Foreign Influence

by Brad Thor

  “Wait here,” replied the Good Samaritan. “I’ll be right back.”

  Harvath thanked him, and once he left the men’s room, followed him at a safe distance. He cut through the gift shop and exited the structure via a side door at the far end.

  Since no one from the black Peugeot had come in looking for him, there was only a handful of places they could be. Either they had given up and left, which he highly doubted; they had driven off to another point where they would wait to pick up his trail again, virtually impossible to do without being seen; or they were sitting out in the parking lot somewhere. And if they were out in the parking lot, they would be positioned so that they could keep an eye on his car while they waited for him to come back out. It was the answer that made the most sense and therefore the one he went with.

  It didn’t take Harvath long to find them. The young man from the men’s room was politely ransacking the Opel, looking for a nonexistent bottle of pills while the two men in the Peugeot watched in silence, trying to figure out what was going on.

  The Peugeot was three rows back and they never saw Harvath coming. Using the butt of his Glock, he smashed the rear passenger window. Popping the lock, he opened the door and sat down upon the spill of broken glass.

  “Nobody move,” he said, holding his pistol so that both of the startled men could see it.

  Next to Eyebrows was the driver, an equally beefy and thick-necked mouth breather with a thin scar on his right cheek. Whoever these two were, they were not operators. They were muscle. And poorly dressed muscle at that.

  “Why have you been following me?” asked Harvath.

  “No hablamos ingles,” said Eyebrows.

  “Bullshit. Why have you been following me?”

  “No hablam—”

  “Shut up. Do you have any weapons on you?”

  “Qué?”

  “Dónde estan las armas?” he said, pulling Eyebrows’ shirt up so he could check his waistband. “Las pistolas? Dónde estan?”

  “No pistolas. No armas.”

  Harvath put the gun against Scarface’s temple and patted him down. He was clean.

  He used his pack to brush off some of the glass on the seat and settled back. These two needed to be dealt with, but not here. “Vamonos,” he said.

  “A dónde vamos?” replied Scarface nervously.

  Leaning forward Harvath put his Glock against the man’s head and slowly repeated, “Va-mo-nos. Got it? Now quit jerking around and get moving.”

  The Spaniard started the engine, put the car in gear, and pulled out of the rest area and onto the motorway. Two exits later, Harvath signaled for him to turn off.

  They followed a small country road and he instructed Scarface to pull behind a thick copse of trees. He then told him to turn off the engine.

  Climbing out, he instructed them to exit the vehicle one at a time. “Afuera.” His Spanish was lousy, but the pistol was a wonderful interpretive aid that seemed to help get his points across.

  He motioned for the men to put their hands on their heads and get down on their knees. It was obvious from their faces that they believed he was going to execute them.

  He walked around to the back of the vehicle and popped the trunk. Pulling back an old blanket, he discovered two sawed-off shotguns. “No pistolas. No armas, huh?”

  Eyebrows began to speak, but Harvath cut him off. “Shut up.”

  He searched the rest of the trunk, but didn’t find much. There was an empty gas can, some road flares, snow chains, a spare, and a jack. What he really would have loved was some duct tape, but there wasn’t any. The plastic Tuff Ties from his kit would have to do.

  Walking around to the front of the car, he tucked his Glock in the back of his jeans and after making sure it was loaded, set one of the sawed-off shotguns on the hood of the car. With his eyes on Scarface and Eyebrows, he fished through his backpack and removed the plastic ties.

  He walked over to Eyebrows and demonstrated how he wanted him to secure his friend. When Scarface was zipped up, Harvath had Eyebrows lie facedown in the dirt and he returned the favor.

  With their ankles zipped together and wrists bound behind their backs, Harvath had them hop over to the car and helped load them in the trunk facedown. Once they were in, he chained a couple more Tuff Ties together so he could hog-tie the men. It was cramped quarters in the trunk and neither of them was going to be able to move until they were cut loose.

  After gagging the men, he slammed the lid shut and climbed into the driver’s seat. He removed the GPS unit, fired it back up, and once it had acquired the satellites, planned an alternate route to the destination, which he quickly memorized.

  The reason he had been able to ID Eyebrows and Scarface coming out of Bilbao was that they had been following close enough to be seen. If the GPS unit or the Opel he had been driving contained some sort of a tracking device, they should have been able to stay back and out of sight. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to gamble that the GPS device might give him away to whoever had sent the two geniuses in the trunk, and so as he pulled back out onto the country road and headed for the motorway, he dropped the unit out the window.

  He had no idea that the car he was now driving was the biggest giveaway of all.

  CHAPTER 11

  CHICAGO

  After leaving Area Five headquarters, Sergeant John Vaughan drove to the intersection where Alison Taylor had been struck. He parked his vehicle and surveyed the entire area on foot.

  Beyond the lone Chicago Police Department blue light camera used to discourage street crime, Vaughan located five other privately owned security cameras that might have footage of the hit-and-run.

  The first belonged to Alison Taylor’s apartment building. Vaughan scared up the resident manager, who had “already” spoken to the Area Five detectives. John mollified the man and explained that he was simply following up.

  The manager told him exactly what he had told the detectives. The building’s exterior camera provided a 24/7 feed so that residents could see who was buzzing them from the front door. Unfortunately, the feed wasn’t recorded.

  Was it possible that a resident could have had their TV switched to the video loop when the accident occurred? Yes, but at three o’clock on a weekday morning, he doubted it. The majority of his renters were young professionals like Ms. Taylor. What’s more, he assumed that if anyone had seen something, they would have alerted the police.

  The manager agreed to send an e-mail to his residents asking if they had seen anything and took Vaughan’s card.

  The next three cameras belonged to merchants near the intersection, all of whom had previously spoken with the detectives. Of the businesses, one’s camera had not been turned on that evening, another stated that her camera was a fake and only there to deter crime, and the third merchant replied that unless he’d been broken into during the night, he automatically erased the footage every morning when he came in and started anew.

  The fifth camera was from a bank ATM, and they still had their footage from the night in question. Though the Area Five detectives had already screened the footage, the bank manager was happy to let Vaughan see it.

  Considering the camera’s field of view, it should have been perfect. In fact, it would have been perfect if not for a large delivery truck that had parked on the street just in front of the ATM that evening. All of the bank’s customers had been recorded perfectly, but seeing beyond the truck to the intersection was impossible.

  Vaughan had figured it was a long shot, but sometimes those were the ones that paid off. His hopes of catching the act on tape now were all but gone.

  After dinner at home with his family, homework, and baths for the kids, Vaughan returned to the intersection and went into the subway station. He wanted to re-create the scene for himself as closely as possible to the way it had happened.

  Coming out of the subway, he turned to the right, exactly as Alison and her friends would have, and retraced their steps along the sidewalk.

/>   He spent hours studying the intersection and its flow of pedestrians and traffic. He watched the timing of the lights and how many vehicles rushed the reds. He charted the vehicles that turned into the crosswalk where Alison had been struck and noted their rates of speed.

  For most people it would have been mind-numbing tedium, but for Vaughan it was a challenge; a puzzle. He was convinced that he could find the answers he was looking for here. He just needed to keep looking.

  At 5:30 in the morning, he went home in time to shower and change into a new suit before the children were up and wanting breakfast. Thirty minutes, four kisses, and one family hug later, his wife took their son off in one direction to his school, while he took their daughter to hers.

  As a Marine who had seen hundreds of firefights in Iraq, he was no stranger to sleep deprivation. In fact, he’d often joked that he could handle sleep deprivation in combat. It was the sleep deprivation of parenthood that was the real killer.

  Because there was no Dunkin’ Donuts near his daughter’s school, he broke one of his hardest and fastest rules and stepped into a Starbucks. The minute he did, he could hear the giant sucking sound of money being vacuumed out of customers’ pockets. Starbucks had good coffee, and as a capitalist, he didn’t fault them for getting the most they could for their product. He just disliked the whole vente/grande, mocha-frappu-B.S.-cino, coffee-as-art shtick. Hot, black, and in a cup—that’s the complete extent of the relationship he wanted with the beverage.

  Instead of taking his large cup of house blend back to the car, he found a table and took a seat. His eyes were glazed over as he stared absently out the window and there were probably multiple customers who found the sight of a man with a pistol on his hip and a thousand-yard stare more than a little disturbing.

  If people were looking, he didn’t notice. The weapon was so much a part of who he was that he never really thought about it. It was just one of several tools necessary for doing his job.

  As his mind wandered, he watched a Yellow taxi drive by outside. He watched as it neared the corner and slowed to a stop. A uniformed crossing guard directed the cab to stay where it was while she crossed a group of kids with backpacks and skateboards.

  He had never liked cabbies very much. The fact that they were predominantly immigrants wasn’t what bothered him. As long as they had come in the front door like everybody else, he was okay with it. What bothered him was what lousy drivers they tended to be.

  It didn’t make any sense. A rational person would be correct in thinking that the more one performed a task, the better one would become at it. But that didn’t seem to apply to cab drivers.

  He seriously doubted the cab would have even stopped for the kids if the guard hadn’t been there.

  At that moment, he got an idea. Pulling out his notebook, he turned to a fresh page and clicked his pen. He removed his cell phone and dialed the main number for the CPD. When the operator answered, he asked to be connected to the Public Vehicles Division.

  “Public Vehicles. Officer Brennan,” said the voice who answered.

  “Good morning, Officer Brennan. This is Sergeant John Vaughan from Organized Crime.”

  “It was all my wife and mother-in-law’s idea. I had nothing to do with it. Put me in the witness protection program and I’d be happy to testify.”

  Vaughan loved working with cops. No matter what, they all had a pretty good sense of humor. “I’ll send someone down to take your statement, officer. In the meantime, I’m wondering if you could help me out with something I’m working on.”

  “For the sergeant who’s going to relocate me to Florida or Arizona, you name it.”

  “Part of your responsibility is keeping an eye on the cab companies, right? You make sure the licensing and the medallions are all in line, follow up on criminal complaints involving drivers; that sort of stuff, correct?”

  “That’s us. Miami Vice without Miami or the vice.”

  “I’m looking into a hit-and-run that involved a Chicago Yellow Cab.”

  “Do you have a number?”

  “Case number or cab number?”

  “I’ll take whatever you’ve got,” said the officer.

  Vaughan read off the case number. “That’s all we have. We are trying to track down the cab.”

  There was the sound of keys clicking as Brennan pulled up the report on his computer. “It looks like Yellow Cab was contacted by our division, but we were unable to get any further information. Yellow claims it doesn’t have any knowledge of any of its drivers being involved in hitting a pedestrian on the evening in question.”

  “What about damage to a vehicle consistent with a hit-and-run on the night in question?”

  Once again, the keys clicked away. As the officer searched, Vaughan added, “Or maybe there was a driver who failed to return his vehicle.”

  Finally, Brennan said, “Sorry, Sergeant. It doesn’t look like we’ve got anything here that can help you. This doesn’t mean you’re going to back out of your promise to get me into the witness relocation program, does it?”

  Vaughan chuckled and then was all business. “If your wife was struck by a cab and the driver fled the scene,” he began and then corrected himself. “Strike that. If your mother was struck by a cab and the driver fled the scene, who in your division would you want on the case?”

  “Paul Davidson. No question.”

  The officer hadn’t even hesitated. “He’s that good?” said Vaughan.

  “You asked me who I’d want. I’d want Paul Davidson. Now, if the guy had struck my mother-in-law, that would be completely different.”

  “I’m sure it would. Can you pass me over to Officer Davidson, please?”

  “He’s up in Wisconsin, fishing.”

  “Can you give me his cell number?”

  Vaughan absorbed a couple more jokes about the man’s wife and mother-in-law, and after getting his promise to put in the word for him with the witness relocation program, Brennan gave him the number.

  Thirty seconds later, a cell tower had located Paul Davidson on Wisconsin’s Lake Geneva. “You have reached the cell phone of vacationing Chicago police officer Paul Davidson,” said the forty-five-year-old cop pretending to be his own outgoing message. “If this is an emergency please hang up and dial 911. For all other matters, hang up and call me when I’m back in my office two days from now.”

  Someone in the background then happily yelled, “Hey! Look at that! Hurry, get the net!”

  Vaughan was getting the distinct impression that the Department of Public Vehicles didn’t hire people unless they were certified wiseasses. There was the sound of line being pulled from a reel as he said, “Officer Davidson, this is Sergeant John Vaughan from the Organized Crime Division.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it. It was my wife and mother-in-law’s idea.”

  “Brennan already used that one.”

  “What a thief. I leave the office for three days and he steals all my material.”

  “Is this a bad time, officer?”

  “Let me see,” said Davidson as he took stock of his surroundings. “Six-packs, sandwiches, Chamber of Commerce weather, and the last day of my vacation. No, now’s perfect.”

  “I can call back.”

  “If you let that line snap again,” he said over his shoulder to his fishing companion, “I swear to God I’ll drown you right here.”

  “Got your mother-in-law with you?” asked Vaughan.

  “No, my priest. Now, what can I spend the last day of my vacation doing for you, Sergeant?”

  “I’m working on a hit-and-run. Not a lot of leads. A Yellow Cab hit a young woman about two weeks ago. We know where it happened and approximately what time it happened, but that’s all.”

  “Do you have a description of the driver?”

  “The two witnesses we have are friends of the victim and were intoxicated at the time.”

  “Is the victim still alive?”

  “Yes, but she’s got seriou
s trauma and some bad brain damage.”

  “I’ve never heard of good brain damage,” said Davidson.

  “Touché.”

  “So were the witnesses too drunk to give you a description of the driver?”

  “They think he was Middle Eastern,” replied Vaughan.

  “Okay. Iranian? Iraqi? Jordanian? Palestinian?”

  “I have no idea. All I know is that Officer Brennan said that if his mother had been the victim of a hit-and-run like this, you’re the one he’d want on the case.”

  “First of all, Brennan doesn’t even have a mother. He was a foundling and there’s lots of times I think he should have stayed lost. But setting aside his penchant for Irish bullshit, he does occasionally get some things right.”

  “Then you can help?”

  “What’s the Organized Crime angle here?”

  “I’m also an attorney. In this case, I’m representing the family, trying to help track down the driver.”

  “So you’re getting paid for this?”

  “Yes,” said Vaughan. “But when I find the guy, then my lawyer hat comes off and I’m going to arrest him myself.”

  “Seeing as how you’re supposed to pursue this as a lawyer and not a cop, I assume you’ve got a licensed private investigator working with you?”

  Vaughan hadn’t gotten that far. In fact, he really hadn’t thought about it until now. Normally, he worked his cases alone. “Actually, I don’t have one.”

  “You do now. I charge two hundred bucks an hour plus expenses, nonnegotiable.”

  “Two hundred dollars an hour? That’s more than what I’m charging as the attorney.”

  “The difference between you and me, though, is that it’ll only take two hours of my time to get this guy. And, unlike a lawyer, I don’t charge for simply thinking about cases. I only charge when I am working on them.”

  This guy has been drinking in the sun too long, thought Vaughan. “If you can find this guy in two hours, you’ve got a deal.”