Oath to Defend

by Scott Matthews

  Drake steered to the side of the road, stopped, pulled the release, and jumped out to retrieve his duffel bag. The brochure was still in the outside pocket, just where he remembered putting it. In bright blue and green lettering, it announced the inaugural Pacific Polo Invitational to be held in Bend, Oregon, next week. One of the two polo teams competing in the charity event would include an international polo star from Argentina.

  Nothing in the brochure had any reference to David Barak or ISIS, of course, and Drake knew there was no reason to connect Barak to the brochure just because it had been in a room in the Mexican villa. But the U-Haul van had been abandoned near a polo field that had just hosted a celebrity event. If this Argentine polo star had been at the San Diego polo charity event, maybe there was a connection after all.

  Drake put the duffel bag back in the bonnet and took out his cell phone, waving off a Good Samaritan who had started to pull over to see if he needed help.

  “Liz,” he said as soon as she answered, “I might have an idea where that nuke is headed.”

  21

  Approaching his destination in Oregon, Barak looked at Mt. Bachelor through the port-side window of his Raytheon Hawker 400XP executive jet. At nine thousand feet in elevation, he knew, this American mountain was not half as high as the Pamir Mountains in Afghanistan, but it was still a thing of beauty. He wondered again why Allah had allowed such a depraved people to inhabit such a bountiful land.

  Perhaps, he thought, it was the abundance of the place that made its people so lazy and allowed them to be so pampered. If Americans had to suffer hardships like the rest of the world did, maybe they would be better prepared for the long war ahead. Then again, maybe not. Hadn’t they already mortgaged their future to China rather than endure a little financial hardship? No, he thought, the fight had gone out of this paper tiger. It’s our time now.

  The Hawker descended from its cruising altitude and began a turn for the approach to the Sunriver Airport and the Skypark development, where he had rented a hangar house for the month. While he stayed in the area to coordinate the attack, he didn’t want to make it too easy for anyone to find him. The Hawker was owned by one of the dummy corporations he had used to hide assets while he ran ISIS, his security firm, and the hangar house was rented to one of the new identities he had been forced to adopt after the fiasco involving the assassination attempt.

  The ranch he was using to stage the attack, however, was owned by a liberal supporter, a rich Hollywood producer who thought the Palestinians were brave freedom fighters and had offered his assistance to their cause. There were no ties that could be found between them, other than an indirect connection to the foundations to which they had both contributed generously over the years. It wasn’t necessary to expend your own resources, he had found, when there were plenty of allies in America who hated the Jews as much as he did.

  Hearing his pilot telling him to prepare for landing, Barak fastened his seatbelt. As the Hawker touched down and began to taxi to the hangar house, he spotted the resort’s main lodge a mile away to the east and the resort homes across a small river to the north and south of the lodge. It was perfect, he thought. He was isolated from the resort as much as he could be, and there was only one road leading to the hangar house from the airport.

  When the pilot stopped the Hawker and let down the cabin’s stairs, Barak stepped out into the brisk morning air. He used the controller he’d been given to open the overhead door of the hangar on the first floor of the five-bedroom, five-bathroom vacation home. He and his pilot would be the only ones staying in the house, which had been built to accommodate large groups for getaways and corporate retreats. But that’s the way it had to be. There was no way he could risk having the team from Hezbollah be seen around the resort.

  Once the Hawker was rolled into the hangar and the overhead door closed, Barak walked upstairs and went out onto the wraparound deck. It was time to check on the progress of the convoy driving north from San Diego. The route he had chosen for them used the lesser traveled highways of Nevada up to Reno, then went across to Susanville, California, and north to Klamath Falls, Oregon. By now, he calculated, Saleem should be somewhere near the Oregon-California border.

  Barak accessed his satellite GPS tracker app on his smart phone that allowed him to use the Low Earth Orbit satellite data network to monitor the progress of the team. This was a system that provided global asset tracking and eliminated the need to use a cell phone or other means of communicating that could be monitored.

  The display showed the tracking device he had secured to the demolition nuke moving past Tulelake, California, on Highway 139, just south of the Oregon border. By his calculation, that meant the small convoy of two trucks and the horse trailer would reach the ranch in about four hours if it made no stops. Figure five hours, and the team would be on the ranch and secure by early afternoon.

  That would give the men a full three days to practice delivering and detonating the device. It would also give him time to meet with the Argentine and make sure he understood the loss he would suffer if he said anything about being forced to come to Oregon with his polo ponies.

  The young man’s father had been a famous Argentine polo player who had fallen on hard times and made the mistake of borrowing money from a bank owned by the Alliance. The cattle ranch the man owned in the Pampas grasslands produced some of Argentina’s best beef, but he had difficulty competing with the large feedlots that were opening all over the country and destroying the nation’s reputation of prime, grass-fed, Argentine beef. Without his son’s knowledge, he had helped the Alliance transport various items along with his son’s polo ponies as they were shipped all over the world for polo matches and charity events like the one in Oregon. This was the first time the father had been asked to assist with anything so risky, but he wasn’t in a position to say no.

  The young man had been a different story. Raised from his earliest years to be a polo star, he had taken advantage of his good looks and consummate skill at the game to become a celebrity while he was still in his teens. By the time he was twenty-five, he had a following on four continents and spent as much time in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia as he did in South America. Getting him to agree to appear in the celebrity event in Oregon had required making him an offer he couldn’t refuse: cooperate, or see your father, mother and siblings die painful deaths along with your reputation and pampered life.

  In the end, the young polo star had cooperated, if grudgingly. Since leaving Argentina on this last polo tour, however, he had been drinking heavily. It was probably time to pay him a visit, Barak said to himself, and remind him what was at stake for him and his family.

  22

  Liz Strobel listened while Drake told her about the brochure he had found in the Mexican villa and why he thought the celebrity polo match in Bend, Oregon, might have something to do with the search being conducted in San Diego. When he finished, however, her silence told him he was wasting his time.

  “Look,” he finally added, “I know it’s a stretch, but you have to admit the U-Haul left near the San Diego Polo Club and the brochure I found are a suspicious coincidence. Barak wasn’t successful the first time in Oregon. Maybe his ego makes him want to try again. Or he might just want revenge for the men and company he lost.”

  She waited another minute before replying. “Drake, I know I didn’t listen to you when you thought the Secretary was in danger at the chemical weapons depot last month. But I can’t walk in to him now and suggest we focus our search for the nuke in Oregon. We have hundreds of people in San Diego searching on foot and in vans and helicopters. They’re going in and out of buildings with gamma and neutron detectors concealed in carrying cases so people don’t panic.” She paused again, but he didn’t reply. “Every threat profile we’ve done points to San Diego as the target,” she said. “There are ninety five thousand military personnel there, and the Navy and Marines have seven separate bases that would attract a terrorist. The Navy SEAL BUD/
s training is on Coronado Island. After the SEALs took out bin Laden, what better place to bomb and make the place uninhabitable for God knows how long!”

  “Liz, I’m not suggesting that you quit looking in San Diego. I’m just saying you might want to consider another possibility.”

  “Drake, the protocols established by NEST in 1975, when someone threatened to detonate a nuclear device in Boston unless they were paid two hundred thousand dollars, are constantly being refined and fine-tuned. So far, the NEST teams have been successful in at least thirty different deployments. Nothing I say will change the way they search for a nuclear device. If you come up with some credible evidence the bomb is in Oregon, let me know. I’m sorry, but I have to go.” She hung up.

  Drake sat for a moment on the side of the road before he drove off. She was right, of course. He didn’t have any credible evidence a nuke was on its way to Oregon or that David Barak was involved in any way. Still, he always trusted his perception of patterns and connections.

  Barak was a terrorist. He had operated in Oregon. Then there was the connection Barak had with the Mexican drug cartels. If the cartels were building tunnels under the border, aided by Hezbollah, how hard would it be to ask that a nuke be smuggled in with the next load of cocaine? And then there was the brochure he’d found in the Mexican villa, the one advertising a celebrity polo fundraiser in Oregon. Even if it wasn’t Barak, someone connected to the cartel was interested in the event or the featured Argentine polo star. Liz might not see a connection, Drake thought, but his gut told him it was there and that it needed to be pursued. If he found something, she could call in the NEST teams and take the credit. If he found nothing, she could take credit for ignoring him and he would have had a nice trip to the high desert of Oregon. Either way, he decided he was going to check it out. If there was any possibility he could find something that pointed him to Barak, the trip would be worth it even if there was no connection to the missing nuke.

  Drake drove the rest of the way home making a mental list of things he needed to do before he left for Bend. First on the list was a call to his secretary. The last time he had called her, when he’d been on his way to Cancun, she had complained that he needed to get back to work if they wanted to keep any of his clients. Hearing that he was back from Mexico, but off again to Bend, was likely to produce a threatened resignation from his loyal assistant.

  Next would have to be a call to his friend and future vineyard manager, Chuck Crawford. Chuck and his wife Laura lived up the road from his farm and had offered to take care of his dog, Lancer, whenever he was away. For starters, he’d have to ask if they could keep Lancer a little longer.

  Chuck managed some of the smaller vineyards in the area and served as a consultant for a number of the larger ones. He had a master’s degree in viticulture and enology from University of California, Davis, and was eager to help plant a new vineyard just as soon as Drake finished pulling out the old diseased vines. Chuck hadn’t convinced him yet to start his own winery when the new vines bore fruit and was even offering to be a partner, if that’s what it took.

  His last call would be to his father-in-law. Senator Hazelton and his wife, Meredith, owned a log cabin at Crosswater, a golf club and resort south of Bend. He had a standing offer to use the cabin, but a call to the Senator was still in order before he took him up on the offer.

  After parking the Porsche behind his old stone farmhouse, Drake went in through the back entrance and dropped his duffel bag in the mud and coat room that also served as his laundry room. He probably needed to run a load of wash, he reminded himself, if he was going to be gone for any length of time. Keeping a closet full of clean clothes was becoming a pain. Maybe it was time to find a part-time housekeeper, someone who could keep on top of the household chores that were starting to take up more and more of his time.

  When the clothes from his Mexico adventure were in the washing machine and he had some Jim Beam in a glass, he sat down at the kitchen table and called his secretary.

  “Hi, Margo, I’m back.”

  “For how long this time?”

  “Well, hello to you, too.”

  “Fine,” she said. “How was Mexico?”

  “Cancun was beautiful, Tijuana not so much. But the weather was okay.”

  “You know what I mean. Did you get him?”

  “No, we missed him twice. How have you been?”

  “I’m not used to staying home all day,” she said, “so I’m bored. Paul takes off every morning and by nine o’clock I’m climbing the walls. I don’t like to shop and I don’t watch soaps. Where did you get that idea, anyway?”

  “Just trying to be funny. Any news about the imams and the investigation?”

  “It’s been pretty quiet,” she said. “Paul thinks the FBI may have had a heart-to-heart talk with them, and the imams chose to keep the lid on this. Drake, when do I get back to work?”

  “How about right now?” he replied. “DHS wants me to visit a company in California and help them deal with a problem they’re having. The company is Energy Integrated Solutions, Inc. Find everything you can about the company and its management. You can do this from home. Then we’ll get back in the office next week.”

  “Is this going to be like Martin Research? I’m not sure my husband will let me keep working for you if you get involved with terrorists again.”

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “EIS, Inc. is having a problem with some research they’re doing for the government. Hackers are messing with them and they’re afraid their investors will react poorly if they can’t shut this down. The SEC told them they can’t continue to hold back the details of these incidents on the 10-K reports they have to file. They’re supposed to identify any significant risks they’re aware of.”

  “So what are you supposed to do about it?” she asked. “You’re not a cyber security expert.”

  “The Secretary of Homeland Security is just asking me to look around and make sure this isn’t a bigger problem than the company is willing to admit. The research EIS, Inc. is doing is for a new component of the Smart Grid that will help protect our electrical power system. Don’t worry. I’ll be in and out in a couple of days, and the retainer we’ll get will put a smile back on your face.”

  She sighed. “All right, I’ll research EIS, Inc. How soon do you need this?”

  “Not for a couple of days. I have to go to Bend and check something out. I’ll call you when I get back.”

  “Well, I guess a trip to Bend is safer than a trip to Mexico chasing a terrorist. Enjoy yourself.”

  The call had gone better than Drake had expected, but then he wasn’t telling Margo everything about his new agreement with Secretary Rallings. He would have to make it a priority to do so when he got back.

  The next call was an easier one.

  “Hi Chuck, Adam Drake.”

  “Got those old vines pulled out yet?”

  “Working on it, I should be ready for you to lay out the new vineyard by next month. That’s not why I called, though. I need to ask a favor. Can you keep Lancer for a few more days?”

  Crawford chuckled. “Tahoe will be delighted. He and Lancer are quite a pair. No problem.”

  “Are you and Laura available for dinner tonight,” Drake asked, “my treat? I’m heading down to the Dundee Bistro in a bit.”

  “We’ll have to take a rain check on dinner, Adam. Our daughter is bringing our grandson over for barbequed hamburgers and Laura’s mac and cheese.”

  “Rain check, it is. Thanks again, Chuck.”

  Drake saw that it was six fifteen and time to call the Senator in Washington, D.C., about using his cabin for a couple of nights. If he was lucky, tonight would be one of the nights his in-laws weren’t out on the D.C. social circuit.

  Senator Hazelton answered on the first ring. “Good evening, Adam. I heard Mexico was a bust.”

  “We missed him twice. DHS is monitoring the phone of some guy he called in the Tri-Border Area. Maybe that will turn up somethin
g. Are you and Mom in D.C. for awhile?”

  “Are you coming here?”

  “No, I’m headed to Bend and wondered if I could stay at Crosswater for a couple of nights?”

  “Of course Adam. I’ll call John at Deschutes Property Management and tell him to give you a key. His office is right on Highway 97, just as you’re leaving Bend. You have business in Bend?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Drake admitted. “When Liz Strobel called about the events going on in San Diego, I remembered that when we hit the villa south of Tijuana, I found a brochure for a celebrity polo fund raiser in Bend. I thought it was strange that a cartel leader, or Barak if he was there, would be interested in a polo event way up in Oregon. With the tunneling the cartels are using to smuggle drugs across the border and the U-Haul they found near the polo club in San Diego, I thought there might be a connection somehow. It’s probably a long shot, but I thought I’d check it out.”

  “Let me know immediately if you find anything,” the Senator said. “The trail’s gone cold in San Diego and the President is considering going public with the whole thing. That would be a major disaster, in my opinion. I don’t think the public is ready for another attack here at home.”

  “Let’s hope we get lucky then.”

  After Drake repacked his duffel bag, he drove to the Bistro, where he enjoyed a Cobb salad, grilled tuna and a bottle of 2006 Ponzi Tavola pinot noir for dinner. For dessert, he had a serving of pinot noir-marinated Oregon berry cobbler with his coffee. His search tomorrow might be another bust, but with a wonderful meal and the allure of the hunt, he was feeling better than he had in days.

  23

  The next morning, Barak called his man watching the young polo star, Marco Vazquez.

  “How is our celebrity?” he asked.

  “He is still in bed,” the watcher said. “But unless he rides today, he will head to the bar for his breakfast.”

  “Has he had any visitors?”