Crashers (18 page)

Besides, Peter didn't actually like his own teammates all that much.

The inboard engine was still missing.

It took two orange Caterpillar tractors with crane attachments to disconnect the engine. The gate into the Wheeler residence wasn't large enough, so the crews ripped up part of the white picket fence, then plowed the Cats through the Wheelers' lawn to get to the backyard, gouging up grass and shrubs in their wake.

They began by sliding two titanium steel crossbeams between the underside of the wing and the pylon sling attachment. Heavy-duty chains hung from the ends of both crossbeams. The Patterson-Pate crews had brought along a custom-designed cradle with wheels, like a gigantic Radio
Flyer Wagon, which they positioned under the wing. It was difficult to do, since the wing wasn't parallel with the ground, as it normally was. Instead, the tip had pierced an elaborate, half-circle barbecue pit/picnic area, and the widest part of the wing poked into the air at a one-o'clock angle.

The fuel lines, control cables, pneumatic system, electrical lines, and anti-ice ducting, all of which linked the engine to the airplane, had been sheared when the wing broke free. Workers clamped them anyway. The dangling chains were connected beneath the hanging engine. They fit snugly around the roughly barrel-shaped engine. While spotters watched from five different angles, crews on stepladders disconnected the engine-pylon rear mount. The whole thing didn't fall apart, so they disconnected the forward mount. Now, only the crossbars and the chains kept the engine and wing together.

The chains were connected to a ratcheting gear. By cranking the handle, the engine was slowly, gingerly lowered into the wheeled cradle.

While the Patterson-Pate crew worked to free that engine—engine number four—Peter and three of his people climbed up on two stepladders they had borrowed, without asking, from the Wheelers' garage. They started at the wider end of the wing, at the torn and twisted pylon, upon which the inner engine normally rested. There was no engine now, and no signs of it anywhere they could see at the Wheeler residence.

Shining a penlight, Peter ran his fingers over the warped metal of the pylon, the penlight trained on his finger like a follow spot on a tenor. A small smile flickered across his usually stolid features. He pointed his penlight and said, “Do you see that?”

The other men focused their lights on the pylon.

“Oh, yes,” Peter said, standing. He shoved back the sleeve of his jump-suit and checked his diver's steel watch. “Four twelve. This bird was dirt-side at eight forty-one,” he said. “Plane's only been on the ground for twenty hours. And we just solved this thing.”

Peter and the power-plant crew were so excited, they didn't notice Irene Wheeler catching it all on the video camera her grandsons had chipped in for last Christmas.

Tommy Tomzak slowly snipped the conduits linking Meghan Danvers's eyes to her brain, then cradled the brain in one double-gloved hand. He
pulled, gently. There was a slurping suction sound as the brain slipped free of the cranium. Tommy gingerly slipped the brain onto the scale, noted the weight, then turned back to harvest the eyes.

The man who threw up at every crash scene was unaware that he was whistling a Lyle Lovett tune as he worked.

Kiki Duvall reached the end of the digital recording and hit the controls to listen to the CVR recording for the eighth time. She checked her manly, waterproof wristwatch. It was going on four thirty.

DONAL O'MEARA, HIS THREE men, and Daria Gibron traveled four and a half blocks, either through basements or by quickly ducking through alleys, before emerging onto Somerset. Luck was with them: a bus was just pulling to a stop. O'Meara said, “Get on,” and let his men lead the way. He kept his hand inside his jacket, not far from his gun. He yanked hard on the handcuff linking himself to Daria, who stumbled forward. He put his lips near her ear and said, “Don't think about it.”

Daria climbed on board without making eye contact with the driver.

They moved to the rear of the bus, finding five seats in two rows. O'Meara sat with Daria. He pulled his gun loose from his jacket, just for a peek. “Don't fuck with me,” he whispered.

“I'm not fucking with you. I just saved your life.”

O'Meara sneered. “From your man, that FBI bastard? Not much.”

The bus started moving. “Now. Who are you? Tell me the truth, ye cunt, or I'll kill you.”

The bus began moving away from the FBI cordon.

“Daria Gibron. You've been to my apartment, you know wh—”

“What were you doing in the flat?”

“I've no love lost for the police or FBI. When they raided my apartment—”

“You said you found that fucker at a disco. What were you doing in an after-hours club in the middle of the afternoon, then?” The questions were being peppered at her in a staccato rhythm. O'Meara never released her hand.

The bus continued moving through the streets of L.A. It was maybe eighty degrees; warm even for Los Angeles on March 8.

“I have a business arrangement with the disco,” she lied. “I provide . . . certain supplies for them.”

The Irishmen exchanged glances. “She's a fucking drug runner,” Keith O'Shea said with a sneer.

O'Meara said, “Is that so, then?”

Daria nodded. Why not? It was as good a story as any for her anti-authority alibi.

“D'you know what we do with drug runners in Belfast, girl? We kneecap them. You're scum, you are.”

“Scum who can help get you out of the city,” she said calmly. “Look at you. You have the clothes on your back and four guns between you. Do you have a stash of different clothes? Money? More weapons.”

She could tell by their eyes that they didn't.

“Look,” she said, speaking for O'Meara's ears only. “I don't know what you're doing in Los Angeles. I don't care. Whatever you're here for, I'm betting it's better news for me than any FBI operation in my own backyard. What I did, back there? That was more for me than you. What is it the Americans say? Covering one's ass?”

O'Meara studied her eyes, worked his jaw as if he were chewing something. They rode in silence for while.

“I can help you, Donal,” she whispered.

He barked a laugh. “Help us how?”

“I'm willing to bet I know L.A. better than you. I can get weapons and money and clothes in a heartbeat.”

“How?”

She shrugged. “Do you want my help or not?”

Assistant Director Henry Deits listened to the story that Ray Calabrese and Lucas Bell spun. He made them tell him three times. Then he picked up the phone and dialed a District of Columbia area code.

“Gail? Henry Deits in Los Angeles.”

“Hi, Henry. You just caught me.” It was nearing 8
P.M.
on the East Coast.

“We filed a preliminary report this morning of four suspected Irish terrorists in Los Angeles. Did you see the circular on that?”

“Yes,” the D.C. officer of the watch said simply, slipping into a more official voice.

“We had contact with them but they escaped. One of our guys sustained minor injuries. He got a good look at them and is sure they're with the Red Fist of Ulster. And there's evidence to suggest they knew about the downing of that Vermeer One Eleven in Oregon last night.”

Deits's D.C. counterpart didn't waste time commenting. “Go on.”

“We're declaring a terrorist incident. We suspect the Irishmen were involved in the crash of a major civilian airliner. We request an interagency alert. And we want to take over the crash investigation.”

“Give me your evidence.”

Deits did. When he was done, the woman on the line said, “That's . . . a little thin. NTSB will fight us until we come up with more. I happen to know that Del Wildman himself is keeping an eye on this investigation, and he isn't going to hand over an investigation like that without pitching a fit.”

“I know. We're putting all available resources of the Los Angeles field office into this situation. We should have trace evidence from the latest scene processed within two hours, and we've got LAPD locking down the city. Gail, please. We want this.”

Deits waited.

“All right. For now, I'll call NTSB and tell Wildman what we know. I'll stick around and wait to hear. You'll send a liaison to Oregon?”

“Done,” he said. “He's going to assist in the investigation and, as soon as we've thrown together some serious evidence, something that would stand up to a court challenge, we'll take the reins up there. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” the woman on the East Coast said. “Send someone who's familiar with the investigation to Oregon. Then get on top of this thing.”

“Done. Thanks, Gail. I'll keep you guys in the loop.”

Deits depressed the phone's tine and turned to the two men who hadn't bothered sitting down. “Calabrese? Pack light. You're in Oregon first thing tomorrow.”

BECAUSE OF THE 5
P.M.
rush-hour traffic, it took Daria and the Ulstermen a good hour to reach Beverly Hills. Daria led them—through two buses and finally by foot—to a palatial mansion on Beverly Park Terrace, with a sprawling five acres of lawn, a lush garden, and a colonnade-studded monstrosity of a house that would have looked vulgar in downtown Las Vegas. Donal O'Meara didn't know much about architecture but he knew shite when he saw it. “What's this, then?”

Daria smiled up at him and, single-handedly (her right wrist was chained to Donal's left), opened the heavy, wrought-iron gate and led the lads up the winding brick pathway to the gaudy mansion. She noticed that the phalanx of seven or eight high-end European cars that normally stood on the lawn like grazing cows was missing today. Perfect.

 

It was almost 6
P.M.
and Hassan Al-Rouaf was most surprised to hear the doorbell. Hassan was executive secretary to Abdul-Hakam Bakshar Farouk Abdel-al, a businessman who had done exceptionally well for himself in America. The boss was in Vancouver, B.C. that week, at a film shoot, along with his bevy of hangers-on, which included his cousins from Cairo and Damascus, his multitude of girlfriends, his assistant
executive secretary, the assistant executive secretary's aide, the macro-biotically inspired new cook, and the new life coach, a zen master who claimed to have recently escaped from China-controlled Tibet but who had actually grown up in Minidoka County, Idaho, and gone to Washington State University on a golf scholarship. (Hassan Al-Rouaf knew all this, but he didn't think Abdul-Hakam Bakshar Farouk Abdel-al necessarily needed to be told the truth, because the faux-zen life coach seemed to make the boss happy these days, and who needs more grief?)

An executive assistant to an insanely rich Egyptian businessman doesn't usually answer the door at 6
P.M.
on a Tuesday, but Hassan found himself alone that evening. He had been sipping the boss's brandy and smoking one of the boss's cigars when the deep, lyrical chime sounded. He wrapped a long robe around his portly form and stepped into leather slippers, then hurried down the gently curving stairs to the fine, marble hall that dominated the first floor of the mansion (which had belonged to such illustrious owners as an MGM CEO and the drummer for Whitesnake). He opened the massive oak inner door, leaving the ornately carved, black wrought-iron outer door closed. He found four men and a small, dark woman waiting in the lighted vestibule. The men were clearly not Middle Eastern, yet, oddly, they didn't look exactly like Americans, either. The woman, on the other hand, had Semitic skin coloring and the almond-shaped eyes of the Mediterranean. There was something most familiar about her.

“Good evening, Hassan Al-Rouaf,” she said, in perfect High Arabic with a slight Lebanese accent. “I hope all is well with you and your house.”

“Do I know you, madam?” he asked, also in Arabic.

“My name is Daria Gibron. I have been prevailed upon by your employer, Abdul-Hakam Bakshar Farouk Abdel-al, to serve as an interpreter from time to time.”

He studied her some more. Yes; of course. Daria, the Lebanese woman who had been helpful on a few occasions. And the boss fancied her, although—to Hassan's knowledge—he had yet to, as the Americans say, score with her.

He bowed his head politely but did not open the iron outer door. “How may I be of service to you this evening?”

(Silently, Donal O'Meara ground his teeth together. The Arabic conversation was getting on his nerves.)

“I have had occasion to help your employer in some extremely sensitive negotiations, as you may know,” the small woman said.

“What of it?” Hassan prodded. The sun was setting, and Beverly Park
Terrace is a nice neighborhood, but still: L.A. is L.A., the men were strangers, and he owed no allegiance to a Lebanese. “I'm afraid my employer is away in Canada at the time and won't be back un—”

“Yes, I know,” the woman said. “I have helped Abdul-Hakam Bakshar Farouk Abdel-al speak to officials from British Petroleum on two occasions, as you may recall. I've also helped translate a conversation between himself and banking officials from Zurich.”

“I wouldn't know such details, madam, but—”

“And, on a few occasions, I've translated between your employer and a businessman who has arranged for several young girls to visit this very fine home.”

Hassan froze. What the hell was she hinting at? “I am not privy to Mr. Abdel-al's private life, madam. I'm only his secretary,” Hassan replied stiffly.

“I received a call from . . . the agency that places the young women. Abdul-Hakam Bakshar Farouk Abdel-al has again requested their presence, in Canada. My friends and I are to pick out some . . . suitable clothes for them, from your employer's most humble ensemble.”