Т Паркер - Swift Vengeance

Hollow silence. A car door slamming in the distance, the soft whine of the heater coming on. Dr. Leising made another short entry in his notebook, then set it back.

War and its secrets. I have mine. And maybe because of them, I’d seen evidence of Lindsey’s torment that first night we met, when she was on her fortune-wrecking roulette-and-booze bender at the Pala Casino. And during the year or so she lived in casita two at Rancho de los Robles, Lindsey had confessed much to me regarding her vices, her failing motherhood, her anger and fear and self-disgust. But not this. A terrorist on a motorcycle and Aleppo field hospital IH-One — at core, the heart of her darkness.

“How was Kenny doing?” I asked.

“He was doing well,” said the doctor. “He’d come a long way in four years. He had stopped the drinking and recreational drug use. He began to like his job — being outdoors rather than cooped up in a flight cockpit trailer. He had begun to date again. So, when Lindsey called to tell me what had happened to Kenny, I felt especially bad. He was thirty-four years old, Mr. Ford. Young, strong, and bright.”

Another silence, this one dedicated to Kenny Bryce.

Leising sighed. “When I saw in my mind’s eye what was done to Kenny in his home, I became sick. His body. His head. The brutality. It took hours for that first wave of nausea to pass.” He smiled wanly. “I apologize. I should find someone to talk to.”

“Talk to me.”

“Lindsey told me about the threats,” he said. “The handwritten letters to all three of them. Can you protect her?”

“She’s safe,” I said.

“Her heart is good,” said Leising. “But she is willful and has been self-destructive. Kenny and Voss internalized. Lindsey acted out.”

I nodded.

“There is such a familiarity in the death letter to Lindsey,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind that she showed me hers. As a picture attached to a text message, I mean. As did Marlon.”

“Theirs to share,” I said. “Be very careful what you do and say. This man is the coldest killer I’ve ever run across.”

The ex-cop in me felt my control of this case fraying. So I let it go. When you turn private, the legal pillars break down, from Miranda to the chain of custody. Sometimes this is good. Lindsey and Voss shouldn’t have shared evidence with their former psychiatrist, but there was no getting the toothpaste back into the tube.

“You’re right about the familiarity in the threats,” I said. “I think that Caliphornia knew all three of them. Or pretends to. He refers to past transgressions in all three Headhunters. Did any of them mention enemies?”

“No,” said Leising. “Kenny had a bar fight not long after he mustered out of the Air Force. Charges were dropped. Lindsey ran up gambling debts but managed to pay them off. Voss, no. He’s very self-controlled. A family man. No enemies that he spoke of.”

“Did they know other people in common?” I asked. “Friends, coworkers, shared contacts or acquaintances. Other than you.”

Leising eyed me, smiling. “Well. They all shared the same chain of command at Creech. I remember a colonel that they all spoke of. A captain as well. I can get names for you. But, really, the Headhunters had all of the United States Air Force in common. Many of them remain in touch with each other. Organizations, clubs, reunions, the Air Force Academy.”

I wondered who else might know them well enough to be aware of their mistakes and misdeeds. I drew blanks. My IvarDuggans, TLO, and Tracersinfo services might help me make connections. I even tried out the idea that the man before me was a clever sociopath staging deadly games with his patients. Which meant Caliphornia was one of them. Sounded like a movie I’d seen.

“Enemies,” I said, as much to myself as the doctor.

“Here’s an outside possibility,” said Leising. “A few years ago, Kenny told me he had been quoted in The Washington Post . A Sunday feature article about the new esprit de corps that the USAF was fostering within the unhappy RPA community. The drone teams were being encouraged in friendly competition against each other. They were allowed to give themselves combat team nicknames, and to create morale insignias for their uniforms. In the article, Kenny told of creating the Headhunter name and patch. There was even a picture of it — a grinning skull with wings of fire. Toward the end of the piece, he deflected questions about widespread dissatisfaction among RPA personnel. And refused to comment on a drone strike alleged to have gone wrong at a field hospital in Aleppo. The Post tallied the dead, citing research by the British group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Kenny was furious when the story ran. But there was his name, in black and white, and a picture of the Headhunters patch, associated with the dead doctors and nurses. He ill-advisedly threatened a lawsuit.”

“But the camel’s nose was already inside the tent.”

“It most certainly was.”

This was bad news, and the more I considered it, the worse it got. A casual newspaper reader might or might not link Kenny Bryce to a drone attack in Aleppo. But, fueled by the possibility of that connection, a determined actor could discover that Kenny and his Headhunters had fired the missiles. And from Kenny, it was two short lines to Marlon and Lindsey.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “Please welcome the Headhunters, as inadvertently presented in The Washington Post .”

Leising leaned toward me. “Cali phornia read the Post article ?”

“Any fourth-grader can find the Post article.”

“Okay, but why ?”

“Nine innocents and one terrorist killed in a drone strike,” I said.

“So Caliphornia might be a friend or a relative, taking revenge for IH-One?”

“Yes.”

“Or is he a terrorist taking on the U.S. Air Force?”

“Both.”

He frowned, peering at me through the small round lenses.

Hall Pass 2 churned through the cold post-storm air as I flew southwest for home, the engine droning and gently buzzing my bones. I thought about Zkrya Gourmat losing control of his motorcycle and the catastrophe this had led to.

I had only faint memories of the attack at IH-One, as reported by the media. The story had broken at nearly the same time that Justine’s sudden death was sweeping me down its dark, deepening tunnel. The fate of the innocents on IH-One had barely registered on me.

Now, as the green hills of Fallbrook eased by beneath me, I considered that a major player was missing from the story of Zkrya Gourmat and IH-One. Someone who had taken the life of one Headhunter and threatened two more.

Caliphornia.

Astride the world with a knife in each hand, I imagined, with one foot in Aleppo and the other in Bakersfield.

Look for him where he started, I thought. Look for him in the rubble.

Rather than go straight home from the airport, I drove the hour south to Point Loma, paid my admission to the Cabrillo Lighthouse Monument, parked, and climbed my way to the whale observation area. The late afternoon was blustery and cold, and the dauntless tourists were few in number and thickly wrapped. I stood at the wall and looked west out over the Pacific, heaving, gray, and endless. I looked for whales as I always do up here, saw none, which is how many I always see. As I strolled past the lighthouse, a peregrine falcon dropped into a hundred-mile-an-hour stoop and out of sight behind the wall in front of me. I figured that some elegant sea bird was about to become the falcon’s meal. Around me, the sage and brittlebush shivered in the wind and the gulls cried and wheeled.

I looked out to the approximate place where Justine had gone down. I lit a cigarette and watched the sun set, an orange ball melting on the curve of the far horizon.