“I’d like to see him in a party video.”
Full disclosure on my part: after the Patriot Act, there were really no rules left with a terrorism investigation. If Omar Smith had said no to anything this night, we would have found a reason to seize his computers and phones. But maybe he knew that and beat us to it, opening his house and records. We watched the party video together and he made me a copy. I said I’d talk to him again soon and left him with something else.
“My sister was Melissa Kern. Her husband, Captain James Kern, also died, as did their son, my nephew, Nate. My niece is in emergency surgery right now.”
“You were the FBI agent who was first inside my building?”
“I was. If you remember more about Juan Menderes or anything else, call me. I don’t care how insignificant it seems. Call me at any time of day or night.”
“I am very sorry for you, and I will call if I remember anything.”
He heard what I was saying, and I knew he would call me. In that moment we connected. How or why we did I couldn’t say yet.
8
At four thirty that morning I was driving when my cell rang with an unidentified number. Didn’t recognize the phone number and in my grief and worry over Julia’s surgery I almost didn’t answer. But it turned out to be Beatty on a burner phone.
“On the radio they’re saying a teenage girl survived. I was hoping it was Julia.”
“It is Julia.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s in the hospital.”
“Will she be okay?”
“The doctors don’t know yet. What happened to your phone? Why are you on a burner phone? Are you at the airfield you texted me directions to?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t talk long right now, Jeremy.”
I started to tell him that Melissa, Jim, and Nate were dead along with pilots he knew, but I couldn’t do it. Plus, I could tell he’d been online. His name was out there and he knew. It could have come from someone in our office. It could have come from the DOD investigators or a whole lot of others.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were shutting your phone down?” I asked.
“I don’t know, paranoid, I guess, and I read an article saying the FBI wants to question an ex–drone pilot who was in the vicinity when the blast occurred. The headline says, ‘Vegas Terrorist Attack Has Possible Local Link—Ex–Drone Pilot Sought.’ Is that me?”
“It is, but don’t take it personally. We’re questioning everyone. You were in the area and were invited. You didn’t show up. You knew pilots, and like you said, you were under surveillance, even if for something completely different. We’re looking at every angle, anything, and everything.”
“So it came from you?”
“No.”
He was quiet long enough for me to wonder if we had lost our connection. Then he said, “I’m really sorry, Grale. You lost a lot tonight. I’ll deal with whatever questions there are about me.”
I wished that were true. I wanted it to be that way, but didn’t think it would work out like that.
“Tell me about the airfield,” I said.
“I’m in a flight trailer that’s two double-wides combined. There’s an asphalt runway for the drones and light aircraft. They graded miles of road wide and smooth enough for trucks, but went cheap on the runway. There are other trailers for living and a commissary. There’s a temporary hangar for the drones that looks like a circus tent and a whole lot of desert and mountains behind here. From the air it’s going to be a black strip of asphalt in a flat desert valley. We’re not that far from the atomic testing area. Is the FBI coming here?”
“How soon after I saw you did you head out there?”
“Right away, and I almost followed you to the party. I chickened out for the same old reasons and went to that Carl’s Jr. you and I used to go to. I had a burger and fries, watching for anyone following me. Everything I told you about Hakim Salter was true.”
“It’s not about Hakim Salter tonight.”
“Captain Kern always said the war would come to us. He said we couldn’t fly drones indefinitely without getting pushback.”
Jim did say that.
“I see all kinds of bad things coming, G-man. My mind is messing with me tonight. I see arches in a courtyard with cinder-block walls and dirt raked and watered. They don’t fill the cells of the cinder block with concrete and steel in Pakistan like we do here. They just stack them up. Cinder-block chunks tear the shit out of a house after a missile goes off. I see Laura when I close my eyes. I try to take back everything bad I said to her. I hear Melissa offering me a room in their house for as long as it takes me to get back to normal. Why is it the best people get killed?”