Shotgun Opera Read online

  * * *

  Meredith flashed her identification and rolled past the guardhouse and onto the National Guard base at six-thirty in the morning. She sipped coffee. Bleary eyes. This early in the morning bullshit was one thing she definitely did not miss about the military.

  She followed the signs to the armory, then slammed on the brakes as she passed the airfield. The little Cayuse helicopter with the grenade launchers and 20mm cannon looked shiny, like it had just been washed and serviced. She flashed on a memory of her buzzing treetop level in Central America, little huts exploding in fire as brown villagers scrambled for the jungle.

  The chopper was a bit obsolete, but that wasn’t a surprise. A lot of regular army units dumped their surplus at reserve posts whenever they upgraded. But she liked the looks of it.

  She was probably a little rusty, but did anyone ever really forget how to fly a helicopter?

  * * *

  Nikki Enders paced the long halls of her family’s Garden District home, her footfalls echoing off the high ceilings and hardwood floors. Mother was somewhere knitting her scarf.

  She paused in the library, stood beneath the sway of her father’s one-eyed gaze. The long windows on either side of the portrait made it seem as if Lordly light were pouring down from Heaven. Today his likeness in oil looked puzzled, as if he glared down at a stranger in his domain. Who are you, little girl? What are you about?

  And that was the problem. She didn’t have immediate answers to those increasingly pertinent questions. Her prolonged downtime had facilitated the onset of a slow and uneasy revelation.

  She did not, in fact, know who she was or what she was about.

  Yes, she was a world-class killer, but there was something machinelike in the way she dispatched her targets, and lately that machine was breaking down. She absently rubbed her injured wrist. It was getting better.

  Who she was as a person was something of a mystery even to herself. She looked for a book to read in the library but realized she did not know her own taste in literature. She could not remember the last thing she’d read that wasn’t a technical manual. If asked, she would not have been able to tell anyone her favorite film or musical group or even a television show she was fond of.

  As a junior at Loyola, she’d had a boyfriend. They’d been sexually active. She strained to remember what it was like.

  She gazed up at her father’s portrait, set her jaw. Yes, there would be a change. She would reintroduce herself to life. She could not have done it when her father was alive, but there was no Lord now to cast out upstart angels.

  Meredith. Her sister had to come through for her, had to finish it. Nikki drifted back into the house’s dark depths, her ears open for the clicking of her mother’s knitting needles.

  Ortega was angry and afraid.

  That he was afraid was what made him angry. Stupid CIA whore. He had a good setup in the United States. He did not want this pissed woman to pull strings with her government friends and have him deported.

  He sighed. For the moment it was out of his hands. He could only turn to other business. It would not be professional to let other opportunities lapse just because he’d blown it with Meredith.

  He spent an hour making phone calls, checking on his investments, overseeing several projects currently being carried out by underlings. He sent a bundle of cash in a brown paper bag to a detective sergeant with the Oklahoma City Police Department. The price of doing business. He looked at his schedule for the week. In a few days he would take his private jet to his other home, in San Antonio, where he would repeat the process of managing all of his local interests.

  In short, he was on top of things.

  Ortega turned his attention to the kill team he’d put together to eliminate the target in New Orleans. The men he sent were not subtle. They were vicious bar brawlers and street fighters. Not geniuses, but they were hard as nails and relentless.

  And if they failed, then there were always the Sprats.

  Little Miss Nikki Enders wouldn’t know what hit her.

  21

  Meredith Cornwall-Jenkins grinned wide, the Cayuse helicopter roaring through the shallow valley a mere ten feet above the scrub oaks. She had to admit it. The stick felt good in her hands. She’d missed the rush, the earth flashing past below.

  She’d had to bully a young second lieutenant into clearing her to take the chopper without exactly going through all the proper channels. I need this bird now. You don’t want to interfere with a covert operation, do you? Think about it, son. This is your career on the line.

  Yes, the Cayuse felt good in her hands. The skills were still sharp. Flying had never been the problem. She’d resigned her commission for other reasons.

  Increasingly, the military intelligence brass had been asking for her by name when they needed a pilot for a special mission, dicey insertions, extractions from hot zones, dropping black ops agents into politically volatile regions, and once blasting the Iranian embassy to smithereens in Jordan. She began to wonder how she’d been fast-tracked for so many important missions.

  Then she found out her father had been pulling strings, calling in favors, even getting her assigned to missions in which he was the lead agent. He’d been behind the scenes, orchestrating every move, and his own daughter hadn’t even known. She’d been so proud, had thought she was making it on her own, ROTC at Texas A&M, head of her class, one of only three women at army flight school. And here was her father invalidating all of her accomplishments.

  She quit the army, spun her life in a completely different direction.

  But now, zooming through the sky, she fantasized about getting back in again. Maybe she could look up some of her old army contacts. Or maybe she could give the FBI a call.

  No. It would never work. Even from the grave, her father’s shadow would loom over everything she did. Former Company chums would come out of the woodwork to help the daughter of an old-timer. She could go freelance like Nikki, but that just wasn’t her style. She liked to be part of a team. At school she enjoyed working with the other faculty, choosing textbooks, chaperoning events, marching bad kids to detention.

  She checked the GPS and adjusted her course. She’d used the information Nikki had given her, accessed state and federal databanks, surveyors’ maps, business licenses. She was looking for a cabin, a barn, and rows of grapevines. She’d plugged the longitude and latitude into the GPS, and she was getting close.

  The helicopter cleared a ridge and swept past so quickly, Meredith almost missed the narrow valley tucked in between two hills. She circled back more slowly, spotted the barn and the cabin. A young boy ran among the grapevines.

  She made a wide circle and lined up for a strafing run.

  * * *

  They’d already searched the front seat and backseat, finding only junk-food wrappers, an empty whiskey flask, an address book, and a used condom. Mike and Andrew Foley now stood looking into the open trunk of Enrique Mars’s Cadillac.

  Andrew noted the various guns and other weapons and whistled. “Looks like Rambo’s junk drawer.”

  “Gather this up,” Mike said. “It might come in handy.”

  “Where are you going to dump the car?”

  Mike said, “I’m thinking about it. Lots of back roads around here. We’ll take it out someplace this afternoon.”

  Keone ran to within twenty feet of them and skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust. “Hey, boss.” He pointed over his shoulder at the sky. “Look.”

  Andrew squinted into the sun, shaded his eyes with a hand. “Crop duster?”

  “Listen,” Mike said. “Helicopter. I don’t think they use them to dust crops, at least not around here. It might be a police helicopter scouting for meth labs.” Hell, they might even be looking for Keone’s father. Mike had seen choppers in the distance before.

  “Could that be trouble?”

  “Just act nice and wave,” Mike said.

  Keone ran skipping back into the grapes, jumping and waving at the helicopter.

  Mike closed the Caddy’s
trunk. “We’ll get this stuff later.”

  Andrew yawned. “What now? We haven’t had any breakfast. I could go inside, put on some more coffee. You got eggs in there? I could do us some omelets.”

  Mike wasn’t listening. He still watched the helicopter. He couldn’t see any markings in the sun’s glare, didn’t know if it was police or a news helicopter or what. It swung in low and got lower, lined up with Mike’s narrow valley. If it stayed on course, it would buzz the vineyard low and fast.

  “What is it?” Andrew shaded his eyes again, took another look at the helicopter.

  “I don’t know,” Mike said. “Maybe we better get inside. Maybe it’s—”

  The machine guns on the aircraft thundered to life, the helicopter descending like hell from the sky.

  * * *

  Meredith trained her sights on anything moving, thumbed the fire button on the stick. The 20mm cannons screamed their song of death, lead shredding grapevines and pounding earth. The two by the parked cars dashed into the cabin.

  She kept her thumb on the firing button, skimming low, and shot out the cabin’s front window, chewed up the door, wood chunks flying. She pulled up and banked at the last second, her left skid barely clearing the cabin’s chimney. She wanted to come around for another pass, and she flipped switches, arming the grenade launchers.

  Her cell phone rang.

  She kept one hand on the stick, fumbled for the phone with the other, and flipped it open. “Hello?”

  “Hey, hon, it’s John.”

  “Now’s not really a good time, babe.” She brought the helicopter around and popped two grenades through the roof of the little barn. It blew apart, a spectacular fireball crackup of flames and flying wood and billowing black smoke.

  “What the hell was that?” John asked.

  “I’m in a construction zone,” Meredith said. “They’re demolishing a building.”

  “Well, drive careful, hon. Anyway, I wanted to ask about the dry cleaning. Did you use the place downtown or the other place by the mall?”

  She was coming in too steep to get a good bead on the cabin, so she pulled up hard, hovered backward, and put the target in her crosshairs. The smoke from the exploded barn filled the sky, drifted in front of the Cayuse’s windshield, obscuring her vision. “The one by the mall.”

  “Okay, one more question.”

  “I’m serious, John. This is a bad time.”

  “I’ll make it quick,” her husband promised. “I want to make a Crock-Pot of really hot chili. I know you don’t like it so I figured while you were gone—”

  “Cut to the chase, John.” She flew in fast, shot two grenades into the cabin and veered away at a steep angle so she wouldn’t get caught in the blast. The cabin’s walls blew out, and the roof collapsed on the rubble.

  “I can’t find the Crock-Pot, and I didn’t know if we had any ground beef in the freezer.”

  “You’re a grown man, John. Figure it out. I have to merge into traffic. Love you.” She hung up, tossed the cell phone onto the other seat.

  She grabbed some altitude and circled the area three times. She didn’t see anyone. The cabin smoked but didn’t burn like the barn. It was possible somebody had ducked under a table or something and survived. That’s all she needed was to blow the place to hell and back only to have the fire department show up and save her target. She needed a closer look.

  Meredith brought the chopper down slow and steady and made a slow circle around the cabin. The rotor blades blew the smoke back and kicked up dust. She let the Cayuse drift a few feet from the cabin toward the barn. She was maybe eight feet off the ground. She scanned the tree line and the vine rows in case somebody was hiding, waiting for her to leave.

  She considered what to do next. She was fairly confident nobody could survive the cabin or the barn’s destruction, but she had to be sure. She glanced around for a place to set down. Then she could get out with her sidearm and—

  The cockpit erupted with shattered glass and the flurry of metallic tinks. Her instrument panel sparked. Smoke.

  “Shit!”

  It took a tenth of a second for her to recognize the jagged rattle of a submachine gun. She craned her neck, twisted in her seat, and tried to spot the shooter. She rotated the Cayuse, saw the man standing atop the ruined cabin, legs apart, the machine gun in his hands still spitting fire. At this range, a ten-year-old with a BB gun could bring her down.

  She jerked back on the stick, climbed steeply, heading for the hill on the other side of the valley. She didn’t have the angle, clipped the branches of some scrub oaks. She topped the hill and saw a two-story house.

  A black woman on the back porch stood with her hands up to her surprised face. She hit the deck when Meredith buzzed the house.

  She made a ragged turn. The Cayuse was sluggish, handling poorly. The guy must’ve hit the hydraulic line or maybe some electronics or who the hell could say? She started going down, tried to keep the front up, but it was dead in her hands. Branches slapped the windshield. The ground rose up and introduced itself. There was an abrupt jerk and she hit her head and everything went dark.

  * * *

  Andrew Foley climbed through the rubble where the back door had been, just in time to see the chopper trailing smoke as it went down over the far ridge, his uncle holding the smoking machine gun.

  When they’d first seen the helicopter and it had opened fire, they’d dashed into the house, and his uncle had thrown open the trapdoor in the floor. They’d jumped into the wine cellar. The explosion had blown the lightbulb dead and they squatted in the dark as all hell broke loose above.

  Then his uncle had opened the chest, feeling his way in the dark. He climbed the ladder out of the cellar with the Thompson gun under his arm.

  Andrew stood next to his uncle now, a revolver in his hand. He’d taken it from the chest. He scanned the vineyard, the barn. It looked like something from a D-day movie, the blasted landscape and thick smoke. It stung his eyes.

  He pointed at the ridge where the helicopter had disappeared. “Did you do that?”

  Mike ignored the question. “Keone.”

  He ran for the vineyard and Andrew followed. Half the rows were ruined. Others still stood. It didn’t take long to find him. Mike knelt slowly, gathered the boy into his arms. Andrew shivered. It looked like a bullet— a big bullet— had entered his lower back and burst through his belly. He looked at the boy’s face. If not for the blood, it would look simply like Keone was sleeping.

  Mike stood, checked the load on the Thompson. It was empty. He dropped the gun and turned to Andrew. “Give me that pistol.”

  The look on his uncle’s face made him take a step back. “What are you going to—”

  “I said give me the pistol.”

  Andrew handed him the revolver.

  “Stay here.” Mike walked in the direction of the ridge.

  Andrew took a tentative step after him. “Maybe I should come too. I can—”

  “Stay.”

  He walked with long, deliberate steps, the gun in his hand swinging at his side.

  PART THREE

  22

  Mike marched up the ridge. Part of his brain registered the steep climb, the ache in his knees and back. Sweat poured down his neck. His heart hammered in his chest.

  Something white-hot behind his eyes blinded him to the pain, commanded his knees and heart to obey. He walked in a perfect straight line to the wrecked chopper, the hate humming through his body like an electric current. It buzzed hot in his ears, tingled his fingertips where he held the revolver. The roar of blood pulsing in his veins was the sound track of his fury.