“Where can I link up with you?”
“You know where,” Riley said. “Remember when we went there? The place where we had that talk? I’ll be keeping an eye on it and I’ll see you there. You’re going to have to walk in from the main road.”
Giannini didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I know where you’re talking about. I figure it will take me about another eight hours or so of driving to get there.”
“There’s no rush. We won’t be on the ground until sometime early in the morning. Try to make it there tomorrow after it’s light.”
“All right.”
“I’ll see you then. Be safe.”
CAMP MACKALL
31 OCTOBER, 5:57 p.m.
Riley put down the receiver and glanced around the entrance to Camp Mackall. The MH-47s still sat on the landing pad outside the gate, awaiting their night missions. A group of students were practicing on the rappelling tower set in the tree line, sliding the sixty feet down to the ground on nylon ropes. Satisfied the area was still secure, Riley picked up the receiver and called Sergeant Major Alexander, informing him that his daughter’s car was in the parking lot and that he had left the keys at the Selection and Assessment committee shack.
On time, Hammer pulled up in his truck and Riley slid in next to Lisa. “Giannini’s on her way down,” he said as Hammer drove them away from the camp to the new hide site, six miles away.
“She meeting us here?” Hammer asked.
“No. We’re taking a ride tonight to get us away from here.” Riley pointed at the dirt road that ran behind Mackall. “Let’s head out there and wait for dark.”
FORT BRAGG
31 OCTOBER, 7:23 p.m.
“Anything?” Master asked.
The analyst didn’t turn around. “I’m getting a message in from Virginia.”
Master got out of his chair, crossed the small space separating them inside the van, and peered over the man’s shoulder. “What do they want now?”
“They’re sending someone down to take charge.”
“Shit,” Master muttered. “That’s all I need. Anything else?”
The analyst tapped the keyboard for a few seconds. “They’ve added another name to the target list.”
“Who?”
“A Donna Giannini. Chicago police.”
Master went back to his chair and sat down, massaging his temples. “A cop? Why?”
The analyst read the information as it came in. “She’s connected to Lisa Cobb. Apparently she’s the one who got this Riley fellow involved and she’s been checking on the situation.”
“So that’s why they’re sending someone down—they’re afraid of losing control,” Master mused. “If she’s Chicago PD, why are they telling us? That’s out of our area.”
The analyst turned and looked at Master. “They got a contact on her using her portable phone less than two hours ago. They bounced it back through the relay towers and she was somewhere around Indianapolis when she took the call.”
“Indianapolis?” Master drummed his fingers on the chair as he considered this fact. “Anything on the conversation?”
“Not yet, sir. The computer was logged on with the call and location. It will take them some time to access the tapes and get the conversation.”
“Where was the number she was talking to?”
“You can’t trace the other end,” the analyst explained. “We could only find where the call went from landline to radio and get the mobile’s approximate position.”
“All right.” Master flipped open a road atlas and looked at the Indiana map. “She’s heading south, at least. That means she’s coming closer to us. So all the players are coming home to roost. The question is: where?”
CAMP MACKALL
31 OCTOBER, 7:45 p.m.
Riley, Hammer, and Lisa Cobb were off the western edge of the Camp Mackall reservation, about two miles from the Rowe Training Facility. Riley handed Lisa a canteen cup of hot noodle soup and then sat down on the ground, his back against his rucksack. Lisa was sitting on the tailgate of Hammer’s truck, alongside the owner, who had his knife out and was whittling again.
“You said your husband worked for the Torrentinos, laundering money,” Riley opened the conversation, uncertain how to proceed.
“Yes,” Lisa answered, the canteen cup paused halfway to her lips.
“Did you know anything about it before the police showed up at your door?”
“I told you I didn’t.” Lisa’s voice was cold.
“But didn’t you wonder where your husband was getting his money?”
“My husband used to make very good money in his business. I didn’t look at his books.”
“But. . .” Riley hesitated for a second. “Did your husband—after everything came out in the open—ever talk about money he had hidden away?”
Hammer stopped whittling and swiveled his head to look at Lisa.
“What do you mean, ‘money he had hidden away’?”
“I mean exactly what I said,” Riley replied. He gestured about. “We’re out here with our asses on the line because someone wants you dead, but it appears that it’s more than simply a case of the mob wanting revenge. Giannini found out there might be a lot of money involved— money that your husband skimmed or stole or whatever. Someone just tried to kill Donna.” Riley’s irritation was clear in his voice. “I want to—scratch that—I need to know what the hell is going on. Is there something you aren’t telling us?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lisa said, her body stiffening.
Riley couldn’t accept that. There were too many unconnected pieces of the puzzle. “Your husband called Fastone, right? Or at least that’s how you think she ended up down there in Charlotte.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re pretty sure it was his body you saw outside your motel room door?”
“Yes.”
“So maybe Fastone got the location of the money,” Riley reasoned out loud. “Or maybe the two of them were in on it together and they had a plan.”
“I don’t know what money you’re talking about,” Lisa repeated.
“Giannini says it’s probably a couple of million dollars—money that your husband stole from the Torrentinos. That helps explain a lot of the shit that’s been coming down lately. It also helps explain why Fastone was killed—one less person to know about the money.”
“But it don’t explain why they’re still after her,” Hammer said, pointing at Lisa with his knife.
“No, it doesn’t,” Riley acknowledged. He looked at the young woman long and hard in the waning light. “Unless, of course, your husband was killed before he told them the location of the money and they think you’re the only link to it. If you have anything to tell me, do it now, before it’s too late.”
“I’ve told you everything,” Lisa insisted.
Riley looked from her to Hammer, who shrugged and went back to his whittling. He stared at Lisa until finally she broke the eye contact. “All right, then,” he said, not sure what to believe anymore.
Chapter Fifteen
CAMP MACKALL LANDING PAD
31 OCTOBER, 11:22 p.m.
They could hear the two helicopters long before the blacked-out silhouettes appeared, hovering low over the tree line to the west of the landing pad. The choppers had been active for the past three hours, running exfiltration missions, and they’d dropped off the last load of students ten minutes ago. They’d circled for a while before coming back—as per the plan Riley had arranged with Chief Warrant Officer 4th Class Prowley.
“Ready?” Riley asked, placing a reassuring hand on Lisa’s shoulder.
She nodded, her face tight with anxiety. She was dressed in a loose-fitting pair of jungle fatigue pants and shirt that Riley had stolen off one of the drying racks outside the tin shack barracks on the compound. His lightweight jacket was zipped up tightly around her neck, and her short hair was stuffed under a black watch cap. Anyone looking closely would be able to tell she was female, but that didn’t particularly bother Riley; women were often used on special operations exercises. What worried him was someone finding out she was a civilian. The army had rules about civilians on military flights. He’d given Lisa strict orders not to talk to anyone aboard the aircraft. Riley had helped her buckle on a combat vest with two canteens on top of the jacket, the bulky black vest helping to mask her slight figure.
The lead helicopter settled down, blowing dust about; the second remained airborne a few hundred meters off. Riley led the way around to the left side of the bird, toward the rear where the back ramp was settling down. Hammer followed them, carrying his own small backpack of gear.
Riley ran up the back ramp, threw down his rucksack and submachine gun, and settled Lisa in one of the nylon web seats that lined both sides of the cargo bay. In the dim glow of the red night lights, he buckled Lisa’s safety strap, waving off the crew chief who had come over to help.
“You got everyone?” the crew chief yelled in Riley’s ear.
“Yeah,” Riley replied, giving a thumbs-up.
The crew chief mumbled something into the boom mike in front of his lips and, with a waver, the helicopter lifted, the back ramp still open to the night air.
The MH-47 was the special operations version of the venerable CH-47 Chinook, which had seen extensive service in Vietnam. Using a powerful tandem rotor configuration, the helicopter was able to carry a large load of troops long distances under adverse weather and visibility conditions. The interior of the cargo bay was large enough to hold a couple of cars or almost forty troops.
Like all other special operations aircraft, the MH-47 flew close to the earth, and Riley could see the tops of trees flicker by a few feet below the bottom of the rear ramp as they headed off to the west. He looked around the interior, noting the contents. A small pallet sat in the front middle of the cargo bay and held the crew’s kit bags and luggage. Along the left bulkhead, a thick rope was tied down, its length tripled back on itself.
Riley made his way to the cockpit, where both pilots were seated, arrayed in a futuristic ensemble of night vision goggles, flight helmets, and sterile flight suits. He recognized Chief Prowley, with his hands on the controls to the right. The copilot was watching the complex array of instruments and relaying their readings to Prowley, who was dividing his time between looking at the terrain outside through the enhancement of his goggles and watching the small TV screen set in the control panel to his left front. The screens showed the terrain ahead; a computer adaptation made it look like high noon outside.
Riley grabbed a headset off a hook on the cockpit ceiling and placed the cups over his ears to listen.
“Got that microwave tower at eleven?” the copilot’s voice crackled over the intercom.
“Roger,” Prowley replied. “That’s checkpoint two. How’s the time?”
The copilot glanced at a map covered in acetate, then the glowing red time display. “We’re plus four seconds on checkpoint two.”
“Sounds good. How’s it going, Chief?” Prowley said, finally acknowledging Riley’s presence.
“All right,” Riley replied. He hadn’t spoken before, not wishing to distract the pilots from their task of flying, especially this close to the ground.
“So how are you getting off at your target?” Prowley asked.
“Two degrees to the left,” the copilot interrupted, his eyes still intent on the instruments. In response, Prowley banked the helicopter slightly.
“I see you have a fast rope rig in the rear,” Riley answered. “You don’t mind if we use it, do you?”
“No, but we need to keep it. Can’t be dropping off two thousand dollars worth of equipment on an unauthorized mission. The crew chief will have to winch it back in after we let you off, which means we’ll have to be on station about forty seconds.”
“That’s no problem,” Riley said. “What’s time on target?”
“We’ve got two hundred forty miles to your drop-off point,” the copilot answered. “We’re going low level the whole way, so that will slow us down a bit.” He consulted the grease-pencil numbers on the map. “TOT at zero-one-four-seven, give or take a few seconds.”
“Okay, thanks,” Riley said.
“What’s this thing here, right next to where you want us to drop you?” Prowley asked, nodding at his partner, who held the map and pointed at a symbol on the paper.
“That’s a tower, about fifty feet in height. You can use it as your reference point to find the place to drop us.”
“Why not simply put you down in this parking lot?” the copilot asked. “We could set down there.”
“It should be closed this time of year,” Riley said, “but I don’t want to take any chances on security. The opposing force on this exercise might have gotten the park people to open it,” he added, trying to keep up the image of a training exercise.
“I’m going to put that tower right in front of my windshield when I let you all out,” Prowley said. “Does it have anything on top of it, like a radio antenna?”