Читать книгу Silent Arsenal - Don Pendleton - Страница 7

“Sixteen years old, and Boise is the closest she’s been to a big city. Hops a Greyhound and I find out about this two months ago—no clue, no threats, no kiss-my-ass. Not even Mrs. Evans number three—Ilsa of the SS I tell ya—with all her keen female intuition, saw this bomb dropping. And here I was, thinking I was father of the year. The cop the press maggots used to call Dirty Harry on Steroids, lower than the lowest now. I can’t even hold my family together. Three-time loser, huh. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking?”

“That’s not what I was thinking, Jim. And I’m not the enemy.”

“Right, yeah, you’re a buddy, ex-cop, once my partner.”

The man he knew from the old L.A.P.D. days was on an angry roll, fueled by whiskey and the torment of the day, steaming more mad at the world with every snarl and speck of flying froth. Carl “Ironman” Lyons figured the best thing to do was to let him vent, expend all the fury before he started firing off his own questions.

“Fuck me raw. I keep asking myself why? It’s like some sick tape I keep running through my head, all these horrible images of everything that could happen to her. Wandering the street, maybe on drugs, some pimp… Goddammit, Carl. All I wanted was for her to have a decent life—you know, clean air, big sky, small town. No drugs, no crime, no gangs, a little slice of peace and sanity to grow up in, not drowning with all the other human turds in that toilet we knew, Los Angeles. We know the city can eat up someone her age. And with her looks… You see a picture of her, you’re looking at an angel, a goddamn princess. Now I track her here, one of my worst fears comes true. I find out she’s been dancing in a strip joint, for God’s sake.”

Lyons didn’t believe in coincidence or fate, didn’t cater to psychic babble or all those crystal-ball hotlines that mapped out someone’s destiny, cradle to grave, fame and fortune and bliss on earth written in the palm of the hand. A former detective of the Los Angeles Police Department and currently a commando working out of Stony Man Farm—an ultra-covert intelligence agency nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains—he believed in action, truth and just the facts. But, he had to admit, bumping into another cop he had partnered with for more than a year in a police department clear on the other side of the country—a man he hadn’t seen, heard from nor thought about in well over a decade—was on the hinky side of coincidence.

But there Jim Evans had been, seconds away from either getting bounced on his ear out of the bar or breaking the joint up with collateral damage to doormen and patrons, a guest stint in a D.C. jail with the kind of unsavory characters he loathed, had busted up and feared his daughter falling into league—or bed—with. Bizarre fluke or some guiding cosmic hand, Lyons couldn’t help but wonder, just the same, about the events leading up to the chance encounter.

After three days decompressing from the latest mission, Lyons had rounded up the other two-thirds of Able Team for a quick getaway until duty called again. Restless, feeling confined at Stony Man Farm in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, Lyons, the leader of Able Team, had piled the three of them into the oversize War Wagon—which wasn’t supposed to leave the Farm’s premises for a mere joyride—then driven them to the Key Bridge Marriott where he’d paid for a penthouse suite for a week. Still restless, tired of watching Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz and Rosario Blancanales enthralling themselves with the same movies on cable or playing computer games until he was sure they were bug-eyed, he had set out by himself for a few belts and beers, a tour of downtown D.C. strip joints on the play-card, fantasies of getting lucky urging him on. Cheap thrills had a way of bringing trouble to Lyons, and this time out had proved no different. It had been touch-and-go back at the titty bar, wrestling Evans free of the bouncers, packing the ex-L.A. detective, drunk and belligerent, into his Lexus rental, trying to get both the story and the facts straight.

Lyons, sensing Evans about to launch himself on the verbal rampage again, was not sure he was willing to sit through another diatribe. Judging from whiskey fumes strong enough to gag a buzzard, one cloud of cigarette smoke after another blown out in long, angry exhales, he didn’t see the man calming down anytime soon. Add the snail’s pace the Stony Man warrior was forced to keep the rental creeping through Georgetown and Lyons found his own aggravation level rising.

He looked over at Evans, found a wrinkled, leather-faced, heavier version of the cop he’d once known. With his black Stetson, sheepskin coat and cowboy boots, Evans in his Wild West garb was damn near a circus act in a coat-and-tie Beemer and Evian town that looked down its nose at anyone who didn’t fit the yuppie and PC parameters. Then again, Lyons, with his knee-length black leather trench coat, aloha shirt alive and flaming with palm trees, flamingos and scantily clad island girls, with white slacks and alligator shoes… Well, he knew he didn’t have much room to judge the fashion show. In fact, he recalled one of the musclebound punks with an earpiece back at the bar tagging him “Don Ho” and ordering him to get his buddy, Wyatt, back home to the ranch.

Kids these days, he groused to himself, no respect for their elders.

Evans, he recalled, hadn’t been a particularly good cop, nor a bad one, at least not the renegade he was purported by the press to be when Lyons had worked with him. There were rumors of brutality, charges of racism, L.A. media making a big stink over a couple of questionable shootings before the man had transferred to Lyons’s division. They had gone through some doors together, solved some tough cases, but Lyons had never found himself ready to cozy up to the man, on or off the job.

He had never been able to put a finger on his feelings toward the man, supposed he was just plain mean-spirited, with or without a badge, the whole world crap, not a decent human being anywhere, a borderline bully out to control, dominate or punish. He wasn’t the kind of man Lyons would sit down with and drink a few beers, but Evans had jumped in front of a bullet for him, getting seriously wounded in the process, commendations eventually pinned on both of them.

What was this moment supposed to mean? he wondered. Was Fate, after all, calling in a marker? Was some cosmic force urging him to extend a helping hand, if not for Evans, but for the innocent life of a young girl? Whatever the emotional quandary, it was a rare day on the planet, he figured, when just about any man’s intentions and motives were altruistic.

So far, Lyons had the gist of why Evans had come to town. Up to a point he supposed he could understand the man’s pain and anger over a runaway child. Hadn’t he once been married? It was true, he had a son, Tommy, but he hadn’t spoken to either the ex or his boy—now fully grown—in quite a while. What was he feeling now? What was he thinking? Did he regret the path in life he’d chosen, sloughing off whatever responsibilities as a father he should have seen through? If so, why? Because it was a big bad savage world out there, after all, and his skills as a warrior were more needed for the greater good of humankind, instead of raising a family? Was he on the verge right then of doing some voyeuristic dance through another man’s broken family life? Was he thinking he could and should help Evans find his daughter, despite his true feelings for the guy?

Lyons jostled through a bottleneck of vehicles playing bumper cars, lurched ahead as a light turned red and a few horns blared their ire at him.

“Did you report her missing?” Lyons asked when Evans fell silent.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Hell, I was embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to know, or think I’d failed as a father. Judy, even though she’s not Deirdre’s real mother, somehow found plenty of ways to want to blame me, but that’s another stinger to pull out of my hide at some point. Didn’t come right out and say it, but she had her way of telling me she’s my problem, I deal with it. How do you like that?”

Another marriage made in hell, Lyons thought. “Seems you picked up the trail pretty quick.”

“She left with an older girl, a Susan Barker. I heard she’d been hanging around with her. Susie’s something of the town good-time girl, nice way of saying she’s just a whore. I own a bar—maybe I told you that—and I hear things. One rumor led to another. I had a talk with this girl’s sometime boyfriend.”

“And a little chat with the boyfriend pointed you east to this fair city?”

“Let’s just say I got a few answers the old-fashioned way. And, my daughter absconded with a couple of my credit cards. Easy enough to track them both to a motel here—the bills started coming in—but Susie’s sometime squeeze filled in a few blanks about their little jaunt to D.C. Seemed Susie filled Deirdre’s head with a lot of nonsense about how they could make it big here, she had friends in the area, some kind of big shots in the entertainment business. I already had my head crammed with visions of pure assholes she’d come here and get scammed by, or worse. Only I get the impression it was something more than just…stripping for a bunch of assholes who oughta be home with their wives and kids. Just today I found Susie holed up in some crack motel up New York Avenue, staked it out, followed Susie to work, where you found me. She goes by the name of Candy. Get this. Walk in, like a regular asshole, I see my daughter’s picture on the wall in this dump, goes by Dee-Dee. The bastards—no better than pimps—had her all dolled up in some cowgirl outfit.”

“Did you, uh, run into your daughter back there?”

Evans scowled. “No. I was told she was off tonight.”

“I got the impression you were making a hard pitch.”

“Yeah, like telling the manager he’s got a sixteen-year-old girl taking her clothes off in his place, and if he didn’t want the cops shutting him down or my fist doing a rectal probe, he’d better tell me where my daughter was. That’s where you entered the picture.”

Lyons cleared his throat, already knew the reaction he’d get when he dropped the bomb. “I have to ask, Jim. Are you leaving anything out?”

“Such as?” Evans growled.

“Kids run away from home for a reason.”

“Why don’t you just come out and ask it, Carl, instead of tap-dancing on my nuts.”

“Okay. Was there any abuse?”

Lyons found his former partner staring at him, steady, no sign of anger or resentment.

“No. None whatsoever of any kind. But I understand you asking. I may be a mean SOB on the streets, but I take care of my kids, never raised a hand to them or touched them in any way. End of story.”

Lyons fell silent, wondering how far he should go with this. Then Evans asked, “If you don’t mind me asking, what are those two cannons you’re packing? Couldn’t help but notice. I figure you’re into something needs punch like that.”

The question didn’t catch Lyons off guard, but he felt uncomfortable with the sudden glint in Evans’s eyes—the Stony Man warrior sure his former partner was entertaining ideas about going vigilante if he discovered any more dark secrets about his darling DeeDee. They were twin .45s, butts-out, stainless-steel, the double bulging package obvious beneath his coat, Lyons knew. But he had the bogus Justice Department ID just in case the issue of concealed weapons was pushed by any law on the prowl. The twins had been made by John “Cowboy” Kissinger, the Farm’s resident weaponsmith. With fifteen Rhino or body-armor-piercing rounds in each clip, Lyons had let Kissinger talk him into trying out hardware other than the .357 Magnum Colt Python he usually carried. Lyons told Evans what they were, but left out the details.

Evans chuckled. “We might have lost touch over the years, but I figured you put in your twenty, retired, maybe got yourself a boat, move up north like a lot of L.A. cops do when they leave the job, maybe write crime novels.”

“I did. Retire, that is. But sitting still on a sailboat or in front of a keyboard isn’t my speed.”

“So what are you doing to keep busy these days?”

“I do freelance security work.”

Evans nodded, looked at his cigarette, savvy enough to know not to push the subject. He paused, working on his smoke, then said, “Know what I’m thinking right now, Carl? I’m thinking I played a bad hand back at that toilet bowl, blew any chance maybe getting Susie to talk, find my daughter. My gut tells me she’s into something way over her head, and you could see I was in no mood or shape for any subtle approach.”

“So I saw.”

“I don’t mean to sound like some judgmental prick, but you actually enjoy going to those kinds of places? What is it? Some kind of Peeping Tom jolt, look but don’t touch, the lonely guy’s masturbatory fantasy in living color?”

“I guess it beats sitting around watching sitcoms every night.”

“Suppose there was a time I did, too.” Evans grunted, Lyons thinking he could almost read the man’s thoughts regarding another chance encounter if he hadn’t been there ready to tear the place apart. Whatever he was chewing over, the anger faded from his eyes. “You, uh, you doing anything special the next couple of days?”

“You’re thinking you’d like me to pick up where you left off tonight.”

“That’s what I’m asking. Maybe you can make some inroads, talk to Susie, at least steer me in the right direction if you learn something. Right now, with a load on, and being too close to it, I’m no good to anybody.”

“I agree, but when I start something, I like to finish it my way, my terms.”

Lyons wished the night had turned out the way he’d originally envisioned, Evans’s world, safe and tucked in back in Idaho, but here he was, boxed in the spotlight. He debated the matter, wanted to tell the man he was on his own, but a combo of chivalry, guilt and a vague sense of being a good guy got the better of him.

“If I do,” he told Evans. “I can’t make any promises you’ll get whatever the end result you want. And, if I do, I have a couple of conditions, no questions, no tirades, no strings. You don’t like what I find, go off half cocked, you’re on your own. Don’t even call me for bail money.”

“Whatever they are, I’ll live with the terms. And I’ll pay you whatever you think is right for your time and trouble.”

“This isn’t the ‘Rockford Files.’ I don’t need your money. Consider this returning a favor for when you took a bullet for me.”

“Fair enough. So, you’ll help?”

“Give me a second,” Lyons said, juggling cell phone and the wheel as he turned them onto Key Bridge, a Volvo cutting him off with horn blasting and the middle-finger salute shot his way.

Seven, eight trills, Lyons gnashing his teeth over the delay. Then he heard Schwarz come on, his teammate forced to nearly shout over a background score for a shoot-’em-up he knew they’d been watching every time it came on Cinemax and HBO.

“This better be good, Carl.”

“I knew it! I can hear your five Elvis impersonators shooting up the Riviera Casino clear across goddamn Key Bridge. How many times you two clowns need to watch 3000 Miles to Graceland? Figure by now you must know every word of dialogue by heart. It’s becoming kind of obsessive-compulsive, don’t you think?”

“I’m partial to the Kurt Russell part. I see you as that psychopath, Murphy, especially when you go down in a hail of SWAT bullets at the end, bleeding out to ‘I Did It My Way.’”

“You’re going to see my foot up your ass if you don’t turn off the TV and look alive! I’m bringing up company.”

“I bet you’ve been out trolling the nudie bars. I sure hope you don’t come through the door with just one chippy, me and Pol—”

“It’s a cop I know from the L.A.P.D. We’re going to work—tonight—and I’ll buy you clowns the DVD for Christmas. You can watch 3000 Miles to Graceland all you want but only on your time.”

“You promise?”

Lyons punched off, found Evans treating him to a curious look. “Despite what you just heard, they are professionals.”

HAL BROGNOLA WAS no fan of spook games, intrigue or mystery. Just the same, he was moving in a shadow world this night, prepared to meet a faceless, nameless emissary shipped out by the President of the United States to get the particulars on a brewing but unnamed crisis.

Beyond his public role as a high-ranking federal agent in the United States Department of Justice, he did, however, lead a double life as director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm. Brognola was also the liaison to the President of the United States, the chief executive’s go-to man in the Farm’s world of high-stakes covert operations.

The Man sanctioned nearly all of the Farm’s missions, the dirtiest of wet work against enemies to national security, either of the foreign or homegrown variety. There was direct contact, usually by phone, between Brognola and the President before the starting flag was waved, the utmost protocol of secrecy maintained where it regarded Stony Man Farm and the Justice man’s netherworld role behind the public face.

So he had some reservations about the rendezvous, the normal channels bucked, unknown entities operating as cutouts. The Man had sounded terse, even abrupt, earlier when he’d called him at his Justice Department office on the secured line to begin casting shadows over what Brognola suspected would become a long night melding into even longer and tense days ahead. But if the President—who had everything to lose if the Farm was exposed—trusted the setup, who was he, Brognola figured, to question his judgment? The crisis was either so serious and the President too busy…

Brognola shut down his reservations, got a grip on what was actually normal professional anxiety and paranoia. In his business, reality was rarely as it appeared.

He proceeded across the Mall, vectoring for the Red Castle of the Smithsonian, flanked and dwarfed by the distant dome of the Capitol and the Washington Monument. It was a short walk from the Justice Department building in the Federal Triangle, and a check of his watch showed he was on time. At this late hour, the museums along Jefferson Drive were shut down to the public. No traffic, vehicular or human, in the area, but there had been a series of armed robberies around the Mall lately, which had thinned the herd of after-work walkers and joggers to virtual extinction. Briefcase in hand, Brognola was mindful of the weight of the Glock .45 shouldered beneath his suitcoat, figured there were enough rounds to split the difference between muggers or spooks with malice of heart.

He was unwrapping a cigar when he spotted the trio of black vehicles rolling his way. They parked curbside in front of the Smithsonian. Government plates, black-tinted windows all around, two unmarked sedans sandwiched a limousine. Doors opened and four suits with earpieces got out, scanned the street, the Mall, before one of them beckoned for Brognola to climb into the limo. The sunglasses were a little much, he supposed, figured the shades for intimidating intent.

The big Fed crossed Jefferson, squeezed through the doorway, claimed an empty section of cushy seat beside a minibar. The door closed and Brognola found another pair of sunglasses across the well. He had a full head of coiffed black hair, cashmere coat, but beyond that the guy was nondescript. Another civil servant. Yet there was something in his silence, the way Brognola found himself measured, wishing he could see the emissary’s eyes…

Sunglasses to wingtips, the guy was spook, Brognola concluded.

“Time is short on this one, Mr. Brognola,” Sunglasses said, producing a thick letter-size envelope stamped with Classified-Eyes only and the presidential seal, handing it to the big Fed. “The fate of the free world and a not-so-inconsequential matter of the possible extinction of the human race may have just fallen into your hands.”

“LOVE THE ‘Miami Vice’ look, but don’t you think the sunglasses are overdoing it?”

Lyons pushed the Blues Brothers shades snug up his nose. “What can I say? Your presence is blinding.”

Cop instincts flaring up, he could see her gears mesh, Susie-Candy wondering how to handle him, but already knowing what problem had walked into her life. All of three seconds looking at her, Lyons heard the bullshit radar in his head blipping off the screen, blond bogey at twelve o’clock.

She finally took a seat in the booth across from Lyons, blowing smoke his way, glancing around, then crossing a leg, the strap-on pump going back and forth like a piston. The damsel-in-distress look wasn’t about to aid his cause, but Lyons didn’t plan on staying any longer than it took to get the answers he wanted.

She sipped from a glass of watered-down champagne that Lyons had promised and paid twenty bucks for after slipping a fifty into her garter when she was on stage, shaking it for her coat-and-tie hyenas. A friendly chat, he’d told her, was all he wanted, nursing a beer while she took her sweet time getting over to him, working her platoon of admirers for a few dollars more. Now that she was his for the moment, Lyons felt the resentment and hostility from wannabes—more than likely on the lam from husband and father duties—boring into the side of his head. He wondered how much of her time he could commandeer before she either turned snippy during Q and A or the security kid with the mouth came over to tell Don Ho his money was no good here. He knew he was being watched, every fiber of instinct screaming the softer, kinder approach was probably just a dream.

Lyons gave it a few seconds before he cut to the chase, treated Candy to a smile that would have come from the heart under other circumstances. The frilly one-piece Roaring Twenties get-up did little to hide a package Lyons surmised lightened many a fat wallet, but the painted face was already showing wear and tear around the eyes from all-night shenanigans. He figured a few more years of life in the fast lane and she’d look every bit the jaded, used-up whore she was acting. Well, he was no one to judge character flaws, and so far he was unmolested by the security quartet. Still, something felt wrong, a lurking menace in the air, and he wondered who was about to do the fishing. A check of his six, and the guy he figured for either the manager or the owner still had the evil eye aimed his way, ready to march out the troops.

“Who’s the guy over there with the bad perm, looking all mean and surly?”

“The owner.”

The way she answered, sure she was in control, Lyons knew he was on the clock. He produced the photo Evans had given him, laid it on the table. It was a shot of the daughter in the saddle of her horse back at the ranch. She appeared relaxed, content enough in the photo, a beauty like Evans claimed, but there was something forced in the expression that told Lyons she wasn’t the happiest camper in Idaho. Chalk it up to youthful disillusionment maybe, but Lyons had seen something more than suppressed rebellion. The truth was, he knew if he discovered Evans had lied about any abuse, he was prepared to walk away. These days, he thought, there was an epidemic of children being savaged, scarred for life by adults, if they weren’t outright murdered. In all good conscience he knew he wouldn’t be a party to returning Evans’s daughter to a torture chamber of psychological and physical abuse if that happened to be the case.

“Tell me where I can find Dee-Dee.”

She laughed, nervous eyes darting around, body language a stone wall of defiance.

“You think this is funny, Susie? She’s sixteen, that by itself means I could get this place shut down, then you’d be out of a job, on the street, probably hooking, unless you’re working the johnson on someone’s husband, or pimping for some scumbag takes your money for crack.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“I’ll take a rain check.”

Lyons read the sudden fear in her eyes, but sensed it wasn’t about being unemployed as she made another roving search of the crowd.

“Look at me, Susie.”

She did, the cigarette trembling in her hand. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”

“Maybe. If that’s true, why?”

She blew smoke in his face. “You’re a cop, like her old man. I can tell, all cops have this look…”

“Was a cop. I’m not interested in your psychoanalysis of a job I’m sure you’ve ever only been on the wrong side of.”

“Touché. So, you a friend of his? A private detective? What?”

“I’m just some guy he used to know and he asked a favor.”

She grunted, choosing her words. “Loneliness.”

“What?”

Lyons watched as she paused, thought about something, the tough-street act almost fading away. “Look, she’s a sweet kid, I like her, I’m her only real friend. All she needed was a friend, you know.”

“Who doesn’t.”

“You want some answers, Miami, listen.” Another look past Lyons, then she went on. “Dee-Dee was always kind of sad. She spent most of her time alone, but it was more than me feeling sorry for her. She has what I call a special heart, an innocence she deserves to keep, something I lost a long time ago.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll stay special working here.”

“It’s all an act, Miami. It isn’t some free-for-all whoring you might think, like hand jobs under the table.”

“Girl has to make a living, that it?”

“Dee-Dee deserves a lot more out of life than small-town Nowhere, U.S.A., and she knew it. How’s that for psychoanalysis?”

“And so you come along and offer her the Promised Land.”

She ignored the remark, went on, “She wrote poems, pretty good ones, and told me how her father didn’t like that. He actually tore them up one day in front of her, told her he wasn’t going to stand by and watch her dream her life away. Might as well called her a nobody. I’d say that’s reason to want to leave home—wouldn’t you?—someone reaches in and rips your soul out. She never wanted to leave Los Angeles in the first place.”

Lyons resisted the tug at his heartstrings, but knew he failed.

“Yeah, there’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Telling me she ran away with you, her mentor, because she missed the big-city lights?”

“If you’re asking did her old man sleep with her, the answer is no. But he’s a drunk, and he can be mean, and he’s a control freak. As far as I know, he never hit her, either.”

“I still have cop’s eyes, Susie. And I’m looking at someone holding back. Keep blowing smoke in my face, but everything about you tells me she’s in trouble. So cut the concerned-mother-hen act and tell me what you know. Now.”

“Listen to me,” she said, her voice lowering to a whisper, Lyons straining to make out her voice as it was drowned by the thunder of rock and roll. She pulled back, Lyons swearing he saw her eyes misting. “I—I made a mistake…you don’t want to know…”

“Wrong. I want to know now more than I did when I came in.”

“I can’t.”

Lyons could almost reach out and touch the wall of fear, her hand shaking as she ground out the smoke, uncrossed her legs. It was a bad move, as Lyons envisioned the cavalry en route, but he reached over, grabbed her arm.

“I’m not leaving until you answer my question.”

“You’re already gone, sport.”

She was breaking away as Lyons heard the voice he’d already put the face to tell her, “Get dressed, and take off. Your VIPs are here.”

“I wasn’t finished.”

“You’re finished, sport, but first me and you are going to have a conversation. Now,” he said, Lyons watching as the Perm settled into the booth, “we can handle this one of two ways…”