Gone Read online

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I’m Kevin. Kevin Norberg, Mr. Cody’s neighbor. You did wander onto our property, but don’t worry about it. The property lines are tricky. There actually is a shortcut back to Mr. Cody’s ranch, through our farm. I’ll show it to you if you want.”

  Mary Catherine paused for a beat, then took a breath.

  “OK,” she said. “Thanks.”

  She followed the kid off the path. She stared at the gun. It looked like a deer rifle. Was he out hunting? Spike hesitated once as the dirt trail descended through a gap in an outcropping of rocks, but she finally encouraged him to go through.

  When they came out on the other side, Mary Catherine saw what at first she thought was a grove of tightly grown baby evergreen trees. But as she got closer, she could see that the long, neat rows of green weren’t trees at all but plants. Plants about nine feet high, with leaves that had long, thin light-green fingers and purplish buds with a strong, sweet smell, almost fruity.

  It was marijuana, Mary Catherine realized when she took a breath. Acres upon acres of pungent marijuana.

  She remembered then what Brian had told her about the encounter at the food bank. The kids there claiming that marijuana was the area’s largest crop. She looked out at the green sea of pot they were skirting. She knew that California’s Central Valley grew a huge amount of the country’s food, but that wasn’t the only thing the valley was supplying to the nation, apparently.

  Is it actually legal? she wondered. A medical-marijuana farm?

  Kevin, leading the way ahead of her, certainly didn’t act like his family farm had anything to hide. He couldn’t have been calmer if they had been strolling through Central Park. Or was that because of the rifle on his back?

  Mary Catherine decided to keep her questions to herself.

  “You sit that horse well, ma’am,” Kevin said as they walked through the forest of cannabis. “Are you working for Mr. Cody?”

  “No, just, um, visiting,” Mary Catherine said as calmly as she could.

  “From where? Scotland?”

  “Ireland, actually.”

  “Oh,” Kevin said with a nod, blushing a little. “I love the accent.”

  “Thanks,” Mary Catherine said brightly.

  “How you liking your stay so far?”

  “It’s a beautiful country,” Mary Catherine said.

  “You like country,” the kid said, “you’ve hit the jackpot.”

  They came upon a greenhouse. It was swathed in white plastic and had a table inside, covered with Styrofoam cups. Each cup had a little pot plant in it, like it was part of show-and-tell at a hippie kindergarten.

  On the other side of the building, in the distance, there was a white-haired woman in a gardener’s smock, squatting in a ditch. She was attaching some PVC pipes together in the middle of an elaborate irrigation system. She waved, and Kevin waved back.

  “That’s my mom,” Kevin said.

  Mom was also armed, Mary Catherine couldn’t help but note. In a holster on her hip was one humongous, long-barreled silver revolver. It was a .44 Magnum, Mary Catherine realized. She’d never actually seen one outside of a Clint Eastwood movie.

  This really was the Wild West, she thought, feeling a little dizzy.

  After another hundred yards, Kevin let her out through a cattle gate and pointed down the red dirt road.

  “You follow this till you get to the creek, and then you’ll see Mr. Cody’s silo down the hill.”

  “Thanks, Kevin,” Mary Catherine said, riding Spike through the gate. “It was nice meeting you.”

  “You, too, ma’am,” the polite young dope farmer said, with a tip of his hat, as Mary Catherine rode away.

  CHAPTER 40

  WHITE LIGHT FLASHED IN the pitch black and began fluttering. After a moment, a low and insistent electronic buzzing began sounding off, the measured pulses synched with the flutter of the light.

  Vida Gomez woke in the back upstairs bedroom of the safe house on South Alta Vista Boulevard in La Brea. She sat up and unplugged the charger from the encrypted cartel cell phone as she lifted it from the nightstand.

  For a fraction of a second, she stared at the green Accept and red Reject buttons on the smartphone’s screen. The more accurate choice would be Live or Die, she thought, finally accepting the call with a callused thumb.

  She didn’t say hello. In fact, she didn’t speak once. She just sat in the dark, automatically listening and memorizing the new orders she was being given.

  A half hour later, they were rolling backward down the suburban safe house’s cobblestone driveway in the team’s only legitimate vehicle, a black Honda Odyssey, Touring edition. Like Vida, the men were wearing shorts and T-shirts and sneakers. Instead of sporting their usual Kevlar vests and long guns, they were armed with small conceal-carry pistols, Glock 26 and Taurus PT 24/7 subcompacts in 9 mm. The orders were explicit that they keep a low profile.

  Avoiding the freeways, they headed south and then west along side streets, Venice Boulevard to Lincoln to Washington Boulevard. Vida, behind the wheel, had to consult the onboard GPS only minimally in order to find the way. She’d been utterly lost in the confusing city the first week she had been here, but now she was getting the hang of it.

  With the lack of traffic, they arrived at Marina del Rey in under thirty minutes. Vida had never been to the up-scale seaside area before. The pastel-colored high-rises and palm trees reminded her of a trip to Miami she had taken as a child.

  They left the van in a parking lot and went out along one of the docks. It was an enormous marina, the berths containing at least a thousand vessels. The forty-two-foot sportfishing boat they were looking for was the third one down on the left of Dock 29. In the predawn murk, Vida could just make out its name on the stern, Aces and Eights.

  The middle-aged American loading the bait bins on the deck was scruffy and blond and had a beer belly and enormous, scarred hands.

  “Help you?” he said, dropping his bucket to the deck with a hollow bong.

  “Are you Captain Scanlon? Thomas Scanlon?”

  “I am,” the big blond man said.

  “We’re the Raphael party,” Vida said.

  Captain Scanlon looked at Vida, then at the six hard-faced killers behind her.

  “Permission to board granted,” he said, waving them on.

  Everything was all set up, the rods and reels, the charts. Even fishing licenses for all of them had been provided in case there was some kind of problem.

  Vida stayed with Scanlon up in the flying bridge as they cast off. The American completely ignored her as he piloted the boat, humming to himself as he checked his charts and the compass on the computer in front of him. She wondered how many runs like this he had done for the cartel. This wasn’t his first. She was sure of that.

  They met other sportfishers as they headed for the mouth of the marina. One of them, carrying a party of what looked like female college-volleyball players, hailed Scanlon with a horn blast. Scanlon honked back twice, laughing merrily.

  “Enjoying yourself?” Vida said coldly.

  “Siempre,” Scanlon told her with a wink. “Always.”

  That makes one of us, Vida thought, grasping the cool railing of the bobbing ship and trying to keep down the churning contents of her stomach.

  CHAPTER 41

  SCANLON CUT THE ENGINES when they were eleven miles out. He went down and started setting the baits on the sea rods and parceling them out to the men.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Vida told him, still up on the flying bridge.

  “No?” Scanlon said skeptically, looking up at her. “Coast Guard has drones now, sweetie. Attached to them are cameras that can see through your pants and count the dimples on your ass from five miles up. What do you imagine the Coasties are going to think if they see your buddies here, out on this fishing boat, standing around?”

  “Fine,” Vida said, checking her watch. She went back to scanning the horizon with her
binoculars.

  “You’re sure we’re in the right place?” she said.

  “As if my life depended on it,” the captain said as he showed Eduardo how to cast.

  The ship came into view from the south a little over an hour later. It was huge, a Handymax-class oil tanker, its rust-streaked black hull two football fields long from stem to stern. There wasn’t anyone visible on its deck. It was flying a Guatemalan flag.

  This is it, Vida thought. It has to be.

  She thought the ship would stop, but it didn’t even slow as it passed, about a hundred yards from the starboard side of the fishing boat. She craned her neck up at the deck.

  Shouldn’t there be someone up there? Or is this the right ship?

  The ship passed on. As the fishing boat bobbed in the tanker’s swell, Vida scanned the choppy surface to see if something had been tossed from the opposite side. But there was nothing.

  Scanlon was opening the cooler on the deck below when she placed the barrel of the Walther to the leathery back of his red, sun-beaten neck.

  “What is this?” she said. “Where is it? You brought us to the wrong place.”

  Scanlon, unfazed by the gun, cracked his can of Bud as he slowly turned around. “Why would I bring you to the wrong place?”

  “To double-cross us,” Vida said. “We weren’t given the coordinates. Only you were. You bring us here, to some bullshit point, then send another boat to the correct spot to grab the shipment for yourself.”

  Scanlon laughed and swigged his beer.

  “Lady, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “Listen, Perrine and I go way, way back. We got drunk together in Paris at a NATO thing back when I was a SEAL. Ask around. Your buddies on the ship got spooked or tipped off or something, OK? I’ve been doing this shit for twenty years. It happens all the time. We go back to shore. You call your people. You’ll be —”

  “Ahhh!” someone yelled behind him.

  The men were crowded at the back of the boat, yelling at one another.

  “What happened?” Vida asked, rushing up.

  “Eduardo!” one of them said. “He was sitting there a second ago, and then I don’t know what happened. It seemed like something pulled him into the water!”

  A moment later, Eduardo broke the surface, ten feet off the stern.

  “¡Ayúdame! ¡Tiburón!” he yelled. “¡Algo está agarrando el pie!”

  Help me! Shark! Something’s grabbing my foot!

  “You gotta be shitting me,” Scanlon said as Eduardo went under again.

  The water broke again a moment later. It wasn’t just Eduardo this time. Vida jumped back, elbowing Scanlon in his beer belly. Beside Eduardo was a man in a full black scuba-diving suit!

  “Surprise!” Manuel Perrine said as he peeled off the face mask and chucked it onto the deck. “How is everyone? Vida, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  Everyone stood there, blinking, trying to catch up. Vida was completely flummoxed. The call had said they were there to receive a shipment. She hadn’t thought it would be the boss himself.

  “I got you, didn’t I? I can tell,” Perrine said, swimming toward the rear of the boat.

  “You actually jumped off the deck of that rust bucket, didn’t you, you crazy son of a bitch,” Scanlon said as he hauled Perrine up onto the deck.

  “What can I say, Scanlon?” Perrine had a twinkle in his light-blue eyes. “I still got it.”

  Vida kept on staring as the rest of the men fished Eduardo out of the drink. Perrine was back in the US! What did that mean? Nothing good. How could it?

  Eduardo was right, she thought.

  There actually was a tiburón. A two-legged one, now on board.

  CHAPTER 42

  EVEN WITHOUT THE AID of a rooster, I woke up on the air base bright and early the next morning.

  The afternoon before had been hectic. Parker had me fill out some paperwork that officially made me a government contractor with top secret intelligence clearance. I was given temporary FBI credentials and, even better, a Glock 17. After dinner, she’d also handed me a pile of files to take back to my room. I’d pored over them until almost one in the morning.

  I’d never seen a CIA report before, and I was surprised to see how similar they were to the NYPD ones I was used to. The gist of what I’d read was that, though there were a lot of leads and tips as to Perrine’s whereabouts, so far they hadn’t amounted to much.

  Usually paperwork in cases drove me nuts, but I was actually pretty jazzed about the whole thing. I wasn’t exactly back at my Major Case Squad desk at One Police Plaza in Manhattan, but at least I was doing something positive, for once in the past eight months. Something constructive.

  I was even psyched about giving my talk. Public speaking is usually on par with a root canal on my list of favorite things, but that morning, I was actually raring to go to give my speech about Perrine to the US troops who were after him.

  But, as it turned out, my enthusiasm was short-lived. After my shower, I was in a towel, shaving in the dormitory head, when my phone rang.

  “Hey, Parker,” I said, holding my phone away from my mouth to avoid covering it in Barbasol. “I’m almost done with the first draft of my speech. Think one part Gettysburg Address, one part St. Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth.”

  “Sounds … ambitious,” Parker said. “But you’ll actually have to put it on the back burner, Mike. Tip came in last night, late. Apparently, someone spotted Perrine over the border in Tijuana. The army scrambled Gray Fox to check it out. The rest of the gang is on standby.”

  Gray Fox, as Parker had explained to me the day before, was the code name of a division of the army’s Special Ops. They were an airborne unit that worked with the CIA on covert operations. Using small, single-engine aircraft or drones, they scanned search areas with sophisticated listening equipment. They could tap as well as pinpoint the location of any and all cell-phone transmissions in a given area on the ground.

  The rest of the gang she was referring to included the Delta Force and SEAL Team Six members who had been assigned to the task force to do the actual boots-on-the-ground arrest once Perrine was found.

  “Well, I hope it’s credible. Where does that leave us?”

  “I just got off the phone with the LAPD federal task force working the cartel murders in LA. They need bodies. I know I said it would just be a couple of days down here, Mike, but if you want, we can get on board there.”

  “But what about my military speaking engagement?” I said. “I’ve been working on my Patton impression all night.”

  “The troops can wait for now, General Bennett,” Parker said. “How about pretending to be a cop again for a couple more days? Last time I checked, you were pretty good at it.”

  “I was, wasn’t I?” I said, finally putting the phone back down on the shelf. “When can you get here?”

  “I already am,” Parker said from the open doorway of the bathroom behind me.

  I spun around, blushing, as I gripped my towel, but she was already turned, laughing as she hurried away.

  “Not funny, Parker!” I yelled. “No girls allowed in the boys’ room!”

  CHAPTER 43

  A FEW HOURS LATER, after I was allowed to put on some pants and we’d grabbed some breakfast, we were on Interstate 10, speeding west toward LA.

  It was a long, strange sort of trip from the air base to the city. First, we went through the edge of the Mojave Desert, then up and down through the San Gabriel Mountains. I didn’t spot one yellow cab or dirty-water-dog/tube-steak cart on any of the blocks. Actually, there weren’t even any blocks.

  As we neared the LA city limits, Parker pointed out the spot in El Monte where the two LA County detectives had been gunned down with automatic fire.

  I couldn’t believe it. There was a Burger King on the corner, beside a furniture store, and a car dealership across the street. It looked like your typical suburban strip. It definitely didn’t
look like a war zone.

  As we drove closer to downtown LA, I sat looking out at the blue sky and palm trees, the San Gabriel mountain range now in the hazy distance off to my right. I had actually been to LA once, the summer before college. After watching a bunch of Stanley Kubrick films, me and a buddy of mine had gotten it into our heads that we would come out here, find work, and become either screenwriters or directors.

  What happened instead was that we got depressingly drunk for three days in a row in a crummy, run-down motel near Hollywood Boulevard, found no work, and eventually had to have our parents wire us money for a ticket home. Aren’t eighteen-year-olds brilliant?

  Watching the glittering downtown LA skyline come into view in the forward distance, I just hoped my second visit to La-La Land would prove more successful.

  The task force HQ was set up at the LAPD’s Olympic Station, a new glass, metal, and brick building located on South Vermont Avenue, in the Wilshire neighborhood business district. The multi-agency squad had originally been housed at the LAPD’s Hollywood Station, but the paparazzi and media, who had camped out after the deaths of the rap mogul King Killa Leonard and pop singer Alexa Gia, had been such a nuisance, they had decided to move.

  Upstairs, in a conference room, Parker introduced me to FBI agents Bob Milton and Joe Rothkopf. The veteran agents couldn’t have been more welcoming or accommodating in setting us up. They’d already dragged in some desks from somewhere and placed them in the corner, with a couple of computer monitors.

  Agent Rothkopf was placing a file about the Mob-boss killing in Malibu on my desk when a group of burly LAPD detectives swaggered in. Coming in from a late lunch, I thought, checking my watch. A semiliquid one from the looks on their red faces.

  Parker had already given me the rundown on the task force. There was a large federal presence. DEA, ICE, and even the ATF, but senior detectives from LAPD’s Major Crimes and Robbery-Homicide divisions were running the show. And didn’t let anyone forget it, apparently.