Before the rain, p.8
Before the Rain, page 8
Wearing a dirty, D-Backs baseball cap. There was something in his hand.
“I could flick it off your face with my newspaper,” he said.
Behind the man’s head, white stars still blinked in a fading night sky. She’d been out all night. Sunny lay stretched out on a hard surface. The tickle had shifted to her jaw. An orange-to-red traffic light glared. A green neon LIQUOR sign and a tall gas station marquee called to drivers, all the lights poking her eyes with bright color.
“Get what off?” she said.
“Pretty sure it’s a tarantula.”
An hour later, after enduring an unnecessarily detailed physical inspection, Sunny curled up in a corner chair of the ER waiting room. A sign at the nurse’s desk said the medical facility was part of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.
Col. Seager had phoned the facility and spoken to her briefly while the doctor examined her. So had Homeland Security, a newly assigned fixer, he’d called himself. A replacement for Seager, Marine Corps Brigadier General Ray Hauser. He spent ten minutes listening to her tale, and with more empathy than her own CO. General Hauser was a nice guy.
“Great work finding the crime scene,” Hauser had said. “Out of the box thinking. Glad you’re okay.”
Col. Seager and Hauser both promised visits this morning, and could arrive at the hospital any minute. Identification of the sedative Jessie had used on her, plus her official medical release, might take longer. She’d been given Tylenol for her bruises, sore joints and minor pains. The spider hadn’t bitten her.
But she fought a losing battle rating her own job performance, second-guessing her earlier decisions. Waiting alone in the Air Force medical facility’s uncomfortable plastic chair, she fumed at herself for starting her search of that potential crime scene alone. She should have waited.
Her hand balled her into a fist. She hadn’t believed in herself. She should have expected to quickly find proof. Expected the tracks there to be a crime scene.
She hadn’t planned for success.
Maybe she did belong among the OIS analysts, behind a computer and a telephone, reading online news stories, researching crimes and criminals and making up theories to solve oddities. Taking her turn with the coffee-room supply checks, updating delivery orders. Putting notes on the staff refrigerator about eating other people’s lunches.
Yesterday’s mistake could and should have cost Sunny her life.
Ray waited for Seager near the medical facility’s main entrance, the morning pleasant compared to how hot yesterday had been. A soft breeze whipped around the corner of the one-story brick building to brush his cheeks. The fresh, moving air was hot, but not stifling. He hoped Seager wasn’t bringing bad weather.
He didn’t need extra hurdles in his search for Alissa’s killers.
There seemed reason to worry. Seager had come out to Arizona from Quantico, if not to take a punch at him, then something just for fun. Ray didn’t want him around, and earlier had sent formal notification Seager was off the investigation. Seager pretended it was too late to change his flight plans. Said he was coming to see Sunny.
From their previous conversation, he was pretty sure Seager was a complete, lifelong Adam Henry. Therefore, he had a hunch Seager wanted to be fired in person. Maybe start a fight. Sounded silly in the military, and of course it was extremely rare among officers. But with his job, he’d seen plenty of physical resistance.
Every other car arriving at the hospital contained at least one Air Force officer, but because Seager had already identified himself as a big-time college football player, the former defensive lineman was easy to spot climbing out of his BMW. He was as big as Ray, but thicker around the gut. He had an Air Force captain beside him. Maybe a friendly witness.
Seager saluted with a sneer. “Aren’t you going to call me asswipe? Say it to my face?”
Ray grimaced. His gut was already sour on the guy, thanks to Seager’s treatment of Air Force Special Agent Sunny Hicks. Endangering her life. Not better supervising her first assignment. The F-ing Romeo. Lucky the thieves hadn’t made Hicks disappear like Alissa. Seager was a jerk. Nothing close to a gentleman.
He made himself loose and ready. “I wasn’t planning on calling you asswipe, but why not? Asswipe.”
Seager’s right hand shot out to slam Ray’s shoulder, the open-palm thrust a juicy target for a practicing martial artist. Standard exercise, so Ray’s responses were reflex and instinct, ingrained in muscle memory. Seager’s attempted shove was still two inches short of making contact when Ray snatched Seager’s attacking wrist and forearm, used the momentum to spin him and force Seager’s arm behind his back.
A rear wrist lock. Bada bing, bada boom.
Seager’s pal retreated a step. Lips grim, Ray guessed he’d made up his mind to remain an observer.
Ray sighed. “Assault? Bill, please. What kind of response is that to being removed from an investigation? Ask yourself, how does this look on your employment record, ace?”
“Go f—”
Ray bent his wrist hard. “What you did to Special Agent Hicks was maybe the worst conduct by a commanding officer I’ve run across. Her first field assignment, and you let her almost get killed.”
“I didn’t—”
Ray goosed the pressure. Talked to the back of his neck. “Shut up. Say another word, I will arrest you for assault on a Homeland Security agent. Take you to the nearest Federal Detention Facility.”
“You’re going to need help,” Seager said. “Even with handcuffs.”
He couldn’t believe Seager said that. The man bringing himself additional pain and embarrassment. But true Adam Henrys were special guys. They didn’t understand much of anything, this one having no clue women hated taking crap as much as men did, especially from a boss. Someone you thought was a friend. No human of any gender likes being pressured into action or choice. Women and men and every variation want to make their own picks, free of intimidation.
It was his sister Etta who taught Ray to be a gentleman at thirteen, before his first dance. She made him sit down and listen and repeat her rules. Don’t offer to shake a woman’s hand. Let her offer her hand to you. If seated, stand when a woman walks in the room. Introduce yourself, and say, yes, ma’am, yes sir, to parents and all adults. Thank your friend and her mother for inviting you into their home. Threat all living things with respect. As you would like all living things to treat you.
He understood every man couldn’t be a gentleman. Most men didn’t know the rules or didn’t care, had no interest. They equated the word with sissy. Plus, there had always been men who believed women wanted to be aggressively pursued and directed. These guys were asswipes, one stage below Adam Henrys. The red line was making the disagreement physical. Take a swing at Ray or try to shove him like Seager did, that made you an Adam Henry.
A loser deserving of being twisted into a knot and arrested.
Delivered to the local federal authorities.
He had to be a hardass sometimes. A bully imposing his personal rules on others. But he was good at his job for the opposite trait—being friendly and gently guiding men and women to make the right decision. He was a large, intimidating man. Sure. With a big title, US Marine Corps general. But he knew being a gentleman usually won the battle, often before a conflict started. Not so much with Adam Henrys, maybe. He’d given Colonel Seager the chance to shut up and step back, even after the loser had taken a swipe at him. But no, this non-gentleman with violent tendencies, abuser of his authority over women, still wanted more.
Ray bent Seager’s wrist harder, made him squeak, kept him on his toes as they fast-walked down the sidewalk. “You have a tiny dick, a small brain, and a big mouth,” Ray said.
He hustled Seager fifty, sixty feet to where Ray’s black Suburban sat parked. A young man and woman, both with long, black hair, stopped to watch the two men struggling.
Seager’s witness, the Air Force captain, followed at a fast walk. Ray bet Seager would pick a better wingman next time he started a fight. What a jerk.
Ray clicked a button on his key ring and the Suburban’s back door popped open. Using his hands and a knee in the nuts, he forced Seager’s head through the opening, showed him a close-up of the back-seat, one-man jail.
Ray Hauser’s Steel-Tube Ride for the Ungentlemanly.
“I’ve only used this lockdown seat twice,” he said, “but it usually makes a serious impression.” He hiked the pain in Seager’s wrist, elbow, and shoulder. “Or does it?”
“I’m impressed. I’m impressed. Let me go. I’m gone without another word.”
Ray eased up. “Stay out of sight. You can see Sunny when I leave. And she’d better tell me later you apologized.”
“For what?”
“Everything.”
Sunny looked up from a People Magazine when General Hauser walked into the waiting room. The general was as big as Colonel Seager, tanner, and better muscled, especially his Popeye-like forearms and wrists.
She saluted. He returned the gesture, then asked familiar questions rapid fire, prodding her into rehashing the story, start to finish in less than five minutes. She expanded her information from their earlier phone call, but this time she finished with an apology. “Sorry I didn’t wait long enough for my partner. I never imagined I’d find evidence so quickly.”
General Hauser offered her a fist-bump. “You discovered an extremely important crime scene, special agent. Your imagination and determination have finally put us on the trail of the thieves. You’re a hero.”
She touched his fist with her own. “That’s nice of you to say, sir. But I feel bad I almost got myself killed. Over-eager beaver.”
Hauser shook his head. “Every investigator walks into bad situations alone sometimes. It happens. Luckily, the guys who took you ran into somebody even tougher, somebody who didn’t want or need to kill you to cover their crimes.”
“Jessie. What a woman.”
“For sure. How good a look did you get at the autocannon? Could you tell how far along they were with installing the cannon on a trailer?”
“They’d mounted the cannon, hydraulic motors, and the ammunition drum, set the weight off-center, too, like in a Warthog aircraft. So the torque won’t flip the plane over.”
“You know a lot about these autocannons?”
“I read about them two nights straight and there isn’t that much to read.”
They laughed together.
“Sounds like they plan on using it,” Hauser said.
She shrugged. “Or they’ve been making it more attractive to sell.”
“If she killed or shot three men,” Hauser said, “do you think this women Jessie had military or law enforcement experience?”
She wasn’t so sure. “She used the term flank, said that’s why she knew her husband’s two friends were going to kill her. They flanked her. But she didn’t come across as the military type to me. Undisciplined. A pill popper, I think.”
Hauser’s cell phone beeped.
“I have an idea,” Sunny said.
Hauser pulled his phone and stared at the screen. “My boss. The CIA identified overseas chatter about an American weapon arriving into yad Allah, the hands of God.”
She decided to rephrase. “General Hauser, sir. I know how to find that aluminum barn.”
He cocked his massive head. The one-star general was as big as the hulk, only he was tan, not green. At least six-foot-seven. And thick. “Tell me, please,” he said.
“That aluminum building was brand new. The bolts and nuts were shiny, almost polished.”
“That’s a good lead,” he said. “We can contact manufacturers. Distributors.”
“I was thinking of something faster. You’re with Homeland. Do our spy agencies keep old satellite photos?”
11
A faded red car drove onto the Maris property, Jessie watching from the trailer as the unfamiliar sedan rolled tire marks across her newly raked dirt near the barn. She’d been packing clothes, personal items, equipment, deeds, wills, and other important papers in cardboard boxes, getting ready to bug out, but she quit all that when she heard the car approach. Gripping her holstered Beretta, she walked outside.
In her mind, Jessie had already assumed sole ownership of the property’s new aluminum barn, Nolan’s Ford truck, the five-year-old Airstream trailer, and the near-eternal two-hundred acres of surrounding Sonoran Desert, not to mention the forty-five caliber weapon she wore, the semiautomatic in front, directly over her belt buckle and the zipper of her cut-off jeans.
The sun looked brighter today, a shine which worked on her insides as well as her skin. Not since she was a young child had the Arizona daylight embraced her with such warmth, or had the pale blue sky cheered her soul. Today, as she had thirty years ago, Jessie loved the desert. Her first morning without Nolan felt like the best day of her life.
She’d never seen the sputtering old Dodge before, but she recognized the driver when he ducked out into the sunshine. She shaded her eyes to confirm the features of Hamza’s young mug. The Pakistani man worked at a convenience store in Gila Bend, where Jessie and Nolan bought gas, beer, candy, and cigarettes for their weekend binges. Hamza Yusin, who did not like being called Ham, also sold potent Afghani hash, and ranked as only one of two people in all of Arizona who could make Nolan laugh out loud.
She wondered why he didn’t tune his car.
“Greetings, Mrs. Maris,” Hamza said. “I was hoping to see my friend Nolan on this beautiful August day.”
She stuffed her hands in her pockets. She liked the Pakistani, too, maybe because he always called her Mrs. Maris and looked directly in her eyes. “Hi, Hamza. Nolan and Angel and Sammy took off for Colorado last night. They said they were going hunting, but I think the trip was more about pot seeds.”
“Hunting? That surprises me. Did Nolan say how long he would be gone?”
“A few days, I think, maybe a week.”
“Oh, my. Hunting marijuana seeds?”
“I don’t know for sure. They took Angel’s Ford 150 with the extended cab and lots of rifles. Maybe they were going to rip off some pot dealers. Or shoot Bambi. Those guys, you never can tell.”
“This strikes me as extremely unusual,” Hamza said. “Nolan and I spoke yesterday. We made plans to meet today. He said he and his friends had recently acquired equipment I might want to buy.”
She studied the Pakistani with new respect. “Really? You must mean that big machine in the barn. How much were you going to pay?”
Hamza smiled. His incisors bent in separate directions and one was broken, but the crooked grin added to his likeability. He was such a humble man, devoid of the macho, controlling crap so many of Nolan’s friends dumped on her. She liked his clothes, too, Hamza always in bright, primary colors. Today, his loose-fitting shirt was solid, bright blue, and his Bermuda shorts were canary yellow.
“We had not agreed on a price,” he said. “Your husband said I should first look at the machine, and then talk.”
She thought a minute. She’d cleaned up the property last night, working until sunrise to shift the bodies way back in the arroyo. She’d transported the bloodied soil and Angel’s truck there, too. Their DNA remained inside the barn, sure, but that proved only Nolan’s friends had visited. No obvious trace of murder and mayhem where the shootings had occurred, and she hoped no blood or DNA could be found within a square mile.
In other words, she saw no reason not to take Hamza inside, observe his reaction, and hear out his offer. She hadn’t considered selling, but Jessie knew her big idea for using the cannon was slightly outrageous. Maybe taking cash would be smarter. She could do a cost/benefit analysis, see if donating Hamza’s money to a woman’s shelter would do more good than what she’d been thinking about.
“So you collect—what?” she said. “Automatic cannons?”
He stared at her. Maybe he was surprised she knew exactly what was being offered. He took three or four beats to make up his mind what to say. The guy had a lot of wheels and levers working up there.
“In a manner, yes,” he said. “I have a customer and friend who acquires antique and used American weapons of war. In the past, I have earned a profit by buying and selling such things to him.”
She stared with skepticism. Total horse manure. Somebody wanted a cannon to mount on their wall? Part of their cannon collection? As nice as Hamza seemed, as humble as he acted, maybe he was a terrorist.
“Do you want to see the cannon?” she asked.
He blinked. “Yes.”
She hooked her left arm through his elbow and escorted him to the barn, her right thumb tucked in her waist, fingers touching the Beretta. She understood danger existed in showing the autocannon to Hamza, but wasn’t worried while she carried.
Compared to most amateurs, she’d turned out to be quite the gunfighter. Not proud of herself exactly, but aware she’d been calm and precise under fire. Probably because she didn’t give a rat’s ass. Apparently, that meant a lot when firing deadly weapons—and being fired at.
Inside the shiny barn, she flicked on the lights. The thirtyish Pakistani froze when he glimpsed the autocannon. In addition to the odor of gasoline, grease, and gun oil, she faintly tasted spent gunpowder in the air. Remnants of yesterday’s battle must have drifted and stayed inside and lingered. She wondered if Hamza noticed.
Or was the smell in her imagination?
“Oh, my,” he said.
For a second, she wondered if he meant the odor. But, no. He was practically drooling, his eyes and lips glossy over the autocannon. She told herself to stay calm and walked closer alongside him. “Big sucker, isn’t it?”
Guns and rifles fired bullets, Jessie had learned the night before, while cannons fired explosive shells. She pointed at two different types of unused cannon shells in their casings, which had been set out on the trailer’s edge.
“Look at the rounds it fires.” She used both hands to lift and offer the larger round to Hamza. “Over eleven inches long, weighs a pound and a half, despite the casing made of aluminum.”
“I could flick it off your face with my newspaper,” he said.
Behind the man’s head, white stars still blinked in a fading night sky. She’d been out all night. Sunny lay stretched out on a hard surface. The tickle had shifted to her jaw. An orange-to-red traffic light glared. A green neon LIQUOR sign and a tall gas station marquee called to drivers, all the lights poking her eyes with bright color.
“Get what off?” she said.
“Pretty sure it’s a tarantula.”
An hour later, after enduring an unnecessarily detailed physical inspection, Sunny curled up in a corner chair of the ER waiting room. A sign at the nurse’s desk said the medical facility was part of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.
Col. Seager had phoned the facility and spoken to her briefly while the doctor examined her. So had Homeland Security, a newly assigned fixer, he’d called himself. A replacement for Seager, Marine Corps Brigadier General Ray Hauser. He spent ten minutes listening to her tale, and with more empathy than her own CO. General Hauser was a nice guy.
“Great work finding the crime scene,” Hauser had said. “Out of the box thinking. Glad you’re okay.”
Col. Seager and Hauser both promised visits this morning, and could arrive at the hospital any minute. Identification of the sedative Jessie had used on her, plus her official medical release, might take longer. She’d been given Tylenol for her bruises, sore joints and minor pains. The spider hadn’t bitten her.
But she fought a losing battle rating her own job performance, second-guessing her earlier decisions. Waiting alone in the Air Force medical facility’s uncomfortable plastic chair, she fumed at herself for starting her search of that potential crime scene alone. She should have waited.
Her hand balled her into a fist. She hadn’t believed in herself. She should have expected to quickly find proof. Expected the tracks there to be a crime scene.
She hadn’t planned for success.
Maybe she did belong among the OIS analysts, behind a computer and a telephone, reading online news stories, researching crimes and criminals and making up theories to solve oddities. Taking her turn with the coffee-room supply checks, updating delivery orders. Putting notes on the staff refrigerator about eating other people’s lunches.
Yesterday’s mistake could and should have cost Sunny her life.
Ray waited for Seager near the medical facility’s main entrance, the morning pleasant compared to how hot yesterday had been. A soft breeze whipped around the corner of the one-story brick building to brush his cheeks. The fresh, moving air was hot, but not stifling. He hoped Seager wasn’t bringing bad weather.
He didn’t need extra hurdles in his search for Alissa’s killers.
There seemed reason to worry. Seager had come out to Arizona from Quantico, if not to take a punch at him, then something just for fun. Ray didn’t want him around, and earlier had sent formal notification Seager was off the investigation. Seager pretended it was too late to change his flight plans. Said he was coming to see Sunny.
From their previous conversation, he was pretty sure Seager was a complete, lifelong Adam Henry. Therefore, he had a hunch Seager wanted to be fired in person. Maybe start a fight. Sounded silly in the military, and of course it was extremely rare among officers. But with his job, he’d seen plenty of physical resistance.
Every other car arriving at the hospital contained at least one Air Force officer, but because Seager had already identified himself as a big-time college football player, the former defensive lineman was easy to spot climbing out of his BMW. He was as big as Ray, but thicker around the gut. He had an Air Force captain beside him. Maybe a friendly witness.
Seager saluted with a sneer. “Aren’t you going to call me asswipe? Say it to my face?”
Ray grimaced. His gut was already sour on the guy, thanks to Seager’s treatment of Air Force Special Agent Sunny Hicks. Endangering her life. Not better supervising her first assignment. The F-ing Romeo. Lucky the thieves hadn’t made Hicks disappear like Alissa. Seager was a jerk. Nothing close to a gentleman.
He made himself loose and ready. “I wasn’t planning on calling you asswipe, but why not? Asswipe.”
Seager’s right hand shot out to slam Ray’s shoulder, the open-palm thrust a juicy target for a practicing martial artist. Standard exercise, so Ray’s responses were reflex and instinct, ingrained in muscle memory. Seager’s attempted shove was still two inches short of making contact when Ray snatched Seager’s attacking wrist and forearm, used the momentum to spin him and force Seager’s arm behind his back.
A rear wrist lock. Bada bing, bada boom.
Seager’s pal retreated a step. Lips grim, Ray guessed he’d made up his mind to remain an observer.
Ray sighed. “Assault? Bill, please. What kind of response is that to being removed from an investigation? Ask yourself, how does this look on your employment record, ace?”
“Go f—”
Ray bent his wrist hard. “What you did to Special Agent Hicks was maybe the worst conduct by a commanding officer I’ve run across. Her first field assignment, and you let her almost get killed.”
“I didn’t—”
Ray goosed the pressure. Talked to the back of his neck. “Shut up. Say another word, I will arrest you for assault on a Homeland Security agent. Take you to the nearest Federal Detention Facility.”
“You’re going to need help,” Seager said. “Even with handcuffs.”
He couldn’t believe Seager said that. The man bringing himself additional pain and embarrassment. But true Adam Henrys were special guys. They didn’t understand much of anything, this one having no clue women hated taking crap as much as men did, especially from a boss. Someone you thought was a friend. No human of any gender likes being pressured into action or choice. Women and men and every variation want to make their own picks, free of intimidation.
It was his sister Etta who taught Ray to be a gentleman at thirteen, before his first dance. She made him sit down and listen and repeat her rules. Don’t offer to shake a woman’s hand. Let her offer her hand to you. If seated, stand when a woman walks in the room. Introduce yourself, and say, yes, ma’am, yes sir, to parents and all adults. Thank your friend and her mother for inviting you into their home. Threat all living things with respect. As you would like all living things to treat you.
He understood every man couldn’t be a gentleman. Most men didn’t know the rules or didn’t care, had no interest. They equated the word with sissy. Plus, there had always been men who believed women wanted to be aggressively pursued and directed. These guys were asswipes, one stage below Adam Henrys. The red line was making the disagreement physical. Take a swing at Ray or try to shove him like Seager did, that made you an Adam Henry.
A loser deserving of being twisted into a knot and arrested.
Delivered to the local federal authorities.
He had to be a hardass sometimes. A bully imposing his personal rules on others. But he was good at his job for the opposite trait—being friendly and gently guiding men and women to make the right decision. He was a large, intimidating man. Sure. With a big title, US Marine Corps general. But he knew being a gentleman usually won the battle, often before a conflict started. Not so much with Adam Henrys, maybe. He’d given Colonel Seager the chance to shut up and step back, even after the loser had taken a swipe at him. But no, this non-gentleman with violent tendencies, abuser of his authority over women, still wanted more.
Ray bent Seager’s wrist harder, made him squeak, kept him on his toes as they fast-walked down the sidewalk. “You have a tiny dick, a small brain, and a big mouth,” Ray said.
He hustled Seager fifty, sixty feet to where Ray’s black Suburban sat parked. A young man and woman, both with long, black hair, stopped to watch the two men struggling.
Seager’s witness, the Air Force captain, followed at a fast walk. Ray bet Seager would pick a better wingman next time he started a fight. What a jerk.
Ray clicked a button on his key ring and the Suburban’s back door popped open. Using his hands and a knee in the nuts, he forced Seager’s head through the opening, showed him a close-up of the back-seat, one-man jail.
Ray Hauser’s Steel-Tube Ride for the Ungentlemanly.
“I’ve only used this lockdown seat twice,” he said, “but it usually makes a serious impression.” He hiked the pain in Seager’s wrist, elbow, and shoulder. “Or does it?”
“I’m impressed. I’m impressed. Let me go. I’m gone without another word.”
Ray eased up. “Stay out of sight. You can see Sunny when I leave. And she’d better tell me later you apologized.”
“For what?”
“Everything.”
Sunny looked up from a People Magazine when General Hauser walked into the waiting room. The general was as big as Colonel Seager, tanner, and better muscled, especially his Popeye-like forearms and wrists.
She saluted. He returned the gesture, then asked familiar questions rapid fire, prodding her into rehashing the story, start to finish in less than five minutes. She expanded her information from their earlier phone call, but this time she finished with an apology. “Sorry I didn’t wait long enough for my partner. I never imagined I’d find evidence so quickly.”
General Hauser offered her a fist-bump. “You discovered an extremely important crime scene, special agent. Your imagination and determination have finally put us on the trail of the thieves. You’re a hero.”
She touched his fist with her own. “That’s nice of you to say, sir. But I feel bad I almost got myself killed. Over-eager beaver.”
Hauser shook his head. “Every investigator walks into bad situations alone sometimes. It happens. Luckily, the guys who took you ran into somebody even tougher, somebody who didn’t want or need to kill you to cover their crimes.”
“Jessie. What a woman.”
“For sure. How good a look did you get at the autocannon? Could you tell how far along they were with installing the cannon on a trailer?”
“They’d mounted the cannon, hydraulic motors, and the ammunition drum, set the weight off-center, too, like in a Warthog aircraft. So the torque won’t flip the plane over.”
“You know a lot about these autocannons?”
“I read about them two nights straight and there isn’t that much to read.”
They laughed together.
“Sounds like they plan on using it,” Hauser said.
She shrugged. “Or they’ve been making it more attractive to sell.”
“If she killed or shot three men,” Hauser said, “do you think this women Jessie had military or law enforcement experience?”
She wasn’t so sure. “She used the term flank, said that’s why she knew her husband’s two friends were going to kill her. They flanked her. But she didn’t come across as the military type to me. Undisciplined. A pill popper, I think.”
Hauser’s cell phone beeped.
“I have an idea,” Sunny said.
Hauser pulled his phone and stared at the screen. “My boss. The CIA identified overseas chatter about an American weapon arriving into yad Allah, the hands of God.”
She decided to rephrase. “General Hauser, sir. I know how to find that aluminum barn.”
He cocked his massive head. The one-star general was as big as the hulk, only he was tan, not green. At least six-foot-seven. And thick. “Tell me, please,” he said.
“That aluminum building was brand new. The bolts and nuts were shiny, almost polished.”
“That’s a good lead,” he said. “We can contact manufacturers. Distributors.”
“I was thinking of something faster. You’re with Homeland. Do our spy agencies keep old satellite photos?”
11
A faded red car drove onto the Maris property, Jessie watching from the trailer as the unfamiliar sedan rolled tire marks across her newly raked dirt near the barn. She’d been packing clothes, personal items, equipment, deeds, wills, and other important papers in cardboard boxes, getting ready to bug out, but she quit all that when she heard the car approach. Gripping her holstered Beretta, she walked outside.
In her mind, Jessie had already assumed sole ownership of the property’s new aluminum barn, Nolan’s Ford truck, the five-year-old Airstream trailer, and the near-eternal two-hundred acres of surrounding Sonoran Desert, not to mention the forty-five caliber weapon she wore, the semiautomatic in front, directly over her belt buckle and the zipper of her cut-off jeans.
The sun looked brighter today, a shine which worked on her insides as well as her skin. Not since she was a young child had the Arizona daylight embraced her with such warmth, or had the pale blue sky cheered her soul. Today, as she had thirty years ago, Jessie loved the desert. Her first morning without Nolan felt like the best day of her life.
She’d never seen the sputtering old Dodge before, but she recognized the driver when he ducked out into the sunshine. She shaded her eyes to confirm the features of Hamza’s young mug. The Pakistani man worked at a convenience store in Gila Bend, where Jessie and Nolan bought gas, beer, candy, and cigarettes for their weekend binges. Hamza Yusin, who did not like being called Ham, also sold potent Afghani hash, and ranked as only one of two people in all of Arizona who could make Nolan laugh out loud.
She wondered why he didn’t tune his car.
“Greetings, Mrs. Maris,” Hamza said. “I was hoping to see my friend Nolan on this beautiful August day.”
She stuffed her hands in her pockets. She liked the Pakistani, too, maybe because he always called her Mrs. Maris and looked directly in her eyes. “Hi, Hamza. Nolan and Angel and Sammy took off for Colorado last night. They said they were going hunting, but I think the trip was more about pot seeds.”
“Hunting? That surprises me. Did Nolan say how long he would be gone?”
“A few days, I think, maybe a week.”
“Oh, my. Hunting marijuana seeds?”
“I don’t know for sure. They took Angel’s Ford 150 with the extended cab and lots of rifles. Maybe they were going to rip off some pot dealers. Or shoot Bambi. Those guys, you never can tell.”
“This strikes me as extremely unusual,” Hamza said. “Nolan and I spoke yesterday. We made plans to meet today. He said he and his friends had recently acquired equipment I might want to buy.”
She studied the Pakistani with new respect. “Really? You must mean that big machine in the barn. How much were you going to pay?”
Hamza smiled. His incisors bent in separate directions and one was broken, but the crooked grin added to his likeability. He was such a humble man, devoid of the macho, controlling crap so many of Nolan’s friends dumped on her. She liked his clothes, too, Hamza always in bright, primary colors. Today, his loose-fitting shirt was solid, bright blue, and his Bermuda shorts were canary yellow.
“We had not agreed on a price,” he said. “Your husband said I should first look at the machine, and then talk.”
She thought a minute. She’d cleaned up the property last night, working until sunrise to shift the bodies way back in the arroyo. She’d transported the bloodied soil and Angel’s truck there, too. Their DNA remained inside the barn, sure, but that proved only Nolan’s friends had visited. No obvious trace of murder and mayhem where the shootings had occurred, and she hoped no blood or DNA could be found within a square mile.
In other words, she saw no reason not to take Hamza inside, observe his reaction, and hear out his offer. She hadn’t considered selling, but Jessie knew her big idea for using the cannon was slightly outrageous. Maybe taking cash would be smarter. She could do a cost/benefit analysis, see if donating Hamza’s money to a woman’s shelter would do more good than what she’d been thinking about.
“So you collect—what?” she said. “Automatic cannons?”
He stared at her. Maybe he was surprised she knew exactly what was being offered. He took three or four beats to make up his mind what to say. The guy had a lot of wheels and levers working up there.
“In a manner, yes,” he said. “I have a customer and friend who acquires antique and used American weapons of war. In the past, I have earned a profit by buying and selling such things to him.”
She stared with skepticism. Total horse manure. Somebody wanted a cannon to mount on their wall? Part of their cannon collection? As nice as Hamza seemed, as humble as he acted, maybe he was a terrorist.
“Do you want to see the cannon?” she asked.
He blinked. “Yes.”
She hooked her left arm through his elbow and escorted him to the barn, her right thumb tucked in her waist, fingers touching the Beretta. She understood danger existed in showing the autocannon to Hamza, but wasn’t worried while she carried.
Compared to most amateurs, she’d turned out to be quite the gunfighter. Not proud of herself exactly, but aware she’d been calm and precise under fire. Probably because she didn’t give a rat’s ass. Apparently, that meant a lot when firing deadly weapons—and being fired at.
Inside the shiny barn, she flicked on the lights. The thirtyish Pakistani froze when he glimpsed the autocannon. In addition to the odor of gasoline, grease, and gun oil, she faintly tasted spent gunpowder in the air. Remnants of yesterday’s battle must have drifted and stayed inside and lingered. She wondered if Hamza noticed.
Or was the smell in her imagination?
“Oh, my,” he said.
For a second, she wondered if he meant the odor. But, no. He was practically drooling, his eyes and lips glossy over the autocannon. She told herself to stay calm and walked closer alongside him. “Big sucker, isn’t it?”
Guns and rifles fired bullets, Jessie had learned the night before, while cannons fired explosive shells. She pointed at two different types of unused cannon shells in their casings, which had been set out on the trailer’s edge.
“Look at the rounds it fires.” She used both hands to lift and offer the larger round to Hamza. “Over eleven inches long, weighs a pound and a half, despite the casing made of aluminum.”
