a hangover. His T-shirt advertised Dos Equis beer. Because he was wearing blue jeans, Kort guessed he had not yet been outside in the heat. Kort addressed him in a bored and impatient voice. “Kevin Dougherty?”

“Yes?”

Kort said, “Bill Rembler, SCI—Security Consulting International—Mr. Dougherty. This is Linda Martin,” he said, cocking his head toward Monique, who offered a half-hearted smile. “Business, I'm afraid. I wonder if we could have a few words with you a moment? Inside—out of this heat—if you don't mind.”

Dougherty half shrugged and stepped aside, clearly caught off guard and uncertain. Just the way Kort wanted him. The inside of the house was gloomy. Drawn drapes closed out the neighborhood and closed in a sense of desperation. It smelled damp, like an old piece of discarded clothing found in the bushes. The living room was littered with dirty dishes. The television was tuned to a game show in which unhappy-looking has-been celebrities were grilling a buxom housewife who wore too much makeup and spoke in a high, grating southern twang. Dougherty's eyes drifted to the television and his interrupted program. He asked, “What's this about?”

Kort reached inside his breast pocket and pretended to read from a paper he found there. “You work on the Duhnings for AmAirXpress. Maintenance,” he stated.

“That's right,” Dougherty confirmed.

“You and too many others,” Kort continued, playing out his role. “What we got going here is a possible breach of security, Mr. Dougherty. Our agency was called in because Airport Police believes some maintenance identification cards from LAX may have been counterfeited. What we gotta do,” he said, again indicating himself and Monique, “is pick up all the IDs for maintenance personnel. Your people will either have a temporary card for you when you report in, or will return your existing card to you. We gotta make sure that none of the cards have been counterfeited. All right?”

“My card ain't been touched,” said Dougherty in a wet voice. “I can save ya the time.”

“Just the same,” Kort said in a determined tone. “This is the procedure. You can appreciate that.” Kort's hand found the syringe in his pocket.

“You better give me your name again—names again,” he corrected, including Monique, “and let me make a call.” He looked Kort in the eye.

Monique said sharply, “Let me tell you something, Mr. Dougherty. You can make all the phone calls you want, okay? But the bottom line is going to be the same for Rembler and me, no matter what.” She stepped in front of Kort. “We've got twenty-seven more of these to do today. It's a million degrees out there,” she said, circling now, and holding Dougherty's attention. Kort readied the syringe inside his pocket. This wasn't exactly the way he had planned it. “Feels like a million degrees,” she added. “And this is my time of month, if you get the message, and I'm not feeling too charitable. So why don't you skip the phone call and get us the ID tag, okay?”

Kort reached from behind to deliver his choke hold—not to kill Dougherty as he had mistakenly done with Ward, but to silence him and render him unconscious. At the same time, his right hand withdrew the syringe from his pocket.

Dougherty sensed him. With a loud roar, the heavy man spun and caught Kort with a forearm, knocking him off his feet. The syringe flew out of his hand and fell to the carpet.

Dougherty lunged toward the front door. Kort sprang to his feet, intercepting him and delivering a vicious kidney punch. Dougherty stumbled with the blow. Kort drove him down. Dougherty crashed beneath Kort's weight and sucked for air. Monique passed the syringe to Kort, who stabbed it into Dougherty's pudgy neck, injecting the contents. Dougherty blinked behind glassy eyes, drooling as he tried to speak. He grew progressively incoherent and lost consciousness a few minutes later. They were long minutes for Anthony Kort.

“Jesus,” Monique said. She was trembling.

Kort heaved a sigh of relief. She had done well. He lifted the heavy head by its hair and then let it thump to the carpet, nose first. “He's out,” he said. “Gloves,” he added, pulling two pair of latex surgical gloves from a pocket and handing a pair to Monique. He gave her his handkerchief. “The door,” he instructed. “His clothing, the skin on his neck. Don't miss anything.”

“His skin?”

“I touched his neck. They can develop prints on human skin. They can develop prints on clothing. On practically
anything
. Don't wipe, scrub him down like you're doing laundry.”

“I don't
do
laundry,” she snapped.

Monique negotiated the van off the San Diego Freeway and came to a full stop at a traffic light on Century Boulevard.

“Talk me through it,” he instructed her.

“Don't
worry
about it, Anthony,” she said condescendingly. “I can get us in, drop you, and get myself out without a bit of trouble. This is something I do nearly every day of the week.”

“But it's usually in Washington,” he reminded.

“LAX is old hat to me. I'm out here all the time. You're on my turf now. Relax, I know what I'm doing.” She continued through the next few green lights and drove past the signs indicating LAX's arrivals and departures. After a few more blocks the number and quality of the buildings decreased and then, with barren acreage to their left, they passed the various offices, warehouses, and hangars for the subcontracting companies, including several of the major air-freight carriers, all enclosed within perimeters of chain link fence topped with razor wire.

The van slowed.

Kort's heartbeat increased.

She steered the vehicle into a crowded parking area and shut off the engine. “You have his overalls in there?” she asked, pointing to Kort's carryall.

“Yes.”

“At the bottom?”

“Yes.”

“Good. If they happen to search that bag—something I have
never
seen done—then I will make up some excuse about our needing the fire extinguisher on one of our trucks. Don't you say anything.”

“We won't pass through a metal detector?”

“Here? Heavens, no. I'm telling you, you're overestimating the security. All we care about is that the people coming through our facility are our employees. We're not about to search all their lunch pails. Remember this is a private security subcontractor hired by AmAirXpress. They work for
me
, not the other way around. I'm a big shot out here—the benefits of being a home office executive.”

He had studied the layout of the facility on paper. Now he watched it come to life as they left the parked van on foot. From this unsecured, street-side parking lot, they were to pass through the privately operated security check she had mentioned and into the secured area that housed the facilities and field-side parking lots for In-Flite Foods. Adjacent to the security check was a gate that provided vehicle access to the secure area, though this was locked and rarely used. Field-side vehicles were fueled and maintained within the secure compound to avoid the lengthy process of vehicle searches. The food delivery trucks passed through one of the three Airport Police checkpoints, where they were randomly subjected to intense scrutiny. For this reason, Monique had elected to walk Kort onto the field through In-Flite.