by Robert Crais
“It won’t be very much longer.” He said it even when I didn’t ask. He said it maybe a hundred times.
Jasper would watch Clark, then walk away, then watch some more, then walk away, like he was nervous about all of this and losing his patience. Finally, he said, “It doesn’t have to be perfect, for chrissake.”
Clark stopped working and stared at him. Jasper walked away.
At ten minutes after six that morning I went out into the parking lot and breathed the cool night air and watched the first traces of pink freshen the eastern sky. Moths swarmed around the parking lot lamps, banging into the glass with a steady tap-tap-tap, and I wondered if they welcomed the dawn. At dawn, they could stop slamming their heads into the thing that forever kept them from the light. People don’t have a dawn. We just keep slamming away until it kills us.
Clark had worked steadily through the night, and I thought that his pain must be terrible, but, unlike the moths, he was doing it because he loved his son. I guess I would do it, too, and I hoped that the love helped with his pain.
When I went back inside, Clark Hewitt was still working. Billings had fallen asleep.
At eight minutes after seven that morning, Clark brought the plates to the lithograph machine, fitted the portrait plate to the printing cylinder, then filled the inkwell with black ink. He looked at me and said, “I think we’re ready.”
Jasper said, “About goddamned time.”
Pike was still in his corner. I don’t think he had moved for hours. Billings sat up, blew another bubble, then stared at Pike. I think he found Pike odd.
Clark said, “We’ll run some test sheets through, first. Just to see.”
I brought over a bundle of the paper. It made me feel useful.
Clark fitted a stack of the paper into the paper feeder, then ran through two sheets. The big machine made a whirring, snapping sound as the paper went through, and the paper went through faster than I’d expected. It came out smudged and dark. Clark said, “Sucks.”
He made some adjustments with a little screwdriver, then ran through two more sheets. These looked fine to me, but Clark frowned again. Jasper rolled his eyes. Clark made another adjustment, printed two more sheets that I thought were identical to the last two, but this time he seemed pleased. “This should do. I think we’re ready to print.”
That’s when Joe Pike said, “Listen.”
Billings said, “What?” He blew an enormous pink bubble.
Jasper said, “For chrissakes, let’s just print the money and get going.”
Pike moved to the lithograph and slapped the shut-off switch. The drum whined down and the humming stopped. Clark said, “It’s going to take a while to reheat.”
Jasper said, “What are you people talking about?”
Pike held up a finger, his head cocked to the side, and then he took out his gun. “Listen.”
There might have been the faint squeal of a door hinge, and there might’ve been the faraway thump of something hard bumping into a doorjamb or a wall. My first thought was that it was Dak and his people, coming to check on us, but it wasn’t, and I didn’t have time for another thought.
Claude Billings trotted to the door, stepped into the hall, and that’s when Alexei Dobcek shot him once through the great pink bubble and blew out the back of his head.
CHAPTER 34
Pike pushed Clark down behind the litho press. I ran for the door, shooting three times into the darkness and once into the wall. Dobcek yelled something in Russian, and he and another guy fell back along the hall into the parking lot. I fired twice more, then pulled Billings back into the big room, but he was already dead. I said, “The Russians. We’re outta here now.”
I saw a flash of men moving in the parking lot, and I heard crashing at the front of the building.
Jasper checked Billings. “Jesus Christ, how in hell did they find us? How many you see?”
“Five. Maybe more. They were running toward the front, so they’ll probably enter that way.”
Clark said, “But what about the money?”
Pike pulled him to his feet. “That’s over now.”
“What about Charles?”
“If they get you they won’t need Charles.”
Jasper snuck a fast look out the door and down the hall that led to the parking lot. That door was closed, and there was probably a man with a gun waiting for whoever opened the door. All the noise was coming from the other hall, which led to the front. Jasper said, “Shit, man, they’ve got us boxed.”
Pike said, “Up.”
I pushed Clark toward the metal stairs and told him to climb. “There’s a stair at the front door and offices on the second floor. If we move through the offices and they stay on the ground, we can come down behind them and get out of here.”
Clark and Jasper and I clattered up the stairs to the catwalk and into the offices as Pike went back to the hall, fired four fast shots in the blind, then followed.
The upstairs offices were dark and hot, and we could hear the Russians moving beneath us, faint and faraway. I thought we were going to make it just fine until a squat guy with a thick mustache turned a corner, saw us, then ducked back behind the corner, shouting. I pushed backward into Jasper and Clark, yelling for them to get back, when the mustache popped out again, snapping off two shots that hit the ceiling above us. I shot back, then Alexei Dobcek darted across my field of fire into an adjoining doorway, firing as he ran. Jasper said, “This really bites.”
We fell back along the hall, retracing our route onto the catwalk and down the stairs into the warehouse, reaching the bottom just as Dmitri Sautin and the guy with the mustache blew through the catwalk door, firing as they came. Dmitri Sautin was wearing a HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH T-shirt from Disneyland.
I yelled, “Joe,” and pushed Clark down behind the plate maker as Joe Pike spun around and shot Sautin once with his .357.
The guy with the mustache dove back into the upstairs hall, but Sautin didn’t. Sautin weighed three hundred pounds, but the .357 pushed him into the wall and knocked the gun from his hand. He looked down at his chest as red soaked through the HAPPIEST PLACE shirt. He said, “Alexei?” Then he fell head first over the rail and hit the cement floor like a bag of damp flour.
A blond guy appeared in the hall door, fired twice, then disappeared.
The shooting stopped and no one was shouting and the only sounds in the place were my own heart and a bubbly wheeze from Dmitri Sautin. He coughed twice, and then he started to cry. Jasper was under the stairs.
Dobcek said, “I think we got you trapped. What do you think?” He said it from behind the catwalk door.
“I thought we had a deal, Dobcek.”
“Da. an’ I think you were going to set us up.”
I was looking at the truck door. It was big and electric with a red open-close switch next to it on the wall about twenty feet away from me. All I had to do was run over there, hit the switch, then run back and hope that no one shot me.
Dmitri Sautin managed to roll onto his side, but that was as far as it went. He was crying the way a small child cries, with little gasping whimpers. He said, “Oo, it hurts, Alexei. I need help.”
Dobcek called back, “Shut up, fool.”
The sobbing became a wet, phlegmy cough.
Dobcek said, “You give us Hewitt, maybe we let you live, dah?”
Pike snapped his fingers and pointed at the truck door.
I nodded. Somebody was probably waiting out there to shoot us, but if the door was up at least we could see. If we could see, maybe we could lay down a suppressing fire so that we could get out.
Pike reloaded the Python, and I reloaded the Dan Wesson. I said, “Jasper, are you in?”
“Sure.”
“Joe.”
Joe Pike swung out from behind the plate maker, popping off two shots at the hall door, then three shots at the catwalk. I moved when he moved, sprinting hard to the door and slapping the big red button. The door started up with a
lurch, and Dobcek yelled something and suddenly the Russians upstairs and the Russians in the hall were shooting as hot and as heavy as they could and I knew that they were coming.
Bullets slammed into the big door like hammers. The noise from the firing hurt my ears and made me squint, and I tried to stay low and close to the floor as I fired back. The closed space filled with smoke and the stink of gunfire and the shouts of men in a foreign tongue. I heard Jasper shout, “I’m out,” and then his magazine hit the floor. Pike was reloading the Python and I was fumbling with the Dan Wesson and the Russians in the hall door opened up again, pouring out rounds. One of them came through low and fast and made it to the base of the stairs to set up a cover position so that another could follow and then there came the surprising boom-boom-boom of a combat shotgun. Men in the parking lot screamed, and the big door was finally up enough for us to see Mon and two other guys running hard from the warehouses across the street as a black BMW with more Vietnamese guys screeched into the parking lot.
The three men running across the street had the shotguns, and all three of them stopped at the front of the warehouse and cut loose at two Russians in the parking lot, kicking one of them up and onto the Pontiac. The other Russian scrambled for cover behind it.
The Russians in the hall were shouting and running and shooting. One of them must’ve run to the parking lot door and seen the Viets. Dobcek was shouting more Russian, and shooting down through the doorway at us, but then the shooting stopped and there was a crashing noise from the second floor and Pike said, “They’re pulling back.”
“Stay down. Clark, you okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Jasper?”
“What the fuck just happened here?!”
Mon and another guy ran in through the big door with their shotguns, and I pointed upstairs. Mon and the other guy went up the stairs with practiced moves.
“Dak must’ve wanted his people to keep an eye on us. His people were across the street, and when they heard the shooting, they came.”
There was more shooting at the front of the building, and then from the street, and then a couple of cars roared to life and screeched away and the shooting was done.
Pike said, “Charles.”
I ran to Sautin, kicked the gun away from his hand, and grabbed him by the shirt. “Where’s the little boy, Dmitri?”
Dmitri Sautin was making gasping noises. Mon and another guy ran back into the room, looked around, then high-fived each other like they’d just won the big game.
I shook Dmitri by his shirt. “Damnit, where’s the little boy?”
“With Markov.” You could barely hear him.
I shook him again. “Where’s Markov?!”
Dmitri Sautin made a soft gurgling sound, his eyes rolled back in his head, and all three hundred pounds of him died.
I pounded on his chest, and started CPR, yelling at him about Charles, demanding that he tell me where Markov had the boy, but Dmitri was beyond that now, and finally Jasper said, “Jesus Christ, Cole, he’s over. Lay off.”
I kneeled there, the points of my knees hurting from the cement floor. I said, “Mon!”
Mon stopped all the high-flving and looked at me with a big smile just as Dak walked in through the big door. He looked scared.
“They leave any cars?”
Mon shook his head. “Two cars come, two go. We got three of the bastards!”
Pike said, “I’m on it.” and trotted out through the hig door.
I shoved between Mon and his pal. “Get on the phone and describe their cars to the police.”
Mon’s eyes went wide and he pointed the shotgun at me and when he did I rolled it away from him and hit him in the face with the barrel. “You’re safe from the cops, goddamnit. Now get on the phone and maybe we can find those people before they kill the kid.”
Mon looked like he wanted to kill me, but Dak said something in Vietnamese and Mon hurried away.
Sautin’s shirt was wet with blood and the wet was spreading to his pants and along the cement floor. I didn’t think about it. I rolled his body over and tore out his shirt pocket, and then his front pants pockets, hoping to find something that would point toward Markov. There was nothing. I felt something gritty in my eyes and I wanted to kick his dead body. Instead, I pushed up out of the warehouse and ran out into the parking lot to help Pike, but Pike had already found it.
Pike stepped away from the guy on the Pontiac with a hotel key card and said, “I know where they are.”
It was a key card from the Disneyland Hotel.
CHAPTER 35
Disneyland was fifteen minutes away.
I used Dak’s cell phone to call Marsha Fields, who said that she would contact the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, as well as dispatch hoth Secret Service and FBI agents from the Orange County field office to the Disneyland hotel. She told me not to leave the crime scene. I said, “Sure, Marsha.”
When I broke the connection, Pike said, “If Dobcek tells Markov that it’s over, Markov will kill the boy just so he can’t testify in a kidnapping beef.”
“I know. You drive.”
Jasper didn’t like it, but he came, too, the four of us piling into Pike’s Jeep. We cranked hard onto the Garden Grove Freeway, then east to Anaheim. The Garden Grove was a nice straight shoot, but it was heavy with morning traffic, and Pike spent more time on the shoulder than on the freeway, blowing his horn and pegging his brakes, then jumping hard on the accelerator to shoot through gaps in the flow. Reed Jasper said, “Do you have a death wish?”
Pike said, “Pretend it’s fun.”
We careened off the freeway at the Harbor Boulevard exit, then turned north toward the park and pretty soon we could see the peak of Matterhorn Mountain and then we were at the hotel. An Orange County sheriff’s highway car was waiting beneath the monorail station, both deps sitting in the front seat with the doors open.
One of the deps was a tall ropy guy with a mustache, the other a slender African-American woman. Jasper flashed his marshal’s hadge, and the mustache said, “They told us to wait here for the FBI.”
“You do that.”
We went inside. Jasper badged the desk clerk, then gave her the key card and asked for a room identification. Markov had four rooms blocked together on the ninth floor, one of them a suite. Jasper said, “Okay. We’ll wait for the others.”
I said, “Come on, Jasper. If he’s already taken off with the boy we’re wasting time.”
Jasper looked worried. “But if he’s up there, we should go in with as many people as possible.”
Pike pushed past him. “Forget it, Jasper.”
Jasper said, “Ah, hell,” and followed.
The four of us walked fast across the back grounds past the swimming pool and into the rear building, and took the elevator to the ninth floor. Housekeeping carts were parked along the hall, and Andrei Markov’s suite was open, the sound of a vacuum cleaner coming from inside. Markov was gone. We went through all four of Markov’s rooms, trying to figure out what to do next when one of the housekeepers smiled at us. “You looking for the man and the boy?”
All four of us stared at her. She was short and squat, and had probably come up from Ecuador. I said, “That’s right.”
She pursed her lips. “They only go a few minutes ago. They said they were going into the park. The big man, he say he want to ride the mountain.” The big man. Markov.
Clark frowned. “Matterhorn Mountain?”
She described how they were dressed as well as she could remember, then we thanked her and went back to the lobby. Clark was making little huffing sounds as we walked back past the pool, and I said, “You okay?”
He didn’t look at me. “Fine.”
Two more Orange County deps had arrived, along with an FBI agent named Hendricks. They were standing with the manager and a tall blond guy named Bates who introduced himself as an executive with park security. When I introduced Clark, I said, “This is the boy’s father.”<
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Both Hendricks and Bates nodded, and Hendricks said, “Maybe you should wait outside, sir.”
“But he’s my son.”
Hendricks said, “Please.” Polite.
Clark went outside. Jasper and I told them what we knew, and what the housekeeper had told us. More feds and Orange County cops were on the way, along with representatives from the Secret Service. Bates was calm and competent, and after we told him what the housekeeper said, he nodded. “If they’ve gone into the park, we own them. We can put people at every egress, then just wait until they walk out.” He nodded, but maybe the nod was meant to bolster himself as much as us. “We’ve worked with the authorities before. We know how it’s done.”
It sounded workable. Markov wasn’t likely to harm the boy inside the park, even if Dobcek found them. There was too great a possibility of being seen, and if he hurt the boy inside the park, what would he do with the body? So all we had to do was wait, and then we could recover Charles with a minirnum of risk.
Pike and I left them to work out the details, and went back to the car to tell Clark, only Clark wasn’t in the car. He wasn’t standing around outside the hotel or in the lobby rest room, either. Pike said, “He’s on the monorail. He’s going to get his son.” The monorail was pulling away from its station.
I yelled inside for Hendricks, and Pike and I were climbing the stairs to the monorail station when they ran out of the lobby. Jasper said, “Hey, where are you guys going? Where’s Clark?”