An Absence of Light (67 page)

“Okay,” Neuman said. It was all he could say. It was amazing how quickly up and down disappeared at night He was gripping the box of military parachute flares between his knees in the cockpit seat, and the gun was cocked open. He jammed a flare into the breach.

“I thought if I made a couple of passes they might give us a flash,” Ledet said. “Assholes. I should’ve known better. Disciplined bastards. It doesn’t matter. I’ve made that strip enough times… hell, I can even see the bayou. Okay, hang on.”

The Cessna banked and dropped at the same time, but it didn’t drop far before Ledet leveled it out, and Neuman could see ahead of them the half moon on the Gulf. Jesus, it was a beautiful sight. The beauty of it surprised him.

“You ready?” Ledet yelled. “This first one’s going to be for spotting.”

Neuman pulled back the window flap, slapped closed the flare gun, braced it in the window, and cocked it He felt the engine of the Cessna trim down and then Ledet yelled, “Fire one.”

Neuman pulled the trigger. The whump filled the cockpit with its concussion.

“Holy shit!” Ledet laughed. “Whoooooeeeeel! Look at that!”

The flare exploded in the night sky outside the plane with surprising brilliance. Phosphorous white. The parachute made the light bobble in the black, and then it settled to a gentle swinging back and forth like a lantern as it descended.

“God I’d love to be down there right now. Don’t you know those assholes are
shitting!”

Neuman was reloading.

“Okay, yeah!” Ledet yelled, confirming their positioning by the flare’s illumination of the bayous below them. “Awww riiight! We’re right on! Fire two!”

Neuman fired. Whump! The sky burned angel white. Neuman reloaded.

“Fire three!”

The Cessna was banking again and Neuman could feel the structure shuddering against the torque of the turn. He tried to ignore it as he reloaded and fired again… and again… and again. The maneuver was a blur in time. He had no idea how long it lasted, but as he felt gravity sling him first one way and then another, as he fired every time he heard the word fire and reloaded every time he finished, he watched the trails of the propellants followed by the explosion of the flares, and then the giant sphere of white light hanging in darkness, a darkness which, in contrast to the intruding flares, was no longer murky darkness but solid pitch.

He felt the plane bank one more time. The box of flares was empty. He looked out the window and saw half a dozen floating fires drifting laterally away from him through the darkness. It looked as if they had set fire to a corner of the night, and the fire was so dazzlingly bright that he almost expected to see it ignite the rest of the sky, all the way to daylight.

10:50 P.M.

Wade Pace had scanned the instrument panel of his Malibu Mirage for the tenth time and, satisfied with what he saw, took the time to look out the side window of his cockpit at the Houston skyline slipping away to his left His copilot was doing the same. Wade turned and looked over his right shoulder at the passengers behind him. The client sat uneasily in the first pair of seats, also looking out his window at the skyline, and behind him in the next pair of seats was Kalatis’s human Doberman, looking straight back at him. The Doberman wasn’t interested in the view. Wade turned back to his panel of dials.

“Shit,” he said to his copilot and shivered. The copilot nodded slowly and widened his eyes.

“Malibu. Malibu. This is Com One.”

Wade instinctively put one hand up to his headphones and frowned in puzzlement at his copilot They both recognized Kalatis’s voice.

“Malibu, this is Com One. Do you read me?”

“Yeah, Com One, this is Malibu. Go ahead.”

“There is an intrusion at your destination.” Kalatis’s voice was slow and deliberate. “Proceed to alternate field.”

Wade shot his copilot a look of astonishment.

“Malibu, do you read me?”

“This is Malibu, I read you. I am now proceeding to alternate destination.” He paused. “You need to confirm this with on-board security. Stand by.”

Wade turned and looked back over his right shoulder again and met the gaze of the Doberman. He tapped his headphones and motioned for the Doberman to come up. The man unhurriedly unbuckled his seat belt and stood, crouching as he started forward. His face was expressionless—it was always expressionless. When he stopped behind Wade’s seat his bulk filled the entire aisle space.

“You’d better listen to this,” Wade said as the copilot took off his headset and handed it to the Doberman who was now leaning inside the cockpit “It’s Com One. Identify yourself first,” Wade said, as the man put on the headset and adjusted the microphone.

“This is Malibu security.”

Wade remained half-turned in his seat and watched him as he listened to Kalatis relate the exact same words he had just told Wade. The Doberman had no reaction. He simply said:

“Malibu security confirms a Com One directive to proceed to alternate destination.”

That was it. He jerked off the headset and gave it to the copilot and turned around and went back to his seat Wade rolled his eyes at his copilot. Kalatis had a collection of these kinds of guys. It was like having a collection of ugly beetles. They all talked in this quasi-military jargon, and they all took themselves very seriously. Well, shit, they were carrying a lot of money.

The copilot gave Wade the new coordinates, and he put the Malibu into a long, gentle bank. The pile of glitter that was downtown Houston slowly changed its orientation outside Wade’s window. Now it was more forward, and it would stay that way until he banked one more time and headed into the runway. Then the city lights would be directly in his line of sight, just above the instrument panel. Now, with the change of plans, the new ETA put them thirty-five minutes out.

Panos Kalatis sat shirtless in his radio room, staring at the panel of dials in front of him, and calculating the odds of the success of several alternative moves. Suddenly he was perspiring, but he was as calm as a philosopher. The report of the flares over Las Copas had been entirely unexpected and had initiated a flurry of activity at the beach house. Jael was now hurrying back and forth between the house to the twin-engine pontoon plane waiting at the dock, loading last-minute cargo which included everything from their next change of clothes to the code-books of Kalatis’s foreign bank accounts. The final hours had arrived, a little ahead of time, to be sure, but not unplanned for.

He always had overplanned his operations, and they always had proceeded with a smoothness in which he took a great deal of pride. Tonight had been no different Instead of three security guards at Las Copas, he had six. They were his most trusted employees and had been with him longer than anyone, even longer than he and Strasser had been together. All six of them were pilots and any of them could have flown the Malibu or the Mooney MSE or the Pilatus. Which, of course, was all part of the plan. All of them would have taken part in the executions.

But now, none of them would, and what was worse, they had gone into Las Copas by boat. For all practical purposes, they were out of the picture for good. Even if the flares were not a raid, even if they were some kind of diversion and nothing else happened—which Kalatis doubted—his six most reliable men would never be able to make it back in time to help him. Kalatis was about to accelerate the evening’s events. He would now have to rely heavily on the three men he had been planning to have killed on Las Copas, the three guards who were responsible for getting the money and the clients from the hotels to the airports. But that did not bother Kalatis. They did not know he had been planning to kill them, so there was no harm done.

Nor did Kalatis allow himself to agonize over who was responsible for the “raid” at Las Copas. He assumed it was Graver. He wondered if Burtell had been alive if he would have given him a call. He wondered how deeply five hundred thousand dollars had burned into Burtell’s sorry soul. Well, it didn’t matter. What did matter was that he had a security leak, and the prospect of losing the nearly forty million dollars that soon would be in the air on the way to Bayfield began to nag at him. He already had sent two times that much out in the last week, but two thirds was never as good as one hundred percent, and Kalatis would take some risks for one hundred percent.

Picking up the white telephone, he first called a number in La Porte and left a code number. Momentarily his blue telephone rang. The return call was from a man, a Texan, Kalatis had known briefly in Buenos Aires in 1981. In 1985 the man had opened a trucking business in La Porte. In 1990, the man received a telephone call from Kalatis. Since then, Kalatis had not spoken to the man more than four or five times, but when he did the man “rented” one of his trucks to Kalatis for an exorbitant amount of money. Cash.

Kalatis picked up the white telephone again and called Maricio Landrone’s code number. Within moments the blue telephone rang.

“This is Landrone.”

“Maricio, are you at the hangar?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“There’s been a foul-up at the original destination. We are going to use the alternate plan.” Kalatis spoke slowly, almost casually. He had learned a lifetime ago, in the Mossad, that the very first step in controlling your men was in controlling your voice. For most men—and women—fear and panic were infectious. If they detected the virus of fear or uncertainty or futility, it was likely they also would contract the disease. It was the first responsibility of a group leader never to expose your people to the virus, even if you yourself were dying of it.

“The alternate destination remains the same,” Kalatis said, “but the timetable is suspended. I want you to leave right now. The cargo will be ready at its hangar when you get there. Load and leave as soon as you can.”

“Okay,” Maricio said. “I’ve got it.”

Maricio had flown cocaine for Kalatis for two years before he took over one of the money runs a year earlier. He was very good at last-minute changes.

Kalatis picked up the white telephone again and called Eddie Redden. Almost immediately the blue telephone rang and Kalatis gave the same information to his third pilot. When he hung up, he looked at his watch. The first load should be arriving at Bayfield in Wade Pace’s Malibu Mirage in just over twenty minutes. With luck, the last one would breeze in on Eddie Redden’s Pilatus somewhere around twelve-fifteen. Maricio Landrone’s flight would be the questionable one. There was not much difference in the distance Landrone and Redden had to fly. It was possible they could come in on top of each other at Bayfield. Kalatis had no idea how they might handle that And he wasn’t going to worry about it. As of this moment he had done all he could do. From here on, whether or not he got his money was going to depend on other people.

He heard the twin engines on the pontoon plane sitting at the dock revving to a pitch that sounded to him like the sweet whine of escape. He could almost smell the burnt fuel thrown off the heated engines, a smell that reminded him of other nighttime assignments, years of adrenaline-driven timetables and rendezvous where trusting other people to hold up their end of the bargain was the only hope he had of getting out alive.

“Panos.”

Kalatis turned and saw Jael standing in the doorway through the bedroom. She was wearing a man’s white shirt tucked into a pair of jeans, her black hair pulled back into a single thick braid that dropped down the center of her back.

“We must go,” she said. “The pilot say we must go if we want to see.”

“Okay,” Kalatis said. “Have you got everything?”

“Everything, yes,” she said.

“Then go on down to the plane. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Everything” actually translated to very little. They were literally walking out of the door and away from a fully furnished house, closets filled with clothes, televisions, stereos—everything that made up a person’s life. He felt marvelous, like a snake shedding its skin. It was an exhilarating experience, to walk away from everything.

He bent down under the desk on top of which were stacked tens of thousands of dollars of electronic equipment, radio and telephone equipment that had allowed him to communicate secretly with his people for nearly four years, and turned a timer dial on a metal canister about the size of a shoe box. It was actually a cake of enhanced C-4, a solid block of it Wires leading from it led to two other cakes elsewhere in the house. He carefully felt the subtle clicks on the dial and set it on twelve minutes. By the time the dial reached “0” again they would be miles out into the Gulf, and the explosion would be a thing of beauty, viewed from afar.

There was very little with which Marcus Graver could salve his conscience about what he was doing. No matter what he told himself, he could not shake the anxiety of circumventing the system—he couldn’t say circumventing the rule of law since that so often was obscured even within the system. And even more disconcerting to him was his knowledge that he had allowed himself to take matters this far because of a personal obsession with Panos Kalatis. If he had been professionally dispassionate he would not be taking these risks. A more reasoned plan would have recognized the imbalance of risk and objective. They already had a wealth of information that would enhance the intelligence holdings of several agencies. It would have been more prudent to wait for another time when he, not Kalatis, would define the closing gambit.

But Graver did not wait.

According to Redden, whenever the alternate plan kicked into play, the situation at Bayfield was not entirely known to the pilots. Their instructions were to taxi to hangar No. 2 and unload the money into a truck that would be waiting there. The client and the guard would stay with the money. The pilots could leave. And that was the end of the affair as far as they were concerned.

The hangar, luckily, had a back room, which was the rear end of the hangar partitioned off and having a flat ceiling which formed a loft under the high-pitched roof of the hangar itself.