by T C Miller
He knew one thing for sure—time was of the essence when looking for a missing person, especially if they were in the hands of foreign criminals. The Black Star Ops Group was under attack and needed to rescue Nora as quickly as possible. Hang in there, Babe, I’m comin’ for you.
***
CHAPTER 20
SEAWIND CAFE
“Not like the Colonel to be late.” Joanna sat next to Jake in one of the wall booths. “Should we order, or wait a little longer?” “Not sure, but you’re right…should’ve been here an hour ago. Think they might’ve meant dinner, not lunch?”
“Could be…Supper sometimes gets switched for dinner, but everybody knows what lunch is…I remember them saying lunch.”
“So do I…He said something about it being a late lunch for him and she said he’d just have to ‘Cowboy Up’.”
“Heard it, too. Maybe we should cruise by the gas station. They were gonna stop by and ask Joe Barsconi a few more questions…Maybe they told him where they were headed.”
“Might have…Then we can come back this way…see if they finally got here.”
They paid their bill at the counter and didn’t notice three men from another table slip out the back door. Jake had parked at the back of the parking lot to get a view down the cliff to the beach. Everything seemed normal, until a lone figure stepped out from behind a fence that enclosed the back service area of the restaurant. He held his hand behind his back as he approached.
Jake was immediately on alert and moved a few steps in front of Joanna. She faded back a little and watched the area to each side of them as they walked down a line of cars.
The lone figure called out to them in heavily-accented English, “Are you the peoples who ask too many questions around here?”
Jake stopped in mid-stride and assumed a casual, yet defensive stance. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, mister. We just checked into a motel…Haven’t talked to hardly anybody.”
“That so? But I say to myself you must be the ones.”
“Sorry, you must be confusing us…” He sensed movement between two parked cars and adjusted his stance. A second figure stood and moved toward Jake with a Tasar in his hand. He fired before Jake could move aside and the two metal prongs snagged his shirt. An instantaneous burst of electricity surged through his body and his muscles tightened in a St. Vitus dance as he fell to the ground with a resounding thud. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was the first figure approaching him with a hypodermic needle in his hand. He thought of Joanna and hoped she managed to run away while the Russians were subduing him.
His metabolism must have been hotter that Bart’s, or he hadn’t gotten as strong a dose of the knockout drug. How long have I been down? Seems like days. He managed to struggle to his feet in time to see a work van speed out of the parking lot, throwing gravel in its wake as it headed north. He leaned against the wall of the restaurant. The smell of rancid cooking oil and rotting garbage made him nauseous. Gotta clear my head.
A white-suited figure in his late twenties wearing a matching food-service paper hat glanced through a partially opened gate that led to the service area as he lit up a cigarette. “Hey, buddy, had a few too many?”
“Not exactly. Didn’t happen to see anything odd, or body leave just now, did you?”
“Sorry, dude…Been too busy cookin’ to notice anything more’n that spinnin’ wheel with the orders. Why…you lookin’ for somebody?”
“Sort of…Thought I saw somebody messing with my car, that’s all.” Jake fumbled in his pockets for his keys and stumbled toward the nondescript car the NSA gave him— outfitted with functions that were definitely not standard from the factory.
The cook took a few steps toward him. “Name’s Thomas… Sure you can drive?”
“Yeah, I take some stuff for a bad back…Makes me a little dizzy now and then. I’ll be fine…Thanks for asking.”
“No problem…Know whatcha mean though…Stand in front of a grill all day long…Sooner or later, something’s bound to get messed up…Take my back, for instance…”
“Look, Thomas, don’t mean to be rude, but need to pick somebody up and I’m late…Catch you later, okay?”
The cook smiled. “Sure thing, buddy…Catch ya later… Didn’t get your name…”
“Call me Jake…later.” He slid into the driver’s seat, started the engine, put the car in reverse and backed out. Take it slow…Drug’s still messing with me. Bart and Nora were supposed to talk with Joe at the gas station, so he headed south.
He was almost to the station when he saw Eagle One pull out of a side street and head north. He did a quick U-turn and flashed his lights. The bus pulled over and he carefully made his way to the door. Bart opened it and motioned for him to quickly step inside.
“Sure am glad I spotted you…Somebody stuck a needle in my neck and grabbed Joanna.”
“Same thing here, son…We were searching Joe Barsconi’s home when somebody bushwhacked me and took Nora.
“See who it was?”
“No…Whacked me on the head and stuck me with a needle…Was out before I could do anything. You ID them?” “Not really. Saw a white work van drive off…Don’t know how long I was down…Positive it was the Russians, though, from the accent….”
“More’n likely. Looks like they’re playing for keeps… Killed Joe…Saw his body in an old car in his yard. Went in the house to look around…That’s when I got knocked out. Couple of deputies showed up right after I came to…Nora’s gone and so’s Joe’s body.”
“Who called the law?”
“Don’t know…Bad guys, I suppose…hoping I’d be taken in for breaking and entering, or worse. As luck would have it, I was outside when they got there.”
“Where do you think they took Nora and Joe’s body?”
“Don’t know ‘bout Nora…Joe’s here in the bus.”
“You serious?”
“As a rattlesnake in your bed…Think they were hopin’ the deputies’d find him and really put me behind the eight-ball. Didn’t work out quite like they planned…Question is, what’s next? I was moving the bus away before I called in. Sure glad you’re here. Let’s callBanner…see what he can do.”
Bart locked the door and set the alarm. Jake followed him through the curtain. Joe’s body was laid out on the couch and secured with seat belts. They moved gingerly past it to the dinette area in the middle of the bus. Bart pressed a hidden button under the table and a panel in the wall slid aside to reveal a communications array.
He placed his hand over a square of glass while it read his palm and fingerprints. A red light next to the panel turned green. He picked up a handset and used a wall mounted keypad to enter a security code and number. A red light turned yellow and then green. The communications technician at the other end connected him to John Banner’s office.
“That you, JB?”
“Yes, Colonel, what can I do for you?”
He explained the circumstances and was interrupted a few times while Banner ordered two tactical response teams and two helicopters to be readied.
“Never hurts to be ready…I’ll be flying up with them as the on-scene commander. We’re using a Forest Service camp over the mountains from Seawind Bay. Got a staging area normally used to fight wildfires…Has all the support equipment we’ll need, including a comm center. Inactive right now…A few calls and it’ll be ready.”
“Sounds like you’re on top of it, Boss. Meantime, Jake and I’ll do a little boots-on-the-ground recon to get a better picture of what’s going on.”
“Fine…We need all the intel we can get.”
“Haven’t worked with you before, so let me tell you right up front…I’m not the kind to sit around waitin’ for the cavalry to show…Gonna find out where they’re keeping the women and get them back…So, if they wanna see any action, those teams better be here in a flash.”
“I hear you. Won’t say I know how you feel…Never had my family taken hostage. But, I
’ll do everything in my power to help you get them back safe and sound…You have my word on it. I think it’s safe to assume they’re being held by Peters and his crew…Can’t think of anyone else who’d grab both women. My guess is he’s getting ready to rabbit on us and use the women as shields…What he’ll do with them once he’s out of sight is anybody’s guess. Our job is to get them back and make sure Peters and his men don’t get away. Any suggestions on how to go about doing all of that?”
“They’re probably holding them in the old cannery, since it’s isolated and close to the trawlers…Help if we knew how to get close to the cannery without being seen.…”
“May have an answer for that…I asked the Imagery Analysts to take a look at the new satellite shots, including infared, and they found something interesting. The Delta IXR-4 has ground penetrating capability and shows the drainage pipe at one end of the altar has hot spots every ten feet or so.”
“Why would a drainpipe have hot spots?”
“Wouldn’t…but an access tunnel would. Analysts say they’re probably lights and that it terminates right about where the stone structure is in the center of the clearing. They say it looks like an altar.”
“You mean like in a church?”
“Not like churches we’re used to…Troughs cut into it lead to one end…Like it’s made to hold sacrificial blood…Could be a hoax to keep people away from the cannery, but why hide it? You’d think they’d want it where people could stumble across it and spread rumors.”
“Don’t know, John…Gets stranger by the minute…Can’t worry about that, right now…Need to concentrate on finding Nora and Joanna.”
“Yes, but keep the whole picture in mind…They may have grabbed the women to sidetrack you…Could be getting too close for comfort. The clearing may be a piece of the puzzle. We’ll keep working on the satellite shots…Let you know if anything else turns up.”
“Appreciate it. Think Jake and I need to pay another visit to the café…Talk to Joyce, the waitress, maybe add to our intel.”
“I’ll call if anything else comes up.”
Bart replaced the receiver and closed the console door. His head was spinning from the new information Banner provided. Need to control my anger and focus on the op.
He looked up at Jake. “Beginning to put a few pieces of the puzzle together. Let me throw a few things at you…Tell me if I’m crazy or not.”
“Anything that helps us get her, I mean, them back.”
“Got a crush on her?”
“Maybe. She’s a teammate and a woman in trouble…that’s all the reason I ever need. On the other hand, she’s smart, disciplined and…” He paused for a second and grinned. “Does sound like a schoolboy crush.”
“Can’t say I blame you…If I was fifteen years younger and single, you’d have serious competition. She’s definitely a keeper…Need to get her back soon as we can…Sounds like you two have some talking to do.”
“Already came up…Says she’s breaking up with the guy in Arkansas…I’ll be first in line.”
“I’d say take it slow, but I know how these things tend to go…Don’t think you could do any better.”
“Me neither.”
“Let’s go over these notes and head over to the café…Find out what’s going on.” He stretched his long legs out into the aisle of the bus. Should’ve stayed in my old job…Toughed it out to retirement…for her sake. The thought jolted him back.
“Where do we start?” Jake clasped his hands together on the table top and looked around at the comfortable interior of the bus. Maybe I should find a rig like this.
“Some common elements here…mainly Eichner and the nukes…He’s either going to sell them to the Russians or get help smuggling them out…Don’t know why he’d trust a bunch of common thugs, though…Might could be he knows them.”
Jake unclasped his hands and rubbed his chin. “Maybe Peters was undercover too and got dumped when the Soviet Union fell…Turned to smuggling when money from his old bosses dried up.”
“Could be. If you’re right, he may be willing to do anything to help Eichner…including sacrificing some of his men to get away, like Eichner did at Mather. Peters might could get a cut of what those nukes bring on the black market.”
“Follow that line of thinking…We keep an eye on Peters and Eichner shows up, right?”
“Pretty safe bet. Personally, I think Eichner’s already here. We know where Peters works and lives and found out he bought the old cannery north of town…Feel like his smuggling operation’s based there…Big enough for a small army…Lots of rooms to hide the women.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“Hold on…Let’s not run off halfcocked. Sure to have lookouts…Maybe cameras and alarms. We can recon it later, if nothing shows up in the clearing. Satellite showed Eichner towing a trailer up the coastal highway…Dropped it off in a little town south of here…Passed over before it got pictures of exactly where, so ‘til he picks it up…”
“Got it…We sit tight. What about the women? Must be something can we do.”
“Don’t know enough about the clearing and the monks to know how they fit in. Perps want to scare people away, since the clearing sort of guards the approach…but you can drive right up to the cannery from the coastal highway…Where does the clearing fit in?”
“Assembly point maybe, in case the cannery gets raided…Big enough for a chopper.”
“Chopper’d draw too much attention…LE’d jump on that like a dog on a bone.”
“Unless it looked like an LE chopper…or actually was one.”
“Banner did react when I asked if he thought somebody was on the take…I was talking about the Sheriff’s office in Point Arena…Could be he was thinking about a Fed.”
“That’d explain why the Russians haven’t been busted… Spread enough bucks around…you get away with a lot, especially when it’s drugs. Lot of cops think the war on drugs is one big waste, anyway…Even had one tell me drugs were a good thing…Tend to keep the population restrained…Said dopers don’t have enough energy to do more than munch-out and watch cartoons.”
Bart rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “Don’t see bribes being a strong bet, but you never know. Don’t pay county mounties enough and Feds aren’t exactly rich, either… But we’re gettin’ off track…More interested in getting our women and the nukes back. Bringin’ Eichner back from the grave long enough to face justice will be icing on the cake.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“Think we need to talk to the waitress. Let’s take your car…Peters and his men seem to know about us anyway, since they took both women. Nothing turns up at the café, we’ll head to the clearing…Then sneak over to the cannery…See what we can find.
SEAWIND MOTEL “What I’m trying to tell you is that my Licia, I mean, Alicia, wouldn’t run off someplace with her friends without telling me. She was covering the front desk from noon until two while I ran some errands…Get back at one forty-five and it’s empty. We never leave the front desk uncovered and she knows it. Think maybe she ran to the bathroom…Isn’t there either…Not like her at all.”
The sheriff’s deputy on the other end of the call leaned back in his chair and worked hard to stifle a yawn. “Mister Martinez, I understand your concern. Gotta tell you though, nine times out of ten it’s a simple misunderstanding. Maybe she asked somebody to cover the front desk while she ran an errand and they forgot. You ask your other employees?”
“Two maids working today…Neither one talked to Licia. Both are busy cleaning rooms and doing laundry.”
“They see her leave?”
“Both are on the other side of the motel…away from the
parking lot. Besides, her purse and car keys are sitting on the front desk and her car’s parked right outside.”
“What if her boyfriend drove?”
“No boyfriend…I mean, she has friends who are boys, but none of them are romantic…And I know what you’re thi
nking…What father knows everything his teenaged daughter is up to, right? Licia and I are very close since her mother died…Trust me…no boyfriend.”
The deputy sighed. “Like to help you…Really would…Just don’t see a missing person’s case here. She’ll probably show up in a little while with a perfectly good explanation and say she’s sorry for worrying you. Besides, has to be gone forty-eight hours to be a missing person…It’s not like she’s a kid.”
“She’s a kid to me. Can you at least send a deputy down here to take a report or something? Maybe look around town for her. What would that hurt?”
“Nothing…If I had an extra deputy and if they had nothing else to do…Short-handed at the moment…Two deputies at school down in Sacramento…One out sick and another who’s testifying in court tomorrow morning. I’d like to humor you…”
“Now wait just a damned minute…I’m a tax-paying citizen who expects better service than this…After all, my taxes pay your salary.”
The deputy restrained himself. “Let me think…Tell you what, Mister Martinez, I got a deputy who’ll be down your way tomorrow taking a theft report at a vacation home. Call me in the morning if she hasn’t shown up…I’ll have him ask around.”
“Tomorrow? Anything could happen to her between now and then…That’s what they always say on TV…You don’t find them in the first twenty-four hours, chances of them being alive are slim.”
“Wouldn’t know, sir. I work in the real world. Look, I got two callers on hold…Tomorrow’s the best I can do.”
“I don’t understand…Why aren’t you more concerned about a missing girl? Anything could be happening…What do I have to do to get you to do something?”
“Nothing, sir…I don’t have the resources right now. Call me in the morning if she doesn’t show up and I’ll have the deputy stop by. Three calls on hold now…Gotta go.”
“Yeah, sure.” and he hung up the phone. Asshole civil servant. Could call the sheriff…Probably get the same run around. He looked through the paperwork in his shirt pocket until he found the business card Bart Winfield gave him.