by Kirk Russell
Julia and I talked for a while. I called Jo, but she was with a patient.
When Nogales returned, we ate burritos outside at a table in the night air, then nursed beers in four different bars as we showed sketches and photos. We reshaped the story. The dismembering murderer now stalked at night and favored bars. He was alone and would keep to himself and might have a barn or other outbuilding he lived in. He was friendly, outgoing, and good-looking. You wouldn’t have a clue how bad he was.
At midnight Nogales dropped me back at the motel and at five thirty the next morning picked me up again, and we returned to Nora the Dawn Artist’s house. Nogales looked over and grinned as he said, “At least we know she’ll be awake.”
I had an additional motive for wanting to see Nora again, other than to show her the new photos. I was drawn to how she had tried to cope with the devastating deaths of her family. Nogales said she was considered half-crazy for the painting of the dawn each day, but that wasn’t crazy to me. Far from it. It was an affirmation of life. I admired her will to turn pain into beauty.
She showed us today’s painting, which caught the sky burning in crimson streaks and caught the first sliver of sunlight on the gray desert rock. It moved me and strangely brought tears that I hid and wiped away. She offered coffee. I took her up on it and used the moment to show her a better image of the Mercedes but got nothing but a shake of her head. I showed her the three new photos of the bombers I’d printed in the sheriff’s office late yesterday afternoon, and she picked up the grainy black-and-white of the man who was rumored dead and said, “That’s him.”
“Him?”
“Yes, this man I’ve seen here.”
“Recently?”
“Just a few days ago.”
The photo was of poor quality and taken by a bus station security camera in Austria eight years ago. He was last seen alive at an Obama rally in Chicago in 2008, and he was a probable suspect in a bombing in France four years ago, but after that, nothing but quiet.
“He’s one of those who look older than they are,” she said. She pushed her hair back and looked at me. “From the side he has a stoop.”
I nodded but inside leapt. That was in the bio on Garod Hurin, and you couldn’t know it from the photo.
“And a wispy kind of goatee.”
“Could you draw him and tell us where you saw him?”
Without answering, she sketched him quickly in profile—drew him tall, thin, and stooped as he walked from the entrance of the general store facing the highway. She drew sideburns and goatee and ponytail and a loose, dirty linen shirt flowing over jeans. Her eyes twinkled at me.
“I love linen,” she said. “I always notice linen.”
She drew worn boots with heels ground down on the outside, another detail that was accurate. She didn’t know where he lived, but it was somewhere around here. She didn’t know what he drove. She drew his long-fingered hands.
“He’s new here,” she said.
I looked at her drawing again, the posture, the stoop, height, chin and head, the worn boot heels. She touched the photo gently and said, “I saw him in the morning outside the market here.”
“When?”
“I’m not sure but recently.”
“Are you sure it was this man?”
“Yes, I am. I’m very sure.”
I stared at the drawing and compared it to the photo and felt a rush that wiped away all my fatigue. I called in and asked for both the ASAC and Venuti and that they be interrupted from whatever they were doing. Then I stood in the sun and waited, thinking, He’s here. She was so sure, and her drawing was right on. He’s here. Garod Hurin is here.
41
I texted a photo of Nora the Dawn Artist’s sketch to Venuti and Thorpe, along with the most recent Hurin photo in the terrorism database. The more I compared features, the more the tension built inside me. It was hard to stand here and wait. Ten minutes later, my phone rang.
“We’re comparing the sketch with the photo, and they’re running it in Washington,” Thorpe said. “What do you see as the next step?”
“We push the CIA. We get ready. We figure out where here he is. If it’s a go, we’ll need the enhanced SWAT squad out of the LA Field Office. I’ll call an analyst I know at the CIA, but if that goes nowhere, I’ll need help.”
“Make your call and I’ll get a back channel going,” Thorpe said. “We’ll talk to LA SWAT from here. Let’s get back on the phone in half an hour, but first give me a quick bio on Hurin.”
“Ukrainian. Into the military at eighteen and trained in explosives but had discipline issues. Went AWOL and may have lived with a Swiss relative for two years while studying chemistry. First known bombing was in Lebanon in 2003. Mossad got onto him. Fled Lebanon. Worked with Iranian elements in and around Baghdad, building IEDs during the war, then disappeared into Asia and started freelancing. Speaks five or six languages. Tied to two Africa bombings in 2012 and 2013.”
“Okay, that’ll do it for now. Make your call to the CIA.”
When I did and my call transferred to CIA analyst Sally Sassari, she sounded exasperated.
“We’ve already had this conversation or one like it too many times, and I have a lot going on today. I’d think you’d be busy too.”
“This isn’t one of my nagging calls, Sally.”
“They’re never that. I didn’t mean that. I’m just busy. I don’t mean to be short with you, Paul. I’ve got a deadline.”
“I have some reason to think Garod Hurin is alive.”
“Well, you’re in Las Vegas looking for a bomb maker, so let’s not play games. What have you got?”
“A possible sighting in Ocotillo Wells, California.” I let that sink in for a moment. “Does the CIA know whether he’s alive or dead?”
“We would need whatever information you have to answer that.”
“To answer whether the CIA believes he’s alive or dead?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, just so we’re clear, I’m not asking for an evaluation. I’m asking if you know whether he’s alive. If he’s confirmed dead, then we’re done with this lead, in which case I’ll leave Ocotillo Wells within an hour.”
“Where are you, again?”
“Ocotillo Wells, California.”
I heard her fingers on a keyboard and knew she was looking down at Ocotillo Wells. I also knew that what she’d see wouldn’t get her anywhere.
“Let me call you back,” she said. “Half an hour.”
“I’ve got a conference call over this in twenty-two minutes. Call me back within ten.”
She called seven minutes later and said that prior to giving an answer the agency would still need to evaluate what the FBI had before responding. She gave me an e-mail to send the sketch to and added, “That’s the way it’s going to have to be. It’s not up for debate. When can I expect to see the sketch?”
“I’m not sure. If it’s comes from me, it won’t be until I get back to the Vegas office.”
“I thought this was urgent. Get someone to send it.”
“You’re missing the point.”
I hung up with Sally, called Thorpe, and said, “It’s up to you. They want to analyze what we have before they’ll say anything.”
“I’ll call them, but if I need you where are you?”
“Borrego Springs, about to get on a plane to fly back to Vegas. I’ll see you at the office. We’re taking off in a few minutes.”
When I walked into our Vegas field office, I was intercepted and directed to a conference room filled with analysts and agents. On-screen was an aerial view of Ocotillo Wells and the surrounding areas of the Anza-Borrego, including Borrego Springs. In LA, the SWAT commander watched remotely. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team was also available and watching, though because procedures were different, the two SWAT teams wouldn’t operate near each other. All of this presumed Hurin was alive and there.
I zoomed in on an aerial view of Cargoland so those
in the room could get an idea of what a village in the desert built of used cargo containers looks like. I left the image up until I reached the Denny Mondari link, and then switched to the map Lacey had created of Mondari’s two road trips. Trip one was in yellow. Trip two was in blue. I traced the credit card trails.
“Follow the most recent trip,” I said. “You can see he was in the Phoenix area on this day, and here on the next.”
The laser pointer followed the road. I stopped the pointer and drew a little circle with it.
“He got tagged for speeding and a burned-out taillight on the twenty-seventh of June. The highway patrol officer said the driver’s license matched Mondari. He doesn’t remember his face, but he’s a veteran and his drill is to always compare license photo to face. He remembers the man as nervous and apologetic. The bottom line is, we can put him in Arizona within two miles of the warehouse where the C-4 was allegedly stored, and we can follow him from there to the Anza-Borrego. We’ve got a second, almost identical, trip that just happened.”
Somebody interrupted and asked, “What did you mean when you said ‘allegedly stored’?”
“I’m not sure it was ever there, but that’s me. Forget that for now.”
I stopped and looked around the conference room. I didn’t want to lose them with my personal theories about how the C-4 entered the US. Nine people in here, and they all had to be thinking, There’s no evidence connecting Mondari to Hurin. I turned the PowerPoint back to the Arizona-to-Anza road map.
“If you’re wondering whether we’re wasting our time charting some pleasure trip Denny Mondari took, I’m wondering too.”
Somebody laughed, but nobody thought it was funny.
“The CHP officer remembered Mondari because he sensed something was off. Those are his words. After he was ticketed, Mondari continued on to the Anza-Borrego. We can follow that movement with credit card charges. With this most recent trip, we’re talking about just a few days ago, and with that one, there are no credit charges of any kind on the return trip.”
“So he’s still there,” someone said. “Why don’t we go out with a warrant, find him, and answer this?”
“We’re already looking for him.” I paused. I gave it a beat. “We’re not looking for his car anymore. The car was found torched on a dirt desert road beneath Potosi Mountain late on the night of the tenth. ERT went out. So did a cadaver dog early the next morning, and there was no sign of foul play. Either Mondari drove the car to the Anza-Borrego or someone impersonating him and able to forge his signature near perfectly drove the car. We’re pretty sure it was Mondari.”
John Munoz, an agent on the DT squad, interrupted.
“I want to make sure I’m getting this right. You’re proposing Mondari as a courier, possibly unaware of what he was delivering. He thinks he’s delivering a drug shipment, but he’s carrying C-4 in the trunk of his car. He delivers to Hurin.”
“More likely to a drop point.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s on the hook for his guys hacking into a Sinaloa cartel manager’s computer. I’ll explain, but let me go on a little further here first. Here’s why we’re meeting. In the Anza-Borrego in Ocotillo Wells, we have a sighting of a known freelance bomb maker who—”
“Who may or may not be dead already,” Munoz said.
“That’s right.”
I looked over the group again. I like skeptics. I like a hard sale. I wouldn’t be any different listening to this than they were.
“We may get a call any minute from the CIA where they tell us they’ve 100 percent confirmed Garod Hurin’s death, and for reasons they can’t discuss, et cetera, it’s been left for the rest of law enforcement to guess about. That would end this, but we’d still be looking for Mondari and still have reason to look at the Anza-Borrego. Look, I know it’s sketchy. I know we’re short on hard facts, but we’re arguing there’s enough here that it can’t be ignored, and if the CIA says the face the Ocotillo artist drew is Hurin’s and he’s alive, well, in that case, I think we know where to look for our bomb maker.”
An analyst smiled at me. She heard drama and conjecture.
“Okay,” Munoz said. “I get that, but what if it’s as simple as Mondari and his guys burned a cartel manager then got scared when they realized they were found out. The guys take off. Mondari thinks he’s insulated, so he sticks. But his guys don’t contact him, so he gets worried they were kidnapped by the cartel, and if that happened, they probably got interrogated. So he’s thinking that as his guys were tortured to death, they put it all on him. He decides to disappear and do some special effects because you’re all over him for something he said to Agent Stone. Have you checked to see he didn’t fly away somewhere?”
“We’ve checked, and he’s also afraid of planes.”
“Maybe having a cartel hit man on him made him more open to flying the friendly skies.”
I nodded, said, “I might have agreed with you until the artist flipped through bomb-maker photos this morning, then sketched Hurin down to his linen shirt and worn boot heels. I think we’ve got our bomb maker.”
I brought up the two images of Garod Hurin I’d sent to Venuti and the ASAC. Then I did something else. I brought up the enhanced image of the wine-refrigerator installer and put it up alongside the other images. They could draw their own conclusions.
“The photo on the left is from the terrorism database. That’s the artist’s sketch on the right. We’re asking the CIA for confirmation, and we may get it today, but either way, we know the driver of Mondari’s car gassed up in Phoenix not far from the warehouse the CIA identified. The same day, though much later, the car was gassed up again in Borrego Springs. Is it just coincidence that the car of the guy who gave us a bomb-maker tip shows up in the same area where a known freelance bomb maker was spotted?”
Agents shifted in their chairs. The two analysts looked at each other, and after a few moments I looked at Munoz before repeating myself.
“In our scenario, Mondari is following orders to save himself by making a delivery. He believes it’s drugs, but we’re using drugs because it’s a drug cartel his guys were trying to rip off. Let’s say he’s been told, ‘You deliver, you get to live.’”
Munoz jumped in. “Why would they use him? Seems like an unnecessary risk.”
I was ready for that.
“No cartel wants to be tied in any way to explosives used to attack the United States. They’re not stupid. So they insulated themselves. They used a known guy, who owed them, and they were probably ahead of him and behind him as he drove. That’s the guess Lacey and I are making.”
I brought up a photo of the Mercedes, its wheel rims sitting on desert sand, the tires burned away and the paint blistered to raw metal, the interior down to blackened metal.
“And here’s a look in the trunk where the fire was hottest. There were no human remains in there, so what was all that heat about? I’m going to say they were burning away any trace of C-4.” I left the image up but brought the conversation back to Nora the Dawn Artist. “I watched her pick out Hurin’s face. She did it in a blink, then drew from memory in a few minutes without looking again at the photo. I pulled the photo away.”
I looked at Munoz and said, “I hear you, but we can’t ignore this.”
Munoz made a little circle with his hand that included himself and the agents around him, as in they were ready to go to work, and Thorpe, who had been looking at his phone and was quiet through all of this, looked up and said, “We just got our answer from the CIA. It’s Hurin. He’s alive. They knew he was alive. They’ve worried he was ready to turn active again. Let’s go find him.”
42
July 12th, 4:30 a.m.
A Nevada Highway Patrol officer rapped on the side of the pickup bed with his flashlight, then shined the flashlight beam in Beatty’s eyes, blinding him. Beatty showed both hands as he blocked the light with one and sat up. His gun was under a shirt near the clothes he’d used a
s a pillow. He slid his sleeping bag back over the top of it as he climbed out.
“You need to move now.”
“Can I stay here if I sleep in the cab?”
“No.”
The flashlight beam was on his face again.
“Sir, I’d like to see some ID.”
“No problem. My wallet is under the driver’s side floor mat. I’ll have to get it out.” The officer kept the light on his face, though there was no reason for that. “I was just sleeping for a few hours. Can I move to another turnout? There must be a dozen along this road.”
“They’re scenic overlooks, they’re not for sleeping.”
“I tried the campsites. I was too late.”
“Keep your hands visible as you remove your wallet, sir.”
“Sure, but take it easy, I was just sleeping.” Beatty turned and reached down. “Can you see my hand?”
The flashlight beam was on his hands, but the officer didn’t answer. Beatty slid the black rubber mat back and the flashlight beam fell on his wallet.
“Do you see my wallet?”
“Pick it up.”
He picked it up and moved slowly as he pulled out his driver’s license and handed it to the officer.
“Sir, I’d like you to stand over here,” the officer said, then got on his radio and ran the license. His voice was loud enough to carry, saying, “Is this the Jeremy Beatty questioned about the bombings? I thought he was being held.”
Beatty couldn’t hear the response but pulled his phone and brought up Grale’s number. He tapped it before the officer looked back at him.
“He’s up here in Red Rock Canyon at a scenic overlook, sleeping in the back of a pickup bed.”
The officer made that sound as if Beatty had just robbed a bank. He stood outside his patrol car with the radio mic in his left hand and his right close to his holster as he waited for further instructions.