Final Winter

Frank spun around and stamped away so hard over the catwalk that the floor grille rattled. Bocks looked over at Randy, who was looking right back at him. Randy came over and said, ‘Can he do it?’

‘Yeah. He can. Hate to say it.’

Randy said, ‘In less than two hours, you’ve got to start dispatching aircraft. You got any suggestions?’

‘No. Do you?’

Randy said, ‘Yeah. Let me and a couple of guys take care of him. Until the flights are gone.’

‘There’ll be hell to pay.’

Randy said, ‘In a few days, we’re going to be attacked by anthrax. And the only way to save this nation is to get those planes down on the floor out the door. Right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then we’ll do it,’ Randy said.

‘You sure?’

‘I’ve flown this long with you, General. I’ll see it through. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a CFO to catch.’

Bocks watched his former Chief Master Sergeant stroll purposefully off the catwalk, and then he shifted his gaze down to the hangar floor. His people. All of them. Working to defend what was right.

He checked his watch. Time was still slipping away.

~ * ~

It was near midnight when Brian Doyle looked out the window of the descending American Airlines aircraft over Memphis. His stomach felt sour and there was a sour taste in his mouth too. It had taken a while to get here, but he hoped it would be worth it. From New York to BWI and now to Memphis. He had spent a couple of hours at the Tiger Team installation in Maryland that was staffed only by a couple of support people, picking up a few things and trying to get to talk to the other team members. But Monty was gone and neither Darren nor Victor answered their phones or pagers. And the Princess was here, in Memphis.

So Memphis was where Brian went.

The ground seemed to rise to meet the plane, and there was just the quickest thud-thud as the aircraft landed. He made his way through the departing passengers, carrying a soft black duffel bag, remembering the last time he’d seen Adrianna, the time he’d spent in Cincinnati, and the touch and taste of her flesh…

He was angry at himself. Letting the little man overrule the big man.

Typical male.

Outside the terminal, Brian got a taxi, gave the cabbie the address, and sat back, the duffel bag across his lap.

~ * ~

At 12:05 a.m., Deputy Sheriff Kyle Thurgood of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department hesitated for a moment, sitting in front of a computer terminal at a substation where he worked. Before him on the screen was a digital photo of a dead man, found late yesterday afternoon in a turnoff from a country road about six miles from where he was sitting. The young guy — Arab, Jew, Mediterranean, Mexican, who the hell could tell — was a homicide victim, and even with Thurgood’s minimal experience on the job that had been an easy call. Three to the chest and one to the forehead sure in hell hadn’t been a suicide. Thurgood hadn’t been the lead investigator on the case — he hadn’t even been part of the investigating squad. He had been working perimeter security, just making sure that the media and the curious didn’t trample in, destroying whatever traces of evidence might have been there. Of course, with a goddamn Freightliner parked there it sure didn’t seem like it would take too long to figure out why this guy had been taken to that place and murdered.

But… there was one more thing. Before being relieved, Thurgood had snagged a photo of the dead guy with a small Olympus digital camera, something…well, ‘souvenir’ wasn’t the right word, but he wanted to have some sort of memento from his very first homicide. And coming back to the station he had had another thought. The department two months ago had gotten a directive from Homeland Security, about some new security initiative or something. Called the Physical Characteristic Comparison Program — or Characteristic Physical Program for Comparison, who the hell could remember — it requested that all law-enforcement agencies submit digital headshots of certain ‘individuals of interest’ so that they could be compared with whatever files the Feds had on hand. There were a whole lot of definitions that made up an individual of interest, and one that Thurgood remembered was an open homicide of an individual with no accompanying identification or notable physical characteristics.

So. A dark-skinned guy with no ID, next to a vehicle whose license plates didn’t match and had no paperwork or registration… that seemed to fit the profile pretty well. But when Thurgood had suggested to his shift commander that it should be followed up, the shift commander had looked at him and said, ‘Son, our boss is up for re-election this fall, and you want to give his ACLU opponents ammunition like this? Screw that shit… we got enough to do.’

Which was true. Yet… Thurgood felt funny about what was back up there. Theft? Hijacking? What in hell had happened up there in that turnaround? He knew what he should do. Close the file and go home. Forget it. Not his case. Not his problem.