by DL Barbur
She gave a little laugh. “Everything I own is in this backpack.”
Dalton was discreetly trying to show one of the airport parking enforcement guys his credentials. Across the lanes of traffic, over where the shuttle buses picked up arrivals, there was a plain white van. A man got out of the van and stared at us.
It was Todd. He was a little older than me, maybe his early fifties. He was still lean and fit looking. Hee was wearing jeans, a button-down shirt and a sport coat just right for concealing a gun.
My hand twitched. From behind me, Eddie said, “You know, there are all sorts of surveillance cameras out here. It’s not like it’s a highway rest stop or anything.”
“Is that him?” Alex asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s him.”
Todd smirked. I wanted to shoot him then. I could wait for an opening in traffic, draw, get a sight picture and drill him in the chest. But Eddie had a point, there were too many witnesses, too many cameras. So I got in the Suburban.
It was only later that it would occur to me that the only thing that kept me from shooting a guy to the ground was the witnesses.
Casey climbed into the third row. I slid into the second beside Alex and we were off.
Alex looked at Bolle.
“I want in,” she said. “They killed my dad.”
He looked at her for a few seconds, as if sizing her up.
“You’re in,” he said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
We drove a long, looping surveillance detection route. Nobody said much. Alex seemed perfectly content to remain silent. There was much I wanted to say to her, but I’d be happier saying it without an audience. It felt good to be sitting next to her again. I’d missed her, and wanted to reach out and touch her, but she seemed so self-contained right now, I wasn’t sure how she’d take it.
After a second loop through southeast Portland, we wound up not far from where we started, in a light industrial area maybe a quarter of a mile from the Troutdale airport. There was a shuttered metal fabrication facility sitting in the middle of a boggy field, within sight of the runway. The place was huge and surrounded by a six-foot chain link fence. We paused to get buzzed through the gate, and I could see cameras everywhere.
The parking lot was mostly deserted. There were maybe half a dozen cars. I was glad to see they looked like real cars, not bland, obviously government issue sedans, or the behemoth of a Suburban we were riding in. We drove around the back to a big roll-up garage door and paused while it rattled upward. The inside was a cavernous space, easily the size of a football field. Huge pieces of machinery were pushed up against one wall, leaving plenty of room for the half dozen or so painfully obvious unmarked cars.
We stepped out of the Suburban. Inside the factory smelled like machine oil and welding slag. Our footsteps echoed as Bolle led us to a door on the far side. The empty space on the production floor was full of nearly a dozen or so travel trailers, the kind people towed behind their trucks on vacations. Electrical lines and plumbing hoses were attached. Bolle had created his own little RV village in here.
On the other side of the door were administrative offices. We wound our way past office doors and cubicles to a large meeting room. Large flat screens had been mounted on the walls, and cables had been duct taped to the floor. A coffee maker was burbling over in a corner and the smell reminded me of how tired I was.
There were three people in the room, all staring intently at computer screens. Two of them, a man and a woman, I didn’t recognize. The third was Henry, Bolle’s chief computer hacker and all around geek. He stood up and smiled at us, or more properly, he smiled at Casey, then the rest of us. He’d always been a little sweet on Casey.
Bolle motioned everyone to have a seat around the table. Everybody else but Henry left. Bolle took a second to fetch a cup of coffee. He took a small sip and gave a slight wince.
I’d been studying Bolle out of the corner of my eye. Last year, I’d aligned myself with Bolle out of desperation. He’d had an arrogant, cocksure attitude I’d found grating, and there was always something he was holding back. I never felt like I’d gotten the whole story. Everything had blown up in our faces, literally, that night on the tarmac, and I’d lain awake at night, wondering how much I blamed Bolle, and how much I blamed myself for following him.
Something seemed different about Bolle, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I felt like I was seeing a man that had been humbled by experience. I wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“I’m going to be upfront with all of you,” he said. “Henderson Marshall is going to try to become a US Senator, and I’m going to stop him. I’m not doing it because I disagree with his politics, I’m doing it because he’s a criminal. All of us, including me, represent loose ends to Marshall, and he’s perfectly willing to kill us to make us go away.”
He took another sip from his coffee.
“I’m still a Federal agent, and while the defeat we suffered last year caused me to lose some support, I still have a tremendous number of resources at my disposal, in the form of money, equipment, the force of law. What I need is people I can trust. People who won’t be corrupted by Marshall’s wealth. If you are willing to help, I could use all of you in one fashion or another.”
Casey, Alex and I all looked at each other. Part of me was tempted to stand up, ask them both to come with me, and get the hell out of here. We were smart and resourceful, we could stay ahead of Marshall long enough to find a hole to hide in, particularly if Bolle was keeping him busy.
But I wondered how long that could last. I’d spent the last six months constantly waiting for Marshall’s people to make a play for me, and I wasn’t keen to spend the rest of my life that way.
I wanted to fight. The tattoo on my chest “Front Towards Enemy” wasn’t just a drunken whim, it pretty much summed up my approach to life. I wanted Marshall to no longer be a threat, one way or another.
The question was whether I wanted to do it with Bolle. He was right about one thing, he had resources I didn’t. I was nearly broke. My security and investigations company had made about enough money to buy me a pizza and a six-pack every month. I’d been hemorrhaging cash on living expenses and security precautions.
Bolle also was acting under the color of law. More than once, I’d considered finding a place to hide with a good rifle, so I could put a bullet through Marshall’s eye, but I didn’t relish the idea of spending the rest of my life in prison. Bolle could put a badge back on my chest, and if some blood got spilled, maybe I would still be the good guy.
Casey and Alex were silent, but watching me out of the corners of their eyes. I knew they would both make up their own minds, but they’d also want to know which way I was leaning. Last fall I’d been in that same boat, trying to decide whether to join forces with Bolle or not. In the end, I’d trusted the judgment of Al Pace, Alex’s father. It had ended with a burning airplane, a stab wound in my arm, and Al dead. Hopefully, history wasn’t about to repeat itself.
“I want to know all of it, from the beginning,” I said.
He stared off into space for a minute. I thought I was going to get the usual, evasive Bolle brand of bullshit, but to my surprise, he started to talk slowly.
“I was a young Special Forces Lieutenant, during the initial invasion of Iraq during 2003. I had tried everything I could to get sent to Afghanistan, but the war was still small then, and I couldn’t get in. So I was desperate to prove myself in Iraq. I wanted a combat record, and a chance to get into Delta.”
The Army Special Forces were one of the two primary pipelines to get into the secretive Delta Force. The other was the Rangers, which I’d been a part of during my stint. We’d provided cover for Delta in places like Central America, and most famously, during an ill-fated mission in Mogadishu, Somalia.
“So I hit the ground in Baghdad in March of 2003, ready to find Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. Instead, I found myself assigned as a liaison officer to C
ascade Aviation. You see, Marshall was a business associate of my father’s, and he pulled some strings to get me that assignment.”
Bolle stood, started pacing around the room.
“The corruption was unbelievable. The Iraq war was our first privatized war. Cascade Aviation had dozens of contracts, not just for aviation support. They had contracts to provide supplies to US troops, to provide aid and reconstruction to the Iraqi people. By the time Cascade Aviation delivered a case of bottled water to troops in the field, they’d charged the US Government a thousand dollars. I saw shrink-wrapped pallets of hundred dollar bills just disappear. Iraqi gold, artwork, cultural relics, all of it was looted and shipped out of the county in the bellies of Cascade Aviation planes.”
He fiddled with his coffee cup and apparently thought better of trying another sip.
“So I contacted the investigators at the Pentagon responsible for waste, fraud, and abuse. They treated me like I was crazy. Two weeks later a bomb blew up in my quarters in the Green Zone. It detonated early so I was injured, but not killed. Nobody was ever able to explain how the insurgents were able to sneak past multiple layers of security, or why they chose to plant it under my bunk instead of picking more lucrative targets like the ammo dump or motor pool.”
He sat back down. He looked pale. I knew what it was like to relive a particularly bad memory. I especially hated doing it in front of people.
“After I recovered, I was transferred out of Special Forces to a job overseeing facilities maintenance at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri. One night as I was driving home from the base, I noticed an envelope stuck between the seats of my car that I knew I hadn’t put there. Inside were baggies of white powder. I threw it out the window. Two minutes later I was pulled over by the local police, supposedly for running a stop sign. They searched my car three times and seemed very frustrated when they didn’t find anything.”
This time last year, I would have thought this whole story was bullshit, cooked up by some crazy conspiracy theorist. Now I found myself nodding my head.
“I took that as a sign to keep my mouth shut and left the Army quietly. I figured my attempt to join the FBI would be sabotaged, but surprisingly, I found myself as a trainee at Quantico, then the New York Field Office. Along the way, I managed to gain the support of other like-minded people, some of them in the FBI, some in other agencies, even some elected officials.”
He got back up, paced some more.
“People like Marshall have always existed. Beneath their veneer of civility and accomplishment, they’re savages. But in the first part of this century, they’ve become emboldened. No longer satisfied with millions, they want billions. They no longer are content to subtly influence from the shadows, they want to own the world. And I intend to stop them, starting with Marshall.”
In my gut, I knew what he told us was true. I also expected there was more, things he hadn’t told us. My guess was they involved his father, who was an “associate” of Marshall’s.
Casey and I had investigated Bolle, as much as we were able, and his story matched what little we’d been able to dig up. Came from an affluent family. Went to the right schools, but sought a commission in the Army anyway after 9/11. A brief time in Special Forces, then a sudden, undistinguished posting, followed by time at the FBI.
I took a deep breath.
“I’m in,” I said.
Casey and Alex were both nodding their heads.
I hoped I was making the right call.
CHAPTER NINE
This was the second time I’d been sworn in as a cop. Both were a little anti-climatic. After my stint in the Army, I’d gone to college and started at the Portland Police Bureau a week after graduation. At my swearing in ceremony, I’d been alone, surrounded by new officers that were being congratulated by wives, husbands, parents, kids, and friends. I’d stood over in the corner, watching all the hugs and pictures for a few minutes, then I left. I went to Ringside Steakhouse in Portland, and for the first time in my life, dropped a hundred bucks on a dinner for myself. Eating it alone was a depressing, lackluster experience.
This time I found myself raising my right hand in a dilapidated conference room with fiber optic cables duct taped to the walls and a big coffee stain on the worn carpet. Bolle seemed to sense the situation was lacking in decorum and tried to make up for it by standing there ramrod straight and reading the oath to me like his life depended on it.
After a few minutes, it was done. Big Eddie handed me a set of credentials fresh out of the laminating machine. Like most federal law enforcement credentials, they looked almost amateurish. He also had a set for Casey, and for Alex. They were receiving special commissions that the Justice Department had developed for technical experts. It was mostly so they could possess and examine evidence. They didn’t quite have full law enforcement powers, but they could carry a gun.
Bolle made introductions all around. I already knew Eddie and Henry of course. I’d met Dalton in the car, but now I shook his hand. At first glance, he was a bland-looking Portland hipster, but if you were paying attention you could see there was some steel underneath. I wondered what his story was.
The other three, Drogan, Struecker and Byrd were typical feds. Stuecker and Byrd were virtual twins, both guys in their early thirties with short haircuts, nice clothes, and an erect bearing. You could put them in clown suits and they’d still look like federal agents. Drogan was a woman, not quite forty, who had hard gray eyes and short-cropped dark hair. I guessed she’d seen some shit. I wondered how they had hooked up with Bolle.
After the introductions, Bolle turned us over to Eddie to get us settled.
“I assume you guys are heeled?” Eddie asked.
I nodded. Casey lifted the hem of her baggy hoodie, showing the handle of her H&K nestled next to her belly button piercing. Alex shook her head.
“I just got off a plane,” she said.
“Well, right this way to the gun locker,” he said, gesturing expansively.
Just then, from the room next door, Henry yelled, “Hey! I think I’ve got something.”
We all walked across the hallway. I’d given him the cell phone I took off the dead skinhead. It was plugged into a laptop and Henry was typing away at a screen.
“What is it?” Bolle asked.
“I cracked this guy’s phone. It’s a pre-paid throw away, but I’ve been tracking all the numbers in the call history and trying to get into those phones too. I managed to crack the phone he called most frequently.”
Cell phones were scary. Henry had gained access to the phone I’d given him, checked out the call history, and had managed to gain remote access to at least one of those phones. This was one of the many reasons I hated cell phones.
He clicked on a file and a picture of a woman bound to a chair appeared on the big screen. She looked scared. It was grainy and poorly lit, but I still recognized her.
Gina.
“Shit,” I said.
“When was that sent?” Alex asked.
“About two hours ago, with this text message,” Henry said. He clicked on another file and a text message came up on the screen.
We still got the bitch. She is pain in ass. How long we have 2 keep her?
“Then a reply came from another phone,” Henry said as he clicked again.
Sit tight. She may still know something.
“And then this,” Henry said.
If u wnat to Torcher her, we have 2 move. Shes noisy.
“Last message,” Henry said.
I’ll tell you when. Busy. Sit tight.
“Torcher?” I said. “They’re going to set her on fire?”
“I think they mean torture,” Casey said. “That guy doesn’t strike me as real literate.”
“Shit,” I said again. “Can you tell where they are?”
After more typing, Henry brought up a map. Three lines intersected on a red dot.
“They’re across the river in Vancouver, Washington. Looks like an apartment comple
x off 164th Avenue.”
“We need to get over there,” I said.
Henry shook his head and pointed at one of the big monitors bolted to the wall. It showed live traffic feeds from the two major bridges crossing the river between Portland and Vancouver.
“It’s rush hour,” he said. “The bridges are gridlocked.”
“Call Jack,” Bolle said. “I want him and the Little Bird in the parking lot.”
He turned to Dalton.
“I’d like for you to take Dent and Henry and try to get eyes on that apartment. Figure out what we are dealing with.”
Dalton nodded. “I’ll need a vehicle on the other side.”
“It’ll be waiting for you. I’m going to get a team together and start moving across the river. The helo is too small to ferry everybody and their equipment. If this goes to shit, we may need to use the locals. Their SWAT team is pretty good.”
Dalton nodded again, then turned to Henry. “You’ve got kits for video and phones pre-loaded?”
“I do,” Henry said. “But it’s going to be hard for me to do video and phones all at once. Can we bring Casey too?”
Dalton gave Casey a look. I could tell he was uncomfortable bringing along people he didn’t know, but I could also tell he trusted Henry.
“Ok,” he said. “You take Casey and get your gear. Dent, come with me.”
With that, he turned and started leading me through a warren of corridors.
“We’re going to have to do this quick,” he said without turning around. “Tell me about your background.”
I would have bet a paycheck he already knew my background. A good way to learn about somebody was to get them to talk about themselves.
“I did four years in the Regiment. I managed not to get killed in the Bakara Market.”
The Regiment was army speak for the 75th Ranger Regiment. The Bakara Market was where the infamous Mogadishu shootout had happened in 1993. They made a movie about it. I always fancied that one particular extra who showed up on screen for a few seconds was me.