Glenn Cooper - Library of the Dead

Darla quickly moved up the aisle to assist her colleague, deliberately seeking out Will's eyes as she flew by. The air marshal in 7C held his seat, standard operating procedure, watching the cockpit, on guard for a diversion. He was a young guy, blanched with nerves, sucking it up. Probably his first real incident, Will thought, leaning into the aisle, studying him.

Then, a sickening thud, skull on skull, a Glaswegian kiss. "That's what ya get, ya fuckin' bastard!" the assailant screamed. "Ya want another one?" Will missed the act but saw the aftermath.

The head butt opened the attendant's scalp and knocked him yelping to his knees. Darla involuntarily let out a short shriek at the sight of flowing blood.

The air marshal and Will rose as one, locked onto each other and started to perform like a team that had drilled repeatedly together. The marshal stood in the aisle, drew his weapon and called out, "Federal agents! Sit down and place your hands on the seat in front of you!"

Will showed his ID and slowly advanced toward the rear holding the badge above his head.

"Oh what tha fuck is this, then?" the Brit called out as he saw Will closing. "We're just trying to get our hols started, mate."

Darla helped the bleeding attendant to his feet and led him forward, scooting by Will, who gave her a reassuring wink. When he was five rows from the troublemakers he halted and spoke slowly and calmly. "Take your seat immediately and place your hands on top of your head. You are under arrest. Your vacation is over." Then the staccato punctuation mark, "Mate."

His friends implored him to back off but the man would not stand down, crying now with rage and fear, cornered, his jugulars distended purple. "I will not!" he kept repeating. "I will not!"

Will pocketed his badge and unholstered his gun, double-checking the engaged safety. At this, the passengers became terrified; an obese woman with an infant started blubbering, which started a chain reaction throughout the cabin. Will tried to erase the drowsiness from his face and look as badass as possible. "This is your last opportunity to end this well. Sit down and put your hands on your head."

"Or what?" the man taunted, his nose thick with mucus. "You going to shoot me and put a hole through the bleedin' plane?"

"We use special ammo," Will said, lying through his teeth. "The round'll just rattle around inside your head and turn your brain into pudding." An expert shot who had spent his youth picking off fox squirrels in the Panhandle brush, at this range he could place a round anywhere he wanted within a few millimeters, but it would exit, all right.

The man was speechless.

"You've got five seconds," Will announced, elevating the pistol from a chest shot to a head shot. "I honestly don't care if I pull the trigger at this point. You've already given me a week of paperwork."

One of his friends cried out, "For fuck's sake, Sean, sit down!" and tugged his companion by the tail of his polo shirt. Sean hesitated for a few long seconds then let himself be pulled onto his seat, where he meekly raised his hands over his head.

"Good decision," Will told him.

Darla rushed up the aisle with a handful of plastic wrist restraints, and with the help of other passengers, the three friends were cuffed. Will lowered his weapon and slid it back under his coat then called out to the marshal, "We're clear back here." Breathing heavily, he lumbered back to his seat to the accompaniment of thunderous applause from the entire cabin. He wondered if he'd be able to get back to sleep.

The taxi pulled away from the curb. Even though it was evening, the desert heat was still stunning, and Will welcomed the frosty interior.

"Where to?" the cabbie asked.

"Who do you think's got the better room?" Will asked.

Darla pushed at his ribs playfully. "An airline room or a government one, it's probably the same." She leaned in and whispered, "But honey, I don't think we're going to notice."

They were looping around the perimeter of McCarran heading toward the Strip. Parked next to a remote hangar, Will noticed a cluster of three white 737s, unmarked except for red body stripes. "What airline is that?" he asked Darla.

"That's the Area 51 shuttle," she replied. "They're military planes."

"You're joking."

The cabbie needed to participate. "She ain't kidding. It's the worst-kept secret in Vegas. We got hundreds of government scientists who commute there every day. They got alien spaceships they're trying to make work, that's what I hear."

Will chuckled. "I'm sure whatever it is, it's a waste of taxpayer money. Believe it or not, I think I know a guy who works there."

Nelson Elder presided over a culture of fitness. He vigorously exercised every morning and expected members of his senior management team to do likewise. "No one wants to see a fat insurance guy," he'd tell them, least of all him. He had a gold-plated prejudice against the unfit that bordered on revulsion, a vestige of growing up poor in Bakersfield, California, where poverty and obesity commingled in his hardscrabble mobile home park. He didn't hire obese people, and if he insured them, he made damn sure they paid hefty risk-adjusted premiums.

His bronzed skin still tingled from his three-mile run and stinging steam shower, and as he sat in his corner office, with its fine view of chocolate-brown mountains and an aquamarine finger of Lake Mead, he felt as well physically as a sixty-one-year-old man could. His tailored suit form-fitted his tight frame and his athletic heart beat slowly. Yet mentally he was in turmoil, and his cup of herbal tea was doing little to settle him.

Bertram Myers, Desert Life's CFO, was at his door panting heavily and sweating like a racehorse. He was twenty years younger than his boss, his hair wiry and black, but he was a lesser athlete.

"Good run?" Elder asked.

"Excellent, thanks," Myers answered. "Had yours yet?"

"You bet."

"How come you're in so early?"

"F.B. fucking I. Remember?"

"Jesus, I forgot. I'm going to hop in the shower. Want me to sit in?"

"No, I'll handle it," Elder said.

"You worried? You look worried."

"I'm not worried. I think it is what it is."

Myers agreed. "Exactly, it is what it is."

Will had a short cab ride to the Desert Life headquarters in Henderson, a bedroom town south of Vegas near Lake Mead. To him, Elder looked like something out of central casting, a prototypical silver-fox CEO, easy with his wealth and station. The executive leaned back in his chair and attempted to lower Will's expectations. "As I said on the phone, Special Agent Piper, I'm not sure if I can help you. This may be a long trip for a short meeting."

"Don't worry about that, sir," Will replied. "I had to come out here anyway."

"I saw in the news that you'd made an arrest in New York."

"I'm not at liberty to comment about an ongoing investigation," Will said, "but I think you can assume if I thought the case was wrapped up, I probably wouldn't have come out here. I wonder if you could tell me about your relationship with David Swisher?"

According to Elder, there wasn't all that much to tell. They had met six years earlier during one of Elder's frequent visits to New York to meet with investors. At the time, HSBC was one of multiple banks courting Desert Life as a client, and Swisher, a senior managing director at the bank, was a rainmaker. Elder had gone to HSBC's headquarters, where Swisher led a pitch team.

Swisher followed-up aggressively by telephone and e-mail over the next year and his perseverance paid off. When Desert Life decided to place a bond offering in 2003 to fund an acquisition, Elder chose HSBC to lead the underwriting syndicate.

Will asked if Swisher had personally traveled to Las Vegas as part of that process.