by John Lansing
* * *
The yellow sun dropped below the horizon, leaving a darkening blue sky as Jack paddled his inflatable Avalon away from his boat. He had moored it around the bend of the promontory, away from prying eyes. The ocean was glassy, the air clean after last night’s rain. He tied off on the neighbor’s dock and felt his blood pressure rise at the sight across the way. Malic’s cigarette boat was docked, and bright security lights surrounded the compound.
Jack was dressed entirely in black with black running shoes and a black watch cap. He checked the time and started up the stairs to the top of the neighboring property.
The seven-foot tall, locked, metal gate and security fence, both topped with razor-sharp spears, had been built five feet below the cliff’s edge so as not to tarnish the view from the estate above. The left side of the rusted gate had been anchored securely into the shear cliff face. The fence to the right, welded at a forty-five-degree angle, jutted out eight feet over empty space and the rocky shoreline below. A convincing deterrent to unwanted visitors.
Jack threw a canvas bag with his equipment over the gate and made his move. He clambered hand-over-hand across the fence’s uppermost crossbeam. His legs dangled precariously over thin air and the rocks fifty feet below. Jack gripped the base of the metal spear at the end of the fence, reached around the outer edge slick with condensation, grabbed hold, and carefully made his way back. When the fence met the gate he pulled himself up and stepped safely onto the stairs.
Jack grabbed his bag, bound up the last few steps and squat-ran along the cliff’s edge to Malic’s compound wall, where he caught his breath and waited in shadow for full darkness to descend. A crescent moon was on the rise, merely a slash in the night sky.
Kayla’s text had been cryptic. I have key, was all she shared—besides where they’d meet.
He texted Deak Montrose, the Coast Guard captain, alerting him to the coordinates of Malic’s cigarette boat, and put his phone on vibrate.
Jack cupped his hand over the Bluetooth device in his ear, his eyes narrowing as Cruz reported a stretch limo traveling toward the compound gate at a slow rate of speed.
Malic had been spotted driving alone in his Town Car toward the city an hour earlier, and Jack wasn’t happy to hear about surprise visitors.
But he was going in regardless. Tonight was the night. If Malic was being forced to clean house, sitting in front of a thousand witnesses was the perfect time to do it, Jack thought. No, Jack knew. He felt it in his bones.
* * *
The black stretch limousine pulled to a smooth stop in front of the massive steel gates protecting Malic’s compound.
The sheik had sent three of his men to do the job of one. A not-too-subtle show of force if his old friend decided to renege on their deal. And a reminder that his reach was vast.
The uniformed guard in the gatehouse was gazing at the monitor that had multiple views of the property, minus the main house. Kayla had demanded her family’s privacy from the security team, and Malic had reluctantly acquiesced. The Iraqi gang member tapped one particular square, and the image of the limo idling at the front entrance enlarged to fill the entire screen.
The guard signaled to another member of his security team, who slid out a side door to check out the occupants of the stretch. Then he banged on the gate, which swung open, and trotted in behind the car as the gates closed securely behind.
Hassan, having been notified of the men’s arrival by security, stepped out of the pool house with the metal suitcase in hand, locking the door behind him. He knew how upset Malic was, losing a prized possession, but Hassan had more on his mind than a rich man’s emotional attachment. He had to kill his prisoner.
Hassan hoped Malic was serious about the bonus. After losing the shipment of drugs and now the painting, he wasn’t sure where any surplus would come from. His wife had been badgering him about a new car. It would be good to shut her up, he thought as he walked past the pool toward the front gate. He never sensed Kayla standing at the kitchen sink, tracking his movements.
* * *
Malic al-Yasiri stood in a tight knot gathered next to Philippe Vargas, his attention on the mayor, who was holding court in the front of the Catalina Ballroom on the third floor of the Bonaventure Hotel. The cardinal, in his red finery, nodded in appreciation at something of import the mayor shared, and then the men broke their huddle and made their way to the head table.
Raul was already seated. But not at the head table with the mayor. He had been placed with McCarthy and Associates, the group recently hired to run Vargas’s leasing campaign. One of his eyes was swollen and ringed in a purple-green. His damaged hand was completely wrapped in gauze. The other held a drink.
Philippe Vargas walked past his son’s table as if he were invisible and took his seat next to the man of the cloth, forcing Malic to accept the chair on the end.
Malic glanced down at his cell phone, which he had put on vibrate, but he spied no text messages. Therefore no bad news. It did little to assuage his mood. His future was supported by a house of cards, and he was overleveraged. He thought about the sheik’s analogy of pulling a single thread out of a rug and being left standing on a dusty floor. In an uncharacteristic moment of weakness, he prayed that losing the ten-million-dollar Matisse wasn’t the beginning of his end.
Malic chastised himself for harboring negative thoughts and then waved off a waiter’s offer of wine. He took in the room, filled with the wealthy, powerful, and politically connected, and reminded himself that he belonged. Glancing at the members of the media in the back of the room, Malic steeled himself for the accolades to come and his time at the microphone.
The lights dimmed. The mayor stepped up to the spot-lit dais, and the room went silent.
45
The bright lights on the peninsula blinked once and then snapped off, blanketing the three massive estates and four square miles of Orange County in total darkness.
Jack leaped over the compound wall, night-vision goggles in place, and ran to the edge of the main house, slipping inside the French doors, which had been left purposely unlocked.
Kayla startled at the sight of Jack in the night-vision goggles but handed off the two keys and pointed across the way.
“These open the doors to the pool house.”
“Is she there?” Jack asked.
Kayla looked fragile, ready to crumble.
“Kayla?” Jack said, wanting to keep her on point.
She heard her daughter cry out in the other room. Jack watched Kayla steel herself and then nod a tight yes.
“There is a button on the bookshelves on the back wall, second row from the top on the side of the wooden panel,” she said. “Oh, and I saw Hassan, Malik’s driver, walk toward the guard house.”
“Do you have a safe room?”
“Yes.”
“Run. Take your daughter and the nanny and lock yourselves in until this is over.”
Thoroughly frightened, Kayla hurried through the darkness toward Saarah’s frightened cries.
Jack slipped out of the house, checked that all was clear, and ran across the lawn past the garden and pool toward the pool house.
He inserted the larger, more ornate of the two keys. Wrong one. Jack could hear men shouting now. On the far side of the house a headlight blinked on. He tried the second key, and the door unlocked. He fastened it behind him just as the screen of the desktop computer blinked on. Powered by a backup generator, sixteen security cameras came to life. He could see the face of the Iraqi in the guardhouse looking frantic and shouting silent orders to someone off camera. Jack slapped the magnetic negative pulse disrupter onto the back of the computer, and the screen blinked and then thankfully went dark.
The pitch-black room was an eerie green through his night-vision goggles as Jack walked over to the bookcases and ran his hands along the mahogany shelves, disrupting l
eather-bound books until he found and depressed the hidden button. The secret door hinged open a crack, and as Jack pulled it wider to step through, he sensed movement behind him.
The door to the pool house exploded off its hinges.
Jack dove into the tunnel as Hassan filled the doorway, holding an AK-47 at his waist. He sprayed the dark room with high-powered rounds, splintering mahogany wood and first editions. He missed Jack Bertolino by a razor’s edge.
* * *
The sheik’s limousine sat idling, headlights on.
It took a gun to the head to force Malic’s guard to manually open the gate and let the sheik’s men escape with the painting.
The stretch limo made a wide turn in the circular driveway, smashing into the rear of a Maserati, sending it spinning off to the side, clearing the way. The sheik’s gunman jumped into the back of the limo on the run.
The long car powered out onto the street—and was instantly T-boned by a Lincoln Town Car. Glass exploded, rubber squealed, and the limo stalled, blocking the entrance to the property and prohibiting the gates from swinging shut.
Two of the shaken Iraqis jumped out, firing wildly at the offending vehicle. The limo driver leaped out and disappeared into darkness.
Vincent Cardona emerged from the back of the Town Car and fired his pistol, taking down one of the sheik’s gunmen.
Frankie the Man lurched out of the passenger seat, using the door to block incoming fire. The window shattered, and as he spit out glass he traded shots and took a bullet in the meat of his arm. Undeterred, he grabbed the gun with his good hand and kept on firing.
The third man slipped out of the backseat of the stretch with the suitcase. He crouched low and fired a round. With the sudden support from Malic’s men, who were firing at Cardona from behind the gate, he made a mad dash around the Italians and up the road, away from the compound, carrying the sheik’s treasure.
Peter jumped out of the driver’s seat, fired twice, and took off running after the sheik’s man.
* * *
The deadly barrage of Hassan’s bullets went silent in the pool house. He ejected his spent clip and slapped in another.
“Call in the troops,” Jack shouted to Cruz, using his Bluetooth as he poked his weapon through the opening and blind-fired, emptying his clip. He pulled the secret door shut behind him and took off running deeper into the tunnel. He took the opportunity to slam a fresh clip home into his Glock.
Jack couldn’t help but register the Iraqi antiquities that lined the tunnel wall. He knew where they came from, and his rage grew the deeper he went. But he had to stay on point. In mere seconds Hassan would be on his tail.
He was confronted by two metal doors at the end of the passageway. Jack keyed the door on the right with the larger key. It opened on another short hallway. He crossed those few steps and opened the door at the far end, entering a room that looked like a set from I Dream of Jeannie.
It was fucking empty.
He dashed back outside, opened the steel-plated door on the left, and stepped through. As he turned the key, locking it behind him, it was pounded with deafening, clanging cop-killer rounds from Hassan’s AK.
Jack stopped short, looked through a Plexiglas wall at what must have been a jail cell. It looked like someone lived there. It was windowless, freakish and unnatural, he thought. And then he remembered: it was the room where he saw Angelica acting in the YouTube video.
But it was empty.
Was Angelica in the limo? Jack worried. Maybe the sheik was still on board and they were flying her to Iraq.
Then Jack saw movement through the opened bathroom door, and he felt a wash of relief.
Angelica Cardona peered around the doorjamb and then pulled back, hidden from the hallway.
Jack unlocked the door to the glass cage.
“You’re going to have to kill me here,” Angelica said. “I’m not leaving—”
“Angelica,” he cut her off. “I’m Jack Bertolino. Your father hired me to find you. I want you to come right now.”
Jack heard a key turning in the metal door, and as it pushed open a crack, a single beam of light refracted through. Jack aimed and fired. The first bullet sparked off the metal; the second made it through the opening, and Jack could hear a curse as the flashlight clattered to the tiled floor.
“Now,” he said with quiet strength to Angelica as he reached out. She gripped his hand with desperate power as he helped her out of the pitch-black room.
Jack fired another round that echoed in the hallway.
“To the left,” she said, guiding Jack toward the camouflaged exterior door.
Jack said a silent prayer that the larger of the two keys would work. Angelica cried out as the heavy cylinder clicked and the door swung open, revealing a clear star-filled sky.
He slammed the door shut, locked it, and broke off the thick key with the butt of his gun. They could hear muted pounding on the door behind them and gunfire from the property above.
Jack ripped off the night-vision goggles, led Angelica toward the slick wooden stairs twenty-five feet above the rocks and pounding surf below, and made a mad dash to freedom.
46
Nick Aprea came screaming up the road in a massive SUV with a lone cherry-top spinning. Three police cars with sirens wailing, red, white, and blue lights flashing, followed in his wake.
Nick was the first man out of his vehicle, weapon drawn.
“Police!” he shouted, aiming down on Cardona and Frankie. “Stop firing. Drop your fucking weapons!”
Vincent Cardona and his cousin were smart enough to hold fire when the bulls arrived. They tossed down their guns and were arrested on the spot.
Malic’s men answered by firing at Nick. The uniformed cops raised their police-issue nine-millimeters and returned fire as Nick led the charge past the crippled limousine and deployed inside the compound walls.
Peter Maniacci was arrested by the next wave of cops arriving on the scene. He was beating the shit out of the sheik’s man, whom he’d tackled running down the road with the aluminum suitcase and the ten-million-dollar Matisse.
The exit through the gate and the only way out was partially blocked by the crashed limo. One of Malic’s men panicked when the cops arrived, jumped in his Porsche, and tore across the lawn past the pool, ripping up the rose garden. The desperate man spun a one-eighty at the compound wall, spraying a rooster tail of dirt and grass, and then jammed the transmission into first and roared back toward the front gate.
Nick stepped into the center of the destroyed garden and fired. His automatic jammed. He fired again. An empty click.
The driver shifted into second. He cracked a tight smile as he rocketed toward Nick.
That’s when Mateo stepped out of the shadows and fired three rounds.
The driver took a bullet to the forehead and slumped sideways. The weight of his dead body pulled the steering wheel crazily to the right. The Porsche veered away from Nick, ramped up the coved edge of the pool, and splashed ass-down in the deep end, the car’s headlights burning skyward like klieg lights.
Nick ejected his jammed clip and slapped in another. He nodded his thanks to Mateo, who headed back to the front of the property.
Nick pulled a flashlight off his belt, saw that the door to the pool house had been kicked off its hinges, and ran in that direction.
Hassan exploded out of the pool house door with a loaded AK. He saw Nick pounding the turf in his direction and let loose with a short burst of automatic firepower.
Fully exposed, Nick fired on the run and then dove into the pool. The AK bullets followed, puncturing the skin of the Porsche as a wild-eyed Hassan ran past to the far end of the property and leaped up and over the compound wall.
* * *
Angelica, in a short skirt, diaphanous blouse, and bare feet, moved gingerly over the rocky shore
toward the inflatable boat tied off on the next dock. She didn’t want to let go of Jack’s hand, but he had another thought and headed toward the cigarette boat to disable it.
As he stepped onto the dock, an arcing trail of bullets splintered the wooden slats in his direction and forced him to move back, hug the cliff, and join Angelica at the inflatable. All he could see in the dark was the muzzle flash. With manic strokes he oared the boat out into the waves.
Hassan had started his descent from the top of the cliff, just below the compound wall, firing as he struggled to maneuver down the slick wooden stairs in his leather boots.
He jumped off the stairs onto the grassy outcropping and sighted in on the Avalon inflatable, disappearing in the distance. He let off a tight burst that fell short as Jack paddled safely around the bend of the peninsula to his moored boat.
Hassan felt a bullet invade his space before he heard the discharge. A divot exploded out of the cliff face. Hassan arched his back, swung his automatic sky-high, and fired over his shoulder at Nick Aprea, who was raining bullets on him.
Hassan knew that if Angelica got away, he would spend the rest of his life in prison, and that was not an option. He spun around; sprayed the top of the cliff, forcing Nick back; threw the AK over his shoulder; and took the stairs down three at a time.
* * *
Jack stepped on board his craft first. He reached out a hand to pull Angelica up, but she slipped into the water and swam to the transom, where he all but lifted her onto the deck. Angelica’s blouse stuck to her body like a contestant in a wet T-shirt contest. She stepped into Jack’s embrace, wrapped her arms around him, and squeezed.
“Thank you,” she said, nailing him with her blazing green eyes.
When Angelica stepped back, she glanced down at herself, as did Jack. She was very beautiful and very exposed.
“If I’d known you were going to save me, I’d have worn a pair of shoes.”