Ark Storm (42 page)

A branch snapped off and stabbed his face, cutting him below his left eye. He laughed. He had emerged unscathed from the killing spree last night only for a twig to mark him.

He wouldn’t use the Cougar, it was too identifiable. The surveillance team, if they had managed to regroup, knew nothing about his bike. He sprinted through the rain, round to his garage, swung it open, uncovered the Ducati. He swung his leg over and started it. It growled back at him, the perfect foil for his mood. He revved the throttle. Roared out, closed and alarmed the garage with his remote control. Motorbikes were prohibited on Seventeen Mile Drive. Too bad. He knew the booth guards, they’d turned a blind eye for him before, would again. And with the storm roaring in, the cops would be preoccupied elsewhere.

The bike screamed along the wet tarmac. The wind slammed into man and bike. Their combined weight and the skill of the rider kept the bike upright. Just.

Fifteen minutes and he’d be there. And he would make Gwen Boudain see sense.

Only it wasn’t fifteen minutes. A Monterey pine had been blown across the road. Dan got off his bike and maneuvered it off-road into the forest and back onto the road, adding seven tortuous minutes to his trip. The bike was heavy. In his leathers, Dan sweated; half exertion, half fear for Gwen.

116

THE LAB

Gwen called all her friends, starting with Dwayne and Lucy, gave them the same message:
get the hell away from the coast. Immediately
. Best thing to do was get on a flight, but failing that they could drive to Nevada, hit the casinos for a while.

Dan would know about the storm. In his capacity as a newspaper man, even a fired one, he couldn’t not know. And he was a big boy for God’s sake. He could take care of himself. All she could do now was wait.

She glanced down at Leo. She couldn’t take him with her. She got up, headed to the Grunts’ office.

“Atalanta, I’m gonna call in that favor,” she said.

Atalanta looked up, big eyes wide and sincere. “Sure. Shoot, honey.”

“Leo. Can you take him with you? I’ve got some stuff to do.… I can’t take him with me and I can’t leave him here.”

“Don’t sweat it. He can come with me. We’ll do the handover if ’n’ when.”

Gwen bent down, kissed the other woman’s cheek. “Thanks, hon.”

On her way back to her office, she snagged another coffee, warmed her hands on the mug. She glanced into the gray mayhem outside. Her guts gnawed at her. She got up, paced to the window, peered out, paced back to her chair and sat down. The minutes inched by. Just as her patience was about to shred, she heard above the rough percussion of the wind, the deeper thud of an approaching helicopter. She grabbed Leo and hurried to Atalanta.

“Here he is.” She bent down, hugged her dog, straightened up. “Stay!” she said. “Be good for Atalanta.”

Leo looked from his mistress to the other woman, who was bending down, petting him, her fingers gripping his collar.

“Go,” said Atalanta. “I’ll take good care of him. I promise.”

Gwen nodded.

“Where you going then?” Curt asked.

“Long story. Another time,” replied Gwen. “Now get gone! Time to hightail it, guys.”

“OK, OK, we’re going,” said Kurt.

She eyed the three of them, and then looked at her dog, gazing up at her with worried eyes. “See you around,” she said. She felt a sudden pang as the thought leapt into her head that she never would.

She pulled open the glass door. The wind hit her with a punch. The same chopper as last time was waiting for her, rocking slightly. A man stood beyond the orbit of the blades, catching the full force of the rain, seemingly oblivious, just watching her. He was one of the unsmiling men who patrolled the Sheikh’s yacht. He ran toward her, leaned in, yelled at her over the twin roars of the helicopter and the wind.

“I need to frisk you.”

“To
what
?”

“Pat you down.” He mimicked frisking himself.

Gwen shivered in the rain and wind. She raised her arms. “Get on with it then!” she shouted, wondering what the hell was going on.

The man patted her down, thoroughly, his hands urgent and rough. Some unspoken hostility close to rage seemed to pump from him. Gwen swallowed back the urge to bring her knee up into his groin.

Then he was finished. He gestured for the copter and they both ducked down, ran for it.

As soon as they were buckled in, the pilot pulled back the joystick and the chopper lurched up into the sky. Gwen just had time to see a motorbike roaring in, stopping, the helmeted rider gazing up, then the copter twisted in flight and crabbed away toward the ocean.

117

THE LAB, 10:38 A.M.

Straddling his Ducati, feet braced on the soaking earth, Dan gazed up at the sky. He saw the helicopter rise above him and fly off. He couldn’t see who was inside. Visibility was bad. He ran to the intercom, buzzed repeatedly.

The door was opened by a beautiful black woman with long braids. She was holding onto Leo. She stood with two men. They all seemed to be leaving.

“Is Gwen here?” asked Dan. “Is she
here
?”

Atalanta eyed him coolly.

“Gone,” she said, nodding at the sky. “In the helicopter.”

Dan swore. “Any idea where it’s headed? Who she’s with?”

“You some jealous boyfriend?” quizzed Atalanta.

“If only,” said Dan, trying to tamp down his impatience. “Why’ve you got Leo?” he asked, reaching down to stroke the dog, who wagged his tail in enthusiastic greeting.

“’cause Gwen asked.”

“So, where’s she going?” Dan asked again, “and who with?”

“I know not,” replied Atalanta. She turned to the men. “You guys know?” They shook their heads. “She just told us to hightail it out,” said Curt. “Didn’t say where she was going, said it was a long story, then she upped and left.”

Dan thanked them, returned to his bike, analyzing, processing what little he knew.

Perhaps the bug in Messenger’s house might reveal something. He hadn’t listened in for over twenty-four hours. The wind was roaring and he could scarcely hear outside. He headed off to Roy’s Deli in Carmel Valley Village. The roads were almost empty. He angled the Ducati, leaning into the curves, accelerating along the straight stretches. Carmel Valley felt like a ghost town. But the Deli was still open, Dan noted with relief, despite the weather warnings.

A man he guessed to be Roy himself was realigning a wall full of black-and-white photos of local landmarks. He turned as the door chimed.

“What can I get for you?” he asked with a gruff smile.

“Black coffee and a haven for twenty,” said Dan with a smile of his own.

“You got both.”

Dan took a seat on a red padded banquette at a clean wooden table. He dialed up the device, got it to relay back to him. Earphone in his ear, he listened. Roy brought over his coffee. Dan nodded, sipped distractedly. The device only recorded when there were voices. It took twenty minutes to wade through Messenger’s anodyne conversations of the previous evening on the phone, conversations with his three sons in Germany by what little Dan knew of German. Then the recording moved to six fifty that morning.

Dan froze, coffee mug to his lips. He listened, switched off the relay, pocketed his earphones, took out a ten dollar bill. He leapt to his feet, leaving the note on the table.

He ran for the Ducati, calling the cops on his cell as he went.

118

SEVENTEEN MILE DRIVE, 11:15 A.M.

Frank Del Russo stood in the driving rain, frowning at the house. He skirted round it, seeking any means of entry. Metal blinds covered every window. He couldn’t see in. He’d already speculatively pushed his shoulder against the doors, front and back.

There was no give on the upper or lower parts of the doors, which indicated to him the presence of multilevel bolts set into the frame. The door was also very well fitted, so that the option to card the five-pin tumbler locks was out. And he didn’t fancy his chances trying to wire-pick the lower mortice locks; they looked to him like Chubb 110s, not the ones you want to try if you were in a hurry unless you were a master locksmith. Which he was not.

He’d already noted the PIR lighting surrounding the house. This made it impossible to approach the building at night without a laser defeat attack on the sensors. Then there were the light patches, just very slightly depressed, in the well-kept lawn. They appeared innocuous, but in this context they indicated to him the presence of ground sensors. A very discreet and sophisticated alarm system designed to allow you to walk into the trap well announced. The man had style.

Del Russo hurried back to his car, called Canning at Tyson’s Corner.

“He’s not there, Chief. Not answering his cell.”

“Break in.”

“Get me an order.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, just get in there. Use your skills!”

“I’m outclassed here, Chief.” Quickly he told Canning about Jacobsen’s security. “It’d take me hours to get in and I’m not even sure I could manage it at all.”

“Then sit tight. Wait for the guy to come home.”

“That’s just it. I’m not sure he will. There’s a big storm brewing and his place is near enough on the cliff edge. The local radio’s telling those on the coast to evac out.”

“Jesus! Is this the ARk Storm?”

“They’re not saying that, Chief. Just that it’s a big storm.”

“Stay tuned. Keep me posted.”

Across the continent, Canning hung up and said a quick prayer.

119

THE SUPER-YACHT,
ZEPHYR
, 11:35 A.M.

Gwen looked down as the helicopter strained through the air, the engines screaming against the onshore winds. Whitecaps littered the ocean like debris. She could practically taste the brine. In the leaden sky, the cumulonimbus were racing in. They angled forward, the top anvils leading the lower-hanging darker base of the clouds. So many were grouping they looked in danger of forming one massive supercell. That meant thunderstorms. Huge ones.

Gwen suppressed a shudder. She knew from her pilot buddy that the violent conditions in and around thunderstorms could exceed rotorcraft structural limits and bring a helicopter down in seconds. The extreme updrafts and downdrafts could toss you hundreds, if not thousands of feet up or down. The pilot would rightly refuse to fly and she would be stuck on the yacht with Sheikh Ali and an even bigger storm bearing down on them. She had to get in and get out quickly.

Through the gloom she made out the gray hulk of
Zephyr
a quarter of a mile ahead. In the big seas the huge yacht looked like a child’s toy. Super wealth, super yacht meant nothing to a big storm.

The helicopter lost altitude, coming down into a hover above the pitching yacht. Gwen could see the pilot casting his eyes back and forth, trying to time the landing. The cords in his neck stood out in stress. Beside her, the other man said nothing. He just looked on with the kind of stoic resilience and stillness of someone who had experienced real fear and survived it.

Sometimes during the half hour flight, Gwen had felt his eyes on her. The scrutiny had felt like more than mere curiosity. She had shrugged it off, evaded his gaze, focused instead on what she was going to say to the Sheikh.

After a few false starts, the pilot brought down the helicopter. It slammed onto the deck, jolting Gwen and the silent man. She watched three men emerge from the yacht and run to the helicopter with what looked like guy ropes, to anchor it.

Once it had been secured, Gwen forced open the door, jumped out, and ran across the deck. The rain fell like sleet, arrowing into her face, soaking her. A door opened as she approached. She felt herself blow in, braced herself on the wall opposite. She let out a breath, laughed, half in alarm, half relief.

The majordomo type she’d seen before gave a slight bow, then led her into the stateroom. The silent man followed behind her.

*   *   *

Sheikh Ali stood with two of his men, one to either side. It almost looked to Gwen as if they were guarding him. They eyed her with hard, unsmiling eyes. Gwen could feel their hostility pumping across the room. Their presence, the frisking, Gwen wondered if they all thought she was going to attack the Sheikh.

She frowned, it didn’t make sense. She caught a look of uncertainty in the Sheikh’s eyes. He was regarding her with more than his usual intense scrutiny, but then the moment passed and he smiled.

“My dear Dr. Gwen! Thank you so much for coming, for braving what appears to be a growing storm.”

Gwen gave him a brief smile. This wasn’t a social visit.

The Sheikh beckoned and Gwen approached. Ali Al Baharna held out his hand, shook Gwen’s warmly, grasped it with the other and led her to the sofa. His two shadows followed.

“Please, sit. Coffee? Tea? Water?”

“No, thank you,” said Gwen. She wanted to get on with it then get the hell off the yacht onto dry land somewhere far away.

“Just a water then,” the Sheikh said to the majordomo. He turned back to Gwen.

“Please forgive my insistence. It’s a Bedu tradition. It is incumbent upon us to offer refreshment to any and all who come visit. Even our enemies,” he added, eyes no longer smiling.

“How inconvenient,” replied Gwen. She pursed her lips. This was going to be awkward, but she had no choice.

“Sheikh Ali, please forgive me but I need to talk to you in private.”

She kept her eyes on his, but remained peripherally aware of the men who flanked him. A small pulse of energy seemed to go through them. They widened their stance, loosened their limbs, exchanged a look. What the hell did they think she was going to do, she wondered?

The Sheikh paused for a moment. He turned to the majordomo, who had returned with a glass of water.

“Go,” he said sharply. The man set down the water and went. The Sheikh dismissed the other two men.

“Ali, wait at the other end of the room will you,” he said, adding something in machine-gun Arabic. The other man moved away, stood by a door, perhaps forty feet from them.