St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

Phoenix
Sunday
2:20 P.M. MST
    A bruptly beige suburbs gave way to beige desert. Paved roads became dirt tracks. Power lines strode on silver legs across the sand and creosote. The helicopter dropped, slid under the lines, and popped up again.
    The pilot’s grin told Kayla that he liked flying on the edge.
    The sweat on Foley’s face told her that he didn’t.
    She didn’t like it either, but anything that happened now had to be better than what would come when Bertone got his hands on her.
    Don’t think about that.
    When the moment is right, I’ll crawl through the cuffs and …
    Whatever it takes.
    She kept repeating it silently, a mantra of fear and determination.
    The helicopter swung to the right, then to the left, hard arcs that turned Foley’s skin a nasty shade of green. The pilot either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He kept playing tag with the desert,skids brushing the tops of the taller bushes, rotor sending out billows of grit, skating on the edge of disaster with a wide smile.
    Keep it up, flyboy. Foley will hurl all over your windshield.
    The idea made her lips curl in a grim smile.
    The pilot made a tight arc around a rumple of dry, rocky hills. A paved road appeared below. The helicopter followed it, then dropped eight feet to a butterfly-soft landing in an asphalt parking lot.
    The front doors of the Arizona Territorial Gun Club rose in a dark rectangle from the side of a hill. Wide concrete steps climbed to it like a shrine.
    Kayla surged to her feet, turned her back on the cargo door, and fumbled it open. She half fell, half rolled out, twisted, and somehow managed to hit the asphalt feetfirst. She took off, running as fast as she could with her hands cuffed behind her. Even if she didn’t get free, she’d buy some time.
    A black Humvee shot up the private road toward the club.
    She spun and raced toward what looked like an obstacle course, chewing up as much time as she could.
    Anytime now, St. Kilda.
    Plan C is looking real good.

71
    Over Phoenix
Sunday
2:22 P.M. MST
    M artin handed Rand a headset, plugged it into a junction box, and made room for him on the jump seat.
    “What’s up?” the producer asked.
    “Foley kidnapped Kayla,” Rand said. Two pistols dug into his back when he sat down. He’d hoped for something with more firepower, but he’d had to settle for the Bertones’ bedside artillery. “He’s headed to Bertone’s gun club. The man himself is either there or will be soon.”
    “Where to?” the news pilot asked.
    Rand looked at the name sewed to the pilot’s pocket. Lopez. “Know where the Hokam Reservation is?”
    “Sure. Little vest-pocket holding to the east. Casino, failed dog track, and some kind of fortress.”
    “Get us to the fortress as fast as you can. Life or death.”
    “Roger.”
    The helo leaped up from the estate’s helipad, banked hard, and headed flat out to the east. The pilot talked to Phoenix Air Control. A few seconds later the bird went up like a bullet, thenleveled. Rooftops and streets raced by several hundred feet below. The pilot’s face and hands were relaxed, steady, and his eyes never stopped checking gauges and airspace.
    “Where’d you learn to fly a bird?” Rand asked Lopez.
    “California and Afghanistan.”
    “Then you know how to shoot, too.”
    “Yeah,” Lopez said, reading dials.
    “Got a piece?”
    “This is Arizona. What do you think?”
    “Keep it handy,” Rand said.
    “Always do.”
    Rand’s phone rang. “Yeah?”
    “This is Steele. Do you have a computer with an uplink?”
    Rand looked at Martin, who had a laptop with a satellite connection. “I can use someone’s.”
    “I e-mailed you a URL for the gun club and satellite photos of the area. There is only one road, one entrance. The perimeter is chain-link fencing with razor wire. It looks like a military installation.”
    Without a word, Rand took Martin’s computer and called up his St. Kilda e-mail number. “Got it.”
    Rand zoomed in on the sat photos. Steele was right. The gun club could have been a military bunker.
    “Anything else needed?” Steele asked.
    “A few warrants and cooperative badges.”
    “We’re working on that.”
    “Then how about a miracle,” Rand muttered.
    “They’re back-ordered.”
    The connection ended.
    Rand studied the Arizona Territorial Gun Club’s web page. It showed outdoor pistol courses and the roofless tactical shooting house nestled against some barren desert hills. Beyond the outsideshooting