Troubleshooter

Chapter 43

Wisps of steam curled up from Jan's styrocup of McDonald's coffee. She inhaled it, as if trying to snort the caffeine. The skin under her eyes was pouched and gray, and her rumpled blouse sported stains at the right shoulder. New mom and resident agent in charge. Not an easy schedule. She kept walking purposefully through the late-night travelers straggling between the gates of Terminal 1, with Tim, Bear, Guerrera, and Rich moving swiftly to keep up. For the brief public walk, Rich kept between the deputies, his head lowered. Though he had left behind his armband and originals, he still had his shaggy rock-star hair, eye patch, and jail-cell odor. Upon meeting him, Jan had regarded him with a cocked brow, then turned her eyes to Tim with an unvoiced question, waiting for Tim's nod before cutting him in to the conversation.

"Inbound caskets rank right up there with diplomatic pouches," Jan continued. "In other words, they aren't checked."

"What's the real story?" Rich asked.

She gave a quick glance around. "Under the right circumstances, even a diplomatic pouch might require a furtive scan." She pointed to the sheaf of documents in Guerrera's hands. "But now we're in the clear. This is sufficient probable cause to buy us X-rays on all inbound caskets. If we get a hit on body packing, we'll need a warrant to cut open the corpses, but we can cross that bridge then."

"What if they're lead-lined?" Tim asked. "The caskets?"

"They will be, by federal regulation. We'll have to pop the lids and remove the bodies to do the scans. It's invasive. That's why I needed strong probable cause in my back pocket."

"Do we need to worry about private planes?" Rich asked.

"Good luck getting a corpse through here in a private plane. It's against regs-security and health-and we screen all large incoming cargo. But I'll put out a whistle, just to be safe."

She ducked through a doorway, and they followed her down a staircase to an open space on the lower level that had been transformed into a temporary workstation. A few irritable-looking duty agents reviewed paperwork at school-size desks. The desks were oddly arranged, leaving a square of central floor space unoccupied. A tarp draped across the ceiling provided the only separation between them and the restricted-access section of the luggage carousel overhead.

Jan had to raise her voice to be heard over the rumble. "This way."

She led into a separate office and closed the door behind them. The noise reduction was a welcome relief. Through the wide window, Tim watched a duty agent shoving a phone to his cheek, one finger plugging his other ear.

"I see your funding isn't keeping pace with your responsibilities," Tim said.

"They want us doing twice the work with the same resources," Jan said. "We make do." She looked from Tim to Rich. "Like we've all had to."

A sapphire blue Swiss Army suitcase tumbled through the ceiling tarp and crashed onto the empty floor space between the carefully arranged desks. The agents kept working, unperturbed.

"They should file for hazardous-duty pay," Bear said.

Jan directed them to chairs and sat behind a metal desk. "It's a brilliant plan they hit on-especially given the lead lining of tranport caskets. The only way to detect a drug packet in a corpse's stomach is to open the casket, pull the body, and X-ray it. Which, as I said, we aren't technically supposed to do."

"But you have," Tim said.

"Hell, yes. We spot-check. Now and again."

"Cargo from certain airlines and flights stands a higher likelihood of getting X-rayed?"

Jan's mouth arranged itself into a smirk. "Now, why would you say that?"

"Are foreign carriers more thoroughly checked than American carriers?"

"No, but yes." Jan paused, hesitant. "You didn't hear it here, but we might be more inclined to take extra precautions when it comes to foreign carriers. Suffice it to say, if a body's coming in from Jakarta, it's gonna get zapped."

"Racial airline profiling," Guerrera said. "How quaint."

"Wait a minute," Rich said. "Terrorists kamikaze four of our airplanes, and now you're screening Aer Lingus. What's that logic?"

"Our airlines screen our own planes when they take off at any point in the world. For other planes that we can't screen, we're less concerned that people will blow them up than that they'll smuggle something in. So we screen them on our end-for drugs and weapons."

Tim removed the sets of blank film from his pocket and dropped them on her desk. "That explains these."

She pulled out the black photographs and thumbed through them. "What's with the Rothkos?"

"My guess is they sent the film through with the bodies. High-speed film, more sensitive to-"

"Ionizing radiation." Jan thumbed out the negatives and found the first two sets cloudy from the X-ray exposure. "These were foreign airlines?"

"Yes. Mexicana and AeroMexico. Villarosa and Andovar were X-rayed."

"But Sanchez?"

"Flew the friendly skies with American," Bear said.

"That's United," Jan said.

"What?"

"The slogan. 'Fly the friendly skies.' That was United."

"Oh," Bear said.

Tim cut in: "They found their carrier route on their third try. American Airlines Flight 2453 into LAX-no X-ray."

Jan checked her monitor. "That flight's slated for a nine A.M. arrival. From today on, we'll be crawling all over it. And any other inbounds from the area." She blew her bangs off her forehead. "There's no way we catch this without your intel. When the dogs give their once-over, a decaying body loaded with formaldehyde would cover the scent pretty good. No way they'd hit on heroin inside a corpse."

"AT gives off a strong scent," Rich said. "They had to come up with something strong to overlay it."

Jan said, "Nearest international airport down there is…what? San Jose del Cabo? You alert Mexican Customs?"

"Yes," Rich said. "President Fox made a round of bullshit reforms, but there's still so much goddamn corruption at the ports it's hard to tighten up down there. You know what they say-Con dinero, baila el perro."

"I didn't know they said that. Live and learn." Jan said it without looking at him. "How are they getting the drugs into the stomachs?"

"We haven't figured that out yet," Tim said. "But we're assuming in some way that gives no overt indication that the bodies have been altered."

"Right, so even if a dog gets a soft hit and we take a closer look, run a hand along the coffin lining, peek under a blouse, everything's copasetic. No Y-pluck, no stitching. Lowers the odds that we'll yank the body out of there for an X-ray, especially if it's riding a domestic carrier."

"Maybe they force the victims to swallow a drug packet before they're killed," Guerrera offered.

"Either way," Bear said, "someone's getting paid to prep the bodies on that end."

"What do you have in the way of a paper trail?" Tim asked. "What's required to ship in a body?"

As Jan dug in her file drawer, Tim's eyes pulled to the photo of her newborn on the empty bookshelf behind her. She followed his gaze when she came up for air.

"Congratulations, Jan," he said. "I don't think we've talked since…"

"Thank you." Her face softened. "I'm sorry about Dray. I didn't bring it up because…you know. You holding up?"

Tim sensed Rich's stare and felt his face get hot. "Holding up."

Jan plunged into the paperwork. "Lead-lined coffin, proof of grounds of burial or place for cremation, passport, two certified copies of the death certificate, a letter on funeral-home stationery describing the preparation and treatment of the remains signed by the embalmer and notarized, a letter from the local health department verifying the absence of any contagion."

"And where are the caskets received on this end?"

"A standard holding area. Nothing unusual there. If it's going straight to a service, the mortuary usually sends a hearse or van for the pickup."

"Can we get copies of all the paperwork from our three victims?"

"Absolutely. We're a bit of a mess here, but I should be able to pull it together in a few hours. What?"

"We might not have a few hours."

"Then I'll do it quicker."

"Thank you, Jan. We're gonna get you a joint Service-FBI team in here."

Jan drew her head back, wrinkling her chin. "Jesus. Really? You want to give me the full story now, Rack?"

Because the al-Fath angle was under FBI jurisdiction, Tim deferred to Rich, who scrunched up his face in an expression that was almost endearing and shook his head.

"Sorry, Jan," Tim said. "I'll tell you in a few weeks over a drink."

"The sound of this," Jan said, "we might not be around in a few weeks."