Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (89 page)

Almeria pulled the headphone jack out of the computer, and they listened to the playback of Brian Garabanda’s phone call several times, while Ramos translated his words for them all.

“Do you think Garabanda will check his voicemail for messages soon?” asked Salazar.

Almeria scoffed.  “Voicemail?  I would assume he’s already heard the call, at exactly the same time that we did.  The man is an FBI agent, so I’m sure that he has the same capability that we have to listen to cell phones.”

“Then why didn’t he answer, when his son called him?” asked Salazar.

Genizaro said, “The boy only called the phone left in the empty hotel room in Santa Fe, did you forget this fact already?”

“I’m not stupid, I know that!  But calls can be relayed, can’t they? Garabanda could answer from another phone, from anywhere.”

“Perhaps,” said Ramos, “But then Garabanda would be giving away his location.  This tiger is no fool, he won’t make a basic mistake like that. He won’t rush into the open, to seize the staked goat.”

Chino said, “But Garabanda will be watching for his son on Broadway, as the darkness comes.”

“Yes, he will,” agreed Comandante Ramos.  “If they have no better opportunity today, that’s when Garabanda and Bardiwell will strike—and we’ll be waiting for them.”

***

Alex carefully glued a gray mustache
onto his upper lip, while leaning across the bathroom sink and looking into the mirror.  His very basic disguise kit was unfolded and laying across the top of the toilet tank.  A silicone nose extension went on next, the flesh-toned rubber matched to his skin color with makeup.  Then he put on a scraggly gray-haired wig, and a crumpled brown fedora.  Boxy black-framed glasses altered the look of his eyes. He slipped on a loose-fitting dark gray suit jacket, and he was ready.

He expected Ranya to laugh at him when he came out of the bathroom, but instead she maintained an impassive poker face, so he asked, “Well, how do I look?”

She glanced up from monitoring the computer screen, and gave a blasé shrug.  “What, have you done something?  You look about the same to me.”

“Gee, thanks.  Just what I wanted to hear.”

She broke into a grin.  “No, seriously, you did a good job Alex.  You look at least 75.  Why, that’s a good ten or fifteen years older than usual.”

He pulled off his brown hat and flung it at her, saying, “No respect, that’s the trouble with kids today, no respect!”

“No, you look fine,” she said, finally laughing after ducking the hat. “You really do look 75.  At least.”

“That’s the idea.  This is one of my best disguises. Nobody pays attention to us old farts, we’re practically invisible.  The trick is to look too broke to be worth mugging, without quite looking homeless.  And all of this garbage I’ve got on my face keeps the digital cameras from getting a match, just in case.”

“Nobody knows we’re in San Diego anyway.”

“You hope.  But hard drives are forever.  Once you’re recorded by the cameras, they can go back and check anytime, even weeks or months later.”

She replied, “Weeks later? I hope we’re long gone by then.”

“We will be, but you never know.  Don’t make it easy for them, ever. Never make assumptions about security.”  While he looked himself over in the room’s wall mirror, he briefly thought about his meeting with Luis Carvahal in the Mount Calvary cemetery, when he had believed he was not under surveillance—a fatal error.

***

Alex left the Holiday Inn
through a secondary exit at the end of the first floor hallway.  The ten story Holiday Inn was located across Harbor Drive from the San Diego Bay.  He walked across to the sidewalk that ran in front of the seafood restaurants and excursion boats on the bay side. A clipper ship longer than a football field was tied alongside the quay wall, its massive bowsprit pointing south toward Broadway.  Its advertising signs declared it to be the Star of India, built in 1863, allegedly the oldest sailing ship still in operation, and now a floating museum. 

Five minutes later he was in front of the enormous government pier which extended for at least two hundred yards beyond the end of Broadway at Harbor Drive.  From the shore, the massive pier seemed like a rectangular extension of Broadway, it was at least a hundred feet wide at its base.  To the south, another giant pier was home to the aircraft carrier USS Midway, now a museum.  To the north, back toward the Holiday Inn, another long pier was occupied by moderate-sized harbor tour and excursion boats from fifty to over a hundred feet long.

The government pier in the middle was the exclusive territory of the security services, with small vessels from Homeland Security, Customs and Border Enforcement, the Marine Patrol, the Navy and the Coast Guard tied up to floating docks, which were attached to the higher permanent pier.  Near the end of the pier, with its square transom facing the shore, was one larger vessel. It appeared to be a motor yacht, about eighty or ninety feet long.  Alex stopped before he reached the government pier and took a few innocent tourist pictures with his digital camera.

A black iron fence ran across the base of the pier, but in the center, a wide vehicle gate was open.  Alex shuffled along the sidewalk, his head down, until he was in the middle of the opening, and then he steered a right turn, nonchalantly shambling out onto the pier.  A uniformed guard immediately stepped out of a cement and glass security post, his arms upraised.

“Hello, can I help you?” the guard asked in an overly loud voice, as he intercepted Alex’s path.  

“No thanks sonny, I don’t need any help.  I just want to walk out there and take a picture of the Midway.”

“Well I’m sorry old timer, but this pier is only for federal employees on official business.”

“I can’t just walk right over there, and take a picture of the Midway?”

“Nope, sorry.  Federal property.  You have to stay out there and take it.”

“All right, I guess.”  Alex put his head back down, and shuffled to the pedestrian crossing at the traffic light on Harbor Drive.  This was a massive intersection, where the six lanes of Broadway ended at the six lanes of Harbor Drive.  He pushed the button and waited.  When the light turned green, he took care to walk as slowly as an old man with bad hips might, and no faster.  

Across Harbor Drive, there were parking lots on the north side of Broadway and government buildings to the south.  A long block up Broadway there were multiple railroad tracks that carried everything from heavy freight to the local light rail commuters.  Alex was amused to note that the train stop there was called the Santa Fe Station, constructed in Spanish Mission style.  The station building was only missing a cross on top to be mistaken for a small Spanish colonial cathedral, an architectural throwback amidst the ultramodern glass and marble high rises of downtown San Diego. 

Alex stood on the sidewalk near the tracks—this must be where Brian watched the trains passing by.  While he was looking around, a red electric-powered commuter train pulled into the Santa Fe Station from the north, paused while taking on and letting off passengers, and then crossed Broadway and continued toward the south.  The placard sign above the conductor said “San Ysidro,” the final stop at the Mexican border a dozen miles away. Alex looked upward and saw the top floors of the Pacific Majesty, two blocks further up Broadway. Even now, Brian might be looking down at the “red trolley train” that he wanted to ride.

Alex tried to take in everything from the point of view of a pedestrian with a small child.  Where was Karin most likely to walk?  At the same time, he scanned for hidden vantage points where his Durango might be parked to lay in wait.  He tried to imagine how the approach could be made, where Brian’s pickup would attract the least attention, and how they could exit the area the most smoothly.  If they drove straight north on Harbor Drive, they would be able to pick up Interstate 8 where it ended in a nice section of Point Loma, on the safe western side of I-5.  From there, it would be a fast dash east on I-8 all the way to the Golden Arrow Casino, where Flint would be waiting for an immediate takeoff.  It could work. It would work. It had to work.

Behind the Santa Fe Station on the north side of Broadway, Alex seized a chance opportunity.  A San Diego Gas and Electric emergency services truck was parked along the curb of a small access road.  The back of the big white utility truck was twenty feet from Broadway.  Three orange traffic cones were spread a few feet behind the truck, but no workers were in sight.  The truck was clearly parked for the long holiday weekend.  Alex casually picked up the two cones nearest the curb, one dangling from each hand, and dropped them in new positions a few yards closer to Broadway, effectively holding a parking space for the Durango.  

***

Even the regional director of DHS
could take off occasionally, mused Bob Bullard.  Late morning on the 4th of July and he was still in his royal blue bathrobe, lounging on the western terrace of his penthouse, on the 45
^th
floor of the Pacific Majesty.  It was a hazy day, and Point Loma was lost in the low fog.  A mile across the bay, the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan lay alongside its Coronado berth at the North Island Naval Air Station.  Below him was another carrier, the retired Midway, now a museum.  At the next pier over from the Midway was his own eighty-foot Eldorado, looking like a toy in comparison.  He always felt like a king surveying his realm up here, but he realized that it could all end quickly.  The barbarians were literally at the gate, just across Interstate 5 and pressing hard.  It comforted him to know that the Eldorado was always fueled up and ready to sprint for the open sea.  His yacht was the ultimate golden parachute.

Bullard’s cell phone buzzed in the pocket of his silk robe.  Only a very short list of people had this number.

“Hello.”

“Boss?”

“What’s up Jim?”

“Ahh, something kind of weird.  It’s the Garabanda-Bardiwell thing. We’ve got taps on the FBI guy’s ex-wife, right? In case Ranya Bardiwell tried to contact her.”

“Um, yeah.”

“I just emailed you a transcript of a call—you’ll want to check it out.”

“What’s it about?”

“Well, the boy called his father in Albuquerque.  Ranya Bardiwell’s boy, remember?”

“I remember,” said Bullard.

“Garabanda’s an FBI Supervisor, the one that Gretchen Bosch smacked with a baseball bat.”

“Got it, I’m with you.”

“Okay. The boy left a voicemail for his father.  He used his mother’s cell phone.  Not his real mother, his adoptive mother.  Karin Bergen.”

“So?”

“Well, it’s the 4th of July, a government holiday, right?  Why didn’t Garabanda pick up for his own son? It seems kind of strange, that’s all.”

“Hmm…interesting.  What do you think?”

“I think maybe he’s not in New Mexico at all, that’s what I think. Maybe he’s a lot closer than that.”

“Could be, could be.  Tell you what…check it out.  Send a local Albuquerque team, but not FBI.  Have them check on Garabanda, tell them to put their eyes on him.  I want sure and certain confirmation of this guy’s location.  Let me know if he’s really in New Mexico or not.  Keep it quiet though—we don’t want to spook him.  And they shouldn’t let the FBI Field Office know we’re looking, or the word will get back to him.”

“Got it boss—be discreet.  Just find out if he’s there.”

“That’s it. Today’s a holiday, so put a flash on the message, and make sure they do it ASAP.  I don’t want it slipping through the cracks because nobody’s on duty there in New Mexico. And let me know what you find out.”

“Will do, boss.”

“Yeah.”  Bullard snapped his phone shut, and dropped it into his bathrobe pocket.  He strolled back through the open glass door inside of his penthouse apartment.  His computer was already on.  He clicked on the email from Jim Holcomb, and his eyes locked on the pertinent section.

“Daddy, did you know that today is the 4th of July?  Tonight we’re going to see fireworks.  When it gets dark, we’re going to walk over the trolley tracks, down to where Bob [Buller] keeps his big boat. Bob [Buller] is Gretchen’s boss.  I can see his boat from our balcony. The fireworks are going to shoot up over the water.”

He smiled at the transcribed misspelling of his name, and wondered what Gretchen Bosch had told the boy.  If Garabanda checked his voice-mail, he’d know where his son was going to be at twilight.  If he returned his son’s call, and he was calling from New Mexico, that fact would soon be known from the telephone intercepts.  However, if he didn’t return his son’s call, the question then would be, why not?

Bob Bullard had been married and divorced three times, and he knew better than most men how bitterly acrimonious these custodial battles could be.  Even so, he thought that an estranged, divorced FBI agent would have the
cojones
to call his ex-wife and ask to speak to his son on a holiday. But what if he didn’t call his son? What would that mean? He vaguely remembered an old black and white Sherlock Holmes movie.  In the story, there was something important about a dog that
didn’t
bark.

43
 

Downtown San Diego, twilight

“Okay, it’s them.  They’re coming,” said Alex.
“
They’re crossing Broadway at the light, so they’ll be walking down our side.  We’ll go with ‘plan A’.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”  Alex was sitting behind the Durango’s empty driver’s seat.  Ranya sat next to him on the other middle seat.