But presumably the worrying thing from their point of view was that they could be dealing with a bona fide FBI agent…Yet I would gain nothing from running my mouth. On the contrary: it could only leave me more vulnerable.
He looked at me patiently. ‘If you’re thinking of playing dumb, you can save your breath: I found the ID. So I’ll ask again: are you an FBI Agent?’
I looked him over. If he was worried, he wasn’t showing it. I chanced another shrug.
He blew through his teeth. He was irritated, but not all that much. He had a longer fuse than his buddies.
‘The thing is: I’ve made inquiries, and it seems that you’re not on their books as an agent – which gets me thinking you’re not an FBI agent at all.’
He let that hang. It told me that, while they might have influence over someone with access to FBI records, it wasn’t someone with the clearance to know who I was. And that was unsurprising, since only the folk at the Hoover Building in DC – that is, FBI Headquarters – were privy to my history. Agents at FBI Field Offices up and down the country – one of whom they must’ve contacted – wouldn’t have had a clue.
It was all to do with the events in 2013. While trying to retrieve my son, I’d withheld information from the FBI, and, as a result, they deemed I was in part to blame for the attacks that unfolded. But because it would’ve been a fiasco to publicly announce that an ex-FBI agent was wanted in relation to the attacks, they never did.
However, I reckoned that if I was ever to wind up arrested for an unrelated reason, the police department responsible – once they’d put my details into their computer system – would receive a call from Hoover arranging to take custody of me. Similarly, if my fingerprints or DNA ever happened to be run by local law enforcement, I imagined Hoover would get wind, and use it to try and hunt me down.
‘Well, there’s your answer, Sherlock. Maybe you should join the FBI?’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘But it’s not that simple, is it? Because we both know that your ID isn’t fake. So how does a guy who doesn’t work for the FBI get an FBI ID?’
I returned his gaze, and made a decision: he wasn’t gonna lash out if I dodged the question. He considered that sort of grunt work beneath him – and was merely trying his luck.
‘Is it by standing on a goddamn ice-cube, or am I thinking of a different riddle?’
He smiled, but was unamused. ‘Is your name even Saul Marshall?’
Again, trying his luck.
‘If you’re asking for the sake of my tombstone, that’s real kind of you – murderers tend not to bother these days.’
His smile grew, and he crouched down.
‘When a man’s burnt alive, it tends to take at least five minutes before they lose consciousness. That’s five minutes of watching your own flesh cook.’
At that Lanky, still smiling, stood and left the room.
Chapter 15
After Lanky locked the door, the situation changed. Instead of moving away, he started talking to one of the other men – sounded like Pockmark – just outside. And this meant we had to delay taking action, because we’d be overheard.
At first, I strained to hear what the men were saying. Then, after gleaning no more than a few innocuous tidbits, such as the fact Jowls had started incinerating the bodies outside, I instead began reflecting on the task at hand.
I soon realized I was grinding my teeth with tension.
And the tension wasn’t helped when the two men then moved away from the door, only to return five minutes later – just as I was thinking it might be safe to make a move.
But I didn’t get frustrated. I began calmly plotting our counter-attack. And if one thing was clear, it was that the MP5 was the game-changer. Get our hands on that, and it made everything else irrelevant and—
All of a sudden, there was a disorientating burst of noise and a shot of adrenaline hit my bloodstream. I recognized the sound alright: a bullet busting the sound barrier.
My first thought was: whose gun? Because all the weapons I was aware of on the premises were subsonic.
The next instant, another noise: a garbled shout of pain emanating from out front. Jowls. He’d been hit.
Hardly had I thought this than there was a second urgent shout from just outside the door to our cell – ‘unlock it, unlock it’ – and a frantic scrabbling to work the locks. Then Pockmark and Lanky came careering in. Pockmark, carrying a Walther, sprinted past my cubicle, with the obvious intent to cover Ellen. Lanky, still holding the MP5, entered my cubicle, and kicked down the partition wall that blocked his view of the door to the room.
Lanky – red-faced, manic-eyed – leveled the MP5 at the door, and waited.
We all waited.
It’d been the sound of a Glock. A silenced Glock, because with an unsilenced Glock, you get a whole lot more noise.
Another bang from the other room – the front door getting booted off its hinges. Then the footsteps of a single person. A light, distinctive patter I’d recognize anywhere.
Vannevar Yeung. Armed with his gun of choice, a standard issue Glock.
But how?
Vann was moving slowly towards the door, and Lanky was staring at the threshold, his finger hugging the submachine-gun’s trigger. He was waiting for Vann to appear in the door-frame, because if he shot indiscriminately through the wall, there was as much chance he’d tip Vann off as stop him dead.
Yet Lanky was also edging closer to me as he tried to get the best angle.
Vann’s footsteps paused. Lanky blinked, exhaled, took a hesitant half-step towards me. A hesitant half-step into my range.
I had to act now.
I lashed my right leg into his kneecap, and he fell back with a startled cry, unleashing a terrifying silent shower of bullets into the ceiling.
‘Now, Vann,’ I shouted.
Vann appeared in the doorway, took aim with lightning reflexes, and put a bullet in Lanky’s head. He was dead before he’d hit the floor.
The MP5 was out of my reach, and a second later, Pockmark appeared before me, and took a shot at Vann. Vann dodged out the room, and the slug missed him by a whisker.
Pockmark, not willing to risk bending for the MP5, instead carefully withdrew a second Walther from his pocket, while continuing to cover the door with the first. He aimed the second Walther at my head, and flicked off the safety. Then he tore his eyes away from the door for a good second and studied me hard – and I knew he was weighing up whether to leverage my life, or rid himself of a liability…
A heart-beat later, he made a decision: one hostage was enough. His finger went to the trigger, the blood whistled in my ears, and I knew it was the end of the line.
But then a bolt from the blue. All at once, Ellen appeared, and – before I could process what I was seeing – she smashed the sharp edge of the table-leg into Pockmark’s throat, and a bullet escaped the gun he’d had on me, and punctured the wall above my head.
Ellen hadn’t put her cuffs back on. Ellen had continued unscrewing the wing nuts, and concealed from Pockmark she was free. And her recklessness had just saved my hide.
I retched – only just holding back the vomit – as I realized my face was covered in blood. But I immediately took myself in hand. The guy was dying, but we needed him.
‘Stop his bleeding, he’s our only lead,’ I said to Vann, who was now in the room.
Vann raced over, removed his leather jacket, ripped off the arm, and wrapped it around Pockmark’s neck, trying to stem the flow. But the blood just kept on coming – flooding over Vann’s hands and lap – and thirty seconds down the line, Pockmark went limp.
Vann turned to me: ‘He’s dead, Saul.’
We’d lost the only lead.
But while I should have been annoyed, I wasn’t. I was just glad it wasn’t me.
Chapter 16
Vannevar rolled the body off his lap, stood, and shot me his trademark anarchic grin.
‘Let that be a lesson: always tip the pizza boy.’<
br />
I couldn’t help but return his grin. The sun could be about to engulf the earth and Vann would still be joking.
‘How the hell did you find us?’ I demanded, still bowled-over by his arrival.
‘Someone must’ve said my name three times,’ he replied slyly. Then, before I could reply, he turned to Ellen, who was also sitting over Pockmark’s body. ‘I’m Vannevar Yeung, good to meet you.’ Ellen looked back at him, dazed. I reckoned they’d knock along well, but she was too shell-shocked right now. ‘Forgive me: usually I soak myself in blood before turning up, but I was running late, so figured I’d just do it when I got here.’
Ellen gave an absent smile, and said simply: ‘Saul told me about you.’
‘Likewise. Though he didn’t tell me about your baseball swing.’
Vann reached into his pocket and threw me a key to the cuffs that he’d clearly picked up in the next room. I freed myself and stood.
I looked Vann over. He was just as I remembered him: 6’4”, jungle-cat physique, a shock of straight, black hair, and a face that revealed his mixed heritage; revealed both his Scandinavian and Chinese ancestry.
He was wearing black jeans and a black tee, both of which were now glossy with blood.
‘Well, Vann, you gonna tell us or not?’
He shook his head. ‘You’re not gonna like it, Saul. Not one bit.’
‘Spill. It can’t have been the burner phone: I removed the battery.’
He bit his lip. ‘The iPad I gave you – it was modified to contain a GPS device, for which I had the receiver. I lost the signal for it about twenty minutes away from here – obviously they found it in your bag, and removed the battery – but I inferred the area you’d be in from the direction you’d been heading. That said, I might not’ve found you if they hadn’t incinerated bodies: the smoke made it easy.’
‘You bastard.’
‘I know, I know. But I wouldn’t have felt the need if you didn’t land yourself in situations like this.’
I was livid. But also beyond grateful.
‘You bastard,’ I said again.
‘One more time, I might disappear.’
‘But hold on: I tried to call you twice this morning – before we landed ourselves in this mess – because we wanted help with an ambush, but all I got was answer-phone. Obviously, the ambush went to shit – but why didn’t you answer the phone?’
‘Because I was on a flight to LA. I figured that when you contacted me the first time, you weren’t just calling to get things off your chest. You were calling because, deep down, you wanted my help, but were worried about asking after what happened last time.’
What happened last time was that I’d enlisted Vann to help retrieve my son, and in the process, landed him in hot water: he’d lost his FBI job and faced criminal charges. And I had to admit, there was truth to his comment. I’d been reticent to make another big imposition.
I nodded to concede the point. Vann continued:
‘So, instead of warning you I was on the way, and having to deal with the bullshit – you insisting I stay put – I thought I’d take the initiative and fly in.’ He chuckled. ‘But from the sound of it, you’d already caved a few hours on, and decided to call in the Calvary.’
I chuckled. But while I felt able to laugh at this communication lapse now, I was only too aware it’d almost cost me my life.
‘So when you arrived in LA, and you were only getting my voicemail, you figured you’d turn on your dirty little bug?’
He nodded. ‘That is, after picking up this baby.’ He pointed to the Glock in his pocket. ‘You’d be surprised how easy it is to get hold of one of these on the streets of LA.’
‘After what happened to me, I don’t think I’ll ever be surprised at what the streets of LA are capable of,’ said Ellen, suddenly rediscovering her voice.
Vann gave her a quizzical look.
‘Vann, we’ll bring you up to speed in a moment,’ I said quickly. ‘First, you need to tell us where on earth we are, and what time it is.’
Vann nodded. ‘Just gone four p.m. And we’re in Searles Valley just west of the southernmost point of Death Valley, at the end of a dirt track.’
‘Okay,’ I said, absorbing this fast. ‘First, I need my valise: I had my own GPS reader in there linked to a bug I placed on that hacker I told you about and if the reader hasn’t been destroyed, it’s a vital lead. Secondly, we need to comb this place for clues.’
‘No problem,’ said Vann. ‘I’ll go get your valise – I saw it in the other room. You start frisking these bodies.’
As Vann departed, Ellen and I started disrobing Pockmark and combing his blood-drenched clothes: I removed them, Ellen frisked them.
‘There’s a receipt in his pants back pocket,’ said Ellen after a minute, holding up a crumpled piece of paper. ‘But unpromising. A receipt from The Maswik Café in the Grand Canyon Village – two portions of pancakes, and bacon and eggs – dated Wednesday lunch.’
I grunted dismissively, and we carried on searching. As we did so, Vann re-entered.
‘Okay, the GPS receiver’s still intact: they simply removed the battery. It’s coming up with a location in San Francisco.’
I nodded. ‘Help us frisk the second body.’
We started on Lanky. And though his pockets yielded no results, I then took off his left-shoe, and came across something: a small piece of paper – maybe twice the size of a postage stamp – with neat black handwriting on either side.
‘Look,’ I said, holding it up.
‘What’s it say?’ said Ellen.
‘On one side: 21.8MHz.’
‘A short-wave radio frequency,’ Vann interjected.
‘Exactly,’ I replied. ‘And I have a feeling that it may well be the frequency that’ll put us in contact with the woman they spoke to earlier.’ I flipped the paper. ‘And on the other side: 756, The Bellagio. 12.12.2015.’
‘A room at the Las Vegas hotel?’ Ellen asked.
‘Must be,’ said Vann.
I nodded gravely. ‘This could be serious shit. Maybe even a warning of an attack to come. And we need to do something about it quick.’
‘But what?’ asked Ellen. ‘We must be at least three hours from Vegas.’
‘More like four,’ Vann cut in.
‘Right,’ said Ellen. ‘So even if we rush there, there’s a real chance we’ll be too late, since shit could hit the fan any second.’
Both Ellen and Vann looked at me. I dropped my head in thought.
‘Here’s how I see it. I know, Ellen, that we’ve been warned not to trust the authorities. Yet while I take that warning seriously, the last time we chose not to alert the authorities it didn’t avert disaster. So this time, I vote we risk tipping-off the LVMPD, but also rush over there ourselves. And to play it safe, we should make the tip from a payphone en route.’
I looked at Ellen probingly. She nodded her consent.
I looked at Vann. ‘Vann, I’m assuming you’ve got a rental?’
‘On the other side of the dune out front.’
I nodded.
‘But what about these bodies?’ probed Ellen.
‘A tricky one,’ I answered. ‘If we tip-off the authorities about this place, it could well backfire: aside from the fact we’ve been warned about trusting the police, this place is now riddled with our DNA, and we don’t have time to clean up. So my gut says to leave things as they are, since folk are unlikely to stumble on this place anytime soon.’ I paused a beat. ‘We just have to accept that the nationalists will almost certainly send a team here, and clear up everything meticulously, because the last thing they want is loose ends.’
This met with no arguments and we fell into action. We checked the rest of the building plus their van. We frisked Jowls, and put out the fires still going strong in three of the steel barrels. We changed out of our blood-ridden clothes: we all put on spare tee-shirts from my valise, and Vann put on my spare jeans. Finally, we gathered all the items that could conce
ivably be of use – the bag I’d taken from LA and my valise (which was missing only my FBI ID, which they’d destroyed), but also all the weapons: the five Walthers, the MP5, the sniper rifle – and carried them to Vann’s rental. A dirty-grey Chrysler 200.
Then we got in the car – Vann behind the wheel – and scrammed in a cloud of dust.
Chapter 17
As soon as we hit civilization we made the tip: Vann stopped at a gas station, and used a pay-phone.
He told the LVMPD that he had reason to believe an attack could take place today at the Bellagio Hotel. Told them the room-number. And that was it.
In no time, we were back on the road. And once Vann had settled in, and we’d put the radio on quietly in the background so we’d know if any news broke, Ellen and I started bringing him up to speed. Thirty minutes down the line, he knew what we did.
‘So the girl in the gazebo was as young as sixteen? And her corpse badly bruised?’ said Vann darkly, after we’d let off talking. ‘That says something about these people.’
I nodded solemnly. I was unsurprised he’d honed in on this detail. It was the thing that’d disturbed me most, too.
‘It says their ideology has turned them into monsters. These victims aren’t just peaceful protestors, Vann – they’re kids.’ I paused. ‘And honestly, after the past few hours, it’s personal…’
Since leaving the quarry, my relief at escaping with my life had been replaced with a burning, near-overwhelming anger. These thugs had roughed me up and had had every intention of executing us in the most gruesome way imaginable. And I wanted them to bleed.
‘But it’s more than just personal,’ Ellen said. She was sitting in the back, but leaning forward to make herself heard. ‘They’ve clearly got more violence in the works, and if innocents are going to escape with their lives, they need to be shut down.’
A silence fell. Ellen had more reason than me to feel this personally, but she wasn’t just thinking revenge: she was thinking about others in the line of fire. It was sobering.
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