Pangborn Enterprises occupied a suite of offices in mid-town Chicago. More prestigious addresses were available, but Pangborn thought a status address rarely justified its cost. Business started early, as much of the company’s competition was located on the east coast, and in consideration of the west coast business, it ended late for the same reason. Starting at five in the morning, the hunter/gatherers that made up his staff busied themselves on their telephones and computer screens. There appeared to be no evidence that the news about the men who’d been assigned to track down and dispatch Ruth Harris-Schwartz and had now dropped out of sight had set off alarms.
Pangborn made a point to keep his business separate from his involvement with the Fifty-first Star. Thus, the company’s flinty eyed employees, handpicked by Pangborn personally, continued their planned rape and pillage of the economically vulnerable commercial sector.
Three struggling companies were targeted for the next round of acquisitions. Two companies, currently on the books, were methodically dismembered and their viable parts sold off at an enormous profit, the marginal units dumped on the scrap heap of American capitalism. Previous owners took what they were offered, happy to have avoided ruin while their employees, who’d been persuaded to take pay cuts so that the company could keep going, now found themselves on the street without warning and wondering where they would find a job, the cash to make their next mortgage payment, and how to explain to their families what had just happened. Few, if any could have identified the source of their personal disaster. One or two would try.
His flight department was the only exception to the separation of the corporate body and the Fifty-first Star. He kept a Global Explorer hangered at Teeterboro and a small fleet of Bell helicopters in varying configurations at the FBO at Martin State in Maryland. Their fuselages were all marked with a star with the number fifty-one in its center. The Explorer and the helos he leased through a subsidiary, Fifty-One Sky Star. He also kept an executive Bell at Chicago’s Midway for his personal use. It was the latter that had carried him to the ranch. He’d left the offices that morning because he did not want to be available when the obvious questions were raised by the recipients of the calls made the night before to people who owed him their allegiance or who, for one reason or another, feared him.
He arrived at the New Star Ranch in the late afternoon and retired to his personal residence. From the outside it looked like the all the other buildings which were arrayed in two rows on the site. Inside there was a remarkable difference. Whereas the others were spartan in their appointments, some even configured like army barracks with rows of cots and lockers, his residence was sumptuous. He and his guest settled in and called for brandy and an update. He would listen to his chiefs for the remainder of the afternoon, have dinner, and then he and Senator Connors would amuse themselves in a more commodious way. It was his word, commodious. Some would say, rhymes with odious. But to do so would be judgmental.
Neither he, nor any of his men or women domiciled on the ranch had spotted Ike’s drone, except, of course the two or three who’d believed it was the buzzard they thought had nearly decorated the helicopter. They could not know that it had returned, equipped with infrared sensors, and in its alternate coloration or lack thereof. Matte black, it noiselessly circled the ranch buildings, recording everything that occurred on the ground for the next eight hours.
***
Charlie Garland had had a busy day, considering the fact that ostensibly neither he nor the CIA had anything to do with the investigation into the apparent death of Sheriff Schwartz, late of Picketsville, Virginia. Facial recognition identified the men at the gates of New Star Ranch as former Army or Marine enlisted men. Three of the four had less than honorable discharges. One was a person of interest in an open case in Nevada involving a missing child. The second batch of images verified that Martin Pangborn had taken up residence at the ranch along with Senator Oswald Connors. The men taken into custody in Maine had still not said anything, insisting they had a right to an attorney and they wished to exercise it. The FBI, which would be brought in later would agree and then, as Charlie would report to Ike, “When the lawyers show up and eventually find their clients, the cat will be out of the bag.” As it happened, there would be some annoying delays before the attorneys latched onto their clients. They might get lost in the system and didn’t Ike just love that expression?
In the meantime, he suggested Ike should consider dropping deeper into the dark. Ike thought he’d had enough playing at being someone else and if even the slightest hint linking Pangborn to his situation was verified, he would end it. Charlie worried how that might play out. It was one thing to erase a low level spy, a compromised diplomat, even a decorated military figure with alternate views of the Constitution. Taking on someone with Pangborn’s connections and backing was another thing entirely.
The analysts finished their examination of the dash cam images and reported that they were able to reconstruct a scrap of a bumper sticker on the car carrying the shooter to positively identify it as a rental. They would have more in a few hours. Charlie sent that off to Frank Sutherlin in Picketsville. Ike’s deputies were feeling frustrated at being left out of the hunt. It would give them something to work on. As an afterthought, he also sent the names of the men identified by facial recognition from the various sweeps and scans the Agency had done.
Charlie managed to get Ike on a secure line and they talked for two hours about what they knew. Most of the time was spent discussing the possible connection between Connors and Pangborn, beyond the obvious, political one. Now, little doubt remained in either of their minds that the impetus for the bomb came from Pangborn. It appeared equally clear that the chance of making that case before a Grand Jury were slim to none. What that left them with Charlie couldn’t say.
“Ruth says I am not to act alone on this.”
“She’s right, Ike. There is no way anyone can protect you from what will happen if you’re caught and, given the obvious linkages you and he now have, you will not be able to avoid some smart prosecutor from nailing your hide to the wall if you so much as cause him to break a nail.”
“Yeah, yeah. You need to tell me again what you think the connection is, or what you think Pangborn has on Connors.”
“I will, but first tell me how the drone is working. The VP for sales has been on the phone every couple of hours for an update.”
“It is a thing of beauty, Charlie. You should buy some. At the moment it is circling the ranch in night mode. From vulture to bat, you could say, and recording whatever is going on down there. I will look at the tape tomorrow and give you an update.”
“Good. Please try not to break it. The Agency does not know they are on the hook for it. Okay, repeating, this is what I think might, emphasis on ‘might’ be the thing that binds Pangborn to Connors. It could be nothing but coincidence but the FBI file marks it as a possible problem at the National Security level.”
Charlie discussed the allegations Karl had uncovered in the FBI file on Connors, speculated the possible ramifications and how it could impact Ike’s situation. Ike listened, asked a few questions and finally wanted to know when the people recruited to staff the fake real-estate agency would arrive.
“You should have them early tomorrow. Are we done here?”
“Are we? I don’t know. We have a possible blackmailer and…let me think a minute. No, not quite finished. Charlie, what do you know about health and safety regulations as they apply to privately run retreat centers, specifically in the state of Idaho?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Neither do I. Could you have one of those smart people you’re sending to me come prepared to play expert in that area?”
“Health requirements for community housing and/or camps? Sure. What are you thinking?”
“A couple of things. I need eyes on the ground. The Vulture is great, but the perspective is wrong. I want to know how the ground is laid out. I might need…no, I will need to know the points of access into that compound and my guess is that night would be the best time to slip in there, if at all. The other is a hunch. Either way, I will need some fake IDs made on short order.”
“That’s it?”
“For now, yes. I have to look at the tape from our drone.”