Chapter 21: The Deposed

The Campus

February 28, 2005

Despite the gravity of the briefing, the escort run to the airport passed without a single hitch—six Harleys in tight formation surrounding the truck, their thunder bouncing off the highway dividers all the way into San Luis Obispo. The caravan kept a steady pace. Owen kept his hands light on the wheel, half thrilled that he was hanging with the Rough Riders on a real mission, half terrified of what might happen.

They peeled off into the general aviation lot at the airport, engines popping down to silence one by one, the smell of hot chrome and exhaust hanging in the crisp morning air. The big red helicopter was already there on the pad—sleek, high-skidded, rotor still, blades drooping like the petals of a heavy flower. Its paint gleamed under the sun.

Owen parked beside the line of bikes. Drew climbed out with his folder clutched tight, eyes darting from the bikers to the aircraft. The pilot’s door on the right side of the Sikorsky swung open, and a man climbed down—a little shorter than average, helmet under his arm, brown mustache above a tight-set mouth, flight jumpsuit zipped to the collar. He started walking toward them, casual but purposeful.

Owen didn’t recognize him from Adam.

Drew, however, did. “I’ve seen that face before,” he said slowly. “I think I took a picture of it once.”

Tater barked a laugh. “Was it suckin’ some dude’s dick at the time? That’s the only kinda pictures your scum-sucking ass takes.”

The line got a rough laugh from the Riders, but Drew didn’t rise to it. He just kept staring, a little color draining from his face. Something in the memory clicked—the pilot who used to date Celia Valdez. He hadn’t taken that picture, but he remembered who had. Paul Peterson had—back when Celia Valdez and this very pilot had been making tabloid rounds.

“That guy used to fuck Celia Valdez,” Drew said. “I can’t remember his name, but it was big news when it was happening.”

“No shit?” Tater asked. “That fuckin’ dweeb? Celia Valdez? Jake’s old lady?”

“Swear to god,” Drew said. “She dumped him after only a few months.”

“I can’t imagine a guy like that eats a good pussy,” Asshat said.

“Or even a bad one,” Long Cock added.

The pilot kept coming, the morning sun flashing off the visor clipped to the side of his helmet. As he got close, the stenciled lettering on his jumpsuit came into focus—R. GROVER over the right breast.

That sealed it for Drew.

“Ron Grover!” he said, triumphant.

The pilot blinked, startled. “Yes—that’s my name. Do we know each other?”

Tater jerked a thumb toward Drew. “The whaleshit motherfucker here claims you used to hose down Celia Valdez. That shit true, flyboy?”

Ron froze, taken completely off guard. “I—uh—used to date Celia Valdez a few years back,” he said carefully. “But I never used a hose on her.”

That broke the Riders up. The laughter rolled through the group, loud and rough. Even Porno let out a grunt that might have been amusement.

Ron’s nervous smile didn’t quite stick. It was obvious he hadn’t been briefed about patched bikers being part of today’s chartered operation. He looked from the cuts to the truck, then back again. “So ... who exactly am I transporting to Burbank Airport?”

Drew raised a hand. “That’s me.”

Ron nodded once. “Understood.”

Tater pointed at himself and Porno. “We’re goin’ along too.”

Ron looked at them carefully. “You are?”

“Fuckin’ A,” Tater said. “We’re the fuckin’ security detail.” He turned to Owen. “You with us, GM?”

Owen hesitated. He’d been given no specific instructions about that part of the mission. “I think Jake might want me back at the Campus to help with rehearsal,” he said uncertainly.

Tater shook his head. “Jake can get along without you for a day. You’re with us. We might need a breaker.”

That was the magic word.

“I’m in,” Owen said, even as a small knot of terror tightened in his stomach. He tried not to look at the red helicopter waiting on the pad, all steel and rotors and menace. He’d rather face a fistfight on the ground than the thought of being trapped inside that thing once it lifted off—but a breaker didn’t back down.

Ron’s polite smile thinned. “Why does this particular mission need security—and a breaker, whatever that is? I’m afraid I need to know what kind of risk my aircraft and my passengers might be facing.”

Tater rolled a shoulder. “‘Cause this piece of shit here is the scum-suckin’ pap motherfucker that takes pictures up women’s dresses and publishes ‘em.”

“I don’t—” Drew started.

“Shut it,” Tater snapped without looking at him. He jerked his chin back to Ron. “This polyp on the asshole of life is tryin’ to redeem himself by testifying against the American fuckin’ Watcher. They already sent thugs after him once. We’re makin’ sure it don’t happen again. There should be no danger to the aircraft at either end ‘cause I’m reasonably sure the American Watcher—or its rent-a-gorillas—don’t possess any surface to air missiles, portable or fixed. We’re strictly talkin’ ground thugs here.”

Ron absorbed that, eyes steadying. Former Navy settled into his posture. “Okay then,” he said. “Shall we get aboard and go over the passenger briefing?”

“Fuckin’ A,” Tater said.

The interior of the helicopter surprised Owen.

Instead of metal benches and webbing straps like he’d half imagined, it looked more like a flying lounge—soft tan leather seats, carpet, a faint smell of polish and machine oil. He took the seat closest to the window and tried not to think about how far it would be to the ground in a few minutes. Didn’t these helicopters crash all the time?

Ron stood near the door, helmet on now, the brown mustache framed by a professional smile.

“All right, gentlemen,” he said in that calm, pilot voice that made everything sound routine. He launched into the passenger briefing—emergency exits, flotation vests, seat belts, fire extinguishers, escape procedures. To Owen, it all blurred together until a few words jumped out and stuck like hooks: “water landing” and “brace position.”

Water landing? Brace position? That was heavy duty shit. The stuff that gave aerophobes like himself nightmares. He’d flown commercial before and hated it, hated every second of every flight, but this was worse—because he could see every switch, every wire, every thin piece of metal that separated him from gravity. And these things crashed all the fucking time!

Ron climbed into the cockpit and started his preflight checks. Switches clicked, indicators lit, and a thin electric whine rose from the avionics—fans and gyros spinning up to life.

Tater was across from him, relaxed and grinning. “Now this is the way to fuckin’ fly,” he said.

Porno rubbed a broad palm over the armrest. “The feel of this leather’s fuckin’ sweet,” he said. “If there was a hole in this seat, I’d fuck it.”

The Riders laughed. Owen did too, though his came out thin and nervous. Porno didn’t sound like he was joking, and his nickname was starting to make grim sense.

Up front, Ron said, “We’ll be lifting off.”

Owen gripped the armrests hard enough to leave fingerprints. The twin engines spooled up, the pitch rising fast—maybe ninety decibels, his science brain offered helpfully—not enough for hearing damage but enough to make chitchat almost impossible. The floor trembled under his boots.

Then they were rising. Just thirty feet, maybe, hovering over the pad. The view scrolled as the nose swung a hundred degrees to line up with a taxiway. They slid forward, skimming the pavement like a huge red insect.

Part of Owen’s brain—some ancient, terrified part—kept whispering that he could jump out from here and probably live. Maybe not even break a bone. His newer, manlier side told that voice to shut the fuck up. We’re backing our brothers. Jumping out of the helicopter would be pussy.

They followed the taxiway, turned at the head of the runway—and suddenly the ground was dropping away fast and they were accelerating forward. The engine noise didn’t change a bit. Didn’t get louder, didn’t get softer. Was that how it worked? That didn’t make sense. He would have to look up helicopter flight when this was over. Assuming, of course, that he didn’t get splattered all over a mountain in the next hour.

Within a minute they were high in the sky, as Caydee would have said, the hills south of town rolling beneath them like green waves.

The climb smoothed out fast. One moment Owen’s guts were somewhere below his shoes, the next they were leveled off, cruising. The vibration softened into a steady, physical hum that seemed to live in the floor rather than in his bones. Through the big window beside him the world had opened wide—bright and crisp and unbelievably close.

For the first time, he wasn’t boxed in by airline glass or staring at clouds. He could actually see the world. The green ribs of the coastal mountains unrolled below like a topographic map come alive. Sunlight flared off streams and tin roofs; ribbons of highway crawled lazily through the valleys. To the right, beyond the ridges, the Pacific flashed blue and silver, stretching to a sharp horizon. Farther out, he spotted one of the Channel Islands—just a smudge of brown in a field of light—but it made his chest tighten with a kind of wonder he hadn’t felt since childhood.

They followed the spine of the mountains south. Each city and town appeared and slipped away: the grid of Santa Maria, the low sprawl of Lompoc, then the pale, glittering fan of Santa Barbara opening to the sea. The helicopter moved fast, but it didn’t feel fast. It was more like the earth sliding past underneath them, easy and graceful. The steady engine noise didn’t change a bit—never louder, never softer—just a background roar.

Owen found himself relaxing. His hands left the armrests. His shoulders dropped. He leaned forward a little, forehead almost against the glass, and grinned before he realized he was doing it. Below them, farmland gave way to suburbs, and then to the industrial flatlands of Oxnard—rows of gray buildings, trucks like toys, long rectangles of color where greenhouses caught the sun.

When they reached the next line of hills, Ron eased them lower. The ridges slid under the nose, close enough that Owen could make out individual buildings and trees. For a second it looked like he could reach out and brush the tops of them with his fingertips. The thought didn’t scare him anymore; it thrilled him.

Then they were over the San Fernando Valley. The patchwork of freeways, subdivisions, and warehouses stretched to the horizon, a mosaic of human order beneath the wild sky. They began descending, the city slowly enlarging, details sharpening—the flash of windshields, the bright blue of swimming pools, the long shadows of towers thrown westward by the morning sun.

The noise never changed. The big red machine just kept humming, steady as a heartbeat.

They sank lower and lower, skimming above the sprawl. The crosshatch of streets became clear; rooftops and parking lots slipped past beneath them. Then, ahead, the long gray ribbon of runway came into view. The helicopter eased down toward it, smooth as silk.

At about thirty feet above the surface, they leveled off, slid clear of the active runway, and followed a taxiway toward a painted circle of concrete. The vibration changed pitch as the skids touched down on the helipad. The rotors’ wind washed over the tarmac and the sleek black limousine waiting just beyond the safety fence, its roof glinting hard in the morning light.

The transfer was quick and wordless. Within minutes they were in the limo, the doors sealing with a soft thud that made the sudden quiet feel heavy. Los Angeles rolled past the tinted windows—freeways packed tight, glass towers and billboards flashing sunlight like mirrors. Drew sat forward, hunched over his folder, pale and silent. Tater and Porno sprawled across from him, their cuts looking out of place against the leather seats. Owen kept his eyes on the city, following the endless lines of traffic and wondering how anything this crowded could ever feel so empty.

Twenty minutes later, the car eased off the 405 at Wilshire and glided into Brentwood, where the sidewalks gleamed and even the palm trees looked manicured.

The limo eased up to the curb in front of a mirrored office building on Wilshire Boulevard. The morning sun was bright on the glass, and the words Brackford, Redman, and Jackson—Attorneys at Law gleamed in silver across the doors. Drew opened his door before the car had even stopped rocking and stepped out, clutching his folder like it might protect him. Owen followed, squinting at the light and trying to act like he belonged outside a law firm that probably charged by the heartbeat.

They’d taken two steps toward the entrance when three men detached themselves from the shade of a recessed alcove beside the building. Two were heavyset and broad-shouldered, their jackets a little too snug across the chest. The third was a suit—gray, sharp, polished down to his shoes. He smiled as they approached.

“Mr. Conners,” he said pleasantly, “we’d like a quick word before you go inside.”

Drew froze. “Who are you?”

“Just representatives of an interested party,” the man said. “You’ll want to hear what we have to say.”

Owen’s stomach tightened. Before he could answer, the limo doors behind them opened again.

Tater and Porno stepped out together, moving slow, deliberate. Sunlight hit their Rough Riders cuts, the patches bright and unmistakable. The two thugs’ eyes flicked to the leather and stayed there, tension visible in the set of their shoulders. The suit didn’t notice—or didn’t understand what he was seeing.

Tater’s voice came out low and easy. “There a problem here, fellas?”

The suit looked annoyed by the interruption. “No problem,” he said. “We just need to have a private discussion with Mr. Conners.” He glanced at Drew, then back at Tater. “Attendance is mandatory.”

Tater and Porno sidled over and took up position on either side of Owen, the three of them forming a wall of denim and leather and khakis with a brown sweater. Drew drifted backward a few steps, clutching his folder like it might shield him.

Tater leaned close. “You with us, GM?”

Owen’s throat was dry. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m with you.”

Porno spoke from the other side, voice low and matter-of-fact. “Take out the suit with a throat punch. Then kidney-punch the fuck out of any asshole that’s got one of us on the ropes.”