"I don't know, maybe that's where Valdez is."
Shane pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.
"Who're you calling?"
"My wife, Alexa. She's the exec at Detective Services Group
downtown and twice the cop I am. Let's get her take." After he got her on
the phone and told her what Miro had overheard, he listened.
Susan watched and waited.
"Where is that?" he finally asked. "Okay, I'll get
a map and look. Thanks, babe." Another pause, then, "Okay, I'll call
and let you know." He folded the phone and put it back in his coat pocket.
"Alexa says she thinks there's a wilderness area east of
here, between Orange County and San Bernardino County, called the Cleveland
National Forest."
"A national forest. That would be federal land," Susan
said.
"Makes slightly more sense than Cleveland, Ohio."
They left the cafeteria and went upstairs to the hospital gift
shop where they bought a travel book that included a map of Southern
California. They found the Cleveland National Forest and huddled together,
staring at it.
"Some cop I am. It's less than sixty miles away and I never
even heard of it," Shane muttered.
Susan borrowed a pair of magnified reading glasses from a display
rack and squinted closely at the page. Little fire roads and trails
crisscrossed the wilderness area. She could just barely read the tiny print on
the map. She saw areas marked as Blue Jay Camp Ground and Trabuco Canyon Trail
on the southern section of the Cleveland forest, then
continued
searching the tiny roads to the west. Finally, on the northeast section of the
map, up around Lake Elsinore, near Riverside County, she found it—a little
trail that splintered off something called Santiago Road and led to Black Star
Canyon.
T
he room was small, locked, and
windowless. The air-conditioner cranked freon-cooled air down on him through
two large ceiling vents.
He'd been taken there in the van from the airport in Van Nuys—no
stops—his head sacked up again like a bag of vegetables. Toward the end of the two-hour
drive he'd felt the tires bouncing on what seemed like a badly paved road. He
thought he smelled pine needles, but that could have been his imagination.
The van stopped, the door was thrown open, and he was dragged out
and roughly pushed across some open ground by commandos who kept the
conversation simple and guttural, sticking to phrases like "Shut the fuck
up" and "No talking, asshole." Mind-expanding discourse.
He was shoved into a room where the temperature was around fifty.
Only two places Jack knew of kept the thermostat that cold: the Polar Bear
exhibit at the Los Angeles zoo and the LAPD Computer Center. Crude as his
captors were, he didn't think he was about to be fed to a bear—so maybe he was
in some kind of computer lab.
Detective reasoning at its tip-top best.
Taking it a step further, if this was a computer lab, maybe it was
part of Octopus or Echelon.
After they pushed him into the cold room they uncuffed him and
left. A few minutes later he decided,
What the hell, go for it,
and
removed his canvas bag.
The room was concrete block—no windows, no chairs. Minimalist
digs.
The hours ticked by while he grew goose bumps. He paced the room.
He put his ear next to the concrete wall and listened. Something was humming
faintly in two separate octaves behind the thick concrete. Water pipes? Power
lines? Motown singers?
"Well, Jack, you've really fucked up big this time," he
said to the humming wall.
Later, the same, dark-skinned, snake-cold Hispanic man he'd seen
at the airport entered the room and closed the door behind him. "I'm
Vincent Valdez."
Jack thought it probably wasn't a good sign that the man told him
his name. Valdez stood close, not ten feet away, as if Jack posed absolutely no
physical threat to him.
Jack stood and growled: "Before ripping your geek head off
and shoving it up your ass, I'm required to inform you that I'm a black belt in
four martial arts disciplines." Tired old bullshit, but there it was. The
guy was pissing him off.
"Let's see what you got then."
Jack shrugged and gave him his best police academy hand-to-hand
move, the old feint-to-the-left and pivot kick to the right. Before he got
halfway through it he was flying backward, spinning wildly in flight, yelping
something Three-Stoogish, like
woo-woo-woop!
He flew against the wall,
landing with a thunk like a load of wet laundry, then slid down to the floor.
Immediately, his worthless back went into a full spazoid convulsion. He was
jerking around on the floor like a power company lineman with a handful of hot
ends.
"I'm a fifth-degree black belt." Valdez was looking down
at Jack, who was now desperately trying to get his lower lumbar region under
control. "This might be a good time for you to tell me what you think you
know," he instructed.
Jack finally stopped spasming and cleared his throat. "Okay .
. . here's one thing I heard."
"I'm listening."
"Ashly Lynn may be getting out of porno."
Valdez didn't answer. He just glared and walked out of
the room,
relocking the door. No "Nice knowing ya," no "Have a nice
day." He just froze Jack's balls with a look and left.
Incompetence pissed off Vincent Valdez
more than anything else he encountered in life . . . more than stupidity, more
than insanity or moral corruption. Incompetence was usually bred from a
combination of careless thinking and bad tactics, both elements within the
sphere of control. Failure indicated that you had not adequately foreseen
problems inside your command venue. That reflected directly back on Valdez and
made him angry with everybody around him, but mostly at himself.
This whole leak on the Ten-Eyck Chimera Project was totally
unacceptable and had been getting worse with each passing hour. General Buzz
Turpin had actually yelled at Vincent over the phone yesterday—something the
whispering general had never done before. God only knew how many people now had
information about the existence of the supersecret project, and all because of
a silly lawsuit to protect a butterfly. The whole tangled mess had started
there and had somehow gotten completely away from him.
He had no choice but to collateralize Wirta. They were in the
middle of the Cleveland National Forest, at the Black Star Octopus Lab, and had
good containment of the area. He would just march this wisecracking bozo out to
the woods, crank a round into his fuzzy head, and bury him in a sack of lye.
End of story.
He was getting set to give that order when the phone rang in the
secure HQ. He snatched it up. It was the DARPA routing officer in D.C.
"Mr. Valdez?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I have a call for you. It came into our L.A. office ten
minutes ago. I had to find you through Mr. Talbot in D.C."
"I don't want any calls."
"Mr. Talbot said you might want this one. It's from somebody
named Herman Strockmire Jr."
"Yes. I do want to talk to him. Have you got an STL?"
Referring to the Octopus designation for Satellite Trace and Location.
"Apparently he's calling from a cell phone and he's on the
move right now. Octopus has him on the Hollywood Freeway just passing
Sunset."
"Okay. Vector some units in on that location and put him
through."
"I already have a team rolling on Mr. Talbot's instructions."
Then Vincent heard some clicks and the hiss of a cell phone.
"This is Valdez," he said sharply.
"Mr. Valdez," Herman said. "Are you the one
quarter-backing this disaster?" Herman was in the passenger seat of
another rental car looking at Susan, who was driving. They had just left Shane
Scully at the Hollywood station where he had volunteered to scare up some
friends to go out to the Cleveland National Forest and help look for Jack. The
lights from the freeway signs strobed across the windshield. Herman pressed the
phone tightly to his ear.
"Let me make you aware of something, Mr. Strockmire,"
Valdez said softly. "You are committing federal crimes and disrupting your
country's national security."
"You're the one breaking laws and committing crimes,"
Herman snapped. "Kidnapping happens to be a crime; so is murder. I know
you're holding Jack Wirta. I know you're evaluating your options. Before you
commit to something you can't undo, I just wanted to tell you to be sure and
read the Metro section in the
LA. Times
tomorrow morning. There's going
to be an article about my restraining order against DARPA and the hybrid
chimeras, including a great drawing my friend made of the one who attacked us.
It's going to be about Jack Wirta and how he mysteriously disappeared after a
federal arrest orchestrated under your command. Jordan Phoenix, a witness to
the bust, has already given her sworn affidavit. In view of all this, I know
you're going to want to keep Mr. Wirta in good condition."
"Is that it?" Valdez's voice was cold and menacing.
"That's it," Herman said. "Hurt him and you're
going to have a lot of 'splaining to do, Lucy."
Valdez hung up without responding.
"Dad, I think somebody is following us. . . a gray sedan."
Susan had been watching it suspiciously in her rear view mirror while listening
to Herman's side of the conversation.
"Get off on Melrose and head back to the Hollywood
Division," Herman instructed.
It took five minutes before they finally pulled into the Hollywood
station on Wilcox Avenue. Herman asked the lot guard for Shane Scully and gave
their names. After the officer made a call inside they were allowed to park
behind the chain-link security fence. As they got out, the gray sedan cruised
past.
"You know what pisses me off most?" Herman said as the
sedan turned the corner at the end of the block and disappeared. "Those
fucking guys are doing all this with
my
tax dollars."
"Dad, stop it. You're beginning to sound like a Republican."
They hurried past the parking guard and into the brightly lit
lobby.
Valdez stood in the Black Star HQ with
the phone still in his hand, listening to an update from his L.A. field unit.
They had followed Herman and his daughter to the Hollywood police station and
had just told Valdez that the Strockmires were inside.
"Okay, wait there," he ordered. "Call me when they
move."
Valdez hung up the phone thinking he had to get rid of Jack Wirta,
regardless. The man knew too much. He was troubled by Strockmire's threat of
press coverage, so he would have to alter his plan—do it in a way that wouldn't
produce too many questions. Wirta's medical file was in front of him. It
included the blood work they had done on
him out at Groom Lake. The file indicated that Wirta had a
high level of some kind of powerful painkiller in his bloodstream. Apparently
the ex-cop was taking a triple-hit narcotic. Percodan or Percocet. If that was
the case, there would also be a medical record of the doctors who prescribed
it. If he had run out of doctors who would write him, which was often the case
with pain-pill addicts, then maybe there was even a trail of street dealers who
could be found and convinced to make statements. If he couldn't find one of
those, he'd get a volunteer of his own to make the allegation. People with drag
histories made believable traffic fatalities.
He picked up the phone. "Get me Captain Pettis. He's in the
lobby, out front."
"Yes sir," Pettis's voice came over the phone a moment
later.