Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

H

IGH

R

OLLERS

Jack Bowman

To John Chandler – whether you like it or not

1

HALO JACKSON GRINNED at Chris Stern as the blades started to turn lazily in the fan casing of the CalSuperior Cargo 737.

He walked back into Hangar Six, put the snap-on wrench carefully back in its place in his roll cabinet, fastened the door firmly, then joined his friend squatting beside it. In the time it took him to perform those few simple actions, the sound of the jet had risen to alarming proportions. Half a dozen techs, who had been scurrying around the gleaming blue-and-silver giant, now dropped away from the unglamorous 737, grandly named Pride of Maine, pulled their Predator protectors from around their necks and dropped them securely over their ears. The triple layer of dense foam insulation with rubber seal deadened the rising howl to a stomach-wrenching roar but, still, an instinct for self-preservation made them back away, as though the few extra feet would protect them from the sound.

Under a large No Smoking sign, Chris pulled a Camel from his top pocket and put it between his lips without lighting it.

Cal Lemanski frowned at Halo and Chris and flapped his hands at his own ear protectors. Chris gave him the thumbs-up, and he turned away.

Kids. Cal was a bear of a man – big, bearded, barrel-chested. He was fifty-four and called anyone under forty ‘kid’.

Halo and Chris grinned at each other – an unlikely-looking pair of friends. Halo was black, skinny, toothy, and with a non-haircut that verged on an Afro; Chris was as broad, blond and pink-cheeked as a drunken Minnesota hunter.

The roar gripped them like something physical. Halo cracked first – he usually did. He grabbed his Predators and clamped them on. Chris held on for another split second, to make a point, his eyes screwed up, his cigarette flattened between his gritted teeth. Then he pulled on his ear protectors, holding them firmly, like Munch’s The Scream, crowing silently at Halo. He took a long fake drag on his cigarette – eyes narrowed, cheeks hollow – and breathed out luxuriously, as if he could still see the smoke leaving his nostrils in decadent trails.

Inside the huge engine the titanium-alloy fan blades – machined to a thousandth of an inch, in a feat as near perfect as makes no difference – sliced through the air at 5,500 revolutions per minute, a mere eighth of an inch from the lining of the engine casing, creating a diverse world of vacuum and violent turbulence.

Now, forty feet from Halo’s head – but far below the nearly unbearable roar of power – there came another sound. Light and delicate. A sound like a gentleman toastmaster calling for silence, with the silver tines of the best fork against the finest crystal. A single tone: so small that it was immediately sucked into the stomach of the engine, so genteel that it might have passed for imagination in a library.

And another revolution of the blades began.

Slowed a half-million times, a single blade swept past the tiny sound in a headlong suck of air and, safely cocooned by its neighbours’ shrouds, spun laconically around to meet that crucial point once more. The point where the rubberized lining of the fan casing was abraded above and beyond the call of duty. Like old friends, another tink of greeting. Was it louder this time?

Halo and Chris were engaged in a silent game of Rock, Paper, Scissors when the number-two engine of the Pride of Maine tore itself apart.

Thirty-eight titanium-alloy blades, each shaved to a cutting edge and exerting an escape force equivalent to the weight of a Mack truck, shattered from the fan casing and ripped free in a catherine-wheel formation at a speed approaching 700 m.p.h. Some gouged troughs in the reinforced-concrete apron; others ricocheted backwards, kicking off the ground and slicing through the hangar. Some found even softer targets, then continued their escape stained red.

It was as if the devil himself had reached up from Hell to spray Number Six Service Hangar at Los Angeles International Airport with a short burst from an apocalyptic Uzi.

It was over so fast that when Halo got shakily to his feet he still had his ‘paper’ hand ready to go. He looked around him, at first unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

In an instant, the jet’s fuselage had been all but severed fore of the starboard wing. Twisted metal, heavy drapes of colour-coded wiring and dark blue patterned carpet were exposed, festooned with fluffy white insulation. The wing itself had collapsed onto the ground, buckled and broken. Over Halo’s head the hangar was split open in a rough line of gashes, each spikily framing twenty-foot blue swathes of the cloudless LA sky.

The number-one engine whined down slowly to a point at which a human voice could be heard. But there were no voices – not then, nor in the eerie silence that followed its complete cessation. Men in blue coveralls started to move, picking themselves off the floor, peering in disbelief from behind gleaming testing gear at the plane silhouetted in the giant doorway of the hangar.

Halo turned to share his amazement with Chris. But Chris wasn’t there. In his place was a shapeless red-and-blue lump. Halo frowned down at it until his brain finally registered that the red-stained chunk of blue cloth was wearing Chris Stern’s Nikes.

Then he fainted.

*

Tom Patrick felt his stomach lurch as the river card appeared on the scuffed green baize. Jack of diamonds – turning the pocket jacks he’d been nursing into something even more valuable.

If his gut rolled over, his expression was unchanged. The other players searching his face for clues saw only what they’d been seeing for the thirteen hours since the start of the tournament – weary, red-rimmed green eyes set deep in a pale face, darkened by the shadow that told of more than one day away from a razor.

Tom regarded the five cards on the baize carefully. Nothing else on. No straights, no flushes, no pairs showing. The only thing that could beat him: someone holding pocket kings to match the one on the table.

He glanced briefly at the other players.

After years of playing, he had this knack. He needed only a glance, almost over their heads – as if he was about to call for chips or food – to take in the faces of his remaining opponents. Other players would stare at a challenger, seeking the clues that might give them an edge. It wasn’t necessary – not in Tom’s book. This quick glance, perfected over years, was all he needed to size up the opposition left at this final table.

To his left was Corey Clump, big and bluff and easy, with his fat ass hanging off his seat and his dopey smile fooling everyone; but Tom had been watching Corey at the river, and he’d seen that little slump of disappointment. Corey would fold his hand.

Next to Corey was a player he’d seen around but whose name he didn’t know. Same age as Tom – maybe thirty-six – clean-cut, wearing sunglasses day and night and with white iPod cables running from his ears. In his head, Tom called him the Pinball Kid, kinda like that deaf, dumb and blind guy in the movie. Except this Pinball Kid wasn’t dumb. Not in the head and not in the mouth. This Pinball Kid was one of those players who couldn’t shut the fuck up. It was like a tic.

Now he was grinning at Tom.

‘Pocket jacks? I got the kings, man. Better fold, man, cos I got you beat …’

Tom let the guy drone on, filling the air. He knew it meant nothing. The Pinball Kid might have the kings, he might not.

Behind the Pinball Kid stood a sexy dark blonde, with smoky eyes and a tight dress showing off spectacular curves. She’d been there most of the day, sometimes with a hand on the guy’s shoulder, loose but proprietorial, a stand-out in a casino filled with a thousand men and maybe twenty women – and those generally over fifty and crammed into velour sweatpants. She met Tom’s eyes briefly but neutrally. She must know what the Pinball Kid had, but her face gave nothing away.

Next to the Pinball Kid was Mr Ling, his face a cliché of inscrutability, but he had a big fat tell, and right now Tom could see Mr Ling’s fingers sizing up his dwindling chips, estimating how many hands he could still play after losing this one. Tom was amazed Mr Ling had got this far in the tournament with such an obvious weakness.

He had his own weakness, of course …

A few years earlier, in a tournament right here at the Bicycle Club off the 710 freeway, Tom had bluffed everyone out of a monster pot. He’d held a pathetic seven and a two – the worst hand in poker – but he’d decided to make a stand anyway. As the last man shook his head and threw away his cards, they’d hit the dealer’s over-eager hand and flipped over: pocket tens! The pair would have stomped all over his lousy hand if the other player had only had the guts to call his bluff. Just the memory sent a thrill up Tom’s back as he debated his next move. So far, it was the pinnacle of his poker career – a moment to be taken out every now and then, pored over and savoured, then wound carefully in the soft cloth of memory and tucked safely away once more.