“Not yet,” Azar said. “For now, I don’t wish to just throw him away.”
“Will he join us?” Assad said.
“Perhaps. I don’t think he has any other choice in the matter.” Azar smiled. “He’s quite mad, you know, and I have determined to keep ajar the door that will lead him into total insanity. Then he will do my bidding.”
Assad said, “But if you need him killed . . .”
“You’ll be the first to know, my faithful Salman.”
Five minutes later, Azar got a phone call. Cory Cantwell and Sarah Milano had checked into the Hilton hotel on Southwest Sixth Avenue.
CHAPTER 26
“This is the spot where Stevens and Baxter were murdered,” FBI agent Tom D’eth said. “Their bodies were then dragged into the trees, where they were later found by a Willamette park ranger.”
Last night’s rain had washed the air clean, and the aborning day smelled of fir and damp earth, with an under-note of moss. Birds fluttered in the treetops, and Sarah Milano had caught a fleeting glimpse of a bounding black-tailed doe that thrilled her.
Cory Cantwell examined the patches of scorched undergrowth along the tree line and said, “I believe this was practice, probably with a drip torch. I don’t think they were attempting to light a serious fire.”
“Whoever they were, they got caught in the act,” D’eth said. “They didn’t get a chance to light a serious fire.”
Cantwell nodded. “Possibly. But it still looks like a practice run to me.”
“Why would they do that?” D’eth said. “Any yahoo with a cigarette butt can start a blaze, so why practice?”
“The drip torch has a learning curve, and for a novice it can be dangerous to use,” Cantwell said. “Even experienced firefighters can make a mistake with one. About a year ago, my pants leg caught fire while I was burning Gambel oak in New Mexico. And you have to get the mix of diesel and gasoline just right, usually four parts of diesel to one of gasoline, or the torch won’t work properly or at all.”
“Well, you learn something new every day,” D’eth said. He took the McDonald’s breakfast sandwich wrappers from Sarah and Cantwell, shoved them in the paper bag they’d come in, and crumpled it in his hands before shoving it in his coat pocket.
“Agent D’eth, did you discover any valuable intel at the crime scene?” Sarah said.
The agent smiled. “Clues? Like Sherlock Holmes does? No, we didn’t, apart from establishing the fact the two men died from multiple stab wounds from bladed weapons, probably knives.”
“What are we dealing with here, D’eth?” Cantwell said.
“Well, it was either some local anti-hunting nuts or terrorists,” the agent said. “My money is on the terrorists.”
“So now what? Do you think they’ll now target the Willamette and be back?” Sarah said. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, and her hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail. As always, her makeup was perfect.
“Either that or, if Cantwell’s practice theory is right, they chose a forest within easy driving distance of Portland,” D’eth said. He glanced at the sky. “Looks like it’s clouding up again. If there’s nothing else you want to see, I guess we should head back to the parking lot.”
“I’m done here,” Cantwell said. “Sarah?”
“Yes, me too.” She looked around. “This is a beautiful spot.”
“Yeah, and a hell of a place to die,” D’eth said.
* * *
Cory Cantwell and the others took a scenic route back to where they’d parked their car, a hikers’ path that led past a stand of mixed fir and ponderosa pine and then into a succession of grassy meadows. Around them in the distance the peaks of the surrounding mountains thrust into a clouded sky, impossibly remote and aloof, their beauty timeless. After thirty minutes of walking, ahead of them rose a shallow green knoll, rocky in places and almost bare of trees. The path faded out for a distance on firmer ground and then started again, curving around the east side of the knoll. As they strolled toward it, Sarah told Agent D’eth about the doe she’d spotted and how beautiful a sight it was. “The first one I’d ever seen in the . . .”
Sarah fell into silence as a startled covey of quail exploded into the air from the crest of the knoll.
Agent Tom D’eth, instinctive and trained to recognize a danger signal when he saw one, yelled, “Down!”
After a moment’s hesitation, Cantwell and Sarah hit the deck, one on each side of the FBI agent. “What the hell?” Cantwell said. “It was only a flock of birds,”
“Stay where you are,” D’eth said, snapping off the words. His dark brown eyes were on the knoll. “Get your guns out.”
Sarah had volunteered to carry Cantwell’s Glock along with her Colt Python in her briefcase, using its shoulder strap option. She passed Cantwell his pistol, checked the loads in her revolver, and thumbed the cylinder closed.
“We’re about to do some quail shooting, huh?” she said.
No one answered. D’eth’s slightly asthmatic breathing was loud in the silence.
A minute ticked past and Cantwell said, “It was probably tourists.”
“Tourist quail?” Sarah said.
“Maybe a tourist stirred them up,” Cantwell said.
“Hunters and hikers maybe, but I don’t think tourists ever come this way,” D’eth said. His voice had dropped to a whisper. “I’m told they tend to overcrowd into the Three Pools area or Tamolitch Falls.”
Cantwell’s gaze scanned the knoll. There was no sound and nothing moved. Close by, an insect made its small sound in the grass, and the bright day was made gloomy by cloud.
“D’eth, how long do we stay here?” he said.
“Until I give the all clear.”
“When will that be?” Sarah said.
I don’t know,” the agent said.
He stared at the knoll again, his face thoughtful, and then rose to his feet, his service Glock in his hand. “You two stay here. I’m going to take a look.” He smiled, a rare occurrence. “If I come running back screaming like a scalded cat, cut loose and cover me.”
Cantwell got up on one knee, his weapon ready. “Maybe I should go with you,” he said.
“No, stay right here,” D’eth said. “I’ll go it alone. This is why you’re overtaxed to pay my wages.”
Crouching, the agent walked toward the knoll . . . and into gunfire that sounded like a roll of drums.
Three men stood on top of the knoll, one with an AK-47, the others using handguns. They dropped D’eth in the first volley, giving their whole attention to the armed man closest to them. Cantwell triggered the Glock, aiming for the man with the rifle. A clean miss. But Sarah fired and one of the other two threw up his arms, fell on his back, and disappeared over the far side of the rise.
D’eth, though badly wounded, was still in the fight. Lying on his belly, his arms fully extended, he fired rapidly, trying to clear the top of the knoll. As far as Cantwell could see, he scored no hits. “The man with the rifle!” he yelled at Sarah. They both fired at the man and missed.
Then a lucky break.
The AK has generous clearances that will enable it to function even if it’s gummed up. But those clearances allow every piece of dirt, grit, and debris easy access to the action. The unlucky rifleman had gotten his hands on a dirty rifle, and he stopped firing as he frantically worked the bolt to clear the jam.
For now, Cantwell and Sarah ignored the rifleman and exchanged shots with the other man. Bullets kicked up dirt at Cantwell’s feet, and a round, sounding like an angry hornet, zipped past his ear. Cantwell laid the Glock’s sights on the man and pressed the trigger. A hit. The gunman staggered back, hit hard, but still game enough to remain upright and return fire.
Grim and bloody, D’eth rose, weaving on his feet, blood darkening the front of his shirt under his suit coat. He painstakingly sighted his Glock and fired. The man with the AK screamed as the bullet hit him low in the belly, and he dropped to his knees, out of the fight.
After the crashing gunfire, a profound silence fell on the forest. Cantwell was sure the park rangers would soon arrive, and he gave Sarah his gun. “Put that away, and yours,” he said. “Just in case we meet up with a badass ranger.”
He stepped to Tom D’eth, who was still on his feet, swaying, his face gray and haggard. “How badly are you hurt?”
“I’m shot through and through,” the agent said. “Bad enough I guess.”
“You’d better sit,” Cantwell said. “Let me help you.”
Sarah helped lower D’eth to the grass and then she said, “My cell phone won’t work. I can’t get a signal.”
“Sound travels. The rangers will be here soon,” Cantwell said. “They’ll get an ambulance.” Then to D’eth, “Hang in there.”
“Not much else I can do,” D’eth said. “Cantwell, go check on the men we shot. See if anyone is still alive.”
All three were dead, including the gut-shot rifleman, who’d bled out on the grass.
“Pity,” D’eth said. “I would like to have talked with one of these men. What do they look like?” He was in considerable pain, fighting desperately to not let it show.
Cantwell said, “Middle Eastern for sure. All three of them young.”
“You were the target, Cantwell,” D’eth said. “They’d staked out the hotel, and then after I picked you up followed us here.” The agent managed a weak smile. “Somebody up there doesn’t like you.”
“Seems to be the case,” Cantwell said.
“I wonder . . . does the somebody include me in his dislike?” Sarah said.
“Lady, if he didn’t before, he sure as hell does now,” Agent D’eth said.
CHAPTER 27
Jacob Sensor received a phone call at eight o’clock in the evening as a rising wind tossed dry leaves along the sidewalk outside his study and billowed the curtains of an open window.
“Sorry to trouble you, sir, but there’s been a development,” the voice on the phone said. “A firefight in the Willamette National Forest in which your Regulators were involved.”
“How are Cantwell and Sarah Milano?”
“Unhurt. But an FBI agent was badly wounded and isn’t expected to live.” Then, after a pause, “The three assailants were all killed.”
“Jihadists?”
“It seems likely,” Daniel Kramer said. He was with Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and a relatively low-level executive, but he was Sensor’s eyes and ears. He added, “The investigation into the deaths of the two hunters in the Willamette was compromised from the start.”
“But no one but me knew Cantwell and Milano were joining the investigation,” Sensor said, his voice sharp.
Kramer was silent for a few moments, carefully choosing his next words. Finally, he said, “That would appear not to be the case, sir.”
“Then there’s a traitor in our midst,” Sensor said.
“Indications point that way,” Kramer said.
“Kramer, I want this investigated. Can you get the Secret Service involved?”
“I believe I can, sir. I have several contacts there.”
“Start the investigation in Los Angeles. Find out if anyone besides me knew Cantwell and Milano were headed for Portland. I need a name.”
“Or names,” Kramer said.
“Do it, Kramer. Keep me posted.”
* * *
Ten minutes after he’d spoken to Kramer, Jacob Sensor answered another call, this one from Sir Anthony Bickford-Scott of MI5, speaking from the British embassy.
“My dear, Jacob,” he said, “I’ve just had a call from the Los Angeles police. Apparently, they’ve picked up the three Special Air Service men I sent you to join your Regulator team.”
“Why were they arrested?” Sensor said.
“As suspicious characters, I’m afraid. Apparently, there’s been an outbreak of wildfires in the city environs, and a police officer was killed. Three tough-looking Englishmen claiming to be . . . what’s the word . . . armed smoke jumpers raised eyebrows, to say the least.”
“There’s a large National Wildfire Service depot in the city. I’ll have the police send them there until Cory Cantwell gets back from Oregon.”
“Ah, but there’s a complication, old chap.”
“There always is.”
“It seems it’s a question of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer,” Bickford-Scott said. “It appears that the LAPD is quite irritated and has chosen to take a rather dim view of the whole situation. Heads will roll, and all that.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Sensor said.
“I wish you would. British nationals in police custody is never a good situation for an embassy.”
“Especially when they’re on-loan Regulators and our little secret,” Sensor said.
“Indeed. Oh dear, it never rains but it pours.”
“The whole thing will be smoothed over as a misunderstanding,” Sensor said. “But the sooner we get those SAS men out of Los Angeles the better.”
“I agree, Jacob. As things stand at the moment, they’re a liability. By the way, on a happier note, our Russian friends presented me with a supply of Beluga caviar. May I send some over to you?”
“You know it’s against the law to possess Beluga caviar in this country . . . the endangered Black Sea sturgeon and all that rubbish.”
“Yes, I know, but the Russians don’t seem to give a damn.”
“Nor do I. Yes, Anthony, send the stuff over at your convenience.”
“You have good Russian vodka?”
“Of course.”
“Cuban cigars?”
“I still have a couple of full boxes of Robusto Reservas.”
“Jolly good. Now, you won’t forget my imprisoned countrymen, will you?”
“I won’t. Depend on it,” Jacob Sensor said.
CHAPTER 28
The meeting was over, the implications of yesterday’s disaster in the Willamette discussed, and the surviving young men of Nasim Azar’s terrorist cell filed out of his apartment, their faces grim. One of their natural leaders, Dilshad Hakimi, was numbered among the slain.
When only the bodyguard Salman Assad remained, the man stood at the window, outlined by the morning sun that gilded the panes.
“Three more martyred in the cause of jihad,” Azar said. He waved Assad into a chair. “The man Cantwell is a demon incarnate. Perhaps he can’t be killed.”
Assad shook his head. “He can die like any other man, and the sacrifice of our brethren was not in vain. A great wind blows from the east that will one day scour the earth clean of the American infidels and their corruption. Master, if it is the will of Allah, we will both live to see that day.”
“The Willamette must go up in flames,” Azar said. “The infidels will know that their vile crimes cannot go unpunished.”
Assad jerked forward in his chair. “When will the fires of vengeance be lit?”
“Very soon. I have now decided to exert all my power. I’m in regular contact with Muslim brothers in Los Angeles who call themselves the Jacks of All Trades. If I care to release the man Norris and then have him shot in the back of the head in the street, they will do it. If I want the tourist traps in the Willamette attacked with bombs and bullets, they will do it. And I advise you, brother Assad, to have no further sexual congress with the whore Corky Jackson. Do not bring her here.”
Assad was shocked. “Master, I—”
Azar held up a silencing hand. “What do I care what you do with a black whore?
But she knows, or suspects, too much. She’ll be taken care of tonight by the Jacks, as will the teenager Randy Collins now that he’s no longer needed to work on drones. But these are very small matters. Of much more importance I have the assurance of the brothers that when I burn the Willamette, they will also mount an attack on the Three Pools area, where the infidel tourists congregate in their hundreds.”
Assad had been chastised, and he knew it. Sometimes when he was with a woman he talked too much, and being reprimanded for it made him peevish. “And what of your Ukrainian?” he said.
“He is still in Los Angeles. I will soon hear from him.” Azar smiled. “Don’t be offended, Salman. She’s only a black whore, and I value you highly.”
“Then allow me to prove my worth, master. Let me kill the man Cantwell.”
“I fear to risk your life, my friend. I need you at my side.”
“I can kill him at his hotel,” Assad said.
“And you may get your chance,” Azar said. “But wait until I hear from the Ukrainian.”
* * *
The woman at the reception desk of the National Wildfire Service had a nameplate pinned to her shirt that said, C. WELSH. She gave the Ukrainian her official smile that was totally devoid of humor or interest. “What can I do for you?”
“My name is Dominik Bonkowski.” He smiled, explaining the accent. “I’m Polish, you understand?”
“And what can I do for you?” Catrina Welsh said again. A phone rang and she said, “Wait, just a moment. I’m real busy this morning.”
As the woman answered the call, the Ukrainian readied the fake ID he used often, that of Poland’s National News Agency. Poles scared nobody.
After a few minutes, Catrina returned and said, “Yes?”
The Ukrainian smiled again. “As I said, my name is Dominik Bonkowski, and I’m with the Polish National News Agency. I’m here to speak with one of your firefighters.”
“Which one? We have hundreds here.”
The Ukrainian pretended to be confused. “Oh, dear,” he said. He pulled a piece of paper out of the top pocket of his gray suit jacket and consulted it. “A yes . . . Superintendent Cory Cantwell. Is he available?”
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