Hunter's Moon, Chuck Logan [i am reading a book TXT] 📗

Hollywood’s quick handshake radiated military urgency. “You got your teeth fixed. What the fuck happened to your face?”

“Zigged when I should have zagged. What’s Randall up to?”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff. You’re safely back in Uncle’s bosom.”

Hollywood flashed a tight smile.

“What? Are you still with the fucking CIA? I thought—”

“Justice Department. There’s a war on, don’tcha know? Drugs,”

Hollywood whispered.

They looked at each other, burst into crazed laughter, and both blurted at the same time. “You haven’t changed…”

“Becky meet Hollywood,” said Harry.

The woman of mystery behind her dark glasses, Becky extended a slender hand.

“You have any baggage to claim?” asked Hollywood.

“Just what we’re carrying.”

“Wait here a second.” Hollywood walked off a few paces and whipped out a cellular phone. Becky leaned against Harry’s shoulder and said, “He’s got a gun on under that jacket.” The first words she had spoken since they boarded in Duluth.

Hollywood rejoined them, gallantly took Becky’s shoulder bag, and walked them through a door, down a stairway, and through a basement corridor. They came out onto the tarmac and the dry, bright heat stunned them. Mountains floated in a wreath of smog.

“Where are we going?” asked Harry.

“To jail if we get caught. I’m cutting some corners on this one.”

They stopped in front of a hangar and Hollywood jogged into a small office. Two Bell UH1 helicopters sat with drooping rotors on the sun-cooked cement. And a Cessna.

Hollywood came back out and pointed to the Cessna.

362 / CHUCK LOGAN

“That’s our chariot.” Becky and Harry climbed in while Hollywood made his preflight checks.

“You ever flown in a small plane?” Harry asked her.

She ran her hands over the interior of the craft and lowered her sunglasses, looking at him with large eyes. “Harry, I’ve never flown in anything before today. This is like…a video.”

Color and curiosity were returning to her face. He squeezed her hand. “Good girl. Hang in there.”

Hollywood piled into the cockpit and cranked the motor. As they taxied to the runway, Hollywood talked to the tower. Becky came forward, leaning between them, fascinated at the radio traffic, all the dials and gauges. She clamped her eyes shut when they took off.

Harry watched the compass spin as they banked through a turn, gained altitude and leveled off. South.

“Mind if I smoke?” he said.

“Go ahead. Your funeral. Hardest part of the Nam to give up. The goddamn cigarettes.”

“So what are you, a narc?”

Hollywood laughed. “Justice Department. Special Task Force. I’m down here narking the narcs. Too damn much money in the drug industry, Harry. Too few men who can’t be bought. Assholes in Washington gotta realize it’s time to bring back the firing squad.”

He grinned. “Need to breed another generation of fanatics like we were. A little fucking American fundamentalism.”

“You like your work, huh?”

“Most of the time I feel like a cockroach on the Titanic.”

Harry tried to absorb the vast desert sky and the mountain ranges.

He shook his head. “Yesterday I was in the woods in northern Minnesota. It was snowing. Now I don’t have a clue—”

Hollywood smiled. “Just like old times.”

“What’s Randall up to?”

“He’s operating in midair. Something popped up on a computer screen in my office and considering that you’re our old asshole buddy…we put all this together in one day flat.”

HUNTER’S MOON / 363

“Put what together?”

Hollywood had yet to show his eyes behind the sleek black glasses.

He chewed his lip, “Another little Valentine from the heart of fucking darkness.”

Harry dozed to the warm chug of the propeller. When he awoke, he heard Becky quizzing Hollywood about the mountains. They flew over desert and mesa, parallel to a highway. A mountain range loomed ahead of them, speckled in sunlight.

“Those are the Chiricahua Mountains. Down there, that wide place off the road that looks like a junkyard? That’s Chato, Arizona.

We have a couple rooms in the one motel,” said Hollywood. He dropped low and skimmed over the mesquite and cactus, flying toward the foothills of the mountains.

Harry turned soberly to Hollywood. “This is all great eye-fucking, the scenery and all, but you guys could wind up accessories to murder.”

Hollywood grinned. “Story of our lives, huh?” He pointed out the window at an abandoned airstrip with a decrepit hangar, the sides caved in. The figure of a man stood next to a station wagon, staked to a long shadow. A wind sock fluttered from the vehicle’s antenna.

The shadow of the Cessna swooped over the car. Hollywood waggled the wings, put the left one practically into the mesquite, and veered back to the runway.

“Where’d you learn to fly?” Harry gripped his seat.

“Air America. Laos. After you split. Strictly an amateur. Sure miss those short landings and takeoffs.”

“Hold on, Becky,” said Harry.

Hollywood cut power and wallowed down onto the cracked, weed-choked tarmac. They came to a jarring halt. Becky’s hair was in her eyes.

They got out. Becky looked around at the mesquite, Spanish bayonet, and prickly pear. The space and light. “Weird,” she said.

364 / CHUCK LOGAN

Hollywood smiled. “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

The guy on the ground was hardcore DEA cowboy; short, cropped hair, weightlifter muscles, black baseball cap, and a face unavailable behind sunglasses. He removed a solid-state radio, a small cooler, and a Tom Clancy paperback from the station wagon and walked to the shade of the plane.

Hollywood drove toward the highway. In seconds they were painted with red dust.

“Where’s Randall?” asked Harry.

“With the guy you’re going to talk to. Owns a gas station in town.”

Life had passed Chato by when the new highway detoured around it. They turned onto the old highway and entered a museum of boarded-up storefronts and streets that ended in the sand. The gas station was left over from The Grapes of Wrath. A closed sign hung on the door.

“C’mon, he lives around the back.” said Hollywood. Jay Cox’s cowboy boots kicked up a horned toad among the bull thorns as they went around the building. The back room of the station had been converted to living quarters. A concrete patio was being re-claimed by the desert. Rusty