Callisto (48 page)

Someone come up to me and took off the blindfold. It's a guy in a one-piece flying suit with a helmet. He says to me, shouting above the engine noise, “No in-flight movie! No meal!”

“Okay!”

“Enjoy the ride!”

“Can you take these off?” I'm talking about the restrainer cuffs.

“No can do!” he says. “Regulations!”

He went away. There's no one else aboard, it looks like, just me inside this big huge space with lights here and there glowing very dim, so it's like being inside a metal cave with this droning roaring sound everywhere. There's no windows to look out of so nothing to do, just sit there and feel everything
shudder and shake. I could hear voices way off in the front where the pilots are, so they don't sit behind closed doors like pilots in an airliner do, but no one come near me after the blindfold got took off. I'm going to Miami, Harding said. That's somewhere I never went before, so this is good.

I bet Kraus and Deedle are waiting there to take me into custody. I have still got this problem about killing Dean, so that is not so good, but now they know Dean had got this thin skull that broke easy. That's what they call extenderating circumstances, which is a fancy name for something that shouldn't have happened and was never meant deliberate. Maybe this will mean they go easy on me with the manslaughter charge, I hope so. Maybe I can call Feenie Myers to be my character witness seeing as she already said on the news she doesn't think I'm a terrorist. If she takes her nose-ring out and combs her hair nice the court will most likely believe her. I couldn't think who else will speak up for me. Not having friends is a big problem sometimes.

I can't say how long we're in the air when the same guy come back to me with a headset and plug-in jack in his hand.

“Call for you,” he says, and put the headset over my ears and plugged the wire into something in the wall behind me, then he goes away. There's a little mike on a rod curving in front of my face to speak into, but so far nothing in my ears except static.

“Hello?”

I'm expecting it'll be Agent Kraus same as this morning, checking up to see that I'm okay and maybe he'll have more news about developments behind the scenes, as they say.

“Hello?”

The static cleared and a voice come through very clear, only it isn't Kraus.

“Odell?”

“Uhuh …”

“Jim Ricker. Can you hear me okay?”

“Uhuh …”

“Heard they put you through the wringer down there. Did they make you sign a paper says they didn't lay a finger on you?”

“Uhuh …”

“That's their style. Don't worry about that. You're off the hook, my friend.”

“The hook?”

“Free and clear. This is a private conversation, Odell. Even the guys up in the cockpit can't hear this, okay? This is strictly between you and me and the bird on the wire. All charges against you have been dropped. Not just the terrorism and conspiracy charge, not just the involvement in drugs, I'm talking about murder or manslaughter charges pertaining to the death of Dean Lowry. That's all gone away. I just found out myself.”

“But ...how come?”

“Let's go back a little way. That letter you wrote to Condi Rice, it came into the possession of the FBI thanks to the guy who stole Dean's truck on behalf of a third party. He took the letter out of curiosity when he saw who it's addressed to. This guy, you don't need to know his name, he's a professional car thief. When he delivered the vehicle to the party paying him to steal it, he kept that letter. When he read it he offered it to the Bureau for a reward because your name and Dean's name were in the news. That started wheels turning. Are you following this, Odell?”

“Uhuh.”

“When Dean's body wasn't where you said in the letter the federal boys were very annoyed with you. Everything you told them was suspect after that. They staged a breakout for you but you figured that out and went the other way, only they had you covered for separation from the getaway vehicle and followed along. By then they're figuring you had no idea where to go, no terrorist buddies to turn to, just a scared rabbit going this way and that. So they picked you up again for some hard grilling to make you fess up, which you and I know was a pure waste of time. Still with me?”

“Uhuh.”

“Meantime, heads are being scratched when the guy with the letter got brought in for interrogation. He broke down and put investigators on the trail of his employer, the one who had him steal the truck. Guess who that was?”

“I … don't know.”

“Ask yourself this. Why did Chet Marchand tell you to leave your phone in the truck the day of the funeral?”

“To … not to have it ring while the funeral's happening.”

“Odell, all you need to do to avoid that is switch the damn thing off. He wanted you to leave the phone in the truck so they could use it to trigger the bomb their people planted. If bits of the phone survived the blast it'd lead to you, the friend of a Muslim terrorist, Dean Lowry. That's what they thought he was then. No one in law enforcement thinks that about him now. Dean Lowry the dope pusher and all-round idiot, that's the thinking now.”

“But...why would Chet want to blow me up?”

“Chet went to Callisto looking for a patsy, someone to
blame for a terror attack. He knew Dean Lowry was messing with Islam because his aunt wrote a letter to Preacher Bob about him. Dean was the target, the one to befriend so his truck could be used as a terror bomb. Only trouble was, Dean was already dead, thanks to you, but Chet didn't know this and started making himself your buddy. When he found out Dean's disappeared and you're available instead, he passed on Dean's role as patsy to you, thinking you're a nobody that no one's going to miss.”

“Chet...?”

“Yeah, Chet, mister nice guy churchgoing friend of Preacher Bob. Put it together, Odell. Bob Jerome wanted Leighton Ketchum in the White House, but enthusiasm for the mess in Iraq has divided the nation. What does Bob need to increase the senator's chances for election? He needs another 9-11 to make the people mad, to make them vote for the guy who's a hardliner on terrorism. Remember the invitation to Bob's big meeting in Topeka on July Fourth? That's when the bomb was supposed to go off. Too bad you got the bright idea of calling your own phone to see if it's still in the truck. Kaboom! End of Bob's homegrown terror attack plan. I'm thinking the phone was supposed to be switched off until you got to Topeka, then someone would've snuck under your truck to activate it for the big rally. They fucked up and left it switched on. You saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives by detonating that bomb ahead of schedule, Odell.”

“I did?”

“You're the invisible hero, my man. Preacher Bob and Chet Marchand have denied any knowledge of this, and there's no way they can be indicted because the evidence against them
is purely circumstantial. If Senator Ketchum was in on the scheme, and his phone records between Washington and Topeka indicate he was, there's nothing he can do now except run with no terrorist attack to boost his chances. He knows we know and he's running scared. You did that, Odell, thwarted a plot that would have made the Oklahoma City bombing look like a rehearsal for the real thing. Take a bow.”

“I ...”

“Now, listen up. All of this is strictly confidential, not for public consumption. I'm not even supposed to tell
you
, but I'm going out on a limb because I don't like to see a decent guy left in the dark. This call is not happening. It's not happening because nobody on the entire planet can intercept and record these words you're hearing. I want you to make me a promise, Odell. I want you to promise me never to speak of this to anyone. Nothing about Preacher Bob or Chet Marchand or Senator Ketchum. Ever. To anyone. Make that promise to me, Odell. Make it now.”

“I ...promise.”

“Speaking out would only fuck you up at this stage. You're no longer being charged in the death of Dean Lowry because Dean Lowry has officially been declared missing, not dead. He's still a hunted man even though his body has already been destroyed. Donnie D and Marky Mark have been given some dough and told to leave Kansas. If they talk about what they know – and they don't know even a fraction of what I'm telling you now, Odell – they'll be eliminated. They know this and believe it. Your girlfriend and her prison guard back-door man have been let off the charges pending against them just to keep every aspect of the story quiet. Don't go near either
one again. This is the compromise my bosses worked out. Preacher Bob has ducked for cover big time. If Dean is thought to be still out there, a homegrown Muslim terrorist boogeyman, Ketchum still has a chance, maybe. Me, I think he's already toast. A big plot has been reduced to a small plot. That's the way it goes. You're in the clear. None of this ever happened. All you need to do now is go far away and keep your head down. Find a small job in a small town and zip that lip. We'll be watching, wherever you go. There were those that proposed eliminating you, Odell, but I spoke out against that, I want you to know. Don't disappoint me.”

“I ...I won't.”

“That's good. That's the sensible thing to do. Any questions?”

“Uh, no …”

“There'll be one final message from your government to you, then it's all over.”

“Message?”

“So long, Odell. You made your mark. Too bad no one'll ever know.”

“Uh...Jim?”

“What?”

“Uh...who do you work for? Agent Deedle said to me you're not with Homeland Security. Was he lying?”

“Odell, have you ever heard the expression ‘wheels within wheels?'”

“No.”

“Well, one day you will, and then you'll understand, maybe.”

“But ...who do you work for?”

“The good guys,” he says.

There's a click and my ears filled with static again. The guy in the helmet come along a minute later and took off the headset. “Did the call get through?” he asks. “We couldn't hear jack shit up front.”

“No, it... all I could hear was buzzing.”

“Maybe they'll try again.”

He took the headset away. I sat looking at the opposite wall, thinking about everything Jim Ricker told me, trying to believe it. If Jim Ricker was speaking the truth then everything that happened to me made sense, kind of. I had been in the middle of Something Big and Bad and never knew it. A long time ago I saw this old silent movie on TV with this guy walking through a town being blown apart by a windstorm, but no matter how many buildings fell down right next to him or even on top of him, he never got touched out of sheer dumb luck. It was real funny. I am that guy, lucky and dumb. I didn't know what to think about all of this, still trying to swallow it down, all those things Jim Ricker told me. And what was this final message from my government to me? The guy in the helmet didn't bring the headset back, so maybe the message would be waiting for me in Miami.

I'm still considering all this when two guys in flying suits and helmets come along from the front of the plane and started unbolting my seat from the wall with a couple big wrenches. They didn't say anything, just worked at those bolts. Finally I asked them, “What are you doing?”

“Orders,” says one of them.

They lifted my seat away from the wall and carried it to the back of the plane where the loading ramp is and set me down, then did something behind the seat, I couldn't see what. They
passed a wide belt around my waist from behind and cinched it tight. Then they started checking the wrist and ankle cuffs. “What are you doing?” I asked them again, but they didn't say anything this time.

They went either side of the ramp and put on harnesses like you see on a parachutist, with cables attaching them to the walls, then one of them goes to a control box on the wall and does something there. Even over the roar of the engines I could hear the sound of hydraulic lines as the ramp started lowering itself. I knew the ramp could do this even in flight because I saw a movie about a Navy SEAL team on a secret mission that parachuted out of a C-130 from the open ramp.

It took maybe a minute to be lowered all the way, and the wind coming through from the outside got stronger and louder the lower the ramp got, until you could've screamed in there and nobody would've heard a thing, there's so much noise coming from outside, the engines roaring and the wind howling past like it is. My hair is real short but I could feel it twisting around on my head as I looked out at the night sky, very bright with stars and moonlight all around, even beautiful.

The two guys come back and steadied my seat, which was wobbling crazy from all that wind whipping around in there. One of them puts his mouth close to my ear and yells, “We have to do this! Nothing personal intended! Okay?”

I didn't know what he meant. They took hold of my seat, one on each side, and lifted it, not so easy with all that buffeting and blowing going on, then they carried me closer to the edge of the ramp, like they want me to see the view even better than before, which was considerate of them but
kind of scary too, because now we're on the ramp itself and there's sky either side of us and the wind and noise is terrible. I appreciated that they're giving me the kind of thrill you get on a real fast switchback roller-coaster, but my heart is hammering very hard which means I'm scared too, because the only thing keeping my seat from flying away into the sky is these two guys holding onto it with their safety harnesses connected to the walls.

“Okay!” I yelled. “Take me back!”

But they didn't take me back inside the plane. They took me further out along the ramp! All the way to the trailing edge! Down below I can see the ocean all crinkled and silver like tinfoil, and now my heart's galloping like a herd of wild horses. I felt like someone that got captured by pirates and now they're making me walk the plank, only they're doing the walking for me because I'm tied to a chair. When pirates do that there's always sharks waiting below ...And then I saw that they're not treating me to a special once-in-a-lifetime experience ...they're gonna throw me overboard, only I don't need to be worrying about sharks because the fall from this high up means I'll die when I hit that water down there ...A mile or more to gather speed and I'll hit the ocean like a melon hitting the sidewalk from the top of a skyscraper ... This is the message from my government to me ...and the message is– Fuck you, buddy, you know too much!