Read Standoff: A Vin Cooper Novel for Free Online

building.
    Out of the AC in Schwinn’s vehicle the sun beat down with a physical force that made my shoulders slump. Marshmallows could roast in the hot air hitting the back of my throat. I glanced at the runway, the far end of it disappearing in a puddle of shimmering mercury. After a couple of minutes, my underarms were already starting to look like dark ponds.
    Behind the makeshift parking lot, a line of yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off access to the ramp beyond it, as well as to the paths leading to several homes and trailers on the desert sand. The place was crawling with law enforcement. Around these residences, heavily armed PD and Sheriff’s Office tactical response personnel, as well as K-9 deputies and their dogs, searched the low sand ridges and bushes. Other police and deputies walked a grid laid out on the sand, looking for what would fall under the general headline of Clues. A Texas Department of Public Safety chopper was arriving, landing down the far end of the runway in the mercury puddle. Other helicopters hovered stationary at around five hundred feet over the desert half a mile away. Media choppers, I guessed, keen for the story behind whatever the hell had happened at Horizon.
    Gomez and I headed in the direction of the airport’s main buildings. Crime scene tape extended out onto the ramp. An old military aircraft was parked inside the tape, a kangaroo in its roundel – Royal Australian Air Force. A bright-red Learjet sat fifty feet beyond it, also inside the tape. Between the aircraft, several portable sunscreens had been placed over various groups of forensics people to provide them with a little relief from the sun’s assault. They were dressed in blue coveralls and wore facemasks and white plastic booties over their shoes, CSI written on the backs of the coveralls. Some were kneeling over four or five bundles of clothing dumped on the asphalt. Others were making notes, speaking into digital recorders or standing around chatting. I’d been in this game long enough to know it wasn’t piles of discarded laundry they were photographing.
    I didn’t need to prompt Gomez. He saw what I saw and neither of us liked what we were seeing.
    The police tape continued all the way to the terminal building. Along the way we passed at least another half dozen tactical response officers and CSI people from both the PD and the Sheriff’s Office, their heads down, deep in thought, heading back the way we’d come.
    The tape went around the rear of the airport terminal, a small low-roofed shed clad with corrugated steel. Twenty yards behind it, a number of police and SO deputies were hanging around a Winnebago – the op’s emergency command center. Gomez and I walked up to the door, excused ourselves and squeezed in. A man and a woman, both in the gray uniforms of the EPCSO, had their backs to us, discussing a large overhead photo of Horizon Airport taken from a height of around fifteen hundred feet, propped on an easel in front of them. Drawn with felt pen at various places all over the picture were red circles, each given a number and a two-letter code. There were quite a few of these circles. Seeing four of them in a cluster drawn on the ramp, where the old air force trainer and the Learjet were parked, I knew each circle represented a fatality. I found a circle numbered 19, then saw another numbered 27.
    “Jesus,” I muttered.
    A burst of comms came through a police radio.
    The female deputy turned around. Three stars adorned her collar. According to the silver tag on her shirt, her name was Foote. She was a short, barrel-shaped woman with full lips and puffy black rings around her eyes that told me she was either an insomniac or played contact sports. I decided either could have been the case. “I’m Chief Deputy Foote,” she said. “Can we help you gentlemen?” The subtext of the way she said it informed me that their help was unlikely to be forthcoming and that calling us “gentlemen” was