The Night Cafe

by Taylor Smith

  As he took the freeway on-ramp, he saw emergency vehicles streaming in the opposite direction, heading toward the center of town, flashers spinning and sirens wailing. Any other time, Liggett would have loved to stick around and watch the party, but tonight he had bigger fish to fry.

  Every time Gladding disconnected after one of his terse calls to the throwaway phone, Hannah was tempted to use it to dial 9-1-1 for help. But then what? Stand by while he took out the people she loved, one by one? Gladding had even anticipated the GPS tracker the feds had put on her car. Who would risk defying a guy that obsessive?

  Traffic at the southern edge of Orange County was light at two in the morning. When she glanced in the rearview mirror, the only vehicle that seemed to have been there since the diner was a dark SUV, but it could be the feds, Gladding, Liggett, or nobody.

  Gladding’s latest call had directed her toward a service road on the southern edge of San Clemente State Beach park, about twenty minutes south of San Juan Capistrano. When she found the road, deep in the park’s interior, it was dark and utterly deserted.

  “There’s a barrier across the access road, but the chain has been cut,” Gladding said. “Push through and drive to the clearing where the road dead-ends.”

  When her headlights picked out the service road, she turned in and nudged the gate gently with her bumper. She unsnapped her holster, thankful that Gladding hadn’t thought to order her to come unarmed. Perhaps it was an oversight, but Hannah doubted it. A more likely explanation was Gladding’s confidence in the superior force of whatever awaited her at the end of that dark road. The Kevlar vest Towle had insisted she wear was bulkier than her own custom-fitted one and its bulk limited her maneuverability, but it was the most protection she was going to get out here.

  She followed the twisting, narrow, tree-lined road to the end. “When you get there,” Gladding had said, “kill your lights, get out of the car and wait next to it.”

  Would he already be there—him or Liggett? Someone else? If she got there first, did she dare risk deviating from his instructions to give herself some small measure of advantage?

  Behind her, the SUV sailed past the turnoff.

  Teagarden saw her turn, but he deliberately overshot the service road, not wanting to risk being seen following her in. As dark as it was, he could see enough to suspect there wasn’t much depth to the track she’d taken. A couple of hundred yards farther up the road, he pulled the Explorer deep into brush, then killed the lights and got out. He waited for a moment, listening and trying to acclimatize to the darkness of the nearly moonless night. Before setting out, he searched the vehicle for a weapon, but Towle had taken the shotgun, and he apparently didn’t stock spares.

  Pity, Teagarden thought.

  There was no sound more mournful than the call and response of a coyote pack, Hannah thought. A desolate wail sounded from somewhere across the hills, and then a bleak response that built to a ghostly chorus. Standing in the darkness, the leather portfolio propped against her car, she felt as lonely as ever she had. Had Gladding planned for a night when the moon would be scarcely a sliver in the sky? There was something surreal about being in one of the most densely populated parts of North America and yet feeling lost in utter wilderness.

  Minutes passed—five? Ten? Suspended in solitary darkness, she felt herself losing track of time. Suddenly a twig snapped and she started. An animal? Or—

  The blow came out of nowhere, vicious. Senses reeling, she felt her knees buckle. As her body slammed into the ground, her consciousness slipped over to the dark side of the moon.

  “Hannah?”

  She flinched.

  “Shhh…it’s Will Teagarden. Wake up, lass. Come on, let me help you.”

  She was facedown in the gravel, hard steel digging into her ribs—her Beretta, still clutched beneath her. He pulled her to a sitting position, but she swayed, disoriented, head pounding, brain refusing to function. Finally she remembered where she was and she scrambled to her knees. Tried to, anyway. “The painting…”

  “It’s gone,” he whispered. “They took it. There were two of them standing over you when I got here. They were arguing about whether to finish you or revive you. Gladding, I think, wanted to hold off. Before they could work it out, I heard another vehicle coming down the track. It stopped up a way and that’s when they took the painting. I haven’t heard anyone leave, so we need to be quiet.”

  “But what are they up to? We should follow…”

  He steadied her weaving body. “I’ll see if I can spot them,” he murmured. “You wait here.”

  She pressed her gun into his hand. “Take it, Will. And be careful.”

  He touched her cheek and she thought she saw him smile. Then, dizzy and sore, she watched him disappear back down the track. She grabbed the car and pulled herself to her feet, waiting for a moment until the world stopped careening around her. Then, step by agonizing step, she started after Teagarden.

  Teagarden had never understood the American love affair with guns, but it didn’t mean he didn’t know how to handle them. He was, in fact, a splendid shot.

  He’d heard nothing much since Hannah’s attackers had walked away from her. It could be that he had missed hearing them leave. If they were gone, he would retrieve the FBI vehicle and bring it back for Hannah. He suspected she was concussed, at the very least, and the sooner he got her out of this bloody place and to a hospital, the better.

  He backtracked the way he’d come in, keeping well to the edge of the dirt road. He could smell the ocean, and though he couldn’t hear surf, he knew they were very close to water. He was almost at the downed chain barrier again when he spotted the glow of lights up a side track he’d missed seeing on his way in. He ducked into a grove of fragrant eucalyptus trees and followed the lights toward another small clearing, where three vehicles were visible—two cars and a white panel van. The back doors of the van were open, casting a bright rectangle onto the gravel roadway, silhouetting two men. Blinded by the lights, they would be unlikely to spot him in the darkness, he calculated.

  Teagarden was a mite vain about his own night vision. For a man his age, it was remarkably good. His hearing, however, was another matter. Although he could make out the murmur of conversation, he was unable to understand the gist of it. He checked to see that the Beretta’s safety was off, then edged forward, staying well under the dappled cover of the trees. Two men stood in the light spilling from the open van, the tattered portfolio propped against one of the bumpers. Inside the van, a mounded mass was staked down under canvas and secured with bungee cords.

  From where Teagarden came to a stop, the light was angled enough to finally make out the faces of the men. One was Gladding. The other, dark haired and dark complexioned, was definitely not Liggett. Teagarden scanned the perimeter. So where was that young scoundrel? It was he, Teagarden was fairly certain, who had attacked Hannah. It made sense that he was still in the vicinity. Gladding would not have come out here alone—and neither, come right down to it, would the other man have been likely to.

  The men’s conversation was pitched low, muffled by wind in the branches, by the chirping of crickets and frogs, and by the occasional coyote howl. It should have made for good auditory cover for his own movements, but night sounds were eerie and unpredictable. Tempted as he was to crouch low to reduce his mass, he daren’t risk his creaky knees, Teagarden thought. In any event, there were rattlesnakes in this part of the country. He could only hope they were napping or hibernating.

  Suddenly the conversation by the van rose to the pitch of argument. He caught only snatches of phrases, but the words double-cross and villa came through loud and clear. Bloody hell, Teagarden thought—a falling-out of rogues. He predicted there was about to be big trouble here, and he and Hannah had the very bad luck to be caught in the middle of it.

  He could only guess that the reason Gladding and Liggett hadn’t finished her off as soon as they had the painting was that the other party to this transactio
n had chosen that precise moment to arrive. Should all hell break loose and they emerge triumphant, however, they would no doubt circle back and finish what they had started.

  Which still begged the question, where was Liggett? Had he already gone back for Hannah?

  Teagarden was just turning to go back for her when a muffled shot sounded—more flash than crash—and the man with Gladding slumped to the ground. Then feet were running in every direction and Teagarden heard the eerie, muted pops of silenced weapons. Those reports hardly seemed decent, given their deadly effect.

  It lasted ten, fifteen seconds, no more, and when it was over, the slight form of Kyle Liggett emerged from the trees. He walked toward the van, stopping occasionally to kick the lifeless forms of the other men who’d materialized in the clearing when the shouting started.

  “Is that the bomb?” Liggett asked.

  Gladding nodded and cocked a thumb at the tarp, utterly indifferent to the dead man lying at his feet.

  Liggett pulled the canvas aside and peered at the mass beneath, his fingers lightly surveying the components. “Looks good. Detonator, timer. Better than I’d even hoped.”

  “It should be good, for the price,” Gladding muttered.

  The portfolio with the painting was still propped against the van’s bumper. This, Teagarden thought, was a debt the man had never intended to pay.

  As she made her slow progress up the track, Hannah forced herself to tread lightly, her head reverberating painfully with each agonized step. She still had Gladding’s throwaway cell phone. She’d tried to see if she could make a quiet 9-1-1 call, but the icon on the screen told the tale, the “no service” signal flickering uncertainly.

  She ducked instinctively when she heard the first whap echo through the trees. Almost before her brain could register the meaning of a sound that was all too familiar to her, it came again, and then was repeated over and over—the quiet staccato of an efficient massacre. Her hand reached to steady herself on the trunk of a eucalyptus, her mind willing the pounding of her head and heart to stop, certain that the whole park had to be hearing the din she was.

  Suddenly, as abruptly as the fusillade had started, it stopped. In its place came male voices, a few short sentences. There was silence for a moment, only the wind in the trees, before a single, deep, outraged shout. Another whap! sounded, and then two more shots.

  Tap, tap. An execution.

  She started to run, knowing Will Teagarden was up ahead somewhere, praying he was well hidden and that none of this had anything to do with him. No such luck. There came a distinctive bang, one she’d heard many times before, both on the firing range and out in the field. It was the sound of her own Beretta.

  He got off one shot, and only one.

  It was answered by two retorts, fast and loud from a weapon without noise suppression. Clearly, someone had changed guns, and the time for stealth had passed. Her heart sank.

  A few seconds later she heard one final shot, and she felt the sickening realization that it hadn’t come from her gun.

  William Teagarden, former Detective Superintendent, Scotland Yard, had gone down.

  When she got to the clearing, she spotted Kyle Liggett. He was silhouetted in the light of an open van as he wrestled with bungee cords to tie down a tarp, grappling the hooks into rings in the floor. Whatever was underneath there was bulky, about the size of an ottoman.

  Hannah crouched low in the shadows, still as the death all around her, while he finished the tie-down. He stepped over a body to retrieve the battered leather art portfolio she’d carried into the park. Another body lay faceup a short way away, this one larger, the belly mounded, the interior lights catching silver-white hair. Moises Gladding.

  Liggett slammed the rear doors of the panel van and walked around to the driver’s side, where he put the painting inside and climbed in behind it. She heard him curse. Climbing back out, he moved from body to body on the ground, rifling pockets until he found the keys.

  When it finally roared to life and the back-up lights came on, Hannah shrank deeper, praying he wouldn’t spot her in the rearview mirror. The tires spun on gravel as he careened back in a tight circle, one of the wheels bumping over a man’s leg. As the headlights panned over the clearing, Hannah saw the rumpled tweed coat of Liggett’s last victim and tears sprang to her eyes. Then Liggett shifted gears and the van roared back toward the main road.

  Eyes readjusting to the dark, she got to her feet and hurried over to Teagarden. She crouched next to him and reached out to his still form, feeling for a pulse, knowing she wouldn’t find one.

  “Oh, Will—I’m so sorry.”

  Sorry he was gone. Sorry to be patting down his pockets for the cell phone she hoped he was carrying. Sorry he’d ever followed her out here.

  She found a cell phone as well as the Beretta that had fallen from his hand. After one last, regretful squeeze of his arm, she got to her feet and ran to check the other car in the clearing, a big white Toyota Highlander. The keys were in the ignition. She jumped in and fired it up, heading back toward the main road and turning in the direction she’d seen the taillights of the panel van disappear.

  As she drove, she dialed 9-1-1 and called in the scene on the service access road. “You need to let Special Agent Joe Towle of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office know about this, too,” she added.

  “Officers are on their way,” the dispatcher said. “I want you to stay—”

  “Call Towle. He’ll bring the cops up to speed.”

  “Ma’am, you need to remain—”

  But Hannah had already disconnected. Then she dialed another number from memory.

  Russo bellowed as soon as he heard her voice. “The GPS on your bloody car isn’t working!”

  “I know. I chucked it. Were you there at the diner? I spotted Lindsay.”

  “Yeah, but we got caught up in that damn diversion. Why did you throw the GPS away?”

  “Did they find the instructions Gladding left me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then you know why. He knew there’d be a bug on the car. I was worried he’d have eyes on me the whole time. The instructions were specific.”

  “Teagarden took off after you in a Bureau SUV.”

  She was silent for a moment. “He’s dead, John. Liggett killed him.” She told him about the ambush in the park.

  “Liggett killed Gladding, too?”

  “I think so. Or one of the other guys, I’m not sure. There was a falling-out, by the look of things. Now Liggett’s on the move and he’s in a hurry. I’m trying to catch up to him and figure out where he’s going.”

  “No! Dammit, Hannah, just pull over and let us take it from here. We’ll find Liggett. Tell me what he’s driving.”

  “You don’t get it, Russo. He’s got a bomb. You know what they said about the guy—he likes to blow things up. Well, he sure as hell looks like a man on a mission now. He didn’t even bother to go back and finish me off, on the off chance some campers or something heard that massacre back there and called it in. He was hurrying to make tracks when I last saw him. To me, that says he’s determined to see this thing through.”

  “Okay, try to see if you can spot him,” Russo agreed reluctantly, “but stay well back and keep the damn phone on. I’m going to call it in to Towle and then I’ll get right back to you.”

  “He’s in a white panel van. Towle will probably want to lay in roadblocks north and south. And by the way, I’m in a white Toyota Highlander at the moment. The keys to my car disappeared, so I had to commandeer this boat. Tell Towle what I’m in so his guys don’t decide to get trigger-happy.”

  “Roger,” Russo said.

  Hannah frowned. “John? He’s gonna go south.”

  “What?”

  “Liggett. Think about it. What’s down here that would make a good target for a nut job like that?”

  Russo hesitated only a split second—it was that obvious. “The San Onofre nuclear power plant.”

  �
�Bingo.”

  “Okay, let me call it in to Towle. I’m on the 5 South now, so I’m not too far from your position. And Hannah? Try to spot him, but do not put yourself in harm’s way. Got it?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “You got anybody on base with experience disarming bombs?” Agent Towle shouted over the noise of the rotors. He and Ito had been picked up by an FBI chopper.

  “We’re the United States Marine Corps, sir,” the major from Camp Pendleton said dryly. “We do it all. What kind of bomb you got?”

  “Not sure. Conventional? Nuke? Dirty, maybe?”