Thai Horse (15 page)

‘About two giant steps south of the Canadian border,’ the agent answered. ‘There’s nothing there, Colonel, it’s been snowed under for three months. It’s where God lost his snowshoes.’

Montana? Sloan pulled out the
M
urphy file and went back over it, reading every line, looking for some reference to Shelby, Montana. But he found nothing. Well, hell, Sloan thought, where can he go from Shelby? He assigned Zabriski to take the next flight to Billings, wait for Hatcher to show up and follow him.

‘And, Zabriski, this guy’s slippery, got it? He’s got tricks you haven’t heard of yet.’

‘Do we bust him?’ Zabriski asked.

‘Hell, no, he hasn’t done anything
w
rong,’ Sloan said. ‘I just want to know what the hell he’s
up
to.’

Maybe, thought Sloan, he’s doing a double-back. Maybe he’s checking
me
out. The risk in hiring Hatcher was that he was too clever. If Hatcher turned into a loose cannon, he could be very dangerous.. After Los Boxes, it was much too early in the game to trust Hatcher.

The twin-
engine
De Havilland snaked its way through the narrow lane the blowers had trenched through the snow. On either side of the plane, high-piled
snow banks
loomed above the fuselage, snow that had been collecting for months. The airport terminal was a small one-story building almost hidden in the white drifts. There was a hangar nearby, barely peeking ove
r
the snow, with a tattered windsock flapping straight out from its warped pole in the subfreezing wind. That w
a
s all there was to the airport. Hatcher’s boots squeaked and his breath left trails of steam in his wake as he hurried across the snow-packed tarmac toward the warmth of the tiny terminal, which was barely the size of a large living room.

On one side of the room was an
airline
counter operated by a skinny young man who looked h
al
f asleep; facing it on the other side of the room was a food -dispensing machine and a combination taxi and rental car service, both operated by the same person, a grizzled man in need of a shave, wearing a fur cap and three layers of wool shirts. The arrival of the flight hardly stirred much activity in the terminal. There were only two other passengers on the small feeder line.

Hatcher drew a cup of coffee from the machine and waited until one of the passengers had gone through the drill of renting a car. When he left, Hatcher approached the fur-capped old man, who was leaning over the rental form, completing it with a stub of a pencil.

‘How long’s it take to get to Cut Bank?’ Hatcher’s frazzled voice asked.

The old man kept working on his form. ‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Time a year. Summertime, takes about forty-five minutes.’

‘Well, how about in the winter, like right now, for instance?’

‘Two hours, if you know the road.’

‘Know how far it is up to the government hay station?’ Hatcher growled.

The old fellow kept writing and said, still without looking up, ‘Thirty-seven miles, more or less, most of it uphill. You ain’t used to driving in snow, forget it. They won’t even find you until spring.’

‘You the cabdriver, too?’

‘Yep.’

‘How much to run me up there?’

‘Son, you make it sound like a bike ride in the park,’ he said, still concentrating on the form.

Hatcher slid a hundred-dollar bill under his nose. ‘There’s another one just like that when we get back,’ he said in his chafing whisper. ‘I shouldn’t be up there more than an hour.’

The old fellow stared down at Ben Franklin’s cryptic grin for a few moments, then looked up. ‘You must be a government fella,’ he said.

‘You want a biography, it’ll cost you that Ben Franklin,’ Hatcher’s frazzled voice answered as he nodded toward the hundred.

‘Nuff said,’ the old man said, folding the bill and tucking it in one of his shirt pockets. ‘Last plane back to Billings is at four.’ He looked at his ‘watch. ‘Gives us six hours.’

‘How about Spokane?’

‘One flight a day. Two-thirty.’

‘Let’s aim for that,’ Hatcher said in his grating voice.

‘Uh-huh,’ the old fellow said and stuck out his hand. ‘Name’s Rufus Eskew.’

‘Chris,’ Hatcher said, shaking a hand tormented with calluses.

‘Better do something about that cold,’ Rufus said, reaching under the counter for his keys.

The chopper swept in low over the meadow, scrambling the deer that had already sniffed out the first batch of hay it had dropped. Simmons stood in the open hatch layered in heavy clothing, his face protected by a scarf against the frigid wind that blasted down on him
a
nd his partner from the chopper blades overhead. His eyes peered out from behind sunglasses between the scarf and the wool hat that was pulled down hard over his ears. His thick black eyebrows were caked with frost. He held on to the heavy lifeline over the side hatch and waited until the pilot whipped the chopper around.

Below them, the herd bounded about erratically, except for one magnificent stag who stood his ground, testing the air with his quivering nostrils, watching as the helicopter lowered over the frosted meadow that was trapped between two mountain peaks.

‘Lookit that arrogant son-bitch,’ Si
m
mons yelled to his partner in the waist of the chopper. ‘That’s one gorgeous buck.’

They were twenty feet above the drifted lea when Simmons put both feet against the two-hundred-pound bale and kicked and pushed it out the door. He watched it tumble down, end over end, smack the ground and burst in a shower of snow and hay.

‘Come and get it, little darlin’s,’ he yelled down at the herd, which had been trapped by a sudden snowstorm and was facing starvation. On the other side, Eddie, his kick-boss, launched the last of the bales. He turned to Simmons and shot a thumb toward the roof of the plane. Simmons heard his voice over the intercom: ‘Okay, bombs away. Let’s go get some hot coffee.’

‘I hear that and that’s a roger and good-damn-news,’ the pilot answered.

Simmons and Eddie closed the hatch doors and sat in front of the feeble heaters. The air that blew out of the two vents was warm air only by comparison with the outside wind. Simmons took out a pint of Canadian Club, pulled down his scarf and took a long swig from the bottle. He wiped the mouth off with his gloved hand and gave the bottle to Eddie, then shook all over as if he’d been struck by lightning. ‘Who-eeee! That’ll get us home,’ he cried out, then pulled the scarf back up over his face, put away the bottle when Eddie had taken his turn, and wrapped his arms around himself. He would sleep for the twenty minutes it took to get to the station.

The pilot’s voice came over the intercom: ‘I just got a call from base. There’s a guy waitin’ there to see you, Harley.’

Simmons perked up. Now, who in hell would come out to the base to see him in this weather? he wondered.

‘What’s his name?’ Simmons asked the pilot.

‘Didn’t ask.’

Simmons worried about it all the way back. He had problems with paranoia anyway. If Lee back at the base didn’t know who it was, then who the hell was it? He was out of the chopper and running toward the office while the chopper blades were still spinning. Who
was
this guy, anyway?

Simmons knew Rufus Eskew, so it had to be the other guy. He was standing over the floor heater, drinking coffee from a cup he held with both hands
—
six, six one, dark hair streaked with gray, built like a boxer. Lookit that tan, Simmons thought. That guy’s from someplace south. L.A. or Florida. He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater, tan corduroy pants tucked into fleece-lined boots and a heavy fleece jacket. And sunglasses. L.A., Simmons decided. Then he took off the glasses and Simmons was staring into the coldest gray eyes he’d ever seen.

Washington, Simmons said to himself.

‘Mr. Simmons, my name’s Hatcher,’ his grinding whisper said.

Jesus, Simmons thought, listen to that. The guy whispers.

‘Let’s go someplace and talk for a minute. This is kind of personal,’ Hatcher suggested.

Personal? Personal? What the
hell
could be personal. He didn’t owe a dollar. His alimony ‘was paid up. Even his jeep was paid for.

‘You got twenty minutes to warm your asses,’ the pilot said as the rest of the crew piled into the shack behind him. ‘They’re loading us up again.’

‘We can go in the director’s office,’ Simmons said. ‘He’s down in Helena for a couple days.’

He led Hatcher into a small
room
with a desk that was barren except for the phone. The room contained the desk, an old-fashioned glass-front bookcase with several government publications scattered
in
it, and a hat tree. The calendar on the wall was from the Haygood Seed and Feed Company in Shelby. Hatcher looked around the office and thought, The director is either incredibly well organized or incredibly underworked. He sat down on the corner of the desk.

‘Grab a chair,’ he said.

Simmons sat. He looked scared to ‘death.

‘What’s goin’ on?’ he asked.

‘I’m with the MIA Commission. “We’re wrapping up the Cody case,’ Hatcher said.

‘Oh Jesus, I knew
i
t. I knew it was that. Damn it, how many times I got to go through that thing? I been outa the fuckin’ Army for almost fifteen years and they been wrappin’ up the Cody case ever since.’

Hatcher was shocked at Simmons’s reaction. But it was also revealing. It was as if Simmons’s worst fear had risen up and grabbed him by the throat. Hatcher knew the signs and at that moment knew his hunch was correct. All he had to do was keep pressing. Simmons was looking to crack.

‘It’s just a routine thing,’ Hatcher said. ‘No reason to get crazy on me.’

‘I been out here for ten years,’ Simmons said. ‘Trying to forget all that. I don’t need
. . .‘
He didn’t finish the sentence.

‘Just a few loose ends,’ said Hatcher. ‘Won’t take but a minute.’

‘Anyway, I heard Cody was officially dead.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘Then what the hell.
.

‘What it is, there are one or two things we need to clarify.’

‘I can’t remember that far back, man,’ Simmons said. ‘That’s fifteen years ago. I saw a lot of people die in Nam. They all just kind of run together.’

‘This was the wing leader, Cody. His father was commanding general of the whole theater. I’m sure you remember that one, Simmons.’

Simmons started to get angry, but it was a defensive kind of anger. ‘Look, Mr. whatever-your-name-is,’ Simmons snapped. ‘I don’t remember. I don’t want to remember. I’ve spent fifteen
years
trying to forget all that.’

‘All what?’

‘Everything that happened over there. Twelve months in my life that I want to
. . .
try to make believe never happened. It’s hard enough.
. . .
Anyway, they all looked alike that far away.’

‘Who?’

‘The flyboys that went down.’

‘How far away?’

‘Across the river. You know, we were flying Hueys in Sea-Air Rescue. When you’re doin’ SAR, you’re never just
. . .
right on top of them.’

‘Yeah, that’s one of the things I wanted to run by you,’ Hatcher said, taking a file folder oat of his briefcase and flipping through it. He let the comment hang, watching Simmons get edgier. A lot of guilt here, he thought, this guy is fragile, he’s broken and the pieces haven’t fallen yet. He waited a little longer, then whispered, ‘What it is, we got a little discrepancy in the reports.’

‘Discrepancy?’

‘Yeah, just a little thing. In your debriefing just after the incident you said that the plane hit
the
trees and blew up immediately. Wait a minute, here it is. “We were about half a mile away and he went in upside down and the whole forest seemed to explode. I d
o
n’t see how anybody could have survived.”

Simmons nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said.

‘But in this transcription of the review-board tape in 1981 you say you were close enough to feel the heat when it blew and you could
see
that nobody got out. Then you started taking heavy ground fire and had to abandon the rescue attempt.’

‘Happened all the time. So?’

‘So which is right? Were you do se enough to feel the heat or half a mile away when he
augured
in?’

He turned away from Hatcher arid started toward the door. ‘I gotta get going. Deer to feed_’

‘You’ve still got fifteen minutes,.’ Hatcher whispered softly. He decided to fire long shot. Look, Simmons,’ his voice rasped, ‘I don’t give a damn whether you lied to the review board. I just want to know the truth now. You tell me, it stops right here.’