Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (50 page)

 
          
“Got
it,” Lassen said. It was obvious that Lassen didn’t need any assistance getting
off the airport. He looked at Lake, and the investor could practically see the
marshal going through the mental exercise taught to all law enforcement
officers that would imprint a man’s face on their memories for years. He held
out a hand toward Lake: “Hi. Tim Lassen—how’re you doing?”

 
          
“Harold
Lake, Marshal Lassen,” Lake responded, shaking Lassen’s hand. “My associate,
Ted Fell.” They shook hands. “Mr. Fennelli tells me you’re a federal marshal,”
Lake said. He motioned to the expanse of high desert and rocky mountains
surrounding Mojave Airport. “Seems like the perfect setting for a marshal, like
the Old West. All you need is a horse and a big six-gun.”

 
          
Lassen
chuckled easily and genuinely enough, but his eyes never left Lake’s. He said,
“Actually, you’re pretty close, Mr. Lake,” Lassen said. “This area used to be
one of the roughest and toughest in the country. Claim jumpers, fugitives on
the run from justice, hijackers, bank robbers ... terrorists ... the scum of
the earth always seemed to congregate around this area, as if the desert would
protect them from the law ... This your plane, Mr. Lake? It’s Italian, isn’t
it?”

 
          
The
federal agent eased into the questioning even more smoothly and naturally than
Lake had expected. Lake responded, “No, it’s not my plane. I know very little
about planes, actually.”

 
          
“Your
plane, Mr. Fell?” Lassen asked, turning toward Lake’s assistant, who thought
himself completely out of the conversation.

 
          
“No,”
Fell replied much too hastily, too nervously. “Actually, I hate airplanes. I
have to practically be sedated into unconsciousness before takeoff.”

 
          
“It’s
a beauty,” Lassen said. “I don’t know too much about them, either, but of
course the job lately has introduced me to lots of different kinds.”

 
          
“You’re
investigating the terrorist Cazaux,” Lake said knowingly. “The lunatic who
isn’t satisfied with blowing up one plane—he’s got to blow up the entire
terminal.” “Exactly,” Lassen said. “This kind of plane, as you might know, is
just like the one Cazaux might use—big, relatively inexpensive, heavy payload,
designed to drop things out the back. This is a fire-bomber, right?”

 
          
“A
water-bomber, to be exact,” Lake corrected him. “And yes, it is Italian. It is
used all over the world for firefighting, military transport, even civilian and
commercial passengers. So how’s the investigation going? You going to catch
that bastard yet?”

 
          
“Oh,
I think Cazaux will either slip away out of the country, do something really
stupid and get himself caught, or one of his soldiers will rat him out for
money or to 'make a deal with prosecutors,” Lassen said matter-of-factly.

 
          
“You
sound pretty sure of this,” Lake observed, trying to act disinterested.

 
          
“I
wish I could say that most crimes are solved by expert, meticulous
investigation by wise, insightful, observant agents, but in fact most crimes
get solved because the bad guy screws up ... or someone very close to him turns
him in.” He paused, his eyes affixing on Lake, and the New York investor felt
the first prickle of perspiration on the back of his neck.

 
          
“Most
criminals, Mr. Lake, are dishonest, egotistical, greedy slimeballs,” Lassen
explained. “Many of the people that psychopaths like Henri Cazaux surround
themselves with are also slimeballs, but they’re usually smarter. These guys
are not quite as violent or psychopathic as their boss—they’re usually
motivated by greed, not by the thrill of killing or some voice inside their
head telling them to kill. They are cowed by the psychopathic leader into
following him, even when the killing grows beyond anything anyone could
imagine.

 
          
“But
sooner or later it appears that the leader is getting too far out of control,
and the smart underling realizes that he’d better cut and run and make a deal
with the authorities before everyone lands in prison for life plus two hundred
years—or dead. The smart underling turns in the psychopath, gets a reduced
sentence or maybe even put in a Witness Protection Program, and thanks his
lucky stars he saw the light before it was too late ... I’m sorry, I’ve been chatting
on here. What is it you do, Mr. Lake?”

 
          
At
first Lake acted as if he didn’t hear the federal agent’s question—and in fact
he hadn’t, because he was too stunned by what Lassen had said. He had precisely
described the dilemma Lake was in.

 
          
Cazaux
was getting more and more violent every day, urging his troops to take more
chances, go to any lengths to carry out his orders. Lake had been looking for
his chance to scrape together enough cash to disappear to a ranch in Brazil or
Thailand, but it seemed Cazaux was always around, watching him, ordering him
around. This trip was exactly a case in point: Lake knew nothing about doing
prepurchase inspections on cargo planes, but Cazaux had him come out here
anyway instead of just staying in his office and monitoring their ever-growing
portfolio of options contracts. They were making ten, sometimes fifteen million
dollars a
day
from their series of
investments, and it required careful study and analysis to keep it all going.
But Cazaux ordered him out here, and now he was being confronted by a fed from
Sacramento, a damned
fed
who seemed
to see right through him.

 
          
“I’m
a smart underling,” Lake finally responded with an easy smile, “and I work for
a broker who can really terrorize a tiramisu or an apricot flambe if he sets
his mind to it. I’m going to turn him over to Jenny Craig any day now.”

 
          
The
ploy thankfully worked—everyone laughed, and Lassen finally disengaged his
piercing gaze, laughed loudly, and shook a finger at Lake as if to say,
Okay, okay, okay, you got me.
“Hey, have
a great day, everyone, I’ve got a long drive back to Sacramento ahead of me.
Nice to meet all of you. Thanks again, Mr. Fennelli.” He shook hands with Lake
and Fell and headed back to his car, casually studying the G222 as he did. He
finally took off his jacket just before getting into the sedan, and Lake
noticed he seemed to wear no gun.

 
          
A
pencil-pusher, Lake guessed, pressed into field service in Hell’s half-acre in
Mojave because the feds were stretched so thin. “Seems like a nice guy,” Lake
said to Fennelli as the fed departed.

 
          
“That’s
the most I’ve heard him say the whole time he’s been here, about four days
now,” Fennelli replied. “Pokes around here and there, flies off, shows up again
a couple days later, never asks for anything, pokes around some more, flies off
again. That’s his Cheyenne over there.”

 
          
That
made Lake relax a bit—the guy really did seem like nothing but a pencil-pusher,
not a real investigator. But as soon as Lake took some comfort in that thought,
his mind went on the alert again. Lassen was a deputy U.S. Marshal—that was not
a ceremonial or political post. Lake wished he had taken more time to study the
fed better. He was going to have Fell check him out.

 
          
“I’ll
be returning to Los Angeles this afternoon,” Lake told Fennelli. “My staff will
conclude the transaction.”

           
‘'Yes, Mr. Lake.” Fennelli said. He
extended a hand to Lake; he did not accept it. “Everything will be ready for
your ferry crews. If there’s anything else you require, please let me—”

 
          
“All
I require, Mr. Fennelli, is for you to do your job.” Lake said, “and to leave
the sleuthing to Deputy Marshal Lassen there.”

 
          
“Of
course, Mr. Lake,” Fennelli said contritely. He led Lake and Fell back to the
Range-Rover. He started heading back toward the flight-line offices where his
customer’s Leaijet was parked, then did a sudden one-eighty turn and headed
back down the flight line. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lake, I almost forgot.” Fennelli
said. “You’ll be wanting to see your other plane. I'm sure.” Lake really didn't
care to see it, but he said nothing as Fennelli sped down the row' of
airliners. It did not take long to reach it. “Here we are. It looks like
they’re farther along the prepurchase inspection on this one.”

 
          
Lake
found his legs and hands shaky as he stepped out of the-Land-Rover and looked
up at the huge aircraft before them. He glanced at Ted Fell, and he w
^r
as
just as whitefaced and nervous as his boss.

 
          
This
had to be some kind of joke, Lake thought bitterly. Henri Cazaux had issued his
order that he wanted this plane, and Lake had found him one right away without
really asking why he w-anted it. Now, seeing it like this, Lake understood
exactly w'hy Cazaux wanted it.

 
          
It
w as a Boeing 747-200F freighter, still in Nippon Cargo Airlines livery,
although the markings on the vertical stabilizer from its former owner had
already been painted over in bright white. The aircraft was a cargo-carrying
version of the 747 airliner, with a huge nose loading door hinged at the top
just below the flight deck, which opens out and up. like a huge sun visor.
Almost two hundred thousand pounds of cargo could be rolled into the cavernous
cargo bay through the front or through large side doors. “It’s a beauty, all
right,'’ Fennelli was saying. “JA8167 is one of the earlier models, built in
1980. Relatively low-cycle airframe, treated fairly well in over ten years of
service although it’s had its share of short fields and tropical weather. It’s
still got its RB211 engines, so its max payload is about ten percent less than
if it had JT9Ds or CF6s, but it’s got its quiet kits installed and it’s fully
certified for Stage Three noise level operations, so you can fly it anywhere.
You got yourself one fine bargain. Who’s going to do the paint job on it?”

 
          
“Excuse
me?”

 
          
“The
paint work,” Fennelli said. “Your ferry crew indicated that its first stop is
the paint and mod shop. Where are you taking it? You know, we do a really fine
job of configuring your bird to your exact specifications. Since you’re a
customer, of course, we can offer you a substantial discount. Nobody does a
better paint job on large aircraft like Mojave. Please consider it, Mr. Lake.”

 
          
Damn flyboys,
Lake cursed silently. The
stupid bastards that Cazaux and Townsend were digging out of the woodwork to
fly these missions had real big mouths. The modifications and paint job were
going to be done at one of four facilities already hired to do the job—Little
Rock, Arkansas; Salina, Kansas; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; or Newark, New
Jersey, depending on which had all the necessary personnel, equipment, and
cargo ready to go, and which was under the least surveillance by the
authorities. Fennelli would obviously want the job badly, so he might try to
contact some of the names in the application to ask them directly. Lake had
sewn up most of those traps so Fennelli might not get anywhere—but then again,
he might if he tried hard enough.

 
          
“I’m
afraid that’s up to the buyer, Mr. Fennelli, and he hasn’t confided in me about
his plans for the airplanes,” Lake said. “But I will certainly pass along your
offer.”

 
          
Lake
couldn’t have been more relieved to get on the , Learjet and head back toward
Los Angeles.

 
          
“Ted,
get on the damned phone and contact the ferry
¹
crews,” Lake
ordered. “Tell them that if they don’t keep their mouths shut from now on, I
will personally see to it that Cazaux deals with them. Then I want—”

 
          
“Harold,
it’s not a good idea to use the Flitephone for something like that,” Fell
interrupted. “The phone on the airplane has to go through a UHF radio station
before it hooks into the landline phone system. It’s worse than a cellular
phone system—everybody with a thirty-dollar scanner can listen in.”

 
          
“We’re
still using the secure phone system and the dead- drop line, aren’t we?”

 
          
“Yes,
but I’m not so sure how well it works over an ARINC network.” The scrambled
phone system was a simple but usually very effective analog voice-scrambling
system that would protect against unauthorized recording and casual
surveillance; the dead-drop line was an 800 number that tied into the local and
long-distance phone lines so all calls made would appear to go only to the 800
number, not to any particular phone or person. Fell knew that sometimes calls
from the plane were not scrambled, or could not be descrambled on the other
end, because of the properties of the additional Aeronautical Radio, Inc.,
radio link.