Orchid Beach (Holly Barker 1)

“What sort of stuff?”

“Equipment, parts, special foods, whatever’s needed. The DC-3 and a Cessna Caravan do that work.”

“Is there any special security at the airfield?”

“Yeah, there’s a couple of those camouflaged places.”

Holly couldn’t think of anything else to ask him. “Stay here a minute,” she said. “Guard, Daisy.”

“You’re leaving me with that dog?” Cracker asked, worried.

“She won’t hurt you unless you move.” Holly left the room and went next door. Harry Crisp was gone. She went back to the other room. Cracker had not moved. “Okay, Cracker, I’m going to let you go. If Barney wants to know why you were here so long, tell him I kept you waiting. If you tell him about our conversation, I’ll know, and I’ll have you back in prison before nightfall, you understand?”

“I understand,” he said. “I’m not going to jail for Barney.”

“Good, now get going.” She followed him to the squad room and watched as he walked out.

Hurd Wallace approached. “Who was that guy?”

“Just an interview,” Holly said. “Nothing important.”

CHAPTER

46

H olly went straight to Jackson’s house after work. One of the two FBI vans was parked outside. Harry Crisp was on the phone, as usual, when she walked in, and Jackson was having a beer with Bill and Joe. Harry waved and covered up the phone. “Be with you in a minute.”

Holly fed Daisy and got herself a beer, returning to the living room as Harry finished his call. “What happened to you today?” she asked. “I came in there to see if you had any more questions, but you had gone.”

“Sorry, when I heard that Cracker was driving Barney’s Range Rover I went out there to see if I could bug it, but I didn’t have the right equipment.” Harry waved at the other people. “Let’s all sit down for a minute,” he said.

Everybody gathered at the dining table.

“I just want to tell you all where we are,” Harry said. “First of all, Holly did a brilliant job of interrogating Cracker Mosely this morning. She got a hell of a lot of information that would have taken us a week to get. Thanks, Holly.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“Let’s see.” Harry consulted a list. “I talked with a guy from the National Security Agency this morning. They were already aware of the transmissions coming out of Palmetto Dunes.”

“They’ve been listening in?” Holly asked.

“They did for a while, starting a couple of years ago, but they’d assigned it a lower priority for the past year.”

“Why? What was coming out of there?”

“Commodity trades.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They were dispatching sell and buy orders for futures on soybeans, wheat, pork bellies, everything you’d find at a commodities exchange, but they were doing it on a worldwide basis.”

“Well,” Holly said, “that doesn’t make any sense at all to me. I thought those things were handled through brokers.”

“What they’ve got there is a brokerage. There’s something odd about it, though.”

“What’s that?”

“They’re using a Chinese telecommunications satellite to move their information.”