Sphere Of Influence

by Kyle Mills

  "There's one coming up fast. He's a ways back still, but not for long."

  "What about northbound? Anybody that could jump the median and come after you?"

  "It's weird, but there's no cars over there at all. It's totally empty."

  Beamon motioned for the pilot to gain altitude. After a few hundred feet he could make out a similar traffic jam a few miles ahead of Gasta's position in the northbound lanes.

  "Carlo. You've got an on-ramp to the freeway coming in about a mile. Take it east. Do you hear me?"

  "East. I got it."

  Beamon grabbed the cell phone in his lap and hit a speed-dial number that he had written down on the map. "Hello?" came the woman's voice.

  "Get ready. You're looking for a blue panel van coming up on your position at about eighty-five miles an hour." A good minute went by before she spoke again.

  "It's coming up the ramp."

  "When it passes, go!"

  He was just hanging up that phone when Gasta started shouting over the other. "Nicolai! Nicolai! We got a police chopper right above us! Fuck!"

  "Don't worry about it, Carlo--that copter can't do anything. Just stay cool and take the route we talked about to the mall."

  "You're sure?"

  "Trust me."

  Beamon motioned the scared pilot forward. They had to give the LAPD chopper a wide berth but managed to find a position that afforded them a reasonable view of what was going on. When the van took a ramp leading to an even busier section of highway, Beamon pressed another speed-dial number. "Go."

  The van and the police chopper were soon out of sight, but there were no police cruisers following. Beamon looked down at the traffic backing up on the off-ramp and the flashing lights hopelessly stuck in the middle of the mess.

  As they flew overhead Beamon focused his binoculars on the cause of the traffic snarl. One of the strippers he'd hired, standing in the headlights of her car, was already down to her bra and panties.

  His other nine little helpers would similarly disrobe on critical junctions along Gasta's route to the underground parking lot of an enormous shopping mall. The police chopper would see him go in, but by the time any cruisers could get there, the drugs would have been switched to another vehicle and it, as well as twenty decoy cars, would be slinking off into the Los Angeles night.

  Chapter 34

  ANOTHER wave of nausea gripped Mark Beamon and he crawled quickly across the stained vinyl floor of the bathroom. Coughing violently, he hovered over the toilet, managing to keep from vomiting by sheer force of will. When the spasms subsided, he leaned against the tub and lit a cigarette with a shaking hand.

  He'd left the hotel room's television on and was now regretting it. Reports of his little drug heist had actually preempted the 24/7 coverage of the rocket launcher threat, and the newscaster was starting to sound downright giddy at the new subject matter. High-speed chases, guns, and strippers. What more could you possibly want in a story? It seemed that all the girls he hired to snarl traffic had been arrested--but then, they'd expected that and built it into their fees. Reports were just starting to come in regarding rumors that "a number" of bodies had been found in the desert and that they appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. Wild speculation regarding a connection to the launcher was starting to fly, based solely on the color of the dead men's skin and their obvious religious leanings Beamon pinched the filter off his cigarette and drew in the heavy smoke. What the fuck had he just done?

  It was a question that was depressingly easy to answer, as it turned out. He'd just planned and helped execute a drug heist that had left four men dead. He pulled his knees up to his chest and laughed. "What do you think, Chet? How am I doing so far?"

  The stress and guilt wreaking havoc on his stomach started to subside a bit and he pulled out the two cell phones he was carrying. The one that Laura had the number to had been turned off for days now--ever since he'd decided to ignore the Director's orders. He'd bought the other a few days ago: It was Nicolai's phone. Gasta had that number.

  He flipped Laura's on and dialed her number from memory. She picked up on the first ring.

  "How'd you like the show?"

  "Mark! Jesus Christ. I've been trying to get in touch with you for days. . . ." She didn't seem to know what else to say.

  "You watching the news? Your Afghans are all dead, I'm afraid. It sounds like the LAPD has them."

  "They do. Scott's already got fingerprints, pictures--the works. We'll have a thousand people working to identify them within the hour."

  "Good. That's good. I hope it gets you somewhere. I think it will."

  "What the hell happened, Mark?"

  "A lot."

  "I want to talk to you."

  "You are talking to me."

  "Face-to-face. I'm on the Bureau's jet. I'll be in L. A. in an hour."

  He thought about that for a moment. If the FBI wasn't throwing everything they had at finding him now, they would be soon. In a couple of weeks his picture just might make the wall of the post office. Hopefully, they wouldn't use one that made him look fat.

  "I don't think I want to do that, Laura."

  "Just you and me, Mark. You have my word."

  He still wasn't sure he wanted to talk. The truth was, he didn't know what he was going to say. But he didn't have any real reason to refuse. Laura's word was good.

  He gave her directions to the run-down hotel he'd holed up in and turned the phone off again. After a shower he felt marginally better. All except for the part about being completely, irretrievably doomed. He put on the same clothes he'd been wearing earlier and looked down at the unopened liter of bourbon lying on the bed. The answers he wanted probably weren't in there, but that was no reason not to look.

  The knock was quiet, timid. Just what one would expect from a brilliant, anal-retentive, team-playing FBI agent who was edging way too far out on a very narrow limb. Beamon opened the door and Laura jumped through, pushing it immediately closed and looking around to make sure all the curtains were shut.

  "Mark. You look terrible. Are you all right?"

  "I'm okay," he said, walking a little unsteadily to the bed and propping himself up on a stack of pillows. At his feet the TV was speculating on the mysterious man behind the traffic-stopping strippers and using that as an excuse to send their cameramen to some of the more colorful local clubs. He pushed the MUTE button.

  "The cops knew where the buy was happening, Laura. They were all over the place. Did you have anything to do with that?"

  She sat down in a pumpkin-orange vinyl chair. "If I'd have known where they were meeting, I would have sent our own team. Besides, you told me you were going to play ball."

  "How, then?"

  "The word is that they got an anonymous tip with a location and time. They thought it was all going to go down in a little valley about a mile from where it really happened."

  Beamon frowned deeply. "Why do I find it improbable that they would put that kind of manpower behind an anonymous tip?"

  "There's anonymous and there's anonymous, you know?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Are you going to tell me what happened?", He didn't answer.

  "I guess the popular theory right now is that the van was driven by the Afghans and got stuck in some sand on its way to the meeting place. All four of them were shot and killed, then the van was towed out--we assume by Gasta and his men. When the van hit the highway, I guess the cops thought they had Gasta dead to rights."

  Beamon watched a particularly nubile stripper gyrating against a chrome bar bisecting the television screen. How had he missed her?

  "You planned it, didn't you, Mark? Gasta might have figured out the sand bog, but not the women."

  "No one was supposed to get killed," Beamon said. "I told them guns would make too much noise."

  "But the guy behind Gasta was clear on that point, wasn't he? He wanted those Afghans dead," Laura said. "Chet told us as much."

  "I thought I'd convinced Gasta
that leaving them alive would send an even louder message. I bet everything on the fact that Gasta wouldn't renege on an agreement with Nicolai--that he'd be too afraid."

  Beamon reached for the bottle of bourbon on the night-stand and took a swig. It burned going down, but that seemed to be the only effect. "I guess he's more afraid of the guy he works for."

  "Scott asked you if you could trust your judgment, being so close to this. . ."

  Beamon shook his head slowly. "I should have just given Gasta up and walked away. Now people are dead and I . . . Shit, even 1 think I belong in jail. . . ."

  Laura rocked back in the rickety chair and pushed her blond hair from her eyes. She was wearing jeans, a blouse, and a pair of running shoes--not her normal corporate look. Beamon wondered if it was a disguise or if she was too exhausted to put on anything else.

  "You're right about one thing: You're in uncharted territory now. But the other stuff is pretty much crap."

  He squinted at her, not sure he'd heard right.

  "We've got the Afghans, Mark. I can pretty much guarantee you they wouldn't have talked if we'd gotten them alive, so they're just as good to us dead. Maybe better, who knows? Dead men don't hire lawyers." She shrugged. "As I see it, we got them without putting any cops or FBI agents in harm's way. And we can still have Gasta. Nicolai can. Sounds like a textbook operation to me."

  "What textbook are you reading?"

  "Look, Mark. We've got a lot of politics flying around here. We've got powerful people who've wanted Gasta for years--and they see Chet's death as their big chance. But we've also got a rocket launcher floating around somewhere, and that has to be the priority. The way I see it, you had the guts to rise above all the noise and go after what was important."

  "You paint a lovely picture, Laura, but I'm not sure it's accurate. I think maybe I sank below the noise more than rising above it."

  She shrugged again. "Whatever. It was a huge gamble. But the jury's still out on whether or not you lost."

  "What are they saying about this at the Bureau? They must want to string me up."

  "Why? You had nothing to do with any of this." "Excuse me?"

  "I'm just guessing here, but I'd say you had no idea when or how this heist was going down. Gasta strung you along and then at the last minute froze you out. He had people watching you, so you couldn't call us and you weren't able to find him. What a shame."

  Beamon flipped his feet off the bed and sat up. "Laura--" "And Gasta . . ." she said, cutting him off "That guy is up to his neck in prostitution and strip clubs. Who but him could have put that diversion together?"

  "No way, Laura. You're not going down with me on this."

  "There's no evidence out there linking you to anything. I'm just making logical conclusions."

  "No, you're moving toward that uncharted territory too."

  "Don't be such a prima donna, Mark. You aren't the only one willing to hang it out there on this. I don't want to be the one who held back when one of those missiles hits a school or something."

  Beamon wasn't sure where she was going with all this. What he did know, though, was that Laura didn't do anything without an elaborate plan. It took two hours of prep time for her to grill a couple of burgers. If nothing else, it should be interesting to hear what this new, outlaw Laura wanted to do.

  "We've got a license number on the van from the police and we're already tracing it. Between that and the bodies of the Afghans, we might just turn something up. And if it leads us to the launcher . . ." She made the sign of the cross in the air. "All your sins may be forgiven."

  It was still before dawn and there wasn't much activity on the street. Beamon lit a cigarette and limped slowly down the sidewalk, not having any real idea where he was going. Laura had gone half an hour ago--back to her hotel, her job, and the real world. He'd tried to sleep but he had too much going on in his head. The movement and fresh air seemed to be helping, though. The night had turned cool, and for the first time in a month he could feel a slight chill beneath his light shirt.

  Laura had seemed strangely desperate. Not so much about the launcher, but to convince herself that he hadn't just thrown away what was left of his life. She seemed to want to believe that the elaborate story she'd concocted was something more than the very brief reprieve it realistically was. She had bought him some time, though. The question now was what he was going to do with it.

  The bottom line was that he wanted the man who'd ordered Chet's death. Of course, he knew it wouldn't change anything--Chet would still be dead and he would still be alive. But sometimes revenge was all there was left.

  He knew now that his plan to deliver Gasta and the Afghans had been a carefully contrived fantasy. Even if everything had worked the way it was supposed to, he'd never really planned on leading the FBI to Gasta. In the end he would have used the success of the heist to stay close to Gasta and get his hands on the man's boss.

  Now, though, his investigation--if anyone in their right mind would call it that--was dead in the water. Gasta had disobeyed him and owed him money, making it kind of unlikely that the mobster would be anxious to ever get within rifle range of Nicolai again.

  Beamon lit a cigarette and just kept walking. There didn't seem to be much else for him to do, and despite a little residual pain from his injuries, it felt good.

  He'd made it almost a mile when his cell phone rang, confusing him for a moment. Hadn't he turned it off? A jolt of adrenaline ran through him when he discovered that it wasn't the phone Laura had the number to that was ringing.

  "Yeah."

  "You live up to your reputation."

  Beamon didn't answer immediately, taking a moment to calm down and slip back into Nicolai.

  "Do I?"

  "Shit yeah!" Carlo Gasta laughed drunkenly. "Strippers! You are the man. The man! We made those cops look like a bunch of assholes!"

  "What the hell happened, Carlo? Why'd you shoot?" "Look, Nicolai ... I'm sorry about that. Really, I am. My boss wanted those guys dead, you know? What could I do? And we used twenty-twos with silencers. The cops didn't hear us. That's not what brought those fuckers down on us."

  "Then you have a leak in your organization," Beamon said. "My sources tell me that the police knew exactly where you were supposed to be. If you'd gone all the way to that amphitheater, you'd have found a SWAT team waiting for you."

  "Bullshit! This ain't coming from my guys. I'd trust them with my life."

  "Then you should be more careful who you trust," Beamon said, letting a little anger creep into Nicolai's voice. "Because if it wasn't for my intervention you'd be calling me from prison."

  "Hey, take it easy, man. No question that you saved my ass and I owe you for that. Look, I know it wasn't the prettiest deal you ever did, but everything worked out. Can we put it behind us?"

  "Where's my goddamn money?"

  "We're cutting the product up now. You'll get it soon. Relax. You earned it." Gasta laughed loud enough to make Beamon pull the phone away from his ear. "Goddamn strippers! You are the shit, man. Look I gotta go. Gotta go work on getting you your cash."

  "Give me a number where I can reach you, Carlo. I've got people in the LAPD. If they turn up anything interesting, I'll let you know."

  "555-3847 is my cell. Talk to you. . . ." The line clicked as he hung up.

  "Great," Beamon said to the empty street. Somehow Gasta contacting him didn't make him feel better, and the reason was obvious. He really had earned that three million dollars. It suddenly occurred to Beamon that not only was he an organized criminal, he was a really good one. He'd more or less lost track of where he was when he came upon a pay phone that looked like it had escaped the wrath of the local vandals. After sticking in a few coins, he dialed Carrie's number. She was out of town until tomorrow but for some reason he wanted to hear her voice.

  "Hi, you've reached the home of Dr. Carrie Johnstone. You can leave a message or, if it's an emergency, you can beep me at 555-9394. Sorry I missed your call."
<
br />   He hung up, feeling like a middle-aged adolescent. That didn't stop him from digging in his pocket for more change, though. Something about her voice provided a brief illusion that none of this had happened.

  "Nicolai?"

  Beamon dropped the phone and spun around, reaching behind him for his gun.

  The weathered, broad-shouldered man standing at the curb didn't react at all, other than to smile politely. He was probably in his early thirties and spoke with what might have been a German accent.

  Despite the fact that Beamon already had his hand wrapped around the butt of his .357 and the young man standing in front of him had his hanging at his sides, Beamon knew he was outmatched. If he pulled his gun, this kid would kill him. Or worse, take it away from him. Frankly, he just didn't need that kind of humiliation right now.

  "And who are you?" Beamon said, surprising himself with his calm tone. No doubt Nicolai's influence.

  "My name is Wolfgang. My employer wanted me to ask if you would be available to meet with him."

  Beamon released his gun. "Who's your employer?" "That is probably something you should talk to him about."

  Beamon looked up the road and saw a gray Mercedes gliding toward them. How had this guy tracked him down? The FBI obviously couldn't.

  "When were you thinking?"

  "Now, if it's convenient."

  Of course it didn't really matter if it was or not, but at least the kid was polite.

  "Sure. Why the hell not?"

  Chapter 35

  "WHAT the fuck happened, Jonathan?" The temperature in the conference room seemed to drop as Alan Holsten walked through the door. "There were police everywhere. Where the hell did they come from? And where the hell were you?"

  Drake shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He wanted to stand and use his superior height and bulk to assert himself, but knew it would be pointless.

  "It was an anonymous tip, Alan. Someone phoned in an anonymous tip. It wasn't possible for my people to complete the mission."