by Kirk Russell
“And where do we think they’re going?”
“Down the river and across the Mexican border. You really ought to be here for the takedown.”
I didn’t respond to that. Mara asked, “Where are you, Grale?”
“On my way to the fusion center.”
“To do what?”
“Several things.”
“Okay. We also got word that Ralin is safe.”
“I was with him. He’s fine. Two DoD agents are taking him someplace safer.”
“Good on Ralin, but there’s bad news on Indonal. The building was hit twice. He was struck by debris as he was running to his car. They got him to a hospital, but he didn’t make it. I’m sorry to have to tell you that, Grale.”
“Are you certain about Indonal?”
“Yes, but we will get the terrorists.”
He sounded upbeat and confident, but I was thinking about Indonal. I didn’t say anything until Mara asked, “You still there?”
“I’m here. Be careful how you capture them,” I said. “Bring Dalz in alive.”
I tuned out Mara’s questions and leaned back with a deep wave of sadness flowing through me. I thought of Indonal hiding in the cabin of a woman he met as a teenager and how they came together again. When I was younger, I accepted collateral damage more easily. I’ve lost that acceptance, but maybe I’ve gained something else. Indonal’s death filled me with true grief, and I couldn’t help thinking of Weiss at Stanford talking about his “mathematical gifts that are once in a generation.” I should have left him at the lake.
56
Jace
As Mara talked to Grale, Jace could tell their supervisor was choosing his words carefully. It said Mara brought her for more than the bust. He wanted her to hear him talk to Grale and be able to recount the tone. There was no question Grale was excluded from the takedown about to happen, and Mara was boosting her. In return he expected loyalty. She knew that, but had never been as uncomfortable with it as today. All kinds of thoughts spun through her head.
Grale once said to her that all good cases are built from evidence but that anything can be shaded, so nothing is more important than integrity. You have to have the integrity to honor evidence.
She listened as Mara maneuvered the conversation to Dalz tips. There was nothing malicious or wrong about it. It was Mara’s way of working around to what he believed and what he’d probably try to convince Grale of.
“We got the predictable flood of tips when we went public with Dalz’s face,” Mara said. “In all of those tips nothing was solid, but he’ll go down with the rest tonight. I’m sure of it. I’m sorry you won’t be here for that, but you’ll be first to interview him.”
“Does SWAT know how much we want Dalz taken alive?” Grale asked.
“It’s been talked through, and I’m confident everyone understands that the object is to capture as many alive as possible. There’s also very high confidence they’re all together.”
“But specifically, Dalz?” Grale asked.
“SWAT has photos of him.”
“But it’s a night bust and anything can happen. If they’re making a run for the border, they’re not going to throw down their guns and surrender. Is there any confirmation Dalz boarded one of the helicopters?”
“Not specifically, but there are three helicopters, and they were organized and fast getting to the pickup area and loaded and gone. They’ll be forced down if they resist.”
“Shot down.”
“They’ll land. Overwhelming force will convince them.”
“Will it?”
“What other choice do they have?”
“Dalz may not surrender,” Grale said. “He’ll have thought it through.”
“Don’t worry,” Mara said. “You’re going to get the call that we’ve got him and we’re bringing him in.”
Grale let that be. He didn’t follow up, and Jace knew he’d picked up on Mara losing patience. He’s not challenging Mara, she thought, but he sees something else.
“Whoever is behind this is trying to get everybody over the border to Mexico,” Mara said. “That’s what they were hoping, but they didn’t anticipate all air traffic being grounded. We’ll get him, Grale. We’ll get him. I promise you that.”
Jace heard the confidence in the way Mara’s voice rose.
“Where are you now?” Mara asked Grale.
“At the fusion center.”
“Take it on home. Jace will call you on the other side.”
“I’m scanning through the Dalz tips.”
That exasperated Mara. He glanced over at Jace and shook his head but managed to keep it out of his voice. “Like I said earlier,” Mara told him, “we’ve had a nonstop stream of solo Dalz sightings, but it’ll turn out he’s catching the same ride out as the rest. The Air Force is tracking the three helicopters and will force them down at a spot downriver where SWAT is already on site. It’s a SWAT show now, Grale. You’re not missing anything. I’ll text you a photo of Dalz in handcuffs.”
“Do that.”
“I will. Now get out of the office and go home. And congratulations on finding those three missiles today.”
Of all people Grale should have been there, but the brass didn’t want him in the media photos. No one had said that to Jace, and everyone would deny that was true. But everyone knew it was. And still she liked Mara. He was a good guy doing a complicated job. Being a supervisor was hard and mostly thankless, but it was Grale she admired most.
Mara shook his head as the call ended. “Grale will try to look through the tips, but he’s still never really learned the new computer system. Every other agent on the DT squad has it down.”
“If they had Grale’s solve rate they wouldn’t need to.”
“He’s got that,” Mara said. “He does have that.”
“No one else comes close, right?”
“We’ll see how this year shapes up.”
“He’s pretty good on his laptop,” Jace said. “He’s got gaps, but I’ve seen him in action enough. I don’t think he likes the new system, but I’m certain he knows it.”
“I’m not. Those lights up ahead are Boulder City. That’s where we’re catching our helicopter.”
Mara had taken a liking to her, and he said that on the drive here tonight. He complimented her on her discipline and attention to detail and said he saw great things ahead for her.
On the outskirts of Boulder City, they parked and waited. Maybe the escape plan made sense originally, before commercial flight traffic was grounded. Fly under the radar, down the river and across to Mexico. There were worse escape plans, but Jace knew what Grale was thinking. He was thinking, With flights grounded why would you get into a helicopter?
Maybe the terrorists didn’t hear about it or figured they’d fly so low over the Colorado River they’d be below radar skimming. That didn’t make sense either, and Mara hadn’t been able to explain it in a way she believed. Making a run for Mexico made sense. Over the border to a cartel-controlled airport then out of the country and gone. Or maybe a cartel was getting paid to lose them in the desert after they land. No need to speculate about that part, she thought. Apache attack helicopters flying south, and fast, from Nellis Air Force Base will cut them off either way. She’d love to see their faces when they realize they aren’t leaving.
Within ten minutes they were listening in on the back-and-forth with the Air Force pilots as a report came that the terrorist helicopters were verified to be south of the dam low over the Colorado River and nearing Lake Mojave. Mara turned and smiled. He held a hand up to high-five, and she slapped it.
“Got ’em,” Jace said. “Or about to.”
Mara and Jace climbed into an FBI helicopter then waited for the Air Force to bring the helicopters down so they could get airborne and get down there.
“You know they’re celebrating,” Mara said. “You know they are. They infiltrated the US, attacked a base, and damaged Indie. If they get out intact, that’s a huge win.”
Jace didn’t say anything. A few minutes later the Apache attack helicopters made their move. Jace and Mara listened in on the calm cool of the Apache pilots making their presence known, first by radio then with warning flares. Two fighter jets arrived to drive home the point that the Mexico trip had just ended. The helicopter pilots didn’t turn away, though—at least not at first. They dropped lower and kept flying.
More warning flares lit the sky, and the helicopters lowered, stopped, and hovered over the river. It was in that moment she realized they weren’t going to surrender. Doors swung open, and men jumped into the water. As the helicopters disgorged, they split up, one flying downstream, one back up the river, and one due east.
“We need these guys alive,” Jace said but might as well have been talking to herself. Gunfire had probably already started, and those who’d jumped in the water most likely were scattering. The smart ones would try to cross the river and get downstream as far as possible before daylight.
Jace and Mara listened as the go-ahead was given to shoot down the fleeing helicopters. She heard a pilot’s acknowledgment then back-and-forth before missiles launched. The three helicopters were downed within minutes. She heard the phrase “not survivable” repeated as the pilots assessed the crashes.
Along the river SWAT was in a firefight half a mile a long, and inevitably that meant a mop-up operation that would continue through tomorrow. The terrorists in the river or out on the sand and in the brush probably didn’t know Apaches had laser guided missiles and 30 mm automatic cannon fire. She’d worked around Apaches years ago. They were monsters. If one hit you, you were not only done but a mess to clean up. She continued listening, but it became almost impossible to follow. Then it became methodical as someone made a practical decision that capturing them alive wasn’t worth the risk. Any terrorist who fired on the Apaches in the air above took massive return fire.
“They don’t need us there,” Mara said. “We may as well head home.”
“What do I tell Grale? He’s waiting on the call.”
“He had a long day. He probably took a pain pill and is asleep and we don’t have a confirmation on Dalz.”
“No, he’ll be waiting. You told him I’d call.”
“Then say we don’t know if Dalz was there or not. We’ll know tomorrow.”
“Did you see that coming, that they’d jump in the water?”
“No, but maybe we should have. We’ll have information in the morning. You go home. I’ll be in the office, and if anything significant happens, I’ll call you.”
“I’ll stay with you.”
“No, we need you rested tomorrow.”
The drive back to the fusion center felt much longer than the drive out, and they didn’t talk much. In the fusion center lot, she and Mara talked briefly before she went to her car. Mara was disappointed but shouldn’t have been. The escape got shut down, and between dogs, helicopters, and summer heat, the stragglers wouldn’t get far. There would be some survivors, and they’d be captured. But like Mara, she felt the failure. It left her down as she drove home. She almost called Grale but didn’t know what she’d say. Who knows? Maybe Dalz was among the survivors.
57
I read through the Dalz tips then checked out an all-wheel drive from the vehicle pool. I lugged some gear out to it and was close to leaving the fusion center without having heard again from Jace or Mara. At that point I didn’t really have a plan, I just wanted to be prepared, ready to follow my gut sense that Dalz would have broken away from the rest of the group. That was always his pattern after an attack—break away and disappear. Let the others leave the trail.
I was exhausted but amped up as I checked with our temporary front desk. They had little in the way of facts, only the blunt assessment that “it didn’t go as planned.” That was often code for “it went badly” but no conclusions could be drawn yet.
At a desk I flipped through some of the more likely Dalz tips, looking for any possible pattern of movement. But it was as Mara had said, too many tips and too varied to sort, so I fought fatigue and kept asking myself, What is he going to do? What would I do? I’ve studied him. I know him at some level. What will Dalz do?
That led me back to where I’d started. He would not be with the group. Other intelligence agencies, including Interpol, had interrogated captured terrorists who’d insisted Dalz was with them throughout, but later it turned out he was gone much earlier. Or in several instances he’d stayed for six months or more in the city where the attack had taken place.
Las Vegas has a large reputation, but the city itself isn’t that large. It’s not an easy place to hide in.
“He won’t stay here,” I said to an empty room. All air traffic into and out of Las Vegas was grounded. There were police checkpoints on the highways and main roads. On I-15 and the larger arteries, bumper-to-bumper traffic jams extended for miles. Dalz would have anticipated that. He’s not at the airport. He’s not in a line of cars on the highway waiting to show ID with a flashlight on his face. If he was escaping, we were losing the chance to apprehend him. I set aside the tips that made the most sense rather than those with the best description, then I left the office and headed home.
The roads were eerily quiet. Jo was at the hospital. I called her and left a message. She called back at midnight as I watched TV coverage. I told her what I was seeing. The media had learned about the river bust and was all over it, claiming the Independence Base terrorists were in three helicopters and had been captured or killed.
My view was more cynical. Whoever was behind this attack couldn’t risk the United States identifying them. Three helicopters flying low over the Colorado River would draw immediate suspicion, and whoever planned that escape was highly aware of that fact. I hadn’t argued the point with Mara, but the more I turned it over in my head, the more likely it seemed.
Yet another reason to have hired mercenaries for the attack. Hire the best but send them to their deaths and let the Americans kill and identify them after they’d boarded a sucker’s ride to the Mexico border.
“You still there?” Jo asked.
“Oh, yeah, sorry, Jo. Just tired. And I’m thinking about this helicopter escape plan.”
“Do you know you’re in the news? You and Blujace, for finding the three missiles.”
“We got lucky, and it was fighter pilots who took out the missiles. Are you at the hospital all night?”
“I am.”
“Then I may miss you in the morning. I’ll be gone early, checking a lead. It may be too late, but I have to take my best guess.”
“But not alone, right?”
“At first, maybe, but there’ll be a quick response if I get lucky.”
“Paul, listen to me. Stay in close touch tomorrow, okay? This is one of those times we’ve talked about. I need to know you’re okay.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Paul . . .”
“I hear you, Jo.”
“And there’s something else,” she said in a slower, quiet voice. “We had a transfer to our trauma unit of a thirty-one-year-old male with severe head injuries from shrapnel at the Independence building. I was told he worked on the artificial intelligence project there. I thought you might know him. He died a few hours ago.”
“Eric Indonal,” I said. “I heard he was killed.”
“He was the one you found?”
“Yes, and a good guy, I liked him.”
I thought of Cindy Maldon and something she’d said to Jace. “We were together that summer when we were sixteen, and I knew then he was the one for me.”
“I’ll tell you more about him when I see you. Are you on ICU tonight?”
“Yes, and sticking with a
patient who’s having a tough time. So, you didn’t tell me. Did Dalz get caught?”
“No. But I doubt he was there.”
“Is Dalz the lead you’re checking tomorrow?”
“One among many. Mara is sure they were all on board the helicopters. If I get confirmation Dalz was on one of the helicopters, well, then it’s over, and I’ll be home.”
Jo paused, then said, “I’ll never forgive you if anything happens to you.”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“Yes, and I’ve heard that before. I also know you’re hurting.”
After we ended the call, I slept four hours before heading to Mountain Springs, southwest of Vegas, up Blue Diamond Road and on toward the mountains. Higher up the road became Highway 160. Looking out over the valley I saw the lights of a passenger plane descending on Las Vegas and another right behind it. The flight ban must have been lifted.
Near Mountain Springs on the highway shoulder were two Nevada State Highway Patrol cars, but no checkpoint. I exited at Mountain Springs, which was small, mostly houses and people willing to live farther from the typical conveniences in a trade for beautiful views, clear air, and light. It was a very unlikely place for Dalz to be except for one thing.
I stopped at the Mountain Springs Saloon where a delivery truck was unloading and a woman who might be an owner or manager stood talking to the driver. I read a text from Jace before getting out and stretching a little as I stood in the early sunlight.
Her text read like a summary. All three helicopters had been shot down. Six terrorists were captured alive. Two of the six were in critical condition with bullet wounds. Nine others were killed, along with the three pilots. More bodies were still in a downed helicopter in the river, but the bodies had been checked out and Dalz wasn’t among them. Jace called a few minutes later.