“Your professor had one hell of a welcoming party for us—IEDs, a .50 cal sniper rifle, and M16s. We walked into a kill zone. I think your intelligence gathering was about as good as George Bush’s in Iraq, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know, it wasn’t worth shit. That was more information supplied by those intelligent Wall Street clients. Well, here’s the deal, you’ll have to be very careful to stay alive in the next short while.. .you hear me?”
“Hey, I always take the best care . . . when it comes to taking care of me. I’ll call you soon, I gotta go.” Parsons shut off his phone as he walked further back into the cabin. He needed a weapon, and the cabin had been picked clean to keep it light for drug cargo. In the galley kitchen, he found only one possible weapon: a Chinese wok. The proverbial mainstay of Asian cooking, it had heft, metal, and—What the hell,, he thought, it’s better than nothing, which is what he had.
The boat was slowing down. He knew that Vincent had a plan. He had a plan of his own; it was to not get killed. He looked up the hatchway. Vincent had one hand on the wheel of the boat and one hand behind his back. His handgun would be cocked and ready. Parsons had only one chance to make a move.
He made it in one motion. He shot himself up the hatchway and threw the wok at Vincent in the same move. Vincent let go of the wheel to throw up his hands to fend off the projectile. Off balance, he fell back with the motion of the boat. Then Parsons fell on Vincent, one elbow finding his solar plexus and a fist pounding his forehead to the deck.
Before Vincent could recover, Parsons gripped him by his belt, removed his gun, and threw him overboard. He took the wheel, hit the throttle, and the Sea Ray 60 rose up, the twin diesels roaring to life. He looked over his shoulder to see if Vincent was treading water. He saw nothing in the black water and didn’t care. They were five miles offshore, the water was below freezing, and Vincent could survive ten minutes if he had a life vest on. He did not.
Parsons grabbed his cell phone and called Cordele. “This is Captain Parsons calling,” he yelled into the phone when Cordele answered. “I am now in possession of the sailing vessel and making waves, my son!” He yelled out a cry of joy, relief, and exhaustion.
“Well done,” Cordele yelled into the phone. He then realized it was only three in the morning in his hotel room in Anchorage. “I suggest you get as early a flight out of there as possible, in case the Asians come looking for you,” he continued more quietly.
“Aye, aye, Sir,” Parsons yelled. He could barely hear Cordele over the roar of the big diesels. “I should be at the airport in about an hour, and I’ll take the river channel that’s five minutes from the airport, so I shouldn’t run into our friends. Did I ever tell you how I hate Asian fucking gangsters?”
“Yes, I think you did mention that,” Cordele replied. He could not stop smiling into the phone. He was genuinely happy Parsons was alive.
“I’m glad we’re clear on that. I’ll call you before boarding the plane. I believe I’ll be on the earlier flight at 0700 hours.”
“Good, we need to get this mission back on track,” Cordele said. He was rubbing his forehead in thought. He could not believe how screwed up it had become.
“Aye. I’ll let you know when I have possession of the activation device and we can light the fire on this sucker and get going.” Parsons did not wait for an answer from Cordele. He ended his call, placed both hands on the wheel, executed some masterful, slow turns, and felt the power of the beautiful boat. He felt the spray of the sea, looked up at the moon and stars, and felt alive for the first time in years.
15
No One Ever Wants To call his boss to tell him he has failed.
Cordele was faced with that task. He knew his boss would be awake—he always was during missions, no matter where Cordele was in the world. He dialed the number and was not surprised when his boss answered on the first ring.
“What happened?”
“Our target had teeth. Two of the Asian contractors and Fuentes were taken out by IEDs and sniper fire,” Cordele answered. He was studying his hands; there was a slight tremor there. This screw-up could cost him dearly—perhaps his life.
“Where is Parsons now?” the boss asked. There was excitement in the voice.
“Headed back to Fort McMurray. He should be there by noon, mountain time.”
“Good, we will need to get control of the device for activation. This event will increase our client’s desire to move ahead.” There was an extra breath at the end of the sentence.
“I would assume so,” Cordele said. He was listening hard to his boss’s voice. This was the first time he had ever heard a crack in the voice, a chink in the armored smoothness.
“How is our man doing at the Arctic Oil Camp?” the voice asked after a pause.
“Well, he neutralized the security guard, he still has control of the activation device, but he’s getting worried.”
“How so?” The voice was even and smooth again.
“A police detective and a crime scene investigator are on the site. The camp is in lockdown, and sooner or later, with enough questioning and enough time, tracks will lead to him.”
“Yes, we need to get him out of there, or tracks will lead to us. Once the device is active, that should be the diversion necessary to get him out of there. Do you have an idea how you can extract him?”
“Yeah, I was thinking of a low-flying helicopter from Fairbanks— should get me close enough to make an extraction. Is there any special message for our man when I pick him up?” Cordele knew what was coming next. His boss was consistent when it came to human failure.
“Yes, I believe you should do an exit interview,” the voice replied in a firm tone.
“I understand,” Cordele answered as he listened to the line go dead on the other end. He snapped his cell phone shut. Exit interview was code for a bullet to the back of the head. He had conducted three such exit interviews for his boss in the past. Failure was not an option on a mission, nor was poor attitude or non-compliance with orders.
He walked to his window, opened the drapes, and looked out into the Alaskan night sky. There would be no sunrise until 9:30 a.m. His watch showed 3:45 a.m. He had a lot of planning to do in the next few hours. Planning was his specialty.
He decided he would start his search for helicopter pilots. He always had a list of possible candidates, no matter where he went. There was always someone who would bend the rules for money—usually for a lot of money.
In Palm Desert, Margaret was staring out the window at the desert sky. It was 4:45 a.m., and light would start to break over the Santa Rosa Mountains at 6:00 a.m. She was considering her options. She had had missions go sideways on her before, where a target got spooked or an agent was discovered. This was different. The carnage of the past twenty- four hours was unacceptable. The mission had a very simple premise: install a device, activate device, everyone makes large amounts of money as stocks in oil surge, reverse the device.
Margaret had numerous repeat clients, and her credibility would now be on the line. Although her operation was secretive, there were others in the business as well. People talked. She would have a hard time living this down if she did not maintain control.
She got up from her desk and opened her patio doors. The desert was cool. Two doves cooed politely on her roof. She liked their company. She had to decide which plan of attack she would take— pursue Professor McAllen and eliminate him and whatever team he had put together to kill her people, or eliminate her greedy Wall Street boys, who had brought this fiasco on her.
She closed her balcony door. The doves flew off, their wings shattering the still desert night. Margaret decided to make herself some chamomile tea and review her options. She thought that at the moment, things could not get any worse.
16
Synthetic Oil Company Had Given Barbara Hoffman and Donna Semchuck, fourth year zoology students from the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, a grant to study the small wolf population that
roamed the oil sands area.
Barbara and Donna were following the tracks of the wolf pack on Friday morning and had left camp at 9:30 a.m. The light was just coming over the horizon, and they were eager to see where the pack had traveled overnight. A radio transmitter had been placed on the pack leader.
The tracks led to a large oil tailings pond that was acres wide. At the far end, they could see the large Synthetic Oil plant, which mined sticky tar deep down in the ground and brought it to the surface. The oil was separated by steam, and the waste water and oil residue was dumped in the pond with a toxic cocktail of chemicals.
The noise of cannons boomed in the distance, an attempt to stop ducks from landing on the toxic ponds. Barbara stopped, undid her backpack, and started to take notes of the wolf tracks in the area. Then she saw them: human tracks. Snowshoes mixed with human footprints mixed with wolf tracks—then she saw the blood.
“This is weird. You see this?” Barbara pointed to the dark stains in the snow. “There are snowshoe prints here, dark stains here, could be blood, and then look here—we got tracks of someone leaving. Only one track leaves.”
“You’re right . . . that is weird.” Donna brought out her camera and started taking photos. She was adjusting her telephoto lens when she saw the hand: a tiny hand clenched in a fist with the middle finger pointed skyward. It was the middle finger of Alisha Sylvester. Alisha, in one last dying reflex, had made a fuck-you gesture at her killer, at the oil sands companies, and at the disgusting resting place of her small body.
What happened next would make waves around the world. Donna took out her cell phone, zoomed in on the hand, and took a video. She panned from left to right, showed the finger, and then videoing herself, said, “This is Donna Semchuck, at the scene of a crime. Was this done by wolves, or by man?” She uploaded the video to her YouTube and Facebook accounts and then called the RCMP.
The damage was done. Her friends back at the university were just finishing their first morning classes as their cell phones rang, buzzed, and chimed. The fuck you finger of Alisha Sylvester started to make it way around the world.
Alisha’s “fuck-you finger” made its way around the university campus in seconds, around the city of Edmonton in minutes, and was the buzz of Canada in a half hour. The social network took over, and poor Alisha, still only known as the fuck-you finger from the tar ponds, had her finger proclaimed in Europe and Asia. It was the finger heard around the world.
Within a matter of hours, CNN, NBC, ABC, and Fox News had marshaled their fleets of airplanes with newscasters to the scene, and the small city of Fort McMurray was inundated with an army of reporters. Alisha was about to do for the tar ponds what many environmentalists could never have done. She was about to get noticed. Her death would cause all hell to break loose.
As the news was breaking, news writers were falling over themselves to determine what the one digit meant. Whose hand? How had the person died? What exactly was this saying to the world? They tried to come up with words that anchors on the nightly news could use to tell the Bible Belt of America the message that someone had left. The writers giggled, then broke into peals of laughter, and then sweated, as they tried to come up with the exact words.
Byron Jacks, a reporter with the Anchorage Daily Mirror, took special notice of Alicia’s message. Byron was an efficient, hardworking reporter, aged twenty-seven, who loved being a journalist and envisioned that one day he would work his way onto the LA Times. He longed for California’s beaches, sunshine, and crime beat.
Byron had come from Columbus, Ohio, fresh out of journalism school, with high hopes of going to the big papers. His credentials had landed him in Anchorage, and his stepping stone had become a landing area. Five years later, he was still working the crime beat in Anchorage and he wanted more.
Formerly Byron Jankowski, he had deep Polish roots in Ohio that he wanted to distance himself from. Byron wrote under the name Jacks as he saw himself becoming a famous crime novelist one day, on par with Michael Connelly.
As Byron scanned YouTube, where he found some of his best material, that day, he came upon the fateful finger in the tar pond. Absolutely beautiful, Byron thought. What made the video better was the shot of the wolf tracks around the pond. Good headlines sell papers, and when a reporter can link two events together, his or her name gets noticed. Byron had the two events: someone that morning had sent him a grainy image of a polar bear just about to chow down on the body of an oil worker before being scared away. An informant had also texted him that a women had been killed, and a security guard at Arctic Oil camp.
He was already dreaming up his lead: WHEN ANIMALS FIGHT BACK AGAINST BIG OIL! Perhaps a little harsh for Alaska, he thought. A republican state with roots in big oil. No use pissing off the republicans. POLAR BEAR AT DAWN-GRAY WOLF AT NIGHT! This sounded better. He liked it. It was a little poetic, his editor might think it a bit too much, but he would float a few headlines past him to see what stuck. He had something to work on. He sat back, looked out his cubicle opening, and got a glimpse of the blue Alaska sky down the hall. He had some phone calls to make.
Byron’s main sources of information in Alaskan oil companies were always the human resources directors. They were usually women, usually young, or young enough for Byron to be on their radar. Byron was handsome, in a Polish Brad Pitt kind of way—blue eyes, clear skin, a perfectly formed nose, and a shiny white smile that the best orthodontist in Cleveland could form. His hair was a mass of blond curls that the ladies went wild for.
The lady that Byron had set his sights on now was Della Charles. Human Resources, Arctic Oil Company. Della picked up the phone on the second ring. “Della Charles, Human Resources, how may I help you?
“Della, its Byron Jacks, Anchorage Daily Mirror.” Byron could hear Della’s chair creak as she leaned her large frame forward in her chair. The short hairs of his blond curls started to tingle.
“Why Byron Jacks, my lovely little boy. How y’all doing? It’s been so long since I’ve heard your sweet voice.”
Some of Byron’s curls started to straighten at the sound of her purr as he knew the cost of information from Della. It was always the same: a large steak dinner at Sullivan’s Steak House in downtown Anchorage, and the girl could eat, and then sex at the Millennium Hotel close to the airport. Della was always good for information, but she would drain him of all bodily fluids before giving him the goods.
“So, Della,” Byron began slowly, “I was wondering if you had identification on the recently deceased up there.”
“Oh, my dear sweet boy, you know I can’t give out that kind of information.” She almost sounded sincere as she said the words. “I get off for rotation next week. Maybe we can get together then?”
Byron tightened his grip on his phone. He stared up at the ceiling. He needed the information now. By next week, the whole world would know the identity of the deceased as the Anchorage Police and Alaska State Police would be making a statement in the next twenty-four hours.
“Della, my sweet thing,” Byron whispered the words, “you know I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important, and you know what, I’ll clear my entire evening for you when you come through Anchorage next week.” Byron pounded his forehead as he said the words. He knew he was going to journalism hell, or at least purgatory, for his crimes of passion with Della. He could only repeat in the back of his mind Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times.
“Okay honey, since you’re such a sweet thing . . . let me see . . . yes. I do have a Constance Lafontaine and a Marc Lafontaine. Both worked for Clear Water Technologies out of Vancouver, Canada, and it says here they were brother and sister. Now isn’t that sad.”
“What about the third murder, of the security guard?”
“Now, honey, that one I’ll lose my job over, so you’ll have to get that elsewhere. You know you’re good, but not that good, honey.”
Byron clenched his jaw. He had gotten much further than most other reporters. “So, is it a murder-suicide
like the Tweets, or something else?”
“Well, honey, that Detective Mueller and a crime scene investigator are both up here, and what I am hearing from the hallways is murder,” Della said. “Oh, by the way, I get in at 5:00 p.m. next Tuesday on theShared Services flight. Don’t be late, my pretty.” And with that, Della hung up.
Byron sat back in his chair. He had something. Two murders and possibly a third he needed to start digging into. He made a note of Della’s flight and reminded himself to make an appointment with a chiropractor for the day after. Della was a big girl, with passion to match. He was hoping it would only take two adjustments to get his back into alignment.
17
Detective Bernadette Callahan Of the Fort McMurray division of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police received the call regarding the body in the tar tailing pond.
The caller was RCMP Constable Tom Aulander, a sensible young man with five-years’ experience on the force in Fort McMurray. “Bernie, we got two victims in a tar pond at Synthetic Oil.” Tom was very familiar with Bernadette, and one of the few people who could call her Bernie instead of Detective Callahan.
“I thought we only had one,” Bernadette said, speaking between gulps of coffee and bites of doughnut.
“We did a troll of the pond and came up with a second body,” Tom said. He was standing near the tar pond and switching his cell phone from hand to hand to keep his hands warm.
“So, what do we have?” Bernadette asked as she wiped the excess doughnut off her mouth and reached for her pen.
“Male, Caucasian, about 6 feet 7 inches tall, maybe 185 pounds,” Tom said. He gave the numbers in old school. For the report, he would enter 200 centimeters and 83 kilograms. He knew Bernadette hated metric.
“He was a real string bean. So... any connection to wolves?”
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