And the FAA comes through for me.
But not in the way I want.
NUMBER NOT ASSIGNED.
I try again, a thick feeling in my stomach getting thicker, from this bit of bad news combined with the fast-food breakfast sandwich I ate an hour ago.
I carefully look at my notes, carefully punch in the number, and just as carefully, the answer comes back.
NUMBER NOT ASSIGNED.
Damn it!
I log off, clear the cache, and walk away, staring straight ahead. The nice older woman at the curved library counter looks up at me and says, “Did you find what you were looking for, hon?”
I attempt a smile in her direction. “What a beautiful library you have.”
I move my Jeep Wrangler out, find a small strip mall, and park underneath an oak tree to give me shade. What does NUMBER NOT ASSIGNED mean?
It means the Learjet 60, as white as it appeared to me yesterday, is black. It belongs to one of the seventeen official domestic or overseas intelligence agencies that supposedly exist here in the United States—trust me, the number is much higher—or to some off-the-books well-financed group that does freelance work for intelligence groups, so in case something goes sour or appears on the front page of the Washington Post, there’s the ever plausible deniability for the White House.
Or it might mean that some corporation or billionaire on the boundary between legal and illegal has the money and pull to keep a registration number on that Learjet in the shadows.
However you want to slice it or dice it, my family—my Tom and my Denise!—were dragged into my world yesterday.
Damn it once more.
My burner phone rings, and I’m happy it doesn’t make me jump. It means I’m still focused on the job at hand.
“Amy,” I answer.
“It’s Freddy,” she says. Most people in the Army know her as Major Fredericka West, but one drunken night—after we both successfully passed the grueling hell-on-jungle that is Ranger training—she told me her real family name was von Westphal, and her great-grandfather had been a prominent general in World War II, fighting on the wrong side.
At some roadhouse in Georgia, both of us in muddy fatigues, hair cut crewcut short to keep it clean, she muttered, “He was a good general, but he stuck around too long. Then he joined the other generals to blow up the little crazy Nazi bastard, and he ended up getting garroted by piano wire for his troubles.”
Now she says, “Under four eyes, huh?
“The most four eyes you’ve ever seen.”
Over the years Freddy has researched and admired her great-grandfather’s military skills—even if they were used in the service of evil—and one German phrase she taught me was unter vier Augen, meaning to talk to someone under four eyes, meaning in strictest privacy.
“What’s up?”
“Two questions, one easier than the other.”
“Which one’s easier?”
I say, “You’ll have to decide.”
A dry laugh. “Okay. Go.”
“There’s an airplane registration number that doesn’t appear in the public records. It’s been scrubbed. I need to know who owns the aircraft.”
“You can’t find it through your usual channels?”
“Freddy, I’m calling you at home early in the morning using a burner phone. Does that tell you I’m doing anything usual?”
She yawns. “Good point. What’s the tail number?”
I read off the letters and numbers to her, and she reads them back to me.
“All right,” Freddy says. “Question one. What’s number two?”
“I need to know what installations we might have in a small town in Texas called Three Rivers.”
“How small?”
“Last I checked, less than two thousand people.”
Freddy whistles. “Pretty hard to hide a base or depot there.”
“That’s not what I’m looking for,” I say. “I’m looking for a safe house, a bunker, a dry-cleaning business that might be a front for something.”
“A black site?”
“Yes.”
“You know those are illegal, even in countries that used to welcome them. Like Poland or Estonia.”
“Sure, that’s what we’re officially told, but this is still very unofficial,” I say. “I need a deep and thorough search. Property ownership that doesn’t make sense. Utility bills paid by a law firm in Maryland. Parking tickets for vehicles belonging to the Agriculture Department’s regional office in Boise. Anything that gives a hint of a place that might be used to hide a high-value target.”
Freddy says slowly, “That’s a pretty big shopping list, Amy.”
“Yeah, well, I remember a pretty big whining session a few years back from someone who was going to give it up and go find a Motel 6 to take a hot shower.”
“Jesus, Amy, how many times do you want me to pay you back for that?”
I bite my lip. Damn it, why are my eyes welling up?
“Last time, I promise,” and my voice shudders, and Freddy, a major and executive officer for the Second Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, picks up on it instantly.
“Amy,” she says sharply.
“Yes.”
“What’s going on?”
I keep quiet.
Freddy says, “Amy…is this professional? Or personal?”
I talk through the tears. “As personal as it gets.”
CHAPTER 20
IN THE plain but comfortable office at Fort Belvoir with a sign on the door that says LT. COL. DENTON COMMANDING/297TH MILITARY INTELLIGENCE BATTALION, he sits at the wide and clean desk, slowly rubbing his hands against the polished surface, knowing that if a subordinate were to walk in, right at this moment, he or she would give him an odd look, but he doesn’t care.
A clean desk to call your own is one of the perks of getting this high up the ladder, this high up the pecking order, that slippery pyramid of command and responsibility.
Oh, yes, responsibility indeed.
Lots of burdens of command, both professional and personal, and while the professional burdens are widely known, evaluated, discussed, and probed, the personal are never examined. It is like a big crack in a home’s foundation that is never talked about, for fear it will bring something rotten into the open. Like the dreams, the memories of sharp explosions, the taste of someone else’s blood on your lips, and the trembling that sometimes happens so fast and so hard you retreat to the nearest latrine so no one can see you.
Best to ignore it, and hope no one else sees it.
Transferring this unit from Fort Gordon three years back was a logistical and personnel nightmare, but one does what one has to do, especially when the dim higher-ups dragged them here from Georgia to make some assistant secretary of defense or congressman happy.
So he did what had to be done. Which is always a good way to manage one’s life in the Army.
The phone in the plain and powerful office rings.
He picks up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“What’s going on? It looks like it’s falling apart.”
He knows his caller is thousands of miles away, and he’s amazed once again at how clear and crisp the voice is.
“It is falling apart,” he replies.