by L. J. Martin
We give her a hug and it's all we can do to get back to Gilbert's Kia.
“Where to?” I ask Pax, then add, “it's a long drive to Malta.”
“The houseboat. Nobody will look for us there.”
“Works for me,” I say. And lay my head back. The adrenalin is still rocking me, but I close my eyes.
Then I remember the van, still full of goodies. “Gilbert, the van is parked on the street near the Italian American Club. Wait until the crime scene guys are done, then have Vanessa drive you over and pick it up and park it on the street near the office. Got it?”
“Got it. Keys?”
“Under the front seat.”
It's midnight when Gilbert delivers us to the Lake Mead boat harbor. We cruise a few miles at about six knots so as not to attract attention, then drop anchor in a favorite cove of Pax's, far upstream from the dam. We can live for days on the well-stocked boat and Gilbert and Vanessa are as close as the throwaway cell phone should we need more. Pax's boat, The Circuit, is in a foreign company's name, so the FBI or other agencies should have no idea of its existence, or be able to tie her to Pax and certainly not to me. So we should be safe for a while. And like all things Pax, it's fully operational by satellite with the Internet. Of course little or nothing goes on over the Internet without the NSA and its Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center knowing about it. God knows, any group with a name like that should know damn near everything.
I've been listening to local radio on the trip out and only sporadic reports of the shooting at the IAC have been coming in, but we turn on the small TV as soon as we drop anchor, and are not surprised to hear there are six dead and four wounded as a result of a shootout near the Italian American Club. They don’t know, I’m happy to note, it’s actually six wounded. No names have yet been released until relatives are notified.
We boil some wieners and have hot dogs and a beer for supper, as neither of us did anything but barely touch our sausage and peppers, and now wish we had. We doze for half the night, one ear tuned to the TV, until a report comes in. Prominent Casino CEOs Tobias Roth and Alex Pointer, both dead from gunfire, along with four of their respective security employees and two others wounded, as well as three wounded, names unknown, presumed to be bystanders. Another four, thought to be involved, are still at large.
It’s said to be a rival casino, or even gangland, shootout. There are rumors of a longtime feud between the principals of the casinos, The Majestic and Maximillian’s.
“What a cluster fuck,” I conclude. “We should never have allowed Pointer to get involved.”
“And, not the least of the problems,” Pax adds, “we're out a cool mil, and half the acronyms in the country are on the hunt for us.”
“We may be out a mil, but I know where a few bucks might be recovered.” I have to laugh, if a little sardonically.
“I thought you had ulterior motives when you turned the van into a pool service company. I don't think I'd wait too long. If Flannigan knew about Roth's hidey hole, others might.”
“I'm having Gilbert come pick us up at six. We’ve got two hours.”
“I'm going to get a couple of hours sleep while you take us in. You can sleep in the van and I'll drive and drop Gilbert off. I don't want him involved in the…the pool repair.”
Pax heads below to a bunk, and I use the windless and recover the anchor. We're most of an hour back to the slip, and Gilbert is most of an hour to the slip from Vegas. If things go smoothly, we'll be pulling a filter tank shortly after eight AM, a time any respectable service company would show up for work.
The hour cruising at ten knots back to the slip is the nicest hour I've spent in many months. There's nothing quite like putting along on quiet water, on a warm evening, with a full moon smiling down on you. Even if you have a throbbing bullet wound in your side and a wounded comrade trying to catch some zees down below.
I wish we could stay and troll for strippers for a couple of days, but I don't think that's going to happen, maybe not for fifteen to twenty years, if Agent Merrick has his way.
Wondering what will transpire in the next few hours, I remember a quote I read somewhere, “Oh God, your sea is so great and my boat is so small.”
We have become judge, jury, and sometimes—too often—executioner. That, more than likely, can't go on forever. We’re likely cast adrift in a very large legal sea.
48
Gilbert has been more than faithful and has already recovered the van, even if only a quarter block away was a club crawling with cops.
I'm not a bit surprised to pull the van into Roth's long winding driveway—Google Earth has shown the place at ten acres or so—to see a dozen cars and limousines parked there. People in dark dresses and suits, the ladies in hats and heels, are carrying casseroles and flowers and cards up to the door when we park near a truck-wide gate leading to the back. Both of us are in bill caps and coveralls with Paulo's Pool Service stenciled on the back, each carrying a tool box. We find a pass-through pedestrian gate leading to the rear yard.
The pool is nearly a quarter-acre in size—maybe seventy-five by one hundred and fifty feet—and kidney shaped. A small circular bar is near the far end, surrounded by a dozen bar stools.
I glance over my shoulder as we make our way to a small fenced area beyond that bar, which I presume contains the pool equipment. If it's garbage cans or lawn mowers we're going to look pretty stupid to the dozen people gathered around another bar under a fifty-foot long covered patio connected to the rear of the large two-story colonial.
As early as it is, a number of them are sipping cocktails. I'm glad they've chosen the shady bar rather than the open one near the pool—and the pool equipment, thank God, we find in the fenced in area.
There are two large tanks among the rather complicated pipes and gauges, but one of them is obviously our target as the plates on either end of the five-foot long by two-and-a-half-foot diameter tank has an odd feature. The plates on either end have large padlocks in addition to the plethora of bolts.
As it's so obvious, and as we have no bolt cutters or a torch to remove the locks, we decide to merely disassemble the two-inch pipe leading to and from the tank, and remove the whole thing. We’ll see if it’s full of green backs or brown sand at some other locale.
We have it freed and are about to try and heave it up and carry it out to the van, when I look up and a guy is leaning on the fence, watching us with some interest.
“What's up?” he asks, when he sees I've noticed him.
“Filter is screwed up,” I say, giving him an answer that's about as technical as I can muster.
“Full, not working, leaking...what?” he asks.
He's not as nicely dressed as most on the patio, so I'm a little worried he might be the Roth estate handy-man.
“Won't know until we get it to the shop,” I say.
He looks a little suspicious, glancing from one of us to the other and back, and I'm just about to think he's going to challenge me, when he says, “That looks heavy as hell—”
“Full of diatomaceous earth,” I offer. “Yeah, it's heavy.” I’ve now expended my total knowledge of pool filters.
“There's a hand-truck over in the equipment shed. You want to borrow it?”
My grin couldn't have been wider. “You bet. Man, I'll owe you a sixpack.”
He laughs, is gone only a couple of minutes, and is back with a dolly large enough to move a refrigerator. He even helps us tip the tank aboard.
In minutes we're loaded into the van, and moving out of the driveway.
I'm driving and a car is entering through Roth's single-car wide gate. I have to move to the side to let the guy by, and am glad I've moved to the left side as I see the driver, Lieutenant Andre Bollinger of the Las Vegas Police.
I gaze out the window at a bed full of daisies as he passes, then gun it and we're out of there.
“The ministorage?” Pax asks.
“Yep,
the one in Sheridan. You up for a little fly fishing?”
“Not as good as Malta, but it'll do until we see what's coming down.”
“You drive. I've got a letter to write.”
“Old girlfriend?” Pax asks.
“Hardly. I'm going to mail a copy of the first half of the recording with Flannigan and a rundown of what we know to Gerry Goldberg and have him negotiate with Agent Merrick. If we can trade info and testimony for a clean slate, we'll be home free—”
“But in the meantime we're going fly fishing?”
“Yep, and I don't want to have to ask permission.”
“Permission is always tougher than forgiveness, right?”
“You got it. We left bodies all over Clark County, and every one of them was in self-defense, but that will be a hard sell unless we have something to trade.” And I add, “We've actually got stuff they don't even know they want, since we know where Flannigan's stash of blackmail goodies are hidden. If, and it’s a big if, any of it’s worth a damn.”
“Maybe we should find the stash and take it with us?”
“Done pushed our luck,” I say. “Let's wander up to Wyoming.”
“You drive two hundred and I'll drive two hundred. We’ll trade off.”
I nod, and, with Pax in the back sleeping, we're headed north on I 15. At the first truck stop I dump the signs in their dumpster, and I put Wyoming plates on the van.
Now we're a couple of fishermen, in a plain white four-wheel drive van, going home to Wyoming.
We rent a cabin on the Big Horn River, about as far from civilization as we can get. I don’t want to show up in my hometown of Sheridan as I know too many folks, although I do keep a ministorage there—which can be visited at night. Like all my ministorage units, there’s a bugout bag that’ll keep me alive in alpine cold or hot desert.
Worried that Flannigan’s stash of incriminating information on Roth will be discovered, I enlist the help of Skip again to return to Vegas and recover it from Flannigan’s carport storage unit, with instructions to deliver it to Goldberg. Within an hour after I know he’s received the stash, I call him on a throwaway phone, one of a half dozen we bought in Cedar City on the way up.
I’m encouraged by Goldberg’s cackle when I ask if it’s of any value.
“A treasure trove of negotiating material. I’ve already got an appointment with Merrick. This is going to be a hoot!”
“Glad you’re enjoying it. I’ll call you back…when?”
“I’m meeting him at four to give him a taste, so give me a yell after cocktail time.”
“Will do.” When I do, he’s still cackling which is a good sign. “And?” I ask.
“I’m getting immunity agreements for you and Weatherwax—”
“You’ve got to get Skip, Sol, Gilbert and Vanessa added as well.”
“I could likely get Jeffery Dahmer added with what’s in that pile. Flannigan was very good at what he did.”
“And the agreement of LVPD and all other agencies who might want a piece of our hide.”
“The FBI has jurisdiction over the whole mess. No one will challenge their authority.”
“Flannigan may have been smart, but he was a friggin’ pervert if he did what I think he did to Sol, but he paid. How good is this stuff?”
“Merrick is going to solve the bombing of the bus thanks to you two. You two brought him the raghead perps on the bombing of Withers’ costume party which went a long way toward this agreement, and he’s got enough to bring a pile of crap down on the head of several city and county employees, and possibly even a state senator or two. I get the feeling Merrick doesn’t smile much, but when he thumbed through the paperwork, a sampling of copies of spreadsheets and copies of checks, and saw there were over five dozen recordings, both video and audio, I don’t think I could have gotten the grin off his puss with a sledgehammer. Roth was a busy boy and has paid off half the government of Vegas and Nevada. And, it seems there’s no love lost between Merrick and the local federal prosecutor, Van Nord, and it’s looking bad for Van Nord thanks to the material you recovered. You and Pax will agree to testify to what you know. Everything, got it?”
“No problem,” I say, but have my fingers crossed.
“And the best news—”
“Is what?”
“You owe me a cool hundred grand.”
“For one lousy meeting and an agreement that’ll take you another hour?”
“It ain’t the time, junior, it’s the expertise.”
“You are the man, Goldberg. See you in a week or so, should you have a signed agreement.”
“I’ll have it late tomorrow.”
“See you in a week. There are several large brown trout I have appointments with.”
“Ha. You do have the hundred grand?”
“I’ll scrape it together.”
He rings off. If he knew I’d scrape it together out of a tank containing seven million eight hundred thousand and change, his bill would likely have been much higher.
“We good?” Pax asks as I hang up.
“Will be tomorrow afternoon, presuming Goldberg gets the immunity agreement he expects from Merrick.”
“All of us?” he asks, obviously worried about his people.
“If you had a rat living under your desk at the office we could probably get him listed, the way Gerry tells it.”
“Cool. Let’s go beat the water with a fly line.”
“Let’s pay a guide and float,” I suggest. “You can’t walk worth a damn and I don’t want to have to drown you if you slip on some Big Horn Rocks. It’d be worth another two and a half mil to me, if I can hold you under, even after paying off Skip and the kids.”
“And you’re likely to bust a stitch, and get your head busted trying to drown me.”
“Let’s call a guide. We can afford it.”
“Yeah, then let’s get back to Vegas. I’m sure Cindy needs consoling with the loss of her father.”
“Yeah, that, and probably the shock of inheriting a nice casino.”
“There is that.”
I’d like to wipe the smug grin off his face, but he’s still damn tough even with a new hole in his bad leg.
I’ll take it out on the trout.
IX
The K Factor
Contents
Invictus
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Invictus
BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Loom
s but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Prologue
One Year Earlier
As much as he loved spy novels and international intrigue, he had no idea he would soon be immersed up to his ice-blue eyes.
Pieter De Vries graduated from the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands, in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science in nanotechnology, and then went on to graduate school to obtain his master’s and then his doctorate, from Oxford in the UK. His area of expertise was highly valued by Royal Dutch Shell, headquartered in his home town of Hague, Netherlands, and he joined them in 1992, working in a secret program involving the use of an ultra-centrifuge for separating uranium 235 from 238—secret, because almost twenty years, before Shell had lost $250 million US on the same program, and they weren’t eager for the financial world to know they were trying again.
He was happy with his work but interested in geo-politics, and he was lured away for less money working for NATO, which took him to Belgium, assessing data and its validity on the progress of nuclear development in other countries, mainly Iran and North Korea. Again happy in his work, but underpaid, he could not turn down an opportunity to join South Africa in 1987 to assist with their nuclear weapons program.