NCIS Los Angeles

by Jerome Preisler

“We’re done,” she said. “I’ll have the guards come in, and you’ll be on your way.”

  “Wait,” Dorani said. “I got a question or two of my own before we hug bye-bye.”

  She waited.

  “My cats,” he said. “What happens to ’em now?”

  “I’m having them brought to foster care,” Kensi said. “They’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, well, my babies don’t eat no poison from the supermarket,” he said. “I buy their food at one of those pet boutiques.”

  “I’ll pass it along…”

  “And they use natural pine litter,” he said. “Pour that regular stuff in their box, I’m telling you, they won’t poop.”

  She sighed. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, plenty,” Dorani said. “They’re used to a smoke-free environment. No chemicals in the air. Or dust mites, God forbid. And you don’t want ’em near freaking little kids…”

  “Or little birds,” Deeks interjected.

  Dorani snapped a glance at him.

  “What’d you say?”

  “Take it easy, Isaak. I didn’t—”

  “No.” He shook his head. “You said ‘birds.’”

  “Right, I—”

  “Birds.”

  Deeks looked at him, puzzled. He really was worked up.

  “Bad joke,” he said. “You know… cats.” And motioned with his right hand. “Birds.” Motioned with his left. “They don’t exactly go, uh, hand-in-hand.”

  Dorani kept staring at him another minute, then abruptly looked around at Kensi.

  “Stop the presses,” he said. “I got something for you.”

  * * *

  Kensi made two hurried calls on her cell within minutes of Dorani and his attorney departing with the MAs.

  The first was a three-way call to Sam and Callen at headquarters. They needed to know what Dorani had told her about the safehouse—and determine whether his recollection could help them locate it.

  The second was to Theodore Holloway, who answered his phone on the second ring.

  “Sir, this is Agent Kensi Blye,” she said, and got straight to the point. “My partner and I would like to drop by and speak with you in about an hour.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Agent,” he said. “This call comes as a complete surprise, and I have an early lunch appointment…”

  “Respectfully, sir, I’d suggest you postpone it,” she said.

  A pause. Then, slowly, he said, “May I ask what this concerns?”

  She wondered if she was imagining the guardedness in his voice.

  “It’s really best we talk in person—”

  “I might have to disagree,” he said. “I told you everything I could about my cousin yesterday…”

  “Sir, I have questions about Operation Deep Dive.”

  Another pause at the other end of the line. She heard him pull in a breath.

  “Deep Dive? What sort of questions? I haven’t heard that name in a lifetime.”

  “Again, sir, I would prefer to wait until we see you.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you right now, it would be a worthless conversation,” Holloway said. “I don’t know why you’re bringing up Deep Dive, but I hardly recall anything about it. That was seven decades ago—”

  “Mr. Holloway,” Kensi said. “There’s no statute of limitations for treason or war crimes.”

  A third pause.

  “This is unbelievable,” he said. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m dead serious, sir,” Kensi said. “I can have you picked up, handcuffed, and brought in for questioning by uniformed officers. Or Detective Deeks and I can come quietly and spare you the embarrassment.” Now it was her turn to be silent and she let it stretch. “The decision’s all yours.”

  Holloway said nothing for a while. She heard him shift the receiver to his other hand and wondered if he was about to hang up on her. But instead he blew a long, heavy breath into the phone.

  “Come over,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

  And then he finally did hang up.

  17

  “The Mojave has two native bird species with the characteristics Dorani gave us,” Nell was explaining to Sam and Callen. “He says he could tell they’re very large by the flap of their wings. That they make a shrieking noise louder than any he ever heard from a bird. And they congregate in flocks.”

  “Large, loud flocks,” Sam said.

  “Large and loud is how they roll,” Nell said. “Specifically the turkey vulture and black vulture.”

  It was now 11:35 A.M., and the agents had pulled Nell away from the station where she and Eric Beale laid out the Edison cylinders… and where, at that moment, Eric was waiting to hear from Granger about the Library of Congress restoration experts.

  “Are we sure only vultures are a match?” Callen asked. “No other kinds of birds? He didn’t actually see them.”

  Nell nodded.

  “Some might have one or two of those traits, but not all three,” she said. “Falcons and hawks are big, and there are several species in the desert. Also the golden eagle. But they’re solitary birds of prey. Vultures are pretty social birds.”

  “Do turkey and black vultures live in the same areas?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, I’ve seen both species roost in the same Joshua tree while I was hiking and it’s sort of creepy,” she said. “The black vultures are more aggressive. When they have to compete for food, they’ll drive off the turkey vultures.”

  “So even if we knew which type was hanging out around the safehouse, it wouldn’t help us pin down its location,” Callen said.

  “Probably not, since they’re all about the same size and make a big racket,” she said. “But there are other things.”

  “Like?”

  “A turkey vulture will pick the highest spot around for its roost. Once it finds one, it’ll stick to it for years, or even life. And it can live to be a hundred,” she said. “If the birds were perched nearby when Dorani was out there, it means the area’s probably developed, and it’s eliminated their natural habitat. Otherwise they’d roost out of earshot on trees and ledges. They’ll ride the thermals over populated sections when they’re looking for food. But they’re shy of people and cars. Human activity would scare them away.”

  Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “So we’re looking at developed and deserted.”

  “You know the abandoned subdivisions outside Palmdale and Lancaster?” Callen said. “They turned into ghost towns when the housing bubble burst in Antelope Valley.”

  “Isn’t that around where Theodore Holloway turned up in a rain ditch after his kidnapping?”

  They looked at each other a long moment. Then Sam turned to Nell.

  “Can we get some hi-res imagery of those developments?”

  “The NRO’s new Block Four satellites would do the trick,” Nell said. “They can bring us in close enough to see the dust churn up when a vulture flaps its wings.”

  “That close?”

  She frowned.

  “Okay, maybe I got overenthusiastic,” she said. “But it would show us the bird.”

  “How fast can you do it?”

  “Hetty’s the one to ask,” Nell said. “She’d need permission from the NRO to re-task a satellite.”

  “And say she gets it?”

  “A single satellite can take lots and lots of photos when it makes its pass,” she said. “Once it’s positioned, I can have a near-real-time image stream going immediately.”

  Sam nodded.

  “I’ll talk to her right now,” he said.

  * * *

  Eric received the call from Howie Wallach, an audio restoration expert with the LoC in Washington, D.C., a little before midday. As he listened to his instructions for cleaning the cylinders, he found himself stuck with a somewhat unsettling image of Granger holding a blowtorch to his red, blistered posterior.

  “Just don’t break the persnickety thing to smithereens like I’ve done a hundred ti
mes,” Wallach cautioned before hanging up.

  Eric had nervously wondered whether he might have been better off without that added snippet of advice.

  Now, twenty minutes later, he perched over the cylinders on a lab stool, slipped his forefinger and middle finger into one wax blank’s hollow core, spread them wide, and delicately lifted it up off the tray. Slightly to his right were a spray can of compressed air, and a large aluminum bowl containing a mixture of Labtone detergent compound, technical grade isopropyl alcohol, and de-ionized water. Also on the counter were several small micropile cleaning cloths, a roll of nonabrasive cotton wipes, and a few outspread paper towels.

  The cylinder was badly crusted with mold, the growth speckling its grooves like bits of caked white flour.

  Reaching for the spray can with his free hand, Eric held the nozzle six inches from the blank and streamed some air over its convex surface, clearing away whatever dust was on it. Next he dipped the cylinder into his detergent solution. As he held it there, fully immersed, he lifted a velveteen cloth off the counter, wet it with the solution, and slowly began wiping it around the cylinder, trying not to apply more than the slightest pressure.

  The mold began to dissolve after five minutes, and within twenty minutes every visible trace was gone.

  Finally, mindful of Wallach’s warning, Eric lifted the cylinder out of the bowl, stood it on the paper towel, and dabbed off the solution with a cotton wipe, not wanting to leave behind any detergent residue.

  At last he stretched his arms and exhaled, the tension draining out of him.

  He’d not only cleaned the cylinder, but managed to leave it intact.

  One down, five to go.

  “Howie W., bless your overcooked ass,” he said.

  And reached for the next blank.

  * * *

  Alysha’s train rumbled into Union Station at one-fifteen, precisely on schedule. Matous had driven her to Via Princessa, one stop down the line from Vincent Grade/Acton, so she could take advantage of the station’s more frequent service.

  Gathering her purse, she quickly rose from her seat in the first car and looked out her window for the attendant. Sarver was waiting for her there on the platform, where they had arranged to meet up with an exchange of text messages.

  “Hey!” he said as the doors slid open. His smile was a little shy. “Recognize me without my uniform?”

  Alysha returned the smile and took his hand. He wore an unbuttoned Los Angeles Dodgers road jersey over a longsleeved blue polo shirt. She noticed a tan canvas messenger bag over his shoulder, and a worn, sunbleached ball cap stuffed in his back pocket.

  “You look very handsome, Drew,” she said, kissing him on each cheek. “I couldn’t wait to get here.”

  He motioned to the sunny blue sky.

  “Looks like we’ve got a perfect day for our adventure.”

  Alysha met his gaze, nodding, her hand still in his.

  “Yes,” she said. “Perfect.”

  * * *

  “Well,” said the Bel Air Palms security guard. “You’re back.”

  “Like Ahnold,” Kensi said out the window of her SUV.

  “Or the ghosts in Poltergeist,” Deeks said from the passenger seat.

  Kensi held her ID out the window, but the guard waved it off.

  “My eyes tell me you’re the same person you were yesterday. I think Mr. Holloway’s at his condo. His assistant got here ten, fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Murphy?” she said.

  The guard nodded. “You can drive right up,” he said. “I’ll call ahead so they know you’re on your way.”

  She nodded and thanked him.

  “Hope Mr. Holloway’s hard partying hasn’t gotten him in trouble,” he said with a sly wink. “I figure he was quite the guy with the moves in his day.”

  “That sounds about right,” Kensi said, and drove on past the booth.

  * * *

  According to public speculation, the U.S. intelligence community’s late-generation Block Four satellites boasted optics that could read the license plates of cars. This was hardly a stretch, since declassified photos from earlier spy sats had confirmed they could resolve on objects as small as cars.

  Sam Hanna knew the satellites could not only see the vehicle’s plates, but obtain crystal clear images of its passengers through the windshield, and then identify them with 3D facial recognition technology, or even human skin texture analysis face-rec that turned lines, wrinkles, acne scars, and other distinguishing marks into definitive algorithms.

  He studied the pictures on the interactive table in Ops alongside Nell, Callen, and Hetty, thinking they looked as if they were coming from a kite twenty feet in the air, not a low earth-orbit satellite zipping through the upper limits of the atmosphere. He was also thinking the view wasn’t pretty—the high-resolution closeups showed block after block of boarded up homes, barbed-wire fences, gang graffiti, trash, weeds, dead tumbleweed… and vultures.

  The birds were everywhere, droves of them. Many in the air circling the subdivision’s geometrically laid out streets and roads, others perched on rooftops, fences, lampposts, and streetlights. This area very well could be where the safehouse was located, but based solely on the presence of the vultures, the safehouse could be one among dozens, possibly hundreds, they were using as roosts.

  “Which of the housing developments are we looking at here?” Sam asked.

  “This one’s called Flor Linda,” Nell said. “It’s about fifty miles northwest of us. The closest of two or three.”

  Sam grunted. “Talk about a burst housing bubble,” he said. “The gang tags mean some badass crews are marking turf.”

  “It’s totally Night of the Living Dead,” Nell said. She shivered. “No one’s around but the squatters. And probably the zombies that eat them after dark.”

  Callen looked at her. “You’ve been out there?”

  She nodded.

  “I once got lost driving out to Vazquez Rocks and passed it right by.”

  “On the state route?”

  “No, that’s where I went wrong. You have to turn off the main road. There’s a highway linkup to Flor Linda that was never finished.”

  Hetty removed her eyeglasses thoughtfully. “Can you bring us in tight on that road?”

  Nell nodded, swiping and tapping the tabletop. When the imagery appeared after a few seconds she tossed it up on a wall screen, highlighting either side of the road with red lines.

  It wound south off State Route 14 midway between Palmdale and Edwards Air Force Base, the paved segment coming to an abrupt end after the first half mile, where it turned into a pitted gravel and dirt strip.

  Hetty studied the flatscreen display, absently rubbing her glasses with a silk handkerchief.

  “Dorani mentioned the road to the safehouse was bumpy,” she said. “It was the only detail he gave about the drive out. Besides riding in a windowless van.”

  “Your classic creepmobile,” Nell said. “The ideal family vehicle for pervs and killers.”

  They were all quiet a second. Then Callen turned to her.

  “Bring us back to Flor Linda,” he said. “We have to keep looking.”

  18

  The drive up to Tip Holloway’s condo led to a semicircular parking area with a jacaranda tree in full April bloom. Kensi turned inside to see Murphy standing on the wide front doorstep.

  “Didn’t the guard say he’s been here awhile?” Deeks said, scratching his head. “You’d think he would have a key.”

  She halted in the shade of the tree, then thought twice and eased the SUV toward the other side of the semicircle.

  “No jacaranda love for you?” Deeks said.

  She shook her head.

  “The pollen is a menace to my paint job,” she said. “A smelly menace.”

  Deeks frowned.

  “I can relate,” he said, reaching for the door handle.

  Murphy turned around to face them as they approached, his worried expression
noticeable from several feet away.

  “Mr. Murphy,” Kensi said. “Is everything all right?”

  He didn’t reply. Deeks saw the sun glint off an object in his hand and furrowed his brow.

  “There’s his key,” he said to Kensi. “So why isn’t he using it to get in?”

  They quickened their pace. Something was definitely wrong here.

  “Mr. Murphy, what’s going on?” she said.

  He stood there apprehensively as they came up to the doorstep, stopping below him on the paved walkway.

  “I can’t get in the door,” he said at last, wobbling the key. “Something’s blocking it inside.”

  “Have you knocked?”

  “Knocked, rang the bell, called on my cell…” He shook his head. “No answer.”

  “And you’re sure he’s home?”

  Murphy nodded.

  “Mr. Holloway knew I was on my way over,” he said. “He phoned to tell me you were coming, and that he wanted me here when you showed up.”

  “That the same key you always use?” Deeks asked, pointing his chin at it.

  Murphy gave another nod. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said. “The lock opened okay. But the door’s jammed shut.”

  Kensi stepped past Murphy, tested the knob, pushed the door with her shoulder. It didn’t budge.

  “Mr. Holloway!” she exclaimed, rapping on it. “This is Agent Blye! If you’re home, please open up.”

  No answer. She pressed an ear against the door, waited, heard no sounds from inside the condo, and knocked again.

  “Mr. Holloway, if you don’t answer us, we’ll have to force our way in!”

  Nothing.

  Kensi moved away from the door, eyeing the sash windows on either side of it. Then she reached into her blazer for her car keys and tossed them to Deeks.

  “The tire iron’s in back,” she said.

  He sprinted around to the SUV’s tail section, returning seconds later with the metal rod.

  “You two better move back,” he said, looking at both Kensi and Murphy.

  They did without a word.

  Deeks went up to the window, raised the iron from his side, and swung it once against the pane. It shattered with a loud crash, shards of glass pouring onto the lawn and walkway. Jabbing the tire iron into the broken window, he moved it around the frame to clear away the jagged fragments of glass still attached to it. Then he shot a quick glance over at Kensi and hoisted himself through the opening.