Wrecker: A John Crane Adventure

by Mark Parragh

  “It’s easier to hide a radio network than you might think,” said Sawyer. “The backbone is low-power point-to-point links. Hard to spot. They hide the equipment in remote areas, power it with solar panels. It’s totally off the grid. They need something like a cell tower for the last mile to the handsets, but even there you can trunk it across a bunch of different frequencies, hide your traffic in legitimate bands.”

  Damn! How cyberpunk is that? The street finds its own use for things.

  “And yeah, they do find them from time to time,” Sawyer said. “The army took down a three-hundred-foot antenna in Coahuila last year. But the equipment out in the field is cheap and easy to replace. They just find a new location to put in a new transmitter, rejigger the network topology a little. They’re back up in days.”

  “To be clear,” said Jessie, “this is very sophisticated stuff. Military grade. And cartel members tend not to be the guys who did real good in math in school.”

  “So they’re hunting down people with the technical skills they need, and just taking them,” said Josh. It made sense once you accepted that the cartels could really blanket all of Mexico in their own private, illicit telecom systems.

  “It’s been going on for at least seven years now,” said Sawyer. “An engineer here, an antenna construction crew there. Dozens of them. No ransom demand, no communication. They’re just gone. Not a one has ever been seen again.”

  “And you’re involved because …”

  Because they took one of his.

  He saw Sawyer’s fist clench. “Because eight months ago, they took my son.”

  Oh. Worse than you thought.

  Jessie filled the sudden silence. “Sawyer’s son, Martin, was an RF engineer for the company. He went missing on vacation in Cabo San Lucas. There’s been no contact, no ransom demand, nothing.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Josh. “What have you done?”

  “Started with a private detective,” said Sawyer. “He managed to trace Martin around Cabo for most of a week. His last day there, he rented an ATV and rode out into the desert. He never came back. A few days later, they found the ATV abandoned. Trail went cold at that point.”

  “That’s when Sawyer came to me,” said Jessie. “I put him in touch with some other resources. We’ve learned a lot about the networks and how they’re run. But not how they identified Martin as someone they wanted, or where he’s being held.”

  “Got people down there right now taking the whole damn country apart a brick at a time,” said Sawyer. “I’ve got a team ready to move in, if we can just tell them where to go.”

  “I can’t tell you where he is,” said Josh, “but I think it’s clear now how they found him.”

  “This fellow your man rescued,” said Sawyer as he rose to refill his whiskey glass, “you say he actually interviewed for this?”

  “He needed a job,” said Josh. “The man doing the headhunting told him he was recruiting for Telcel.”

  “And he’s American. White guy? That was what was odd about them taking Martin. Victims are usually Mexican nationals. Didn’t think they’d want the attention of grabbing an American.”

  “He’s someone who could move in the right circles to find Americans to target.”

  “Sure would like to talk to him,” said Sawyer. “Just for a few minutes.”

  There’s an undercurrent to this guy. Try not to get on his bad side.

  “You’re not the only one. But we’ve lost him, for now at least. And what you really want is to find the other end of the chain.”

  “You’ve got an idea how to do that?”

  They need engineers because they don’t have the skills themselves. Which means they don’t understand what those engineers are actually doing.

  “If something goes wrong with a piece of hardware,” Josh mused, “they’d take it back to wherever they’re keeping their captive engineers, right? That’s what they’re for. And once they’d fixed that piece of hardware, it would go back out into the field again. Something goes in, something comes back out. That’s a communications channel.”

  Yeah, this could work.

  “I think we can help each other, Mr. Cottrell.”

  Sawyer thought for a moment and then glanced over at Jessie.

  She nodded. “I’ll vouch for his man—Crane. He’s good.”

  Josh could see Sawyer’s mind was made up. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. If you can help us locate them, Jessie can fly my people in. They’ll bust Martin out, and anyone else they find. Jessie flies them all back out across the border.”

  Sawyer stood and offered Josh his hand. Josh stood as well, and they shook.

  “Welcome to the team, Mr. Sulenski,” Sawyer said. “Glad to have you aboard.”

  “I thought you two would get along,” said Jessie. “Now let’s hear a little more about this idea of yours.”

  CHAPTER 18

  It was a rare cloudy afternoon in Bahia Tortugas. The sky was a leaden gray, and the breeze off the bay was choppy and relatively cool. It looked like the kind of sky that should produce a thunderstorm, but so far it hadn’t. Crane sat on the patio at the La Playa with his bag at his feet, watching the Emma under sail, heading out toward the open sea. Crane had gotten Captain Burch alone and told him just enough about what was going on to convince him that it was wise to take his boat and his crew down to Cabo San Lucas for a while for a change of scenery.

  Crane couldn’t be certain that they’d be in danger if they stayed, but he was expecting some kind of response from Tate and the cartel, and he had been staying with the foundation on their boat. It was best if they were out of the way.

  Hector the bartender brought Crane his fish tacos and a Pacifico. “Hey,” he said. “You’re staying with those kids on the catamaran, right? They’re leaving without you, man!”

  “Looks that way,” said Crane. “Guess I’ll have to move ashore. Where’s a good place to stay around here?”

  “Straight up the road from the pier,” said Hector. “Motel Maria. My cousin will set you up. Tell him I said to take care of you.”

  Crane thanked him and turned to his lunch. The fish was fresh from the bay that morning, and the tacos were excellent, with lime, jalapeño, a bit of ancho chili powder. Crane decided he’d found his hangout in Bahia Tortugas.

  After lunch, Crane walked up Calle Independencia from the pier until he found Motel Maria. It was a square compound of pale green walls and white trim at the doors and windows. A low cinder-block wall closed off most of the street frontage to create a central courtyard surrounded by a dozen or so rooms.

  Hector’s cousin showed him around. The rooms were small, not air conditioned, and sparsely furnished. But they were clean. Crane paid for a week in advance, dropped his bags, and grabbed a quick shower.

  Then he decided it was time to get to work.

  That morning, Crane had walked over to the former bar where Chloe had ambushed Tate. He’d let himself in and explored in hopes of finding something useful, but it looked as though Tate had abandoned the place. The ground floor was nothing but dusty old scaffolding to begin with. It looked like nobody had done anything there for years but walk through to get to the stairs. The two upstairs rooms were clean but empty. Crane guessed Tate had told Arturo and Juan Manuel to clean the place out in a hurry. There was no sign of the Escalade around back.

  So it had been a fairly unproductive morning. If he wanted better results from the afternoon, Crane decided, what he needed was some local expertise. He locked his room and walked back down to the pier. As expected, he found Luis hanging around in his Versa, waiting for customers. Luis saw him coming and popped his seat back up to driving position.

  “Buenas tardes, Mr. Crane!” he said. “Going somewhere today?”

  Crane squatted down beside the driver’s door and slipped Luis a fifty. “Could be, Luis. You don’t miss much around here.”

  Luis accepted the compliment with a smile and a tilt of his head. The fifty vanished into his sh
irt pocket.

  “Boz has a big black Escalade he likes to roll around town in when he’s here. You know it?”

  “Sure. Everyone knows it. He makes sure of that, the jackass.”

  “You know where he keeps it these days? I checked his place, but it’s not there.”

  Luis laughed. “You up to no good, eh?” He cocked his head toward the passenger seat. “Get in.”

  Crane walked around and got in, and Luis drove off with a grinding shift of the Versa’s overworked gearbox. They drove around the western edge of town to a street that had only a few scattered houses, and those only on the right side.

  A few hundred yards up, Crane spotted a structure on the left side of the street. Beyond it was nothing but scrub and the occasional cactus.

  “That’s it up there,” said Luis. “What do you want to do?”

  “Drive by slow.”

  As they rolled by, Crane checked the backyards across the street. He didn’t see anybody outside. Closed blinds covered the windows. If he didn’t raise too much of a disturbance, he doubted anyone would realize he was there.

  The garage itself was a low-slung cinder-block building. It had three rusting metal bay doors, the last one hanging open. Crane noted there were no power lines or other cables running to it. That meant no lights, and also no alarms unless they were battery powered. He didn’t see any problems.

  Crane let Luis get a hundred yards or so past the garage, and then said, “Okay, pull over.”

  Luis did, and Crane got out. “I’ll be back,” he said. “Five minutes tops.”

  Then he walked calmly back toward the garage. Nobody else was on the street. He passed the fenced backyards on his left now. To his right were only the garage and sandy hills dotted with Joshua trees and scrub brush.

  When he reached the garage, he circled it. There was nothing behind the building but a cache of empty beer bottles and cigarette butts. There were no doors, but each bay had a window to let in some light. The third window was barred.

  When he had circled the building, he checked the open bay. The metal door hung half off its hinges, and there was nothing inside but a skinny stray dog that lay on the cool cement floor, watching Crane warily.

  The middle bay was locked with an ancient, rusted padlock and chain. But the third bay had a long metal bar, hammered flat at both ends and locked with two new heavy-duty disc locks. It wasn’t hard to guess which bay held Tate’s Cadillac.

  He glanced around again and confirmed that no one was watching. He noted a backyard tool shed across the street that would be the perfect place to set up a remote surveillance camera if he had one. He mentally added it to the list of things to request from Josh. Then he examined the door one last time for signs of alarms or other security.

  When he was satisfied, he took out his picks and opened the two locks. He lowered the heavy metal bar to the ground and opened the doors just enough to slip through.

  The Escalade was inside. The windshield still showed the cracks and spider-webbing from the two rounds he’d put into it, and Chloe’s clip-worth of bullet impacts was still visible on the passenger side. Ballistic glass replacement windows would have to be shipped in, probably with a technician qualified to actually replace them. He made another mental note to keep his eyes open for that.

  Apart from the Escalade itself, the garage was empty except for a couple empty oil cans in one corner and a plastic funnel. Crane turned his attention to the SUV itself. He jotted down the license number and VIN, and then tested the driver’s door and found it unlocked. He climbed in and gave the SUV a methodical search. There was no registration or insurance information in the glove compartment—just the Cadillac-issued owner’s manual. Given that an apparently powerful cartel was involved, one with the ability to make Chief Moreno stay well clear of Tate, he found himself wondering if the vehicle was registered at all.

  He climbed into the back and felt under the seats. There, at last, he found something. A business card with something written on the back in a thick pencil. “Carne asada torta, elote, dos Tecates. FRIO!”

  The front said the card belonged to a William Kim of a law firm called Cancio, Hopkins, and Metcalfe in Los Angeles. “High net worth estate planning.” Crane pocketed it and felt around for something else, but the card appeared to be all he was going to get.

  He got out, closed the door, and shook his head. The card was probably nothing. After all, Tate had jotted down his lunch order on it—a steak sandwich, spiced corn, and two cold beers—and then lost it under the seat of his SUV. But Josh would look into it and make sure. Otherwise, this had been a waste of time. If he had the right gear, he could have at least put a tracer on the Escalade. But that would have to wait. He closed the garage door, replaced the metal bar, and walked back to Luis.

  Luis drove him back to the motel. On the way, they passed the police station, and Crane noted a black Chevy Suburban parked outside. It was obviously not local. It was new and gleaming. It had to have driven in from Vizcaino and then had the dust of the long, mostly unpaved road washed off once it got here.

  “Know who that is?” Crane asked.

  “No,” said Luis. “Nobody local. I seen it around a couple times today, but not before.”

  “Drop me back at the pier,” said Crane.

  “I can take you to the motel, no problem.”

  “No, the pier.”

  Crane wandered the beach after Luis dropped him off. He checked the MHS pistol he’d taken from Orly Wilde and made sure it was ready at the small of his back. Before too long, he spotted the black Suburban driving slowly up the waterfront toward him.

  Crane walked calmly toward a large rock formation above the high tide line and leaned against it. The Suburban parked, and a man got out and walked toward him. He was short but slim and taut, with dark hair slicked back. He wore black pants over cowboy boots of some kind of exotic leather, an intricate piteado belt, and a white silk shirt. Crane noted that he kept his hands away from his sides as he walked.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “are you Mr. Crane? Mr. John Crane?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Enrique Salinas,” the man said, stopping perhaps twenty feet away. “I’m an insurance investigator. Do you have a moment to talk?”

  “Why not?” said Crane. He was under no illusions that Salinas was an insurance investigator.

  “Mr. Bradley Zahn is a customer of my company. We provided full value hull coverage for his yacht, the Gypsy.”

  “I see,” said Crane. “Guess that wasn’t your best deal in retrospect.”

  The man shrugged. “That’s what insurance is for. We just want to know what happened. Do you know what happened to the Gypsy?”

  “Just what I hear around town,” said Crane. “And of course, I saw the fire. Everyone saw that.”

  “I’ve been asking people what they saw all day. Some say you were aboard the Gypsy.”

  “They haven’t said anything to the police,” said Crane.

  The man who called himself Salinas smiled. It was cold and mirthless. “People in Mexico don’t like to talk to the police. Nothing good ever comes of it. You do know the owner, Mr. Zahn. I hear you and he had some difficulties.”

  “He’s not the easiest man to get along with,” said Crane. “I don’t imagine that’s news to your company.”

  “But do you have some specific quarrel with him?”

  Crane smiled. It sounded as though the cartel was earnestly trying to understand what kind of trouble Tate had gotten them into.

  “As I said, he’s a man who makes enemies easily. I’m sure his business is worth something to your company. But a man who lives the way he does is going to keep having incidents and filing claims. I guess you have to be the ones to decide when the risks outweigh the premiums he pays. You’re the insurance experts.”

  The man was silent for a long moment. Something in his eyes reminded Crane of a snake’s.

  “The people in town say you are a detective,”
he said at last. “You came here looking for the missing girl who, sadly, was found dead.”

  Crane didn’t say anything.

  “If that’s true, then your case is closed, Mr. Crane. Why are you still here?”

  Crane shrugged. “It’s a nice town.”

  The man glanced up at the dusty, unpaved streets and ramshackle buildings. He laughed.

  “Buenas noches, Mr. Crane,” he said. Then he turned and walked back toward his Suburban.

  Crane watched him go, watched the Suburban do a three-point turn and head away. Still your move, he thought. Whatever the cartel was going to do, though, he gathered they would be getting around to it soon.

  CHAPTER 19

  Marin County, California

  Josh and Tim rented a car at SFO, on the grounds that it would be harder to trace an airport rental, and Josh drove them north on the Pacific Coast Highway. It was foggy along the coast, the marine layer pushing in from the sea. Josh found it frustrating that he could look out to his right and see the thick cloud layer abruptly stop a half mile or so inland and give way to pure blue sky.

  It’s a beautiful day over on the 101.

  Yeah, but you’re going to be glad that fog’s there when you get where you’re going.

  They were headed back to the hospital at Fallon Landing, though their approach would be quite different this time. In the trunk of the car was a police model automatic license plate reader with a high-resolution camera and a cellular radio, all powered by a high-endurance battery originally developed for Navy sonobuoys. It was the sort of thing Crane would have asked for in one of his ridiculous shopping lists. Josh felt like James Bond just having it in the trunk.

  Possession of the license plate reader by civilians was already legally iffy. But there was no doubt about the plan to infiltrate the Fallon Landing grounds and install the system in a tree overlooking the approach road so it could log traffic coming and going from the hospital.

  No, that’s just illegal as hell. Crane never gets arrested because he’s Crane. That doesn’t apply to you.