Collision (26 page)

35

Sam Hector aimed his Learjet down his private runway. The compound fell away below him. He set the plane’s course, radioed into Dallas airspace. Then he went silent, slipped off the headphones, and called a number on the plane’s phone. He said, “I hope you’re leaving some gumbo for me.”

“Hardly. I expected to hear from you before now . . . ,” Margaret Pritchard said.

“Listen. There’s been a break in the project.”

“I’m listening.”

“Early this afternoon Dallas police found a body in an apartment. I have a source inside the department. The body is that of a woman who, I believe, is connected to Randall Choate.”

“How do you know she is . . .”

“I don’t. But it might be worth it if your agent flashes Choate’s picture to the landlord, see if anyone recognizes him. See if you can match the woman’s photo to any known ex-CIA, including those missing in action. My source at the force will send you complete info.” He cleared his throat; he didn’t need to go into detail about the additional findings in the police report: the scattered photos of Emily Forsberg in the moments before her death and the description of Ben Forsberg given by the bus station witnesses. Better for her to hear it from an impartial source. The only thing he’d taken from the apartment was the laptop; no reason to let the cops recover Ben’s deleted report from the hard drive.

“Too many deaths,” she said. “We can’t keep this under wraps.”

“Wrong. They’ve been in hiding for years, and thanks to Adam’s work and my digging, I’ve rooted out three of them in the past few days; this woman could be the fourth. This group is imploding under the pressure I’m putting on them,” he lied. “They know they’re close to being discovered. Choate might be trying to eliminate everyone who might talk.”

“I don’t need dead bodies. I need live ones that can tell us where the rest of this group is.”

“I know, Margaret,” he said. “We’re getting very close. There is one problem.”

“What?”

“They know it’s me after them. Ben Forsberg called me. Threatened me. Said they would smear me and my company with all sorts of allegations if I don’t back down. Who knows what he might claim, what he might say? None of it would be true, but I want you to silence the story as much as you can. When you speak to the police chief in Dallas, and I know you will, about this case having implications for Homeland Security, you need to be sure she understands that I’m doing your work and any allegations against me are baseless.”

She hesitated, as though he were asking too much. “Sam . . .”

“Should I call the Homeland secretary? Would that be easier?”

“Of course not, Sam, we’ll handle it on this end. Are you coming straight here after you land?”

“No. We have further leads to pursue. But I’ll call you when I’m on the ground.”

She thanked him and hung up.

Jackie said, “You might have overplayed your hand there.”

“Ben and Pilgrim can’t hurt us now. Ben fled a murder scene and left behind pictures of his dead wife. No one’s going to believe a word either of them say.”

“They know about New Orleans. He talked to Delia Moon—”

Hector didn’t want to think about how Ben had gotten him to let down his guard. “She knew no specifics. And they can’t get there in time. We move tonight.”

Hector pointed the plane southeast toward New Orleans. The hard work was nearly done. Within a day, he knew, his future would be assured.

36

The pilot stirred awake. Voices jabbered in the kitchen. Two men. Vochek. Talking about . . . taking the plane. He could smell the tomato soup he’d started to heat and he thought that his nose was the only part of his body working normally. His neck ached, he could barely see, and his hands weighed heavy, as though his flesh had converted to iron. He groped his front pocket for his cell phone—gone. But he remembered the scattering of panic buttons in the safe house. Pressing the button would send a silent alarm to the Homeland office in Dallas and an alert to the Plano Police Department.

He heard whoever was in the kitchen leaving, and he staggered to his feet, fell to his knees, and started to crawl for the alarm button in the bookcase.

The plane was already fueled and loaded, and Pilgrim was going through the flight check when sirens approached.

“Pilgrim.” Ben pointed over Pilgrim’s shoulder. “We got to go. Now.”

At the front entrance of the air park a police car screeched past the gate, sirens flashing.

“Let me explain to them.” Vochek reached for the door.

“Ben, don’t let her.” Pilgrim kicked in the engines, hurried the plane onto the runway. “We can’t risk that you might not be persuasive.”

The police car wheeled onto the grass around the runway as the jet coursed down the concrete.

“He’s going to pull onto the runway,” Vochek yelled.

“He’s not suicidal.” Pilgrim gunned the plane.

The plane hurtled toward the police car. A second patrol car followed the first, both onto the runway.

“Oh, Christ,” Ben said.

The jet powered forward. Straight toward the cars, which both lurched out of the jet’s way as time ran thin. The plane’s wheels rose; the cars fell away beneath them.

“The officers didn’t get out of the cars so I knew they wouldn’t stay parked. Common sense,” Pilgrim said.

“Your common sense gave me a goddamned heart attack,” Ben said.

The plane’s radio began to squawk.

“They’re going to order us to land,” Ben said.

“Explain that we’re on a Homeland Security emergency. Your boss got juice?” Pilgrim asked.

Vochek nodded. “She can clear our path. She can also stop us cold.”

“Then she gets us cleared all the way to New Orleans. Otherwise, consider the possibility we’ll be shot down.”

She reached for the radio and asked air traffic for an emergency patch to Homeland Security. Three minutes later Margaret Pritchard was on the line.

“Agent Vochek.”

“Here. With Mr. Choate and Mr. Forsberg.”

“Please repeat.”

“Mr. Choate and Mr. Forsberg have surrendered and are in my protective custody.”

“Understood.”

“We want to deal, Ms. Pritchard,” Pilgrim said. “We can give your office everything it needs on the biggest covert group in the government. But we get to fly to New Orleans, no problems. That’s what Vochek wants and what we want.”

“I’ll make sure your way to New Orleans is cleared,” Pritchard said, resignation in her tone.

“Thank you, Margaret,” Vochek said.

“One thing,” Ben said quickly. “Part of the deal. You tell Sam Hector that we’ve surrendered to Homeland Security and are being questioned by you in a secure location. The media and the Dallas police don’t know.”

The silence went on so long they thought she’d disconnected the line. “Why do I need to feed him a lie?” Pritchard asked.

Ben gave Vochek a pleading look. “We have some serious evidence against Hector,” Vochek said. “It would be best for now if he believes these two pose no threat to him.”

“I understand.” The line to Pritchard clicked off, and the only noise from the radio was traffic chatter, directions for Pilgrim to rise to a certain altitude. “Will she lie to him?” Ben asked.

“I don’t like that she didn’t give us an assurance,” Vochek said. Ben and Vochek, sitting in the back of the plane, leaned back in their seats. Texas slowly unfolded beneath them as the sunlight began to die. Exhaustion claimed Ben—he hurt all over his body—and he closed his eyes.

He heard Vochek say, “Why?”

“Why what?” Pilgrim asked.

“Why the Cellar? Why was it created?”

“I don’t know.”

“You joined it and you never asked?”

“Ignorance has its advantages. They didn’t hire me for my brains.”

“Don’t,” she said. “You killed for the CIA. And then for the Cellar.”

“Yes. More stole and spied than killed.”

She went quiet and the hum of the engines became like a blanket. Ben thought of Emily; she hated flying, never would have set foot in a small plane.

“Killed, stole, spied. Which did you do the most?” she asked.

“Does it matter?” Pilgrim said.

“You only killed the bad,” she said. Ben could feel the tension coming off her in waves. One did not normally banter with a man who murdered.

“I killed,” Pilgrim said, “and it’s all bad. I had to train myself not to vomit after I killed. But I won’t feel one second of regret for killing Hector.”

“If Hector is guilty,” Vochek said, “and I’m not saying he is, by any means—you can’t kill him. We need him alive.”

“I’m not terribly interested in what you need. I’m telling you what’s going to happen.”

“You’re not working for this Cellar anymore.”

“I don’t work for you, either.”

She poked Ben with her finger. “Open your eyes. Tell me why Hector would risk this takeover of a covert group.”

Ben considered. “A man like Hector only risks his business to save his business. So whatever he’s doing, it has to be something that helps him maintain his bottom line. He’s had a lot of deals lost, a lot of contracts shuttled away from him. He told me a few days ago he’s in the business of making fear go away. So maybe he needs fear to be back in a big way.”

They fell silent as Texas passed beneath them and Louisiana appeared. Ben closed his eyes, exhausted, dozed. He dreamed of Emily, of the soft pressure of her hand in his. Peaceful and quiet. He awoke with a jerk at Pilgrim’s words: “There’s another plane coming up fast on us.”

37

Ben pressed his face to the window. “It’s not a fighter jet,” he said. “It’s a private jet, but bigger than ours.”

Vochek said, “They’re too close.”

“Wait a sec,” Pilgrim said, and he pulled the earphone plug so the radio could be heard in the cabin.

“This is Pritchard. The plane will escort you to New Orleans Lakefront Airport. Upon arrival, you will toss out any weapons, leave the plane, hands on head, and then you will lie flat on the tarmac. Do you understand?”

“Understood,” Pilgrim said. “Thanks for the escort.” He clicked off the line.

“It’s just a precaution,” Vochek said. “You’ve been rogue for ten years. They just want to make sure you behave.”

“Or make sure they control us,” Ben said.

“After they kill me,” Pilgrim said, “they’ll either promote you as a reward, or kill you because you know too much.” Vochek started to shake her head and Pilgrim held up a hand. “Watch your back. At least until the ink’s dry on your promotion.”

“You’re paranoid.”

“Tell me,” Ben said, “what was going to be the end result of finding all the illicit groups like the Cellar?”

“Shut them down. They’re not accountable.”

“Right. And then what? Trials for all the participants and those who gave them their orders, a public spectacle, the dirtiest laundry of our government aired for the world to see? Or was the shutdown going to be discreet? You’d have to find a way to shut everyone up.”

“We certainly weren’t going to eliminate people.”

“But you weren’t going to give them passes or pardons,” Ben said.

“No, I suppose not.”

“Forgive me for not wanting to step in front of a firing squad,” Pilgrim said.

The gleam of New Orleans, dimmed since the storm, began to unfold beneath them. The radio sounded, the Lakefront Airport—where jets such as theirs would normally land—gave Pilgrim approach instructions.

Now they arrowed across the width of Lake Pontchartrain, the huge lake to the north of New Orleans, one source of the deadly tidal surge that flooded the city. Coming up fast on the city proper.

The radio repeated landing instructions.

Pilgrim scanned the controls. He listened to the reported positions of the planes around him, gauging distance and speed, measuring their own distance from Lakefront and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International.

“This’ll work,” he said, half to himself, then he dove the plane toward the waters of the lake in a steep dive.

Ben pressed his face to the window; the Homeland plane veered downward as they shot toward earth, trying to stay close to them.

“He’s crazy, Ben, for God’s sakes!” Vochek grabbed at Pilgrim and one-handed he shoved her back in her seat.

“Ben, give me the gun, now,” she said.

“No.” He didn’t point the gun at her but he kept it close. “He knows what he’s doing.”

“You’re as crazy as he is,” she said.

Air Traffic Control for Lakefront Airport was not happy, calmly warning Pilgrim that he did not have clearance for the approach he was taking. He raced low over the long cup of Lake Pontchartrain, but he had slowed his descent, flying a bare two hundred feet above the surface, and he came in low over the city. In the puddles of lamplight Ben could see people on the street, watching the plane in surprise and fear, perhaps sure the plane was verging on a crash, before it went past in an instant.

The Homeland plane was the only other aircraft close to them. Pilgrim zoomed over the Superdome, rising to skirt its top, took a turn over the French Quarter, going low again, driving hard along the Mississippi River toward the Lower Ninth Ward. Below in the bright glow of the moon lay a ghostly web of roads, highways, and devastation left over from Katrina, now taking on its own sad permanence. Ben peered at wide swatches of land where nothing had been rebuilt; many homes still lay on limp and broken deathbeds. FEMA trailers dotted yards. He watched the altimeter dip: He was at two hundred feet, soaring fast over the broken city. The engines’ roar made a booming echo against the ground.

He took a hard, screaming turn, downward toward the ruins.

The crazy bastard was going to land the plane. In the streets. Vochek could see below that it was madness: power lines, still-tilted poles, front yards jagged with fencing, ruined houses, trying to crawl back from death.

The gun. Ben still held it, not pointed at anyone, and his own mouth was a thin line of worry.

“Ben. Talk him out of this.”

“He knows what he’s doing.”

Doubtful. She grabbed at the gun and slammed her elbow hard into Ben’s chest. She got both hands on the gun and tried to wrench it from his grasp.

Pilgrim turned the plane hard again, banking, slowing, searching for enough street.

The force of the sudden turn threw Vochek off Ben. He put the gun on the side away from her. Then a small but pile-driving fist hit Ben in the back of the head, smacked his face against the window. His lip split, blood smeared his teeth.

He folded himself over the pistol. He could not let her get the gun; she’d force them to land at Lakefront. The plane took another wrench to port, Pilgrim trying to slow before he ran out of road to land. As the windows dipped, Ben saw the headlights of a car on a deserted street, close enough almost to touch.

Vochek landed on his back, one arm closing around his throat, the other hand’s fingers digging for his eyes, saying, “Please, Ben, give it to me before he kills us.”

Pilgrim needed asphalt. In the moon’s gleam and the spill of light from cars and houses, he saw five threads of pavement, one a busier cross street on the edge of the neighborhood, where the roads and the lots had been swept clean. The other two choices were less-crowded roads. One had fewer houses and FEMA trailers and chain-link fences dotting the yards and was a straight shot. It had the fewest cars parked on the curb. No sign of the Homeland plane close by; they were far above, circling, watching, summoning the local police to intercept Pilgrim. Taking bets if he was actually crazy enough to land.

Well, why wouldn’t he be? He had nothing left to lose. Nothing. First time he’d been told to do anything by anyone other than Teach in ten years, and she was dead. He took no more orders. The realization steadied his hands on the controls.

He descended fast, hearing Vochek and Ben struggling behind him. A pickup truck chuffed through an intersection at a crosshatch on the road, going the opposite way, maybe thirty feet below him as they dropped. Doubt—normally a stranger—filled him, and a sour taste broke in his mouth. He could kill someone, and he was supposed to be a Good Guy, eliminating Bad Guys. A minivan, full of kids, or a car, driven by a high school girl, or a motorcycle, with some regular nice guy coming back from a long day’s work of rebuilding the nearly lost city—no, he wouldn’t let that happen.

He dove the plane down toward the empty blacktop. Had to time it just right, pull up with room to spare, bring it down on three points, with room to slow—

Then the gun erupted.

Vochek knew how to hurt. The eyes, the groin, the bending back of the finger that caused surprised agony. She worked all this brutal magic on Ben, saying, “Ben, let go,” again and again. But he wouldn’t. She stepped on his wounded foot and he howled. She got a grip on the pistol. He raised the gun and she twisted it, felt his finger depress the trigger. The gun barked. The window shattered; a flick of light hit the wing.

“Goddamn it!” Pilgrim yelled.

Ben kicked back with all his strength, trapped Vochek between himself and her window. He kept her pinned, tried to pry her hands from the gun.

“Nearly there,” Pilgrim yelled.

Wheels hit the blacktop. The plane bounced hard, Ben nearly thrown to the ceiling. He kept his iron grip on the gun. He landed back on Vochek, knocking the wind from her. Wings screamed as Pilgrim cut the engines and lifted the flaps. A boom thundered and a shiver rocked the plane, sparks dancing past the window, as a wing clipped metal—a mail box, a street sign, a chain-link fence—and the plane rumbled forward. Another shriek of protesting metal, a jarring bump, then the plane skidded to a stop.

Pilgrim turned and pulled the gun from both their hands. He put it to Vochek’s head.

“The deal is off,” Pilgrim said. “Thanks for the lift.”

“Pilgrim . . . ,” Ben started.

“The police will be here in probably ninety seconds and we can’t trust Homeland. Come on.” He opened the door, grabbed Ben, pushed him out onto the pavement.

“Don’t do this,” Vochek gasped.

“Vochek, don’t trust anybody. I don’t want to see your lovely face again.”

Pilgrim jumped to the asphalt. Behind the plane, a pickup truck and a minivan slammed to a stop. Pilgrim ran toward the truck, his gun out and high to see, and gestured the two women out of the cab. The women stared, agog at the crumpled-winged plane on the road and the crazy man waving a gun. They obeyed, hands up, one crying.

“Very sorry, need the truck. You’ll get it back.” Pilgrim shoved Ben across to the passenger seat, climbed into the driver’s seat. He wheeled the truck hard in a circle, tore around the plane by driving on a grassy edge of the road, and roared away. Through the open window the damp breath of the neighborhood smelled of wet and decay. The sirens rose in their approach: fire truck, police, ambulance.

Above them circled the Homeland plane.

“Ben,” Pilgrim said, “I should have given you the choice to stay with her.”

“We said we’d stick together.” He thought he saw for a moment a flicker of relief on Pilgrim’s face. There, then gone. He must have imagined it.

“They’re gonna chase us hard. You ready?”

“Yes.”

Pilgrim tore along a road of houses of patchwork brick and wood, homes trying to arise from the drowned soil, stripped down and rebuilt.

“I can still hear that plane.” Ben leaned out the window. “He’s banking, trying to keep us in his sights.”

Pilgrim swerved the wheel hard, catching sight of a police car flashing sirens in the rearview, and he wrenched the pickup into a two-wheeling turn toward the thoroughfare of St. Claude Avenue and headed west.

A deputy’s car picked them up, followed, lights blazing.

Traffic was light and Pilgrim swerved and accelerated around cars, ducking onto side roads, and then back onto St. Claude. Ben braced himself for the impact that would surely come when Pilgrim miscalculated and rammed into a bumper or a barrier. Pilgrim nearly clipped a construction sign that marked where the street was being repaired, power-turned hard, drove across two yards, and veered down a side street. He was out of sight of the pursuing deputy’s car and he stood on the brakes, revved into a grassy parking lot full of cars and trucks, a banner announcing a Saturday night revival meeting, presumably connected to a church that sat back from the street, in redbrick grandeur. Slammed on brakes, nestled in between two large trucks in a loading area for the event. The jet went overhead.

They ducked down and Ben thought,
This is how it ends, me arrested with an ex-spy in a church parking lot.
The jet’s whine passed, the deputy’s sirens faded, and they eased out of the truck. Pilgrim started feeling along bumpers for key cases, Ben testing for unlocked doors.

More sirens sounded, patrols responding to calls about the downed plane. The energetic strains of modern worship music rose from the tent that stood pitched near the church. Then the sirens faded again. The buzz of a helicopter replaced the churning whine of the Homeland plane.

“I got a winner,” Pilgrim said, pulling loose a key box from a bumper. “Come on, before the helicopter spots us. They can fly lower and slower, stick to us like glue.”

They pulled away from the revival in a sedate blue Ford sedan.

“I hope this isn’t the preacher’s car,” Ben said. “We’re going to hell.”

“I’m the only one hell-bound. We’ll find you a place to lay low.” They could hear the helicopter widening its circles. Pilgrim wheeled the sedan back into traffic, at normal speed.

“Lay low. Forget it. He killed Emily. I’m not sitting on my ass.”

“Ben. Hector specifically took over the Cellar for this big job. That means I have to fight several people from the Cellar. It’ll be like fighting a whole gang of me. You did your part. You don’t have to take this on . . .”

“I know I’m not good at shooting and fighting, but I can help you.”

“Not now. I promise you, I will kill him for you. For everyone he’s hurt.” Pilgrim’s mouth became a thin slash. “For Teach, and for your wife. You won’t have a long wait.”

“Good Lord. You know where Hector and the Cellar are at.” Of course he knew, and he wasn’t going to tell Vochek or the authorities until he knew what kind of reception awaited him and Ben in New Orleans.

“I have an idea,” Pilgrim said.

“The Cellar had a safe house here.”

“Good guess.”

“If Hector has them believing you turned against Teach—same as Green and De La Pena did—they’ll kill you,” Ben said.

“Yes, they will. They don’t know me from any other jerk on the streets. Hector has all of Teach’s pass codes, bank information—he’ll seem very legit in their eyes. I will look like the enemy.”

“Then let me fight him from another angle. Barker called someone at the Hotel Marquis de Lafayette. Last person he called before he left that house, to betray you and Teach.”

“Yeah.”

“I want to know who that person is. We know Hector’s working for Vochek’s boss on security. But maybe he’s working for someone else, too.”

“Fine,” Pilgrim said. “You go get phone records, I’ll go shoot people.”

“You better calm down,” Ben said, “or you’re going to make a mistake and get killed.”

Pilgrim pulled the sedan over to the side of the road. “Pardon my anger. I’ve lost my life, same as you. But I’ve done it twice now. First I lost my family, my career; and now I’ve lost Teach and the Cellar. I wanted to retire two days ago. I wanted to leave and be in the real world. He killed my hope.” For a moment he was silent, fingers clenching above the steering wheel. “But there’s no place out here for me now. As long as I could stay in the Cellar, then I could hope it could be different for me . . . that I could have a real life. But I can’t. Vochek and Homeland, they’d put me in a cell, have me talking for years.”