Orchid Beach

Cracker looked surprised. “How did you know that?”

“We’re talking about what you know, Cracker.”

“Yeah, they’ve got netting over them.”

“Who mans them?”

“There are certain employees who’re trained for that, a couple of dozen, I think. If there’s an alarm, they go to their positions.”

“What kind of an alarm?”

“There’s a siren on a pole at the security office. If we get three blasts, we’re to go to our preassigned positions.”

“What’s your position?”

“Backup at the front gate, unless I’m already on service-gate duty.”

“What are they afraid of out there, Cracker?”

“I don’t know, exactly, but I know that they don’t want anybody from the outside there, unless they’re invited and escorted.”

“What kind of aircraft land at the airfield?”

“Corporate jets, mostly, and some support airplanes that bring in stuff.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“Equipment, parts, special foods, whatever’s needed. The DC-3 and a Cessna Caravan do that work.”

“Is there any special security at the airfield?”

“Yeah, there’s a couple of those camouflaged places.”

Holly couldn’t think of anything else to ask him. “Stay here a minute,” she said. “Guard, Daisy.”

“You’re leaving me with that dog?” Cracker asked, worried.

“She won’t hurt you unless you move.” Holly left the room and went next door. Harry Crisp was gone. She went back to the other room. Cracker had not moved. “Okay, Cracker, I’m going to let you go. If Barney wants to know why you were here so long, tell him I kept you waiting. If you tell him about our conversation, I’ll know, and I’ll have you back in prison before nightfall, you understand?”

“I understand,” he said. “I’m not going to jail for Barney.”

“Good, now get going.” She followed him to the squad room and watched as he walked out.

Hurd Wallace approached. “Who was that guy?”

“Just an interview,” Holly said. “Nothing important.”

CHAPTER

46

Holly went straight to Jackson’s house after work. One of the two FBI vans was parked outside. Harry Crisp was on the phone, as usual, when she walked in, and Jackson was having a beer with Bill and Joe. Harry waved and covered up the phone. “Be with you in a minute.”

Holly fed Daisy and got herself a beer, returning to the living room as Harry finished his call. “What happened to you today?” she asked. “I came in there to see if you had any more questions, but you had gone.”

“Sorry, when I heard that Cracker was driving Barney’s Range Rover I went out there to see if I could bug it, but I didn’t have the right equipment.” Harry waved at the other people. “Let’s all sit down for a minute,” he said.

Everybody gathered at the dining table.

“I just want to tell you all where we are,” Harry said. “First of all, Holly did a brilliant job of interrogating Cracker Mosely this morning. She got a hell of a lot of information that would have taken us a week to get. Thanks, Holly.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“Let’s see.” Harry consulted a list. “I talked with a guy from the National Security Agency this morning. They were already aware of the transmissions coming out of Palmetto Dunes.”

“They’ve been listening in?” Holly asked.

“They did for a while, starting a couple of years ago, but they’d assigned it a lower priority for the past year.”

“Why? What was coming out of there?”

“Commodity trades.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They were dispatching sell and buy orders for futures on soybeans, wheat, pork bellies, everything you’d find at a commodities exchange, but they were doing it on a worldwide basis.”

“Well,” Holly said, “that doesn’t make any sense at all to me. I thought those things were handled through brokers.”

“What they’ve got there is a brokerage. There’s something odd about it, though.”

“What’s that?”

“They’re using a Chinese telecommunications satellite to move their information.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand that, either,” Holly said.

“Neither does the NSA. Their earlier scans were handled routinely by lower-level personnel. All they did was to listen in; they didn’t do any analysis. Now they’re going to take another look at the transmissions and see if there is any change in what’s coming out of there. They’ll also do an analysis of the information.”

“I still don’t understand it,” Holly said, “but maybe that’ll help somehow.”

“Sounds like your old man’s idea of the antiaircraft emplacements wasn’t all that far-fetched,” Harry said. “Though, for the life of me, I just can’t believe that anyone on the Florida coast would start shooting at airplanes.”

“Who would do something like that?”

“It doesn’t make any sense as a security precaution. It might make more sense if they intended to use that kind of weaponry to buy some time.”

“Time for what?” Jackson asked.

“Time to evacuate. From what Cracker had to say in his interview with Holly, it sounds like they have a plan to hold the place just long enough for some aircraft to get out of there. I mean, they can’t get into a shooting war with the outside and expect to win, can they?”

“They could sure hold off my department for a while, though,” Holly said.

“I think that’s what they’re counting on. In a pinch, they can get out of there before reinforcements arrive. Your dad’s right; they couldn’t hold out against a military assault, but cops with small arms couldn’t take the place.”

“Have you found out anything else so far?” Jackson asked.

“We’ve had a report from Miami Center on the aircraft in and out of there. They’ve had airplanes with registrations from Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Canada, Japan and, mostly, from the United States. We ran down the U.S. tail numbers and nearly eighty percent of them were owned by a charter service out of Miami, which is owned by a Delaware corporation, which is owned by a Luxembourg company. Wheels within wheels.”

“Spooky,” Holly said.

“We checked out Diego Ramirez, the general manager of the place, too. He’s Panamanian, a former colonel in Manuel Noriega’s palace guard. He got out before the invasion and has been living quietly in Miami. No criminal record in this country, and his immigration status is okay.”

Holly spoke up. “I checked out the property ownership this afternoon, but the results were disappointing.”