Perez walks me to our cars about nine. She stops beside Starbuck, looks me in the eye for the millionth time tonight, and starts in on me.
"Do not, under any circumstances, blame yourself for the death of idiots."
"I..." She cuts me off.
"You are going to drive home and stay up all night repeating ‘I am not responsible for idiots' over and over again. Do you get me?"
"Yes, sir."
Instead I go home and actually go to sleep.
The fog is mild tonight, cool, not particularly damp, a few swirls, and a couple balls happily chasing each other across the sky. Fog Dude is there, dressed in his usual black robe with staff, but somehow it feels like he's wearing jeans, a t shirt, and cowboy boots.
"You can't take this so personally," he's apparently been talking to Perez behind my back. "Let it go."
That's the last he gets out before Halloween delivers her spit covered
coup de grace.
It's time to get up and run. Oatmeal. Shower. Off to LAX. Taylor and I have a nice 10 minute chat waiting for my new captain. His name is Don, he's been flying to New York, and now is joining us on the Kona route in place of Matt.
No Perez in the terminal, she's got driving around duty this morning. We walk down to the aircraft, and I walk down to the tarmac. Don spends the entire transit from the street to the gate telling me exactly how he wants me to do the walk around. I nod, make agree noises, say "that's a good idea" a couple times. I have no idea what he said.
As I walk to the tail to check out the rudder, elevators, and skid pad, a commuter aircraft taxis by, pretending to be part of a major carrier, but really a little guy that pays nothing and uses the lesser skilled among us. It's a nice looking new small regional jet, and it's flashing evil with every spin of its tires. I call Perez on my special cel phone. She's over at air cargo, but before I finish checking out the number one engine, I hear the sirens converge somewhere in the 80 gates.
We taxi down Bravo this morning, second in line, no message from Perez on what they found before we're cleared for takeoff, and I start my bird rolling down 2-4 right. We're in the air clean, gear up, flaps put away, climbing through the low clouds. Seems to be in slow motion to me now, but it's nice to be able to sit back and let plane do the work.
Don gives me a five hour lecture on everything I do wrong, down to my penmanship in the logs. I hope there is no quiz at the end of this, because as we're walking off the plane I realize that I have had six hours of instruction, and I can't remember a word of it.
My phone beeps as soon as I turn it on, it's Perez asking me to call. I dial her up, and hear Don complain to one of the flight attendants that I should have waited until we got into the terminal. Another 20 kilos. That's 12 million bucks in just over two weeks. Nice. This shipment came in from Dallas via San Francisco, chemically identical to the first two.
Don wants to go play golf, I take the flight attendants snorkeling. It's a perfect 82 degree day up at Kahalu`u Bay, turtles at the ready, fish feeling frisky, and so am I. Just not for anyone who's here with me. Get back to the hotel in time for a nice dinner, then a late night swim with the rays.
Tuesday night, the Captain and I land our aircraft at LAX at 9:30, a few minutes late, and taxi to gate 75. Together with the flight attendants we take the bus over to dispatch and say good night. Perez is there, she and I head north when we get to the freeway entrance, then east until we reach Upland where she's found a new starting place for me. It's a long drive on the 10, but clearly well worth it once I check it out. A hotel without cameras next to a strip mall with convenient hiding places, and nothing but wooded and grassy hills behind.
I exit the Mustang with my backpack on my back (ok, redundant), and Perez reminding me not to do anything stupid. Behind the restaurant, I strip, put my clothes into the pack and it's off to Vegas, naked, which might normally be interesting, but all I'm going to do is look for a general, so.....WTF.
It's seriously dark, so I pop off the roof and into the air without worry that someone might see me. My backpack has a radar return, but the radar dishes are all on the ground, and my body is between them and the electromagnetic waves that need something to bounce off.
I spend the hour flight hoping the general's an early bird and will get to the office before the worm gets up, as in, in the dark, but I have plan B if he doesn't. Landing on top of an office building near the entrance to Nellis Air Force Base, it's reading time for a few hours until the morning shift begins to arrive, not in the dark but as the sun is just peeking over the tops of the neighboring mountains. I take my camera, complete with new telephoto lens, out of my pack, and test it by taking a shot of the red orb, partway over the desolate red and brown peaks.
Leaving the rest of my gear behind, I fly just to the west of the main gate, hovering high enough to be invisible, my pasty white torso blending nicely with the barely blue early morning desert sky, but not so high I can't make out the faces of the drivers as they enter. It's nice that security makes each one stop, that way I have a good shot at making an ID.
By 6:15 I'm about to leave for plan B, when a last car comes into view. Blue Nissan with tinted windows, the driver has to put them down for the guard, and I have him. I snap a series of shots of the driver, the license plate, the vehicle driving through the base, parking, and our target walking into a three story building. No windows on the first two floors of this concrete structure, but nice large ones on the third.
Nothing to do for a while, I hop back over to my rooftop, and put the clothes on that are hiding in my pack, including a pair of plain glass glasses and a baseball cap. Then down through the building, out the front door, walk south on Las Vegas Boulevard to the bus stop, and head for the Strip. I wander through the hotels, spend time in a couple shopping malls, sit and read some more, and generally waste the entire day.
It was my turn to laugh when Perez gave me the glasses to wear, when I had pledged that I would never do something so stupid to hide my identity, but when I stop in the men's room to pee, I almost don't recognize myself.
It gets dark about 5:30 this time of year, so I make sure to be back on my roof by five, and ready to move by sundown. My operating assumption is that the general will leave late as well, and I will be able to tail him. If not, I have plan B, but that would have to wait for another day.
Karma, however, is not her usual bitchy self. Not quite seven, the blue Nissan exits the gate, and heads toward town. I follow, 1,000 feet above. He drives south, a short jog west to pick up Las Vegas Boulevard, back to the south and into the parking lot of a high rise condominium complex. I can't figure out where he goes, though I wait for nearly an hour to see if he'll appear on one of the balconies or show himself in a window.
I, however, am patient. Back to the Strip, I land on top of a hotel, change, put my disguise back on and walk out the front door. Following the carefully thought out Perez script, I walk down Flamingo to the Clark County library, and use a public computer to call up the property records for the high rise in question.
It is 40 stories, and nearly 400 residences. No one named Church lives there. I print the details, pay in cash, and stuff the thick stack of papers into my backpack. Then it's back on the bus, out to Boulder Highway, through the main entrance of a Boulder Strip casino, into the hotel stairwell and onto the roof. I grab some lucky molecules and fly to Upland, where Perez is waiting to drive me home.
We take the memory card to the pharmacy on Central near the 60 entrance and print the photos, two of each, not wanting to download them onto a computer. He's a colonel, not a general. He's in the Air Force, not the Army. His last name is O'Connor. There's a Steven O'Connor who owns a unit on the 32nd floor of the condo tower. His office building has signage out front that suggests it's the headquarters of a group responsible for UAV's, unmanned aerial vehicles, aka drones.
Successful day. It would have been disaster to have searched the web for General Church, another trap that we were lucky not to fall in to, and instead we are beginning to put together some truth from all the lies.
Chapter 8
Perez and I are back walking terminal 7 this week, making for a quiet morning.
We eat lunch on the flight deck of an aircraft and talk about nothing of importance. I teach her how to input flight plan information into the flight management computer and agree that I need to take her flying, both with and without the plane.
Our break in the afternoon is spent sipping our usual iced teas in the food court, and thinking about how to run the license plate number I got yesterday without the Air Force being able to trace it back, but short of breaking into a patrol car in Vegas, we come up empty.
After shift, we walk out of the office together, get in the Mustang, and rocket to my favorite Italian restaurant, the first time I've been there since breaking up with Jen. Sal, the waiter, lets me know that Jen has been there with her new man. Good thing that didn't happen tonight, I don't know how well I'd handle it.
Perez and I stay until closing, spending more time on the General problem, and then she fills me in on the drug war. The FBI and DEA have traced the drugs back to the Rio Magdalena cartel in Columbia, whose US connection is the San Gabriel Guerrero, a nasty street gang based west of downtown. They sell in a large area of LA, and supply many of the other gangs in neighboring areas. Millions of dollars in sales, no trace of the money. I know them well, they owe me a set of underwear. It was the Guerrero who shot up my ass.
All Guerrero have a unique tattoo, which according to the feds, connects baggage handlers in our cities, Dallas, and Houston to the drugs. The DEA has slipped undercover agents in as baggage handlers at the airports in an attempt to get details on the pipeline. Neither of us thinks that undercover feds are going to solve the problem, but for the moment, it's not really our problem.
We walk outside, and Perez has another present for me in her car, a pair of green contact lenses.
"You told your girlfriend Celeste that you had these, I thought that actually was a good idea, and got you a pair."
"She's not my girlfriend, and thanks."
Perez hits me on the arm. "See you Sunday."
"Good night, Perez." And I'm off to home, then two days in Kona, before we meet again on Sunday for dinner with my parents. Mom and dad have apparently concluded that Jen and I are not getting back together, and they somehow know that nothing is possible between me and Perez, so the Sunday visits are back to being relaxing, eating, and talking about whatever comes to mind. No plan for what to do tonight, I stay in and think about what I might do to a certain Air Force Colonel.
Friday night I fly back in from Kona, but am once again unable to find any useful crimes to fix. I take a brief pass by downtown, long enough to see the rooftop parties from a safe distance, and locate the drone floating nearby. I'm definitely getting better at spotting it. Heading out to Colton, I let the little one acquire me, follow me for a while, and then I lose it out in the desert before heading back to Hawai'i, bored. How strange is it that I no longer think of flying naked at Mach five, 20 feet above the Pacific, as exciting?
Saturday morning I go for my run, shower, then hit the buffet at the hotel for breakfast, alone this morning so I can read the newspaper and get caught up. The first story is so bizarre, I almost wish I hadn't. Two men, black leather, black helmets, black motorcycles, my old neighborhood in the Guerrero part of town. Grainy cel phone pictures. Beat the crap out of a couple of dealers, burned their dope, left a fucking business card on the remnants calling themselves the Mysterious Motorcycle Men, MMM.
Doesn't sound or look like they have any abilities beyond those of mortal men, but they also don't have to worry about looking cool when they land. I finish breakfast, head for Keahole, and then fly for home the old fashioned way.
It's a little after 10 by the time I finish my paperwork, but instead of driving home I drive for Upland, strip to my underwear, change my face, and head for East Heights in search of two dudes on motorcycles. It's windy, light drizzle, and low clouds, making for miserable flying. I have trouble holding my course against the gusts, and it's almost impossible to see anything from altitude. I'm soaked early on, but fortunately my skin temperature feels the same dripping wet in a winter rain storm as it does on a sunny beach in paradise.
Whether it's the weather, or they aren't there, I can't find the new men in black. After a couple hours, I give up and head for home. No more reporting on them on TV or on the
Times
web site either, so maybe they played it smart and hid.
Sunday at mom's Perez fills me in on what she knows. The MMM are normal guys, at least the guys they beat up think so, just big and strong in the normal way, and maybe good at martial arts. She has no advice on how I can find them in 10,000 square miles of territory.
At least there have been no more people intentionally crashing into the highway barriers or trying to get the police to come after them so they can sell their cars at sizeable profits. Still, I can't really figure out how to stop crime, and every time I do something successful the copycats end up making me feel worse for my accomplishments.
