Standoff: A Vin Cooper Novel by David Rollins Read Free Book Online

south over the border. Wrong place, wrong time.”
    “What’s gonna happen to him?” I asked Liz.
    “We have to finish doing our thing. The tape won’t come down for another 24 hours at least. Maybe you should go talk to the guy taking the lead, Lieutenant Carlos Cruz. I’ll take you to him. Once we’re done here the deceased will make the trip to the mortuary for autopsy. At that point County Coroner Sue Flores is the person to speak to.”
    “Got her phone number on you?” Gomez asked, taking notes.
    Liz read it off her phone contacts.
    I gazed down on Sponson. He was a big African-American: two-thirty pounds, give or take. I wondered if he hadn’t spent so much time and money supersizing himself whether he might have taken a ride on the back of Whelt’s bike instead of coming here. In which case he’d also have had the opportunity to give us the finger instead of entertaining the flies.

Three
    Two AM, 3FC, 4MC and 5AF were under the shade tents Gomez and I had seen when we first arrived: they were the victims near the Learjet and the old Aussie trainer. Milling around the area were more than a half-dozen law enforcement officers, a mixture of CSI, medical examiners, and homicide, the latter distinguished from the rest by the word I NVESTIGATOR printed on the backs of their coveralls. One of these, a tall sallow guy, had the words L IEUTENANT on his back to avoid confusion.
    “What do I get if I guess which one’s Lieutenant Cruz?” Gomez asked.
    “A banana smoothie,” I replied.
    Liz, our tour guide, caught Cruz’s eye and he came on over. “You pass that information about 5AF to the Chief Deputy?” he asked her.
    “Yes, sir.”
    He gave a long sigh of frustration. “I’m sure hoping we get a match on the perp’s DNA, ’cause so far we got dick.”
    Given the alleged source of that DNA, the detective’s choice of words was a long way from sensitive, but then I’m the last person who should throw stones.
    “We sure could use a break,” he continued.
    “Sir,” said Liz, “Ranger Gomez and Special Agent Cooper here wanted a word with you.”
    “Federal,” he said, instantly on his guard, scowling at me, thinking I therefore had to be FBI.
    “OSI,” Gomez informed him.
    The Lieutenant visibly relaxed – OSI, unlike the Bureau, not being in the takeover business.
    “We were in the area when we got a call,” Gomez continued. “One of Agent Cooper’s deserters turned up here.”
    “Yeah, that’s 1AM,” he said, “outside the terminal building.”
    “You got no idea what happened here?” I asked, “Other than a bunch of murderers arrived by aircraft and went through the place hunting down folks and killing them?”
    Lieutenant Cruz flipped his sunglasses on top of his head and squinted at me. “That’s some interesting speculation you got there, Agent … er …”
    “Cooper.”
    “Mind telling me what inspires it?”
    “Which part?”
    “How they arrived.”
    “That’s what folks do at airports, Lieutenant. They fly in and they fly out.”
    “They could’ve bussed in.”
    Yeah, and they could’ve arrived on a herd of dromedaries.
    “Look, I know that the killers flying in makes sense. And we have made formal requests for assistance to the FAA and air traffic control at El Paso International. I’m just trying to keep the options open here. We don’t know anything for sure yet.”
    Fair enough, but I doubted ATC at the main airport would be able to help. Air traffic control was once my gig back in my Combat Controller days – jumping in behind enemy lines with Special Forces, laying beacons and other nav aids for fighters and bombers. So I was aware that even a cheap on-board GPS had the precision to get an aircraft in and around civilian airspace. A half decent pilot could land a plane just about anywhere these days without tripping any alarms or the suspicions of local ATC, but I said nothing about that. The detective would find it out for himself soon enough, if he