Signature Wounds Read online

  ALSO BY KIRK RUSSELL

  Ben Raveneau Mysteries

  A Killing in China Basin

  Counterfeit Road

  One Through the Heart

  The John Marquez Mysteries

  Shell Games

  Night Game

  Dead Game

  Redback

  Die-Off

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Kirk Russell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503942714

  ISBN-10: 1503942716

  Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects

  For Susan Berry

  Contents

  Saturday, June 17th

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Saturday, June 17th

  The plane was a well-cared-for Cessna 182T owned by a retired American couple. Their bodies lay on the airstrip at their ranch in Mexico as their plane flew west toward an orange sunset. The pilot had done other work for the cartel and was reliable, though disturbed by the casual execution he’d just watched. His passenger seemed unaffected. As they entered US airspace, the pilot made the planned emergency call, reported engine trouble, and landed at a private airfield in the Imperial Valley.

  Two vehicles were waiting. Two said the passenger was important. The pilot got another look at him as the man climbed out, but knew not to look too long or hard. He turned the plane and took off again, skimming dark fields, then circling and climbing ahead of the mountains. The plane was his. That was the agreement, and he already had a buyer. He needed to forget about the old man shielding his wife before they were shot. Deliver the plane, he thought, get a clean hotel room, and then go down to the bar and drink. He liked the hotel bar and they knew him. At the bar he would forget what he had seen today.

  On the ground, there was no waiting. The cars pulled away, and only the passenger looked back. He watched for a flash of white light. It came as the plane reached four thousand feet, crossing mountains at the edge of the valley. Like heat lightning, it was there only a moment, then gone, but in his head he saw more. He saw the plane shatter and the pieces falling, twisting and turning, tumbling in darkness.

  1

  Jeremy Beatty hesitated when he opened his trailer door and saw me, then stepped outside and pulled the door shut, keeping the cool air inside. He was dressed for the heat, wearing sandals, shorts, and a gray T-shirt with blue letters reading United States Air Force arced across the chest. In sunlight, his face looked older than thirty-one years. His clothes looked slept in. But the gunfighter eyes were there, and that’s what I was looking for. I didn’t need or want an apology.

  “I sent that text last night, then crashed,” Beatty said. “I was drinking. Sorry I didn’t get back to you today, Grale.”

  “I thought you were done with late-night drinking.”

  “I am.”

  “Okay, so what happened last night?”

  “Some bad news, and I kind of lost it.”

  In truth, it was none of my business what he did with his nights, yet I had something of a mentoring role with Beatty.

  “When I got home yesterday, two Air Force Office of Special Investigations officers were waiting here. They’re working with the Department of Defense on a joint investigation. Supposedly, the drones I test-flew in Taiwan last February were built from stolen plans. They told me I should have known and reported it. Grale, I had no friggin’ clue. They want me to wear a wire and set up a meeting with the guy who hired us.”

  Air Force OSI working with DOD to scare Beatty into wearing a wire sounded like an idea cooked up in a joint meeting. I could make a call or two and find out, but for the moment I was just relieved he was okay.

  I didn’t see Beatty often anymore; I took in the changes, but also what hadn’t changed. His hair was still cut high and tight, as if he’d never left the air force. Lines etching the corners of his eyes were deeper. Beatty had gone from a go-to drone pilot in the Creech Air Force Base flight trailers to living alone and struggling with PTSD while kick-starting a drone consulting business.

  “Did the Taiwan work come through that job broker Eddie Bahn?” I asked.

  “It all still comes through Eddie. He rips me off, but he gets me work. For now, it’s what I’ve got.”

  He moved farther out on the deck and said, “When I got on the plane to go to Taiwan, I swear, Grale, I thought, ‘This is made up. This can’t be.’ They sent me first-class tickets. I’ve never sat in first class in my life. I kept thinking, ‘This isn’t for you, dude, something is wrong here.’”

  “What did you think when you got there?”

  He smiled and said, “It was pretty cool to fly halfway across the world and get paid to fly drones. It made me feel like everything was going to turn out fine after all. The drones in some ways were like the Predators I used to fly, but that’s just the way it is. Everyone is stealing from us. Everyone wants a drone program. Anyway, that’s what happened last night. That’s where that text came from, but I’m not suicidal. No bullshit, Grale. I don’t have those thoughts anymore. Hey, you must be on your way to the party. Sorry about the text, and I owe you for stopping by. Have fun tonight.”

  That was my cue to leave for my sister and brother-in-law’s Fourth of July party. I was ready to kick back and have a cold beer and hang with my sister, Melissa, and brother-in-law, Jim, but I wasn’t leaving yet. Black plastic was taped over the windows of Beatty’s trailer. A militaresque BLDG J was stenciled in red paint to the right of the front door. The plastic could be about blocking sunlight. The BLDG J was troubling. Beatty saw me looking at it.

  “I’ll clean it off today,” he said. “I was drunk.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Honestly, I don’t even fucking remember.”

  Jim and Melissa were my connection to Beatty. Jim is an air force drone pilot stationed at Creech and an old friend of mine. He married my sister twenty years ago and went from a B-52 squadron in Idaho to the drone flight trailers at Creech. Melissa, Jim, and their two kids, Nate and Julia, are all I have left for family. We’re close. Melissa and I laugh a lot. We try to get to
gether once a week, and every year Melissa and Jim throw a Fourth of July party for Creech drone pilots and friends. That list of friends includes Jeremy Beatty. Always will, Jim says. It was Jim who’d asked me to help Beatty when he was spiraling down after his discharge. Jim knew how I’d fought my way back to active duty at the FBI.

  “Hey, I might have gone to the party tonight,” Beatty said. “But I can’t, because I’ve got a new job starting tomorrow. I’m moving out to the airfield tonight. I’d just finished packing when you knocked.”

  “Good about the job. Where is it?”

  “In bumfuck nowhere, dude. Way out in the desert, north of Indian Wells and off to the west on Bureau of Land Management land leased from the government. I’ll text you directions. The company that hired us does mining-assay work and is switching over to drones. They put an airfield out there and some trailers. I’ll be teaching drone pilots, probably guys good at Xbox who’ve never flown a plane. If it goes well, it could become a long-term thing. I’m hoping for that.”

  He drifted back toward his door and again waited for me to say good-bye. Instead, I asked, “Got anything cold to drink inside?”

  “I drank all the beer last night, so no, unless you count Diet Coke.”

  “Coke is fine.”

  “Naw, dude, take off, go have fun.”

  “I’m here. I haven’t seen you in a while. Let’s talk some more.”

  “Okay, come on in, but don’t go all FBI on me.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I did some remodeling.”

  I followed him into the shadowed cool and looked around at the gutted interior of the trailer. I didn’t get it. The trailer was leased. It would cost some serious money to restore.

  “I was trying to get the feel of a Creech flight trailer. I want to be in that space in my head as I teach.”

  “You ripped out your kitchen and half of everything else to make a flight trailer?”

  He didn’t answer, and I let it be. Whatever it cost him in repairs was his problem. I looked at a small drone in the corner. Quadrocopter. Like the thing the Florida mailman landed on the White House lawn.

  “What do you do with that drone?”

  “Lately I’m taking videos. I’m under surveillance. They’ve got four people on me, maybe more. I thought it was the CIA watching me before the OSI officers showed up last night.”

  “The CIA here in Wunderland Trailer Park?”

  “I know it sounds batshit crazy.”

  It did.

  “It’s about a drone strike we made before they booted me out. Talk to Jim, he’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.” He looked over. “Our orders were to never talk about it.”

  His face fell as he said that. It was emotional for him and discouraging for me. I felt a weary sadness that after all his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and getting a new career and life going again, Beatty imagined the CIA watching him. The intensity and focus in his face conjured memories of him after his fiancée, Laura, finally gave up. At that time, he wasn’t getting any help from the VA either. His first Veterans Administration appointment had still been nine months away when his fellow pilots stepped in. But by then he was down to where he was questioning even his close friends. He was restless, angry, and drinking hard, his thoughts twisted by paranoia. No, it was worse than that. He’d lost interest in the future. He didn’t care anymore.

  That’s when Jim had approached me and said, “He might listen to you, Paul. His friends are burned out on his relapses.”

  I said I’d try. I could feel for ex-Lieutenant Jeremy Beatty. He’d signed up with the air force at twenty-one, became a drone pilot, and the air force became his family. After his discharge and after Laura left, he was alone with little to look forward to. I liked to think I’d helped him see a way through, but looking around here, I saw what vanity that idea was. Maybe it was just a way of covering my guilt at not having seen him much in the last year.

  I remembered a night when he’d pulled a Glock 17 out of a drawer and stuck the barrel in his mouth before I could move. And all the middle-of-the-night text messages and alcohol-fogged despondency had worn me down, same as his friends. I tried, but I hadn’t really made any difference. That was more like the truth, or what it felt like, looking at what he’d done here.

  Two bedsheets hanging from the ceiling separated his “flight trailer” from his bedroom and bath. In here, the only place left to sit was a worn tan Barcalounger, similar to what drone pilots sat in when Beatty worked in a Creech Air Force Base flight trailer. In front of the Barcalounger was a table with three computer screens. Beneath the table was a stack of white Styrofoam fast-food containers. A chair, a table, three computer screens, and a rat’s ass swamp-cooler air conditioner rattling away.

  “This your work station now?”

  “This is it.”

  “Does it give you the feel you were after?”

  He wouldn’t answer that, but he said, “Try out a program while I get the Cokes. A friend modified some software for me. Use the push pedals to fly the drone, but don’t freak out over the targeting. It’s a simulation. It’s chill. Don’t worry. We had to pick places to aim at, and with the GPS settings, these are easiest.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean by that, but okay.”

  I sat down on the Barcalounger and reached for the mouse as Beatty went for the Cokes. A map of the US lit up, and I clicked on DC. Drone flight time to get there registered in the upper-right corner of the screen. So did distance to target. I changed the city to Las Vegas and heard a refrigerator door shut. Distance to Vegas was ninety-two miles. Not a long flight at all. Inside of an hour. Completely doable.

  The bedsheets fluttered as Beatty returned and asked, “Where’s the Fourth of July party this year?”

  “At Alagara, but you must know that.”

  “Oh, yeah, right, the Alagara, I forgot. I like that place. Their fish tacos are killer.”

  “The tacos are gone. The guy that started Alagara was going under and sold it. The new owner uses the building for party rentals.”

  Beatty handed me a cold can of Diet Coke and took a long drink from his before saying, “Hard to picture Captain Kern celebrating the Fourth inside a building.”

  “Two of the kids in the group had trouble with the heat last year, so they’re trying this out. And they got a great price.”

  “Your sister probably negotiated that.”

  “She did.”

  I picked Seattle as my next target while Beatty worked around to telling me about this secret drone strike that Jim allegedly knew about and the air force had hushed up.

  “Since you’re hanging around, Grale, I’ll show you some video I shot with the drone in the corner. It’ll be quick, and you can walk out the door anytime you want.”

  “Okay, show me, and then tell me about this drone strike no one can talk about.”

  “It made national news. It got talked about plenty for about two minutes. It’s the officers who were there who are not supposed to talk.”

  I leaned back in the creaky Barcalounger as Beatty slid a flash drive into his laptop. He spun the laptop around and slid it to me. I tapped the arrow and played a three-minute black-and-white video the little drone took from three hundred feet above Wunderland Trailer Park.

  The lens zoomed in on two cars sitting around the backside of the pink laundry building, a man in one car, a woman in the other. They might have been unmarked police vehicles, but it was hard to tell. The woman got into the passenger seat of the man’s car and was there a couple of minutes before she got out and drove away. There wasn’t enough there to draw any conclusions.

  “I can’t tell who they are,” I said. “Maybe they were there to repair the slot machines in the laundry.”

  “Those got fixed. I won twenty bucks yesterday.”

  “Show me more video. Show me time stamps. Show me the same people on different days.”

  “You got it.”

  I watched
two more, and Beatty looked expectant, but I couldn’t draw any conclusions.

  After a silence, Beatty said, “I met this therapist in a bar last year. We were drinking and talking for a couple of hours. She told me the only way to get rid of things is to talk about them. If the air force wants to come down on me, they can, but I’m through being quiet. Do you remember a twenty-four-year-old schoolteacher from New York named Hakim Salter, who was killed in one of our drone strikes in Pakistan in 2013? He made it into the news, but as a bad guy.”

  “Sure, I remember.”

  I also remembered talking with other agents about it. The official version made you wonder what had really happened.

  “I launched the missile that killed Salter. In Afghanistan the drone strikes were military, but in Pakistan they were CIA. The CIA had their own drones, but they used us to fly them. They wouldn’t tell us shit, but they always thanked us for killing their targets. Very polite that way.”

  Salter’s mother was a Pakistani who had married an American decades ago and moved to New York. Her twenty-four-year-old son, Hakim, got it in his head to go teach school in the village where she was born. Taliban came through, but did so without killing or kidnapping Salter, and that got the CIA wondering what was up with that. Allegedly, Salter conspired or aided Taliban soldiers, but as far as I knew, no evidence was ever offered. That was the game nowadays. If you lack evidence, you make allusions and let imagination and fear go to work. Innuendo stands in for truth.

  Officially, Hakim Salter was unlucky collateral damage in a drone strike on Taliban terrorists. Off the record, a different story was leaked to quiet the media. That version said Salter’s pilgrimage to his mother’s birthplace was far from innocent. Those whispers inflamed the family. They went to the New York Times and found an ambitious reporter who was interested enough, and for a news cycle or two, the NYT reporter’s article on Salter’s death was national news.