Gone

by James Patterson

  It was a sickening arrangement, I thought as I watched Kaukonen leave. The young woman who had been killed was only twenty-eight. But with Perrine out there trying to turn Southern California into the Vietnam War Part Two, it was easy to see that these were desperate times that called for some pretty desperate measures.

  After the ADA left, we went back into Scricca’s cell and got his statement. The gist of it was that a little after noon, he had spotted Perrine in Marina del Rey, on a deep-sea fishing boat called Aces and Eights owned by a man named Thomas Scanlon. Scanlon was a sketchy character, he said, and it was an almost open joke among the fishermen down at the marina that he was involved with drug running.

  Scricca’s story seemed to pan out further when we went back up to our HQ at Olympic Station and Emily put Scanlon into some of the Big Brother federal databases she was privy to.

  Scanlon was, in fact, a sketchy character. In 1995, he had gotten booted from the Navy SEALs for a hot drug test. Soon after, Mr. Scanlon’s passport started appearing in some pretty strange places: South America, the Netherlands, Central Africa, the Middle East. It was a lot of world travel for a man who didn’t seem to have any visible means of support.

  “This guy was in Qatar for a year and a half,” Parker said over the diner takeout piled on our desks. “When was the last time you went to Qatar, Bennett?”

  “Went to Qatar?” I said, cracking the lid of my coffee. “I can’t even play one.”

  “Then Scanlon just disappears off the grid for five years, and pow! Out of the blue suddenly pops up in SoCal as a deep-sea fisherman?” Parker said. “How’s that work?”

  “You’re right. Overall, this guy seems pretty fishy,” I said.

  Agent Parker tossed a sweet potato fry at me, which I deftly caught without spilling my joe. I took a bite and then, remembering it was a vegetable, promptly chucked it into the wastepaper basket.

  “So what now?” I said.

  “Now we call the bosses in to see how quickly they can spin our gold into straw,” Emily said.

  “Ouch,” I said with a smile as Emily started texting people. “That sounds like something a burnt-out, jaded NYPD detective would say after a bottle of twelve-year-old Irish wine.”

  “You’re a bad influence on people, Bennett,” Emily said, smiling broadly without looking up. “You should seriously think about talking to somebody about it.”

  All the bells and whistles started going off after Emily and I sent the info up both the civilian and military chains of command. Wiretap subpoenas for all Scanlon’s phones were immediately put into motion, as well as round-the-clock surveillance for Scanlon’s boat and his house in Brentwood. The head FBI honcho working with the CIA and military folks up at the air base seemed especially excited, as the Tijuana tip they’d been following had dug a hole as dry as the Mexican desert.

  A massive task force meeting was called for eight the next morning. It would be teleconferenced with the military folks at the air base. In the meantime, Emily’s immediate boss, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s LA office, Evaline Echevarria, ordered us to Scanlon’s house for the first shift of surveillance.

  Though we’d been running pretty hard since the a.m., we both leaped at the assignment. I know I was pretty jazzed. After being out of commission, out in the sticks, I had a deep store of untapped adrenaline to run on.

  As we drove over to the FBI HQ to get a better surveillance vehicle, it was my turn to start laughing.

  “That’s a real personal gigglefest you’re having over there, Mike,” Emily said. “You losing it on me already? If you want, I could swing you back to Metro State Hospital for an eval. I noticed the rubber room next to Scricca was free.”

  “Not yet,” I said, finally getting myself under control. “It’s just that I pictured Bassman’s face when he heard the news about our little gold strike. That obnoxious bozo is going to be so freaking pissed.”

  CHAPTER 49

  SCANLON’S HOUSE WAS IN Brentwood, on Chaparal Street, a quiet, high-hedged lane behind an all-girls private school. It was an old, tasteful brick Tudor house hidden behind a lot of shrubbery, with a wrought iron gate across its driveway.

  There weren’t too many parked cars on the secluded street, and, even with the silver Mercedes crossover we were using for an unmarked, it definitely wasn’t the best setup for surveillance.

  “Nice crib for a chum chopper,” I said from where we parked, a couple of houses down.

  Parker nodded. “That house easily goes for a million, maybe a million and a half.”

  There was a security light on above the garage when we got there. We scanned the windows with binoculars, but there was nothing. No movement anywhere, even after another half an hour. There was no way to tell if Scanlon was home.

  Parker fixed that, and quick. She made a phone call, and about twenty minutes later, a plain, white panel van pulled onto Chaparal. It passed us without acknowledgment and then slowed to a brief stop in front of Scanlon’s house before pulling away.

  Parker’s phone dinged a couple of minutes later.

  “It’s clean,” came a voice from the speaker, “but there’s a dog, Parker. A big son of a bitch. Good luck.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Parker said, hanging up.

  “Infrared?” I said.

  “Close,” Parker said. “That was the LA office’s portable X-ray van. We use it at the ports sometimes, and on presidential visits. Two techs in the back of it work equipment that can see right through just about anything.”

  “Like a TSA team on wheels? I take it that’s a pretty much all-male detail. Tell me, Parker. Can federal contractors apply for the job, and what’s the waiting list like?”

  Parker raised one of her auburn eyebrows.

  “You’d be surprised how many female agents are in the unit, Bennett.”

  I blinked at her.

  “Well, in that case, remind me to head to the supermarket before we go back to the hotel. I need to make a supply of tinfoil boxers for my stay here in LA.”

  Though Parker tried to hide it, I noticed she actually laughed a little at that one. My war of attrition was taking its toll. As usual, I was wearing her down with my charm.

  “Now, if Scanlon isn’t home trying not to let the bed-bugs bite at this time of night, where do you think he is, Mike?”

  “That’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question, isn’t it?” I said. “If I were an international fugitive sneaking into an unfriendly country, I’d probably want to keep everyone who knew about it on a tight leash. At least until I left. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on it that Scanlon is chilling with the big boss for the duration of his trip.”

  “Which means, if we find Scanlon, we find Perrine,” she said.

  “We can only hope and pray,” I said.

  CHAPTER 50

  AFTER IT WAS DETERMINED that Scanlon wasn’t home, phase two of the operation was put into play.

  Parker got on the horn again, and then, twenty minutes later, a beat-up Dodge Ram pickup with a camper bed pulled up behind us.

  “More friends of yours, Parker?” I said. “What does this truck do? Test your cholesterol?”

  As she shushed me, I noticed that the two men who got out of it were dressed head to toe in black. I also noticed that the cabin light in the pickup failed to go on when the men opened the doors.

  Parker zipped down her window as they approached. One of the agents was stocky and older, with a dark mustache. The other one was blond and looked like he’d just started shaving. I thought they looked like a father-and-son team of American ninjas.

  “Which is it?” Junior wanted to know.

  “The one with the gate,” Parker told him. “There’s a dog, apparently.”

  “No problem,” said Senior, patting the bag he was holding with an evil grin. “We love puppies.”

  Junior kept his eyes on the house as he put a chaw of chewing tobacco between his cheek and gum. There was a light jingle of metal o
n metal when he tightened the knapsack on his back. He checked his watch.

  “We’ll call you in … seven minutes?” he said, cocking his head at his partner.

  “Six,” the older partner said with a nod before they walked off.

  “The wheels of justice are moving so much faster than I remember. This must be some sort of land-speed record for a search warrant,” I said, watching the FBI agents scale the driveway gate like squirrels.

  Parker ignored me. I’d only said it to tease her. This was an illegal, unauthorized black-bag job if there ever was one.

  One I thoroughly approved of, actually. Following the letter of the law when Perrine was out there wiping out families and cops would be like obeying the traffic laws while driving a dying relative to the emergency room. In a word, stupid.

  We needed information, the faster the better. We needed to be on Scanlon, on his phone, neck deep in his life, before he had the slightest inkling of what was what. My eyes were locked firmly on the prize, namely, a world without Manuel Perrine. I’d cut more corners than a miter saw to take out the son of a bitch who was still out there on the loose, trying to kill my family.

  It was actually only five minutes from when the FBI Watergate plumber guys hopped the fence until it slowly started opening. The older agent opened the door formally, like a butler, as we came up the drive.

  “Where’s Fido?” Parker asked.

  “Out like a light. After we picked the lock and tossed him a treat, he got real sleepy all of a sudden. Funny, huh?”

  CHAPTER 51

  PARKER HANDED ME SOME gloves and night-vision goggles from a bag of goodies she had brought with her, and we proceeded to toss the house. We were careful not to disturb anything. Not just because we didn’t want Scanlon to know, but because there were guns everywhere. A Taurus .380 in the bathroom cabinet, a .45 M1911 under the sink in the kitchen. A locked-and-loaded, fully automatic MAC-10 was taped to the underside of the night table in the master bedroom.

  “Mr. Scanlon seems like a fairly cautious individual,” I whispered as I showed it to Agent Parker.

  The treasure trove we found was in the closet of a bedroom that Scanlon used for an office.

  On top of a case of printer paper, we found a dozen boxes of portable disposable cell phones. Half of them were empty.

  The phones were the unregistered kind that narcotics dealers liked to use and throw away. What got our blood pumping was that the boxes with the missing phones still had the serial numbers on them. Our techs could contact the company, and we could put a trace out on every single one of them. If Scanlon had one in his pocket, we could find him, even if it was off.

  “Please let this work,” Parker said as she snapped picture after picture of the boxes.

  We spotted some guy crossing the street toward the house just as we were about to go out.

  “Is it Scanlon?” Parker asked.

  I quickly checked the passport photograph we had. The guy coming toward the gate looked young and was too dark and thin to resemble the blond, bearlike Scanlon.

  We fished out our Glocks as the guy punched a code into the keypad beside the gate. It was evident that the guy was in his early twenties as he came through the buzzing gate and up the driveway. He was wearing white iPod earbuds.

  “Whoever this guy is, he doesn’t seem to have a care in the world,” I whispered.

  We stepped back as the guy keyed open the door.

  As he closed the door behind him, I put my Glock to his brain stem. He bolted forward like he’d been Tasered and head-butted the door. A hiss of N-word-laced rap drivel cut the silence as I pulled out his earbuds for him.

  “Don’t move,” I said.

  “What is this? Who the hell are you?” the young man said.

  “Who the hell are we?” I shot back, full of attitude. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Donny Pearson, from up the street. Tommy just called and said he’d be out of town for a few days and asked if I’d feed Christobel, man.”

  Parker took out his wallet and nodded. I showed the guy my badge and holstered the gun.

  “I got nothing to do with anything illegal. I swear to God!” Pearson said.

  “Just listen to me, Mr. Pearson,” I said. “Did he call you on your cell or your house phone?”

  “My cell,” he said, taking out his iPhone.

  Parker took it and quickly compared the phone number Scanlon had phoned in on with the ones we’d found in the closet. Then she gave me a palm-stinging high five.

  “Bingo was his name-o,” she said.

  CHAPTER 52

  WE WERE HOMING IN on Perrine now. We could feel it.

  On the way back to the hotel, I drove while Emily disseminated the intel to just about every card in the multi-jurisdictional Rolodex. The LAPD phone people got a call, as did the FBI, CIA, NSA, and even Gray Fox, the army Special Ops communication specialists.

  Back in my hotel room, I stripped, sleepwalked through a hot shower, and proceeded to crash like the Hindenburg. I was facedown, still stone-dead asleep in the hotel bathrobe, when my phone rang ten hours later.

  As it trilled, I blinked out the window at the bright sky behind a palm tree. Was it morning? Afternoon? I couldn’t figure it out. No wonder they call this place La-La Land, I thought, finally answering my phone.

  “The goose just laid a four-hundred-troy-ounce gold bar,” Parker said excitedly. “They just got the signal on Scanlon’s phone. He’s in Orange County.”

  Parker clued me in as we raced south down the Pacific Coast Highway.

  The signal on Scanlon’s phone was coming from Newport Coast, a ridiculously affluent town an hour south of LA. The Gray Fox army com unit had done a flyby, and the house where they had triangulated Scanlon’s phone was in a development of ten-thousand-square-foot-plus houses off Newport Coast Drive, not too far from the world-renowned Pelican Hill Golf Club.

  As Parker drove, I flipped through an old Realtor.com file the FBI had dug up on the massive mission-style mansion. I read in the report how the premier property had been owned by an energy-company billionaire but had recently been put up for rent due to ongoing divorce proceedings.

  “Huge pool,” I said, nodding. “Ocean view, check and double check. It also says the interior decor was imported from an eighteenth-century château in Monpazier, in the south of France. This is feeling righter and righter, Ms. Parker. This seems to fit Perrine’s billionaire boulevardier tastes to a capital tee.”

  Our rallying point was behind a Trader Joe’s off the Pacific Coast Highway, three miles south of the target. The assemblage of law enforcement officials that came together over the next hour was nothing short of dumb-founding. There was a command bus on site when we got there, and for the next hour, a nonstop wagon train of unmarked cop and federal-agent cars pulled into the lot. And this was just the civilian staging area.

  A series of white vans brought in the FBI’s hostage rescue team. Watching them disembark, I noticed that there were two men with them who weren’t wearing FBI fatigues. They stood together, apart and aloof, big, fit-looking men with shaved heads and beards, dark sunglasses on under their drab olive ball caps.

  I didn’t need Parker’s help to figure out that they were military, probably Delta Force. They were likely coordinating radio signals and whatnot between the civilian and military forces. Parker had already told me that the military was gathering somewhere else to coordinate an air assault.

  As the invasion force mounted, Emily and I touched base with the other task force members. At a card table stacked with ammo, LA-office FBI agents Bob Milton and Joe Rothkopf were busy handing out vests and requisitioning M4 automatic rifles. Despite the obvious building pressure, the young agents were fairly unflappable. Serene, laid-back, California cool. They were acting as if they were waiting for a surfing competition to start down on the beach, on the other side of the PCH, instead of World War III.

  I spotted Detective Bassman, on the other hand, pacing around the p
arking lot like an expectant first-time father. He was completely keyed up. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with Emily and me, let alone talk to us. I could just about read the big man’s mind as he bounced around in a state of semi-shock. He’d had his hands on perhaps the greatest rocket boost his career would ever know, and he’d gone and handed it away to a Feeb and a bum from the NYPD.

  If I had any last qualms about how serious the authorities were in dealing with the Perrine problem, they were fully put to rest when I saw what swung into the parking lot just after dark.

  On the back of a flatbed truck came none other than a twenty-ton-plus Bradley Fighting Vehicle. I stood there, gaping at the caterpillar-treaded troop-carrying tank, at the 25 mm gun mounted to the front of it.

  “Well, well,” said Agent Rothkopf as he polished the lens of a nightscope beside me. “I don’t believe we’ll be getting outgunned on this one.”

  “This is impressive,” I said, getting a little nervous at all the commotion. “I mean, we don’t even know if Perrine’s here.”

  “Better to have some backup if he is,” Rothkopf said.

  “Perrine wanted a war,” Emily said. “Time to see how much he can handle.”

  CHAPTER 53

  PLANS WERE MADE AS the clock ticked and it got darker.

  The armed-to-the-gills LA-office SWAT teams, along with Hostage Rescue, were geared for a full frontal assault, while we task force members were assigned slightly safer, perimeter positions in case Perrine tried to mosey out the back door.

  At a little after eleven, Parks Department personnel were inserted into Crystal Cove State Park, a little south of the development. We had to hike a mile down a dark horse trail, alongside scrub willow and oak, using night vision. Though it was pretty temperate, with all the gear on and my rifle, I was sweating like a pig in about a minute and a half. Parker looked as fresh as a daisy.