The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) by Gregg Loomis Page A

as his pilot. “Unless?”
    The government man shook his head. “Not sure. There was an odor, though, soon as the A & E pulled the plate. That’s what made him call me over.”
    “Give me a swag, some wild-ass guess,” Lang said evenly.
    The TSA man took one look at the anger burning in Lang’s eyes, the threat he seemed to express without words, and decided this was a man who wasn’t going to accept the usual government-speak nonsense. He made a most ungovernmentlike decision to exceed his authority. “Can’t be sure, but I’d make a personal guess it was some sort of acid.”
    “Acid?” Lang was puzzled.
    Burt, still looking like he might be ill any moment, nodded. “Acid eats almost through the cable. Leaves enough connection to respond to the controls during preflight, then snaps.”
    “And then?” Lang asked.
    “Horizontal stabilizer controls altitude, nose up, nose down. If it went out on takeoff, say, we couldn’t lift the nose of the plane to get into the air; we’d crash off the end of the runway.”
    Lang’s knowledge of aeronautics was basic at best. “I thought the air speed controlled when the plane left the ground.”
    “It does, but unless the plane lifts off, it would just increase velocity until it hit something. Even if the horizontal stabilizer held for takeoff, we’d be unable to climb. For that matter, we couldn’t lift the nose on landing, either.”
    Once again, the TSA man beckoned. “Come with me.”
    Lang guessed he was used to being obeyed.
    Lang spoke to Burt. “Make sure she’s properly buttoned up, will you?”
    “You can count on it.”
    Lang followed the man to what he guessed were the airport’s administrative offices. In one room, six people were watching a television monitor of Lang’s hangar. He had not seen the camera. If there was doubt in Lang’s mind that they were all some species of cop, the letters on various windbreakers dispelled them: FBI, ATF, US Marshal, Treasury Department. The only departments missing seemed to be Health and Human Services and the IRS.
    A woman, middle-aged and probably once attractive, extended a hand with a badge in it. “Sheila Burns, Special Agent, FBI.”
    All agents were “Special Agents” unless they were “Special Agent in Charge” or some other derivation. It had been a subject of humor at the Agency. Lang said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
    He wasn’t disappointed. “An attempt to sabotage your aircraft, Mr. Reilly. That’s a federal crime.” Her words capitalized the offense. “Just as effective as a bomb, with the added benefit of maybe passing as an accident.”
    “Any ideas?” a man from the Marshal’s Department asked without introduction.
    Burns silenced him with a glare. Obviously, she was the chief honcho on the investigation.
    She asserted her authority by asking, “Know somebody who’d want you or the executives of your foundation dead?”
    “No.”
    She glanced around the room, making sure she was asking the questions Lang knew they had all agreed upon before he got here. He was well familiar with interrogation by committee. “The Holt Foundation was chartered as a charity a little less than a year ago, right?”
    Lang had been wrong. The IRS
was
here, just not in person. That left Health and Human Services.
    “That’s correct. We fund programs to provide pediatric care in undeveloped countries.”
    “Do you mind telling us the source of that funding?”
    “Our sources are confidential.”
    Not entirely a lie. The Pegasus organization would hardly want its identity known.
    Burns’s eyes narrowed, the equivalent of a horse laying its ears back or a dog growling. Law-enforcement agencies assumed that any information withheld was incriminating. Privacy was a bothersome subterfuge of the guilty.
    “You know I can find out.”
    Lang gave her a smile with no humor in it. “Be my guest.”
    The labyrinth of foreign banks, dummy companies, and assumed identities would take an army of