The Bitter Past, page 18
The drone practically falls out of the sky on top of me and Rudenko, hovering ten feet above, a mistake. I point the Grach at it and fire three rounds. It spins out of control and crashes into the restrooms next to us. Everyone in the area is running now, many of them screaming, “Police!”
I reach down into the cart and pull Rudenko out. “We have to run.”
We do, moving in the opposite direction from the zoo entrance and into the trees on the north end. The perimeter wall is like a prison fence, about fifteen feet high, and the trees are too far from the fence to be of use; at least I am counting on our pursuers believing that. Earlier in the day, one of the zoo groundskeepers lowered a rope from a tree limb that extends down the wall.
“Up and over,” I say to Rudenko. “There is a cab waiting across the street with its hood up. Wait at the top of the wall until you can drop undetected. When you hit the sidewalk, walk slowly to the cab. Don’t run, and don’t wait for me. I’ll get back to the embassy another way.”
We can hear the voices of men running through the grounds, frantically communicating via radio. I peer through the trees, but my eyes cannot focus in the distance and my peripheral vision is cloudy at the edges. Rudenko reaches into his pocket and extracts the tiny camera I had long ago given him. “It’s all there,” he says. “Everything you need. But I’m blown now. This is it for us. You have a leak somewhere, Beck.”
I nod. “They will question you, Anatoly.”
“I know. I will be okay.”
I reach out and take his arm. “I can get you out. It will take time, but I can get you out.”
Rudenko shakes his head. “No, my friend. But thank you.”
Rudenko climbs the rope like a monkey. When he reaches the top of the wall, he pauses to check the darkening street below. In my narrowing field of vision, I don’t see the Russian creeping through the trees from the north. The crack of the bullet is loud, and it strikes Rudenko in the neck. He falls like a sack of cement at my feet, the rope with him.
The next round smacks into the tree next to my face. Dropping to my knees, I can barely make out a figure moving along the wall, fifty-plus yards away. I raise the Grach and fire seven times. When the man leaps back into the trees for cover, I take one last look at my brave friend and scramble up the rope.
Fifteen minutes later, I jog back up to the front gate of the American embassy. Since the Russians can’t be sure who Rudenko had met with, my status in the country will not be affected, but at my own request, I fly to Stuttgart the next day for an eye exam. My military career is over.
CHAPTER 13
I wake much like I had gone to sleep, my vision blurred and dark. Slowly, my brain begins analyzing the visual data, and the popcorn ceiling in Wolverton’s living room takes shape. I’m lying on the couch, and my temples feel like abused bass drums in a marching band. My left eye and forehead are wet. Blood.
She must have gotten me back in the house. “Sana?” No answer. I swivel my legs over the edge of the couch. The sole dim light in the room emanates from an electronic screen in the kitchen. I stagger to my feet, holding a hand over the wound on my head, and move toward the glow.
“There he is. Welcome back, Sheriff.” The voice that comes through the speaker has been electronically altered and sounds like one of those confidential sources on Dateline. These days you can download an app for that, so I’m not overly impressed or surprised. I set my hands on the kitchen island and peer into the iPad. What I see horrifies me. Sana is hanging upside down from a hook attached to what looks like a floor truss somewhere, maybe a basement, her bare arms tightly bound, a gag in her mouth, her clothes torn away with only her underwear covering her. She appears otherwise unharmed and is squirming against her restraints.
“Hey there, sleepyhead. How are you feeling?” the voice asks. I say nothing. “That’s a nasty cut you have there, Sheriff. I think you’re going to need stitches.”
A man backs into the camera shot. He looks to be of average height, maybe a bit taller, it’s hard to tell. He wears a black mask covering everything but his eyes and a long black leather jacket. “Let her go, Ivan,” I say.
The masked man takes a seat in a folding chair next to Sana and laughs. He pushes on her torso, and her body swings freely back and forth. “Ivan, that’s good, Sheriff. How very Cold War of you.”
I unspool some paper towels from the stand nearby and plaster them to my forehead, wondering why he’s using a voice disguiser when he’s wearing a mask. “Nothing personal, Slick. If I don’t know your name, I have to make one up. What should I call you?”
He laughs. “Ivan is fine.”
“What do you want?”
“I think you know. We’re both looking for the same man, if that helps.”
“You assaulted and kidnapped an FBI agent. Now you’re going to have a couple hundred feds out looking for you. Where you gonna hide?”
“I suppose the same place I am now, if it comes to that. Seems to be working okay so far. And if I sniff the foul odor of another federal agent in this county, bad things are going to happen.” He pauses a moment. “Or I could release your precious colleague. All you have to do is deliver mine.”
I think about his offer for a moment. Well, that’s not actually true. I’m berating myself for screwing this thing up so badly. “I have to tell you, man, I think your agent is long gone, if he was ever here to begin with. Just release her, along with Michaela Edwards and we’ll call it a day. You can leave my county and go back to Moscow or whatever hellhole you were hatched in. Just walk away.”
The electronic voice chuckles again. He seems to think I’m very funny. “Very good, Sheriff. Yes, I have the other girl, too. Although you should give me a reward for taking her from that place. It’s barbaric what they do to their women. The indoctrination, the servitude. All in the name of a God that doesn’t exist.”
I feel my knees giving way and scoot a bar stool under my butt. “Yeah, well, we call that religious freedom here. It’s not perfect, but we find it preferable to living under a murderous tyrant.”
The masked man gets up and moves out of the view of the camera. I pick up the sound of metal clanging in the background, and then I see terror in Sana’s bulging eyes. “You still there, Ivan? Did I hurt your feelings?”
The Russian comes back into view, although it suddenly strikes me that the man could be American. There are people with a very particular set of skills, people like Liam Neeson, the Russians could have hired for this job. He is holding something in his hands I can’t quite make out. Some kind of tool, and the sight of it makes Sana scream through her gag.
“I have to say, Sheriff, I’ve become very impressed with you. Especially how quickly you put the pieces together. And finding the FBI man’s files, that was genius. We missed that.”
I try to smile, but it hurts too much. “Well, don’t beat yourself up, Ivan. You’re just trained to kill people. Nobody expects you to do the heavy mental lifting.”
Ivan sits down in the chair again and begins twirling the tool in his hand. It is shaped like a razor but bigger and with a thicker handle. Now I recognize it. It’s a dermatome, the medical tool for peeling human skin the Vegas coroner showed us. My stomach turns. It’s the same thing he used on Atterbury. “You also seem to be pretty good at killing, Sheriff. Or should I say Lieutenant Colonel?”
That’s a surprise, although I should have anticipated that they would have researched me.
“Oh, yes, I know who you are, Lieutenant Colonel Porter Beck. My bad luck to get someone with your background and skills running the police out here.”
I chuckle. “Ivan, your bad luck hasn’t even started. You lay another hand on her and I’ll never stop hunting you. You’ll never get a good night’s sleep again. So why don’t you just let the women go?”
“Like you hunted me last night? When you stumbled out of that house and nearly killed yourself on that tree branch? You know, I stood over you after you went down, Sheriff, and I gave serious thought to putting a bullet in your head.”
My jaw tightens. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because you have my illegal, obviously. Everything is just a lot easier if you hand him over to me.”
“A lot easier for you maybe. I’m pretty sure I would have a hard time living with that decision.”
Ivan rises from his chair and holds the dermatome next to Sana’s exposed thigh. Her body jerks, but she’s strung up like a piece of raw meat. “Why? What is he to you? A spy in your country. A traitor in mine. He’s not American, not one of you. Why would you lose any sleep over that?”
“Well, there’s the whole problem with you already having killed a couple of people here.”
“Old men, both of them,” says Ivan. “What is it you say here, Sheriff? You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet?” He presses the skinning tool hard into Sana’s thigh and she shrieks.
I know I have to buy her time. “I didn’t say no, Ivan. Let’s keep talking.” When the masked man sits down again, I add, “You place a pretty low value on human life.”
“Don’t sound so somber, Sheriff. You’re going to come through this okay if you just do as I ask. No one else needs to die.”
Maybe he’s right. I’ve worked with spooks before, and most of the time they can be counted on to stick to a deal. Most of the time. “So, how do we do this? I mean, if I can identify your illegal, how do we handle this?”
“That’s the spirit.” Even electronically altered, the voice sounds jovial. “I’ll call you in twelve hours. That’s all the time I can give you, I’m afraid. If you can’t give him to me by then, I’ll kill the women. Of course, I will peel every inch of skin from them first.”
I pound the kitchen counter. “How do I know Michaela is still alive? Let me see her.”
“No. Call you in twelve hours, Sheriff.” Ivan rises and moves toward the camera.
“Wait,” I yell, before he can disconnect us. “Why is he so important to you after all this time?”
There is no response, and all I can do is wait. “He’s a traitor,” the Russian finally replies.
“It’s more personal than that, though, isn’t it?”
Ivan backs up a few feet, so I can see his masked face. “Isn’t it always, Sheriff? By the way, speaking of personal things, I believe I went out for a run with you one night in Moscow several years ago.”
My brow furrows. “Don’t tell me you were one of those fat FSB guys in the hideous track suits that used to follow me around.”
“No, Colonel,” he replies, the voice deadly serious now. “This was a night in late August. I was the one who shot that other traitor, Rudenko, as he was climbing the wall at the zoo. That was a great shot, don’t you think?”
I feel rage rising in my chest. “Doesn’t ring any bells for me, Ivan. Talk to you in twelve.”
CHAPTER 14
“You need stitches,” Tuffy tells me, applying a butterfly bandage to top of my forehead. “And you probably have a concussion. You shouldn’t have driven here.” She dabs carefully at the blood in my hair with some gauze.
After my encounter with the Russian and seeing Sana being stretched from a rope with a human potato peeler against her bare skin, I somehow managed to get to my truck in the dim early morning light and drive to the station.
Tuffy places some pills in my hand, and I swallow them, leaning back in my desk chair. “Should help with your headache,” she says.
“Nice gash, Columbo,” Brinley says from the doorway.
Tuffy leaves with her first aid supplies, and Brinley sits down on the desk. She carefully reaches toward my face as if she wants to adjust the bandage and then ruthlessly thumps the laceration hard with her finger. I rock back and howl.
“Are you a moron?” she yells.
I nod slowly and painfully. “I believe the jury has returned with a guilty verdict on that count.”
“I could have been there with you. I could have been in a tree two hundred yards away and killed the bastard.”
I look at her, the woman who has grown from a frightened feral child into the Annie Oakley of the modern West. “Or, he could have killed you, Brin. I didn’t want to take that risk.”
Brinley’s expression softens, the corners of her mouth lifting. She gets up and shuts the door to the office, then returns to her seat on the corner of the desk. “I really appreciate your concern for my safety,” she whispers, “but you can’t see in the dark, dumb fuck. I can.”
Jesus, who else knows? I get to my feet and she has to steady me. “What did you find?”
“He blew the breaker box on the back of the house with a remote charge. After that, who knows. How he sneaks up on her is a mystery. Even to get close enough to dart her like he did you, it’s like he’s invisible. The ground out there is covered with patches of snow and hard, thorny vegetation. You can hear every footfall. The two of you would make a cute couple—you’re blind and she’s deaf, apparently.”
My eyes close. “Any tracks?”
“Same one we found near Michaela’s bike. So, we know it’s the same guy. And he didn’t make any attempt to hide them this time.”
“He’s very good, Brin. Better than me, obviously. I don’t want you caught in the cross fire. You should go take that gig in L.A.”
She gazes up at me, wounded. “I can help, Porter. You know that.”
I straighten. “I mean it. Go. You don’t work here.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she says with a shake of her head.
“Fine. I’ll put in you in protective custody in one of my cells. You can help Tuffy go through those files. But you will be locked up.” I know that last part will do the trick. Brinley has been locked up before, by her asshole father, and the thought of confinement of any kind is the only thing I know that terrifies her.
She backs slowly toward the door, her hands squeezed into fists. “He’s going to fucking kill you!” she yells. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Get out of here!” I yell back, the words banging off the walls of my brain. I don’t like talking to her this way, but I know she won’t go unless I get her good and pissed. Following her into the outer office, I see everyone’s eyes on us.
Brinley marches toward the station’s entrance. “I’ll send you my bill,” she announces, flipping me the bird on the way out. She doesn’t look back.
So, let’s look at the scoreboard. Two men are dead on my watch, two women taken. I have a concussion, my third, and I have less than twelve hours to produce the illegal for Ivan. And the day is just getting started. I walk to the center of the office, my face flushed with heat. No one wants to speak first, so I have to do it. “Where are we, people?”
Tuffy, Wardell, and Pete all look at each other nervously. From his desk, Pete slowly raises his hand, a pen dangling from his fingers. “Umm … I think Chuck Wolverton is the illegal, Sheriff.”
I stare at him for a long moment. “Tell me.”
Pete swivels in his chair, nodding toward his computer screen. “He first shows up here in ’61. We knew that. Goes to work at the Meteor Mine. But I can’t find diddly on him before that. I mean the guy does not exist. I’ve checked NCIC, military, and every other database I could think of. Social Security says they didn’t issue him a number until 1962.”
“That wasn’t uncommon back then,” Tuffy adds. “A lot of employers didn’t require a social back then.”
Pete nods. “That’s true, but it is interesting that there is no record of him anywhere before ’61. I mean the guy does not exist. No birth record. Nothing.”
Wardell stands. “We should bring him in. Question him. Interrogate the son of a bitch.”
“Maybe,” I say.
Wardell scowls, his legendary lack of patience already at an end. “Where do you have him stashed? Pete and I will go get him.”
In my brain fog, I consider the options for a minute. “He’s safe. Let’s leave him be for now. He’s not going anywhere. The way this guy has been ahead of us, I don’t want to risk more people getting killed right now.”
Wardell’s cracked lips draw back in a snarl. “You should have brought us in on this thing you were running last night with that FBI lady friend of yours. Now this Russian has another hostage. You’re not even going to tell us where you have Wolverton? What if something happens to you?”
My arms cross my chest. “If something happens to me, Wardell, I guess you’ll be in charge and you can do any damn thing you want. For now, I need you guys back out on the roads. Tuffy, you stay here and man the fort. I’ll go talk to Wolverton and see what I can find out.”
Pete rises from his chair. “I’m happy to come along, Sheriff. I did a lot of interviews in my time as an MP.”
“I’ll manage, Pete, but thanks. You guys get back out there and start knocking on doors. This guy has Michaela and Agent Locke both. He’s keeping them somewhere close. Any house you don’t know. Check the abandoned ones first. God knows there are plenty of those up here. Start poking around. Look for places with basements. You guys take Caliente and Panaca. I’ll have Arshal and the Twin Peaks do Pioche. Anything that looks hinky, call it in. Nobody else is dying in our county, got it?”
* * *
Forty minutes later, I pull up at the home of Amon Jessup on the FLDS compound in Mill Valley. Arshal is waiting for me.
“How’s he doing?” I ask, getting out of the truck.
