Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (41 page)

 
          
Geffar
moved closer to the bed as the deputies scrambled to put away the chart and
papers. Hokum’s face was badly swollen—Hardcastle would have been proud, she
thought. He was also sputtering to his people to remove her. “Just wanted to
check on you, Chief—”

 
          
She
was grabbed tight around the forearms and shoved backward.”

 
          
“What
a big gun you have there,” the deputy said as he pulled her .45 out of her
holster and tossed it to one of the men behind him.

 
          
She
was considering a judo move when she heard, “Get your hands off her, Buck.”
Standing in the hallway, half-leaning against the wall for support, was Maxwell
Van Nuys.

 
          
“Everything’s
under control, Mr. Van—”

 
          
Van
Nuys reached over and grabbed the deputy’s left wrist, encircling it in his
left hand. “I
said,
get your hands
off her.” The deputy’s knees began to buckle under Van Nuys’ grip before he
finally released Geffar. “Give her the gun back.” The fireman did. She had to
wonder at the sheer power of Maxwell Van Nuys even in his obviously weakened
condition.

 
          
“Get
out of my sight,” Van Nuys said. His voice was weak with the pain shooting
through his back but the message was clear. They both retreated into the chief
s room and the door closed behind them.

 
          
Van
Nuys groaned and held himself up, his back flat against the wall. A nurse came
by to help him back into bed, where he lay flat and motionless.

 
          
“What
did you think you were doing?” Geffar said.

 
          
“I
might ask you the same question,” glancing at her out the corner of his eye.
“Stay away from them. Hokum may be the police chief of a conservative peaceful
Sunrise
Beach
but he runs the place like the marshal of
an Old West town. The residents like his tough-guy act.” “This is the man who
files your flight plans for you?”

 
          
Van
Nuys smiled and gave her a nod. “All right, all right. Message received. I’ll
do like everybody else and file directly with the feds. But I’m serious about
Hokum. He has the law and a lot of powerful, influential citizens behind him .
. . So . . . how about it? Can I see you again?”

 
          
“I
told you, there are serious questions that need to be cleared up with your
affairs.” And mine, she silently added as she turned and left without another
word.

 
          
Van
Nuys lay flat in bed, savoring the thought of Geffar, until he heard a knock at
the door and it swung open. One of Hokum’s men poked his head through the door.
“Sir?”

 
          
“Get
out.”

 
          
“Sir,
the Chief would like to speak.”

 
          
“Tell
him to go piss up a rope.”

 
          
“I’m
afraid he . . . insists, sir.”

 
          
Van
Nuys sat up in bed, stood, adjusted his bathrobe and without a hint of the discomfort
he’d shown Sandra Geffar pushed past the man and stepped through the door
connecting their two rooms.

 
          
Chief
Hokum was lying in bed surrounded by senior deputies and assistants. He had
just downed a shot of tequila. His face was puffy. “That Hardcastle sure did a
number on you, didn’t he? Okay, now what the hell do you want?”

 
          
“I
want to know what
she
was doing
here.”

 
          
“Visiting
me.”

 
          
“Then
why was she in my room?”

 
          
“Maybe
she stopped by to admire her partner’s handiwork.”

           
“Very funny . . . You’d better not
see her anymore.”

 
          
Van
Nuys, his patented smile in place, stepped over to Hokum’s bedside,
nodding—then suddenly reached over and grabbed Hokum’s neck with his right
hand. The chief yelled in pain. Van Nuys gave a quick glance at the deputies
but none raised a hand.

 
          
Van
Nuys leaned forward and moved his face within an inch of Hokum’s, maintaining
his grip. “You listen to me, scum bag,
I
run this operation. I say what goes down and what doesn’t. Now I’m telling
you.
You stay away from Geffar and
Border Security. Clear?” Van Nuys released his neck with a snap of his wrist.
“I’m interested in what happened to my flight plan and my airplane. If I had a
suspicious nature I’d say you sabotaged my plane and didn’t file the flight
plan so Border Security would catch me—”

 
          
“That’s
crazy, Mr. Van Nuys,” Hokum managed through the pain in his face. “You were
carrying five million dollars worth of blow. Why would I want anything else but
to see that shipment arrive safe and sound?”

 
          
“Maybe
I wasn’t supposed to make it. Maybe you want to take over my operation. You let
me get caught with the drugs—”

 
          
“No,
no, Mr. Van Nuys. If you get caught I’m implicated right away. They’ll come
down on me harder than you. I want to do everything I could to make sure you’re
covered. That’s why I kept Border Security away from your plane and foamed it.
I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize our operation—”

 
          
“My
operation,” Van Nuys said, not entirely convinced, although Hokum seemed
panicked enough to be telling the truth. “What happened with my flight plan and
Custom’s clearance? Why was Border Security alerted?”

 
          
“I
swear
I don’t know. I filed the
flight plan as you directed. We had it all worked out how we were going to
delay the Customs inspector at the front gate until we off-loaded the drugs. We
had the proper cargo seals with the copied numbers all ready to go. They
must’ve lost the flight plan in the system—”

 
          
“Very
convenient—for you. You screw up once more, Hokum, and you’ll find yourself
part of a concrete foundation in my new gallery mall on
Grand Bahama
. And you make very damn sure that plane is
sanitized before it’s turned over to Customs.” “He’s crazy,” one of the
deputies murmured after Van Nuys had gone and they helped Hokum settle back
into bed and poured him a shot of tequila. “He’s going to blow this whole deal
over that bitch—”

 
          
“Like
hell he is,” Hokum said. He turned to his senior deputy, David Frye. “What
happened? Why
didn’t
that plane go
down?” “The charge must’ve been defective,” Frye told him. “Instead of
detonating it burned through some wiring and shorted out his alternator. We’re
damned lucky he made it back here instead of being forced to land at Opa-Locka
or
Miami
... But if you wanted Van Nuys to get caught
with the coke we had hidden on his plane why did you order us to foam his plane
and take the stuff off?”

 
          
“Use
your head,” Hokum said. “I wanted Van Nuys dead
and
the coke found in his plane. If he’s alive he can talk, and if
he can talk and explain that he had nothing to do with the stuff being in his
plane, the attention focuses on us again. This weapons-smuggling operation I’ve
spent years organizing inside Van Nuys’ drug smuggling almost went down the
tubes because of your bungling. You get one more chance—that’s it.”

 
          
Hokum
lay silent a moment, then tossed back a mouthful of tequila and jabbed a finger
at Frye. “I want to know all there is to know about this Sandra GefiFar. I want
to know where she lives, where she goes, what she does and who she does it
with. Use our contacts in the Dade County Sheriffs office and DMV. And keep it
quiet.”

 
          
Hammerhead
One Air Staging Platform

 
          
Two Weeks Later

 
          
Geffar
and Hardcastle were, officially, off duty, having finished a twelve-hour day
shift, but both were in uniform. They were sitting near the bay windows
watching a Customs inspection of a Costa Rican freighter tied alongside the
platform’s east docks below the aerostat-balloon-launching area. The ballpark
lights that rimmed the platform’s top level were bathing the freighter in stark
white light.

 
          
Michael
Becker, his earset looped around his neck, cord dangling from a pocket, walked
up to their table with his dinner. “Mind if I join you?”

 
          
Geffar
stood. “I’ve got to get ready for tonight’s . . . interview. Excuse me.” She
looked embarrassed and she was.

 
          
“She’s
got a ‘Nightline’ interview in a couple of hours,” Hardcastle told him.

 
          
“I
know ... I heard. She makes a great spokesperson for the Hammerheads.”

 
          
“She’s
lost, burning it at both ends,” Hardcastle said, staring down at the freighter.

 
          
“You’ve
been spending an awful lot of time out here yourself, Admiral. I’ve noticed you
missing the chopper back to shore more and more. Why don’t you take some time
off? Go see Daniel.”

 
          
“I
should . . . hell, I’ll give him a call... You know, Mike,” he said, jabbing a
finger at Becker, “after more than six months we’ve only got four fully
operational Sea Lion aircraft and only five platform-qualified crews.”

 
          
“We
have two Sea Lions on the platform and one at
Homestead
, plus one for training. Congress has been
screwing around with our funding from the very start. They delayed the next six
Sea Lions for two months, waiting for public reaction, according to Elliott,
who’s doing his best. Also, having this big shot Van Nuys testify on how effective
and how heroic the Hammerheads are was a good move—”

 
          
“Yeah.
Van Nuys,” Hardcastle said, shaking his head. “Our new buddy, our very own
socialite-playboy-spokesman for the

 
          
Hammerheads.
I could do without it, without
him
.
. . ”

 
          
Becker
said nothing, but understood Hardcastle was less than pleased by the apparent
friendship between Geffar and Van Nuys.

 
          
“Mike,
we should be flying the hell out of the crews, the Sea Lions and the drones. We
should be making our presenc
efelt.
We’ve got to get this station on the damned track.”

 
          
Again,
Becker kept his mouth shut. Because this was between his boss and GefiFar. And
because he believed his boss was right.

 
          
The
camera’s lights created a spot of daylight at the edge of the platform, even
brighter than the illumination of the ballpark lights on the east side of the
huge facility. A camera crew was set up on the Hammerhead One upper deck,
positioned so that the camera could swing freely from Geffar on deck down to
photograph the activity on the deck of the Costa Rican coastal freighter moored
alongside the platform.

 
          
Geffar,
with one finger covering her right ear and another holding the earpiece secure
in her left ear, strained to listen to the question from the TV interviewer.
“Miss Geffar, thank you very much for joining us tonight.”

 
          
“My
pleasure. Beautiful night out here. Glad you could join us.”

 
          
Hardcastle,
in his office beside the command center on the third deck, shook his head as he
half-listened. Talking about the Hammerhead’s main operations platform as if it
were a white sandy beach in the
Virgin Islands
. . . ?

 
          
The
intercom on his desk buzzed, and he touched the button without taking his eyes
from the TV screen. “Yes?”