Michael McGarrity - Nothing But Trouble

“Then just shut up about it.” Shaw gunned the engine and accelerated. The van jarred over the ruts as it picked up speed.

Buster clamped his lips together. The van headlights froze a rabbit in the road and a front tire thumped over it. He glanced at Shaw. In the glow of the instrument panel Shaw looked pissed off. He’d been acting that way toward him all day. Probably still steamed about the saddle, Buster thought.

He unwrapped a piece of gum, popped it in his mouth, and started chewing. It kept him from asking Shaw what in the hell the big hurry was all about.

To keep himself alert and entertained Kerney used night-vision goggles to watch Fowler, Leo’s deputy sheriff, ex-Marine sniper, one-man SWAT team, crawl toward the landing strip. In the gathering darkness, with the waning moon yet to rise, he wondered if Fowler’s effort would be worth it. Other than the officers on the stakeout there had been no hint of human activity in the valley since their arrival. Additionally, the operation was premised on nothing more than an educated guess. There was no guarantee that a plane would be landing at the strip tonight.

Fowler was good; he stayed low, used his elbows, knees, and belly, and moved to the best concealment points. Soon he’d be in position, five hundred meters out, covered in sand and grit, pricked by cactus spines, bitten by fire ants.

Inside the four-by-four Leo had his headset on and was talking with the troops in a low voice. Throughout the wait he seemed perfectly content to remain sedentary and had exited the vehicle only once to relieve himself. Kerney didn’t know how the man could sit so long without getting antsy.

So why was he on edge? Over the years he had calmly pulled more than his fair share of stakeout and surveillance assignments. He should be sitting back waiting for events to unfold, not prowling restlessly back and forth under the camouflage netting. Like a spasm the thought hit him that he had no business putting himself in potential danger, not with Sara in a war zone. What if Patrick lost both parents in the line of duty?

What in the hell had he been thinking? he asked himself angrily.

The door to the four-by-four opened. Leo eased himself out and handed Kerney a headset. “Time to plug in. Fowler is in position.”

“Let’s hope we’re not wasting our time.”

Beyond the landing strip headlights flashed into view and dipped out of sight.

“I don’t think we are,” Leo said.

Walt Shaw made a hard turn at the fence line, sped to the gate at the foot of Chinaman Hills, and ground the van to a stop. Buster jumped out to open the gate and Shaw went with him, shining the beam of a flashlight on the rutted dirt road. The recent rain had washed away all the old tracks and there was no fresh sign that any vehicles, horses, or people had passed by.

Shaw gunned the van through the gate and Buster had to pull himself inside on the run.

“We’re gonna be way too early,” he said, trying to make small talk. He’d never seen Shaw so uptight.

“Not tonight.” Shaw downshifted as the van bounced through a sandy trough in the road.

Buster put his hand on the dashboard to brace himself as the van jitterbugged down the road. Through the windshield he could see the flashing warning lights of the plane as it came over the Big Hatchet Mountains.

Shaw stopped at the end of the eighteen-hundred-foot dirt strip and blinked the headlights. The plane banked, descended, and engine noise filled the night air. It touched down, taxied to a stop, and the pilot cut the engine. Buster walked to the cargo door and cranked the latch. The hold was empty.

“There’s nothing here.” Befuddled, Buster turned and looked at Shaw.

Shaw laughed in his face and shot him twice in the chest at close range.

Through his night vision goggles Kerney watched Buster go down. In his headset he heard Fowler swear as Shaw picked up Martinez and dumped him in the airplane.

“Everybody go, go, go,” Leo yelled to the teams. “Lights and sirens.” He ground gears, jumped the four-by-four out of the arroyo, and hit the gas.

Engines revved and roared in concert with the slow thud of chopper rotors and first whine of the airplane propeller cranking up. Sirens wailed, adding to the din. Emergency lights splintered the darkness. For an instant Shaw stood frozen in the glare of the van as the backwash from the propeller rippled over him.

“I’ve got a head shot on the shooter,” Fowler said.

“No, disable the plane,” Kerney said.

“Ten-four,” Fowler replied.

Kerney counted seconds as he watched Shaw scramble into the open cargo hold. The plane swung around for takeoff, but before it could gather speed, Fowler put three rounds in the engine and two in the front landing-gear tire. The engine sputtered, died, and the plane tipped forward. Shaw and the pilot bailed out and ran for the van.

Behind Kerney the chopper went airborne, its floodlight washing over the four-by-four. The teams from Chinaman Hills and the windmill bore down on the landing strip. By the time Shaw and the pilot were in the van and moving, they were boxed in.

Leo skidded to a stop on the landing strip. Kerney rolled out the passenger door, crouched behind it, and leveled his weapon at the van windshield.

Under similar cover Leo grabbed the radio microphone and hit the PA switch. His voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Throw out the weapon, turn off the engine, drop the keys on the ground, and exit the vehicle with your hands clasped behind your heads. Do it now.”

Slowly the men complied, and Leo put them through a by-the-book felony takedown. Surrounded by officers, they were cuffed and pulled into a sitting position. While Leo checked the pilot’s ID, Kerney went to the airplane and took a look at Buster Martinez. He was facedown, leaking blood, and very dead.

He walked over to Shaw, hunkered down, and looked him in the eyes. “Six officers will testify that they saw you murder Buster Martinez in cold blood,” he said. “I seriously doubt any lawyer could mount a defense against such overwhelming evidence. Want to tell me what this was all about?”

Walt Shaw wasn’t talking, so Kerney decided to take a crack at the pilot of the airplane, Craig Gilmore. He walked Gilmore to Leo’s unit in handcuffs and sat with him in the backseat.

A man in his fifties, soft in the face with a dimpled chin, Gilmore looked like the arrest had hit him hard.

“Is that your airplane?” Kerney asked.

Gilmore looked out the window at the disabled aircraft. “Yeah, I bought it ten years ago when business was good.”

“What kind of business is that?” Kerney asked.

“I own a regional wholesale cigarette and tobacco company in El Paso. But I almost lost everything when the tech stock bubble burst in 2000. I took a real beating.”

“How do you know Shaw?”

“We were in the navy together and stayed in touch over the years. I brought him in on the deal.”

“When did you partner up with Shaw?”

“Four years ago. It was either that or declare bankruptcy.”

“Tell me how your scheme works,” Kerney asked.

“It’s real simple,” Gilmore replied. “I forge documents showing that American-made cigarettes have been exported, and then sell them at cut-rate prices to several distributors in New Mexico and Arizona. Because custom and state taxes aren’t levied, we make a substantial profit on each pack.”

“How much profit?”

“It depends on the state, and we split it sixty-forty with the distributors. In New Mexico our cut is fifty-five cents a pack, and in Arizona it’s seventy cents.”

“How many packs have you sold?”

“Eight million, more or less.”