Т Паркер - The Room of White Fire

The Hickman family had its roots in nineteenth-century Boston banking, then migrated west and branched into railroads, lumber, and construction. Damon Hickman, a Navy lieutenant, had settled in San Diego after World War II, going into residential and, later, hotel development. By 1953, Hickman Homebuilders was Southern California’s fifth largest contracting company, and later, when Damon’s son Rex became chairman of the board at age thirty-five, it had risen to third place in the hottest homebuilding market in the country. Clay was Rex and Patricia Hickman’s third child, born prematurely and with a faulty left ventricle, not expected to survive. No pictures of baby and mother after birth. No announcement.

But Clay Hickman survived not only his early birth but an early heart surgery, too. He grew healthy. In junior high school he was a scholar athlete in spite of his short stature and light weight (five feet three inches tall; one hundred and five pounds). He graduated from high school with honors and lettered varsity in four sports. He had added six inches of height and fifty-five pounds by graduation. A middleweight.

Three weeks later he joined the United States Air Force.

According to my DoD file, Clay Hickman had undergone basic training, then trained for a year in tactical aircraft maintenance. He was then deployed to Ali Air Base in Iraq to work on AC-130U “Spooky” gunships. I knew from my own tour of duty in Iraq that the Spooky is very spooky and more, a menacing nightmare belching out six thousand machine-gun rounds per minute through electric Gatling guns. From the air it is both deafening and surreal, but from the ground it is very real, and the last thing many people hear or see. It also carries a 105mm Howitzer cannon and a 40mm armor-piercing machine gun. It was known in Vietnam as “Puff the Magic Dragon” because its dense exhale of lead could rain down death on so many humans at once. Clay had serviced and maintained the Spookies, apparently with neither distinction nor demerit, during 2007. But as I noted in the poorly lit Waterfront bar, Clay’s final two years of service had been blotted out by half a page of heavy black ink, from which Clay did not emerge until late 2009, honorably discharged from the U.S. Air Force, as Dr. Hulet had told me. So, almost two missing years.

I sipped the bourbon and called my flight instructor at Oceanside Airport. He taught both Justine and me to fly — Justine first, years before I met her. Chuck Graff was Air Force back in Vietnam, piloting F-16s. He had spent his last three active decades with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations in Washington. Then he’d retired and come west to teach people how to fly for pleasure. He was crushed when Justine’s plane failed. They had spent a lot of hours together in the blue. We’re not friends, but I’d done him a favor during the divorce of a friend of his.

We caught up just a little, then I told him who I was looking for and the reason why, and what the DoD file on 2A3X3 Clay Browne Hickman had said. “What it didn’t say is what I’m most interested in. Two years gone. Blacked out. I’m just after the basics, Chuck.”

“I can’t help you with that,” he said. “They redact those records for good reasons.”

I waited a beat. “I understand. But would you look over his file anyway?”

“With an eye for what?”

“For helping me find him.”

“I’d do you more good flying search over those mountains.”

“He’s out of the mountains by now.” I told him about Sequoia Blain, letting my worry about her come through.

A long wait. “Well. Don’t expect much, if anything, Roland.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Call me in an hour.”

I called him a dinner and a bourbon later. I had to put the file on the seat across from me while I ate. Chuck told me that no Clay Hickman had been deployed in Iraq as an aircraft mechanic by the USAF during the years in question.

“Was Clay Hickman deployed to Iraq as something else?” I asked.

“Not deployed to Iraq at all.”

“Then I have a falsified file?”

“Correct.” Chuck went silent. I could almost hear his brain whirring. “Clay Browne Hickman was part of the aircrew protection program — survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. SERE. It may ring a bell. It’s based at Fairchild AFB outside of Spokane. He graduated from the program and immediately went to work as a Fairchild trainer. I’ll deny telling you that until the end of time.”

I knew that SERE prepared at-risk airmen for survival, capture, and interrogation. “Was he still at Fairchild in 2008 and 2009?”

A long pause. “I hit the same block you did.”

“Redacted into the great black yonder?”

“Sorry, I tried.”

“Thanks, Chuck.”

“Roland, little bit of advice? Clay’s file tells me that he probably stepped into something that’s hard to step back out of. Trespass at your own risk. Better yet, don’t trespass at all.”

I said nothing for a long beat.

“Roland? Who gave you that document?”

“It came from Arcadia. A private sanitorium out by Palomar Mountain.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It tries hard not to be heard of.”

“Forging military records is a felony.”

“I’ll point that out to them.”

“Good luck. Come out to Oceanside and we’ll have lunch.”

I hung up, paid up, waved to Sergio, and got out. I walked half a block down Kettner, stopped and lit a smoke. The promised rain had not come but the fog was thick enough to wrap the streetlights in gauze. A white Range Rover and a black Charger came down Hawthorn, passed Kettner, headed toward the harbor. There are hundreds of such vehicles in San Diego County, but few of them travel in pairs, and this was the second time in two days I’d seen two of them doing just that. The windows were all blacked out and the windshields darkened so I could see nothing of who was inside. I walked half the block toward Grape, changed sides of the street, and finished my cigarette. Sure enough, a moment later the happy white Range Rover and black Charger came rolling east on Grape, making me the approximate center of their rectangle.

Back at my truck I knelt both front and rear, scanned my phone flashlight across the undercarriage, found no radio transmitters that might account for my company. Tomorrow I’d get under it and really look. I cussed myself for letting myself be tailed. Once from Fallbrook to Lazy Daze, once from Fallbrook to downtown. The last time I’d been tailed was during my Internal Affairs interviews regarding the shooting of Titus Miller, an erratic but nonthreatening, armed black nineteen-year-old citizen. My partner had killed him with five shots and I had chosen not to fire. Back then, the tails were fellow Sheriff’s Department deputies trying to harass me. It worked. Followed me everywhere, it seemed. Made me angrier and more spooked than usual. Trouble sleeping. Bourbon and regret. During that harassment I relearned my most important lesson from Fallujah: To stand by me. To watch my own back. Be my own ally and friend.

After the transmitter check I sat in the cab of my truck, blasting the heater and defroster. Based on what Sergio had said, I decided it was safe to text Sequoia. A gamble, because if my text set something bad in motion, it was all on me.

I thought for a minute and came up with:

7:21 PM

Just saying hi . Primate Palace misses U. Call me when U feel like it. Bye 4 now

Back in my heavily draped, ponderously furnished, Justine-haunted home office I poured another drink and began hunting down the basics of the survival, evasion, resistance, and escape program of which Clay Hickman had apparently been a part.