Perfect killer

CHAPTER 86

I sat in the rearmost seat of the unmarked government van between Tyrone and Jasmine and held her hand. The van idled along the shoulder of the road near the end of the runway at Campbell Field outside Madison.

As we waited, a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza came in low, filled the van's windshield, and touched down. A radio up front crackled with traffic between the small control tower, the Beechcraft, and other airplanes approaching and ready to depart.

We all watched the Bonanza recede in the distance: Rex and Anita on either side of Talmadge in the seat ahead of me, then up front, the three government contractors who had snatched us more than six hours before.

They had changed into summer-weight civilian clothes that revealed highly fit former military men. The leader of the group, a retired Air Force colonel and fighter ace named Buddy Barner had turned to a second career in special ops when he had been assigned a desk to fly.

The interior of the van hung damp with the mustiness of drying mud caking the piles of combat garb jammed in back with the luggage and gear. The van's airconditioning labored against the hundred-degree heat and matching humidity outside and did little to diminish the mud's fetid dankness.

But no one was complaining about the smell because we had acquired the mud along with Talmadge's microfilm. Years ago when he was still an active hunting guide, Talmadge had sealed the microfilm inside a thick, plastic, river-rafting dry-bag enclosed in an airtight length of black plastic drainpipe with caps glued over both ends.

Talmadge had then buried the package deep in the muck beneath a series of fiftyfive-gallon oil drums used as a duck blind in the middle of a lot of nowhere. The "nowhere" in question, which had eluded the efforts of the U.S. government, was a bootsucking swamp approximately south of an abandoned railroad grade, about twelve miles southeast of the Choctaw Indian Reservation near Wiggins, and not far from where the Coffee Bogue Creek oozes into the Pearl River.

Talmadge hugged the bag on his lap and refused to let it go as he half-dozed beneath the sedatives Anita had given him to help control his seizures.

"Y'all don't worry 'bout me," Talmadge had told us hours ago. "These fits start with some Las Vegas lights in my head. But don't worry none. I'll give you fair warning. You hold me down for a bit and I'll go right to sleep."

Rather than risk a seizure, Anita and I had selected a sedative combination from among the selection our captors had brought. Talmadge lay totally buzzed. Every few minutes, he would chuckle and make a show of embracing the bag, and twice he had wept for his dead wife. Jasmine squeezed my hand in those moments, knowing that I was thinking about past and future, Camilla and her.

I think I knew Talmadge's pain, but could never be certain. Anguish-like everything about consciousness-remains a relentlessly personal drama, played out on an internal stage for just one person, an experience that can be deduced by others but never shared.

A faint turbine whine made its way above the air-conditioner fan and focused us all on the end of the runway.

Barner shook his head. They're still a couple of minutes out."

Moments later, a Citation, fanned out and landed gracefully with little smoke from the fires.

"So,"-Rex leaned toward Barner-"how did you find us? Really. Three old guys when the whole U.S. government is still chasing their tail?"

Barner looked at a thin man with salt-and-pepper hair who sat near the window. They had been stingy with information. Other than to tell us they represented neither Homeland Security nor law enforcement, they had said little.

"No harm," the thin man mumbled. He turned to Rex. "First of all, we had some leads from the folks in California and just asked the right questions, the right way, to the right people." He paused. "See, people actually like to talk to me. Which is more than you can say for the numb-nuts, Billy Joe Bad Ass Homeland Security goons." He paused. "And from what we learned, everything eventually pointed to you."

"Uh-huh, exactly," Rex said, "That's what worries me."

The thin man smiled. "You've left footprints. You're a family man now and you've started to forget about your other life. Some folks out there are a little better at remembering, especially when somebody like you materializes and wants to call in really stale IOUs. Some of those folks might seem dumb as a fence post, but they can still connect the headlines to a call from you."

"Who-"

The thin man shook his head. "No can say, podnuh. You need to remember: they did you a favor. They let us get to you first."

"Well," Rex grumbled.

"What he means is 'thank you'," Anita said to the thin man.

Rex opened his mouth to protest when the call sign we had been anticipating sounded loud and clear on the radio. Barner put the van in gear and headed for the airport's general aviation gate. He entered a combination on the keypad and waited for the chainlink gate to slide open.

As we drove toward the arranged spot on the apron, a small jet with the correct number and twin engines at the tail dropped quickly and landed at the very end of the runway. An earsplitting blast of reverse thrust echoed through the airfield.

The jet, marked only by a civilian N number, taxied right up to the van. The jet's forward door opened as the aircraft rolled to a halt.

"Stay here," Barner told us as he and his two colleagues got out. The engines were still running as Barner climbed the stairs. Our van's rear doors opened then, and Barner's two men grabbed our bags and my laptop, then transferred them to the jet.

Seconds later, one of the men opened the van's sliding side door and motioned us aboard. They helped me carry Talmadge and settle him in. As soon as we were aboard, Barner introduced us to the two officers aboard, shook my hand, and disappeared.