"Put on the full armor of God,
so that you can take your stand
against the devil's schemes."
Ephesians 6:11
At 4:00 a.m., La Guardia Airport's main terminal was a ghost town. Ticket counters were dark, manned only by signs suggesting when they might open.
Win Steele threaded a cluster of young men sprawled on the floor near a United Airlines check-in counter. Each was asleep, close-cropped head resting on an oversized, camouflage rucksack. One husky kid's fingers were laced across a tight-sleeved T-shirt emblazoned with a large Marine Corps seal. Even in civvies, he was proud of being a tough, high-and-tight Marine serving his country.
Win carefully maneuvered a wheeled suitcase through the maze of legs and tattooed arms. More than likely, the troops were combat veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan, merely re-validating a tenet every old warhorse knew well: Sleep whenever and wherever you can. Never know when you'll get another opportunity.
One Marine caught Win's eye. The kid was fair skinned and sporting a buzz cut of copper-red hair.
Same color as Erik's.
The thought flashed and was gone, before Win was aware it had surfaced, before he could deflect it. A cruel ambush that sparked another wave of soul-wrenching sadness.
Seventeen years ago, Erik and his West Point buddies might have slept on this same floor, Win mused.
He forced the thought aside, aware that, since receiving the gut-punch news from Kyler, everything Win encountered seemed to trigger a silent scream: Erik's gone!
He hadn't slept for 24 hours, and was experiencing the initial grip of an all-consuming weariness that would plague him for months.
Only one food concession was open, staffed by two night-shift imports, whose command of English was marginal. Steele ordered breakfast, paid the bill, retrieved his coffee and a styrofoam plate of scrambled eggs, ham and hash-brown patties, then found a table.
The only patron in a huge food court, Win ate quickly, then returned to the waiting area to check e-mail messages on his BlackBerry. Most were shocked condolences from family and close friends. Others were about book-signing events and other business matters, which now seemed absurdly trivial and of zero importance.
Thanks to an Internet-savvy nephew and his wife, who had been scouring the 'net for news, several e-mails included postings that had appeared in the comment sections of Las Vegas media outlets. One particularly graphic account was unsettling, yet informative: "My wife and I were seven or eight feet away from the shooting, as were the police. We were to the suspect's immediate right. We heard and saw the three police officers shouting to the man in question to 'Get on your knees!'
"At that point, the man appeared somewhat stunned by the commotion and shouting of the police. His right arm went up in a defenseless position, and it appeared his left arm [was] going up, but there was NO gun in his hands. He was… shot at the same time.
"At no time did the man in question ever raise his voice, shout an obscenity or become confrontational with the police.
"We saw the [wounded,] disabled man falling to his right, facing us, with what appeared to be a bullet wound in his upper chest [and] blood coming from the wound. Immediately, his eyes became glassy, and he began to convulse. At this point, he was no threat to anyone; both hands were in full view… and there was no gun.
"As he [went] down, the police continued to shout 'Put the gun down!' several times… but there was no gun in his hand, as we had a full-vantage point [of] view. The injured man was having agonal respirations, [and] he was down, when a second volley of bullets rang out. There was no… question that, following the second barrage of bullets, the man was dead.
"His girlfriend was to the back-side of us, and [she] began to scream: 'Why did you kill him? He is a military man, with a license to carry a concealed weapon! You didn't need to kill him! You didn't need to kill him!'
"An officer then came up to the injured man — who in my opinion was… dead — and cuffed him, with his hands behind his back. No attempt [was made] by the officer to determine if the man was alive or dead. No apparent life-saving aid was given to the downed man. The man was totally lifeless, when the paramedics arrived on-scene.
"I was absolutely surprised to see that no attempt at aggressive ACLS [Advanced Cardiac Life Support] was engaged. They… just picked up the body, like a sack of potatoes, and hurled [it] onto the gurney and into the ambulance. This was a crime scene, and [it had been] violated.
"What nobody is talking about is that there were many, many spectators; many, like ourselves, [were] within just a few feet of the victim, when the shots rang out. It seems to me that the greater danger was posed, not by the victim, but by the police, who fired many shots in the vicinity of the innocent public!
"I hope the media and your friends' family can get their hands on [Ho's video data and] cameras, which will, indeed, tell the rest of the story. Also, it must be confirmed whether the second gun, supposedly found by the victim's side, was, indeed, also registered to him as a licensed conceal-and-carry.
"This whole incident was a monumental tragedy; a tragedy for the family and friends, and also a tragedy for the involved officers, who were pushed into a needless confrontation that reached hysterical proportions, due to the overreaction of certain employees and bystanders. This was a needless death."
"In summary, it is our opinion that the victim did not pose an immediate threat to the public. And, in the final analysis, [this] was a case of excessive force.
Win reread the eyewitness account, virtually experiencing the agony that his son had endured. It was as if those slugs had slammed into Win's own chest, exploding his heart. He could feel the impact, pain and disbelief Erik must have suffered, as he was dying. Looking through his son's eyes in those horrible final seconds, Win also heard Erik's last thoughts: NO! I didn't do anything!
Nothing made sense. If Erik hadn't touched his weapon, why would a police officer fire? And what the hell was that BS about a "second gun?" Erik never carried two firearms! He rarely carried one! Win's gun-smart son always secured a Kimber .45 semiautomatic in a compartment between his car's front seats.
Why in God's name, son, were you carrying that forty-five yesterday?
A sleepy United ticket counter clerk appeared and the Marines began stirring, kicking their buddies awake and mumbling friendly obscenities. Win retrieved his boarding pass and followed the young troops through a TSA security zone.
He felt disconnected, as if watching himself and the passenger terminal from a perch outside his body. The unholy scene that eyewitness had described kept playing in his mind. Frankly, it was too graphic for a father in the initial stage of disbelief and shock, but there it was: The initial round of mental and emotional blows the Steele family would encounter, as it confronted a bottomless cesspool of Las Vegas corruption and evil.
Somewhere above 30,000 feet, Win stared through the Boeing 767's window, half-aware of forests, rectangular fields, housing clusters that defined small towns, and bug-like vehicles inching along paved ribbons. Buildings and trees brushed by the early Sun extended long fingers of deep shadow to the west. Most inhabitants of that distant world were still in bed, grabbing a few extra Sunday-morning winks.
Win tried to doze, but the killing-Erik movie kept playing, an endless-loop horror film. It always ended the same: His son gasping for air, eyes glassy, sightless, as life left that sculpted, buffed-up body. A sneering, shaved-bald, Neanderthal standing over him, smoking gun in a two-handed grip.
Then another mindless insult: Cuffing a dead man. Tossing the still-warm, bleeding body of his eldest son onto a gurney, "like a sack of potatoes."
How could an American police officer be that incredibly cruel to a fellow human being? That shit might be normal fare in third-world dictatorships, but not in the United States of America!
Win finally gave up. Sleep wasn't happening. Couldn't, and probably wouldn't, until his body reached its physical limit. He pulled a spiral-bound reporter's notebook from his briefcase, and did what he'd always done, when facing an intractable, knotty problem. He wrote. First, the facts.
What did he know, for sure? Damned little, so he assigned question marks to the hearsay and opinions of Internet postings. To the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department spokesman's quotes, he assigned "unreliable; minimal value." The exercise didn't take long, because there wasn't much to go on.
Next, he jotted questions that demanded answers, consigning them to three categories: those of Win-the-father, Win-the-engineer, and Win-the-reporter. They were difficult to isolate, repeatedly elbowing into each other's territory, fighting for priority.
The father kept screaming "Why?" as his shell-shocked brain visualized his first-born son as a blue-tinged corpse lying in a frigid meat locker. Surrounded by the brutal, stainless-steel tools of a coroner's lab, Erik was just another stiff, a mere toe-tagged number, to compassionless bureaucrats. But that body was his son!
Despite repeatedly being shoved into the background, Win-the-engineer managed to score a few points: Who was that shooter-cop? Young or old? Experienced or rookie? How long had he been on the Metro force? What exactly transpired, after he confronted Erik? What possessed the guy to fire, when, according to several witnesses, Erik presented no threat?
Win-the-reporter fought to keep some distance and look dispassionately at broader, more-subtle elements. Don't jump to conclusions. Assemble the facts and witness reports, then search for linkages. Listen carefully to whatever Las Vegas "officials" were uttering, but look for holes. Maintain a discriminating skepticism.
Butt-covering was the norm for modern "official-dumb," especially when some government fool screwed up. Keep the BS antennae up and rotating. Watch for tell-tale signs of misdirection, obfuscation and outright cover-up, but give the system a reasonable benefit-of-the-doubt—at least in these early hours of confusion and uncertainty.
Then strike fast: Contact insiders and sources ASAP, before still-fresh tracks vanished. Finally, rely on a mixture of facts, experience and gut-feel to nail the real story.
Win soon had pages of questions, but only one solid fact, a lone element of stark truth: Erik was dead, shot to death by a cop. All else was maybe, what if, could be and yet-to-be-determined unknowns.
As Win studied each question, adding a note here and there, the three selves—father, engineer and reporter—gradually converged into a singular, powerful mental image: A roiling, black-laced mushroom cloud rising above a fleet of Las Vegas Metro black-and-white cruisers ringing the Summerlin Ho's warehouse store.
Anger was winning the battle with logic. Above all else, Win Steele wanted to destroy the evil forces that had killed Erik. He desperately yearned to put a .45 against that asshole cop's forehead and pull the trigger.
On the ground in Chicago, Steele left the 767 and hunted for his connecting flight to Denver. Tired and emotionally numb, he marveled at other passengers, aircrews and concession workers going about their business.
Didn't they realize that a magnitude 9.0 upheaval had struck, silencing a superb, successful man? That today and a forever of tomorrows were completely, totally different than all yesterdays?
How could people be so oblivious, so casual, so… normal? He fought the urge to stop a coat-and-tie businessman with a Bluetooth bug jammed into an ear, or a four-stripe pilot dragging a wheelie topped by an airline-issue flight bag, and compel them to understand.
Our Erik was killed! My son is dead! For God's sake! Don't you care? Does anybody care?
Totally illogical, senseless, mental screams. But he couldn't help it. They were there, swirling amid turmoil and hurt. A cocktail of confusion, pain and fury.
Win bought a cup of steaming coffee and settled into a padded seat at his departure gate. He re-checked his e-mail, scanning news accounts of Erik's killing. Each dutifully regurgitated crap spewed by Metro's Captain Michael Greel, a cocky weasel Win was learning to despise. A close-up photo of Greel showed a porky, forty-something cop with a beer belly and thinning, prematurely gray hair losing the battle of bald. Dark, squinty eyes were unusually close together.
Greel was quoted liberally, spouting details that could not possibly have been vetted and verified, prior to a hurry-up press conference in the Ho's-Summerlin parking lot. The damned fool never used qualifying terms a reporter would expect to hear from a law enforcement professional immediately after a tragic event. No "alleged," or "victim," or "it's too early," or "that will be determined by an investigation."
Just BAM! Abject certainty: "The suspect pulled a gun and our officers had to shoot him."
Suspect? Suspected of what? Hell, Erik was no criminal! Yet that arrogant captain implied the "suspect" was a despicable dirtbag, who deserved to be gunned down!
Win fired off a thumb-typed e-mail to Ned Scott, a top-notch TV reporter for Channel 7, KWNV, The Voice of Nevada. Over a fifteen-year span, he and Ned had shared leads, tips and insights, as they investigated "black-aircraft" stories for their respective news organizations. They had endured more than a few nights in a rental car and TV news van, staking out the borders of Groom Lake, the U.S. Air Force's ultrasecret test base in north-central Nevada.
After he retired from International Aerospace magazine to write novels, Win had been a periodic guest on Ned's late-night radio show, discussing Steele's techno-thriller books, covert spaceplanes, "black" ops and cutting-edge, secret technologies being employed against terrorists.
A gate attendant was pre-boarding the Denver flight, when the iPhone Violet Hawthorne had given Win vibrated. He tapped a memorized code to unlock the crypto-secure device and read a curt text message:
Win: Just learned of your tragic loss. Erik was murdered in cold blood. Call as soon as you get home. We can help. — Doc
That would be Michael David Black, who Violet had mentioned the night before as Win's contact. A neighbor and friend, Doc was the former sheriff of Jefferson County, Colorado.
The initials "M.D." explained the nickname "Doc," though Black had no association with the medical profession. A career peace officer, he'd been an exemplary, two-term sheriff for one of the state's largest, most-populous counties, retiring with a string of awards and the admiration of colleagues and citizens.
Known as a tough, fair and scrupulously honest lawman, Black had been snapped up by aerospace giant Lawhead Corporation and assigned as the company's liaison to U.S. Northern Command headquarters, the Colorado Springs-based military partner to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He also provided Northcom and DHS with first-hand expertise about large cities' first-responder capabilities and limitations.
Black also was a committed, serious author. As Violet had noted, Win and Doc periodically met to discuss the trials of modern-day publishing and trade ideas about plot lines and characters.
After boarding, Win re-read Doc's message, trying to comprehend how his friend might have learned about Erik's death. Win hadn't called any Colorado Springs-area friends, and had no family living in the Pikes Peak region to spread the tragic news.
Doc, as Lawhead's Northcom/DHS liaison, had access to intelligence captured and assessed by military, CIA and contractor experts manning Northern Command's high-tech operations center.
Win had been inside that ops facility, watching exercises in real time, and had written Aerospace International stories about Northcom's voracious appetite for information funneled from across the North American continent.
But the senseless killing of an innocent civilian by Las Vegas police officers hardly warranted the attention of a Northcom watch officer. Still, how else might Doc have been alerted about Erik's murder-by-cop?
The United jet pushed back from its gate, then threaded a maze of Chicago-O'Hare taxiways, its high-bypass engines whining a low, early morning lullaby. Steele closed his eyes and breathed slowly, trying to relax — and crack a suspected between-the-lines code in Doc Black's cryptic message. A thought drifted across his consciousness, a tantalizing maybe, a tickle of possibility.
What if, through some miracle, he could tap into the "black world," that ultra-classified confluence of intelligence, advanced technology and covert operators? Would any of his insider contacts step up and assist him now, during the worst crisis of his sixty-three-point-five years? Had Doc Black's message implied as much?
Doc was part of Lawhead Corporation, which had a long, storied history in the "black" arena, where lines between contractor and customer blurred. Shadow-warriors could peel the onion of a cover-up in Las Vegas, and certainly inflict great pain on bad guys. But would they help an old alumnus? And why would they?
Sure, Win Steele had once been an integral member of that "black" community, while assigned to the National Security Agency and flying classified missions. On several occasions, he'd held a Top Secret security clearance augmented by a handful of Special-Access-Required add-ons. Later, though, as an Aerospace International investigative reporter, he'd also been a thorn in the black world's supersecret buttocks.
Wouldn't it be a hoot, if the spooks would actually help me retaliate against Erik's murderers?
Not a chance. However, the crazy, fatigue-induced fantasy coaxed a weary smile, the first in more than fifteen hours.
Though unrecognized, at that moment, God had already dispatched the first of many Earth-angels to guide Win Steele through the most ferocious battle of his existence. Rather than ethereal winged beings, though, His terrestrial warrior-angels flew sophisticated "black" aircraft, and commanded an arsenal of deadly, off-the-books weapon systems that surpassed the imagination of Hollywood's best.
A war had been declared, and Las Vegas Metro's smug killers had no inkling that they had incurred the wrath of unimaginably powerful, invisible forces.
Erik's avenging angels were inbound.