by Barry Eisler
She waited, trying not to hope. After a moment, he said, “Do you have the Azrael with you?”
She felt a surge of excitement. “Yes. Like you told me.”
He sighed again. “It’s not a surveillance drone, but given the distances and speeds we’re dealing with, it ought to work as one. It’s easy to operate. I’ll tell you how.”
She felt the tears again, the anesthesia completely gone. “Thank you, Tom. You’re a good—”
“Don’t say it. It makes me nervous.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“Listen. Even if we can fix their exact location. You know how well trained these two are. Special Forces, six tours in Iraq. Out in the desert . . . it’s going to be like home to them. And not just in a general way. If you’re right, they’ve used the Salton Sea many times. They’ll be familiar with the specific terrain. You’re not. Surprise isn’t going to be enough. You ought to have backup.”
“I tried. No one wants to risk taking on Boomer or his father. At this point, you’re about our only friend.”
“You have other friends.”
She understood his meaning. “No. Don’t even think it.”
“He’d help you. You know that.”
“Forget it, Tom. There’s no time, anyway. Just . . . please. Tell me when Boomer’s moving. And how to use that drone.”
40
They drove to Mecca, a sparsely populated agricultural town that someone had figured out how to make blossom in the desert. Everything about it was silent and empty, and while there were houses and some lonely streetlights, it felt like an edge place—forgotten, cut off, even abandoned. And Mecca, from what she’d read, was one of the more populous areas surrounding the dead lake. If isolation and privacy were Boomer and Snake’s objectives, she could understand the attraction of the Salton Sea.
They stopped on one of the countless stretches of empty, cracked roads, dry arteries that simply petered out at the edges of desert hills, with nothing but sand and waste beyond them. Kanezaki explained how to use the drone, and Livia practiced with it. It was simple to operate, as he had assured her. In fact, it was a lot like a video game. There were only two controls: A joystick that controlled speed, direction, and altitude. And a red button, covered by a clear plastic flip-up protector. Naturally, when she asked Kanezaki about the button, he said, “You know what the button’s for. Please don’t press it.” Which she decided to interpret as “Unless you really have to.”
The screen readout was as simple as the controls. There was a feed from the unit’s cameras, of course—two each in the nose and the belly, regular and night vision. Readouts for speed, direction, and altitude, and also ones for battery life and geographical coordinates to help locate the drone if it went down. But Kanezaki assured her a crash was unlikely. The unit’s built-in avionics and sensors wouldn’t allow the operator to maneuver it in a way that would result in a crash, and if for any reason the control signal were lost, the drone would fly back and circle to reacquire it.
The biggest danger, really, was that the drone’s battery life would be insufficient. Kanezaki had told her its top speed was close to sixty miles an hour, and she was confident Boomer wouldn’t exceed any posted limits, so keeping up wouldn’t be a problem. But the unit had only about an hour of loiter time, and flying full-out was going to drain the battery far faster than loitering. They’d have to hope that once they acquired Boomer, he wouldn’t be going far.
And then there was nothing to do but wait. They parked in a dusty lot behind a boarded-up church, the engine off, the windows cracked. The night was hot and dry, and even miles from the water the air smelled vaguely putrid. A waxing gibbous moon had risen above some rocky hills in the distance, and but for its weak illumination there would have been no light at all.
Little dozed, and Livia was glad he was able. Several times he grimaced and twitched in his sleep, and she imagined his dreams were as bad as hers. She sipped from a bottle of water they’d bought in Coachella, which seemed a long time ago, and waited, and tried not to think about Sherrie Dobbs and how terrified she must be. Livia didn’t know why the woman had been put on bed rest. She hoped it wasn’t life-threatening.
Eventually, she nodded off herself, awaking with a start at the buzz of the sat phone. She clicked the answer key and brought the unit to her ear. “Yeah.”
“I think he’s on the way,” Kanezaki said.
Livia’s heart started pounding and she sat bolt upright. “What do you mean, you think?” Little was awake now, looking at her intently.
“Five minutes ago,” Kanezaki said, “Snake’s burner got switched on and was used to call Boomer’s burner. A minute later, both burners got shut down. My guess is, the call was of the nature of ‘I’ll see you soon at the place.’ At which point, Boomer shuts down his unit because although he doesn’t mind having it on when he’s stationary at the hotel, he doesn’t want to take a chance on anyone using it to track him to the crime scene.”
Boomer’s phone was off. How the hell were they going to track him? She tried to think. “Where did Snake call from?” she said.
“From outside a town called Westmorland. That’s about forty-five minutes from the northwest shore of the Salton Sea, and past the point where he would have turned north if the plan were to meet on the eastern side.”
“So Boomer . . . if he takes surface roads, and they’re meeting on the western side, we’re too high up. We’ll miss him.”
She checked her watch. It was nearly two in the morning. She’d been asleep longer than she realized. Her shirt was damp from sweat.
“I already thought of that,” Kanezaki said. “Look at the map. The last of the surface roads Boomer could conceivably take run into Route 86 just south of the Torres-Martinez Reservation. If you set up there, then it doesn’t matter which road he takes, or even if he takes the interstate. He still has to pass your position.”
“What if they’re meeting farther north?”
“Then Snake will pass you going the other way. Look, the bad news is, at this hour there are going to be zero cars on those roads out there, so vehicular surveillance, especially against men like Boomer and Snake, is going to be impossible. The good news is, if you see a car, you can be pretty sure it’s them. And with the Azrael, you should be able to follow it without revealing yourself.”
That made sense. She should have seen it herself. She needed to get out of the Jeep. Clear her head.
“Just south of the Torres-Martinez Reservation,” she said so Little could plug it into the navigation app. “We’ll get in position. If anyone’s burner comes on, call me, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” Kanezaki said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
41
Boomer was in his minivan, on his way to Salton Sea Beach. It had been a miserable evening and he’d had way too much to drink. But Boomer could drink and drive with the best of them, always could. And the hell with it anyway, because being drunk felt good, and fuck anyone who had a problem with it, California Highway Patrol included.
The admiral had skipped a bunch of the festivities, claiming some kind of stomach flu. Which left Boomer to deal with all the glad-handers alone, even though everyone knew the admiral was the real attraction. Maybe the old man was demonstrating how much Boomer needed him. Yeah, maybe it was that. And maybe that’s why Boomer had gotten so obviously lit up, so word would get back to the asshole and show him that the bank really didn’t want a default on this particular loan. He remembered how freaked out the admiral had been when he’d thrown the old man’s own aphorism back at him, and he laughed.
After the guests had left, Boomer had gone back to the hotel room. Even drunk as he was, he was too keyed up to sleep. He’d checked the news from Kanab, and it was crazy—a dead cop, a kidnapped woman whose name the authorities hadn’t yet released but who had to be Sherrie Dobbs, a shootout in a hotel parking lot. But he didn’t even care. Snake knew what he was doing. And there was no way to connect any of it with Boom
er.
All he cared about really was that he and Snake were going to meet later at the Salton Sea—the best thing in the world under any circumstances, but especially so tonight, because Snake was bringing him Sherrie. They’d do her together, get rid of the body, and Boomer’s damn Me Too problems would finally be over.
Or, if not over exactly, at least contained. He knew there would be speculation, and questions, and even accusations. But he was getting good at dismissing the speculation and questions as conspiracy theories and fake news. And the accusations he almost welcomed, because they all came from the other side, and the more outraged they got, the more it fired up Boomer’s base.
Boomer’s wife didn’t much care for any of it, that was true. She wasn’t doing so many events these days, and had skipped Palm Springs tonight. Well, that was fine, actually. She’d been giving him a hard time about the drinking, and he was getting tired of it. And anyway, it would have been hard to explain why he was going out at two in the morning.
He tried to focus on where he was heading, and what it would be like when he got there. Noreen Prentis had been so much fun. They’d taken the gag off and she’d begged a lot. Boomer had just laughed and told her it was her fault, she shouldn’t have said anything, and she agreed with him, telling him he was right, it was her fault. But he and Snake had done everything to her anyway, everything and then some. And when they were finished, maybe an hour before dawn, they pulled a plastic bag over her head, which was how they did it when they had to disappear someone because a bag didn’t leave much evidence in case anyone ever found the body. And they’d sunk her in the water with weights, and man, it had been a night to remember.
And tonight would be another one, wasn’t that right? Yeah. It would be. It was just . . .
He was beginning to realize he hadn’t been happy in a long time. Ever since Snake went to Leavenworth, and Boomer left the army and got started in politics. And then Snake was out, and everything was all right again, so Boomer thought that was all that had been missing, his buddy and the good times they had together. But now he realized that wasn’t quite right. It was the politics that was making him so miserable. It had started when he ran for Congress, and got worse when he’d won, and now he was running for the damn Senate and if the polls were right it looked like he might even win. Which should have made him happy, but instead made him almost want to puke.
When did things get so complicated and messed up? He wished he could just make it all go back to how it was. Simpler times. Happier times.
He laughed at how maudlin he was being. Because wasn’t he on his way to see Snake right now? So fuck all the rest, he’d worry about it tomorrow, and he’d figure something out.
He laughed again, feeling a little better. Well, his mom had always said he was good at cheering himself up.
He’d left his regular cellphone back at the hotel—routine security precaution, because how many bad guys had they killed or captured in Iraq by locking onto a cellphone?—so he didn’t have his playlists. But that was okay, he had the CD he’d burned ages ago, which was still his favorite way to listen. He popped it into the minivan’s drive and cranked up the volume. Yeah, baby, he thought. Let the good times roll.
42
Little was tired and trying not to show it. He’d been going for weeks now on not much more than adrenaline and coffee, and while he’d been able to manage bursts like that just fine back in the day, lately he was realizing it was a younger man’s game.
He parked behind a stand of fruit trees on a dusty strip of road called Eighty-Fourth Avenue. As though they were in the middle of a city and not the middle of nowhere. But the hell with the street names. If Boomer were heading south, he’d have to pass them here. And the same for Snake heading north.
They each took a bathroom break among the trees, and then there was nothing to do but wait again. Little wanted to get the drone aloft, but Livia cautioned him about the battery. If Boomer was the one they picked up, as they expected, and he used surface roads, it would take him an extra twenty minutes compared to the interstate. So they had to time things carefully.
The good news was that the area was about as deserted as anything Little had ever seen, the moonlight falling weakly on idle fields, and roads so still it was hard to imagine them ever having been used. One of the family trips he had mentioned to Livia was to the Badlands in South Dakota, and for sheer emptiness that was his only analogue. The three of them had gotten in late, on a moonless night, and had to pass through the park to get to their hotel. His wife was sleeping, and Presley had leaned forward from the back and asked quietly if they could stop and get out. And even though Little had been paranoid about bears or God knows what, he did as she’d asked. He parked and turned off the headlights and the two of them stepped out of the car. Once the doors were closed, the darkness was so total they might have been in a cave, the night so soundless the silence wasn’t an absence but rather a presence, an infinite, solemn entity pressing close from all directions.
He’d shone a flashlight around, and they saw they’d been driving through a canyon of prehistoric rock formations to either side. The night was so black the car’s headlights hadn’t even illuminated them.
Presley had whispered, “Daddy, it’s beautiful!” And that sweet girl had hugged him tight. And he would have given anything, truly anything, to have that moment with her again. That moment, and nothing ever more.
Livia, maybe sensing his mood, looked at him. “You okay?” she asked.
He nodded. “Just remembering something nice.”
She paused, then said, “You looked sad.”
“I always look sad when I remember something nice. Is it not the same for you?”
She chuckled at that, and he was glad. He himself had an easy laugh, which he’d cultivated because it disarmed people. But she wasn’t like that.
“You know,” he said, surprised to feel his eyes filling up, “I think Presley would have liked you a lot. And she sure could have done worse for a role model.”
She gave him a small smile. “I would have liked to have known her.”
He sighed and the tears spilled over. “I wish you could have taught her some of your skills, I’ll tell you that.”
She nodded. Someone else might have given his hand or knee a squeeze, but Livia didn’t like that kind of contact. He understood why, though of course she’d never told him and he’d never asked.
“Listen,” she said. “We need to talk about our objectives tonight.”
He thought he knew where she was going. He’d already been thinking about the same.
“I get it,” he said. “You’re thinking that, because we have that drone, I’m going to want to just kill them. Unless I’m looking for an opportunity to torture them first.”
She didn’t answer, and he knew that was exactly what she had been thinking.
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “And you’re not exactly wrong, either. But the main thing, and if need be the only thing, is that we rescue Sherrie Dobbs. Sherrie, and her baby.”
“That’s right.”
He nodded. “I know it’s right.”
“I want to kill them, too. But with Sherrie Dobbs’s testimony, they’re done. Kidnapping, murder, conspiracy, everything. I’ll put them in separate rooms and interrogate them, and I promise you, by the time I’m done, they’ll have fucked each other so badly they’ll both be spending the rest of their lives in prison. With Boomer’s father for company. But you know what I want almost as much as that?”
He didn’t answer, and after a moment she went on. “I want them to give up where they left all the missing girls. I want you . . . I want you to be able to bury Presley. To take care of her, one last time. Like I did for Nason.”
That made him cry again. “I’d like that, too.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“I appreciate what you’re doing for me,” Little said. “And . . . for Presley. And I’m sorry for getting you into it.”
“I’m not,” she said.
“I shouldn’t have made it your fight.”
She looked as though she was considering that. But all she said was “It is my fight.”
And then they waited again, the digital clock in the Jeep marking down the minutes.
At 2:50, Little said, “You know, I did a little research on the name Azrael.”
She looked at him. “Yeah?”
“Azrael was an angel. In the Koran, the angel of death. But in the Hebrew Bible, the name translates as ‘angel of God,’ or ‘help from God.’ And you can call me foolish, but I’m going to take that as an omen.”
“That’s fine with me,” Livia said, opening the case and taking out the drone. “Because we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
43
Boomer headed south on Route 86, the four-lane road running along the western shore of the Salton Sea. He was feeling good now, the discomfort and bullshit of the fundraiser behind him, the excitement of seeing Snake and everything else just ahead. The stink of the water was overwhelming, and it was like a promise of what was to come.
He wasn’t used to driving from this direction, and drunk as he was and without the usual landmarks like the Red Earth Casino, it was a little confusing. The road ran closer to the water here—he could see ripples glittering in the moonlight. But other than that, it was nothing but sand and scrub and rock formations, and never-ending telephone lines paralleling the trackless highway. If anyone ever figured out how to get a colony going on the moon, and it failed, he imagined this was what it would look like.
He thought he’d passed a Jeep a few miles back, parked behind some trees. Maybe some kids getting high or making out. He’d checked the rearview, and even pulled off the road and cut the lights for a minute, but there was no one trying to follow him. Yeah, just some kids.