by Robert Crais
Jon eased from the bed.
Floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors lined the back of his house, ten-foot-tall, custom-designed monsters so Jon could Zen on the view. Golden lights glittered to the horizon, ruby flashes marked ghetto-bird prowlers, jets descending toward LAX were strung like pearls across a tuxedo black sky. The doors were heavy as trucks, but silent as silk when they slid open. Jon stepped out and went to the pool.
Pike was a silhouette cutout, backlit by the city as Jon swaggered close.
“What do you think of the next Mrs. Stone?”
“Which one?”
“Doesn’t matter. They all end up the same.”
Jon had been married six times. Six was six more than enough.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house? I could’ve shot your ass.”
“Is someone in Los Angeles selling military munitions?”
Talk about non sequitur.
Jon glanced at his bedroom, irritated.
“Waitaminute. I’m standing here naked, it’s three in the morning, and I would know this why?”
“The people you work for listen.”
“I’m home two days, bro. What are you talking about?”
“Stolen ordnance in Echo Park. RPGs and forty-millimeter grenades. Cole’s trying to find a woman. He thinks she’s with the dealer.”
Now Jon was pissed. After thirteen years in the Army, the last six with Delta, Jon Stone had jumped the shark to become a private military contractor. He sold his services and the services of others to various clients, one said other being this very Joe Pike, who, by the way, commanded top dollar, which meant a top commission if Pike let Jon set a contract, which he wouldn’t, because Pike wasted his time with Elvis Cole, a low-rent peeper without two twenties to wipe his butt.
“What the hell, Pike? I don’t care about Cole and his problems. Tell me you didn’t pull me away from those women without serious cash on the table.”
“If the woman’s with him, he probably sells to al-Qaeda.”
Stopped Jon cold. Jon Stone’s primary client was the United States of America, with most of his work being directed against various terrorist factions and the governments, corporations, and individuals who supported them. Off the books, and deep in the black. When Jon Stone told the French chicks he was a professional warrior, he wasn’t lying.
Jon glanced at his bedroom again. Nothing moved within the black rectangle framed by the doors.
“Al-Qaeda.”
Pike nodded.
“Listen, so you know, just because some idiot sells this crap doesn’t mean it’s going to terrorists. All-American morons turn grenades into paperweights, and RPGs into lamps.”
“The woman doesn’t care about morons. She’s been trying to contact an FTO.”
FTO. Foreign terrorist organization.
Jon was totally disgusted.
“This is why I hate you wasting your time with Cole, bullshit like this. What are we talking about here, a crazy person, or some kind of anti-American lunatic?”
“They killed her son.”
Jon Stone studied his friend. Pike’s face was an empty mask, unknown and unknowable. The reflection of the city in his dark glasses was the only sign of life.
Pike said, “Suicide bomb in Nigeria. No suspects or arrests. She wants answers, Jon. I guess she figures she has to go to the source.”
“Terrorists.”
“Or someone with access and connections.”
“In Los Angeles?”
“Echo Park.”
Jon went to the edge of the deck. He watched the helicopters prowl, and the big jets slide down the night.
“Here.”
Pike said nothing.
“Dude, listen, Homeland Security should be on this.”
“They’re on it. FBI and LAPD, on it. Elvis and I, on it.”
Jon sighed.
“And you want me on it, too.”
“The people you work for listen. If someone here was talking, they might know who.”
“I’m on it.”
After Pike left, Jon returned to his bedroom but not to his bed. Phones were all over the house, but Jon’s private cell was in his pants. The French girl woke while he was digging through his clothes at the foot of the bed. She rolled over, sleepy and sexy, stretching to offer her body.
“Ton ami, il va se retrouver avec nous?”
“Vas á dormir.”
“Mon guerrier.”
“Tais-toi.”
The girl asking if Pike was going to join them, Jon telling her to go back to sleep. The girl thinking she was funny, calling him her warrior, Jon telling her to shut up.
Idiot.
Jon found the phone and took it outside. This particular phone, the phone Jon used for business, scrambled its signal into garbage only a phone with a similar chip could unscramble.
Deep in the black, the people Jon worked for did more than listen. They collected. Phone calls, email, text messages, video feeds, the sum total digital flow of everything pouring through the Internet was collected and stored. Supercomputers built of bubbles and light, running algorithms written by smart nerdy geeks, as deadly in their way as Joe Pike and Jon Stone, analyzed all of it, searching for patterns and keywords. Little escaped their attention.
Jon made the call from the edge of his deck. A voice with a special phone answered. A little while after, Jon phoned for a limo, woke the two French chicks, and told them to leave.
He was on it.
25
Mr. Rollins
MR. ROLLINS owned a great house in Encino, up in the hills with a killer view of the Valley. Not under his true name or Rollins, natch, but he owned it free and clear along with a condo in Manhattan Beach, a West Hollywood bungalow, a loft downtown in the Arts District, and a 1923 Spanish classic beneath the Hollywood Sign. The Encino home was his favorite. Big pool in the backyard, outdoor kitchen. Mr. Rollins liked to sit by the pool at night, smoke weed, and watch losers fighting their way home on the 405, nothing but red to wherever workaday assholes lived.
That night, Mr. Rollins was on the chaise lounge, smoking, watching assholes, feeling a little better about losing the Echo Park house, when Eli called and ruined his evening.
The clown was alive, and the police had recovered the package.
“Eli, wait. Stop talking. Can your device hurt us?”
“The components will lead nowhere. No one saw us place it. This I can swear to you.”
Bullshit. A fingerprint, a part number, or DNA on the device could lead to Eli, or someone in Eli’s crew.
Violent fantasies crept into his thoughts. Mr. Rollins saw himself shoot the clown, midday, downtown, walking up close from behind, pushing the gun into his back, popping off four fast ones, turn the bastard inside out, the body still falling as he walked away; he saw himself swing for the fences, a Louisville slugger, catching the side of Eli’s skull; Charles and the woman were on their knees, blindfolded and bound, one shot each in their heads, pop, pop; problem solved, over and out, and he could move on.
Mr. Rollins realized this was his fear talking, and reminded himself of another rule: Control your fear, or your fear will make you stupid.
Mr. Rollins put Eli on hold, and took a few seconds to organize his thoughts. Eli had screwed up the hit, and now Mr. Rollins wondered if he was screwing up anything else.
“The boy you sent, I saw he died.”
“Carlos.”
“He didn’t look banged up so bad when I saw him. The police must’ve tried to make him talk.”
“He would have said nothing.”
“I have to ask. Can they put him with you?”
Eli fell silent.
“This was your guy, Eli. You understand I have to ask.”
“Carlos cannot be put with me.”
“Okay. Good. That’s very good.”
“Yes.”
“The officer. He still has to go.”
“It is more difficult now, but we will do this.”
“He won’t be as easy to find. They probably won’t let him go back to work.”
“We know his name. I have people who will find where he lives.”
“You know his name?”
“I have people. There are not so many dog officers. It was easy.”
Mr. Rollins did not doubt Eli had people who could help. Eli’s career was based on information no one was supposed to know.
Eli said, “I will do this thing. Even now, it is happening. Do not let this slow our business.”
“It isn’t, and won’t.”
Rollins put down the phone. He told himself Eli would come through, but he had a major case of the doubts. One day might roll into two, two days could roll into three, and with each passing hour, the clown would grind through more mug shots. Sooner or later, he’d see Mr. Rollins.
This was one of the most important rules: If the police have your number, walk away. Friends, family, wives, lovers, houses, money, children, goldfish, whatever. You didn’t stop to explain or say good-bye, or pick up a stash of cash. Wherever you were and whatever you were doing, you dropped everything, walked away, and never looked back.
Mr. Rollins accepted this fact, and was prepared. He had plenty of money in secret accounts under various names. He had DLs, credit cards, and passports. He could walk away without looking back, but he cautioned himself not to be hasty. Haste smacked of panic.
Eli was a professional and a cold-blooded killer, but Mr. Rollins wasn’t up to leaving his fate in Eli’s hands.
He picked up the phone and hit the callback button.
“One more thing, Eli. What’s his name?”
“His name is Officer Scott James.”
“When you find out where Officer James lives, call me before you kill him.”
Mr. Rollins hung up. He watched the line of red lights trapped on the freeway, inching through hell toward nothing, each light a loser too stupid to know what he was.
Mr. Rollins didn’t want to get back into the murder business, but he had been good at it. He had been excellent. And sometimes he missed it.
The Predators
The African lion makes a kill only twice out of every ten hunts. Leopards do better, catching their prey twenty-five percent of the time, and cheetahs do best of all the big cats, with a kill ratio of nearly fifty percent. The deadliest four-legged African predator is not a big cat. It cannot be outrun or outdistanced, its pursuit is relentless, and it captures its prey nine out of every ten hunts. The most dangerous predator in Africa is the wild dog.
26
Elvis Cole
THE SUN WAS IN FULL BLOOM above the eastern ridge, and the air was blush with warmth as I spun through a tae kwon do kata before an audience of hidden police officers. Joe Pike and Jon Stone stepped onto my deck a few minutes before seven that morning.
Jon Stone went to the rail.
“Bro. You showing off for the cops?”
An hour of fighting myself, and my shorts were soaked and the deck spattered with sweat. The cat was under my grill, safe from the spray. His tail flicked when he saw Jon, and he made a low growl. Not the friendliest animal.
“Thanks for coming, Jon. I owe you.”
“At your rates, I’ll be in the red forever.”
He pointed across the canyon.
“Got yourself a spotter. Far ridge at ten o’clock, left of the blue house. Another on the way in, watching the turn.”
“I know. They’ve been here all night.”
Jon made a big show of waving at whoever was across the canyon.
“Seeing as how you showed them up yesterday, they might’ve bugged up your car. I’ll give it a sweep.”
Jon’s work often required him to search buildings and vehicles for hidden devices. His life usually hung in the balance.
Pike said, “Check the house, too.”
Jon gave Pike a sour look.
“Keep in mind, I get the big bucks for things like this. Just saying.”
I wiped my face, and pulled on a T-shirt.
“Do your people know anything about Echo Park?”
Jon shifted the sour from Pike to me.
“Me first. The woman whose son was killed, Breslyn, who is she to you and what do you know about her?”
I went inside for Amy’s file, and opened the Woodson brochure to Amy’s corporate portrait.
“You gotta be kidding. She looks like my aunt.”
“She embezzled four hundred sixty thousand dollars. She bought a nine-millimeter Ruger and learned how to shoot, and she’s spent months trying to make contact with radical Islamist jihadists.”
Jon looked dubious.
“What took her so long? Al-Qaeda and ISIS have media centers. Hezbollah has a TV station. These assholes use Twitter and Facebook for recruitment and fund-raising. All she had to do was drop’m a note.”
“She’s smart. She’d know the people you work for watch those sites.”
Jon grinned, but it was nasty and mean.
“The people I work for watch everything.”
Jon skimmed the file as I told him about Meryl Lawrence, Amy, and the things I’d learned at the X-Spot. When I finished, he handed back the file, and his manner was different. He wore his Delta face. The Delta face made me uneasy.
“You wanted me to ask a question. I asked. This conversation is not something we can discuss on the phone or in email. Not today, or whenever. We clear?”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t bullshit.”
“I understand.”
“Fourteen weeks ago, posts began to appear on certain private message boards that drew attention.”
Pike said, “Pro-jihadist sites.”
“Did these posts originate in Los Angeles?”
“Eleven weeks ago, the source was narrowed to the Los Angeles area. Note the word ‘area.’ NSA believed they should be investigated, and tossed the ball to Homeland Security.”
Maybe Special Agent Mitchell was remembering the posts when he told me about terrorist nightmares.
I felt a stir of hope. Computers and smartphones left a number trail as distinct as tracks in the snow each time they touched the Internet. One of these numbers was assigned by providers but one was hardwired into the device. From the instant a person signed on, their computer’s numerical path was logged and recorded by Internet service providers, networks, wireless hotspots, servers, and routers, forever linking the time, location, and path of service to your specific machine. Surf the Net, check your email, chat with a friend—each new router and service provider recorded and stored your numbers. The geolocation of a computer could be found by back-tracing this trail of numbers. Finding an approximate location was relatively easy. The spooks Jon knew could probably back-trace to a specific sign-on address, identify a specific machine, and pull the name of the person who bought it from the manufacturer.
I said, “Was it Amy?”
“If it was, she was too smart for them, which is what drew their attention.”
Pike said, “They couldn’t ID the source.”
“Meaning what?”
Jon smirked.
“Meaning the crap on these boards is usually posted by a crank in a garage, or a thirteen-year-old idiot, toked up on the big sister’s weed. Thirteen-year-old idiots are easy to find. This computer was hidden behind anonymous proxies, virtual networks, and spoofed identity numbers. One post looked like it came from Paris, the next from Birmingham, another from Baton Rouge. Each post appeared to be written on a different computer, only none of the computers actually existed.”
I glanced at Pike.
“She’s smart.”
“There were sixteen posts in all. They weren’t filled with threats to blow up the White House or hate for the West, but they were clear appeals to engage with extremist factions.”
Jon described the posts. The first was a respectful request to correspond with principals of the Islamist jihadist movement in northwest Africa. As soon as I heard this, I knew.
“Amy. Her son was killed in Nigeria.”
Jon held up a finger and continued. The author reached out to al-Qaeda members in northern Africa twice more and expressed willingness to meet reasonable security requirements. Later posts used phrases like ‘willing to share my technical expertise’ and ‘able to offer insights into regulated materials and their availability.’
I interrupted again.
“It’s Amy. She’s talking about explosives.”
Jon seemed to consider me for a moment, but maybe it wasn’t me he considered.
“Then the posts stopped. The sixteenth and last post was made seven weeks ago. Since then, nothing.”
“Were there responses?”
“Plenty. They were checked and dismissed. Cranks.”
“Is Homeland still investigating?”
“Negative. When the posts stopped, they kicked it back to D.C.”
“What’s your friend think?”
“Only two ways to go. Contact was made, and the conversation was taken off-line, or no contact resulted, and the poster quit posting.”
“Quit.”
“Yeah. Like a kid making crank calls. They start off really into it, make stupid calls for a couple of months, get it out of their system, and move on. If contact was made, they got past D.C.”
“She was reached.”
I told him about Charles.
Jon sighed.
“She’s gonna get herself killed.”
“Not if we find her.”
Jon turned to the canyon again, and leaned into space.
“Pike said it was a suicide bomb.”
“Fourteen dead, thirty-eight wounded. He was a journalist.”
Jon leaned farther out over the rail.
“War is a bitch, isn’t she?”
Jon pushed away from the rail.