Vertical Coffin s-4

by Stephen J. Cannell

  "So he lied."

  "Big time. He was basically a Gumby. His equipment was a mess, mostly second-hand stuff. His haul bag was a disaster, full of the kinda stuff mountain shops sell to newbies, but nobody ever uses. Since we do outdoor climbs, not gym climbs, we have to travel to our sites. Sometimes it's a two-or three-hour drive, so I like to get an alpine start."

  "A what?" I was writing all this down.

  He smiled. "Alpine start-early, like three a. M. We'd meet in a market parking lot, or some agreed-upon place, and take off from there. You go early, especially if it's a snow climb, because the hard pack starts to melt after noon and you want to be off the mountain by then. Once the snow starts melting, all your protection starts pulling loose and it can get treacherous."

  "Protection?" I was still scribbling like mad trying to keep up.

  "Anything you pound into a rock face, or screw into ice to tie you off, is called protection."

  I nodded.

  "He always escalated any disagreement past the place you were willing to go. It's how he won arguments. There was something about Vincent. You never knew what he was capable of, and you didn't want to find out."

  I nodded. Pretty much exactly what Tad Palmer had said.

  "On the first climb he went on, we saw how dangerous he was, so we made him a belay monkey. That's basically somebody who stays at the belay station and minds the anchors."

  "I'm sorry, I'm afraid…"

  "Somebody who stays below and holds the end of the climbing rope, keeps it from getting tangled. It's a job anybody can do. If a guy brings his nonclimbing girlfriend, we always give her the job. Make her our 'Belay Betty', so to speak, okay?"

  "Right."

  "But after the first time he didn't want to do that, so the next time we went, we had to take him up as a rope man. He was long on nerve and short on skill. Basically, a screamer in training."

  I raised my eyebrow again.

  "A screamer is somebody taking the big drop. A screamer is dangerous to everybody, because he can zipper out all the protection and kill everyone on the line with him."

  "Got it."

  "So we asked him, basically, to stop climbing with us and resign from the club. As president, that was my job. I actually considered putting a gun in my belt when I talked to him. He was that unstable."

  "Sergeant Brickhouse told me you'd mentioned that he belonged to some kind of survivalist club."

  "That's what he said. He was always talking like some ex-military, antigovernment fanatic. But if you want my take on it, he was just mouthing off. He didn't have any tats on him, no swastikas, or any of that other antigovernment nonsense those survivalist guys like. I think it was just talk."

  "Anything else?"

  He thought for a moment, then said: "Well, one thing. He was always wanting us to climb the Chocolate Mountains."

  "Where's that?"

  "Way the hell on the other side of the Salton Sea. It's a mountain range between California and Arizona, which is, to be honest, not all that challenging. But he wanted to go up there anyway. Said there was a high altitude SEAL training camp he wanted to see. Even had maps."

  "When was this?"

  "All the time. He never stopped talking about it, until we threw him out. Most of the club members like the big face at Pinnacle National Monument, or, if we're going to overnight, we like Yosemite National Park. There's hundreds of great V-five climbs up there, some as high as thirty pitches, that require two or three days to complete."

  I didn't know exactly what pitches or V-5 climbs were, but I more or less had the idea, so I didn't ask. "If he was going to make a climb somewhere, you think it would be in these Chocolate Mountains?" I asked.

  "If he was still alive, yeah, I'm sure that's where he woulda gone. To the SEAL camp up there. It's almost four thousand feet up."

  "Do you have a map?" I asked.

  "Yeah, I think I have the Chocolate Mountains in a book- right here."

  He crossed to a bookshelf where he had a library of climbing books. He pulled down a volume labeled Bradshaw Trail Climbs.

  "The Bradshaw Trail is out past Indio by the Salton Sea in Riverside County," he explained as he started flipping pages. "It runs between the Chukwalla Mountains and the Chocolate Mountains. There's some spectacular views from the Chukwalla Bench of the Palos Verdes Valley."

  Then he found the page he wanted. "There's a Navy SEAL camp known as Camp Billy Machen down here at the base camp. They used to use it for desert training. It's closed now. The other SEAL camp, the one he wanted to visit, is at altitude." He pointed at a spot on the map. " 'Bout here, above Silver Pass."

  "Could I make a copy of this?" I asked him.

  "You can take it, if you bring it back."

  He gave me the book and I pulled out the sheet of paper that I'd found by Smiley's trash. "You recognize anything here?" I asked him. He scanned it for a moment.

  "YUMA TACTS," he read aloud. "Looks like some kind of military operation."

  "Yeah, but for what?" I wondered out loud.

  He shrugged and handed it back. "Beats me."

  I thanked Marion and walked back out to the car, wondering how to go about this.

  If Smiley wanted to go to the Chocolate Mountains, then that's where I wanted to go.

  My problem was, I didn't know the first thing about mountain climbing.

  Chapter 42

  THE DEAL

  By six fifteen the Rams were halfway through practice. I pulled the borrowed D-car into the upper parking lot at Agoura High School and walked through the campus. It was Friday afternoon, and the school sign announced that the Agoura football team was playing at San Marino High that night at eight, so the high school team wasn't out on the field. I stood for a minute on the top steps, looking down to where Chooch and thirty or so kids in their practice uniforms were running plays on the main field. There was still almost an hour of fall sunlight left.

  Chooch was with the offense. Across the field, working on breakdown drills with the defense, was Sonny Lopez, the man I'd come to see. He was coaching the boys to come to a partial balanced stop, setting their feet, running in place before making an open-field tackle.

  Chooch saw me and waved. "Hey," he yelled. "This is a closed practice."

  I flipped him the bird and he laughed, then turned and limped on his walking cast back toward the offense. Sonny looked up when Chooch yelled. He was dressed in sweats and football shoes, with a towel around his neck. When he saw me, he scowled and immediately started walking in my direction. We met about midfield.

  "I came to make a deal," I said.

  "You got nothing I want."

  I told him about Smiley's twin brother Paul, how Jo Brickhouse and I had found the tunnel at Hidden Ranch, and my theory about how easy it would have been for Vincent to steal those casings from the shooting ranges, commit the Nightingale and Greenridge murders, and frame both SWAT teams. When I was finished, he had lost the attitude.

  "You and Jo Brickhouse turned all that?" he said, a little respect creeping into his voice and eyes.

  I nodded, then added, "Jo was shot by that bastard this afternoon. She's in critical condition at L. A. County. She went to a house Smiley was using in Inglewood and he dumped her. It's all over the department and on the news. I'm surprised you haven't heard about it."

  "I've been at practice here since two."

  "I think I know where Smiley might be," I continued, "but I have a few conditions."

  Sonny stood with his hands on his hips, his face a mask. I couldn't read him at all.

  "First, I can't go after him alone. I need your word that if I tell you where I think he is, you'll do your best to deliver what I want."

  "I'm not gonna promise anything, Scully. At least not until I know what you have in mind."

  "All I want is your best effort. If you can't deliver, then you can't deliver."

  "Let's hear." He took off the towel that was around his neck and dropped it on the grass. His team had
stopped practicing, so he turned and yelled, "Hey! Keep that drill going. This ain't a break! We have the Chargers on Saturday!"

  The boys again lined up and continued the tackling drill. Sonny looked back at me.

  "I think Smiley went up into the Chocolate Mountains. It's a range out by the Salton Sea, south of Indio."

  "So call the FBI. It's their case now. Turn it over to them."

  "I want to arrest him myself. Two weeks ago he shot Emo, a guy I really cared about. This afternoon he dropped my partner. I really want this guy, Sonny."

  "It's not like Sergeant Brickhouse was your real partner." He was hedging.

  "Hey, she's my partner! And she's also my friend!" I almost shouted this at him. Calm down, I lectured myself for about the tenth time in two days. Then I put my hand on his shoulder. "Listen Sonny, if not for me or for Jo, then do it for Emo. You cared about him. Smiley deserves some first-person payback."

  "You said you had a few conditions. I got the first one. What're the others?"

  "I don't know how to mountain climb, and from what I've found out, I think he's going into some pretty rough terrain. I need help to get up there."

  "How can I help you with that?" Sonny said. "I don't know how to mountain climb."

  "SEB does. They teach their SWAT teams mountain rescue. I want you to get in touch with Scott Cook, tell him to bring the Gray team, or as many of those guys as he can, and have them meet me here and bring their climbing equipment. I'll call Cagel at SRT and see if I can convince him to loan me that unit too."

  "SEB and SRT are barely speaking. Put 'em in the same place, and you could end up with people getting killed."

  "Think about it. These are the two units that were hurt the most by all this. They weren't out killing each other, Smiley just made it look that way. What better way to bring these guys back together?"

  "A joint op."

  "Exactly. We work it together. Go up there and drag that asshole off the mountain."

  "You oughta sell this to the Discovery Channel," he said dryly. But I could tell from his expression and the glint in his eyes, that I had him.

  "Tell Sergeant Cook that my condition for giving him Smiley's exact location is that I go up there with them."

  "He's not gonna go for that."

  "He is if he wants to catch the guy who killed Billy Greenridge."

  Chapter 43

  GOOD TO GO

  Whatta they doing here?" Gordon Grundy said, standing in the back of the SRT SWAT truck, which was parked in the Faculty Only area of the Agoura High School lot. He was looking across the tarmac as the SEB SWAT van's headlights swept across us pulling in. It was just after sunset.

  "So far, the only thing all of us are guilty of is having a stupid fight in a bar," I said. "Nobody shot anybody. SEB didn't light up Greenridge and you didn't shoot Nightingale. Maybe it's time to bottle up some of this testosterone and aim it at the real shooter."

  Grundy was a tall, hard-edged man, dressed in black Kevlar. A collection of right angles and hard surfaces, his jaw jutted and his knuckles looked like unmined calcium deposits. He was flacked and jacked. His first scout, Nacho Rosano, was behind him, also glaring across the tarmac at the sheriff's van.

  Grundy, Rosano, Happy Zant, and Ringo Wagner, the two other members of the ATF Situation Response Team, climbed out of their truck. They stood in a tight huddle watching the Sheriff's SEB team dismount from their van twenty yards away. From this distance, it looked like only SEB team leader, Scott Cook, and his first scout, Rick Manos had come. Then I saw Sonny Lopez jump down out of the back of their van. He was only supposed to be the messenger, so what the hell was he doing back here? Scott, Rick, and Sonny moved across the parking lot toward us.

  "Let's talk to these guys," I said to Grundy.

  He nodded, and along with Nacho Rosano, walked with me toward the SEB team. Once we got to within a few feet, everybody stopped. There was enough electricity here to start a power company.

  The sheriffs wore tan jumpsuits with Glocks in low-slung outside rigs strapped with Velcro to their right legs. They were carrying long rifle cases called drag bags. Each one was folded up around a long gun and contained a shooter's mat and sniper's pack, with a multifrequency radio and several bullet trays. All of them, including Sonny, were wearing heavy Cover6 Plus tactical vests.

  ATF was in black jumpsuits with "SRT SWAT" in gold letters on the back. They also carried big holstered sidearms, wore Ultima flak vests, and were carrying fifty-pound mission packs.

  Everyone traded appraising looks. It seemed it was up to me to perform the marriage ceremony.

  "Okay," I said. "We need to get some stuff behind us before we start." Nobody said anything. "I think somebody needs to own up to what happened at Hidden Ranch."

  Grundy shifted his weight. "We told your warrant control desk there was a possibility of automatic weapons in there."

  "Not according to them," Cook said immediately.

  "Excuse the expletive, but fuck 'em," Grundy said dangerously.

  "Whatta you mean, fuck 'em? Fuck you! They said you only told them about the impersonating bust."

  "That's bullshit." Grundy was getting hot. "Somebody, probably some six-dollar-an-hour civilian in your warrant office, is covering his ass. We told them there was a weapons complaint and that there was a possibility of ordnance at that address. We also-" He stopped and everybody waited. "Okay," he went on. "We put a low assignment risk on it because we'd braced Smiley before and, quite frankly, he looked to us like a feeb. We didn't see any trouble coming. In retrospect, we shoulda assigned a higher risk to the warrant delivery. That was a mistake. But we're not fucking mind readers. Nobody thought the shit was gonna jump off like it did. We backed up Deputy Rojas. We were just around the corner."

  "Why didn't you serve your own damn warrant?" Cook asked.

  "We thought it was unnecessarily provocative to roll in there with a SWAT team. We didn't think he had an AK-forty-seven, but we wanted to give your guy cover, so we parked nearby."

  They were all silent for a long time.

  "Look, we're sorry," Grundy said. "I know that doesn't cover the loss of Deputy Rojas, but the fact is, we feel pretty damn bad about it. We tried to come to the funeral, but you guys ran us out."

  Scott Cook looked at Sonny Lopez. It was almost as if he was asking Sonny's permission to go for this. Finally Sonny nodded.

  "Okay," Scott said. "We accept the apology." Then he put out his hand and Gordon Grundy shook it. After that we shook all around.

  "I understand this guy is in the mountains up on rough terrain." Grundy was getting right to business.

  "Right," I said.

  "Okay, we're good to go," Grundy said. "We're all V-five-certified climbers."

  "So are Rick and I," Scott said. "But Sonny Lopez couldn't climb off a whore's ass in the middle of a vice raid."

  "Then what's he doing here?" Grundy asked.

  "He came over to the SWAT house to give us the word, then wouldn't get outta the damn van."

  "I'm going," Sonny stated bluntly.

  "We can't take anybody who isn't certified. It's dangerous and it'll slow us down," Grundy said.

  "I'm going," Sonny repeated.

  "Me too," I said. "I didn't put this whole thing together so I could read about the capture in the newspaper."

  "You're not going either, Scully," Scott Cook said. "Neither of you are."

  "Then you're not getting the map," I answered. "I'm the only one who knows where on that mountain Smiley went. Those are the terms."

  Scott and Gordon glowered at me. Again, I was the problem.

  "Okay, if that's the way you want it, you guys can come. But we're not waiting for either one of you. If you can't keep up, we're leaving you."

  "Fine," I said. Sonny nodded.

  "Is that all you've got to wear?" Grundy said, looking at my jeans and cotton shirt.

  "I'm sure you guys have another one of those snazzy lookin' bunny suits in the truck."
<
br />   Grundy turned to Rosano. "Nacho, get this asshole suited up."

  Nacho headed to the truck and I followed. As I was changing my clothes inside, putting on the jumpsuit and Tac vest, Gordon Grundy and Scott Cook walked over to the back door.

  "Okay, so where the hell am I going?" Grundy asked.

  I pulled the book that Marion Bell had given me out of my briefcase, and flipped it open to the Chocolate Mountains. "He's heading for a Navy SEAL camp. Right here." I put my finger on the spot marked Silver Pass.

  Chapter 44

  THE CHOCOLATE MOUNTAINS

  We were all in SRT's SWAT truck, because it was bigger, newer, and had better toys. Gordon Grundy drove, while Sonny, Rick, Scott, Nacho, Ringo, Happy, and I sat on the benches in the back facing each other with tight, blank expressions, dressed like Gulf War commandos. We sped along the 210 on our way toward Palm Springs, lost in our own thoughts. Too many friends had died or had been injured in the last two weeks.

  I thought of Emo, remembering his easy smile, the way he had of looking at you without judgment. I had once seen him in a booking cage telling jokes to a guy he had just busted, both of them doubled over with laughter. He could arrest somebody without making a power trip out of it. He understood human weakness and always seemed to be able to communicate, even with the most hardened criminals. Emo was the kind of cop I had joined up to be.

  Before we left Agoura, I had called the hospital and Bridget reported that there was no news. Jo was still in ICU and critical. Bridget sounded like she was beginning to come apart, her voice tight, verging on shrill.