Analysts at the FBI received a heads-up by their sister service in Langley suggesting that Jack Brattan might be posing as a naval NCO on one of the East Coast bases. They did not act on that information. They believed that there were too many naval installations and they preferred not to squander scarce resources to cover them all. They passed the information on to the local LEOs and turned their attention to other, more pressing matters. Charlie assumed they would. He dispatched a few agents, between deployments and getting bored with desk duty, to Norfolk and Philadelphia on the off chance he’d guessed right about what Brattan would do. There were other ports with active naval personnel he knew, but if one were looking for Jack Brattan, he figured those two would be his most likely landing places.
At the same time, Billy Sutherlin drove his pickup to Norfolk and connected with his brother Danny at his apartment outside Little Creek. Danny was happy to see him until he heard why he’s come.
“Billy, you have to be nuts. Do you have any idea how many sailors there are in this part of the world?”
“Nope, don’t care.”
“You should care. There are something like eighty thousand men and women on active duty. Then there is a hundred thousand plus family members with them and maybe thirty thousand civilian employees spread out all over the area. I ain’t counting all the retired Navy guys, who by the way can still wear their uniform under certain circumstances. Finding one chief petty officer, real or fake, in that mix is like finding a needle in a haystack. I take that back, it’s like finding a nickel-plated needle in a stack of stainless steel needles. It’s impossible.”
“Right, and a really big stack of needles, I bet. I believe you. So, with that in mind, if you were going to look for the nickel-plated one anyway, where would you start?”
“You’re serious?”
“Danny, this guy shot a cop in cold blood. He’s connected to the bomb that…that blew up Ike’s car. He’s a certifiable bad ass. He can lead us to the people that have been after Ike and Ruth, and God only knows who else, come to think of it. We need to nail him, and do it before the Feds or some other police department does. If they find him first, we miss our chance to interrogate him. It’s real important that don’t happen. If he’s here, I want him.”
“You mean beat the crap out of him ’til he talks?”
“No. Come on. I just want the chance to remind him what could happen if someone else gets to him first if I was to cut him loose. If he thinks about it, he will want to deal. The other thing is, cops aren’t the only folks looking for him. He’s got himself some hard people who are for sure going to shut him up permanent because they know if he talks some real important people is going down and they won’t want to let that happen. They get him first and he’ll disappear. Danny, this is real important. If I can, I need to find him and put him away. Will you help me or not?”
“Okay, but it’s a waste of time.”
“A waste of time? Suppose your SEAL team was assigned to go into some raggedy-ass place and take out a terrorist. Do you calculate the odds and decide it’s ‘a waste of time’ or do you go in and get the summabitch?”
“Okay, okay. Tell me more about this guy. Maybe if we can narrow the target area a little we might get lucky.”
Billy showed him the file. Danny read it and sat for ten minutes drumming his fingers on his kitchen table. He sighed and called in a half dozen of his teammates. They arrived and debated, then asked their lieutenant for a few days to run an “undercover exercise” on the base. The object, they said, would be to see if they could infiltrate various restricted locations without being detected. They said they needed to keep their “escape and evasion” skills sharp. The lieutenant gave them a “who do you think you’re bullshitting” look and said “Okay.” They didn’t mention that the locations they intended to infiltrate were motels, service men’s clubs, massage parlors, bars, and brothels. They didn’t have to. The lieutenant was not born yesterday.
***
Ike had the Vulture disassembled and ready to ship back to Charlie. Sam watched him fit the pieces into the crate. She did not appear pleased.
“Do we really have to give it back?”
“We do. Get your stuff together, too, Sam. When we pull out of here I don’t want any loose ends. Ms. Silver and the Gottleibs need to be in the wind as soon as we bust those guys. When the smoke clears, there will be nothing to prove we were ever here. Not a scrap of paper, a bar of soap, and certainly not this great lump of a fake bird.”
“Because?”
“Because we owe it to Charlie to make sure there are no CIA fingerprints on this operation. He’s done a lot for us. We can’t let him take a beating from some Congressional oversight committee for it. We disappear and resurface as ourselves as if we just spent a week at the beach.”
“What about the surveillance equipment we planted around the ranch?”
“Well, I hope no one will ever notice, but if they do stumble on them, they’re all marked, ‘Made in China,’ and could have been put there by anybody, anytime. Given the paranoid disposition of ninety-nine percent of the membership, they will assume the worst about everything and everybody and that one or more of the organizations they obsess over put them there. By the time they get done trying to figure which agency, police department, NSA, CIA, FBI, ISIS, whoever, was watching them, the batteries will have gone dead and the memory chips erased. We’ll leave them.”
“So, what now?”
“Now we wait ’til the motion sensors are triggered and we record what happens. Then, if our luck holds, we gear up and tomorrow we go in there and bust some chops.”
Ruth walked in from cleaning the kitchen. “Chops? What kind of chops?”
“Not what, whose.”
“Ike thinks that we will have the goods on Pangborn—”
“You mean assuming you’re right about what goes on over there after dark and we can sneak in. That’s it, isn’t it, Ike? You will go after them.”
“Pretty much. Once I have what I need, we will slip in there and knock some heads together.”
“Metaphorically.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so. Ike, you are out of your jurisdiction. Also, even though you have never practiced it, you’re the lawyer. You know damned well if you do anything out of line, they will have their seven-figure-a-year lawyers hand you your guts. If we go in, we go with the local police, or we don’t go.”
“Ruth—”
“I mean it Ike. We have been shot at, blown up, and abused in an assortment of ways by that bastard and I don’t want you screwing up his trip to the slammer by playing your version of Die Hard.”
“Yippie-ki-yay.”
“Shut up, I mean it.”
Ike sighed. Being married to a person with conventional morality had its drawbacks, but Ruth was right. He was an ex-spook and not a lone wolf anymore. Maybe he never was. At any rate, he had to weigh whether he valued his freedom enough to forgo the luxury of splashing Pangborn’s brains on the wall. It would not be an easy decision.
“Don’t worry. If my hunch is right, I will have the State Police put on notice. Well, that’s not quite true. ‘An anonymous source’ close to the governor will suggest to the director of the State Police that he might make a SWAT team available for a possible raid on the New Star Ranch. It’s funny how politics works. As conservative as the governor is, apparently he is not far enough to the right to satisfy Pangborn. Charlie tells me that a large sum of money which he traced to Pangborn ended up in the PAC that tried to oust him in the last election. The governor is still smarting from that. He will have no compunctions about bringing down Pangborn if he’s given the opportunity. Frankly, I suspect he won’t care much if we turn up anything or not. A well publicized raid by the State Police and the suggestion of a sandal is a publicity bonanza.”
“That’s mean.”
“Do you care?”
“Not even a little bit. And if your hunch is wrong?”
“Plan B.”
“Which is?”
“Keep digging. Now help me shove this crate outside for the delivery company to pick up and then I could use a nap.”
“A nap? It’s nearly six o’clock. Some supper, maybe, but a nap? What’s up with that?”
“I think he means a connubial nap,” Sam said and reddened.
“Oh, that kind of nap. Let me check my day planner to see if I can fit you in, Sheriff. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have supper?”
“Actually, I meant nap, as in sleeping briefly. Sam, you have been away from Karl too long and your mind is drifting. Get out of here. On the other hand, Ms. Gottlieb, maybe you should check your day planner. I’ll grab some sandwiches and that half empty bottle of red and you can help me take care of both.”
“Like dinner and a movie, but without the movie. You are such a romantic, Marvin. But how about we take a rain check? It’s been a long day.”