Two hundred and fifty guests.
Crew and staff.
All of them aboard Glorietta, half a mile out in the harbor on dark winter water while two heavily armed men calmly take life after life, reload, kill again and again, blood running down the decks and scuppers while terrified people take their chances overboard.
I told Flaherty just enough of what I knew to bring a flush to his broad Irish face.
“How do we handle this?” he asked.
“Quietly,” I said.
A hard, blue-eyed stare from Liam. “This ship we’re on never leaves the dock, right?”
“New Year’s Eve it doesn’t.”
We climbed to the upper deck and looked out at the city, downtown rising above the bay into a winter-pale sky. I was looking forward to calling Taucher with what I’d found, but she beat me to the punch. I stepped into the breeze to take her call, away from Liam.
“Caliphornia wants his money,” she said. “Tomorrow! We’ve got an Arab American agent on his way to deliver it. We insisted on a bodyguard to protect our man and cash. You’ve got the job if you want it.”
“Why me?”
“You’ve got JTTF experience, you’re capable, and you’re cheap. And you don’t come off as a fed.”
“Yeah, I’m way better-looking.”
“Are you finished being a twit?”
“Yeah. So let me tell you about New Year’s Eve aboard Glorietta.”
38
FOUR P.M. THE NEXT DAY, a Tuesday. A pewter sky bellied low over Balboa Park, breeze rising and daylight falling. I had been cast in the role of armed bodyguard in this FBI Repertory Theater performance of Busting Caliphornia. The curtain was scheduled to rise in half an hour.
I was given no lines but was allowed to drive my own truck and pick out my own clothes and accessories. I had chosen a navy suit, white shirt, and yellow tie, my .45 handgun in my leather inside-the-waistband holster.
One hour ago I had driven into the heart of the park like any other visitor and parked near the Mingei International Museum. As scripted, a black federal Town Car was waiting. I opened a rear door and stepped in. FBI Special Agent Ali Hassan, flown in from New York, sat in the spacious backseat. He was young and trim, with black hair, a goatee, and an expensive suit. We shook hands.
Our black-suited chauffeur was none other than Directing Special Agent Darrel Blevins, who introduced the cast as soon as I sat down: Mike Lark the homeless was under the tree right there, Joan Taucher and Patrick O’Hora in the white Challenger over by the exit, Darnell Smith circling on a damned motorcycle in case high-speed pursuit ensued.
“He’ll come buzzing by here again any minute,” said Blevins.
We had a good view of the benches outside the Mingei, where Caliphornia claimed he would meet Hassan and his bodyguard at exactly four thirty. It made sense that he’d choose a busy, outdoor public place with fading daylight for the cash pickup—easier for him to remain unrecognized, and more difficult for law enforcement to operate—if Raqqa 9 and the Warrior of Allah were not who they had claimed to be.
But as I looked out the darkened Town Car window, I saw that the blustery weather and short daylight had kept some of Balboa Park’s usual holiday visitors away. A young couple hustled from the Mingei and across the parking lot toward their car. An old man with a cane rose from one of the benches and headed bent-backed toward the museum. A flock of pigeons lifted off the grass nearby, and the old man turned to watch. Lark, smudged and ragged, slouched against the trunk of a huge coral tree, his heavily laden shopping cart beside him. I pictured him in my barn, young and bright-eyed, stating his affection and respect for the beleaguered Taucher, telling me that he was the same age she’d been when she started out in the Bureau. And making the crack about his boss stepping in the dog’s mess.
Balanced across Hassan’s knees was a well-used leather briefcase containing fifty thousand dollars in twenties. He opened it so I could see. There were fifty bundles of fifty bills each, printed on five-plus pounds of paper. The Bureau had decided not to deploy exploding dye packs—too much risk that the suspicious Caliphornia would ask Assayed Hassan or his trusted bodyguard to handle or transfer the money first. Each bill number had been recorded, on the slim chance that Caliphornia might get away and start spending it.
“Yep,” said Blevins. “There goes Smith on his Kawasaki.”
I watched the leather-clad, black-helmeted agent coming down the drive and past the Mingei, the Kawasaki’s stinger burping in the afternoon quiet of the park.
Blevins turned and beamed us, implants perfect and polished. “Don’t screw this up, PI,” he said. “Just do whatever Caliphornia says, and we’ll take care of the rest. Remember, if either of you runs his left hand through his hair—we are coming in fast and hard. That’s your call-in-the-cavalry signal: left hand through hair. So keep your left hands far away from your damned heads in the meantime.”
Ali shot me an annoyed look as he clicked the briefcase shut. “We’ll manage.”
“I love stuff like this,” said Blevins, turning away from us to face the windshield and the Mingei. “Gets my mojo up. What’s that in your waistband?”
“The gun that any armed bodyguard would carry.”
“Know how to use it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Makes me feel better, too, what with all the heads rolling around lately.”
A silent beat while I scanned the parking lot for a metallic gray 4Runner.
“You were in Fallujah, weren’t you?” Blevins asked.
“The first one,” I said.
A half-turn, and half of the dazzling Blevins implants. “When it all went to shit.”
“A lot of bad things happened all at once,” I said.
“That was when I finally realized how much they hated us,” said Blevins. “Killing those American civilians like that.”
I cocked my head, figured why the hell not. “If they showed up here with a hundred and fifty thousand troops, you might hate them, too.”
Blevins growled. “So us being there excuses everything?”
“It set the table for people like Caliphornia.”
“We were helping them,” said Blevins. “You want to weigh in on this, Ali?”
“I was born in the U.S.,” he said. “I married an American woman. I’d fight to the death to defend my country from occupiers. Like anybody anywhere.”
“What gives Islamic State the right to cut off American heads?” asked Blevins.
“They’re fanatics with no country to defend,” said Hassan. “We should run them into the ground where we find them.”
“You got that right,” said Blevins.
Again I studied the lot for Caliphornia’s gray 4Runner. And again for a black Cube. At four twenty Blevins asked if we were ready. Helpfully, he reminded us not to screw this up.
Looking through the windshield, I saw the empty benches outside the museum. A security guard came from the building, looked around for a moment, then went back in.
“Good luck,” said Blevins.
* * *
—
Ali and I walked side by side on the nearly empty footpath, took a detour away from the Mingei, passed the visitors’ center and the Prado Restaurant. He carried the briefcase in his left hand. Wore wraparound sunglasses and a blue shirt open at the collar.
We looped back to the Mingei and my heart fell a little when I saw the empty benches. No Caliphornia visible on this late blustery afternoon in a beautiful park. Hardly anyone at all.
Hassan went to a bench, lowered the briefcase, and sat. I walked across the thin grass and stood under the big coral tree, thirty feet away from him. Buttoned my coat, snugged my lapels, mentally registered the gun against my backside, then checked my phone. All of us on the takedown team had linked our Telegram apps to group-receive from Caliphornia, but only Ali wou
ld answer.
Four thirty came and went. The darkness closed and headlights came on and I could see Blevins’s vague outline behind the wheel of the black Town Car. The darkened windows of the Challenger revealed no one inside at all. A moment later Agent Smith came whining down the drive on his motorcycle, revs high but speed low, apparently taking in the fetching scenery around him.
Then a buzz from my phone.
CAL 4:44 P.M. DECEMBER 18
Change of plan. Walk to Air and Space Museum. Stand outside of entrance. Your suit looks expensive. Your bodyguard’s not so much.
Ali and I walked south toward the Spreckels Organ Pavilion. The amphitheater sat empty in the near-darkness. Hall of Nations to our left. United Nations Gift Shop. Christmas lights. Palms and eucalyptus towering high and lit from below. On President’s Way, a blue Mustang went by, then an older 4Runner. White.
We walked along Pan American Plaza and another parking lot with more spaces than cars, our heels sharp on the walkway. Businesslike. Executive. Confident. An oncoming covey of teenage girls broke rank to let us through, lost in laughter and their phones.
“He’s seeing if we’re alone,” said Hassan. “When he’s satisfied that we are, he’ll leave. My guess is he’ll ditch this park altogether.”
“I agree,” I said. “He’ll want a better crowd to feel safe.”
“Are there usually more people here?” he asked.
“A lot more,” I said. “The fabled San Diego weather let him down.”
We stopped a few yards short of the entrance to the Air and Space Museum. The building is bulky and cylindrical, an old version of futuristic. Plenty of room for air and space. Out front, scale models of iconic fighter jets rise on pedestals—an old X-15 and a modern F-16. A huge, spotlighted banner above the entrance announced the current exhibit:
AIR WARS
Fighters in the Desert Sky
Around the building, streetlamps glowed and eucalyptus trees swayed in the cool breeze.
Under the X-15, Ali set down the briefcase, hiked a shirt cuff, and checked his watch. I walked off a hundred feet or so, stood just outside the pale pool of a streetlamp with my back to the building. Feet spread, hands folded dutifully in front of me. Roland Ford, bodyguard.
Felt like a smoke, but you can’t do that here.
Had some thoughts, none of them interesting.
Ten minutes later I saw Ali walking toward me, looking down into the glow of his phone. I read the message:
CAL 5:05 P.M.
Take a seat under the Unconditional Surrender statue by the Midway.
“That’s the nurse and the sailor kissing,” I said.
“Crowded?”
“Always.”
Then Darrel Blevins, group-texting the team:
BLEVINS 5:06 P.M.
(619) 555-5555
TUESDAY, 12/18/18
Ali—confirm with Caliph. You and Ford WAIT ten minutes before you leave for Unconditional. TEN! Smith, pick up Lark NE corner Hall of Nations and take side streets to statue to come in from south. JT and O’Hora wait FIVE and come to statue from north. I’ll be waiting and watching. Be alert.
Ali and I strolled back to my truck, stood outside, and snuck a couple of his cigarettes. Kept an eye out for park security. Laughed quietly at ourselves. Schoolboys. Waited. Our ten minutes felt like an hour.
Then we launched.
39
MY NERVES WERE STEADY and my eyes sharp and my body felt light and strong. How I used to feel before a fight. Took Park Boulevard to the 163 to I-5 north. Headlights and taillights, traffic heavy but moving. Off at the Lindbergh Field exit, then all the way to North Harbor Drive, which runs along the bay and comes into downtown from the north.
The evening was clear and the stars began to emerge above the city lights. The yachts bobbed easily on the water and the traffic was steady. We passed Glorietta. A weak light inside.
I drove past the smaller charter boats and the pleasure craft to where the Azure Seas, berthed at one of the cruise-line docks, disgorged a river of tourists onto the Embarcadero. Many headed for Unconditional Surrender, no doubt.
“Do you think he’s convinced?” asked Ali. “Or will he run us around some more?”
“If we passed his sniff test at the park, I think he’ll show,” I said. “He wants that money. But if something looked wrong to him, he’s gone by now and he won’t talk to the Warrior of Allah again.”
“The damned motorcycle,” said Ali. “It was conspicuous and noisy and out of place. Easy to remember if he sees it again.”
Traffic thickened near the Midway, and we picked our way toward the parking lot. The enormous aircraft carrier presided over the city waterfront like a city of its own, multi-storied and brightly lit, a chapter of history afloat on glimmering black water. Paid my money and parked.
We made the Embarcadero and rounded the stern of the Midway. Then mixed in with the steady flow of holiday visitors, cruise-ship patrons, and local families out for a look at the harbor lights and the city skyline and maybe dinner. I scanned the parked vehicles for Caliphornia’s 4Runner, Blevins’s Lincoln, and the Taucher-O’Hora Challenger. Up ahead I could see Unconditional Surrender—the sailor and the nurse, locked in their eternal public kiss—brightly towering in the night.
The statue is based on the iconic photograph V-J Day in Times Square, which captured the sailor kissing the nurse. It was originally installed in Sarasota, Florida, but some San Diegans had to have one, too. Others did not. As they argued, private donors and city boosters ponied up a million dollars, bought another Unconditional Surrender statue, and installed it here on the waterfront.
Where it now loomed before us, immense and boldly lit. Twenty-five feet high. Bronze, but painted to resemble skin and clothing. An average human adult is roughly the length of one of the nurse’s shoes, and comes to about the middle of the nurse’s calf. The closer you get to it, the more vertigo-inducing and weirdly monstrous it is.
All of which was arguable to the scores of people milling beneath the sculpture—posing for pictures alone and together, trying to re-create the postures of the kissing couple—laughing and snacking and drinking as they ambled or stood or sat on concrete benches, craning their necks.
We worked our way to the edge of the mall in which the statue stood. The Midway presided to the north, the downtown hotels and offices sprouted densely to the east, and to the west I could see the twinkling necklace of Coronado on the black water of the harbor.
Ali carried his briefcase to an open bench and sat, facing Unconditional Surrender and the Midway. With his trim suit and briefcase, he looked out of place here among the tourists. Uptight and somehow false. All the easier for Caliphornia to spot. And to doubt?
Across the mall, Taucher stood with her back to the statue, taking or faking phone pictures of the aircraft carrier. Her apparent companion, O’Hora, waited not far from her with a convincing air of boredom.
From the Embarcadero, homeless Lark wandered toward Unconditional Surrender as if he’d walked all the way from Balboa Park.
But no Caliphornia.
I stood just off the Tuna Lane sidewalk, a hundred feet away from Hassan on his bench. Tuna Lane curved one-way past the statue and the waterfront restaurants, then back out to North Harbor. One side was bordered by diagonal paid-parking spots, much coveted during the holidays. Cars pulling in and cars pulling out, cars waiting, patience required. I scanned them, hoping that simple good luck would bring Caliphornia’s gray SUV into focus. I wondered if he’d switched vehicles for this meeting. Did Kalima have a car?
Turning away, I saw Lark, already ambling down the sidewalk along Tuna Way toward us.
Then:
CAL 5:58 P.M.
Leave the briefcase. Go back to your car.
HASSAN 5:59 P.M.
I was hoping to discuss our future. We need go
od warriors and we pay them well.
CAL 5:59 P.M.
Another time.
Text to the team:
BLEVINS 6:00 P.M.
(619) 555-5555
Ali and Ford leave case and clear toward Midway NOW. Keep going. Others, close only when subject has possession of case and BEGINS exit. O’Hora and Lark CONTACT. Taucher and Smith COVER. Clean and fast. Collateral everywhere. Get him down and tied and make me proud.
Hassan stood and turned my way. I stepped around the tourists, looking for Caliphornia or anyone else who might be closing on the money. Saw a couple with a stroller and twins. And an old couple, he with a walker and she with a steadying hand on his arm. A group of Japanese tourists. A laughing boy in overalls running loose, with Mom in hot pursuit. Sailors on leave, taking selfies for families or lovers—one of them maybe the next serviceman to be immortalized by a photograph.
Ali waited, then we started off toward the Midway under the dress of the kissing nurse. Drifted through Taucher and O’Hora with nothing more than glances.
Then, like a guest appearance in a strange dream, Hector Padilla came shuffling across the grass toward us, his face uncharacteristically grim and his eyes raised toward Unconditional Surrender.
40
WITHOUT BREAKING STRIDE, I worked my phone: Hector incoming from north. Then, once out of earshot, I told Ali we had just passed Caliphornia’s partner in terror.
“That little guy?”
“Hector Padilla in the flesh,” I said.
“Change of plan, then,” said Ali, walking faster. “When we hit the sidewalk, you go to the truck like Blevins ordered. I’m going to join the tourists and loop back to the statue.”
“So am I.”
“I’m ordering you to the truck, Ford.”
Swift Vengeance Page 25