by Kirk Russell
“This stuff will be useful if you have to abort,” Douglas said, pick-ing crumbs off his plate, wiping his hands, his eyes on Marquez’s face. “But you’ll be at their mercy at some point when you deliver.”
“That’s where you come in.”
When Douglas left, Marquez told Katherine another Kline story he never had told her before, about Mexican military planes used to ferry cocaine and dope, and the death of a DEA agent named Brian Hidalgo, a sunrise, a haze at horizon and the sun’s blood light and Hidalgo’s body in the burned-out car. Spanish phrases, forgotten Indian dialect, words he’d lost returned to him.
“Kline tortured Hidalgo and inside twenty-four hours had started working his way back through our team. I shot the man who was supposed to kill me and the word we heard after was that Kline swore he’d get me. When I quit the DEA and decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, I think he did send someone for me. I’d crossed a junction near Kearsarge Pass in the southern Sierra and had camped at a place called Charlotte Lake, planning to hike down the trail at Kearsarge and resupply in Bishop early the next morning, but I met a man on the trail who said there were two men who’d camped for a while near Kearsarge who were looking for me. They’d showed him a photo and he’d recognized me. They’d told him they were there because my mother had died of a heart attack, but she died when I was a teenager so I knew it was bad. I stayed off-trail and I waited.”
“You saw them?”
“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure they were Kline’s people. I hiked during the night the next two days. I didn’t get home until late that fall.” She already knew the rest, but he said it anyway. “I hiked north to the end of the trail in Washington and you and I didn’t meet for another two years. By then, I was trying to put it behind me.”
“You should have talked more to me, John.”
“If I could do it over again, I would.”
“And now he’s asking for you by name. You can’t go, John. You just can’t do it. Think about Maria and me. Ask yourself what you’re doing. You’re carrying the same guilt you had when I met you and now you’re going to risk sacrificing yourself. This is crazy, really crazy.”
“The Feds will be close by.”
“How do you know?” He didn’t and Douglas didn’t either. “Maybe you want to die, John. Maybe then everything is even and you’re with your dead friends. It’s all even and fair again.” Her face flushed and tears flooded her eyes as she shook her head. She stood and moved away from him. “You’re going to go even though Douglas said he’d get an FBI volunteer.”
“I think her only chance is if I show.”
“I can’t wait here and I can’t be a part of this.”
She stood and shook her head. Then she walked out the front door and he heard her car start, gravel kicking up on the driveway as she drove away. He watched her headlights hit the road.
Near midnight he checked his e-mail, found nothing, and opened the Web site again. Petersen’s face had changed, the bruis-ing had darkened. Some sort of necklace hung from her neck and he focused there, saw the iridescent green, the cut triangular shape and he was sure it was similar to the abalone piece he’d taken from Bailey’s boat. He fought the terrible heaviness inside and reached for the phone to call Douglas.
“I recognize what’s around her neck,” Marquez said. “I pulled something similar off Bailey’s boat.”
“What’s it mean?”
“Maybe nothing. It’s abalone shell, so maybe it’s a statement.”
“Do you have it still?”
“No, it went back to Bailey. His lawyer got everything released before we had probable cause on Bailey.”
“Is it the same shell?”
“It could be.”
“Incoming,” Douglas said, and Marquez saw the mail icon flash. He clicked to the e-mail as Douglas cleared his throat. “Are you reading?”
“Got it,” Marquez said. “I’m reading now.”
John Marquez, you’ll be in Humboldt Bay at 7:00 a.m. tomor-row. You’ll need fuel for a 400 mile range. Money in waterproof bags. Any surveillance and she’ll be executed.
“The bags you carry will transmit position,” Douglas said. “We’ve got two fishing boats we’ll get there before you arrive, but why Eureka, Marquez?”
“It’s been fogged in for two days and it’s big enough to where you wouldn’t pick his people out as easily. The four-hundred-mile range could mean he’s going to burn a lot of time determining who’s following.”
Marquez gave Douglas Katherine’s numbers and then called her as he drove down the mountain. He stayed on the phone with her until he was almost to the boat. In San Rafael he hooked the trailer up to the Explorer with the help of an FBI agent, then started north with the FBI following and the SOU leading. Cairo and Roberts would get into Eureka by dawn. Shauf and Alvarez were heading to Shelter Cove with another Zodiac. The Marlin had left the Berkeley marina and was already five miles north of the Gate. He drove slowly up 101, towing the boat, taking the occasional phone call from the team and Douglas. He talked to Kath again and Keeler, then to Baird as he came into Eureka. It was cold and the light flat this morning, the pavement wet, fog rolling in from the bay. Foghorns sounded and a nervous energy burned in him as he put the boat in the water and called the number they’d given him, what the FBI had confirmed was a cell phone activated yester-day morning in San Francisco.
“I’m in the harbor. Where do I go?”
“All business, are you?” An Irish accent, he thought. “Leave the bay and go south. Give me your phone number.”
Marquez read it off as the boat bounced in the first swells. “How far south?” The Irishman didn’t answer and after the line went dead Marquez positioned the phone where he could keep it dry and still reach it. It was a satellite unit and he had backup in case this one went down. The bags of money were near his feet and cabled to the boat. When he left the harbor he skirted the coast, passing the mouth of the Eel River and moving out to sea a little farther before Douglas called.
“We’re with you, but keep your speed as steady as you can. How are you doing?”
“It’s going to get a little choppy ahead, but I’m good.”
“When you made the call they were in a car probably on High-way 101 near Santa Rosa. They didn’t stay on long enough to deter-mine their direction. In case you were wondering, he recruited out of the IRA, got a handful of ex-IRA working for him.”
“Kline did?”
“Yeah, in the ‘90s.”
“I heard the one I just talked to as Irish.”
“So did we.”
When he hung up with Douglas he wiped water from his face and sealed the Velcro at his wrists after putting on gloves. With the lack of sleep the cold reached him a little faster and there was more wind out here. He went south now for two hours and hit a patch near Cape Mendocino where the wind was cross and fog shredded through the rocks that the wind was trying to drive him toward. Waves pitched the Zodiac and it slapped hard on the water. At half-hour intervals, Douglas called.
“You’re doing all right?”
“What are you, my mother?”
But he had a tightness in his chest and the cold seemed to come from inside out. Katherine’s voice echoed in his head.
“Your chief is here with me now. We’ve got a copter inland, moving with you. You’ve got another thirty miles of fog and you’ll hit blue.”
Unless he turns me around, Marquez thought, or heads me out to sea. The reassurances were nice but meant nothing. He cut his speed and got off the phone with Douglas, called Shauf. Her father had been a fisherman up here. She’d gotten into resource management because she’d heard her father talk all the time about how the fisheries were collapsing. He’d railed against the bottom-raking industrial trawlers that took everything, and he’d had names for them, would point to a trawler and tell her that one is named the Antichrist. She’d gone through her childhood thinking there was a boat out there named that.
“I’m
coming onto Punta Gorda,” he said. “What’s your guess?”
“Somewhere along the Lost Coast and we’re already here. We’re in the King Range on that main dirt road.”
The Lost Coast was his guess, too, because it was empty, because you could follow one of the creeks to the water and pack the money back out through the mountains on foot, and because Kline had trafficked drugs out of Humboldt for years. Along an empty stretch of the Lost Coast, a quick execution after the money was handed over, but better not to think that way. Better to think it’s going to work out. He swept past Punta Gorda, continued south, reached Shelter Cove and the phone rang.
The Irish voice said, “Where are you?”
“Still going south.”
“Where the fuck are you?”
“Shelter Cove.”
“Circle.”
“How long? I’m burning through my fuel.”
He circled an hour, half of it talking to Douglas, ate a dry roll and a Payday bar, drank hot tea from a thermos. He’d heard an edge in the Irishman’s voice that said killing came easy to him. Another call came and they moved him farther south, then back north five miles before turning again. The thrum of the engines vibrated in his bones now. The cold ran deeper and he was close to Fort Bragg. More phone calls and the Marlin had him on radar, so did an FBI copter and a spotter plane and a fishing boat carrying FBI agents, so he knew it wouldn’t be anywhere near here. He was through half his fuel now and ran on one engine only, conserving out of habit, crouching in the boat to loosen his muscles as the fog began to sweep back in the late afternoon. Two hours now since he’d heard from the Irishman, so maybe they’d called it off. Then the call came.
“Are you ready?” the Irishman asked.
“You’re going to have to show her to me before I put to shore anywhere.”
“Turn south, again.”
“I’m burning fuel fast. I don’t have much more range.”
“It was Belfast in ‘85 when the lad carrying the ransom ran out of petrol and got his man killed, the stupid arsehole.”
The line went dead, and the next call didn’t come until after dark. Marquez was south of Fort Bragg about twenty miles, run-ning with lights and GPS, but it would be much harder after dark to put in anywhere, dangerous with the rocks. The Irishman had him continue south another hour, then reverse and turn north. By then the sea had calmed and he rode half a mile offshore in a light wind. Douglas checked in.
“There’s a boat three miles off your port side we’re looking at. Nothing else close to you.” Static and a bad connection, then, “We’ve got agents all along the highway.” The SOU was there too, but Kline would know that the shore was lined with police. “They may run you all the way back north.”
“Are you just chatting me up?”
“How are you doing?”
“I’m ready to get it done.”
Near the coast at Van Damme State Park he got the call to turn shoreward and run hard toward the surf.
“You want me to run aground with the money and lose it in the ocean?”
“No, you arsehole, I’ll bring you home.” The Irishman barked at him about some kidnapping that had gone bad along the border in Peru, then cut back in, “North again, you fuckin’ copper.”
So he has me in sight, Marquez thought. Reading a heat signal if nothing else. Close in as he was the Sony Palm IR would work at this range. He was close to the surf, too close to rocks. He flicked on the boat lights and the Irishman said nothing. “You’ll see a flash of blue light.”
Several minutes passed, the Irishman still on the phone. “I see it,” Marquez said, and turned toward the caves of Van Damme. “We’re going to run you through the caves and she’ll be waiting for you. You don’t want to fuck up now and lose one of your own. She’ll be wearing a hood and two men will be with her. You’ll take a boat ride together.”
Marquez saw the blue light flash again and moved closer, glad that he knew these caves, maneuvering the boat constantly to stay off the rocks. Hit the rocks and it’s over. He eased inside the cave, the Zodiac engine an amplified roar. He swept his light along the rock and in a cleft saw what looked like a woman sitting with a hood over her head. A man yelled for him to bring it in close, yelling “faster, faster, come on, you fuckhead, in here and kill the engines,” and now Marquez saw light in the water below, a diver surfacing near him, the man onshore still yelling instructions, holding an assault rifle on him as the diver boarded and Marquez fought the impulse to go for his gun.
“Don’t move,” the order came again, and then to the hooded woman sitting on rocks, “Raise your arm. Let him know you’re okay,” and when the arm came up he wasn’t sure if it was Petersen’s, but a second diver had the bow rope and was towing him over to the rock, the Zodiac rising with every swell, the sound drowning the man’s voice.
Now it was the diver behind him speaking, telling him to put his hands out, patting him down as the other diver boarded. “Where’s the money, lad?” And before he could answer a knife cut into one of the cabled bags and the diver yelled to the Irishman.
“It’s here.”
“Let’s see her face,” Marquez demanded. He didn’t see the blow coming, but it was the diver behind him and he tried to rake an arm back to defend himself as his knees buckled. His hand caught teeth and he snapped a head back before sinking down. He didn’t feel the second blow but felt his arms pulled back, hand-cuffs clicked on his wrists, then his ankles, and he heard faraway laughter as he rolled into the cold water and felt himself pulled forward, dragged along the sand, then a knife cutting off his shirt, and he was shoved and propped against a rock. The Irishman squatted near him on the sand, his voice low, a light on Marquez’s face, the breath of the man on him.
“The tide’s out, lad, enjoy the beach.”
Marquez saw the woman pull the hood off. She wasn’t Petersen.
“Where is she?”
“I hear she’s the crew’s favorite on a boat somewhere, but you can ask him yourself. He’s coming to visit you here. If I was you, I’d be giving myself up to God.”
“Where is she?”
“You’re a fuckin’ fool, lad.”
Marquez watched the Zodiac motor slowly out of the cave with a single man guiding it. The rest had gone, however they’d gotten here. He knew it would take time, maybe too long, to sort out that the man at the helm wasn’t him, and Kline had to be counting on that. The Zodiac turned out of the cave, the light vanished, and there was only the roar of the waves.
35
An hour or more had gone by and he needed to get out of the water, had to get above the incoming tide. They’d stripped his clothes down to his shorts, had taken a knife, a second gun, the telelocator off him. How long would it take Douglas to figure out that someone else was running the Zodiac? He’d get sus-picious when the calls didn’t go through, but when would they start searching the caves? Get up, he thought, get off the sand and on the rock as high as you can. He lifted his head, staring into the darkness, head throbbing and not thinking clearly, his body trem-bling with cold. He could make out the cave entrance but there was little light. Pushed off with his heels, dug them into the sand, used the rocks to help pull himself up and then fell again. Fought his way back up as a wave ran as high as his knees.
There’d been a rock ledge near here when he’d swept his light across. If he could find it, maybe there was a way to get onto it. Four feet higher would buy a lot of time and sooner or later they’d come here. He got to his feet, his back resting against the rock, breath coming in gasps. Had to get out of here, had to get high enough to last through the changing tide. Where was Douglas? What was taking so long? He pressed against wet rock, leaned into it, hopped sideways, working his way along.
She’s on a boat, the crew’s favorite, the Irishman said. Then she’s alive. She’s alive and can be found. He felt the gap in the stone now, leaned his head into the hollow. How deep was the ledge? No way to tell, and he tried jumping up and sliding ont
o the rock. Got partway onto the shelf and slid out, fell on his back on the sand, his shoulder striking a rock. He lay there, numbed. A wave touched his legs and he rolled to his side, got on his knees again, to his feet, tried again, fell again. On the fourth try he finally got enough of his weight onto the ledge. He rested and inched forward, praying there was enough room, that his shoulder wouldn’t brush rock too soon.
But there was plenty of room. The shelf was deep and worn smooth by the ocean. Marquez slid toward the back and lay on his side, watching for light, moving his legs and feet to fight the cold, trying to keep his fingers from going numb as another half hour or more passed. Waves finished against the rock now, spray reached him, and where was the Zodiac now? Why was it taking Douglas so long to backtrack?
Then he saw light but not from a boat, something surfacing in the cave, another diver, he thought, and slid against the back wall. The light came closer, moved toward him, and he heard rubber, the snap of a mask, a man’s hard exhale lost as a wave came in. The light had vanished and Marquez strained to hear, knew the diver was on the small beach where the Irishman had left him. Now he heard the tanks clank against rock, saw a beam of light working low along the water to his left and then quickly turned off.
“Where are you?” a voice said, but the light didn’t come back on.
Afraid to leave the light on, Marquez thought. Looking for me and surprised I wasn’t where they left me. The light scanned again, this time the beam reaching closer. He heard the air tanks clank against the rock again, the rip of Velcro, the man reposition-ing himself, and briefly the light was on again. When it clicked off Marquez got ready. The next pass would reach him. He brought his knees up, thought he’d try to kick out, drive his legs into the man’s chest.