The bureaucratic end of the stick had always been his least-favorite part of the job. Now it was his least-favorite part of retirement. “I’m not the best at political etiquette, you know.”
“He’s no Boy Scout, either.”
“All right,” Joe agreed. “I assume you’ve made arrangements for me to get what I’ll need at DOE.”
“The secretary will personally be waiting for you at Andrews,” Bud confirmed. Andrews Air Force Base was the East Coast staging site for NEST, Joe’s old team.
“Fine.”
Joe Anderson was gone as fast as he had come.
“He’s incredible,” the DDI commented. “Like a machine when it’s time to go to work.”
It was a good way to put it, Bud agreed. “Guess this puts Vishkov in the center, or at least near it. We find him, and we may be able to zero in on the missile. Let’s hope we hear something from the rebels.”
“What about Vishkov himself?” the DDI wondered. “If we find him, I mean.”
Bud’s gaze went cold. What he wanted to do to the renegade Russian was not in his power to accomplish, or to order. It was in someone’s power, however. “He’ll get his justice. I’m sure of that. Remember, we have a very convincing lobbyist with the Man now,” the NSA pointed out, his eyes glancing upward. He wasn’t referring to the President.
* * *
It was very early in the morning, the light of the new day still a dream for those fortunate enough to be sleeping, a luxury not often afforded on a regular basis to warriors engaged in battle. Yet, even in the darkness that was the undeniable friend of the fighting soldier, there was work to be done. Night was the perfect environment for the dispensation of violence. It was also the preferred battleground where the quieter arts of war, the ones disdained by the professional soldiers in uniform, were practiced. It was the common domain of the spy.
Antonio was standing, Ojeda and Manchon sitting on the edge of the truck’s rear gate. “You know of him?”
Ojeda folded the paper in half and handed it back to Papa Tony. “The question should be why does your government now
want
information? They do not tell us this.”
Paredes knew he had to stand up to the colonel. Attempted explanations, of which there were none, would not placate him. The truth might, but the CIA officer didn’t know what the truth was. The only remaining alternative was insistence.
“They would not request information from you if it was not necessary. Two simple questions, that is all.” Paredes noticed Ojeda’s gaze soften. “We have given a great deal.”
“Yes.” Ojeda stood. “We know of him.”
Thank God he didn’t shoot me.
“And where is he?”
Why should the Americans care where a miserable little scientist who had fallen out of favor with the
presidente
was?
Why, indeed?
“Captain Manchon will show you on the map.”
The information was transmitted through the facsimile function of Paredes’s satellite manpack up twenty-two thousand miles to a Milstar satellite five minutes later. Langley had it seconds after that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE TURNING OF STONES
The walk had only been a block and a half in distance, yet they felt as if every eye in the city was on them. But they were now there. To safety.
“Hurry up,” Tomás exhorted. His wounds were minor, just a series of scratches on his face and one nasty gash inside his mouth.
Jorge, though, was really hurting. Something was seriously wrong with his back and neck, forcing him to walk as if someone had taken his spine and twisted it like a piece of soft metal, deforming the outer shell until it resembled some grotesque medieval sculpture in motion. “Man, I’m moving as fast as I can.”
Tomás turned from the sidewalk to the unwelcomely well-lit walkway that ran in front of the rooms, with Jorge a few steps behind. Theirs was at the inside corner of the motel’s
L
where the two sections of the structure met. From there they had a perfect view of the parking lot and the intersection beyond. The plan now called for getting cleaned up and rested before the courier arrived for the tape. And they still had to somehow get Sullivan, though that could wait for a while. Just a while.
Jorge limped up to the door as Tomás was fumbling through his pockets.
“Come on, open it,” Jorge said, almost pleaded, his face contorted by pain.
Where is it?
“I can’t find it. You have it?”
“The key? No. Come on.”
“I can’t... oh, shit!” Tomás softly punched the door as a release. “I left the key in the car. I put it in that tray between the seats. Shit!”
“All right. No big deal.” Jorge would have cursed his partner if the pain hadn’t been so bad, but all he wanted was to get onto the bed. “It’s gone. Nothing will survive the fire, okay? Just go to the night window and tell them we lost it. Okay? Hurry, man.”
Tomás still was pissed at himself for doing such a stupid thing. At least they’d torched the car, which they knew would destroy any fingerprints or other evidence of their identity. And also the key, now. He got a replacement from the not-real-happy-to-be-awakened night clerk and went back to his partner.
“Five fucking bucks for a key!” He shoved it in the hole and opened the door, letting Jorge in first. He immediately fell onto the bed.
“This hurts, man. Have we got any booze left?”
Tomás checked the dresser drawer. “A little
Chivas
.”
“Give it.”
The remains were gone in a minute, but it would take longer for the effects to be felt.
“Sleep, Jorge. Just take it easy.” Tomás went to the bathroom and rinsed his mouth out, checking the gash inside in the mirror. “We’ll find Sullivan in the morning.” The taste of blood was heavy as he spoke.
“I want him, Tomás. I want him dead. Dead! And I want him to feel it. No bullet-in-the-head crap—ahhh!” Jorge writhed in pain. “God, is there any Tylenol or anything in there?”
“None.” Tomás came back from the bathroom. “Sorry.”
“Yeah.” He twisted and bent his body into as comfortable a position as he could. “Sullivan will be, too.”
* * *
Art and Frankie pulled up just as the fire department had finished dousing the flames with spray from an inch-and-a-half line. The injured cop had seen Sullivan bail out of the Lumina before it fled from the crash scene, so they anticipated no body would be in the smoking hulk.
“You Jefferson?” the LAPD sergeant asked. He was in a foul mood. It hadn’t been a good night for the force.
“Yeah. Anything?” Art stood back while Frankie began examining the steaming remnants of the Lumina.
“Just looks like they pulled it in the alley and set the inside on fire. From there...”
It was obvious. The bulk of the once pretty car was now just charred bare metal, save the extreme front and back.
“VIN?” Art inquired. The vehicle identification number was stamped on a small dash placard below the windshield in front of the driver’s seat.
“Burned pretty bad. We’ll have to pull it off the firewall.” A second stamping of the VIN was located on the firewall in the engine compartment in a not readily accessible place. That prevented easy tampering, but it also prevented quick access for the purpose at hand.
“We don’t have that much time.” Art scratched his head, his fingers finding more scalp than hair. Life was just grand, wasn’t it?
“Art.”
He walked over to his partner, who was crouched down at the vehicle’s rear. It was basically untouched by the intense heat, other than some blistering on the trunk deck. “Look here.”
Art bent down, the LAPD sergeant behind him shining his light on the area just to the right of the trunk lock. “Scratches.”
“Looks like someone peeled off a sticker,” Frankie observed, looking up to her partner. “Like a rental one, maybe.”
Art turned to the sergeant. “You got a pry bar?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“We’re popping this trunk. Rental companies started putting additional copies of the VIN and the owner information on a little plate under the trunk lining last year.”
The sergeant nodded. Anything to find the perps who caused the deaths of two good cops and the injury of his close friend. “One minute.”
It was less than that. The lock gave way after a few forceful pushes. Art peeled back the soggy carpeting so Frankie could find the placard.
“Got it.” She copied it down and went straight to the radio. Their teams checking rental agencies now had a specific target, and those running down stolens could be redirected. She was back from the broadcast in under a minute.
Art had walked to the front of the car, leaving the sergeant to complete his report.
“Step one,” Frankie said.
Art was silent, his eyes scrutinizing first the damaged front of the car and then the surrounding area. They were in a mixed residential-industrial area southeast of Beverly Hills, though that proximity did nothing for the neighborhood’s aesthetics. The majority of BH was no better, any observer could see upon a short visit. Art had done so on many occasions, each one convincing him that his town house in La Canada was preferable to living in some mansion surrounded by squalor.
The alley jutted off from Rimpau Boulevard, a generous description of the narrow street. Rimpau itself intersected Olympic just a hundred feet from where the alley broke off to connect it with parallel streets. From the spot where he stood, Art tried to imagine where the shooters had gone. Which way?
“Let’s take a walk,” Art led off to the end of the alley—actually its beginning—at Rimpau. Frankie was right with him.
“They came back this way,” Frankie said.
“How do you figure?” Art asked, stopping at the alley’s opening, his eyes scanning the neighborhood.
“Backtrack.” She took a few steps out into the dark street, looking back at Art. “They pulled in this way, probably came up from Olympic.” She pointed down the alley, past the car and in the direction it had been heading. “That way is unfamiliar. My guess is they backtracked out here up to Olympic.”
Art’s head cocked toward his observant and driven partner. “Let’s see what’s up there.”
The walk-up took just a minute. Olympic Boulevard at one in the morning was as deserted as any other major street would be. There were the expected late travelers cruising the street, but very few visible on foot. It was not a safe area, like much of the city, especially after the sun went down.
“And from here?” Art asked.
Frankie looked to the left, toward the east. The street was almost desolate, and there were no pay phones that jumped out at her. None of the familiar blue handset signs. “Not a cab.”
Art thought not. That, aside from being a practical impracticality in this area, would have left a well-defined trail. These guys were too smart, he believed. Too smart to do that. “They didn’t walk.”
“No.” Frankie turned right, looking west, and smiled. “There.”
Coming from the west on Olympic, across the street from the two agents, was the graffiti-scarred traveler of the night. Art and Frankie trotted across the boulevard, holding their shields in the air to flag down the number 28 bus of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on its last run of the night. The driver pulled his nearly empty coach over on the south side of the street and opened his door.
“Yeah?”
“How often does this line run?” Frankie asked.
The yellow-shirted driver, a small but muscular man whose years behind the wheel had obviously given him the wariness of the streets, narrowed his eyes at the young woman on the first step of his Grumman. Her coat had parted, revealing a gun on her right hip. He wished he could carry one so large, but his was just a little .380 that he kept in a thigh holster despite company and legal prohibitions against doing so. “Every forty minutes after eleven P.M. We went to that schedule two weeks ago.” He cast an almost evil eye at the other agent behind the woman. “I’ve never seen you out here before. LAPD?”
“FBI,” Art answered. The man’s eyes were powerful, and the wispy gray of his mustache and hair added to that to give his dark black face an air of authority.
“How many other drivers on this line tonight?” Frankie probed. She was intimately familiar with the MTA from her many childhood days spent riding from the family’s apartment to the doctor’s office and from her part in an undercover operation that had busted several drivers for trafficking in narcotics.
“Two.” His eyes narrowed almost to slits.
“Did you pick up two guys in the last three hours?” Frankie pulled out her folded copies of the shooters’ composites.
His head shook in response.
“The other two drivers still on the line?”
The driver nodded, wondering just what the FBI wanted with bus riders.
Frankie turned to her partner, her eyes asking.
Well?
“I want you to contact your dispatchers and have them get a hold of both buses to find out if these guys were on either of them.” Art looked to Frankie, but she was already across the street on her way to get the car.
The driver picked up his handset, which was a duplicate of that used on telephones. “Dispatch, this is Forty-Five on the Twenty-Eight, bus number Eighty-six Thirty-nine.”
The dispatcher acknowledged the driver’s call and listened to his relay of the agents’ request. Two minutes later, just as Frankie pulled the Chevy ahead of the bus, their answer came back.
“Yeah. The one two ahead of me remembers two guys just like that.”
Yes!
“Where’s that bus now?”
It took a minute to get the answer. “Olympic and Alvarado, deadheading back to division.”
Art gave a quick thumbs-up to Frankie in the driver’s seat. “Tell your dispatcher to hold that bus there. We’re on our way.”
“Well?” Frankie asked, anticipation in her voice and eyes.
“Olympic and Alvarado. Go. Go. We may finally have a trail.”
Frankie floored it back into the traffic lanes. It would take only a few minutes to travel the distance, but she wasn’t going to waste any time. Trails could grow cold very quickly, and this was just about all they had at the moment. “What about Sullivan?”