Oath to Defend

by Scott Matthews

  Saleem laughed. “Aside from hitting someone by accident with your polo mallet, I doubt that you have ever hurt anyone, let alone killed someone. Do not make a threat you can’t carry out. If you do as you are told, your precious family will not be harmed. Now get downstairs. I have to call your dinner hosts and tell them you’re too ill to make an appearance.”

  After making sure Vazquez had followed his orders, Saleem locked the door out of the garage as he had done earlier with all the exterior doors on the lower level. Then he walked through the mud room and kitchen to the living quarters of the villa and the owner’s office.

  The walls of the office were covered with framed posters of the motion pictures and documentaries Michael Abazzano had directed or produced. Among the posters hung framed photos of the director with stars and starlets, politicians and people Saleem assumed were either rich or powerful. These were the celebrities that Americans worshipped and, worse, listened to. Why any thinking person cared what a beautiful movie star with cosmetically enhanced features thought about anything, especially politics, was a mystery to him.

  He stopped and peered closely at one framed photograph of a group of men standing on the rear deck of a large yacht. So that was Abazzano’s connection. Four men stood facing a younger Abazzano and holding flutes of champagne in their hands. Two Saudi princes in traditional white thobes and headdresses; the Shia cleric and co-founder of Hezbollah, Abbas al-Masawi; and Yasser Arafat, the Fatah and PLO leader, with his arm around Abazzano’s beautiful wife, Nadine. It was rumored that Arafat had met her in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and started her on her career as a PLO operative. Saleem knew about the lovely Nadine, but he had not known of her husband’s involvement in the cause of holy war.

  Leaving the photo, Saleem made the necessary call to the woman in charge of the polo fundraiser and dinner that night and apologized for the star’s temporary illness. He promised that Marco Vazquez would certainly appear tomorrow morning for the polo match. Yes, he assured her, the star would get a good night’s sleep. With that out of the way, he walked back to the great room and poured himself four fingers of Abazzano’s Scotch, a twenty-one-year-old Old Pulteney single malt. The bottle was sitting on a bar near the covered patio that provided a view of the ranch in the canyon below. Swirling the amber liquid around in his tumbler, Saleem started to walk out to the patio when he heard someone walking through the kitchen from the garage.

  “Pour me a glass, Saleem,” Barak said without greeting. “I’ve wanted to try that. Abazzano swears it’s the best single malt scotch in the world.” He gave the room a cursory glance. “Is our boy down stairs?”

  “Yes, and if I had my way, he would die downstairs. He promised he would kill me if we harmed his family.”

  Barak gave a thin smile. “Well, we don’t need to worry about that, do we?” He tasted the scotch. “Citrusy lemon and pear,” he said. “Do you enjoy scotch?”

  “Not really.”

  “That’s too bad. There are pleasures in the world we didn’t invent. It doesn’t hurt to sample them.”

  “Are you meeting with my men before their evening prayers?”

  “Yes. I want to see if they’re confident they can find the dam.”

  “They haven’t been all the way to the dam on their practice runs,” Saleem admitted, “but they’ve been to the turnoff from the highway that takes them there. They know how far it is from there. They’ll get the bomb to the dam. Don’t worry.”

  “They’re your men, but it is my worry. We both know what will happen to the two of us if we fail.”

  “Like you failed last month? You’re still here.”

  Barak set his tumbler on the bar and walked over to Saleem. Stopping inches in front of him, he said, “Do you know why you were selected to bring the bomb here, but not be in charge?” Before the younger man could reply, he went on. “It’s because your blood is not pure. You’re a half breed, half Arab and half Mexican. You’re a warrior, they know that, but they aren’t sure they can trust you with big plans. You have to prove yourself, like I have. You have to prove that you can follow orders, that you respect those who give you those orders. And, as you just demonstrated by insulting me, you have not proven that yet.”

  Saleem looked at Barak’s eyes, which had suddenly become bloodshot and red, as if specks of dust had flown into them. At that moment, he knew he had pushed the older man too far.

  He dipped his head and retreated. “I meant no disrespect,” he said.

  “Show me you mean that by doing what you are told. See if your men have returned. Go. I want to finish my drink.” Barak’s voice was cold.

  ~~~

  Before Saleem could walk past the door at the top of the stairs to the lower level of the villa, Vazquez quickly closed the door he stood behind and returned to the rec room. He had been playing billiards by himself before becoming bored. He had wanted to see if Saleem was still upstairs guarding him.

  48

  After feeding Casey and his men and enjoying a plate of grilled soft tacos and a Caesar salad that he shared with Liz, Drake dispatched his team with their afternoon assignments.

  “Ricardo and Billy, go back to Abazzano’s ranch and see if Vazquez is there taking care of his ponies. His polo match is scheduled for eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. I need to talk with him before that, if possible.” He turned to Casey. “Mike, if O’Neil’s leaving this weekend, why don’t you and Larry see if the realty office that handles the rental of that hangar will give you a tour. Maybe O’Neil’s there, maybe he isn’t, but you might learn something.”

  As his team got ready to leave, he added, “I’ll go back to Crosswater with Liz and see if her plane geek at DHS can tell us anything about where O’Neil’s plane has traveled lately. We’ll call when we hear something.”

  “Should I stop at the country store while we’re at Sunriver and pick up something for dinner?” Casey asked.

  Liz laughed. “My turn, Mike. You cooked last night. Would linguine with white clam sauce work for everyone?”

  “Mike’s hungry already,” Drake said. “You like to cook?”

  “It’s my hobby,” she said. “My hours in D.C. are irregular and I hate to eat out all the time. It’s the only way I get comfort food when I need it.”

  Drake smiled at her. “It sounds like we’re in for a treat tonight. Okay guys, let’s get going. Meet back at the cabin by six o’clock, unless we get a lead we need to move on.”

  After driving a dozen blocks or so through town to reach Highway 97 and turning south, with the sun in their eyes, Drake didn’t have to see behind Liz’s sunglasses to know if her eyes were closed. She hadn’t said anything since leaving the restaurant.

  They drove for several more minutes before she broke the silence.

  “When I return to Washington next week, I’ll be asked to explain how you single-handedly developed actionable intelligence about the missing nuclear device when we couldn’t. We’ve spent several billion dollars to develop a system that pulls together state and local law enforcement resources to be able to do what you’re doing.”

  “We haven’t found the nuke yet,” he reminded her.

  “I think you will,” she said. “But that’s not the point. When the abandoned van was found next to the polo club in San Diego, someone should have thought to investigate everyone involved with that event. I should have thought to investigate it. If Marco Vazquez is involved, we should have known it a long time ago. We have to do better.”

  “You’ve stopped fifty or so terror plots since 9/11,” he replied. “I’d say you’ve done a good job until now.”

  “Until now. Those terror plots involved homegrown threats that were much smaller in scale than what we’re looking at now. We did do a good job stopping those people, but this is the big one, the unthinkable event we’ve worked the hardest to prevent. And we don’t have a clue where the bomb is, or who’s behind this.”

  “Liz, there are over two hundred thousand people empl
oyed by DHS. You can’t blame yourself for not seeing what none of them saw, either.”

  “Actually, I can. I was FBI before joining DHS. My job is to keep an eye on how the whole agency is doing. That’s what the Secretary counts on me to do. I’ve let him down. I’m thinking of resigning, Adam.”

  “You can’t do that! You’re my liaison with DHS. I’m just getting used to working with you. Besides, you were the one who found Barak for me in Cancun. If it turns out he’s behind this, you’ll be the one who gets all the credit. I can’t let everyone know about my arrangement with the Secretary, so you’re just going to have to tough it out and work with me a little longer. I’m starting to like my new role in life.”

  “You mean getting to be a cowboy again?”

  “Maybe, maybe that’s what it is. Besides, I get to see Mike more often and have pretty women cook my meals. What more can a guy ask for?”

  She turned her head to look at him and smile. “What other women? I like to know my competition before I cook a meal, in case I have to step up my game.”

  He smiled back. “A gentleman does not disclose that information. Just cook away and I’ll let you know how you’ve done.”

  They had just turned off the highway and were driving into the parking lot of the country store at Sunriver to pick up the items Liz needed for her dinner. As they walked through the store, Drake began thinking about the banter he had just exchanged with her. It reminded him of better days, and, perhaps for the first time, he didn’t regret letting a woman flirt with him. He followed her around the store, pushing a cart that she quickly filled with fresh linguine, an imported Italian extra virgin olive oil, garlic cloves, a tin of anchovy fillets, fresh thyme, three cans of whole baby clams, a lemon, fresh parsley, and four loaves of crusty French bread.

  “Are we expecting company for dinner?” he finally asked. “You have enough food here to feed my old football team.”

  “Your friend eats like he is a football team,” she said. “I just want to be sure there’s enough for the rest of us.”

  Drake searched the wine corner until he found four bottles of 2008 Ponzi Tavola pinot noir to pair with the linguine with white clam sauce. The Senator had an ample store of wine in his thirty-bottle wine refrigerator he knew he could tap, but the Tavola was his favorite, easy-going, red wine with pasta.

  With each of them carrying a large sack of groceries, they returned to Drake’s Porsche, put the sacks in rear seats that were barely large enough to hold them, and drove on to the cabin at Crosswater. There, Drake put the groceries away while Liz went into the great room to call her favorite plane geek at DHS. When she returned, he was using his iPad to check the local news about the polo match the next morning.

  “Vazquez isn’t attending a fundraising dinner and auction tonight,” he told her. “This report says he called in and said he wasn’t feeling well and needed to rest so that he could ride tomorrow. What do you think that’s about?”

  “It might explain why he checked out,” she said. “But where is he? I’d think he’d stay where he was and rest there instead of moving to a new location the day before the match. Too bad we can’t trace his call and find out where he is now.”

  “Maybe we can,” Drake said. “Law enforcement can track cell phone calls without a warrant. If you could get the local police to trace the call Vazquez made when he called in sick, we’d know where he’s spending the night.”

  “The day before a big local event? I’m sure the Bend police department will drop what they’re doing and run a trace for me.”

  “They would if you showed them your DHS badge, or whatever you carry. But it might not be necessary for you to make the call. My secretary’s husband, Paul Benning, is a senior detective with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s office. He and Margo are coming over for the polo match. He’s done favors for me in the past, and he knows what I’m doing here. He might be willing to ask his counterpart here in Bend to have the cell phone company trace the call. I’ll ask him. Here, take my iPad and see if you can find the name of the person Vazquez likely called to say he wasn’t feeling well.”

  At the same time, Drake found Paul Benning’s number on his iPhone and called him.

  “Detective Benning, how are you this fine day?” he asked when the detective answered.

  “I was fine until I saw who was calling,” he replied. “The only time you call me Detective Benning is when you want me to do something for you.”

  “No way to slip up on you, is there? Are you and Margo still coming to Bend for the polo match?”

  “We’re already here. We came over this morning, stretching the weekend for a mini-vacation. Why?”

  Drake told him about needing to talk with Vazquez and not being able to find him.

  “So you want me to request a phone trace on the call that was made to whomever this guy called to say he had to miss the dinner? Do you know who he called?”

  “Liz, did you find out who Vazquez called?”

  Reading from Drake’s iPad, Liz said, “According to this story in the Bend Bulletin, a Mrs. Rebecca Harsh is the chairman of the local nonprofit raising money for breast cancer research. She organized the dinner and auction.”

  “Paul, the woman’s name is Mrs. Rebecca Harsh. We think she’s probably the one who took the call. If she didn’t, she’ll know who did.”

  “All right, I’ll request the trace. There’s no need to involve my friend in the Deschutes County Sheriff’s office, though. I’ll do it myself. I’m going to say I’m cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security. Is that okay?”

  “Liz, can Paul say he’s cooperating with DHS on this trace?”

  “Fine, have them call me if they need to,” she said.

  “Liz says it’s okay and have them call her if necessary. Give them my number. I owe you, Paul.”

  “Yes, you do. Will we see you tomorrow?”

  “Why don’t you join us for dinner? Liz is making linguine with a white clam sauce for the crew here. There’ll be plenty to go around.”

  Benning laughed. “I’ll see if Margo wants to use one of her vacation nights eating with her boss. I’ll call you.”

  Drake turned to Liz. “I hope you don’t mind me inviting them for dinner.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “I’ll have a chance to get to know your secretary and hear all the gossip about you.”

  That’s when it occurred to Drake that he might have made a big mistake allowing the two women to spend time together. One of them knew most of his secrets. The other seemed interested in knowing them.

  49

  Liz took the call from her plane geek at DHS while standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows and looking across the river to where the sniper had been when he shot her. When she turned away at the end of the call, she had a satisfied look on her face.

  “I think we might be getting somewhere,” she told Drake. “The tail number Larry gave me identifies a Hawker 400XP registered to an offshore Panamanian corporation. It flew from Las Vegas, where it was purchased last month, to San Diego, then here to Oregon. Panama has some of the strictest corporate book secrecy laws in the world, so we’re not going to learn anything about the ownership of the corporation, at least not right away.”

  “How long has the jet been here?” Drake asked.

  “It arrived here the same day the nuclear device was detected in San Diego.”

  “So it’s possible the bomb was flown here. If we get a radiation detector on the jet, will we be able to confirm that?”

  “There will be too many variables to be conclusive. The nuclear device could have been well-shielded. The jet could have been used to transport legitimate devices that are used for medical or industrial irradiation of blood or food items. If the source of radiation is still on the jet, we could x-ray the plane and see it. But you’d have to be pretty stupid to leave a nuclear weapon parked near an airport. Wristwatch sensors are now being used at larger airports and you would never know when one might acciden
tally walk by your plane on some pilot or some first responder.”

  “What about O’Neil himself?”

  “Same kind of problem,” she said. “Without knowing the physical factors controlling his exposure, plus the time, distance, intensity, source and type of exposure, all you could do is make a rough estimate. Medical x-ray examinations and airport body scanners all produce radiation exposure.”

  Drake gave this some thought. “Okay,” he said, “let’s forget about his radiation exposure. What about O’Neil himself? Maybe we can’t prove he was around the nuclear device or whatever it is, but can we link him to terrorists or to David Barak or Marco Vazquez? Some connection that might lead us somewhere?”

  She picked up her cell phone again. “I’ll find out,” she said.

  “I’ll let Mike know where the Hawker’s been,” Drake said. “If the realtor gives him a tour of O’Neil’s hangar house, he might have a chance to talk with O’Neil, pilot to pilot, ask him about the Panamanian corporation he’s flying the jet for.” He walked out onto the deck and sat down in one of the cedar Adirondack chairs and made the call.

  “Hey, amigo,” he said when Casey answered. “Have you toured the hangar house yet?”

  “We’re waiting for the realtor to show up. We’re sitting outside her office on the Sunriver Mall.”

  “If you get a chance to meet O’Neil, there are a few things you need to know about him and the Hawker jet he’s flying.” Drake told his friend what he’d learned. “See if he knows Vazquez or met him in San Diego. It’s just too much of a coincidence that they both came here from San Diego,” he added.

  “What do you want us to do if we see him and don’t like his answers?” Casey asked.

  “Keep an eye on him. Liz is having DHS look into his background and record. If she finds something that will justify his arrest, I’ll ask her to arrest him,” Drake said.

  “Have you heard from Ricardo and Billy?”

  “They should be at the ranch by now. I’ll call them and let you know. I’ve asked Paul Benning, Margo’s husband, to try and trace the phone call Vazquez made when he called to say he’s not attending the fundraising dinner and auction tonight. If we find out where Vazquez is, I’ll want you and Larry to come with me when we visit him. I’m in no mood for another knife fight.”