CHAPTER 126
SPACE
HANK DOBO, Chief of Security
"I DON'T GIVE one damn who he is or what emergency you have going on here!" Huddleston waved his bandaged hand in the air. "He assaulted a police officer, and that makes him a wanted man, so open this fucking door or we'll knock it down!"
Dobo reached up and wiped away a spray of the man's spittle that had peppered half his face. Turning to a female SPACE security officer standing behind them with a video camera, he said, "Be sure you keep the camera rolling."
The security officer nodded, and Dobo looked directly into the camera. "Hank Dobo, chief of security. Despite a critical systems failure that I was addressing on behalf of my employer, I am here because Detective Ronnie Huddleston of the Las Vegas Police Department threatened to arrest me unless I left my station and personally assisted him. We are here at guest room one-four-zero-two-one-six, the room provided to a SPACE contractor named Sam Flatt. We object to this violation of a guest's privacy in the absence of a warrant, and I am opening this room under duress of what I believe to be an illegal coercion."
Dobo touched his bracelet to the door handle. The LED turned green. He twisted the lever and pushed the door open, then walked inside and gestured for the others to follow. It was obvious the suite was empty as soon as they entered, but Huddleston waddled around looking in every conceivable hiding place. When he finished, Dobo said, "Are you satisfied, Detective Huddleston?"
"Shit no, I'm not satisfied!"
More spittle hit Dobo. "Would it be all right if I assign one of my security officers to assist you with anything else? I need to get back to my station. The casino's frozen because of the surveillance outage, and we're losing big money."
"No! You will assist me. I'm not about to run around here with some flunky who has to make a phone call for permission every time I need something."
"I can assure y—"
The man looked like his head might literally explode. He got closer, squared up with Dobo, and said, "No, no, no, no, no," tapping one of his good fingers on Dobo's chest with each “no.”
"Very well," Dobo said, "but let me give you some advice. Do not touch me again. Clear?"
Huddleston grunted and huffed his way toward the door. "I want to know where he is. Now."
CHAPTER 127
SPACE
SAFELY INSIDE THE room of the fictional Ms. Edna Haverstein, I opened my laptop and checked my inbox. Amid another screen full of newsletters and special offers, I had two emails of interest, one from my P.I., and the other from Meyer. I opened hers first. One sentence:
We just picked up a BOLO on you from LVPD? What in the world?
MY REPLY WAS BRIEF. I told her I had a burner phone and would call her soon. The P.I.'s email was a bit more substantive than Meyer's.
SAM, I've attached all the reports, but only one of them looks interesting in light of the little bit you've told me about your case. And honestly? I only stumbled onto that connection, LOL. One of the names was ALEX SOSA. Sounds Italian or something, right? Turns out that's an alias. Sorta anyway. He came here when he was grown, from Russia or somewhere like that, because his original name was ALEXANDRE ANDREYOVICH SOZONOV. He legally changed it to the more American sounding ALEX SOSA. Anyway once I had his real name I started searching and came across something curious. He didn't come here by himself. Had a brother and a sister. Brother's name was DMITRY SOZONOV and I couldn't find anything on him except he came here with the other two many years ago. Not a peep since. The sister is the connection. I don't know how you say her original name cause it's in all the databases in some weird ass letters that wouldn't copy and paste for me. You'll see what I mean if you look at her report. Anyway she changed her name too, and when I searched on her, that's when your client turned up, the Space casino. She's a lawyer and talks on her web site about them being a client of hers. Her American name is BRANDY PALMER. Anyway it's late and that's all I got for you. I'll jack the volume on my computer so it will wake me up if you need to email again.
THE CONNECTION to Brandy Palmer caught me off guard but when I thought about it, it made sense. She was probably part of engineering the whole mess with the unallocated space in the bowels of SPACE. She'd had access to both sides of the equation, the criminals as well as Jacob. And Alex was the name of the guy supervising Daria and the other hackers. That tingle on the edge of my psyche when something big is breaking in a case was now way past a tingle. More like a big blue electric arc jumping around my brain.
CHAPTER 128
SPACE
SURVEILLANCE ROOM
DETECTIVE RONNIE HUDDLESTON
HUDDLESTON PULLED a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped the sweat off his face again. The cloth was getting saturated. And no wonder at that, given the fact that these stupid fuckers couldn't find Flatt. All the electro-magic in the world at their fingertips and still, a big fat goose egg was what he had. "Can you turn the damn air conditioning a little colder?" he said.
That Dobo looked at him like he was crazy, said, "It's sixty-five degrees. You're hot?"
Dodo would be a better name for this asshole. Huddleston held up his handkerchief and wrung out several drops of sweat. "What the hell you think?"
"Interesting, but I can't help you on that one. Computer controlled. Maybe you'll want to arrest me for that?"
"Don't be a smart-ass."
"Never."
"Thought you people had super-duper facial recognition. Why the hell can't you find this asshole?"
"Well, 'we people' lost all our surveillance for right at ten minutes. And it's still not fully operational, not synced back up with the face-rec software. Maybe we could've gotten it back up a little quicker, but I had to take you to one-forty, remember?"
Huddleston's bowels were churning. He had to find Flatt. Not just because the asshole broke his damn fingers, either. It was much more serious than that. That damn Flatt was a problem. He knew something. Twenty years of cop-sense told Huddleston that. And that just could not fucking stand, no sir. "Go back to that bracelet map," he said.
Dodo blew out a big sigh, like he was just so damn put out because he was being asked to help a law enforcement officer find a criminal. He clicked around a little bit and pointed up at the screen on the wall. "Just like last time and the time before that."
The screen showed a big blue map of the whole SPACE complex. Blinking up top, a line of red text said TAG NOT DETECTED. Huddleston pounded the counter and said, "Where is that sonofabitch!"
CHAPTER 129
SPACE
I DIALED MEYER. She answered on the second ring: "Meyer."
"It's Sam, Agent Meyer. How're things on your end?"
"It's still quiet here at good old nine-sixty-six Green Mountain Drive. What's going on with this BOLO?"
"Long story and it's not worth the time to tell right now," I said. “Just know that it involves a certain portly detective."
"Understand that I can't be a party to evasion of any law enforcement. Where are you?"
"I have another piece of the puzzle for you."
"Ignoring my question?" Meyer said.
"Like you said, you can't be a party to some things."
"Okay, what's the piece?"
"Two pieces, really. First, I got another email from the bad guys. It had a picture of somebody holding a knife to my daughter's throat, and instructed me to kill Jacob Allen. I've also found a connection between the Sultanovich operation and Brandy Palmer."
"Who?"
"Brandy Palmer is outside counsel for SPACE," I said. "High-powered little bitch of a lawyer."
"And how does she fit into all this?"
"That's the second puzzle piece. She's from Eastern Europe, came here with two brothers. One of them's named Dmitry. I looked back at Daria Bodrova's summary, and the original overseer of the hackers was named Dmitry, the one who vanished."
"Lots of guys named Dmitry in that part of the world."
"No doubt. But I'm pretty
sure the other brother is the one who bought the video camera that was used to film those rapes."
"Holy shit," she said. "How do you know that?"
"Unimportant right now, but I'll share all of it with you later, once we find my daughter."
"Fair enough. What's this other brother's name?"
"He and his sister anglicized their names a long time ago. He goes by Alex Sosa now."
"Any idea where he is?"
"I think I know exactly where…"
IT WAS the word “address” that triggered a momentary mind-freeze. More accurately, it's like my subconscious was screaming, Whoa, go back! Go back! What was it? Then it hit me.
Meyer said, "Sam, you there?"
"Where are you?"
"Uh…same place I've been for a couple hours now, the house on Green Mountain."
"No, exactly where?" I said.
"In the mobile command post, behind a church. Wh—"
"The address, Agent Meyer. Give me the address of the house you guys are surveilling."
"Nine-sixty-six Green Mountain Drive, Las—"
My mind raced as goosebumps popped all over me.
"That's not the address I gave you."
"What? Sam, you're losing me. Correction…you've lost me."
"Listen very carefully, Agent Meyer. The address Daria gave me was seven-forty-two Green Mountain, and that's what I gave you, not nine-sixty-six."
She went silent as it sank in. Then she got it. In perfect sync, we both said, "There are two houses."
I said, “Where’d you get the nine-sixty-six address?”
I could hear Meyer typing on a keyboard. “I sent the Green Mountain address you gave me to my office to research. They called and said it was registered to Sultanovich, and I was sure it was the right place. The search warrant they emailed me, though, is for nine-sixty-six.”
“How long will it take to get a warrant for seven-forty-two?”
“I’m on it.”
“Hurry!” I said.
CHAPTER 130
ORLEANS CASINO HOTEL
CHRISTINE GAMBOA
ON ONE HAND, Christine was beyond relieved to be getting out of the tired, dingy hotel suite. On the other, she was confused as to the sudden impetus for going. After a couple secretive phone calls in the other room, Sasha had declared it was time, and was rushing them to move.
"What's going on, Sasha?" she said.
He was at the door, gesturing for them to hurry. "Chrissy, we must to go. We must to go now."
"Fine. Why now?"
He blew out a long noisy breath that blubbered his lips. "I am thinking Max may to know where we are."
Zuyev stood by the door, a dead-eyed, animated corpse ready to do whatever.
Christine said, "You think he's coming here?"
"Maybe he comes. Maybe he will to send other killers. We must not to wait and find out."
She nodded, and by habit, looked around to be sure she wasn't leaving anything behind in a hotel room. Then she realized that she had nothing. Nothing to take. Nothing to leave.
They left the room and rode the stale-smelling elevator to the ground floor. They walked through the casino, toward the rear of the casino, where she assumed Sasha had someone waiting with a car.
The idea came to her in an instant, but she knew she had to do it. "I have to go to the restroom," she said, and walked away from them without waiting for an answer. The moment she was out of their sight, she broke into a run.
CHAPTER 131
LAS VEGAS
COURTNEY MEYER
"AND YOU'RE certain both houses are jammed?" Meyer said into the comms headset. "No calls in or out, right?"
Team Leader responded, "Correct."
"Let's do it," she said, shifting in her seat and leaning forward to concentrate on the console screens. Two of the HRT agents remained at the 966 house where Sultanovich was. The warrant for 742 Green Mountain had just arrived, and they would hit the house hard and fast in a pure hostage rescue posture.
She turned to Console Agent and said, "How long should it take to get that translator? We still don't know what he said on that phone call."
"It's unusual to take this long. Been almost an hour. Want me to call and rattle some cages?"
"After this is done," she said, with a nod toward the console.
The screens were all green, the four agents of immediate interest advancing on 742 along the railway behind the houses, just like they had with 966. After several minutes of bouncy green walking, they arrived. One took a prone position in the rear, facing the house from about twenty yards back. Meyer watched as the three others crept around the house, two on the right and one on the left. Soon they were converging at the front door. Team Leader gave a silent countdown from three using his fingers, and the quiet of stealth and creep was instantly replaced by a cacophony of sound and moving images.
One of the agents hit the door with a one-man door ram and the other three charged inside, Team Leader in front. Shouts of "FBI!" and "Freeze!" and "Hands in the air!" issued from the console speakers. A room light switched on and the screens, now in full color, showed a living room with two sofas against walls and three cots arranged in the middle of the room, all occupied. A female on one of the sofas was sitting up, a panicked look on her face and a paperback book in her hands. Another stood from a cot, holding what looked to be an old Nintendo GameBoy. The others were rousing from sleep. All looked bewildered and scared, and all were female. Young. Meyer guessed the range from mid-teens to mid-twenties.
Three of the agents left the living room, one straight ahead into what looked like a kitchen, one into a hallway on the left, and the other into one on the right. The kitchen and bathrooms were empty. Meyer counted four bedrooms as she tried to keep up with the fast-moving action. Each bedroom had multiple occupants and proved to be a repeat of the scene she had watched in the living room. Confusion and fright on young faces. One bedroom held five males, but everyone else in the house was female.
Now the screen still showing a green view of the rear of the house came to life. A figure was coming out of the back of the house, actually, out of the back side of the garage. The prone agent was on his feet in an instant. "Freeze! Hands in the air! You move, you die!" Now the agent was advancing toward him, his rifle visible and leading the way.
"Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" It was a man. Meyer watched a bright splotch bloom around the his crotch on the green screen. Had the agent shot him? No. The man had peed himself. Some big bad criminal he was.
She switched her attention back to the 966 screens to be sure all was quiet. It was. They had done it.
CHAPTER 132
SPACE
DETECTIVE RONNIE HUDDLESTON
FINALLY! Flatt's tracker had shown up on the screen. It appeared first in the employee parking area, then moved inside. The asshole had left the property. He would have stayed gone if he had any sense, but his stupidity was Huddleston's good fortune. He stood from his chair. "Let's go, Dodo."
"My name is Dobo."
Awww, little faux pas hurt the rent-a-cop's feelings. Huddleston wanted to burst forth with a gut-busting laugh, but he held it in. "My fucking bad, let's go." He hooked a thumb toward the tracking screen on the wall. "Where is that?"
"Looks like he's headed out toward the entertainment complex."
"Why the fuck would he do that?"
"Detective, I've cooperated to the best of my ability. Mind easing up on the f-bombs? Getting tiresome."
Huddleston couldn't believe his ears. Here he was trying to catch a criminal, not to mention a personal threat to Huddleston and his income, and having to put up with this candy-ass shit? He shook his head. "Whatever. Can we go?"
Dodo picked up an iPad and walked out. Huddleston followed.
CHAPTER 133
SPACE
THE BURNER PHONE rang and I looked at its tiny screen: FEDERAL BUREAU O… I answered it. "Flatt."
"Sam, it's Court."
Court? "Sorry?"
"Courtney Meyer."
"Oh, oh, got it. Tell me you have good news."
"Your daughter wasn't there. I'm sorry."
Even though I expected that, the disappointment still hit me like a shot to the gut. I took a deep breath. "What about Daria?"
"She's safe, and fifteen others. They're pretty freaked out, worried about their families. None of them are what I'd call fluent in English, so we're having a bit of trouble getting them calmed down, making them understand that no one knows they've been rescued."
"I'm glad they're safe. Any bad players with them?"
"One man, Jeff Tindle, one of your shady slot machine players. He'll be interrogated posthaste, and he'll break quickly. The guy literally wet himself when he was being apprehended."
"What about Sultanovich?"
"We're still watching, hoping he'll make a move so we can track him to the others. Hang in there."
WHAT WAS I not thinking of? What clues had I missed? Did they really expect me to kill Jacob, or was it a distraction? A new thought occurred to me: What made them think I was even capable of such a thing? As far as they knew, I was nothing more than a computer nerd. Or did they somehow know more? How? The security chief, Hank Dobo, knew at least something about my background from being in the same place at the same time in Afghanistan. The only other person I'd ever shared information with was Nichols, a drunken move of idiocy on my part. Could one of them be involved?
Too many questions I couldn't answer. Time to ground myself in things I did know. I fired up the virtual copy of Gamboa's computer that I'd copied to my laptop. It resumed to the exact state it had been in the last time I'd looked at it, which felt like a year ago even though it was a week or two max. The last thing I'd seen was the deep web page that listed all the hacking targets, the “hacking portal,” as I'd come to call it. No untapped investigative value there; the feebs had the hackers themselves. I clicked the HISTORY menu in her browser and looked through the list of page titles. Even though I'd been through it, maybe something would jog a memory or spark an idea.
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