Swift Vengeance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  A man’s amplified voice filled the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, please give me your attention as I point out the highlights of ‘The Swords of Araby.’”

  I saw the speaker, small and sleek, move into the center of the room to stand under the great tapestry. He wore a trim dark gray suit, an open-collared shirt with red and white stripes, a lavender handkerchief, and a small mike attached to his lapel. His hair was short and glistening, his complexion ruddy. He stood on a carved wooden chest that looked plenty strong enough to hold him.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he said, his voice forceful and clear and lightly accented. “Hello, my good friends. For those of you who don’t know me, I am Bernard Monfil, owner of this gallery. I welcome all of you and wish you a wonderful experience here tonight. Araby, as you know, is not a place that you can locate exactly on a map, or a word that you will find in a modern English dictionary. Rather, Araby is a word coined by James Joyce—an idea—deriving from the collective and unrivaled histories, cultures, and arts of the mysterious Middle East. Araby is treasure and learning. Araby is romance and—”

  Hector listened, nodding. He dropped his magazine and snatched it up again, rolling it tight.

  Which gave me just enough time to recognize it—Rumiyah magazine—the “official” publications of Islamic State. The title is Arabic for Rome. Rome—as in the fall of. Rome—as in jihadis must not rest until they are resting in the shade of the olive trees there. Rome—as in the United States. The magazine instructs American “lone wolf” terrorists on such things as how to build concealable micro-bombs, set effective forest fires, and hide weapons in street clothes.

  I knew all this because I’d read the current issue online, to see what Caliphornia might be reading. Or even writing. Hector’s issue was the same one I’d read, and I recognized the cover—a bloody knife blade fresh from a kill. The related cover story was titled “Just Terror Tactics,” and it covered “choosing the right weapon and targets.” One line of this bloody how-to article had stuck in my mind. Something like: “People are often squeamish about the idea of plunging a sharp object into another person’s flesh.”

  As Monfil continued on about the Swords of Araby, Hector strolled into the knife gallery.

  19

  HECTOR ENGAGED THE SALESWOMAN, who had set a number of the decorative janbiyas on a glass countertop. I pressed in closer. The janbiya is the classic Arab knife, with a short, curved blade and a raised medial ridge running its length. The hilt is relatively short, made for one hand. I could see that each knife was safely housed in its own scabbard. An informative stand-up cardboard graphic said that the janbiya is a dagger used in the Middle East and India but is most closely associated with Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Many boys in those countries begin wearing such a knife at age fourteen as “an accessory.” The design and materials used to make the blade, the handle, and the scabbard are a measure of the owner’s status.

  Hector’s back was to me, but I could see that he was talking to the saleswoman with some animation. He’d rolled his Rumiyah magazine tight and stuffed it into his wallet pocket. The clerk had a skeptical expression and a guarded smile. Looked at me quickly, then back to her customer. One dark-suited security man watched from behind the counter.

  Hector perused the knives before him. Asked a question, got a brief reply. He picked up one scabbarded dagger in his right hand, then another with his left. Raised them up as if he was about to stab something. Then set them back down and crossed his arms.

  I sensed female company hard on my left and half a step behind. “Do you think he’s dangerous?” asked Faux-Mink Stole. “Or just insane?”

  “Definitely.”

  “You look familiar. But then, I collect faces.” Cinnamon hair, loosely up, eyes blue. The faux mink had a fair, elegant neck to ride on.

  “My face is common as a clock’s,” I said.

  “No, you’re wrong,” she said. “I love that scar. But I really am concerned about this little man. Playing with knives. What if he’s packing?”

  “He could be.”

  “I have seen you,” she said. “On the news last year. Fallbrook. A helicopter.”

  I raised one finger to my lips. Her smile of recognition quickly turned to surprise, then confusion, then embarrassment.

  “I am so sorry,” she said, leaning closer, her voice a leafy rustle. “I have terrible manners sometimes. I truly beg your pardon. And please know that the man you watched me walk in with is a client.”

  From a black clutch she drew a business card and a short jeweled pen, wrote something on the back of the card, and handed it to me. Then she smiled and backed into the crowd, latching the clutch as she looked at me, blending easily, as if she had another set of blue eyes on the back of her head. I looked down at the card:

  WYNN RENNER AGENCY

  Talent, Media, and Performance Arts

  Underneath that, a Santa Monica address, phone number, and website. On the back, no handwritten phone number after all, just: “Sorry. Do call.” When I looked up again she was gone. Should have asked her if she danced.

  After more talk and knife-handling, Hector decided on two janbiyas. The clerk rang him up. One knife came in a silk scabbard, decorated with leaping lions. The other scabbard looked like heavy sand-colored cotton with subtle stripes and triangles woven in. The saleswoman accepted his sheaf of bills with unsubtle disgust, counted them quickly down to the glass countertop, gave Hector his change. Then wrapped the knives in red tissue, set them in a twine-handled Gallerie Monfil shopping bag, dangling it out to Hector on the farthest possible tip of one forefinger.

  Hector O. Padilla, owner of two janbiyas and a stone to sharpen them on. Janbiyas—possibly the type of weapon used to decapitate Kenny Bryce.

  Hector O. Padilla, reader of Rumiyah, recently broken up with, interested in Muslim women.

  Hector O. Padilla, owner of Lindsey’s current address, professionally provided by my old partner, Jason Bayless.

  I followed Hector from the knives, to the swords, to the spears and lances. He didn’t seem to have serious interest in any of them. Standing under the ceiling-mounted “Mihr Killing a Lion” tapestry, Hector set down his treasures of Araby to consult his phone again. This time it took longer than it had before. He read, thumbed in a reply, then slipped the phone back into his rear pocket and took a deep breath. He headed for the salon exit. Hustled back a few seconds later to get the shopping bag he’d left behind.

  * * *

  —

  Following him was easy. Plenty of people out on Cedros that night. Not that he seemed to practice universal awareness all that often. He walked past my truck with a relaxed air, tapping his terrorist magazine against his leg. I climbed in a few moments later, watching from two hundred feet away as he got into his gleaming black Cube. I set up my smartphone with the tracker codes, keeping an eye on Hector.

  He U-turned and came toward me. I did a full PI Slouch, watching his headlights pass across the headliner until they were gone. Started her up, gave Hector a few seconds while I confirmed his location on my phone, then cranked a U-turn of my own. The tracker GPS updated its location every second on my screen—street, address, city, state. Best hundred and ninety-nine bucks I’d ever spent. Bought two.

  He made a series of right turns, which brought us back to where we started. I couldn’t figure why, other than some kind of evasive maneuver he’d been told would work. I thought of him forgetting his bag of treasures of Araby. Separated by ten seconds, I tracked him north to Lomas Santa Fe, east to Stevens, south to La Colonia Park, where he circled a parking lot and came back out. This could have outed me if I hadn’t been trailing far back. I parked, shut down, and slouched again while his headlights slid over me.

  Then another U-turn and a low-speed tour through residential Solana Beach. I fell far back, lost sight of him, let the tracker do its job.

  At last Hector
broke out and took a mile-long straightaway on Villa de la Valle. Past the racetrack and the fairgrounds, both dark. His taillights, way up ahead. A left turn on San Andres and a right on Flower Hill. Then he stopped. I pulled over. Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. I drove slowly toward his current location, spotted his Cube parked far out in the Flower Hill Promenade lot. Just a few other cars there, this far from the retail stores on a cool, dark night.

  I parked in the lot, on higher ground, a full hundred yards away. Killed the engine, got my night binoculars from under the seat. Rolled my window down. Hector got out and started toward a Toyota 4Runner parked one space over from the Cube. It was a dark, older vehicle and I wrote the plate numbers in my notebook.

  The Toyota driver’s window was halfway down. A stand of eucalyptus trees bordering the lot blocked the moonlight. As Hector approached I could just make out the shape of someone behind the wheel. A pale face in a dark interior.

  They talked, Hector saying little, nodding. The window rose and Hector went to the rear, opened the 4Runner’s lift gate, and let it rise. Then back to his Cube, where he swung open the rear cargo door.

  20

  HE LOOKED AROUND BRIEFLY, reached in and hefted out by its handle a green metal canister. I knew what it was instantly. I knew it to be rectangular, just under twelve inches long, six inches across, and seven high. With a fold-down metal handle, heavy lid, hard-to-open latch plates that lock tight to defeat sand, moisture, time itself. I’d seen more than a few of those during my days as a Marine. I glassed the yellow print:

  420 CARTRIDGES

  5.56MM

  M16

  LOT WRA 22416

  Hector lugged it with both hands to the 4Runner, set it in the cargo area, pushed it forward. The driver, still locked in darkness, didn’t appear to move. Hector clap-dusted his hands on his way back to the Cube.

  Repeated the activity.

  Four trips.

  Which meant sixteen hundred and eighty rounds.

  Or, accounted another way, two and a half minutes of fully automatic fire through an M16. Although M16 barrels melt at around two hundred straight rounds.

  Rumiyah says to rest your gun. Which is fine, because you need to reload anyway. You have to stop firing to step over bodies. Which is good, because it lets the barrel cool. Why not post some video? Show the world what a badass you are, and what you’re doing to make it a better place? By then, you’re good to go again.

  If you kill only one person with every ten rounds, you’ve taken one hundred and sixty-eight lives in your two and a half minutes of fully automatic glory.

  Add an accomplice and the numbers can double.

  A case of four hundred and twenty M16 rounds will cost you about what I paid for my GPU vehicle tracker—around two hundred dollars. Best deals are online. Shipping is sometimes free.

  I glassed the SUV driver again, sitting very still in the dark interior. Him or her? Young or old? Something in the vague shape of the face said young and male. My night-vision binoculars couldn’t illuminate, but they enhanced my eerie phantom and his surroundings in counter-natural green.

  Hector wasn’t finished. From the front passenger side of the Cube he pulled out his fashionable Gallerie Monfil shopping bag, rummaged through the red tissue paper, and removed one of the knives. Walked it over to the 4Runner and held it up to the half-open window. Nodded, said something, shrugged, returned to the Cube. Standing by the open door, he drew out the blade and slashed the air around him, his free hand out for balance, which he nearly lost.

  Then back to work.

  Four more trips, four more ammunition canisters. I saw that these contained nine-millimeter cartridges, usually used in handguns. Smaller shells. One thousand rounds per canister. Hector was breathing deeply by the time he shoved in the fourth case and slammed the 4Runner’s lift gate shut.

  Dusting off his hands again, he approached the driver’s window. The driver turned. And in the moment before Hector blocked my view, I saw that he was indeed a lean-faced young man, wearing a dark watch cap and a dark plaid shirt buttoned to his chin. It looked heavy, maybe flannel, against the cold. A tremor of recognition rattled through me as I pictured the Kenny Bryce surveillance video. Surfer. Boarder. In the brief moment I saw him, he gave Hector a blank stare. Splinters of light for eyes.

  A moment later Hector backed away from the 4Runner. The driver’s window was already up and white exhaust coughed from the muffler. No interior lights, but the headlights came on and the 4Runner pulled out. Hector tried to follow, realized his rear doors were still open, got out and slammed them shut, then hustled back behind the wheel.

  I watched them go. In the shopping center lights I could see that the 4Runner was dark gray. Fell in behind them as Hector’s location registered on my phone. Backtracked to Via de la Valle, to Interstate 5. The Toyota hit the southbound on-ramp fast, blowing past the one-car-per-green light, heading for traffic. Hector chugged along behind him and of course stopped at the red light. My heart sinking and racing at the same time. An eternal red light. The Cube rolled away, my turn next. I ran the light, swept around Hector’s left and barreled past him, taking the middle lane and hitting the gas. I knew my chances were poor: too fast and he’d know something was wrong, too slow and I’d never catch up with him.

  But I had good lines of sight from the middle lane. Stayed right there and gunned it. Eighty miles per hour, a hair faster than most of the flow. Eyes steady, breath even, high on hope. It was a wide freeway, two lanes on either side of me, traffic fast but light enough to give me a good view of the 4Runner.

  But no 4Runner by the time I came to Del Mar Heights Road. Highway Patrol stopped on the right shoulder behind a Corvette, so I slowed down. Model citizen.

  And no 4Runner by the next exit sign, either. That sinking feeling. But I regained my eighty miles an hour, blinders on for everything but what I wanted to see. And maybe because of that, I passed the Carmel Valley Road off-ramp just as I saw the dark gray Toyota climbing that ramp toward a very lucky green light that would take it over the freeway, then back onto it, heading in the opposite direction—north.

  Disappointed and not a little pissed off, I sped the long half-mile south to Sorrento Valley Road. I knew that by the time I’d reached it, my mark would mostly likely be on his happy way northbound, doing the speed limit with nearly six thousand rounds of ammunition in the back, chalking up the miles between us. And almost impossible to find.

  I exited at Sorrento Valley, pulled over when I could, called an old San Diego Sheriff’s Department friend who might be willing to run the 4Runner’s plates for me. I got a firm maybe.

  Then Taucher. Who, when I told her about the ammunition, hissed a string of profanities. “We can rattle Hector’s cage first thing in the morning,” she said. “Friendly little knock and talk.”

  “You might rethink that,” I said.

  I told her I’d put the tracker on Hector’s car, that we knew his address and work schedule, and if left unmolested, odd Hector just might lead us somewhere even better than a knife buy and an ammunition transfer. But if we let him see our shadow, he’d go down his hole. And whoever was the receiver of said ammunition—maybe even Caliphornia himself—would go down his hole, too.

  Taucher liked that. Then she was gone.

  I stepped outside and had a smoke. Heavy breeze from the Pacific. Moon caught in the marine layer. Watched the cars speed by below me. Interstate 5 goes all the way from Mexico to Canada, where Canada names her 5 also and lets her run into the Rocky Mountains. I drove through British Columbia once. Beautiful. You might not know that California is longer than Texas is wide. Almost got into a bar fight about that, in Fort Worth, from where Lindsey hails.

  I got back on the freeway, northbound for home. Still disappointed and a little pissed off. Reminded myself that everything happens for a reason. Reminded myself that I’ve never believed one word of that s
entence.

  But this I knew: I would stop Caliphornia and his loyal dunce Hector from whatever they were planning for Lindsey and Voss and whomever their almost six thousand rounds were for.

  * * *

  —

  Halfway to Fallbrook I got a call from a number not in my contacts. It came in at exactly eleven o’clock, from a Las Vegas area code. I hit the earpiece button and waited.

  “Mr. Ford, my name is Rasha Samara. I live in Las Vegas. I’m looking for Lindsey Rakes. She’s missing.”

  Ring of ear and thump of heart. “What is your relationship with her?”

  “We’re acquainted socially,” he said. “I am a businessman. Lindsey Rakes taught my son in school.”

  His voice was full and smooth. A slight accent. My imagination readied for liftoff, but I kept it on the ground. So many salient details about Rasha Samara: IvarDuggans had told me that he’d been questioned by UC Irvine campus police for brandishing a janbiya at a party. Taucher had told me that the FBI was looking at him. My own eyes had told me that Samara had handwriting very similar to Caliphornia’s.