The Vulture (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

Charlie added the six pages of single-spaced notes the reporter from the
New York Times
had sent him to the growing pile on his desk. It told him more about Senator Connors than he really wanted to know and added little to his growing corpus of intel relating to Ike's attempted assassination. Still, you never knew. Things connected in odd ways sometimes. “Everything is connected to everything else.” An eco guru told Charlie that once. He couldn't remember where or when exactly, only that he thought at the time the guy was a complete phony. The swami had the circle of life or something like that sort of thing in mind, but in Charlie's experience, connectedness between people and events meant something different and frequently sinister.

Sam reported that she had pinpointed the receiver at the ranch, so Ike's instincts were still sharp. In any event, it meant the operation in Maine could be shut down. When the calls ceased, something should happen at the ranch. They would worry. They would want to know what happened. Back in Maine, attorneys would appear out of the woodwork to protect their clients' right to remain silent. Not that they'd need them. The men they'd picked up had not uttered a word in the days they'd been stashed in a pre-Guantanamo holding facility. So far no one had thought to provide them with their phone call, so no lawyers yet. Assuming everything is connected the way it seemed to be, two of their men in the hands of the authorities had to produce a reaction. Some of the activity should ripple up the chain to whoever was behind this. The
whoever
, Charlie felt certain, would be the same Martin Pangborn whose bios, news clips, confidential assessments, and intelligence constituted two-thirds of the pile on his desk. Releasing them didn't necessarily mean turning them loose on the public, however. They might get lost in the system. Charlie loved that phrase. It covered all sorts of incompetence at so many levels.

The problem with men like Pangborn stemmed from their ability to surround themselves with multiple layers of deniability. Charlie knew that no matter how deep they probed, they would never find any direct or admissible evidence implicating Pangborn to Ike's attempted assassination, to Ruth's, or to the cop in Virginia. At most, he would be an anonymous voice on the phone or, if he were to be in direct contact with someone, that person would be fiercely loyal like the goons they'd picked up in Maine or, like the bomber the FBI lost, be eliminated before they could talk. He made a call and the Maine operation ceased. He would wait and see what popped.

***

Sam noted a flurry of activity on the ranch communication channel. She had not heard back from the cryptographers yet, so she could not know what was being said, but clearly, something happened to stir up the troops.

Ike,” she yelled down the hall, “are you seeing anything? The phone lines to the ranch just lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“Some people hot-footing to one of the buildings. I can't tell if what you have and this are related.”

“Charlie just sent this,” Ruth said and slipped beside Ike on his bench.

“What's it say?”

“Umm…They shut down the transmissions in Maine. That's one thing. He also says the two of you need to talk. Just you two? I'm hurt. And finally the Fifty-first Star is the key to the whole puzzle. Goody. Now, just what or who is Martin Pangborn?”

Ike stared at the screen as the Vulture made another east-west pass across the center of the ranch and then banked north to start a north-south sweep.

“Ruth, do you remember Maine?”

“The slogan that started the Spanish-American War? Before my time. Or do you mean our vacation gone sour last year when you accidently blew up a helicopter?”

“A fortuitous accident, as you recall. Those people had murder and mayhem in their hearts. Yes, that Maine memory. The incinerated chopper and its occupants belonged to Martin Pangborn. I gather he is still upset about it.”

“I thought it was covered up by the Agency's clean-up crew.”

“As did I.”

“I guess you and the ubiquitous Charlie will have to have your chat. That can't bode well.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Every time you and your spook buddy have a sit-down, all hell breaks loose and people get hurt, as in dead.”

“Not always.”

“Often enough. Listen, Ike, I know we have to see this through and if it means things might be bloody, well okay. I get all that. But I have to tell you that I am not happy going through life in some nut's crosshairs and it has to end. This is not normal living. I came to Picketsville to take a job at the college. That's all I wanted to do. College presidents are supposed to face down sit-ins, angry parents, thick-headed board members, and insolent faculty, not be shot at, blown up, and maimed. You need to find a new line of work or I need body armor.”

“Maybe made with nano technology so you could change its color? Or disappear?”

“I'm serious, Ike.”

“I know you are. The problem is, most of the really bad things that come my way have to do with who, or more precisely, what I was, not what I am now. The sheriff of a small town has his moments, but nothing like this.”

“You're right. Maybe you need a nano tech past that we can make disappear.”

“I know you are being facetious, but the truth is, that is more of a possibility than you might think.”

“What?”

“I need to talk to Charlie. Let's get this mess settled and then I will find a way to throw a switch and my past, like our Vulture, will disappear from view.”

***

Martin Pangborn expected a phone call. He would wait. Meanwhile, he watched the rush hour traffic stop-start its way eastward toward Whacker Drive. Worker bees on their way home from dead-end jobs and wasted lives, he thought and smirked. If they only knew what he knew, but then, if they did, where would he be? Success, he believed required a ratio of something like a thousand to one, losers to winners and he was definitely one of the winners.

Pangborn stood just under five feet ten inches. His height did not make him a short person as it is generally understood. But he didn't qualify as a tall one either and that was a constant source of annoyance. As a teenager he'd longed to be at least six feet tall. All the popular boys were. Through no fault of his own he'd failed at that, but it might have been the last thing he would fail at. Well, except for the hair. Most of his hair deserted him in his early thirties, though the beginning of male pattern baldness could be seen in his high school yearbook. Like many men, he was in denial about it and sported a comb-over that began just above his left ear and streaked to his right. By now, precious little remained to comb, but he stayed with the practice even after the meager strands on his pate looked as if they had been drawn there with an eye liner. “More comb than over,” one of his employees had said. Unfortunately he didn't know Pangborn had come up behind him and he had joined the ranks of the unemployed the next day.

He glanced at the phone willing it to ring. Martin Pangborn did not panic. He had assets he had not yet deployed. That's how he put it to Jack Bratton, Colonel Jack Bratton. Jack had risen to an E-7 rating in the Navy, no mean achievement, but Colonel was a reach. He'd achieved a small bit of notoriety as bodyguard to a series of bratty rock stars and wannabees. Currently, that is when he wasn't cleaning up after Pangborn, he spent his time providing security, muscle, for concerts and off-the-grid sporting events. The latter had caught the eye of several local police departments but nothing had ever been laid at his doorstep. Nevertheless, in the inverted world of the Fifty-first Star, Colonel had been his landing place. Pangborn had taken to him and had seen to his advancement primarily because Bratton did not seem to have any sensibilities. He was the sort of man who matures from the boy who tortured the cat, pulled the wings off butterflies, or bullied those weaker and more vulnerable than he. There were half a hundred men and an equal number of women who would happily stand idly by and watch Brattan drown, fall over a cliff, or die of thirst while they sat on a case of Perrier. None had yet screwed up the courage or had the opportunity to do anything like that and probably never would. The Brattans of this world appear immune to the limits imposed on the rest of us.

The phone chirped. Pangborn let it continue through five cycles and then picked up. “Go.”

“Yes, sir. You want me to have a face-to-face with the guys so that they get their stories straight before they meet the lawyers, right?”

“I wouldn't say that. I am only concerned about the welfare of some acquaintances. You know that. We have people in the federal prison system and the local Maine constabulary. Find them and see if you can determine what, if anything they need.”

“Yes, sir. Message received.”

Pangborn frowned and tapped off. He liked Jack in many ways and in others he didn't. People had their uses and then they didn't. Among other things, Bratton lacked discretion. His time in the useful category might be reaching its limit, he thought.

The phone line hummed in his ear. He hung up and muttered.

“I will have to do something about him before too long. He's too eager. But first things first. This means the woman is still out there. We need to find out where and finish what we started. People need to know that it is not a good thing to cross me. What else does that mean? Damn, they know something. How much? If they knew to set up that blind, did they know about the tower? No, how could they? Still…time to call in a few IOUs.”

He picked up the phone again and dialed a series of numbers with Washington, DC area codes.

***

It promised to be a long night for several people who would have to search their consciences and weigh their political and financial futures, their survival, against assuming some of the responsibility for the certain destruction of one or more people they'd never met. In the end, personal survival would win, but in fairness to one or two of them, there were a few qualms before the storm.

The next morning, phones began to ring across Foggy Bottom—in senator's offices, the FBI, NSA, and the White House. Charlie received a heads-up from the director.

“I don't know who you pissed off, Charlie, but the proverbial fertilizer is about to hit the fan. I hope your pals are tucked away someplace safe.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

Ike's Vulture nearly flew into the rotors of the approaching helicopter. The drone's guidance system was capable of challenges of all sorts, wind shear, rain, even lightning, while doing things bird-like, but to spot an aircraft and avoid it was not one of them. Fortunately, prop turbulence knocked it to one side and into a dive. Its programming recognized that the craft was off course and losing altitude. It recalculated its flight path and the adjustments the bird's software needed to reset. Within seconds, it had wheeled about, regained altitude, and returned to its pre-programmed vector. People on the ground who happened to witness the near collision, laughed and wondered aloud what, if the bird hadn't dropped when it did, would “chopped buzzard” have looked like splattered all over Mr. Pangborn's new toy?

The tiny five-by-seven-inch screen restricted Ike's view of what happened. He had a sudden sinking feeling that he'd lost his bird and then what he might have to say to Charlie. Charlie told him he needed the drone back and in one piece in three days' time. What he would say if Ike shipped him a crate full of diced Styrofoam? Nothing repeatable in church, certainly. In the next instant he recognized that the drone had righted itself and cleared the chopper's path. He breathed a sigh of relief when the drone leveled out and resumed its preprogrammed course. He made it wheel away and “disappear” for a few minutes and then had it return following a different flight pattern.

“Something big is happening,” Sam shouted. Her voice traffic had escalated quickly in the last few minutes.

“I've got it,” Ike shouted. “A helicopter just flew in and landed. I have our bird changing its altitude and flight pattern. I want a peek at the passengers. Any idea what the chatter on the phone lines is about?”

“Software is still installing. Another couple of minutes and we can listen in, but right now, I have nothing.”

“Why'd it take so long for the spooks to release it? Never mind. I can guess.”

“From my experience at NSA, they are not good at sharing. Charlie can do only so much.”

“Right.”

Ike checked to make sure the Vulture was recording and resumed squinting at the screen. With any luck they would be able to grab a few usable face shots and run them through facial recognition programs. He reckoned he already knew who it would be, who he hoped it would be. If they could get the author of all this craziness on the ground and close, he could end it. Ike did not think he'd bother to wait for an arrest warrant if that were the case. All this assumed, of course, that the dots, when correctly connected, led to Martin Pangborn.

“Software is up and running. I will have some transcripts from the earlier calls for you in fifteen minutes.” Sam sounded excited. Then Ike remembered that she had always sounded that way when some new techno-goodie arrived for her to play with. She piped in the live conversations.

“Star Two is on the ground,” the digitalized voice reported.

“Star Two? Assuming that is the tag for whoever just landed, who or where is Star One?”

“Remember when I looked at the analysis of the Fifty-first Star? Someone named Drexel Franks was described as the head of it. I didn't see his name anywhere else in the material, though.”

“You sound disappointed, Ike,” Ruth said. She had come into the room when the shouting started.

“If I assume Star Two is the second in command, Star One must be the Mister Big I'm after and the guy I'm interested in. I hoped he was the one who got out of that chopper, that's all.”

“Well, perhaps this is the advance party.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it. From what Sam just said I'm thinking it's more likely the real brain behind all this is smart enough to put a patsy in as titular head. That would be this Franks character. Then if there were any serious breakdown, people would naturally go after him, that is Franks, not the actual manipulator of the organization. He, in turn, would glide away into the miasma and disappear.”

“He?…Miasma?”

“I'm assuming the person behind all of this is male and Star Two is our friend Pangborn. I could be wrong. It could be the Dragon Lady, or Meryl Streep having a bad hair day, or Drexel Franks, but my money is on Pangborn. Miasma…fog, mist with an ominous or foreboding valence. Miasma.”

“My ass to you, too. Don't go all English as a Second Language on me, Schwartz.”

“Sorry, Doc. But you see what I mean. If we are going to bring this thing to a close in this decade, we need the players correctly identified and located where we can get at them, not lost in a fog by any other name.”

“And if they all show up here, what will you do?”

“Take care of business. I will make sure they know that I know and that there are always consequences for seriously screwing around with me and mine.”

“Bravely spoken, sir. There is just one problem with that. You have no hard evidence that Pangborn or Meryl Streep, if your second guess is correct—”

“She was a joke.”

“I got it. If he/she is in fact in play, you got nothing to justify going all Rambo.”

“Evidence is a vague sort of concept, don't you think?”

“You went to law school. You tell me. Or does your sense of righteous outrage trump due process?”

“What's up with you? You said you wanted to put an end to this. You said you understood that bad things might happen, but you were tired of having a target on your back. You know me by now. So what is the problem?”

“I said all those things and I meant them, and I do, indeed know you. That is the problem. I also said a lot of other things over the years, some of it on reflection I am not proud of and would take back if I could. Other stuff…well. Now I am saying this to you, Ike. I do not want justice at the expense of losing you. I've already come too close to that, if you recall. Whether from friendly fire, bad guys getting off a lucky shot, or more likely a judge who has little or no patience with vigilantism putting you away for twenty to life, I will not accept losing you because you can do what you do. I want these monsters brought down the right way. That's all.”

“Wow. Well, at least you didn't drop the F bomb. I'm proud of you.”

“I was tempted. If ever there was an occasion.”

“Okay, I hear you.”

“Hearing isn't enough. I want a promise that you won't go all Lone Ranger on me and ruin what we have just to drop one slimeball.”

“The Lone Ranger was the good guy.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You do understand that if we play straight arrow, we might never get this guy. If the source of this continuing nightmare is who we suspect, he will not be easy to nail. People like him have layers around them like an onion on steroids, to prevent anyone from getting close. And he is connected to all sorts of powerful people.”

“Ike…”

“Let me finish. Do you remember when the financial collapse hit a while back and banks had to be bailed out and General Motors teetered on the verge of bankruptcy? Some were considered ‘too big to fail' so the bozos who engineered that fiasco not only got a pass, but to add insult to injury, gave themselves performance bonuses for their monumental incompetence. Some of what they did was clearly criminal yet, they were too big to go to jail. So, it appears there are some people in this society who are permitted to skate on moral thin ice because they are just that—too big, too important, too connected, or too rich, to bring down. They will have alibis, fall guys, high-priced lawyers, and friends in high places who will grease the skids for them. Or enough money to flee the country to a venue with which we have no extradition treaty and, by the way, take their money with them. This guy is one of those people. He might be impossible to bring down the right way.”

“So, you will do it your way?”

Ike sighed and said nothing. What could he say? Any answer he gave would be a lie—to himself or to Ruth. There was no middle ground here.

“Okay, then. I have a pot of stew on the burner. You and Sam need to eat. You can plot and scheme with Dinty Moore. I'm going to settle for a tall scotch and water and leave you to it. Just this, I don't like it.”