“I can assure you, Agent Spencer, no one is working on this crash site. In fact, all traces of the helicopter may well have been removed from the site by now. We believe the chopper was manned by a team bearing automatic weapons. They were hunting a man on the ground. There was a fight that led to this crash.”
Spencer digested the information.
“Obviously, these circumstances would be of interest to the FBI. May I ask why they would be of interest to you?”
“The target is a retired member of our … community. We would like to know who is after him and why. Since this is a criminal matter, it would seem to fall within the jurisdiction of the FBI.”
“We might be able to get to the bottom of this matter more quickly if the FBI knew the man being pursued.”
“Indeed it might, but I cannot help you with that. I am sure the FBI will conduct a complete investigation.”
“Is there anything else that you can tell me?” Spencer asked.
“No, not at this time. However, if any other information comes into my possession that could be of assistance to you, I will call. May I have your e-mail?” the caller asked.
“Yes,” Spencer said, and gave the caller his personal e-mail address.
“Good day, Agent Spencer.”
“Good day to you.”
Spencer heard his e-mail notification chime a moment later. The address on the e-mail was [email protected]. Spencer suspected the account holder was nonexistent. He considered calling O’Connor, but rejected the idea. If O’Connor had been in a position to tell him about the situation directly, he would have done so. Spencer respected the message.
Spencer searched “Big Bear, California” on the Internet. He scanned the hits and pulled up the chamber of commerce site for the area. The city was up in the San Bernardino Mountains, in Southern California. Most of the area was a national forest. Spencer decided to call a contact in the FAA’s Washington office.
“Sam Merriman.”
“Hi, Sam, Bill Spencer.”
“Bill, what a pleasant surprise. How can I help the FBI today?”
“Can you tell me if any aircraft went down in Southern California on Saturday night, or early Sunday morning? Actually, let me be more specific, near the town of Big Bear, California.”
“That’s easy enough. Let me pull the reports from that sector. Saturday, you say. I’ll check a day on either side to make sure. No, nothing went down. I have other incidents during that time period down at Ontario Airport, hard landings, that sort of thing, but no crashes in that area. Why, is there something we should know about?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. It was probably just an error on this end, but if it turns out to be something real, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay, stop in for lunch the next time you’re in town.”
“Count on it. Have a good day, Sam.”
Spencer pulled up the name of the FBI’s Los Angeles Bureau chief, Tobey Nelson, from his contacts list. The two men had worked together as part of the task force that investigated the Oklahoma City bombing and had become friends. Spencer suspected that Tobey would be sufficiently intrigued by the possibility that an aircraft had gone down in the nearby mountains, without a report being filed, to send one of his agents to investigate.
Spencer gave Tobey an abbreviated version of the tip that he’d received, intentionally omitting any suggestion that he might know the source of the information. Although his friend might have suspected there was more to it than that, he tactfully left the matter alone. Nelson promised to send an agent to check out the site, and to get back to Spencer as soon as he knew anything.
Eight hours later, Spencer got a call back from Nelson.
“Spencer.”
“Hey, Bill, Tobey.”
“Tobey. Look, like I said, it was no big deal—”
“Actually, it may be quite a big deal, or operation might be a better word for it.”
“What did you find?”
“The agent I sent up there hikes those mountains all the time. She was thrilled to put on her boots and crisscross the sector bracketed by your GPS coordinates. After an hour of trekking, lo and behold, she found something that may well be a crash site.”
“What kind of bird was it?” Spencer asked.
“Well, that’s the interesting part. There was no bird.”
“What?”
“According to Special Agent Yung, she would have missed the entire site, but for a set of truck tracks that she ran across when she was walking the grid. Someone had covered the tracks with snow, where they intersected with the road. She followed the tracks into the forest and found an area where there’d been a lot of activity. We’re talking somewhere between eight and fifteen people marching around. She noticed an odd smell and decided to do some digging. Bingo. She found a big oil spill and took a few samples. She also took samples of other areas that smelled like fuel.”
“Aviation fuel?” Spencer asked.
“The lab report will be here within the hour, but that’s my bet.”
“Where the hell did the chopper go?”
“Like I said, that’s the interesting part. Agent Yung found the truck tracks, but no chopper.”
“Tobey, they’d need a crane to get a chopper out of the forest. Someone would have seen it.”
“Maybe, unless they cut it up with torches and hauled it off,” Nelson said.
Spencer whistled to himself.
“That’s right. Someone with real horsepower is involved, and I know my good buddy Bill Spencer is going to tell me all about it.”
Spencer smiled. “I will, as soon as I find out.”
“Okay, buddy, this is potentially a big deal, but as far as I’m concerned it’s your show. Tell me how you want to run the investigation.”
Spencer knew what Tobey was asking. He wanted to know if Spencer intended to run the investigation up the flag pole, or keep it local for a while.
“Since I don’t know what we have here, I suggest that we both open local files and work the issue until we have something more substantial. You work the crash site and I’ll try to trace the bird from this end.”
“That works for me, Bill, but let’s stay in touch on this,” Nelson said.
“Done. I’ll call you every couple of days.”
“Great. All right, chief, I gotta get back to work. We don’t work Texas hours here.”
“Yeah, right. Thanks, Tobey.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
Austin, Texas
December 6, 1999 / Monday / 1:00 a.m.
Andrea flipped off the radio in the pickup truck, irritated by the incessant commercials. With the radio silent, the only sound was her fingers tapping on the steering wheel. She stared at the four-story apartment building in the middle of the next block. Richie’s apartment was on the third floor in a corner. The older building overlooked the alley behind the building. Andrea looked at her watch. Caine had been in the building for nineteen minutes. This is a mistake. We shouldn’t be here.
When she called Michael Bosmasian from the motel, he wasn’t at home, and no one picked up at his office. It was too early. On the way into Austin, she’d reached his assistant. The woman was new and less than cooperative. She’d told Andrea that Mr. Bosmasian had just started a criminal trial and wouldn’t be available until after 6:00 p.m. When Andrea asked for his cell number, the woman politely declined the request.
After dating Michael for a year, Andrea knew Michael’s habits. He would call in for messages at the lunch break. She told his assistant to tell Michael to meet her at the Marian House Restaurant at 7:00 p.m. and she had left him a voice mail with the same message. The restaurant was within walking distance of the criminal court. If Michael received the message, she knew he’d get there.
The delay left seven hours to burn, and Caine had insisted that they use the time to try to find out who was after them and why. In Caine’s mind, that meant a visit to Richie’s apartment. Andrea had r
esisted the idea, but reluctantly agreed when Caine persisted, in part because she was worried that he would find a way to do it on his own, no matter what she said.
A part of the sidewalk across the street from the apartment building was cordoned off. A group of construction workers was excavating a part of the street. The main event was a man with a jackhammer in the middle of a shallow hole next to the curb. Periodically, the man would attack something at the bottom of the hole, generating a deafening roar. After several minutes of pounding, he would stop, and the entire group would gather around the hole to assess the progress. After a short consultation, the process would start all over again.
As she watched the workmen, an Austin Police car came around the corner and parked directly across from the apartment building. Andrea had no idea what the cop was doing, but she wasn’t inclined to take any chances. She reached for her cell phone, which was plugged into the power outlet on the console, and dialed Caine’s cell number. The jackhammer started up again, just as the phone started to ring. She pressed the phone against her ear in an effort to shut out the racket, but it was still difficult to hear anything even though all of the windows in the pickup were closed. Caine didn’t pick up and the call rolled over to voice mail.
Andrea left a short message and decided to try again in five minutes. She changed her mind when another patrol car pulled in behind the first car. Andrea dialed Caine’s cell number and once again it rang until the voice mail message started. Why doesn’t he pick up? The jackhammer—Caine probably couldn’t hear the phone over the noise, especially if he’d lowered the ringer volume on his cell before he entered the building.
Andrea gripped the wheel in frustration. The policeman in the second car seemed to be looking directly across the street at the front of the building. It was too much of a coincidence. They must be going into Richie’s apartment, or worse, they were there to investigate a call about an intruder. She had to get in there and warn Caine.
Andrea reached over and pulled a Texas Rangers Jacket and a matching cap from the space behind the front seat. Her winter coat was still back at the Portman Lodge. When they’d stopped to buy a charger for her cell phone on the way into Austin, Caine had suggested that she buy a coat at the small sports outlet next door to the Radio Shack. When she passed on the idea, Caine had politely suggested that wearing something out-of-character was probably not such a bad idea. Andrea had taken the hint. The Texas Rangers coat and the matching cap were the least offensive things she found in the store, and they wouldn’t seem out of place in Austin.
Austin, Texas
December 6, 1999 / Monday / 1:00 p.m.
Anders and Vargas were sitting in Vargas’s Cadillac, halfway down the block from Steinman’s apartment building. The car was four years old, black, and in perfect condition. Vargas had parked the Cadillac away from the building to avoid the dust from the construction. Anders looked around the spotless interior of the car, and grinned.
“So the beaner chicks you date like this ugly boat, do they? Makes sense. They got no sense of prospective, comin’ from a dump like Mexico,” Anders said, a scornful smile on this face.
“Perspective, Anders, that’s the word. But that’s still quite an effort for an illiterate like you. Have you been watching Sesame Street lately?” Vargas said, without looking away from the building.
“You know, Vargas, I am going to have to kick your brown ass one of these days. You’re just not respectful enough of—”
Vargas raised his hand in a warning gesture, cutting Anders off. The two men watched an Austin PD patrol car cruise slowly around the corner and park across from the apartment building.
“No big deal,” Anders said. “It’s just a cop.”
Vargas continued to watch the cop. He started to relax when the cop just sat there for several minutes, but his anxiety level climbed again when a second patrol car pulled in behind the first cop. This wasn’t good.
Vargas thought the stakeout was a waste of time, but after listening to Insonna describe last night’s ambush, he’d brought along his Heckler & Koch P7M13, with an attached suppressor. The gun was hidden in a compartment in the trunk. Anders’s Glock 23 wasn’t nearly as well hidden. He’d shoved it under his seat when he got in the car. If the police took an interest in the two of them and found a reason to search the car, the situation could get difficult.
When the cops made no move to get out of their cars, Vargas turned his attention back to Steinman’s apartment building. About forty yards up the street, on the opposite side, a woman wearing a Texas Rangers jacket and matching hat was walking in their direction. Vargas couldn’t see her face or her hair from that distance.
Vargas looked over at the picture taped to the Cadillac’s dashboard. The woman in the picture was an attractive brunette with shoulder-length hair, attired in a stylish but conservative business suit. He looked back at the woman on the sidewalk and decided it wasn’t the Marenna woman. Vargas looked over at the two cops, but his eyes wandered back to the woman as she approached Steinman’s building. Something didn’t add up. He picked up the binoculars on the seat and took a closer look at the woman. She was the right age, and he could just see the dark hair under the hat. When he added in the expensive watch, earrings, designer jeans, and perfectly manicured nails, the hat and coat didn’t fit the picture.
Vargas turned to look at the picture and noticed that Anders had picked up on his interest. His eyes were fixed on the woman.
“She’s the right age, and I would guess that she’s a looker under the jacket. It could be her,” Vargas said.
Anders grunted, opened the car door, and stepped out.
“I’ll check her out. You let Paquin know we may have a hit,” Anders said.
Vargas opened his mouth to object, but Anders had already closed the door. Vargas didn’t want Anders to take the lead on the surveillance with the cops right there, but there was nothing he could do about it. He watched Anders stroll through the traffic to the other side of the street. Good job, asshole, jaywalk in front of the cops.
Vargas picked up the cell phone and dialed Paquin.
“Paquin.”
“It’s Vargas. We may have found one of the targets—the girl. Anders is checking it out.”
“Is Caine in the area?” Paquin asked.
“We haven’t seen him yet.”
There was a short hesitation, and then Paquin continued. “If you can take them both out, do it. If you can take Caine out, do it. But I don’t want the girl killed unless you can take Caine out at the same time. That will only make him more dangerous and harder to find. Are we clear?” Paquin said.
“Clear.”
“I’m leaving now for your position, but don’t wait for me to get there, if you have a kill within those parameters.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
Vargas dialed Anders’s cell.
“What do you want, Mex?”
“We have a go to put down Caine and the woman, or Caine by himself, but we can’t kill the woman unless it’s a twosome.” Vargas hesitated, and then continued after glancing over at the cops.
“Anders, your Glock’s here. So if you see them, don’t start anything. Call and wait for me.”
Anders didn’t say anything.
“Are we clear on that, Anders?”
“Got it, Mex.”
Austin, Texas
December 6, 1999 / Monday / 1:00 p.m.
Anders could see the girl on his right as he crossed the street. She didn’t look in his direction, but he could tell she was aware of him. To allay her suspicions, Anders joined the line of patrons at the taco stand across the street from the Cadillac. Anders waited until the woman walked into the parking area underneath Steinman’s building before stepping out of the line. When he was parallel to the police cars across the street from the apartment building, the first car pulled out into traffic and the second car followed. A smile played across Anders’s face. He was looking forward to introduc
ing this babe to a new kind of nightmare.
There were two large openings in the concrete foundation that formed the outside walls of the underground parking area. Anders climbed through one of these openings and dropped silently in front of an old van. He could see the woman. She was pulling open a gray steel door on the far side of the garage and entering the rear of the building.
When the door closed, Anders walked across the garage and stopped in front of the door. He listened briefly and then pulled it open. The door opened to a corridor that extended from the rear of the building to the front door. A wooden stairway that led to the floors above faced the front entrance. Anders heard the woman’s steps on the front stairs as he eased the door closed behind him. He could tell from the sound that she was just approaching the first-floor landing. Vargas had told him that Steinman’s apartment was on the third floor.
At the opposite end of the corridor, a window was open. Anders could see a steel fire escape landing through the opening. He jogged down the corridor and climbed through the window. There was a risk that the window on the third floor might be closed and locked, but Anders doubted it. During the winter, the tenants on the upper floors of these buildings used the window over the fire escape to blow out the excess heat rising from the lower floors.
Anders took the stairs up the fire escape two at time. His rubber-soled boots made no noise as he ascended. The window on the third floor was open, as he anticipated. He climbed through and glided down the corridor. The woman was just coming up the third flight of stairs. She was facing away from him. Anders positioned himself behind a large wooden post and waited. When he heard the woman’s step on the far side of the post, he stepped out in front of her and jabbed the four fingers of his right hand into her solar plexus.
The force of the strike bent the woman over. As she desperately struggled to draw in a breath, Anders grabbed her and turned her back toward the stairs, lifting her bodily from the floor. He gripped her right arm with one hand and wrapped his other arm around her back.
Helius Legacy Page 18
