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 parking 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.
When I turned, far away over the trees, I could see the shiny surface of the Pacific. Wow, do I have a weird job, I thought.
We were under strict radio silence. Too bad there wasn’t voice silence. Up ahead in the dark, Emily and I could overhear Bassman complaining about what a bullshit detail this was and how, since it was LA cops who’d been murdered, it should be the LAPD kicking in the front door.
Emily and I shook our heads at each other. I’d heard blowhards before, but this guy was something else.
It took us almost twenty minutes to get into position along the horse trail at the bottom of the shrub-and-loose-dirt-covered slope behind the rented mansion. We spread ourselves out in two-person teams along the bottom of the slope, one team every ten or twenty yards. If Perrine came down the hill, he’d be nailed. I prayed that he would.
When I checked my watch, it was a quarter to twelve. The breach team was due to go in at 12:20 on the nose. It was exactly 12:15 when the bullshit started. We turned as Bassman, who was stationed on the trail to the right of Parker and me, started climbing up the hill with his partner.
“Bassman,” I hissed, rushing down the trail toward him. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting into a better position,” he hissed back.
“That’s not the plan, Bassman. You’re gonna get your ass shot.”
“What are you? My mother?” he said, dismissing me with a wave as he continued up the slope.
After another minute, he disappeared over the crest of the hill with his partner.
The moment he disappeared, I looked up to see the huge form of an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter appear out of the night. It passed extremely low, directly over my head, making no more noise than a Cuisinart mixer. I knew that the military teams were being inserted into the compound by air, in conjunction with the SWAT teams. What I didn’t know was how discreet their entrance would be.
Less than a minute later, up over the ridge in the distance, there came several sharp, loud bangs that must have been the SWAT teams breaching the house’s wrought iron gate. There was a roar of engines that had to be the SWAT vans. Over the tactical mike, I could hear cops-or maybe they were soldiers-calling out a jumble of shouted directions amid more bangs.
That was when the firing started. From everywhere at once, it seemed the silence burst with the unmistakable metal-hammering-on-metal sound of automatic gunfire. The dark sky above us lit up, suddenly glowing with muzzle flashes as the jumble over the radio became confused screams.
The firing was becoming heavier when I heard an unmistakable voice over the cacophony.
“I’m pinned down!” Bassman was yelling. “By the pool house! Cop pinned down! Somebody help!”
“Of course he is,” I said to Parker as I started up the loose-dirt hill.
When I peeked over the ridge, I didn’t see any sign of Bassman, but I did see a figure on the deck. He was a short Hispanic guy in tighty whities, with a tribal tattoo on his shirtless chest, and he was staring straight at me as he raised a pump-action shotgun.
Before I could duck, get my hand onto the pistol grip of the rifle strapped to my back, or say my act of contrition, a half-dozen FBI SWAT guys appeared in the backyard from the side of the house, firing. The glass doors on the deck blew in, along with most of the gunman, as a fusillade of MP5 fire ripped open the entire front of him, from his crotch to his throat.
I stood there, frozen, watching helplessly as the SWAT team rushed in through the back doors.
If they hadn’t come, I would have been dead, I thought. A second later, I would have been gone. I knew it in my bones.
I shook all over.
I’d never been to war.
Until now.
CHAPTER 54
I pulled myself together by the time Parker arrived behind me. I raced with her around the pool and around the dead guy on the deck, into the house.
“Down! Freeze!” cops were yelling. From somewhere a woman was crying.
As we passed a bathroom, Parker tapped me on the back.
“Mike! Oh, shit, Mike! It’s him!”
“Who? Perrine? Where?”
I turned. It wasn’t Perrine. It was Scanlon. I recognized him from his passport photo. Barely. He was on his back in the tub, on top of the torn shower curtain. His hands were handcuffed behind him, and his throat was cut to the bone.
We scoured the house for another twenty minutes before one of the ATF SWAT guys found the trick door in the wine cellar. Beyond it was a steep set of circular stairs, with faux castle walls and candelabra, leading toward a Gothic, dungeonlike door on the bottom.
“What the hell is this?” Emily said as one of the hostage rescue guys in front of us pushed it open.
“They left this out on Realtor dot com,” I said.
The door led to a large octagonal room with benches along the crimson walls and a huge platform bed in the middle of it. Strapped on the bloodred silk moiré walls were lots of very interesting objects. Whips, handcuffs, leather hoods, and other assorted adult devices that, when bought off the Internet, probably arrived in plain brown packages. There was a sophisticated sound system and even a mounted camera in the ceiling.
“Now I think I know why the previous owner got a divorce,” I said.
One of the commandos pushed open yet another door, on the other side of the room. There was another long corridor behind it. It dead-ended at a brick wall with a little ladder bolted into it. At the top of the ladder was a hatch. An open hatch.
I poked my head out. The escape hatch opened up onto the trail, not twenty feet from where we’d been stationed behind the house. I shook my head. Then pounded my thigh with my fist.
No! If we’d still been in position, we would have heard Perrine escaping. Now Perrine could be anywhere.
“He’s in the woods behind the house,” one of the commandos called into his radio. “Get the chopper! Light the park south and east of the target house, and, dammit, get K-nine into the park!”
When I went back into the underground sex chamber, Bassman was standing there, examining one of the curios on the wall. I just stared at the jackass, about as pissed off at anyone as I’d ever been in my life.
He finally noticed me staring. No wonder he made detective, I thought.
“Can the eyeballing, Bennett,” he said, puffing up his already pretty puffed-up self. “You need to get something off your chest, open your trap.”
Actually, I did need to get something off my chest. But I forgot to use my words. I took two steps forward and punched him as hard as I could in the mouth.
He grunted as his head snapped to the side. Then he screamed as he rushed forward and rammed his shoulder into my chest, knocking out my breath as he bulled me backward. He was about to get me down when I wrapped a leg around the back of his ankle and spun us both sideways. Bassman landed hard on his back, beside the bed, with me on top of him. I punched him three times quick again in his face before two of the SWAT guys could peel me off him.
“What are you, crazy?” Bassman yelled, thumbing blood on his lip.
“We could have had him!” I screamed back, going berserk. “He was here! We had him! But you had to charge the hill, didn’t you? Had to screw things up like the two-bit flake that you are!”
“Screw you, Bennett!” he screamed. “You’re full of shit! Screw you!”
“You already did it for me,” I told the dumbass. “Don’t worry, Bassman. You already royally did.”
PART THREE
TROUBLE ON THE HOME FRONT
CHAPTER 55
In the morning, Mary Catherine left Trent in charge of pouring the pancake
s and went down into the cellar to find another apron. Rummaging through a packing box, she glanced up as she heard soft footsteps coming down from one of the upstairs bedrooms.
“Hey, Chrissy,” she heard Trent say.
Oh, boy, let the games begin, Mary Catherine thought, moving some Christmas ornaments over to get at another U-Haul box. Trent was at the age when his goal in life, the very purpose of his existence, in fact, seemed to be teasing the girls as much as he possibly could. And Chrissy, being the youngest, was his favorite target.
“Good morning, little sister,” Trent continued sweetly. “So nice to see you this happy day. Sleep well?”
“What are you doing?” Chrissy said skeptically. “You’re not supposed to have the oven on. Where’s Mary Catherine?”
“Who knows?” Trent lied. “I’m doing an experiment, Chrissy. See how this batter is running off the spatula and splattering onto the pan? This is exactly like when somebody gets shot and all the blood goes flying all over the place. Imagine I was just shot, OK, and I’m bleeding to death, and this pan here is covered in my blood. Isn’t it awesome?”
Mary Catherine shook her head, smiling. What is it with boys? she thought. How do they even come up with this stuff?
“Stop it, Trent!” Chrissy said. “Blood doesn’t even do that. You’re lying.”
“No, it’s true,” Trent said sagely. “Blood splatters like crazy. Way worse than this, especially if a bullet nicks an artery. I saw it on TV.”
Note to self, Mary Catherine thought. Change the TV’s parental channel locks as soon as possible.
“You know what else?” Trent continued. “I bet Dad is right now looking at blood splatter on a wall next to a dead body. I mean, that’s what Dad does, right? He’s a cop. So whenever they find a dead guy with bullet holes in him or a knife sticking out of his neck, they call Dad in to the scene. Isn’t he lucky? Isn’t that so cool?”
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