The Rule of Nine

THIRTY-ONE

They were now in the home stretch, and like a buzz of electricity running through his veins, Thorn could feel it. He was finally back at the airfield in Puerto Rico. The clock was running. He had only days to go and a mountain of work to complete before the plane could be airborne again.

Thorn had received word that morning that the Mexican had done his job. Snyder was dead. There would be no more news conferences. Whether he knew anything or not, the old man’s lips were now sealed, and Thorn was free to concentrate on the task at hand.

To help him he had two of his regular crew, along with the two others, Western-educated Saudis, both of whom were trained as pilots and who would fly the plane. They were Muslims from the Mahdi Army, recruited through contacts that Thorn had developed during his years in Somalia.

But it seemed there was always one more problem. This one was driving Thorn crazy. Ahmed, the senior pilot, came fully equipped with his own caste system. He indicated a strong resentment toward anything that even remotely resembled manual labor. And, of course, the moment this affliction was made evident, his copilot, Masud, developed the same disease.

Between prayers they would sit on their asses all day under the trees, watching Thorn and his crew busting their behinds to get the plane ready. When Thorn tried to explain to them that there was painting to be done and a ramp to finish, they turned up their noses.

The one job they agreed to work on was the pylons under the two wings, and only because these were weapons-related. This seemed to appeal to their native warlike instincts in the same way possessing a rifle and shooting it into the air had appealed to their ancestors.

Thorn had no choice but to put them to work on the pylons while he and his crew hauled cans of paint, masked the exterior of the plane, and went to work firing up the compressor that was stashed inside the plane.

Every time the two Saudis took a break, Thorn would have to stop the compressor and look at them to get them back on the job. Sometimes even that didn’t work. He would say chop-chop as if they were Chinese. Ahmed actually spoke perfect American English. He should, as he had been raised for eight years in the borough of Queens in New York.

The two pylons were mounted, one under each wing. The alignment was critical. The mounts had to be perfectly straight, otherwise you were inviting a midair catastrophe because of the aft-situated wing configuration and the long fuselage. Thorn was forced to break away several times to check on the Saudis and their work. In the end it would have been easier to do it himself.

In between painting and running herd on his two pilots, Thorn turned his attention to the small toy he had dubbed “the little brown bat.” In military parlance it was known as an MAV, a micro air vehicle.

Seeing Thorn with the toy as they worked on the big jet, the two Saudis would look at him, talk to each other, and then laugh. Thorn didn’t pay any attention as long as they got their work done.

The model airplane was just slightly larger than the size of Thorn’s right hand, which now held it. The wingspan, just over six inches from tip to tip, was curved, somewhat like a bat, hence the name. The entire craft was clad with a thin layer of a bright, shiny copper compound. This had been sprayed on to save weight. The tiny plane had been specially crafted for Thorn by a master model maker who assured him that the copper-pigmented paint would react chemically in the same manner as if the model were made of the metal itself.

The plane was powered by two tiny electric motors, each capable of spinning a small propeller at more than fifteen thousand revolutions per minute. Using two nine-volt batteries, it could carry the necessary payload to an altitude of five hundred feet, and then stay aloft for a little over six minutes. This was more than enough time to do its job.

In flight, the little brown bat was virtually silent. On a dark night you would have to know precisely where it was, and even then you would have to strain your eyes to see it.

Thorn carefully placed plastic tape over the electrical components, the tiny motors, the wires, the battery housing, and the circuit board that formed the spine of the little craft between the two wings.

There was still more work to be done on the small bat before it was finished-the installation of the pinhole camera, a servomotor to swivel and maneuver the camera, and a small light-emitting diode slightly larger than the camera that would be wired into the circuit board. But that work would have to wait until Thorn had completed this part of the processing.

He finished masking the electrical parts, then carefully patted the tape in place to make sure it was sealed and that there were no openings. Then he placed the small aircraft on the ground and stepped back a foot or so. Thorn then pulled down the zipper on his jeans, fished out the man in the turtleneck sweater, and began to pee all over the model.

When the two Saudis behind him saw this, they began to laugh. “If you like, we can come over there and help you,” said Ahmed, smiling.

“I think I can handle it,” said Thorn. “You just get the pylons finished.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” They laughed some more.

Thorn didn’t care. He knew that in less than two weeks they would both be dead and he would be sitting on a beach somewhere drinking mai tais while tallying up the bottom line for his numbered account in Lucerne.

Thorn looked down at the little model. In a day or two the uric acid would begin to patina the copper pigment in the paint. By the end of the week, with another bath or two, the little plane would be the color of an old, worn penny. Precisely what he needed.

Joselyn begged off and went to the ladies’ room while Paul and Herman grabbed chairs at the American Airlines gate at Miami International. They had two hours to kill before their connecting flight from Tucson would carry them south to Puerto Rico. Herman was feeling naked without his pistol, particularly now that they had a lead on Thorn’s whereabouts.

The phone number, the Puerto Rico area code and the seven digits that followed on the hand-scrawled note that bled through onto the contract for the plane, rang at a hotel in a town called Ponce on the west side of the island, the Hotel Belgica.

Joselyn wanted Paul to contact the FBI, but Madriani wanted confirmation that Thorn was actually at the hotel in Ponce. If he wasn’t there and the FBI was called in, whatever credibility they still had with the feds would evaporate.

As she stepped out of the ladies’ room Joselyn reached into her purse for her cell phone. She had forgotten to turn it back on following their flight from Tucson.

She fired it up and checked her messages. When she saw it, her eyes lit up. She’d missed a call from Snyder. He had called less than an hour before. She touched the message and hit the Callback button. The phone rang twice before it was answered.

“Hello.”

It didn’t sound like Snyder’s voice.

“Hello. I wonder if I have the wrong number?”

“No. No,” said the voice. “Are you calling for Mr. Bart Snyder?”

“I am,” said Joselyn.

“Then you have the right number,” said the voice. “My name is Peter Montoya. I am a lieutenant with the Chicago Police Department. May I ask who’s calling? Is this Ms. Joselyn Cole?”

Obviously he could see Joselyn’s caller ID on Snyder’s phone.

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Mr. Snyder is dead.”

“What?”

“It happened early this morning,” said the officer. “The maid found his body when she arrived for work. We are not sure, we are still investigating, but it appears likely that it was suicide.”

“I don’t understand. He called me not more than an hour ago,” said Joselyn.

“No,” said Montoya, “that was me. I have been calling recent contacts, people who left messages on his cell phone, to see if any of them might have spoken to Mr. Snyder in the last few days. Did you talk to him recently?”

“No,” said Joselyn. “I didn’t know him well. I met him only once, earlier this month.”

“I see. Where was this?”

“In California, near San Diego.”

“May I ask the circumstances of this meeting, was it business or social?”

Joselyn thought for a moment. The shock of Snyder’s death unnerved her. Something deep down told her it wasn’t suicide. “Neither,” she said. “I just happened to be seated at a table where Mr. Snyder was also having lunch.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“Did he seem despondent? Upset by anything?”

“Yes. His son had been murdered,” said Joselyn.

“I see. Then you were aware of this.”

“Mr. Snyder talked about it,” said Joselyn. “And it did upset him, obviously.”

“Of course. According to our notes you made several attempts to contact him. May I ask why, what the reason was?”

“I don’t have time to discuss this right now,” said Joselyn. “I’m trying to catch a connecting flight.”

“I see. Where are you now?”

“Miami International.”

“I would like to get a statement from you. Are you headed home?”

“No,” said Joselyn. “I’m headed to Puerto Rico with friends.”

“And when will you be returning?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Can you give me the name of the hotel where you will be staying?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Joselyn. “We’re going to pick a hotel when we arrive. But you can reach me at this number.”

“Of course. I will do that. I don’t want to hold you up any longer. You will be there tonight in Puerto Rico?”

“Yes,” said Joselyn.

“Have a good flight. And I am sorry to have to convey such bad news.”

“Thank you,” said Joselyn. She hung up and jotted the name “Lt. Peter Montoya” on a small pad in her purse. Then suddenly she realized that the only number she had to reach him at was that of Snyder’s cell phone.

Liquida walked the short block from where he’d parked his rental car to one of the bridges over the Chicago River. Joselyn Cole was with Madriani and their next stop was Puerto Rico. It was a safe bet this wasn’t a vacation. Liquida smiled, wondering how much this information would be worth when he offered to sell it to his employer.

Word of Snyder’s death had been all over the local airwaves. A prominent lawyer committing suicide was hot news, that and the video of the babbling maid who found the body.

Liquida walked halfway across the bridge and leaned against the railing. Lawyer with a scrambled brain, no one would even notice that his cell phone was missing. And even if they found records showing calls made on the phone after Snyder’s death, an inquiry like that wasn’t likely; given the virtual certainty of suicide, the call records would lead them nowhere, only to Joselyn Cole and a cop, Peter Montoya, who didn’t exist. Liquida felt the stiff breeze against his back as he unfolded his arms and casually dropped Snyder’s cell phone into one of the swift-moving eddies of the river below.