by Robert Crais
Al-Diri said, “Here. See what you believe. Is he close to death?”
I shrugged my shoulders to point out my wrists.
“The cuffs. I need my hands.”
The Syrian motioned to Royce, who clipped off the plastic.
I went over, smiled at Krista, and knelt by Berman’s head. Krista stared at me as if she was trying to figure me out.
I smiled like the friendly family doctor because al-Diri and his men were watching, and spoke loud enough for them to hear.
“How’s he doing?”
This time when she spoke she remembered her accent.
“Not too well, I think, but maybe the same? His eyes, they move but do not see. He says the crazy things.”
Berman looked better. He was less pale, and his skin wasn’t clammy. When I touched his head, he looked at me. His eyes seemed vacant, but more or less focused, and the pupils matched in size. I’d seen baseball players, army buddies, and guys at the gym look worse. I had looked worse myself more than once. I held Krista’s eye for a moment.
“Yeah. I see what you mean.”
I checked for a fever, peeled up his eyelids, and felt his head for injuries. He had three large contusions behind his right ear, and winced when I touched them.
I got up, and went to al-Diri as if I didn’t want to speak in front of the girl.
“He has a bad concussion for sure, but I’ve seen worse. I didn’t find a break, but the one thing I can’t tell is whether he’s bleeding. If the pressure is building on his brain, he’s screwed. If not, he should be okay in a few days if you keep him iced.”
The frown line notched his forehead.
“Iced?”
“Yeah. Ice his head. Reduces the swelling, and might even stop the bleeding. You have ice here?”
“Yes. We have power.”
I’d seen his men working on the commissary power when they’d brought me here.
“Get some towels and ice, and I’ll show you. We also have to get some water in him. You let him dehydrate, he’s gone. He’ll be fine if you make him drink.”
Al-Diri told the gawky guard with the Adam’s apple to get what I asked for, and the guard hurried away.
Something buzzed, and al-Diri pulled a phone from his pocket and moved away. He cupped the phone, and gestured to Royce.
“Find Medina.”
When Royce left, I squatted by Berman and whispered to Krista.
“Don’t react to anything I say. My name is Elvis Cole. I’m working for your mother. I’m going to get you out of here.”
She showed no reaction except to wet her lips. She glanced past me to check the guards before she spoke.
“Now?”
“Soon. Someone on the outside is coming to help, but we’ll go whenever we get a chance.”
I looked at the Asian kid.
“Kwan Min Park. Your grandfather and cousin are helping me.”
A tiny smile cracked his features. Kwan Min Park was being smuggled into the United States because he was wanted for seven murders in South Korea.
“We leave. Soon.”
I glanced back at Krista, then Jack.
“He’s hurt, but he’s coming around. What happened?”
Kwan said, “Teeth.”
He bared his teeth in a horrible grimace.
Krista said, “Medina. The guard with broken teeth. He was hurting me.”
She stopped, and stared at me as if that was all she wanted to say.
“I understand. Are you okay?”
“So far. He keeps looking at me.”
I glanced across the crowded room. Medina wasn’t with us, but the large room was thick with nervous prisoners and roving guards. A group of Koreans huddled in a far corner, but no more than a dozen. I looked at Kwan.
“Where’s the rest of your group?”
“Some here, some other room. Like before.”
Krista said, “There’s another room like this across the hall. They split us, half on this side, half on the other.”
“There must be a hundred people in here. That’s two hundred people.”
“They brought us last night, our group and two others. I overheard this guard, he said one of the groups is from Russia. They have almost thirty Russian people across the hall.”
It was insane. Two hundred people of little or no means who had been kidnapped, imprisoned, and were now being ransomed to their equally poor families and miserly employers for as little as a few hundred dollars each to maybe a few thousand. Locano was right. The Syrian’s ugly business was based on quantity. If he collected one to two thousand each for two hundred pollos, he would see two hundred to four hundred thousand dollars for the people around me. If he stole two hundred people ten times a year, he saw two million to four million dollars.
I wondered why al-Diri brought the three groups to a single location, and why all three at once.
“Did the guard say why they brought you here?”
“Some guards disappeared. They just vanished or something, and now everyone thinks they were arrested. I guess they’re worried their friends will tell the police where we were, so they moved us.”
“A crew of guards? Like the men guarding you?”
“Yeah. Gone.”
Pike. Something or someone was putting pressure on the Syrian, and I knew that someone was Pike.
I checked the Syrian again. He was still on the phone, but now Medina and Royce were with him, and the Syrian looked angry.
Kwan said, “You have gun?”
I tapped my head.
“My mind is my weapon, Jedi.”
Kwan studied me for a moment, then turned away.
Krista leaned close to whisper.
“I have a knife. Jack found it at the other house.”
She reached toward her waist as if to show me, but I stopped her.
“Keep it. If you need it, use it. I’m going to get you out of here.”
“What if your friend can’t find us?”
“He will. There are people who won’t let you down.”
The gawky guard with the Adam’s apple returned with a pot of ice and a threadbare towel. Krista warned me he was coming, and told me he looked like a praying mantis. The name made me smile.
When he gave me the ice, the sharp-cornered outline of a pistol bulged in his right front pocket. This made me smile even more.
I wrapped ice in the towel and wedged it against Berman’s head. The Syrian shouted at someone in the hall. I liked it that he was angry. I thought about Pike again, and knew he was hunting.
Royce and the Praying Mantis came back a few minutes later, cuffed my wrists, and took me back to my room. I bumped Royce several times to check his pockets, and decided he carried no gun. I didn’t mind. The Mantis’s gun was with us, and would be easy to take.
They did not let me leave my room again until my third day at the date farm. I did not see Ghazi al-Diri again until that third day. I did not see Royce and the Praying Mantis again until the third day, which was the day I took the Mantis’s gun and killed them.
Joe Pike was hunting.
I would hunt, too.
43
Joe Pike
He was parked on the sand a mile north of Coachella, watching distant headlights slide along an invisible freeway across an invisible horizon when Megan Orlato woke. Took a second for her head to clear, then she felt the tape and binds, and stiffened as if she were being electrocuted. She fought and twisted against the binds and tried to scream through the tape. Her eyes were crazy-wide with fear, and should have been. Fear was right and proper. Fear was correct.
Megan Orlato was laid across the back seat. Her wrists, arms, ankles, and knees were secured with plasticuffs. Duct tape sealed her mouth. Pike was behind the wheel, turned to see her, his right arm hooked around the headrest, calm and relaxed. They were alone. Nothing moved except for the distant headlights.
Pike tried to recall how long since he last slept, but couldn’t. Didn’t matter. You sacrif
iced what needed to be sacrificed.
Pike stared at her until she quieted. He watched her watch him, and listened to her breathe. Her breathing was loud and ragged, but finally slowed.
“Your name is Maysan al-Diri. You are Ghazi al-Diri’s sister. You and Dennis Orlato supply drop houses to your brother.”
He moved for the first time to lift the yellow file box he took from her office.
“The houses where people were tortured and murdered are your listings. Properties for sale or rent, with out-of-state owners.”
He leaned across the seat, and gently peeled off the tape.
She shouted for help, screamed and shrieked, and thrashed again. He simply watched until she was winded. Then she finally spoke.
“I was in the kitchen-”
“Now you’re not.”
She was stirring honey into hot tea. She had not heard him enter. Did not hear him approach. She never knew he compressed her carotid artery, cut off the oxygen to her brain, and put her to sleep. She had not seen him until this moment when she opened her eyes, there in the moonlit desert.
“Dennis is dead. I shot him here.”
Pike touched the center of his right eyebrow.
“Ruiz and Washington are dead. Pinetta and Khalil Haddad are with the police.”
She was breathing hard again.
“Who are you?”
“Where is Ghazi?”
She breathed harder, so Pike touched the files.
“Twenty-two have out-of-state owners, so Ghazi will be at one of them. The time you save me is worth your life.”
She didn’t respond.
“If not, I’ll leave you with Dennis. Ghazi is mine either way.”
“Why do you want my brother?”
“He has my friend.”
“Will you kill him?”
“If I have to, yes. And you. Where is he?”
She wet her lips, a secret gesture in the back seat shadows, betrayed by a glint of blue light on her tongue.
“The date farm. A commercial listing.”
“Where?”
She told him. It wasn’t far.
“Don’t lie. If you’re lying, you won’t get a second chance.”
“I’m not lying. He wanted a bigger place. I had the farm.”
He followed her directions back to Coachella, then south and east into the desert again, well outside the city. The date farm was laid out in a perfect rectangle between paved streets, fifteen hundred feet on the long sides, seven hundred fifty on the width, split down the center by a road of crushed gravel, and crowded with rows of trees. The trees were dead and had long ago dropped their fronds. They reminded Pike of Marines frozen in permanent ranks. A large painted sign stood at the entrance: FOR SALE-READY FOR DEVELOPMENT-DESERT GOLD REALTY. He saw the outline of a building set well back on the gravel road, but nothing more. He saw no lights.
“He’s here now?”
“I guess. I don’t know. He asked for a bigger place, and this is what I had. I don’t help him move.”
Pike studied the building, and realized he was seeing two buildings. He wondered if Elvis Cole was inside one of them, and if Cole was still alive.
“How many buildings?”
“The property is twenty-eight acres, with five buildings, metal-and-wood construction covering fourteen thousand square feet of usable floor space. You have three septic tanks, and it’s fully plumbed with county water.”
Pike looked at her.
“I don’t want to buy it.”
“It was a farm. The buildings were used for processing and packaging dates. Two of the buildings were used for maintenance and equipment storage. One of the buildings has offices and a commissary for the staff.”
“How many ways in?”
“Just the main entrance here. There was a gate on the west side, but the owners put in more trees.”
Pike wondered at the size of the place. The three other addresses had all been small, single-family homes.
“Why bigger?”
“He thought Dennis and the others had been arrested. He wanted to get his crews out of the places Dennis and the others knew about.”
“How many crews?”
“Three, I think. He was using three houses.”
“Everyone came here?”
“This is the only new property I gave him.”
Pike found a spot to park on an unpaved road north of the farm, put fresh tape over Megan Orlato’s mouth, and slipped between the trees. The five buildings were grouped together in the center of the orchard almost five hundred feet from the street. Three were on the east side of the drive, and faced the two on the west. Glints of light showed from the east buildings, but not the west. Pike moved to the lights. He searched for sentries as he approached, but found none.
Pike studied the fronts of the buildings for several minutes, noting the doors and windows, then crept along the rear. Snoring and the occasional low voice came from the first building. A man spoke too loudly in the middle building, and two other men laughed. When Pike reached the end of the south building, he found several pickup trucks outfitted for off-road use parked outside a long sliding door, along with a large box truck. Pike wondered if this was the truck Sanchez used on the night Krista Morales was taken. Pike decided the prisoners were in the north building, the guards were housed in the center building, and the south building was being used as a garage. The garage was likely the only way in or out of the buildings.
Pike stood between the trucks and looked down the length of the gravel drive to the entrance. It was almost two football fields away. Only way in, only way out. Two football fields was a long way.
Pike worked his way back to the Rover, checked that Megan Orlato was secure, and considered his options. He could not see the building through the trees, but he knew where it was and stared at that place in the moonlit shadows. Three crews meant about eighteen armed men and an unknown but large number of innocents. The doors and windows would be reinforced. Pike would have to enter through the garage, fight his way through guard country to the last building, locate Cole and the kids, then fight through the guards a second time on the way out. He wondered again if Elvis Cole was inside.
He said, “I’m coming.”
The odds didn’t scare him, but better odds meant a better chance at success, and Pike believed he had a way to improve the odds. He glanced at Megan Orlato, then phoned to see if Jon Stone was still in jail.
44
Jon Stone
Jon Stone walked out of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Station beneath an overhead full moon at the beginning of its lazy slide to the west. Everything in Jon’s possession at the time of his arrest had been returned with the exception of Khalil Haddad, who would remain a guest of the United States government. No loss.
Jon was miffed when Nancie Stendahl stomped out of the room because the folks in D.C. cut him free. At least the two young deps who processed him out had the good grace to be impressed he got to keep the M4. They asked if he was a spy.
Jon burst out laughing. Spy. Jesus.
Nancie Stendahl said, “You always laugh at yourself?”
“If you heard the crap in my head, you’d laugh, too.”
Stendahl was leaning against Pike’s Jeep, which had been released along with everything else. The parking lot was near empty, though he saw the big white ATF van on the far side.
Stone was pleased to see her. He sympathized with her personal involvement, and respected the all-in effort she was making to find her kid. Jon was big on all-in effort. He hoped she wouldn’t ruin the moment by lecturing him about the rule of law. If she started with that crap, he was going to recite Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in the original Russian to freak her out.
She didn’t. She looked beat to hell, strained, and frayed at the edges. He wanted to buy her a cup of coffee, but he had things to do.
“Do you know where my boy is?”
“Nope. Know who has him, though. So does Haddad.”
>
She perked up.
“Who?”
“Dude named Ghazi al-Diri. Haddad’s boss. You have a pad, something to write with?”
He stowed the M4 in the back seat while she searched herself for paper, and put his pistols, ammo, GPS, and phones on the driver’s seat. When he turned back, she was poised with a pen and a napkin. He rattled off a longitude and latitude, then checked her napkin to make sure she had it right.
“These coordinates bring you to a body dump. You’ll find eleven or twelve people wrapped in plastic. Haddad probably murdered half of them. You’ll find two stiffs who aren’t in plastic. They murdered the rest.”
“Who killed the stiffs?”
Jon ignored her question.
“Don’t be misled by Haddad’s agreeable manner. These are evil fucking people. You wanna walk while we talk? I want to look over this Jeep.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You want to shut these guys down at the border. The more Haddad gives you on the Syrian, the more intelligence you’ll have on how the cartels do their thing. Good intel is everything. I know that firsthand.”
Stone gave the Jeep a quick walk-around with Stendahl for company. It had picked up a few dings. Pike wouldn’t be happy.
“Ghazi al-Diri is the Syrian?”
“The Mexicans call him the Syrian. For all I know, he’s from Bakersfield. You know what a bajadore is?”
She shook her head.
“He works the border, stealing whatever the cartels send up. Mostly, that’s people trying to sneak in without documents.”
“On the U.S. side?”
“Most of these guys work south, but a few are beginning to work north. It’s easier to dodge the police up here than the cartels down there.”
