Breaking Point (34 page)

“You bet. I'll be there in ten.”

*   *   *

Peter Kim said, “What do you mean,
not answering
?”

Beth frowned. “Teresa's comm unit seems to be working. She's just not answering.”

HELENA

Reporters throughout the country wanted a part of the Malatesta story, following Amy Dreyfus's story in the
Washington Post.
Since so many were in Montana covering the crash already, Renee Malatesta held a brief press event in the hotel's conference room, confirming that Malatesta, Inc., was in the arms business.

She wore sunglasses throughout. It could have been to hide either her tears or her wildly dilated eyes. She wore a long, white Missoni sweater that reached her knees, her hands jammed into the sweater pockets. She looked pale, brittle.

She answered their questions lucidly but with a chilling lack of emotion. She was a humanoid, a cybernetic being. One of Andrew's microelectronic creations.

Her left fist curled around the nickel-plated Colt .25 in the sweater pocket.

Amy Dreyfus listened in, standing with a good friend from the Business desk of the
Wall Street Journal
. Amy tapped a drumbeat on her notepad with her pen. “Something's not adding up here,” she whispered.

The
Journal
reporter leaned in. “What?”

“Where are the other two?”

“Other two what?”

Amy said, “The chief engineers of Malatesta, Inc. Andrew Malatesta used to call them the Starting Five: himself and four other engineers he'd known since they were undergrads. They were really tight.”

“Yeah?”

“Two of them died in the crash with Andrew. Christian Dean and Vejay Mehta. I knew Christian, a little. The others are all that remain of Malatesta's engineering brain trust. Wouldn't you think they'd be here for this? Or that they'd have called the press conference back in Maryland? This isn't adding up.”

The
Journal
reporter just shrugged.

Amy said to herself,
I gotta get to Maryland. Pronto.

*   *   *

Ray Calabrese flew back to Montana and drove directly to the crashers' hotel. He rapped on the door to Kiki and Tommy's room. They were in.

Tommy said, “You look like shit, hoss.”

“It's not an illusion, Texas.”

Tommy knelt—a little vertigo; not bad—and drew two tiny scotch bottles from the minibar.

Kiki looked at the pale band around her wrist—no watch—then glanced at the bedroom alarm clock. “Is that a good idea, this close to the Go-Team meeting?”

“Trust me, hon. Man's on Mexico time.”

Kiki looked unsure.

They sat as Ray cracked them open, drained them into a tumbler. “Good news and bad news.”

Kiki said, “I always start with the bad.”

“Guy I know who's an expert in the field says there are no EMP weapons. They're forbidden by international treaty.”

Tommy was crestfallen. “What the hell. I know what I saw on the plane.”

“My boss also hooked me up with another guy. This guy's pretty knowledgeable. He says there may be this one engineer who's been working on the theory of a pulse weapon, but it's just on paper.”

The trio was glum. Kiki said, “And the good news?”

“I lied. It's pretty bad, too. First, you two aren't crazy. Daria ID'd Silver Hair. Goes by the code name Calendar.”

Tommy and Kiki slapped palms.

“Don't celebrate. He's an assassin. He's damn good. And she says he's a psycho. If his job's not one hundred percent done, then…” Ray shrugged. “And it gets worse.”

“It gets worse'n a psycho assassin who's good at his fucking job?”

“Yeah. He freelances for U.S. intelligence and military agencies. Exclusively.”

He drained the booze.

A very long silence. Tommy started a couple of sentences, but they died, stillborn. He finally got, “Are you saying … Is Daria…? Is it possible we might've been brought down by a federal agency? This could be some sort of domestic spy shit?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that even possible?”

Ray said, “I'm FBI. That means I'm a cop in a good suit. I don't know jack about the espionage world. Is it possible? Yeah, Texas, maybe. What can I tell you?”

Kiki turned to Tommy. “Please tell me there's more scotch in there.”

TWIN PINES

The town had only twelve hundred residents, but when four-fifths of them agreed to the recommended evacuation, the route to the highway quickly jammed.

State police turned both lanes of the highway into westbound lanes, right outside the town limits. Two of Paul McKinney's four dayside officers helped direct traffic; the other two were guarding the makeshift morgue and the parts shop with the ruined fuselage. Pickups and SUVs quickly jammed the western edge of the town, turning the freeway on-ramp into a parking lot.

*   *   *

Ray, Tommy, and Kiki had to drive on the shoulder of the highway to get back into town. They were joined by a phalanx of fire trucks and Caterpillar bulldozers heading toward the conflagration. Neither Ray nor the crashers noticed the Ford Escort following them, a mile back.

*   *   *

Beth Mancini finally got through to the U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia. “I'm looking for Marshal Tyson Beck,” she said. She explained who she was, why she was calling: that she was tracking down the truth behind two signatures.

The woman on the other end said, “Marshal Beck will have to get back to you. He's in a meeting with the attorney general.”

Beth gave the woman her number and hung up.

*   *   *

At that very instant, Ray Calabrese said, “Marshal Tyson Beck. Yes, please. It's about the crash.”

Ray didn't like talking on a cell phone while driving. He didn't like driving on the shoulder of a highway, facing an unending sea of trucks and cars going the other way. He didn't like dodging the massive, daisy-yellow Caterpillar dozers. It's the reason he hadn't spotted his tail, yet.

“Beck. You're calling about the crash in Montana?”

“Yes, sir. Two black boxes were recovered from the crash. One went to Portland, Oregon. The other to NTSB headquarters in L'Enfant Plaza. They were signed for by, ah…” He blanked on the name. Kiki dug out the notes, which Susan Tanaka had provided them. She showed them to Ray. “Ah, Deputy Marshal Robert Sonntag.”

He waited. He heard nothing. Cars coming out of Twin Pines honked at him, as if he didn't know he was driving toward a forest fire.

Marshal Tyson Beck said, “Is this a joke?”

“No, sir. Sonntag signed for both of the black boxes.”

“What is your name again? Your field office?”

“Ray Calabrese, FBI field office for Southern California. My SAC is Henry Deits.”

The man said, “I know Henry. So I suspect this isn't a joke.”

“It isn't, sir.”

“Bob Sonntag died of pancreatic cancer three months ago.”

*   *   *

Ray hung up as, three miles to the east, Beth's comm unit chimed. “Beth Mancini.”

“Miss Mancini, this is the U.S. Marshal's Service in Washington. We spoke a few moments ago?”

*   *   *

In her surveillance van, Jenna Scott said, “… We spoke a few minutes ago?”

Beth Mancini said, “Oh, yes. Thank you for getting back so quickly.”

“Not at all. One moment for Marshal Tyson Beck, please.”

She put the Mancini woman on hold, adjusted her headset. “Barry? Your name is Tyson Beck. Ready?”

LANGLEY

Barry Tichnor said, “This is Marshal Beck.”

“My name is Beth Mancini. I'm—”

“My aide told me. You're calling from Montana. What can the U.S. Marshal Service do for you, Miss Mancini?”

“Two black boxes were signed for, night of the crash, by a Deputy Marshal Robert Sonntag. I need to confirm that he actually came to Montana, came to the crash site.”

Barry said, “Can you hold a moment?” He put her on hold, studied the new Degas print he'd seen the weekend before and just had to have. It certainly brightened up his office. He reconnected. “Miss Mancini?”

“Yes?”

“I spoke to Bob. He confirms. He picked up your packages.”

He heard a sigh. “That is a huge relief. Thank you. Good day.”

“Good luck out there.”

As soon as Beth hung up, Barry heard Jenna's voice in his ear: “Hook, line, and sinker.”

TWIN PINES

Calendar met up with his two ex-Special Forces soldiers, Cates and Dyson, less than three blocks from the crashers' new meeting space. Calendar laid out the new goal, told them they'd be using the forest fire as cover. These were soldiers he'd worked with before. Guys he knew could do the deed, quickly and cleanly, then evaporate like dew.

*   *   *

Ray said, “I don't know if it's the fire, but now I'm getting nothing but static.”

He folded his cell.

Tommy checked the dashboard clock. “We're early. Look, there's the real estate office. You go use their landlines or, I don't know, someone's comm unit. Me, I'd kill for an aspirin.”

Kiki said, “Me, too.”

Ray parked and undid his seat belt. Tommy said, “I'll drive,” and the other two laughed.

“Hey, Concussion Boy. Kiki's driving.”

She moved to the front seat, bussing Ray's cheek en passant. She pulled out, heading for a convenience store they'd noticed the day before.

*   *   *

Calendar's man, Cates, sat in a Chevy pickup a block away. “Targets are separating from Guard Dog. Repeat: Guard Dog is out of the picture.”

Calendar heard that message through his ear jack. He was just approaching the auto-parts facility with the destroyed aircraft. The fat, white airship hung over the facility's fenced-off backyard, looking vaguely like a prop from a 1950s science fiction story. As he watched, vans arrived and more than a dozen members of Jack Goodspeed's airframe team began securing the detritus of the Claremont crash.

27

A
T THE DRUGSTORE, KIKI
fished the NTSB credit card out of her hip pocket. “I say we get slushies on the taxpayers' dime. There are very few opportunities for good, honest graft in the … Tommy?”

He was staring down at a point on the tarmac before his shoes. Slowly, he went down on his haunches.

“What is it?”

“Blood.”

Kiki circled the car and knelt, her thigh wound protesting. She saw it now, too. A small, tight cluster of round, coagulated drops.

Tommy said, “Hmph.”

“What?”

“Funny splatter pattern.”

“Funny how?”

He scratched his chin, which he often did when calculating in his head. “Both too much and too little. Like, I don't know, you cut an artery, a really good bleeder, then put a pressure bandage on it right quick.”

She peered at it but didn't see the same signs Tommy did. “Is it fresh?”

“Not too old. See how round these are? Fell straight down.”

“Do you think it's germane to all this?” Kiki made a twirling motion, taking in their whole situation.

Tommy looked her in the eye and reached out one hand. Kiki took it, palm to palm. “Nah. Blood splatter, convenience store parking lot? I don't see how. Except for Tanaka's Law.”

They stood, Kiki quoting Susan: “In a crash, there's no such thing as coincidence.”

*   *   *

Jack put two fingers to his lips and whistled. The fifteen people on his airframe team stopped chattering in the auto-parts facility, turned in his direction.

“Listen up! Normally, in a crash,
where
stuff landed is vital. But this case is different. We've already moved everything once.”

The team members nodded.

“The fire's coming this way. We escaped it once and it looks like we'll have to again. Take everything you picked up off the forest floor and stow it back inside the Claremont. Doesn't matter where. Ginger, here, is going to fly everything out at once.”

Ginger LaFrance waved to the crew.

Jack clapped twice, like the quarterback he used to be. “All right! Let's book!”

His crew starting hauling artifacts of the crash from outside and into the Claremont's ruined fuselage.

*   *   *

Tommy asked the store clerk about the blood in the parking lot. She said, “Oh, gross!” but knew nothing helpful. Kiki paid for Extra Strength Tylenol and two bottled waters. Plus a bag of Fritos because she was feeling salt deficient.

Stepping outside, they found a big white guy in a suit, carrying a clipboard and standing by the rental. Kiki smiled politely at him.

“Katherine Duvall? Leonard Tomzak?”

They nodded.

He turned the clipboard forty-five degrees to reveal a 9-millimeter Glock auto with a long, charcoal-gray silencer.

“Lieutenant, the driver's seat, please. Doctor, the passenger side.”

“The fuck do you think—”

“Dr. Tomzak,” the guy cut in. “I will gut-shoot the redhead unless you do you exactly what I say. Understood?”

They noticed the doors were open an inch. They climbed in, and the big guy got in the back behind Kiki.

Kiki put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot.

The Ford Escort, a half block away, fell into formation.

*   *   *

A firefighter brought his Caterpillar D11T crawler-dozer to a halt and hauled up on the hand brake. He lowered the massive forward blade, which could handle six cubic yards of debris at a pass. He climbed down from the cab, removing his hardhat and wiping sweat from his forehead.

A black guy who looked like a fullback, wearing an identical orange safety vest and hardhat, walked his way. “Pardon?”

The firefighter stopped.