Smart, I thought. Appeal to his ego.
“Yah! Yah!” She mimed writing something down, her gesture urgent, and Bill passed her his notebook and pen.
We’d underlined how critical it was that Mila insist the meet take place at the Agvan Supply site. I just hoped she remembered. The air around her rippled with tension, and her cheeks were ablaze. She might have gone completely off the rails.
She ended the call. Her chest heaved from the exertion of the exchange, like an Olympic sprinter at the end of a close race. Once again, I found myself admiring the ferocity of her commitment.
“So?” Bill’s eyebrows migrated to midforehead. “What’s his answer?”
“He will do it,” she said. “We meet at Agvan Supply, in about one hour. I tell him I am by the airport, so he gave me directions for taking a taxi from there.”
I went into my bedroom and retrieved what I needed from my safe.
“Here,” I said, and passed over a men’s button-down shirt.
She inspected it, curious.
“Third button down,” I said. “And Bill, you’re not seeing this.”
Way before my time, if you wanted to record something in secret, it took a portable, reel-to-reel tape recorder the size of a shoe box and weighing at least ten pounds, plus a wired microphone head taped to the chest—sure to leave a raw strip of hairless skin upon removal. The rig was very dangerous and way too easy to find with a pat down.
And before that, in Sherlock’s day, your only chance to eavesdrop was an ear to a door, or an eye to a peephole. Come to think of it, someone, somewhere must have started it all by hiding under the house’s eaves, as if to find shelter from the raindrops.
But like so much else, spying had gone wireless, micro, and much, much harder to detect. A tiny, covert wireless camera and recorder, small enough to hide in a pen cap, or, in this case, a shirt button, was not only available, it was legal. The tricky part, legally speaking, lay with streaming the event in question to another site.
Thanks to a wealthy former client—a real estate scion determined to catch his business partner making commissions on the side—I’d been able to purchase, on his dime, a nano-size, high-resolution, wireless video and audio kit.
And thanks to Mike, my laptop computer was set up to receive the stream.
Mila returned from my bedroom with the shirt knotted around her waist. It looked good on her—even better, it looked normal. I showed her how to activate the camera, and we checked the feed on my laptop. A fairly clear image of Bill from the waist down appeared. We’d be seeing a lot of midriffs.
“Somebody say something.”
“Old MacDonald had a farm,” Bill said, and his voice crackled from my laptop.
“One last thing,” I said. Bill and I had discussed this on the deck. We’d both decided it might best come from me. “Mila, if this is about revenge, about killing your brother, we can’t go ahead with it. Finding out the truth is one thing. Continuing the cycle of violence is another thing entirely. It’s up to you.”
She looked between Bill and me, scowling. But then her eyes found Sasha, and she softened.
“Truth only,” she said. “I promise.”
“Then we promise to help you, whatever it takes.”
The four of us crammed into the Neon. I’d been tempted to take the Shelby, in case we had a need for speed, but I didn’t have the seats—or, more to the point, the seat belts—to accommodate more than one other passenger.
We arrived at Van Nuys Airport in less than half an hour, and I pulled into the passenger loading and unloading zone in front of Terminal B. I waited, hazard lights flashing, as Bill, Mila, and Sasha walked past the terminal to the taxi stand. They looked like any other normal family, and I had a brief moment of wondering what might have been. Bill and Sasha put Mila into a taxi, a brand-new, bright-yellow Prius, almost the exact same shade as my Shelby. Yellow Cab had gone green.
They returned to my car, Bill up front, Sasha in back with the laptop. The taxi wove around the airport, eventually turning left onto Sherman Way. It beetled its fuel-efficient way toward the thicket of warehouses where Zarko had his headquarters.
“Body check, my friends,” I said. “Everybody remembering to breathe?”
Bill and Sasha grunted.
“Okay, then. Off we go.”
I fell in behind, and soon reached my previous surveillance spot in the alley close by. By now, the streets were largely deserted. I cut the engine. I’d given Bill my newer Barska Gladiators. Now I dug out my older, smaller binoculars and adjusted the lenses. High-tech surveillance was great, but sometimes you just wanted to see things with your own eyes.
“There they are,” Bill said.
I focused, and found the taxi pulling into the lot.
“That’s Zarko’s car,” I said after spotting the BMW.
We watched.
Sasha said, “What’s happening?”
“She’s ringing the bell,” Bill said. “Okay, now the door’s opening and she’s in. I can’t see who opened the door.”
“You getting anything?” I asked Sasha.
“Not yet. Okay, wait, now I am.”
I heard Mila’s low, muffled voice, and another lower response. “Can you increase the volume?”
Now they were audible enough to understand, if I understood Bosnian. Sasha gamely translated, struggling a little to keep up.
“Zarko says it’s good to see her. She says the same. Now he’s taking her into his office. He’s offering her tea. She says no.”
“Let me see,” I said. Sasha tipped the laptop my way. Mila’s button camera had picked up a murky figure, but only one.
“There’s not much light in there,” Sasha said.
Zarko says: “Do you have it?”
“Da. U torbi,” I heard.
“She says, ‘Yes, in my bag,’” Sasha translated. “He’s asking her to give it to him. Now she’s saying she needs his word. Needs him to promise that once she’s given him the disc, nothing will happen to her or to Sasha, I mean, me.”
Mila’s voice rose, and Zarko responded with a burst of angry words.
“Sranje!” Sasha said. “I mean, shit! She just said, ‘like happened to my father!’”
The voices calmed. “Okay,” Sasha said. “She’s pulled back from that.”
I watched the screen. Mila’s arm floated across, handing something to the blocky arm and body of Zarko.
“She just gave him the disc,” Sasha confirmed.
More discussion. “He wants to know if this is the only copy.”
“Da! Naravno!” I heard. Then something that sounded like “Glup!”
Sasha translated: “‘Yes, of course! I’m not stupid!’”
Zarko’s next words seemed conciliatory. “He said, ‘You should understand something. I’m not the one you need to fear, sister.’ Now he’s offering to drive her to the airport. She says the taxi’s nearby. That she already booked it to take her back.”
Strange thing to say, I thought. I’m not the one you need to fear.
Zarko switched to English, the words curt. “Then call taxi. Good-bye.” Chairs scraped. A door opened and closed. But nobody said another word.
I raised my binoculars again.
Mila walked outside, cell phone to her ear. Her tense whisper filled the car. “I am calling the taxi driver. He is not answering.”
The repetitive buzz of her unanswered call, transmitted through the laptop, rasped my already jangled nerves. Mila snapped the phone shut. “What should I do?”
“Shit!” Bill twisted in his seat. “God damn it!”
An SUV skidded to a stop and two men jumped out. Two men I knew. Ponytail pinned Mila’s arms from behind as Bozo sprinted into the building.
“Stop! What are you doing!?” She sounded more enraged than afraid.
“Ten, start the car!” Bill yelled, but I was way ahead of him. I pulled nose first out of the alley.
“What’s happening?”
&n
bsp; “Uncle Zarko’s outside again!”
Another burst of Bosnian over the wire. “He says, ‘Mila, what game are you playing? Do you want to die?’”
“She says, ‘What do you mean?’”
“He says his guys talked to the cab driver, and he told them two men put you into the cab. That one of them sounded like Sasha, and the other one, your boyfriend.” I heard policija, which needed no translation. Sasha’s head whipped around to me, his eyes wide.
“Go!” Bill said. “GO!”
I floored the Dodge and we shot out of the alley. We took the corner hard, tires squealing, and swerved onto Sherman Way.
My Wilson was in the right pocket of my windbreaker. I steered with one hand as I dug it out. Bill already had a firm grip on his Beretta. I could no longer hear any sound from the laptop. Either the connection was broken, or the hiss of adrenaline had hindered my ability to hear.
We were close. If I kept going, we’d be fully visible. I threw a look at Bill.
“Full frontal,” he said. “There’s no other choice.”
“Glove compartment,” I said to Bill. “Airlite.” Bill punched it open, grabbed the gun, and passed it over the seat to Sasha.
“Don’t shoot at anything that’s not right in front of you and trying to kill you,” Bill told Sasha, who was staring at his hand as if it held a dead spider.
“You’ll be fine, Son,” Bill said. For once, Sasha didn’t flinch at the term.
I floored the Dodge. It was small, but fearless. Zarko and his two men were waiting for us. Ponytail dropped to one knee, aiming a Smith & Wesson much like mine. Bozo’s wide-legged stance and bulky arms supported a very familiar assault rifle. He raised the sight to his right eye.
“Duck!” I screamed.
My front and back windshields exploded, showering us with kernels of glass.
“Hold on!”
I slammed on the brakes, tossing us hard against our seat belts. I flung open my door and took immediate cover behind its opened flank. Zarko was dragging Mila into the SUV and twisting her arm high behind her back.
“Fuckers!” Bill yelled from the other side of the car.
Another shot, a single one. The door kicked. My body compressed into a single, hot ball of rage. I’d just started to bond with this car.
I heard the slap of a fresh clip going into a magazine. More shots, this time from Bill’s Beretta, to my right.
Roll and shoot, roll and shoot. I rolled, academy-style, and came up on one knee, just as Bozo prepared to unleash a deadly rainstorm. I beat him to it, with a single, steady Wilson Combat Supergrade shot in the lower right shoulder, where bone and muscle meet. His rifle dropped as he grabbed at the blast site, howling with pain.
A second howl echoed, but from my right. Bill spun around, clutching his right arm. Before I could reciprocate, Ponytail jumped inside the SUV. It roared away.
Bill and I had run negative scenarios, but this degree of fuck-up surpassed even our ability to anticipate problems.
Sasha was helping Bill to his feet. Bill’s shirt was torn, blood dripping from the wound in a steady stream. I ripped open the sleeve. Not a mortal wound, but I could see muscle laid bare.
“We’ve got to get you to the ER,” I said.
“No. We have to find Mila! It’s not that bad!”
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
Sasha stood, pale and still. The Airlite dangled from one hand. I removed the weapon, cool to the touch and scentless. He hadn’t taken a single shot. I was glad for that.
“Sasha, help your father into the car! We have to get him to the hospital!”
Bozo lay moaning, his blood spreading beneath him on the asphalt. I called over to Bill, as he lowered into the car.
“Bill, cuffs!”
“Left back pocket,” he told Sasha. Sasha fished them out and tossed them to me.
I raced to my gunshot victim. His face was chalk-white, his pupils dilated and unseeing. He’d gone into shock. I kicked his assault rifle several yards away, and cuffed his wrists together, across his front. As much as I disliked the guy, I couldn’t see wrenching his arms behind him. Not with that jagged, ripped shoulder.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled quickly until I found Deputy Sergeant Gaines’s number. I got his voice mail.
“Deputy Sergeant Gaines,” I said. “I have something for you, regarding the Moorpark shooting!” I recited the address for Agvan Supply. “I’m pretty sure you’ll find your murder weapon, as well as Bozo, the clown who pulled the trigger.”
I got Bill to the ER at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in under 15 minutes, even with a wounded door that wouldn’t close properly and only the jagged outline of a front and back windshield.
I helped my friend inside, where the hospital’s police liaison awaited. I’d made Bill contact his bosses en route. He was on temporary leave, but still, he’d get the royal treatment, which would do less than nothing for his foul mood.
Nothing worse than being sidelined by a bullet wound when your girlfriend’s been kidnapped.
Ex-girlfriend.
I shuddered to think about the protocol and paperwork Bill now faced, as well as the irate chief on his way.
“Go!” Bill said, just inside the emergency room entrance. “Find those fuckers before it’s too late. And please, Ten, make sure Mila and Sasha come back alive. I couldn’t bear for something to happen to my son, or his mother. Go on! Get out of here.”
Yeah, but driving what?
Thank goodness for Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Sasha and I limped north on Buena Vista Drive at 15 miles an hour, jigged across San Fernando, and parked just up the road from their small Burbank office on Winona.
Twenty minutes later, we were buckled into a Chevy Tahoe, the closest thing to an armored truck they had in their lot.
I’d deal with the wounded Neon later.
Sasha was without words. My computer lay open on his lap, as silent and blank as his face. We’d completely lost the stream from Mila. I didn’t want to guess why.
“You okay?”
“What are we going to do?” he asked, his voice very young.
“We’re going to find your mother,” I said, with more firmness than I felt.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“That was the first time I’ve been in a gunfight. And, I feel different. Like something changed, deep down. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Maybe.”
I dropped into the arena of spacious listening. I needed to know, with absolute certainty, whether or not Sasha could continue. If he’d lost his center, his further involvement could torpedo any hope for a positive outcome.
“There’s this knot, down in my gut. I got really scared.” He shot me a quick look.
I nodded.
“But also, something else, a kind of, of stillness. My ears are ringing, but I’ve never felt more, like, clear inside.”
I exhaled with sharp relief. Work that requires deadly risk is not for most people. Those special few share an odd sense of quiet when under stress or attack. They also feel fear, of course—that wiring got installed in our bodies millions of years ago—but their primary response is stillness. Clarity: you need it to be able to face down, as well as survive, certain dangers. And Sasha had it.
I said, “Nothing I know clears the mind like getting shot at.”
“Yes,” Sasha said. “I feel that way. I feel right.”
You feel like your father.
I made up a quick blessing, on the spot: Long may this boy avoid bullets, and taste only the sweetness of survival.
I was glad to have an extra gun-hand, however inexperienced. The deck was heavily stacked against us.
We’d arrived back at Agvan. Apparently Gaines hadn’t gotten my message yet, which was a good thing. I pulled into the lot. Bozo was still down, but his pulse was nice and steady, and the tourniquet had stopped the bleeding. I grabbed a tire iron from the Tahoe. The office do
or didn’t budge, not even with a swift kick, so I used the edged part of the iron as a crowbar and snapped off the hinges, one by one.
With Sasha’s help, I shoved the door aside and stepped into a dark reception area, empty as a tomb. Sasha slipped in behind me.
I tried the switch, and fluorescent tube lights blinked on. They buzzed and spat, as if to scold us for breaking and entering. I did a quick scan. No filing cabinets. No laptops. No nothing. The place had been emptied, picked as clean as a carcass after the vultures finished their feasting.
Not good.
The distant siren sent us scampering back to the Tahoe.
I raced to the Taco Bell parking lot, and pulled over to call Mike. Seven P.M. He’d probably just woken up.
“Good morning,” he said, his voice all bright and shiny.
“Mike, we’re in trouble over here. Any luck with the Agvan website?”
He sobered up fast. “No. And, boss? It’s gotten even weirder. Now the entire NDRSNT directory is coming up as error pages, too. I ran some automated crawlers last night, to check if the blackout was web-wide, but the shutdown seems to be localized, thank God. In other words, just their users, and just with each other. I’d hate to think someone turned my fellow geek-entrepreneurs into involuntary spying machines. But either way, there’s no way to access anything having to do with NDRSNT right now, Agvan Supply included.”
“Well, keep trying anyway,” I said. I disconnected. I glanced over at the laptop screen. Also completely silent. The feed was dead. I just hoped Mila wasn’t dead, too.
I closed my eyes.
“What are you doing?” Panic was shredding the borders of Sasha’s voice.
I opened my eyes and turned to him. “I know this seems counterintuitive, but I need to switch gears here. Move from planning to receptive mind. I need to let go of expectations. To listen for a moment. It won’t take long, I promise.”
I closed my eyes again.
Inhale. Exhale. Allow.
Our technology has failed.
Inhale. Exhale. Allow.
When has this happened in the past?
The Fourth Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (A Tenzing Norbu Mystery series Book 4) Page 26