Authors: James W. Hall
Another twenty minutes up the road, outside of Vero Beach, Tina prodded Sugarman’s arm, said she had to use the toilet. An emergency.
Sugar took the next exit.
“That one,” Tina said. “The Shell station.”
“Okay, sure. The Shell station.”
“They’re cleaner, that’s all. Shell stations, their bathrooms are always cleaner.”
While Tina headed for the john, Thorn joined Sugar at the pumps.
In a quiet voice Sugar said, “Don’t look, but there’s a white pickup two pumps over. It’s been behind us since we left Key Largo.”
“You sure?”
“Thirty years in law enforcement, I can spot a damn tail.”
Thorn said, “I’ll go get in the guy’s face. See what’s up.”
“Stay put. First, it’s not a guy. And second, she’s heading over here.”
Halfway between her truck and where they stood, the tall, dark-haired woman reached inside her jean jacket and withdrew a leather folder and flipped it open, closing in on them with her badge displayed.
“Oh, terrific,” Sugar said.
“Afternoon, gentlemen.”
Thorn leaned in to read the ID. Her name was Madeline Cruz, an agent with the FBI.
She wore faded jeans and a denim jacket over a black and white checked shirt. She was wide shouldered and slender and olive skinned. Her smoky eyes were a deep glossy brown. There was a bump in the bridge of her nose that looked like a fist might have cracked it a few years back. She was in her early forties, quietly exotic in that way that Hispanic women with a shot of Aztec blood can be. Not conventionally beautiful, but well north of pretty.
Sugar asked what they could do for her. Stiffly courteous.
“I’d like you to open the trunk of your vehicle, sir.”
“What’s this about, Cruz?”
“You need to open your trunk, sir.”
“That badge only takes you so far. You need some probable cause.”
“Well, for one thing, I smell marijuana coming from your vehicle.”
“The FBI is in the drug business now?”
“There’s another matter, a bit more serious.”
Sugarman bent forward and took a closer look at her badge.
“I have reason to believe you’re transporting illegal materials.”
Tina was coming back across the parking lot drinking a Big Gulp. She halted when she saw the woman showing her badge to Sugar. Tina scanned the gas station, spotted a green sedan, its door open, engine running; its owner, a skinny girl in a baseball cap, was dumping some litter in a trash can.
Tina dropped her drink and sprinted to the sedan, slammed the door; the skinny kid crossed her arms across her chest and yelled at Tina as she peeled out of the station, swerving to avoid a Winnebago and screeching toward the entrance ramp for I-95.
Cruz flipped open her cell, speed-dialed, and said, “She’s running. Green Nissan with dark windows. Yeah, call me when it’s done.”
“What the hell?” Thorn stepped close to the woman.
“All right, gentlemen. Back in your vehicle, park over there beside the station. We’ll talk. And don’t curse at me again, is that clear?”
Sugarman drove them to the shade of a tamarind tree. She leaned over and pulled out the ignition keys and told them to stay put, then got out and went behind the car and popped the trunk.
“Jesus, Sugar. Is Tina dealing dope?”
“She smokes a ton of weed, and she’s got some sketchy friends, but dealing, no. Anyway the FBI doesn’t waste their time with drugs.”
Cruz came back to Sugar’s window and motioned for them to get out.
They followed her around to the rear of the car, the open trunk. She bent down and spread the duffel all the way open, exposing the stocky barrels and handgrips of a couple of oversize shotguns hidden beneath bundled bricks of cash. Old bills, twenties and fifties.
Cruz zipped up the duffel and slammed the trunk. Her phone rang and she plucked it from her jacket pocket, flipped it open.
“Okay, good,” she said. “Take her back to HQ. I’ll be in touch.”
Sugar gave Thorn a gloomy eye roll.
Here we go.
They were only a few hours down the road and already their simple plan had spun out of control.
Cruz ended the call and directed a satisfied smile toward the ramp where Tina had fled. She snapped the phone shut and ordered them back in the vehicle.
“I didn’t know about the weapons or the money,” Sugar said when they were seated. “I put the duffel in the trunk, I never looked inside.”
“Save it,” Cruz said through Sugar’s window. “I know you’re innocent. Both of you.”
“Where’s Tina? Where’d they take her?”
“For questioning,” Cruz said. “Palm Beach office.”
“She needs an attorney,” Sugar said. “Give me the details, her location.”
“For the moment,” Cruz said, “all legal protections are suspended for your friend, just as they are for all enemy combatants. It’s Homeland Security’s call. I’m sure their people will be contacting you in due course.”
“Are you nuts? Tina’s no terrorist.”
“It appears you don’t know Ms. Gathercole as well as you thought.”
“If you know we’re innocent,” Thorn said, “then give us the keys and we’ll be on our way.”
“You’ll stay put.”
She left them sitting in the car and went to her pickup, drove over to the side of the station, and parked alongside them. She unloaded a computer bag and a backpack, put them in Sugarman’s trunk, and got back in the front seat.
She handed Sugarman his car keys.
“Drive,” she said.
“Where?”
“North on I-95. Same direction you were headed.”
“You’re not going to take us in, interrogate us?”
“You can’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”
“So where am I driving?”
“North.”
“Where?”
“I’ll tell you when to exit,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’m not taking you out of your way.”
“This isn’t even close to police procedure.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not.”
“How far are we going?”
She drew a Glock from her jacket, lay it on the dashboard.
“Far enough for us to get acquainted.”
FOUR
BUT NO ACQUAINTING TOOK PLACE
for the next half hour. Sugar peppered her with questions but Cruz stared straight ahead and seemed not to hear and finally he shook his head and went quiet. With each mile the silence inside the Honda grew more dense until the stillness solidified around them and the interior of the car felt so airless that human speech no longer seemed possible. The only sound was the rough hum of tires, the rumble of passing trucks, and their buffeting tailwinds.
Thorn slipped the postcard from his pocket and looked again at the Neuse River, the pines and dogwoods and sweet gums growing near its banks, the grassy field dotted with wildflowers.
He turned the card over and examined Sugarman’s office address, printed in block letters. Those two words,
Help Me
. Looking some more. Spotting something odd.
He was no handwriting expert, and he’d need to have the rest of Flynn’s postcards at hand to do a side-by-side comparison to be sure, but there seemed to be something different about the penmanship from the addresses on the previous cards. A subtle backward tilt to the letters. And the first letter of each word were capitalized.
Thorn tried to picture the others. Shuffling through the storehouse of images in his head. Visualizing the most recent one, from Marsh Fork, the one he’d had at the library just a few hours ago. He was almost certain those letters were printed in all caps.
Very close but not identical. Just the slightest hint of another personality. A backward tilting, capitalizing human being pretending to be Thorn’s son.
“Something’s not right.”
Cruz half turned and met Thorn’s eyes.
“What is it?”
“Forget it. It doesn’t concern you.”
“Everything concerns me.” She rested her arm on the seat back and swiveled around a few more degrees until she was facing him.
“Okay, this is total bullshit.” Sugar slowed the car, checked the rearview mirror, then swung into the emergency lane and braked to a hard stop.
Cruz swiveled forward again, looked out her window, and from Thorn’s vantage point her face seemed utterly serene, as if she’d been expecting this moment for a while and was fully prepared for anything that might develop.
“Look,” Sugar said. “Read us our rights, arrest us, or let us go. What you’re doing amounts to carjacking. You can’t hold us against our will. That’s beyond your authority or anybody else’s, I don’t care what federal agency you work for.”
“No one’s being arrested,” Cruz said. “No need for legal formalities.”
“She’s singing from a different hymnal,” Thorn said. “What do you think, Sugar? Toss her out right here, get back to our business?”
She didn’t bother turning around again. Just kept staring out the side window at an empty field as the traffic blew past them.
“Thorn, Thorn, Thorn. Agent Sheffield warned me that you’re the designated problem child on this team. Which makes him a better judge of character than I’ve been giving him credit for.”
“You work with Sheffield?”
“I think his exact words were: ‘a recluse with poorly developed social skills.’”
“Why were you talking to Sheffield about Thorn?” Sugar had switched to cop mode. Tough, no nonsense, Cruz’s professional equal.
“Let’s drop the adversarial tone. It won’t be productive in the coming days. We need to foster a more cordial and trusting relationship.”
“What coming days?” Sugar said.
Thorn said, “And what the hell’re we doing with that artillery still in the trunk? Why didn’t your people seize the duffel back at the gas station? Where’s Tina?”
“All right,” Cruz said, shifting in her seat, glancing back at Thorn, then settling her gaze on Sugarman. “These are decent questions. Good, let’s get started. The first thing you need to know is that the weapons in the trunk aren’t your ordinary street sweepers. What you’re carrying back there are AA-12s. Either of you familiar with that model?”
Sugar said he wasn’t, and Thorn said, “Go on, you have our attention.”
“They are Atchisson Assault Shotguns. Fully automatic and drum-fed. They fire five twelve-gauge shells per second with great reliability and so little recoil that a strong man can shoot it one-handed. The AA-12 was developed together with the FRAG-12, an extremely lethal variety of cartridge. Each round is essentially a small high-explosive or fragmentation grenade accurate up to a hundred and seventy-five meters. In short, these weapons are not legal for civilian use.”
“What’s Tina Gathercole doing with a couple of elephant guns?” Thorn said. “Running them to Jacksonville?”
“Tina wasn’t going to Jacksonville. That was only her cover story.”
“I don’t get it,” Sugar said.
“She was along for the whole trip. She hadn’t sprung that on you yet, but I’m sure she had a good story ready. She was going to sweet talk you like she’s been doing the last few weeks. She was headed to Carolina, all the way.”
“That’s ridiculous. Tina didn’t know I was going on a trip till a few hours ago.”
“Wrong. She’s known for at least a week.”
“I’m not following you, Cruz.”
“All right,” she said. “Here’s how it is. Last week someone contacted your friend Tina with a proposition. I know this because my team has been monitoring the communications of the person who made that contact. That person convinced Tina to take advantage of her relationship with Sugarman, to hitch a ride all the way to Pine Haven, North Carolina, where some very dangerous people are hiding out near the Neuse River. Same place you’re headed. You’re now part of a larger federal operation that’s being run under my command.”
Sugar was silent for a moment, then said in chastened voice, “Which explains how Tina knew Flynn was involved. That wasn’t a guess.”
“Why’d she need us? She could drive the guns there herself.”
“She wasn’t delivering weapons. Her job was to deliver you, Thorn.”
“Do that again.”
“Let’s get something straight.” Cruz turned and faced Thorn, then cut a harsh look at Sugar. “The woman back at the gas station, your so-called friend, she was conning you. Unwittingly perhaps, she had gotten mixed up with some bad folks, and she was leading you into a trap.”
Sugar looked over at her, shook his head as if he hadn’t heard correctly, then glanced at Thorn. A familiar expression.
You bastard, this is your fault.
“The postcard from Carolina. That was Tina’s doing?”
Cruz nodded.
“So Flynn, he’s not part of this? Gun smuggling? That cash.”
“Flynn Moss is at the heart of it.”
“Goddamn it, Cruz,” Thorn said. “Cut the double-talk. You want our help, you’re going to lay out the whole story.”
She was silent for a moment, then reached into her jacket and came out with a clear plastic case, the kind his clients carried in their fishing vests.
She opened it and held it out for Thorn to see. A half dozen bonefish flies, an assortment of his own creations.
“You do nice work. Can’t say I’ve actually tried them out myself, but from what I see, your flies have a certain aesthetic charm. This is my favorite.” She plucked a red and blue feathered lure from its slot. “What do you call it?”
He hesitated a moment, then sighed and said, “Bone Crusher.”
She eyed him carefully.
“Interesting choice.”
“Get to the point,” Thorn said.
“You’re all about violence, aren’t you? Trying to project yourself as this laid-back guy, but there’s all this molten energy seething just below the skin. And every once in a while you show a glimpse of it.”
“Bonefish flies all have names like that,” Sugar said. “It’s part of fishing culture. You’re reading Thorn wrong.”
“Yeah,” she said. “You two defend each other. Have each other’s back. You’re a team.”
“What do the flies have to do with anything?” Thorn said.
“I’ve been studying you to understand what makes you tick. Lately it’s been my full-time focus. I wanted to be sure you could be trusted for the role you’ll play. Agent Sheffield thought you’d be willing. Willing is fine, but I needed to be sure you’d be effective.”
“What role would that be?”