“Where’s his damn helmet?” Trujillo asked.
“I thought you had it,” Kramer said.
“Shit. I’ll run back and get it.”
Fuentes was watching out the door windows. Some of the public and press had snuck through the barricades and were starting to gather on the steps, the deputies keeping them at bay growing outnumbered. Beyond were the two transport SUVs at the curb, Manny sitting in the driver’s seat of the second.
“Forget the fuckin’ helmet!” Kramer said.
“Fuentes?” Sauce asked.
Parish would only be on the steps a few seconds, but…
“Time’s wasting, man,” Kramer gestured towards the shouting outside. Maybe thirty or forty more were rounding the corner of the courthouse.
“Shit!” he swore. “Alright, move! Trujillo get the dang doors!” He hoped his “dang” would amend for his “shit.” He spoke into his radio on his left shoulder. “Prisoner escort coming out!”
“Put the pedal to the metal Fuentes, we’ve got a situation brewing!” the radio crackled back.
Fuentes took up Parish’s right, Sauce on his left, Trujillo in the lead and Kramer bringing up the rear as they cleared the exit. The courthouse deputies with shotguns lining the wide steps looked anxious. Must be over a hundred in the mob and more coming. Someone was going to get hurt.
They hustled Parish down the stairs.
“You sick fuck!” screamed a fat white woman with long braided hair.
“Burn in hell!” shrieked an old man.
“Someone’s gonna get you, Parish!”
“Fucking redneck rapist!”
“Goddamn sicko!”
Spit landed on Fuentes cheek.
“Get back!” Fuentes felt the current of panic in the guards’ voices and it was flowing, starting to splash into his own detail. Sauce had a hand on his 9mm, so did Kramer.
“Move, move, move!” he shouted, wiping at the spittle.
Trujillo raced ahead of them three steps at a time, opening the SUV’s rear door, wheeling his arm madly to hurry them on.
They were halfway there when the big man abruptly stopped, the unexpected halt causing Sauce to take a spill and Kramer to run into his broad back.
“C’mon! What the hell are you doing!” Fuentes yelled.
Parish was peering up into the sky. No, he was looking west, out into the city, towards the PCH, the Pacific herself, God knew, ignoring their tugging and pulling like an elephant might ignore a child.
Fuentes screamed again. Sauce was back on his feet, angrily reaching for the big man’s cuffed hands. Kramer pushed him from behind to no avail.
The fiendish giant turned on Fuentes with transfixed black eyes, his unnerving grin showing very white, very healthy teeth. Fuentes would always remember he had excellent teeth.
Parish’s left eye socket exploded.
There was a sonic crack! as flesh and bone and blood sprayed across the steps.
The big man fell back, sat down hard. People screamed, fell, scrambled for cover.
Fuentes wiped his hand down his face where once had been spit and it came away with blood and bits of God knew what as he screamed into his radio.
“MAN DOWN! MAN DOWN!”
He reached for their prisoner who stared at him from one good eye, a smoldering mess of red sinew and protruding bone for the other.
“YOU’RE ALRIGHT! YOU’RE GOING TO BE ALRIGHT!” he declared.
Trujillo was running back up the steps, pistol in hand. Sauce, crouching, had pulled his own weapon while Kramer wiped gore off his glasses, gave up and dashed them to the ground for his Glock. Frenzy in every direction, some still trying to get at their downed prisoner, deputies dropping low and scanning the chaos, trying to get a fix on the shooter. Fuentes would have told them they were wasting their time, it was a long-range weapon, he knew a supersonic crack when he heard one but he was too busy trying to figure out what to do to save Travis Parish’s life.
He grabbed at a kerchief he always kept in his pocket for crying mothers or fathers or lovers when their loved ones had been arrested or were bleeding to death at the scene.
“Roll the credits,” Pincer Parish said, satisfied, as he fell away from Fuentes’s outstretched hand to die on the courthouse steps, his head coming to lay against Kramer’s leg.
Taking full responsibility for the debacle was Fuentes’s choice. His superiors argued against his dismissal but someone needed to be blamed. Fuentes would take the fall because he believed his fellow deputies were good men, were needed on the street, but also because he didn’t want to be a cop anymore.
Joining Uncle Eduardo, he would eventually run Fuentes Concrete himself, retiring at the age of seventy with the same loving wife and lots of grandchildren to keep him company throughout his remaining years. He and his two sons and then their sons would take trips down to Baja and fish and talk about women and children and God as they made their way to the bottom of coolers of ice cold beer. He would die gazing into Suzanna’s warm brown eyes, her hand holding his as he drew his last breath, his family all around, their love buoying him to the sweet hereafter.
Alejandro Fuentes prayed the night Travis “The Pincer” Parish was killed, as he would every night thereafter, thanking Jesus and the Virgin for all his blessings. The rest of his life he would rarely think of Parish or his executioner. When he did, he would always remind himself his wasn’t to question the mysterious workings of God.
And he would lose the will to try.
CHAPTER 32
AUGUST
Ashland, Oregon
By midnight he had made the Oregon state line.
I have killed three men.
His eyelids were heavy. The adrenaline of exodus north long since spent had left only a wary weariness. Real sleep had been rare on his expedition into sunny California, and now that the deeds were done, he was hundreds of miles away, it was coming whether he was ready or not. He left I-5 for a rambling road paralleling the Rogue. Just past a little burg called Prospect he took a tree-lined, rutted dirt road down to the riverbank.
The Oregon evening a welcome respite after the blistering blanket that had smothered California. He washed the black dye and gel out of his hair in the cool current, scrubbed off eyeliner and tattoos until his skin was raw. He changed his clothes, and though his grandpa would have his hide (as if this was the worst thing his grandpa would have his hide over) he laid the black garments of his masquerade on the steady stream and watched them float away.
The river smell and sound brought back memories of his youth, of family, of happy times. Did the dead look down upon what he had done? Did they do so with praise? Understanding? Harsh judgment and condemnation? Did the dead care at all?
If they did they kept it to themselves.
Returning to the rented Ford Taurus, he leaned the seat back, rolled down the window so the cool night air could roll over his damp skin. Its chill would keep him from too deep a slumber. An hour nap was affordable, waking up in daylight could be very expensive.
If the radio was to be believed, the police had the shooter locked down in southern California, near the Mexican border, the obvious egress for a fugitive from San Diego, but for all he knew it was misinformation and they were hot on his trail. If an Oregon state trooper had suddenly shot him dead it would be a surprise but not unexpected, nor unwarranted. There were leagues of law enforcement out there and at the moment a respectable majority in this particular region of the world were on the lookout if not the hunt for him, or at least their idea of him.
I have killed three men. And I feel nothing.
That wasn’t true. Self-recrimination manifestly absent, there was the fatigue of diligence. That damnable, ingrained, All-American working-class industry; raise a barn, plow a field, work the line, design a WAN. Kill people. It’s been a hard day’s night and he was ready to sleep like a dog.
But his mind had tricked him. Sleep not so inevitable after all.
He checked the radio
. No new development on the radio regarding his latest endeavor, the atrocity that had been Travis Parish, but there was a brief snippet about Alan Odom. The Odom clan had offered a million dollars for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer of their unfortunate son. They wanted blood.
He didn’t blame them. He had wanted blood, too.
If I turn myself in would I get to keep the reward?
He hopped out and took a leak. Stood by the river’s shore. Just him and the night, the river keeping time. Scooping up a handful of stones, he sent them skipping into little rippling disturbances across the water’s surface as a lone cricket began playing its ballad.
CHAPTER 33
AUGUST
San Francisco, California
“So what do we know?” Barringer asked.
“M118 Long Range, likely an M40. From a hide of sheetrock, up on a ridge in unfinished construction. Four hundred-sixty meters, give or take.”
Four hundred and sixty meters was a respectable shot.
Neither man was in uniform, sitting at a little outdoor café just off the pier, overlooking the blue-green envy of the Pacific, they faced the stiff ocean breeze, letting it tear away their words before they could fall upon anyone else’s ears, electronic or otherwise.
“No witnesses, no suspicious characters in the area, no physical evidence other than some bleach stains and the two slugs, one from Jackson’s corpse, another in the pool concrete. No casings, no tracks. Someone did see a red or blue four-door parked off the road but that’s not unusual with all the construction up there. Kids screwing, what not. No plate. Sounds like a pro, sir.”
Barringer grunted. Of course it was a pro.
“You call me sir one more time and I’m shoving that napkin holder up your ass sideways.”
“Yes…” Warrant Officer Lucas swallowed. His wavy blond hair and blue eyes irritated the General. He detested pretty-looking men, especially when they reminded him of a mini Don Tombari. He couldn’t say who had the smaller spine. Lucas had managed to carry his weight, if barely, in his role at the CID but he’d never been an all-star, and Barringer liked all-stars. All-stars had ego, and that was something a man could grab hold of and use. Pete Jackson had been an all-star. Lucas was a family man. Those were often more unpredictable because they had a lot more to lose.
“What do the yahoos know?”
“Yahoos” were what he called law enforcement, though another favorite was “IFs” for “Ignorant Fucks.”
“Other than the caliber and perch, not much,” Lucas said. “Still looking at military as the probable perp.”
“They’d be fools not to. So they know about the same that we do at the moment?”
“That’s an affirm.”
He snorted. “And Jackson?”
“Just a civilian working the depot, stellar record. They went pretty hard at the logs and soldiers he worked with but they’ll come up empty.”
“You sure of that?”
Lucas wanted him to think he was. “One bit of promise—the blonde bimbo that found him, a local sperm-receptacle. They’re trying to locate her ex-husband as we speak. Seems he didn’t care for her sleeping with the brothas, sir.”
He saw where Lucas was heading so he let that “sir” go. “We looked at him?”
“Smoking meth in a rundown in Sacramento at the time of the shooting. A piece of shit junkie, no way he’s our shooter.”
The General grunted.
It had all the look and feel of a pro. Jackson may have fucked the wrong woman, someone’s wife or girlfriend, but that optimism was for cheerleaders, and if it wasn’t someone crying over a broken heart who was it and why? Was someone trying to sabotage the operation? Their shooter had known just the right target to strike. He needed that depot. Was there a conspiracy afoot or was this just some rogue actor?
Blue Alpha always vetted the local staff. Those that didn’t qualify wouldn’t talk because they knew nothing to talk about, and those who did commit to their cause wouldn’t shoot Jackson without considering the consequences. Jackson was known as his pet, his boy. The General was generous in compensation but Blue Alpha had a well-groomed reputation for swift retribution for rule-breakers.
The more he thought about it, the more it made his stomach roil like the ocean at his feet.
They couldn’t jump at shadows because they were the shadows. But…
“Goddamn. We’ve got a breach.”
“Think so?” Lucas surprised, the dolt.
“Someone’s either off the reservation or we’ve got a leak.”
“What? Who?”
“Isn’t that you’re fucking job to find out?” He gave Lucas a sharp look. “I want this shooter ASAP. Nip this in the bud. Understand?”
“Roger that.”
“Get the yahoos onto the husband and keep them there.”
“That’s an affirm on the frame-job, then?”
“I’m in a foul goddamn mood, don’t make me repeat myself.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“So where are we with the depot?”
He looked uncomfortable. “We’re doing our best. Petey made it look so damn easy.”
“Just keep the books clean and up to snuff ’til I get someone in there.” Barringer leaned close. “And Lucas?”
“Yes?”
“We find this traitor, I’m going to fuck his children and murder his wife. In that order.”
Barringer made his way down Stockton through the bustling throngs of little yellow people. He was wearing a simple fisherman’s hat, sunglasses, a tan shirt and blue jeans. Casual in his interest of his surroundings, ostensibly oblivious like any other tourist strolling through humid and overripe Chinatown, he was well aware of the five spooks tailing him.
They were running a floating box, the in-front cheating. Worked well with vehicles, not so much afoot. Not rookies but certainly not the usual pros they sicced on him.
Ducking inside a café, he whistled his way through, out the back and down a narrow alley reeking of yesterday’s catch, into the back of a produce market off Grant, out its front, back north. They would assume he was continuing south towards his destination rather than just passing it, a journeyman mistake, rookies catching it because they lacked trust in their abilities, a veteran leaving the possibility open because he knew tailing was only as good as knowing your target. These assholes were just confident enough to possess belief in their experience. They’d been around, been in the field, they had stories that had gotten them laid. They would realize their error eventually but it would be too late.
Engorged on post 9/11 fear-funding, the unwieldy apparatus of intelligence had been electronically cannibalizing its own HUMINT appendages which had served it so well since the Cold War. Human spycraft as a trade was fast becoming a lost art. It’s why he had retained the best and brightest for his own team.
Ely Barringer was a realist, notoriously pragmatic to the core, his enemies would confide to you as much, in a whisper of course, in a bug-swept room, behind shuttered window and bolted door. He was not an adherent of American divinity as were many of the religious ideologues who espoused such, usually to rank, raucous applause. No atheists in foxholes certainly but he had always been first out of the trenches, as a soldier and patriot always doing what was needed. Long ago he had accepted as institutional the sacrifices that must be made and the earnest men who were compelled to decide who must make them, a white man’s burden he had shouldered with great honor when it came his own time.
His colleagues would enthusiastically claim him as American Made, a Boy Scout through and through, and that was true. Had he not rescued his Beverly, rest her beautiful soul, from the clutches of mad flower-powered fantasists in this very city some thirty years ago? And decades later with her blessing remained vigilant at his post against enemies, foreign and domestic, as the goddamn cancer insatiably consumed her?
He slipped into Chow’s Asian Market, redolent of pine oil and fish and spic
e that if he was a brooding man would have reminded him of darker times in darker jungles. Past the bins of rice and legumes, the dried seahorses and carp, towards the café in the back. A tall man sat alone among a thin lunch crowd, his back to the wall. Smooth dark hair, crisp, immaculate midnight suit, even in this humidity; he looked bored but don’t let that fool you, he was as dangerous as they came. Cold eyes guided Barringer to a door.
He navigated down dark creaky stairs to a basement lit by a hundred candles along one wall. There were several doorways, most closed, one opened onto a game of Mahjong beneath a halo of smoke, the players all Asian and ancient, the girls beside them all Asian and young. One of the girls pointed down the hall. He nodded, went to the door there and opened it.
“You’re late.”
There were two folding chairs, one occupied beneath a naked dangling bulb. He took up the other one, nodded at the man opposite. “You’re lucky I showed at all. I don’t like basements. Reminds me too much of the old days.”
“Laos or Buenos Aires? Or are you reminiscing over Beirut?”
“You trying to make a statement by telling me where I’ve been? Why’d you pick this shithole?”
The man across from him chuckled, a dry rattle of snake scales across sand. He was in his customary charcoal pinstripes, double-breasted, crimson tie. He sat back just out of reach of the pool of light, two sets of feet off to either side leading up to big men in the shadows.
“I had business in the financial district. This was convenient. And the dim sum is not to be missed. If the Beltway could ever get a decent Chinese restaurant…Then again, we would just bug and eavesdrop them to death. So it goes, eh General?”
“I don’t know how it goes up there for you pencil-pushers. You going to get to why we’re here?”
“You’ll have to forgive the General here, Hasawi,” he said mildly to the shadow to his left. “He lacks patience for the likes of me, only sees his equal in military men. He forgets that this country, his country, won by war, codified by the Founders who, all well-educated men and many of military experience, held little inclination for the portentous mischief that breeds from a standing military. The General dismisses as passé the grandiose speeches by the Framers intended to deny his existence here today. Disregards as irresponsible their passionate elocution vehemently in opposition to the modernized machine he has helped engineer this past half-century. He does not accept that other sectors of America are as vital as his guns, tanks, F-16s and ICBMs. But do not hold that against him. The General is a good man, decent, a great American, and has served his country without fail, ever at the cost of his own peril and happiness. Is that not correct, General?”
Jackboot Page 21