by Mark Parragh
It would be better if we could take the airstrip last, he thought. Parachute the team in somewhere along those slopes to the east, extract the hostages, and then secure the airstrip and call in Jessie to pick them up. He might recommend that, but right now he didn’t know how long Jessie would be able to remain in the air, or whether Cottrell’s team of mercenaries was trained to parachute into mountainous terrain.
It could be done, he decided, but there were challenges. And he’d want considerably better intelligence about the place than Google Earth.
The others’ voices were rising, and Crane realized there was an argument going on.
“ … know why you’re making all the damn decisions all of a sudden!” Cottrell snapped at Josh. Josh’s body language was defensive. He and Cottrell were in each other’s space, and Cottrell was clearly angry.
“I’ve been working on this for eight months! It’s my son in there!” He turned to Crane. “It’s nothing personal, but I don’t know you, Mr. Crane. I’m not going to send some stranger in, guns blazing, and hope you can pull him out. I’m going with people I know.”
“Come off it!” Josh shouted back. “You’ve been on this for eight months, and you didn’t get jack. We’re on board less than a week and boom! If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be sniffing around Cabo!”
“Shut up!” Jessie snapped. “Both of you. This is no time for a pissing contest.”
They both stopped short and looked at her in surprise. Crane smiled to himself.
“Josh, a little compassion, please,” Jessie went on. Crane noted that Josh had the good grace to look a little ashamed of himself. “Sawyer, we know what’s at stake, all right? Nobody’s questioning that. But that doesn’t mean you’re qualified to plan a rescue mission. I am. And it’s my plane, so John’s coming with us, or else your team can walk in.”
Sawyer stepped back and sighed. “Okay, yeah. I know. It’s just … that message. There’s no way he would have let it go out without something, just to tell me he was there and he was okay, and he was waiting for me to bring him home.”
Sawyer was about to break down, Crane realized.
“If he’s there, we’ll get him out,” said Jessie. “We need better intel and some time to plan a mission. How long will it take to get your team together?”
“A few days,” said Cottrell. “I’ll have to call them. They’ve been waiting around a long time now.” Now he sounds defeated, Crane thought. Going through the motions because he’s decided that his son isn’t there. Crane had no idea what the truth was. He’d been taught to prepare for contingencies, but also to assume everything was going according to plan until he knew it wasn’t.
“Start making calls,” said Crane. “We’ll put together a mission brief.”
Cottrell closed his eyes and nodded. “Sure. Yeah. I’ll do that.”
Crane saw Jessie give Josh a look, and Josh put a hand on Cottrell’s arm. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go to my office. We can start pulling your team together, and you look like you could use a drink.”
He guided Cottrell toward the doors. Then Georges zoomed the satellite image in to the closest view of the compound the resolution would support, and they got to work.
CHAPTER 26
Palo Alto Airport
A helicopter brought Josh back across the bay from Hayward, where he kept his Gulfstream. It was annoying, but Hayward was a former army airfield and had a runway long enough for the jet to take off, whereas Palo Alto did not. He was returning from Hayward because he’d taken Sawyer Cottrell there and had his standby pilots take Sawyer back to El Paso. Sawyer needed to assemble the team of mercenaries who would be conducting the rescue mission, and El Paso was to be the staging area. Sawyer was on his way now, and Josh could return his attention to other things.
The helicopter brought him in and landed near a hangar in the general aviation area. Josh’s Mercedes was waiting for him as he thanked the pilot and climbed out.
As he hurried over to the waiting car, he realized Tim was there, back from his mission to Bel Marin Keys. That was unexpected. He’d assumed Tim wouldn’t be back until well after dark.
Tim opened the door for him and then got in front.
He looks like his doctor just gave him a week to live. Something went wrong.
“Everything okay, Tim? What happened?”
“Nothing,” said Tim. “It was a dead end.” He started the car and headed out of the airport.
“How so? What happened?”
“It was weird,” said Tim. “I got through the gate just like you said. But after that, it went south real fast. The Cadillac wasn’t there. That didn’t surprise me. I figured he’d be at work. I was going to check the house, and then wait for him to get home, and tag the car.”
Josh nodded. “Right.”
“But when I got there, there were a couple white vans out front. Unmarked. And the front door was open. I thought, okay, if there’s work crews, maybe I can get inside, talk to them, see what’s going on.”
Unmarked? Why aren’t the vans marked? Plumbers, electricians, remodelers, all of them, the vans have names, logos, phone numbers, slogans. Who doesn’t want to advertise that your neighbors hired them to work on their house?
“So I went in the front door, and there’s nothing there. I mean no furniture, nothing. Turns out the workers are—”
“Crime scene cleaners,” said Josh.
Tim stopped, startled. “Huh?”
“That’s who shows up in a plain van.”
“Okay,” said Tim. “Well, you’re right. They were washing the whole place down with solvents and bleach.”
Good God, they’re worried about leaving DNA behind? What are we up against here?
“I talked to the foreman,” said Tim. “He said he’d been out to Bel Marin Keys twice before. Once for a messy suicide. The other time was an old lady who had a stroke and died on her kitchen floor and nobody found her for a couple weeks. This time, there was nothing. Everything had already been cleaned out. The place was ready to show. He had no idea what they were doing there.”
Movers. Clean up. How long would it take to get that done? Track it back, when did they figure out we were on to their doctor?
“Did he say when they got the call?” Josh asked.
Tim shook his head. “Sorry, I didn’t think to ask.”
“That’s all right,” Josh muttered, sinking back into his seat in thought.
“They knew we were coming,” said Tim.
“Yes, they did.”
When isn’t what matters. The real question is how did they know?
He spent the rest of the trip trying to come up with ways the people he was trying to unmask could have figured out that he had identified Dr. Dabrowski. But no matter how many angles he approached it from, there was only one answer that made any sense.
Someone told them. There’s a leak in your team.
The next morning, Josh met with Don Finney and Laura Berdoza in his office. He didn’t want to do it in the war room because Perry Holland was climbing the wall again, and he was in no mood for it. Josh hadn’t slept well.
Of course not. You’ve got half a dozen people running this show and one of them’s betraying you.
That’s … not confirmed.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
Josh was late because he kept finding ways to distract himself from his morning routine. He didn’t want to do this. Especially after Tim’s report last evening, he worried that he wasn’t going to like what Finney and Berdoza had to say.
You’re running out of cards to play, Ace.
Shut up. I liked it better when you were doing Mambo Number Five over and over again.
They were waiting in the outer office when he arrived. His secretary had gotten them coffee—tea in Berdoza’s case—and they were reading the morning news on tablets. They stood as he came in.
“Good morning,” he muttered. They replied in kind, overlapping one another.
&nbs
p; Is one of them selling you out? How would you know?
“Come on back,” he said.
Josh’s office was a sprawling expanse of white marble, black leather, and frosted glass. Some very expensive interior designer had put it together for him. He used it to impress visitors, but otherwise spent little time here. He led them out to the balcony. He’d hauled some of the very expensive original Knoll Barcelona chairs out there and spent most of his time looking out over the grounds and the pond.
He sat down now and gestured to them to take the other chairs. Then he sat back and looked out across the pond and the trees. He said nothing. They said nothing. A duck took off from the surface of the pond with a splashing sound.
“It’s a beautiful morning,” Berdoza said at last.
Josh checked his watch. It had taken her a minute and twenty-three seconds to break the silence.
So what does that tell you? Is she the spy? Come on.
“The doctor was a dead end,” he said. “We lost him. Out of leads to follow on the medical side. I’m really hoping for better news on the legal front, and I don’t think I’m going to get it, am I?”
Finney stammered a bit, but Berdoza took the bait. “No,” she said. “You’re not.”
Josh sighed. “All right, fill me in. What’s the problem?”
“They’ve been at this for a while now,” said Finney, apparently deciding to just charge ahead now that Berdoza had opened the way. “And from the looks of it, they’ve got a dozen different law firms working full time, filing registrations for s-corporations and real estate investment trusts and anything else they can think of.”
“As soon as one exists, it starts trading assets, making negative amortization loans, and so on,” Berdoza added. “When one’s run its course, it folds up, or sells itself to another company that takes on their liabilities and transfers collateral to a creditor trust. It just keeps going.”
“We can trace most of this,” said Finney, “but it’s hard, and it’s time consuming.”
“It’s a structural problem,” she said. “It’s just easier and faster for them to build up layers of the onion than it is for us to peel them away. They’ve got a head start, and they can run faster. We’re not going to catch them this way.”
One of them couldn’t sabotage the operation without tipping off the other one. They’re not both in on it, are they? No. No.
“We can tease these things apart,” said Finney. “Eventually we’ll find the answers, but not in a useful time frame.”
That was what Josh had been afraid of.
“What do you suggest?” he asked, a note of defeat slipping into his voice.
Berdoza and Finney glanced at each other. Berdoza gestured for Finney to speak.
“We have to slow them down if we’re going to catch up,” he said. “I don’t know how to do that. We need to disrupt them somehow.”
Josh shook his head.
This is worse than you thought.
“It’s possible they could make a mistake,” Berdoza offered tentatively. “Do something that connects a new company to one of the ones we’ve already investigated. That would let us skip ahead.”
“But they haven’t done that yet,” said Finney.
Another silence fell over them. Josh was looking for ways to disrupt … whomever and give his team a chance. But he wasn’t coming up with anything that sounded plausible.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Thank you for that. Please keep it up, and I’ll see if I can find a way to take the pressure off you.”
After they’d left, Josh stood up and leaned on the balcony’s aluminum and wire railing. He needed something big and unexpected. He needed to toss a grenade into this mess and blow it up.
Heh. What do you do when you need something blown up?
You talk to Crane.
Bingo.
CHAPTER 27
Coronado Hills, El Paso, Texas
Sawyer Cottrell had found a wet bar in Josh Sulenski’s Gulfstream as it flew him back from California. Under the circumstances, he thought it was appropriate to help himself, and he was already about two thirds drunk by the time the plane touched down at El Paso International.
Now, back home, Sawyer had locked himself in his study and continued drinking. His wife Ellen wanted to know what the surprise trip had been about, what he’d found out about their son. He had to convince her it was nothing, a dead end. How could he tell her the truth? But they’d been married for thirty-one years now, and Ellen was no fool to begin with. She knew he was keeping something from her, and he wouldn’t keep good news to himself. She was upstairs in bed right now, crying into her pillow, and that was one more thing for Sawyer Cottrell to carry, one more reason for him to drink.
He drained the last of the Macallan and went looking for another bottle. He was pretty sure there was an unopened bottle of Bowmore. He lurched up out of his deep leather chair and stumbled across to the bar.
Of course, the problem with that was that the wall behind the bar was covered in pictures of Martin. Martin in his football uniform from high school. Martin with the two of them at college graduation. Martin proudly beaming from the bicycle he’d gotten for his eighth birthday. That was Sawyer’s favorite of all of them. He still remembered that day. It had been a day so perfect that it should have terrified him. How could any day ever reach that high ever again? What could life be from that point onward but loss?
Sawyer’s knees buckled beneath him, and he sank to the floor. He felt his world contracting down to a point. Nothing he had done mattered anymore. Nothing he had was worth anything. The company, the Chamber of Commerce awards, the big house in Coronado Hills. None of that mattered. None of it.
That’s what Sulenski couldn’t understand. He didn’t seem like a bad person, but he didn’t know Martin at all. He had his own agenda, and it had occurred to Sawyer that he couldn’t trust Sulenski to put Martin first. If Martin was still alive in that compound, he didn’t doubt that the mercenaries he’d assembled would get him out. And if he wasn’t … well, if he wasn’t, nothing really mattered. Sawyer wasn’t interested in spending the money he was spending, breaking the laws he was breaking, just to rescue a handful of strangers.
No, if Martin was … if Martin wasn’t coming home, then he had less than zero interest in helping Josh Sulenski do whatever it was he was trying to get done down there. If Martin was dead … If Martin was dead, what he wanted, what he owed his son and his grieving wife, was revenge.
Sawyer controlled his breathing, pulled himself back to his feet, and found himself once again looking at that old photo of a beautiful, innocent little boy so proud of his new bike, so full of energy and potential, his future spooling out before him. Sawyer walked slowly and carefully to his desk, picked up a cordless handset, and dialed a number from memory.
After several rings, the call connected and a tired-sounding voice said, “Stratton.”
For eight months now, Sawyer had been pouring money into nearly every private detective he could find. Chris Stratton was the one who still impressed him as a man who knew what he was doing.
“Sawyer Cottrell,” he said. “I’ve got something. I know where my son is.”
Is, he thought. Not was. Not until you really know. And this man doesn’t need to be wondering.
“That’s great news,” said Stratton. “How did you get this information?”
“It’s trustworthy,” said Sawyer. “Let’s leave it at that. It’s a place in Durango. Nearest town is called Santa Catarina de Tepehuanes.”
“Hold on.” Stratton’s voice sounded tired. Sawyer checked his watch and realized what time it was. He’d probably awakened Stratton.
“Okay,” Stratton said a few moments later. “Got it.”
“It’s a hacienda in the mountains a few miles northwest of the town, off Highway 23. I can get you latitude and longitude, if you need it, but it’s kind of hard to miss. It’s the only place out there for miles.”
“I can be there b
y noon tomorrow,” said Stratton. “What do you already know, and what do you need me to find out?”
“I don’t know much,” said Sawyer. “I’ll need a general briefing. The town, local police, and so on. See if anybody’s seen Martin. But mainly, what can you find out about that compound? Especially who owns it and what they do there. How are they protected? How are they vulnerable?”
“All right,” said Stratton. “Like I said, I can be there sometime tomorrow. I’ll start asking around. I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything. There’ll be some expenses.”
“I understand,” said Sawyer. “I’ll transfer funds to the holding account. You spread it around, do what you have to do.” He grabbed the glass from his desk and drained out the last drops of the Macallan. “Let’s be clear,” he said quietly. “When I find out who owns that place, who lives there, does whatever the hell they’re doing there, that guy’s got a target on his back. And it never goes away. Never. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Do you know people down there? People who can handle something like that?”
“I know some people down here,” said Stratton. “If they can’t handle it, I’ll find someone who can. There’s always someone down here.”
“All right,” said Sawyer. “Find out what you can. The money will be there. This … this means a lot to me. Keep that in mind.”
“I know what it means to you,” said Stratton. “You’ll know as soon as I find anything.”
“Thank you,” said Sawyer, his eyes closed, the cool pressure of the glass against his forehead. “Thank you.”
After he hung up, Sawyer staggered back to the bar and cracked the seal on the Bowmore. He was unsteadily pouring a couple fingers into his glass when he suddenly realized where the bottle came from. Martin had given it to him for Father’s Day last year.
