The Heist (19 page)

Nick unbuckled his seat belt, got up from his seat across from Burnside, and made his way into the cockpit, slipping into the co-pilot’s seat beside Willie.

“How’s it going?” he asked, taking his hood off.

“Absolutely great,” she said. “Sit back and enjoy the flight.”

“That’s not easy to do when you’re flying vertically.”

“It’s called liftoff for a reason.”

“Rockets lift off. Planes take off.”

“We’re in the air, aren’t we?” she said.

They wouldn’t be for long because they didn’t have far to go. Their destination was the general aviation airport in Thermal, California, so named because the temperature there could be as close to hell as it was possible to get without actually being damned, often making Death Valley feel like the North Pole by comparison.

Thermal was 136 miles southeast of Los Angeles, a two-hour-plus drive by car but only a few minutes travel by plane. The climate and landscape in that corner of the Mojave were very similar to Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert, where the Viboras were waging a bloody war with the Sinaloa Cartel for the control of narco-traffic into the U.S.

Nick glanced at his watch. “How are you feeling about landing the plane?”

“I can’t wait. I just hope they have a very long runway,” Willie said, and then laughed when she saw the troubled expression on Nick’s face. “If you’re worried about my piloting skills, you shouldn’t have given me a pilot’s license.”

“It’s fake,” he said.

“Aren’t we all?”

Nick put his ski mask back on and returned to the cabin. Chet was still wearing his mask, too, even though Burnside was out cold. That’s because Nick was a firm believer in never slipping out of character in the presence of the mark, no matter what. It kept the crew sharp and prevented them from letting their guard down. He was impressed that Kate seemed to know that instinctively, not even sharing a glance with him back in the cabin, even after Burnside was covered with a hood.

The first few years of the new millennium had been a boom time in the Coachella Valley. The desert resort communities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, La Quinta, and Indio had expanded quickly. New homes were sold as fast as they could be built and at well over their asking prices. The demand for vacation properties was so strong that developers scrambled to buy up large tracts of land.

It was only natural that developers turned their eyes to Thermal, despite the fact that the pitiful patch of blazingly hot desert was downwind from the Salton Sea, which was frequently stricken with algae blooms, massive water evaporation, and catastrophic fish die-offs that made the entire area smell like it was under a huge, ferocious fart cloud. Encino Grande was going to be the development that would transform the perception of Thermal, making it a prestigious address for resort living, with its 144 luxury homes built around a shimmering man-made lake and a lush nine-hole golf course.

A grand entrance gate, a stone wall surrounding the property, and three homes were built and landscaped before the economy cratered. One day the developer simply disappeared, leaving behind the homes, an empty lakebed, acres of graded sand, and a dozen foundations in various stages of construction to bake under the scorching sun.

And so it had remained for seven years until Nick Fox came along and, using one of his pseudonyms, rented the property from the bank to use as a location in a low-budget movie about drug smuggling.

Tom Underhill came in with a construction team that worked day and night for three weeks to transform one 6,500-square-foot home into a Vibora drug lord’s luxurious but fortified hideaway,
with an open-air guard tower and a high, bullet-pocked wall topped with razor wire. The yard at the immediate rear of the house, within the high walls, was landscaped with tropical plants around a swimming pool with a swim-up wet bar. It was an oasis within an otherwise militaristic compound. A zigzag of concrete K-rail barriers was placed inside the gate to prevent attackers from surging into the compound with vehicles. A detached garage was converted into guard quarters, and the pool house was turned into a “prison block” for unwelcome guests. Of course, most of it was fake.

Boyd Capwell watched his mansion take shape and read up on the Vibora cartel, screened Al Pacino in
Scarface
and Ricardo Montalban in
Fantasy Island
, listened to Julio Iglesias CDs, and ate almost exclusively at Taco Bell, which also happened to be the most upscale restaurant in the vicinity of Thermal. He picked out a wardrobe at the stores along El Paseo in Palm Desert, wore the makeup that Chet created for him, and a week before Burnside’s abduction, moved into the Encino Grande house and arranged the décor, tended the landscaping, and swam in the pool. And now he stood in his mansion looking out the living room window at the black Suburban driving into the compound, and he knew it was showtime. He was Diego de Boriga, and he would slice Neal Burnside into bite-size pieces if that’s what it took to get his money back.

Burnside woke up in an eight-by-ten-foot cell. He was on his back, on a thin foam mattress, on a cinder-block shelf. He looked straight up at a large black spider that clung to a web strung across the ceiling and was waiting for some unlucky insect to come along and get stuck. Or maybe, Burnside thought, he’s been waiting for me. A shaft of sunlight came through a recessed barred window about the size of an iPad. The light made the stainless steel toilet and sink shine. At least it was clean. The air was heavy and hot, pushed around by fans that Burnside could hear struggling in the corridor outside his cell. He didn’t hear any voices or sounds to indicate the presence of any other human beings.

He’d been changed into a T-shirt and loose-fitting sweatpants. The clothes were more comfortable than those he’d worn on the plane, but he was creeped out that someone had stripped him and dressed him. There was a pair of rubber sandals on the floor beside the bed. He stood and slipped his feet into them.

On top of the sink he found a tin cup and an American Airlines toiletry bag, the kind the flight attendants routinely hand out to first-class passengers on long flights. He opened the bag and surveyed the contents: a travel-size toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, a disposable razor, a tube of shaving cream, a comb, a pair of socks, rubber earplugs, and a mask to put over his eyes to block out the light. He figured since there was nothing in the bag that could be used to hijack a plane, it was probably also useless as an escape kit.

He climbed up on the toilet, which had no seat, balanced his feet on both sides of the rim, and got on his tiptoes to peer out of the tiny window. He saw a sun-bleached stone wall four feet from the window. The wall was topped with embedded shards of broken glass and razor wire. He craned his neck and got a glimpse of the clear blue sky above. It wasn’t a suite at the Las Ventanas al Paraiso in Cabo, but it could have been a lot worse, he told himself. He could be tied naked to a chair, being beaten with a baseball bat and kept conscious by having buckets of ice water poured over his head. Of course, it could still come to that.

Tom Underhill walked across the yard to the pool house–turned–stockade, wearing camouflage fatigues and carrying an AK-47 loaded with blanks. He’d never acted before, and was terrified to attempt a speaking role, so his performance was simplified: Look mean and bad-ass, like Samuel Jackson. And pretend that Burnside was George Pogue, that sniveling worm of a banker who’d tried to take his house away from him.

Burnside heard footsteps in the hall outside his cell. He stepped down off the toilet and turned to face the cell door, which was iron mesh over iron bars with a slot at the bottom for sliding in a meal
tray. The footsteps stopped at Burnside’s door, and Burnside looked out at someone he sized up as a guard. The man was wearing fatigues, carrying an assault rifle, and looked like he ate ground glass for breakfast. The guard unlocked the door with a set of keys that were chained to his belt, and motioned Burnside out by swinging his weapon. Burnside stepped out slowly into a narrow corridor with three ceiling fans. There was an open door to the yard at the far end. The guard jabbed him in the back with his rifle to get him moving.

Burnside walked past an empty cell and went outside. What he saw looked like a two-story Spanish Mediterranean mansion built in the middle of a prison yard. The lush landscaping and pool were in stark contrast to the razor wire, the K-rails, and the guard tower. Everything was clean and orderly. Even the brown sand looked as if it was regularly raked.

The guy in camies poked him again with the rifle, herding him toward the house. Burnside looked up at the guard tower that stood outside the wall. He had to squint into the sun, but he could make out two men with rifles up there, both with their backs to him.

Another man in camie fatigues was unloading wooden crates marked
EXPLOSIVOS
from a black Suburban and carrying them into an armory filled with similarly labeled crates. The man was linebacker big and carried a gun in a shoulder holster. Burnside guessed he could have been one of the two masked men on the plane.

There was a slight breeze, and with it came the stench of rot and decay, like an outhouse on fire. The smell was so strong that Burnside took another glance around, looking for the source, afraid he might spot it.

The living room of the house was open to the patio and the pool. A man sat at a poolside table eating a very thick, very rare steak. There was a glass pitcher of ice-cold sangria, filled with fruit. The pitcher was beaded with condensation. The man wore sunglasses with blue lenses, a pair of dark-denim designer skinny jeans, a Gucci belt, K-Swiss classic high-top sneakers, and an explosively colorful T-shirt covered with sparkles, studs, and roaring lions. He looked like he was auditioning for a part in a Mexican version of
Jersey Shore
.

Burnside stood in front of the table for a long moment, watching the man eat his steak and sip his sangria.

“Welcome to Mexico, Mr. Burnside,” the man said, setting down his knife and fork. The steak was so pink it was almost throbbing. “Do you know who I am?”

Burnside shook his head. The man sounded like Ricardo Montalban doing a bad Al Pacino imitation, or vice versa.

“I am Diego de Boriga, one of the founding members of the Vibora cartel. The man behind you is Char, named for his skin, which is black as charcoal, like his soul. He doesn’t speak much, but when he does it is with his gun. You will never forget what he says, because you will be dead.”

Kate and Nick were upstairs in a soundproof bedroom, sitting side by side in front of a bank of monitors that carried live feeds from cameras located all over the property.

“Omigod,” Kate said. “That made absolutely no sense! And ‘Char’? Boyd just named Tom after his skin color and his soul? Are you freaking kidding me? Didn’t you give Boyd a script?”

“Boyd isn’t great at following a script,” Nick said.

“You have to talk to him. He can’t just go off saying ridiculous
things. He’s ruining the whole setup. And what’s with that accent? I half expected Boyd to say ‘Welcome to Fantasy Island.’ If I was in Burnside’s flip-flops right now, I’d be laughing my ass off.”

“You also said Burnside would never be fooled by the mannequins in the guard tower.”

“What are you going to do when the sun isn’t in his eyes when he’s looking at it?”

“The sun will always will be in his eyes whenever we let him into the yard. Remember,
we’re
directing the show.”

She tapped the onscreen image of Boyd. “Does
he
know that?”

“He’s a Vibora?” Burnside asked, tipping his head toward Char.

“Char is a hired gun, and the only man I trust,” Diego said. “That is because his only loyalty is to money.”

“What happens if someone comes along and offers him more to kill you than what you’re paying him for his protection?”

“Then I am dead,” Diego said.

Burnside looked over his shoulder at Char. “How much are you making?”

Char didn’t answer.

Diego laughed. “Are you going to make him a better offer?”

“I might.”

“Even if you could, and Char accepted, and assuming he could kill all the other men patrolling this compound, you are in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert. A man who killed a Vibora leader would not get very far.” Diego stood up and ambled into the living room. Burnside followed, shadowed closely by Char. “Have you noticed that delicate scent in the air, carried in the morning breeze?”

Delicate?
Burnside thought. No amount of flowers and tropical
landscaping could mask the stink of rot, which he’d first noticed walking over from the stockade. “It’s awful.”

Diego took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I find the fragrance invigorating.”

“What is the smell coming from?”

Diego strolled to an oil painting over the mantelpiece that depicted a large flower in bloom, its single-stem inflorescence wrapped in an enormous, flowing white–and–lime green petal that was a deep, rich purple on its furrowed inner folds.

“This is the
Amorphophallus titanium
, found naturally only in the rain forest of Sumatra. It blooms for only two days at a time, and rarely in its forty-year lifespan. When it blooms, it’s a gloriously beautiful sight, as you can see, but the fragrance it emits, likened to that of a herd of decomposing elephants in a swamp of excrement, has earned it the nickname ‘the corpse flower.’ ”