An Absence of Light

Chapter 72

3:50 P.M.

Graver sat on the back porch with Remberto and Murray. He had explained everything to them, trying to give them as much perspective as he could in a short time. All three men were sweating, all three men were drinking ice water, none of them wanting anything stronger which might cause even a momentary flicker in their judgment Since Neuman had gone to pick up Last at the service station, Graver told them about Last, too. These were two men he could trust without reservation, and inasmuch as he could influence their opinion, he wanted them to have that kind of trust in him as well. The best way to get that, aside from having Arnette’s endorsement, was to give them a clean view of the players and the circumstances, though the latter might change dramatically within the hour.

“What about the girl in there?” Murray asked. He sat up straight in his chair without leaning back, holding his glass in thick hands, the muscles in his arms and shoulders looking like they belonged to a man twenty years his junior. He had a ballpoint pen stuck in the neck of his plain white T-shirt, and an old Colt-Browning. 45 service automatic stuck in the waist of his jeans. His face was so closely shaven it was slick, and his burr haircut, even though his widow’s peak was thinning considerably, added to the air of no-nonsense professionalism that he exuded. Graver had no doubts about either the competence or the reliability of Murray.

“I thought I’d leave Last with her while we go to pick up Redden. I haven’t thought about it beyond that. But I can’t very well let her go.”

“Good.”

“And this Redden, he will be armed?” Remberto asked.

“Ledet says he will be.”

Remberto was tall for a Latin, a little taller than Graver, rangy but with broad shoulders. A good-looking young man with thick black hair that was neatly barbered and combed, he wore slacks, a pale blue shirt, and a sport coat, all of which looked very much stressed after his hour-long sauna in Connie’s courtyard. He wore a shoulder holster under his jacket with a Sig-Sauer like Graver’s jammed into it and sat in his chair with a very relaxed and self-assured manner. But the stillness in his dark eyes belieda a concentrated tension that he had acquired during his few, but densely experienced, years in undercover work and which now occupied the core of his personality.

Both men had kept their eyes on him since the moment they had walked out on the porch. For them there was no tendency to let their attention wander to the bay, the predictable reaction of anyone who sat on a porch with a beach view. But Remberto and Murray-Graver still didn’t know their last names-had no curiosity about the water or the ship or the Gulf. They were only interested in Graver and what Graver had to say to them about the impending events.

“I’ve been behind a desk for a long time,” Graver said, “and you two know more about the tactical end, but I’ve got a couple of suggestions about when it might be best to take him. Tell me what you think.

“The first good opportunity, it seems to me, is while he’s refueling. Ledet says that at Bayfield the planes refill from a small tanker truck that pulls up to the hangars. Always two servicemen in the truck. I thought two of us could take their place. If that’s not feasible maybe pose as other pilots, whatever, milling around the parking lot, the terminal office. Whatever it takes. The second opportunity would be at the restaurant where they eat I’ve done that before, and I like it It’s easy to be on either side of him and have two guns on him before he suspects anything. Have Ledet sit at a table that would accommodate an easy approach.

“What I don’t like about the second option,” Graver added, “is that taking him at a restaurant would mean that he and Ledet would have to drive there alone in order to avoid raising any suspicion. Too great a chance for Ledet to think he could win a car chase… too much time for a lot of things to happen.”

“No, I favor the airport too,” Murray said.

“So do I,” Remberto added, “but, if something goes wrong, if there is shooting, we will be risking fire with that fuel.”

“Yeah, I thought of that,” Graver said.

“What is his personality?” Remberto asked.

“I don’t know, but judging from his telephone conversation, he’s the one in control. Ledet seems to be going along, less concentrated. And, too, Redden’s the one that Kalatis trusts, which says a lot. Kalatis seems to insist on personal contact with his three lead pilots.”

“And we’re just going to question the guy, is that it?” Murray asked.

Graver explained his situation regarding the bureaucracy he would have to negotiate in order to move officially against Kalatis.

“And while they’re trying to work out the politics of such a move, Kalatis would vanish,” he said. “And he wouldn’t be the first big target to slip out the back door while the bureaucrats are trying to make up their minds. So, my intention in questioning Redden is to see if there’s some way to salvage something out of this fiasco other than a long, drawn-out investigation that will wind down eighteen months from now with nothing to show for it but a few oversentenced small-timers.”

He looked at them. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I told Arnette they’d be moving money tonight, and they will be. But my sole concern here is Panos Kalatis. I want the money because Kalatis wants the money and my guess is wherever it is he’s not far away. To me the money is nothing more than bait. I’m not going to be looking at that; I’m going to keep my eyes on the shadows.”

He wasn’t going to spell it out. He didn’t think he had to.

“You’re sure the cargo’s not drugs,” Murray said.

“Ledet says it’s cash or people or both. Not drugs. According to him, these pilots never move drugs. That’s another cell, another group.”

“Goddamn,” Murray said. “Organization.”

“Yeah, and I don’t think it’s unusual for Kalatis to reorganize periodically or to change plans at the last minute. He expects everyone to keep up with this, not to be put off balance by last-minute shifts in time and place. I think Redden and his two counterparts are very good operationally. And since they know just about as much as anybody about Kalatis, I put them right up at the top. I really want these guys. They would be invaluable from an intelligence point of view.”

Both men nodded, and it seemed as though they thought his proposition a reasonable one, if somewhat unorthodox. But then Graver guessed that neither of them was too fond of orthodoxy anyway, or they wouldn’t be doing what they were doing.

Just then Graver’s handset buzzed, and Neuman told them he was pulling up in front of the house.

The Pilatus PC-12 was indeed a beautiful aircraft, a long, sleek fuselage with wings mounted from its belly, the tips of the wings turned up like fins, the T-tail gaining extra support by a straight, sharp rib extending forward to the roof just behind the last of the eight port windows. Coming in from the Gulf and approaching the northwest-by-southeast runway, it looked like a sliver of ice falling into the lowering sun.

Graver sat in the car in the shade of one of several hangars flanking the runway where Redden had just touched down. Bayfield, he observed, was one of those airstrips that looked like it had been built during the 1940s to serve what had then been a remote naval station or some other wartime installation and then had been quickly superseded after the war by better installations that grew up nearer the expanding city of Houston. But somehow Bayfield did not die. One by one the four Quonset huts were replaced by corrugated tin hangars that quickly looked as old as the huts they replaced. A variety of men hangared a variety of planes there off and on over the years, and a pilot manque who wore glasses with Coke bottle lenses ran the “tower,” a two-room, cinder-block building with a radio and a picture window facing the strip. There were always a couple of guys hanging around working on old engines and to drive the fuel truck if someone dropped in and wanted to top off. Bayfield was almost deserted, but at the same time it was not unusual to see fancy planes parked there from time to time. They came and went. Nobody paid much attention.

Graver watched Ledet fifty yards away ease the Alfa Romeo along the skirt of the tarmac and stop at the opened doors of the hangar where Redden kept the Pilatus. Inside the hangar, Neuman was backed against the wall, watching Ledet only seventy-five feet away. A hundred and thirty yards away, inside the main hangar where Graver had already presented his credentials and impressed upon the four employees there the importance of cooperation and silence, Remberto and Murray were slipping into the bright orange overalls of the two airport mechanics who normally drove the small tanker truck. Remberto kept his eyes on another employee who was on the other side of a glass wall wearing headphones. The man gave Remberto a thumbs-up.

“There it is,” Remberto said, zipping up the coveralls. “He just radioed for the fuel truck.”

Using his handset, Murray relayed this to Graver as Neuman listened in, and then the two men climbed into the high-seated fuel truck, Murray behind the wheel, and pulled out of the shade of the hangar. Behind them, well back from the door, a clutch of men-the two tanker drivers, a mechanic, and the dispatcher-watched the unfolding scenario as though it was a spectator event with more than a hint of serious danger about it.

The sun glinted off the Pilatus as Redden turned at the end of the runway and began taxiing back toward the hangar, halfway up the tarmac.

Wearing sunglasses, Ledet got out of the Alfa and leaned back against its front fender and watched as Redden approached at a ninety-degree angle from the hangar and then twitched the flaps to swing the plane around so that it was headed straight into the open doors. He taxied the Pilatus almost to the door, the whine of the turboprop growing louder inside the hangar as it drew near, the powerful engine reverberating against the corrugated sheet metal walls. Then he cut the engine, and the turbo began its long whining wind-down.

Peering through a crack in the seams of the sheet metal, Neuman watched as Redden, his face unemotional behind dark aviator sunglasses, began gathering together miscellany from the cockpit, getting ready to open the door. Neuman shifted his eyes to Ledet who stood up from the car but didn’t move away from it, while on the other side of him, behind the plane, the tanker truck advanced on the plane.

Neuman could see Redden crawling out of his cockpit seat into the center aisle, and then the full door behind the cockpit levered out and slid back against the body of the plane.

“Hey, Rick,” Redden shouted, and jerked his head for Ledet to come over. Ledet hesitated. The fuel tanker was approaching the wing of the plane, and he didn’t want to be anywhere around Redden when the guns came out. Inexplicably, he just pointed to the fuel truck.

Murray was pulling to a stop, and when he saw Ledet pointing at him he grabbed a clipboard off the dash of the truck and raised it and pointed to it Redden looked toward the truck and saw the driver waving the clipboard. He laid something in one of the passenger seats, lowered the steps, and stepped down out of the plane. He was sandy-haired with a light, sun-flushed complexion. Though he was not a heavy man, he had a well-developed beer gut which was hardly camouflaged by his loose-fitting guayabera, a common garment for convenient handgun concealment. He wore cowboy boots and faded blue jeans, one leg of which was caught on the top of his boot revealing the boot’s red leather top which served as the background for a hand-tooled Mexican eagle, its wings spread out on either side of the boot.

Murray and Remberto got down out of the truck, slammed their doors, and came around the end of the wing as Murray again raised the clipboard.

“They said you had paperwork to clear up before you could take on fuel,” Murray said.

Redden looked around at Ledet “What’s this shit?”

Ledet shrugged.

Redden and Murray approached each other as Murray held out the clipboard, turning slightly as he did so to allow Remberto to approach Redden a few steps later than Murray and on Redden’s blind side.

“I’m paid up. What the hell’s the matter?” Redden said, grabbing the clipboard.

As soon as he jerked it out of Murray’s hand, Remberto’s arm went inside his bright orange overalls and came out with the Sig-Sauer, the muzzle of which went instantly into the fleshy reserve covering Redden’s left kidney. Redden flinched, and as he did so the muzzle of Murray’s. 45 screwed into his stomach while at the same instant Remberto’s left hand gripped his left arm just above the elbow.

“A forty-five and a nine-millimeter,” Murray said, his face right up in Redden’s. “And a Mac-10 right over there in the hangar.”

As Redden rolled his eyes cautiously to look at Ledet, Neuman came out of the hangar with his gun leveled at Ledet who simply raised his hands in the air.

“Son of a bitch,” Redden said. “Jeee-sus, I’m not believing this.”

“Believe it,” Murray said and his thick hand went around behind Redden and relieved him of the gun he had jammed into the back of his waistband. “Nine-millimeter… Beretta,” Murray said before he had even brought it out in the open.

The instant Remberto’s hand had gone into his overalls, Graver started the car and drove quickly across the tarmac, pulling up between Ledet’s Alfa and the plane. He got out and came around the front of the car to where Redden was still trying to absorb the past twenty seconds. Graver handed a pair of handcuffs to Murray who stepped around behind Redden and cuffed him.

“Who the hell are you?” Redden demanded, leveling his dark lenses at Graver. His nose was hawk-beaked and raw from the sun. Graver guessed it didn’t take much sun to be too much sun for Redden.

Graver reached out and took off Redden’s sunglasses to reveal pale blue eyes and an extraordinarily woolly pair of ginger eyebrows. Redden immediately grimaced in the bright light.

“Shit,” he said.