Hard Target (10 page)

Conrad shifted his feet. “You asking me if it’s possible?”

“Let’s start with that,” DeSantos said.

Conrad shrugged. “Yes, sir. Very possible.”

Uzi glanced at DeSantos, then said to Conrad, “Possible because a bomb could take one of these things down?” Uzi asked. “Or possible because someone could gain access to the fleet?”

“The former, sir.”

“Even the Super Stallion?”

“Even the 53s. Yes, sir.”

“How would you do it?”

Conrad chafed his hands against the red grease rag. He looked over to Vasquez before answering. After getting a permissive nod, the master sergeant said, “A standard military M112 demolition block—that’s only a pound and a quarter of C-4—placed on the rotor hub would cause her to drop like a rock, with no hope of recovery.”

Recovery, Uzi knew, was another term for “autorotation,” a way of regaining control of the craft with the tail rotor gone.

Conrad continued: “Assuming I had access to the explosive material, it’d be a relatively simple deal. In fact, I could take the Stallion down with only half a pound, really.”

“Where would you put it?”

“Well, the pilot or crew chief always does a walk-around before the flight. So I’d want my explosive to be well concealed.” He shoved his grease rag through a belt loop, then shrugged. “If the pilot’s good, and we’ve got only the best here, he could set the bird down even without a tail rotor, so I’d probably put the explosive on the main rotor hub.”

“Ever hear of the Jesus Nut?” Uzi asked.

Conrad smirked, then snorted. “‘Course.” His smile faded. “This bird isn’t named the Super Stallion for nothing. It’s the largest, most powerful and technologically advanced helicopter in the world. Its only weakness is the Jesus Nut. Every mechanic worth his salt knows that.”

“So if a block of C-4 was placed near the Jesus Nut, no one would see it on their walk-around?”

Conrad nodded knowingly. “The thing about C-4 is that it can be molded into just about anything. If I was doing it, I’d shape and paint it to look like part of the rotor head assembly.”

“How would you detonate it?” DeSantos asked.

After a moment’s thought, Conrad said, “Radio detonator or timer. I’d choose a discrete radio channel and detonate it where and when I’d want to.” He threw a nervous, sideways glance at Vasquez, then added, “Hypothetically, of course.”

Uzi and DeSantos were quiet.

Conrad again looked to Vasquez, then back to Uzi. “Anything else I can help you with?”

“Anyone on your staff show any strange tendencies?” Uzi asked.

“Sir?”

“An affinity for molding C-4,” DeSantos said. “Or sympathy for right-wing groups. Or anyone who’s made derogatory comments about Glendon Rusch. That type of thing.”

Conrad angled his eyes ceilingward for a moment, then said, “No one, sir.”

DeSantos crossed his arms over his chest. “I know it’s a tough question, Master Sergeant. I’d be asking you to rat on a colleague, which is something Marines just don’t do. I understand that. But we need an honest answer.”

The “rat on a colleague” remark made Uzi flash on his own situation with Osborn. Like a pinprick to a fingertip, the comment caused some pain.

“Yes, sir. If I think of anything, I’ll let Major Vasquez know.”

“Thanks, Top,” Vasquez said. The Master Sergeant nodded, then left.

Uzi sat there in the silence thinking how it easy it would’ve been to blow up those choppers— something he wouldn’t have thought possible fifteen minutes ago. But there were still too many unanswered questions that required leaps of logic to bridge all the gaps.

“How about work attendance?” DeSantos asked. “Drug problems, disciplinary actions?”

“Impeccable records. All of them. I wish I had a smoking gun, a problem Marine who’d been reprimanded, but you wouldn’t find that here. There’s really nothing I can think of. I assume you’ll want to interview each of them?”

DeSantos nodded.

The major lifted the phone and selected the extension for the Maintenance Material Control Officer. “It’s Vasquez. Assemble the maintenance personnel in The Cage in fifteen minutes.” Vasquez listened for a second, then asked, “How late?... Yeah, I’ll hold.” He cupped the phone and took the copies from his assistant, who had just entered the major’s office. He handed the papers to DeSantos and said, “All personnel on Alpha shift will be available for questioning. One of the men is reporting in late—” He turned back to the handset. “Are you sure?” Vasquez chewed his bottom lip. “Fine. Thank you, Gunner.”

“Problem?” DeSantos asked.

“One of the men was due in late, but hasn’t shown yet.”

“Is that unusual?” Uzi asked.

“He’s an hour and a half overdue. Yes, that’s unusual, Agent Uzi. Very unusual.”

Uzi and DeSantos shared an uneasy look. “Tell you what, Warren,” DeSantos said. “Why don’t we postpone our interviews with the flight crew. Uzi and I will check out your missing man.”

“It’s probably nothing.” Vasquez stood, then shook his head. “Shit.”

UZI ENDED HIS CALL as they approached the Tahoe. “My people already did some legwork for us. They’ve assembled a spreadsheet with backgrounds on all the flight crew, including the crew chiefs and maintenance personnel. They’re sending it through right now.”

“Sending it through to where?”

Uzi held out his phone. “To this.”

“Your phone?”

“This is no ordinary smartphone. I’ve rooted it—hacked it, modified it. Made it...smarter.” Uzi winked. “Just a bit. I mean, just a byte.”

DeSantos looked at him. “Is that some kind of computer joke?”

“It was supposed to be.” They got into the SUV and Uzi fired up the engine. He navigated his phone’s screens, then handed it to DeSantos. “Page down through the spreadsheet.”

“Is this thing secure?” DeSantos asked, taking the device.

Uzi chuckled. “I’m using Serpent-Twofish-AES encryption, which is three ciphers in a cascade—”

“Uzi. Uzi—I don’t know what that shit means.” He quickly raised a hand. “And I don’t wanna know. Brian was a technogeek. He thought a good time was finding a way to hack into government and corporate computer systems. I never had the head for any of that crap.”

“I spent five years working on chip design for Intel. I led the team that designed and built the Pentium 4.”

DeSantos winced. “Why do I attract people like you?”

“Other way around. People like us are attracted to know-nothings like you. Makes us feel superior. Besides, I’m not a total techie. My motorcycle’s a thirty-year-old dinosaur. Suzuki 450. Air cooled engine. Sat in my parents’ garage for a dozen years till I moved back to the States, dug it out, and gave it mouth to mouth.” He flashed on the rides in the hot New York summers— frigid wind rippling his shirt, intense acceleration as he twisted the throttle, the engine roaring with power. When he had told Dena he missed his motorcycle, she forbid him from buying one in Israel because it was too dangerous.
If she only knew what I really did for a living.

“Wife bought me a Harley last year for my fortieth.”

Uzi eyed his partner. “Nice gift.”

“That’s what home equity lines are for. Guess I should be thankful we’re not underwater,” he said absentmindedly as he sifted through the names on Uzi’s phone. “This shit’s gonna take a while to go through.”

“Start with our missing Marine.”

“Corporal William Ellison.” DeSantos continued scrolling through the document until he found the entry. “Got it. Lives on base, a lettered apartment on John Quick Road. Couple miles from here.”

He gave Uzi directions, then started reading the backgrounder on Ellison.

Uzi departed the Air Facility, then turned onto Barnett Avenue. “Anything pop out?”

“Guy’s a model soldier, like Warren said.” His eyes flicked right and left through the summary. “Could be a dead end.”

Uzi accelerated. “We’ll find out real soon.”

UZI TURNED ONTO JOHN QUICK ROAD and drove up to the 2000 block, then pulled in front of Corporal Ellison’s residence. The three-story, six-family base-issue apartment building, with its thirties-style architecture and red-brick masonry, reminded Uzi of the school he attended in New York.

Two anonymous-gray aluminum gang mailboxes rose from the sidewalk like sentries guarding the entrance. Concrete-and-wood park benches stood astride the front walkway.

A patrol car sat parked at the curb, its radio crackling with dispatch chatter. Uzi craned his neck to look at the cruiser through the passenger window. “Looks like we’ve got company.”

“Marines wouldn’t let the FBI get the jump on their investigation,” DeSantos said. “Despite my relationship with Warren.” He handed Uzi back his phone, then got out and followed his partner to the front door. “How much of a lead you figure they got on us?”

“If they were on patrol and passing by, five or ten minutes.”

Uzi led the way across the threshold, holding out his credentials case as he encountered the first military police officer stationed in the entryway.

“FBI. Aaron—”

“I know who you are, sir.” The MP was a couple of inches shorter than Uzi, but his crisp uniform and formal demeanor gave him an air of control. “They’ll be done in a few minutes.”

Uzi said, “We’ll just head on in and look around. I’m sure Major Vasquez wouldn’t mind.”

“Ellison here?” DeSantos asked.

The MP, his jaw tight, answered with a terse, “No.”

DeSantos shouldered past the officer, followed by Uzi. After passing through the hallway, Uzi and DeSantos split up, each taking opposite ends of the rectangular apartment. Five minutes later, Uzi entered the family room and caught DeSantos’s eye. They walked out of the apartment building together and stopped behind the Tahoe. Uzi glanced over his shoulder to make sure the base police were not within earshot. “Anything?”

“Nothing,” DeSantos said. “You?”

“There was a message. On his answering machine.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“I lowered the volume. If this turns into something, I wanted to make sure this time we got the jump on our ‘buddies.’ With nine days to get to the bottom of this, we can’t afford to waste time with turf battles.”

Uzi glanced back at the apartment again before continuing. “It was a female voice.” He pulled out his phone, tapped and swiped at the screen several times with a finger and said, “He’s got a younger sister, lives off-base. Could’ve been her. She was reminding him of her doctor’s appointment at eight. She also wanted him to pick up some groceries on the way to work.”

DeSantos squinted. “Groceries? Strange favor to ask a brother, don’t you think? Especially when he lives on base and she doesn’t. Not exactly ‘on the way.’”

“Maybe she’s laid up and he’s helping her out. Hence the doctor’s appointment.”

“Time stamp on the message?”

“Nope. Old microcassette deal. Rewind the tape to the beginning and record over the messages. It was right at the beginning, so it’s recent. He’s missing this morning, so maybe she left it last night.”

DeSantos indicated the apartment with a nod of his head. “You got anything else you want to look at in there?”

“I’d rather go check in with the sister.”

“Let’s do it. Before our friends get the same idea.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Uzi tapped his pocket, where the tape was safely buried. “For the moment, this is our lead.”

KATHERINE ELLISON LIVED IN DUMFRIES, Virginia, a small, backward-leaning town fifteen miles from her brother’s apartment. Her house was a dilapidated clapboard, with weeds and gravel in place of a lawn, and weathered siding that was once blue but had long lost most of its pigment. Still, the surrounding land was wooded and green, pleasant and quiet.

Uzi pulled against the curb, blocking the short driveway where a red Dodge Ram was parked. “Does the corporal own a pickup?”

“In fact, he does.”

Uzi’s eyebrows rose, an understated movement intended to punctuate the fact that Ellison was there and that something had to be amiss. “He hasn’t called into work.”

DeSantos thought for a second, then said, “Sister’s ill and he took her to the hospital.”

“His pickup is blocking the driveway.”

DeSantos’s eyes darted around as he sought another explanation. “They took her car, which was parked at the curb. Or an ambulance came and took both of them to the hospital. Or—”

“When you hear hoof beats,” Uzi said, “think horses, not zebras.” It was an old medical school saw his father had drummed into him: when presented with the unknown, first consider the most obvious explanation before turning to the obscure ones.

DeSantos reached beneath his jacket and pulled out his Desert Eagle. Uzi was doing the same with his Glock. “Ready?”

Uzi nodded, then quietly popped his car door. Crouching low, they hurried up the broken concrete walkway, hands on their weapons and eyes scanning the windows for movement. As they stepped onto the wood porch, a floorboard creaked loudly under their weight. Uzi winced.

They took positions on either side of the door. DeSantos pointed at the doorbell. Uzi shrugged. At this point, if a nefarious sort was inside, he’d probably know they were there. Uzi nodded for DeSantos to continue. He pushed the button and a tinny, high-pitched bell sounded.

A moment later, Uzi balled a fist and rapped on the flaking wood door. Nothing.

“Is that blood on the doorframe?” DeSantos asked.

“Where?”

“There.” DeSantos indicated generally with a dip of his nose.

Uzi didn’t see anything, then understood.

“Someone’s life could be in danger,” DeSantos said. “We’d better go in.”

As Uzi opened his mouth to object, DeSantos kicked in the door.

Uzi swung into position, Glock held in front of him, knees bent, eyes darting around the interior. He slid in, followed by DeSantos. Pistols leading the way, they began clearing rooms.

It didn’t take long for Uzi to find what they were looking for. “Santa! In here.”

DeSantos appeared seconds later. His shoulders slumped in resignation as his eyes found the uniformed Marine lying faceup on the threadbare carpet. “Shit.”

“Corporal Ellison, I presume.”

DeSantos moved the man’s arm with the tip of his Desert Eagle, and the nametag, now visible, confirmed Uzi’s assumption. “Large caliber weapon.” He got down on a knee to examine the gunshot wounds in the forehead and chest. “A forty-five with hollow point rounds, I’d guess.”