War Lord (14 page)

‘So where does Sweetwater fit into all of this?’

‘Kim?’ said Arlen giving her the floor.

‘As I’ve already told you, Cooper, Randy went undercover at NAB. We followed the ownership trail of those aircraft impounded by the DEA to companies owned by Falco and Charles White. Randy managed to get close to them, joined their organization, found the connection to Benicio von Weiss. And then, about three weeks ago, we lost him – lost Randy. We thought he’d surfaced, flying that King Air to Australia, but that turned out not to be the case. Somehow, he’d managed to make contact with the CIA operative and convince him to stand in on that flight to Australia.’

‘He used him as a decoy?’ asked Arlen. ‘That’s rough.’

Petinski pushed on. ‘Cooper, it was only after you told me about the severed hand and ransom note business that another avenue of investigation opened up.’

‘And which avenue is that?’ I asked.

Petinski shifted a folder and picked up a number of pages stapled together, handing them to me. The letterhead informed me that the forensic lab of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police had compiled it.

‘You seen this?’ I asked Arlen.

‘I’m half an hour ahead of you,’ he said, lifting his copy into view. ‘But that’s all.’

It was the report Bozey said would have to wait its turn in the queue. Someone had leaned on the system heavily to have our case jump to the head – the detective, I figured. I read through the report, taking it for a short walk around Bozey’s office. It began with a bunch of disclaimers, which basically said the tests on the hand, note and packaging were incomplete and that more time was required to reach definitive conclusions on each item, and so forth. I flipped the page and read some more. In the limited time available most attention had thus far been given to examining Thing. The report said that the hand belonged to a male of mixed racial origin between the ages of forty and fifty. Every knuckle was separated, and all the fingers as well as the thumb had been broken. Badly bruised skin in the areas of the breaks indicated that the damage was done while the victim was alive.

Maybe the guy had won a few too many games of pool . . .

According to the report, the manner in which the bones in the wrist had been cut indicated that a surgical saw of the highest quality had been used to do the job. There was no vital reaction in the soft tissue around the cut at the time of the amputation – no bleeding – meaning that the hand was amputated post-mortem. Whoever he was, this guy had pissed someone off pretty bad. I turned another page and kept reading, and what I read made me read it again. A snake’s fang had been found embedded in the webbing between the first and second finger. Toxicology tests revealed a lethal amount of snake venom in the blood. It was the view of the pathologist that snake venom had killed the man who belonged to the amputated hand. In fact, there was so much venom in the blood and tissue that the pathologist who performed the tests believed the victim had been bitten many times prior to death. DNA analysis of the venom revealed that it had come from one of the world’s most lethal serpents, the golden lancehead viper, found exclusively on the island of Queimada Grande, which apparently lay off the coast of Brazil, not far from Rio de Janeiro.

Rio. Plenty of roads seemed to be leading there.

I flipped over another page and saw the subhead
Air Force Academy Ring
.

‘I’ll save you the trouble reading,’ said Petinski. ‘The ring’s the real deal.’

‘Randy’s,’ I said.

‘No question.’

The following page dealt with the FedEx packaging. I skimmed the findings, which were no more or less disappointing than I thought they’d be. The paper, plastic and packing tape were all covered in fingerprints, hairs, skin cells and other biological material, but all of it was next to useless as evidence, or even identification. According to the analyst’s assessment, the box had simply gone through countless hands and environments, and identifying which fingerprint, hair and/or skin cells were salient to building a case was impossible. The FedEx box itself was standard issue and the address was not a house or apartment but a post office somewhere in Rio, at a place called Céu Cidade
.
Whoever posted the package could have driven across town to that post office. That lead was probably a dead end.

I dropped the paperwork back on the desk. ‘So what does all this tell you?’

‘Benicio von Weiss is a herpetologist, an expert on snakes. He’s one of the world’s foremost authorities on venomous South American vipers, and has written several definitive papers on the effects of venom on human flesh.’

‘So he’s an expert on snakes, and the guy missing a hand died from snakebite. What’s the connection beyond the circumstantial one? And what’s that got to do with Randy’s ring?’

‘You don’t believe in coincidences, Cooper, so why don’t
you
tell me what it means?’

‘I’m just asking,’ I said, opening my hands out, Mr Innocent.

Petinski’s head was lowered, her eyes on me like a bull about to charge – a very small blonde bull that could possibly do the splits.

‘C’mon,’ I said. ‘I’m the one who’s blindfolded here. Just tell me what this is all about.’

‘I can’t give you the full picture, Cooper, not in the presence of the colonel, because he isn’t cleared for it. This is as secret as it comes.’

‘The lady speaks the truth, Vin,’ Arlen confirmed.

I leaned back against the door. ‘Then I’ll take a down payment – tell me whatever you can in my supervisor’s presence.’

‘Okay, well . . .’ she began, eyes flicking to Arlen and then back to me, ‘as I said, Randy went undercover to keep an eye on Ty Morrow, who picked him up to fly guns and drugs out of South America, once Randy passed the audition. Randy flew legal for three months until the bad guys were happy. They stepped it up sharply after that – deliveries of weapons and drugs throughout South America, and sometimes also into North America. Randy finally came into contact with Mr Big – Benicio von Weiss – after more than fourteen months of flying, on a run to São Paulo, Brazil. He hit it off with the boss straight away. But then the DEA got too enthusiastic on a tip-off from Randy and raided a secret drugs-manufacturing plant in the north of Brazil, in concert with Brazilian government troops, and that set off alarm bells in von Weiss’s camp. Von Weiss, or one of his people, figured that the leak could have come from limited sources, one of them being Randy. So they put a watch on him around the clock. We think Von Weiss ultimately decided not to wait till the songbird broke cover and had all suspects whacked simultaneously. We think Randy might have got word that he was a target at around the time he had to do the run to Australia. One of our people piloted that plane in Randy’s stead to give him some breathing space, and you know the rest about that.’

‘And Thing? The severed hand?’ I asked.

‘The theory is that Randy sent it.’

‘Randy sent the hand?’

‘That’s what we think.’

‘You
think
?’

‘The fingerprints identify the hand as belonging to a low-level crook known to Brazilian authorities as Diogo Jaguaribe, alias “Fruit Fly”.’

‘Fruit Fly?’

‘He’s got sticky fingers, apparently. Money tends to disappear around him. Word in the favelas is that Jaguaribe was killed by von Weiss – stole some cash from the boss; Jaguaribe living up to his alias. Somehow, Randy came across his dismembered corpse. Maybe he was asked to dump it as some kind of test – we don’t know for sure. But we are reasonably certain that he used the severed hand and his ring to send us a message . . .’ Petinski hesitated.

‘Which was?’ I asked her.

‘That he’s still alive and in Rio. Using his academy ring authenticated the message, and the packaging gave us his location – Céu Cidade
,
the favela von Weiss runs.’

‘Really?’ I said. I wasn’t sure I bought it. There’d have been less dramatic ways to get the message across, surely.

‘We’ve been monitoring his girlfriend and—’

‘Alabama?’

‘Yes. And there have been no further communications. That’s as much as I can say.’

‘Why didn’t Randy just post the hand to you?’

‘I would have thought that was obvious, Cooper.’

‘Help me out with it anyway.’

‘I’m a federal agent. We don’t know who we can trust so sending the hand to his stripper girlfriend was a safer option.’

‘Alabama’s not a stripper.’

‘Then what is she?’

‘A topless tall.’

‘Whatever. Look, the obvious part of this is that if Randy thought he could FedEx me something and get away with it, I’m sure he’d have forwarded me a full debrief with all questions answered.’

‘Arlen, for the record I want you to know that I’m not buying any of this.’ It all smelt like it had been lying around in the sun too long. To Petinski I said, ‘Why the trust issues with you being a fed? Why don’t you just tell me what’s really going on here?’

‘We should give Bozey his office back,’ Petinski answered, gathering up her iPad, iPhone and assorted papers.

‘Hey, I’m
nowhere
near finished here. Just leaving the big picture aside for a moment, who cut off the hand with the high-quality surgical saw?’ That seemed a little genteel to me, given the damage done to his fingers. Why not a machete, a large pair of bolt cutters, or even just an axe?

‘The cutter would have been von Weiss.’

‘You seem very certain about that.’

‘Von Weiss wouldn’t have been able to help himself. Studying the effects of venom on human flesh – that’s his specialty. He’d have performed a complete professional autopsy on the corpse. No different than his father.’

‘Who was his father?’

‘Von Weiss claims to be the illegitimate son of Josef Mengele.’

The name rang a bell. ‘The name rings a bell,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t he some Nazi or other?’

‘Mengele was a
Hauptsturmführer
in the Nazi SS and the chief medical officer at Birkenau. The inmates called him the Angel of Death. After the war, Mengele fled to South America and lived in Rio, Buenos Aires and Paraguay, and died in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1979. Mengele changed his name and went by Weiss, Rudolph Weiss. Benicio von Weiss literally means “son of Weiss”.’

‘Why’d they call the old man the Angel of Death?’

‘Because he’d stand on the railway platform as the cattle cars arrived, survey the newcomers as they shuffled along, and with his arms out wide like an angel with its wings open he’d say, “Death to the left, life to the right.” And then he’d perform medical experiments on the ones chosen to live. As I said – like father, like son.’

There was a soft tap on the door. ‘You folks done?’ came Bozey’s impatient voice through the wood.

‘Just a minute, Ike,’ Petinski called out, and then turned back to the computer screen occupied by Arlen. ‘I can’t take this any further, Colonel, I’m sorry.’

‘No problem,’ said Arlen. ‘Vin, this is where I turn and burn, buddy. Why don’t you two go have some fun?’

‘Thanks a whole bunch,’ I said.

‘Don’t mention it.’

P
etinski sat behind the wheel of the rental and pulled a gadget from her bag. She ran it around the ignition and dash with the motor off, then repeated the performance with the motor running.

‘A bit melodramatic, wouldn’t you say?’ I said.

Petinski put the bug sniffer away, selected drive and pointed the Focus toward the Las Vegas Boulevard exit. ‘You know when I said this was beyond secret? The trade in stolen weapons is only a small part of it.’

I knew it. I looked across at her.

‘Cooper, we’ve got an Empty Quiver situation.’

‘What’s that?’

My casual lack of understanding arced her up some.

‘It’s a missing nuke, for Christ’s sake. So, no, I wouldn’t say I’m being—’

‘A what?!’

‘You heard me.’

‘What do you mean,
missing
?’

‘What do you think it means?’

The investigator now had my fullest attention. The situation a lot of people had been dreading for a very long time appeared to be unfolding, only the scenario usually went that the nuke would originate from a leaky weapons storage depot in Siberia, or be provided by some North Korean crackpot, or built by a terrorist group. But this was
one of ours
; how was that even possible? Suddenly all the subterfuge seemed inadequate.

Petinski went for a break in the traffic and accelerated hard into the gap. ‘It’s a W80, part of our upgraded stockpile, a thermonuclear warhead with a variable yield of between five and one hundred and fifty kilotons of TNT. We think Benicio von Weiss obtained it through Falco and Charles White, who we now believe set up the operation to steal it, building on the contacts and systems they put in place over the years to pilfer small arms and other weapons from US bases.’

‘How long’s it been gone for?’

‘We don’t know for sure.’

‘You mean, you don’t know
at all
.’

The look on Petinski’s face told me I was right. ‘Up to six months,’ she said.

‘When did someone realize we were down a nuke?’

‘Six weeks ago.’

‘Where’s it gone missing from?’

‘Nellis, Area Two. Kirtland was also under a cloud for a while, as was Barksdale.’

‘Under a cloud. Great metaphor. Does anyone have any idea where the weapon is?’

‘No.’

‘We don’t know much, do we?’

‘No.’

‘Well, is it likely to go off in a US city?’

‘The physics package cannot be detonated without codes, and they’re impossible to crack.’

That just sounded too reassuring to be reassuring. I mean, was there such a thing as a code that couldn’t be broken? ‘Petinski, as you’re in the driver’s seat, you can take me to Summerlin.’

‘Sorry, we’re going to Nellis.’

‘Sure, we can go to Nellis
after
I’ve paid Alabama a visit.’

‘There’s no point to that.’

‘There’s plenty of point.’

‘It’s not our priority.’

‘It mightn’t be yours, but it’s top of mine.’

‘You can’t tell her anything.’

‘I can inform her that her boyfriend’s alive.’

‘It’s not a good idea, Cooper. We don’t know who’s watching.’

‘As in ours, or theirs?’

Petinski wasn’t forthcoming with an answer.

‘Who
is
in on this wayward-nuke story, Petinski?’

‘That’s classified.’

‘Does the Air Force know?’

‘Classified.’

‘In other words – no.’ I already knew that Arlen was not included in the need-to-know. And his access was ordinarily much higher than mine.

‘Listen, Cooper, stockpiled US thermonuclear weapons
can’t
just disappear. I mean, can you imagine the panic if this gets out? If we can lose one, then why not a dozen or more, right? It will tell our enemies and our allies that our procedures and protocols are totally and completely broken. If this leaks, all kinds of doors within the Air Force will slam shut. No one will talk and tracks will be covered.’

‘Not to mention asses.’

‘The Department of Defense and DCIS have been looking into the theft of weapons from US bases for a couple of years now. We believed we were close, and then the hole in the W80 inventory was discovered. As soon as it came to light, all kinds of contingency plans went into effect, and all of them are as secret as you can get.’

‘Great, only you don’t know when the weapon went missing, how it was stolen, where it is now, or even where your undercover agent is.’

‘I’ll admit it looks bad.’

‘And I thought you had no sense of humor.’

‘It’s not like
I
lost it.’

‘No, but you’re part of the bullshit.’

‘And now you are too.’

‘Would you mind turning this crate around and driving me to your partner’s partner?’ The turnoff flashed by. ‘If you want my further cooperation, Petinski, that is not – repeat
not
– a multiple-choice question.’

*

Alabama’s front door was closed, but I’d rung through to confirm that she was home and tell her I was coming over. Petinski pulled to the curb as Randy’s girlfriend came out onto the porch and waved. Petinski sat and stared straight ahead as I got out of the car.

‘Hey,’ I called.

Alabama put her hand to her forehead, using it as a shield against the sun. ‘Who’s your friend?’

I heard Petinski come up behind me. ‘This is Special Investigator Kim Petinski. She’s also been working on Randy’s disappearance.’

Petinski displayed her credentials without comment.

‘Thank you so much for helping,’ said Alabama.

Petinski gave her a fleeting smile.

‘Another couple of agents came calling after you left, Vin,’ Alabama continued. ‘I thought they were FBI, but now I think about it, their IDs were more like yours.’ She nodded at Petinski.

‘What did they want to know?’ I asked.

‘Mostly stuff about Nevada Aircraft Brokers and what Randy did there. They didn’t ask about the hand or the ransom note. Maybe they didn’t know about that. They were polite. So far, the between-two-glass-slides thing you talked about hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be.’

Actually, given what I knew was going on in the background, I was surprised that the entire security machine of the United States hadn’t descended on this street, locking it down, sealing it off and making Alabama a virtual prisoner. That told me the folks at the top who knew about the missing W80 were scared – so scared they were tiptoeing around the crisis, hoping the mess wouldn’t literally blow up in their faces.

‘So, any leads?’ Alabama asked.

‘You mind if we go inside?’ I said. The slight breeze coming off the desert was superheated and dry, like it had stopped in a kiln to fire some pottery on the way over.

‘Sure. Come on in. Can I get you a drink?’

‘Just water would be fine,’ Petinski replied, looking around the room.

Alabama went off into the adjoining kitchen. ‘Vin, you?’

‘Water too,’ I called out. ‘Though I’ll take mine as ice. And if you could maybe just add some tomato juice, a shot of vodka and a dash of Tabasco . . .’

‘Okay.’

Petinski glared at me. I knew what she was thinking – this was wrong, but I knew how to fix it. I called out, ‘And if you’ve got a stick of celery to put in it, that’d be great.’

‘Jesus, Cooper,’ Petinski hissed. ‘We’re in a hurry here. You mind sticking to the rules? Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.’

‘I’m allaying suspicion, Petinski. Just being my normal self. But perhaps you’re right,’ I told her and called out again, ‘Maybe forget the celery if it’s too much trouble.’

Alabama popped her head around the corner. ‘No problem. With or without?’

‘What do
you
think?’ I asked Petinski.

Three hundred watts.

‘Okay, with,’ I said.

Moments later, Alabama appeared with a Bloody Mary in one hand and ice water in the other. Petinski and I relieved her of them. I crunched the end of the celery stick.

‘So, the drink aside, Vin,’ Alabama said, her eyes flicking between Petinski and me, ‘this is looking a little official. Should I be worried?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘The opposite, in fact.’

She seemed to relax when she heard that, and even attempted the shadow of a smile.

‘Some information has come to light,’ I said. ‘I can’t give you specifics, but we’re as sure as we can be that Randy is still alive.’

‘Oh my god.’ Alabama sat heavily, her knees giving way. ‘Look, I can’t tell you how much . . .
Such
a relief. Thank you. How do you know?’

‘We’re not in a position to say,’ I replied, doing the government sidestep.

‘Who’s we? You two?’

‘The federal agency I work for,’ said Petinski, backing up my sidestep with a little shuffle of her own.

‘Which agency is that again?’ Alabama asked.

I drank some of my Bloody Mary, then drank some more.

‘Defense Criminal Investigative Service,’ said Petinski.

‘Where is he?’

‘We can’t say,’ Petinski replied.

‘When will I be able to see him?’

‘I’m sorry but—’

‘But that’s classified, right?’

Petinski answered with a reluctant nod.

‘You government shitheads play dice with people’s lives.’ Alabama’s anger flushed into her cheeks, turning them red. ‘It’s like we’re goddamn lab rats to you people.’ She stood up and glared down at both of us, her hands flexing briefly into fists, little white and pink balls of frustration. ‘You can go now.
Both
of you. Don’t bother finishing the damn drinks.’

‘Don’t you feel better about that now, Petinski?’ I said as we stepped down off the veranda. ‘I know I do.’

My new partner didn’t answer and went silently to the Chevrolet, aiming the alarm remote at it. I heard a
tweet
and she pulled the door open without a backward glance. No matter what Petinski thought, I had a duty to Alabama and to Randy and I felt that I’d discharged at least some of it.

When we were back in the car, I took a stab at deciphering the odd electricity in the air and said to Petinski, ‘You knew about her, but she didn’t know about you.’

Petinski snapped, ‘That’s none of your damn business, Cooper.’

Bullseye.

She started the car, signaled, and did a vicious U-turn. She said nothing for a few hundred yards or so. ‘I was with Randy
before
Alabama. You happy now?’

‘He leave you for Alabama?’

‘No.’

I let that sit in the air.

‘All right, there was overlap.’ Petinski pulled to the side of the road, the Irish greenery of the golf course visible ahead. ‘Randy cheated on me with that stripper, and it hurt. I wanted him to be punished. I thought maybe that wish had come true when he disappeared.’

‘Alabama’s not a stripper,’ I said.

‘So you keep saying. Whatever she is, I’ve hated her. I think I have that right.’

‘You mind if I drive?’ I asked her.

‘Do whatever you like,’ she told me, her meaning clear.

I leaned past her and removed the keys from the ignition in case she decided to drive off when I got out. I opened the door, went around to the driver’s side and opened it. Petinski unwillingly got out and swapped sides. She stared out the window as we drove back toward town, Mandalay Bay on the Strip in the distance picking up the sun’s afternoon rays and shining like a nugget of gold lying around for the taking.

‘Y’know, Cooper, I don’t care what you think of me or the organization I work for, and your interest in my love life is beyond trivial. You just wasted half an hour of precious time on that woman, and it’s time we’re running out of faster than you know.’

‘Then why don’t you tell me what I don’t know?’

‘The note that came with the severed hand – as I told you, DCIS believes that was a message from Randy to us, authentication confirmed by the presence of his academy ring.’

I still wasn’t sure I bought that.

‘You remember the ransom note verbatim?’ she asked.

‘Probably not.’

‘“Failing to come up with $15 million will trigger delivery of his head. You have 20 days. You will be contacted. No police.” Sound right?’

I nodded.

‘My agency’s interpretation is that, at the time the hand was received by the addressee, Randy believed the nuclear warhead would be delivered in twenty days time. By the calculations of my superiors, we’ve got nine days left.’

Was my chain being yanked here? ‘Couldn’t it also mean that failing to come up with fifteen big ones will result in Alabama receiving Randy’s head in a couple of weeks, probably in a FedEx box?’

‘Look at the language, Cooper. There’s more to it than just a ransom note. The words FAILING, MILLION, TRIGGER and HEAD – all capped. Why do that?’

‘Because the writer’s shouting?’

Petinski pursed her lips. ‘Randy and I had been working on the weapons being sold out the back door of certain Air Force and Army bases for around a year – it was Randy’s first case with us. Then he went undercover at NAB. DoD believed a lot of stolen weapons were leaving the country packed into aircraft, Morrow’s among others. This investigation was called Operation Roy Rogers. Randy and I shortened it, named it for Roy Rogers’s horse, Trigger.’

‘What about the other capped words in the note? What’s their significance?’

‘We believe they’re capped so that “trigger” wouldn’t stand out if the note and the package fell into the wrong hands.’

I’d found the wording and the use of caps unusual when I’d first laid eyes on the note. And ‘trigger’ was an odd word to use in the context of a ransom note.
Nine days and counting . . .
‘How would the device be “delivered”?’ I asked putting a couple of air bunnies around the word.

‘We’re expecting the worst.’

‘But you’ve already said detonation is impossible.’

‘Whether it can or can’t be detonated isn’t the issue. Who’s the weapon going to? A missing nuke in the hands of terrorists? We’re talking the ultimate loose cannon.’

‘What do White and von Weiss want?’

‘Yeah, well, that’s the other part of the problem, Cooper – no one’s got the faintest idea.’