Moving Target (40 page)

“Where are you?”

“At the 76 station on the west side of the Saucedo exit, but we’re headed for the gate to the junkyard right now. We’re in a red Cadillac
Escalade. If you’re northbound, the gate to the junkyard is on the east side of the freeway along the frontage road just beyond the exit.”

“I’m on my way,” Father McLaughlin said. “I should be there in a jiff.”

“Tell him there’s a chain with a padlock on the gate,” Ali warned. “The only way we’ll be able to get inside is to drive through.”

Father McLaughlin said with a laugh, “I may be a man of God, but I’m also a man of action. I believe in being prepared because it turns out most people aren’t, including, presumably, the two of you. Along with a few extra weapons and a spare Kevlar vest or two, I always carry a pair of bolt cutters in the back of my car. Doesn’t everybody?”

“Point taken,” B. muttered.

He was preparing to drive away from the gas station when Ali stopped him. “Wait,” she said. “I want to go buy some jerky. We’re going to a junkyard. If there happens to be a junkyard dog, I want to be prepared, too.”

Father McLaughlin pulled up in a dusty, disreputable, and very unpriestly-looking Isuzu Trooper moments after B. and Ali stopped in front of the locked gate. He got out, wrestled a large bolt cutter out of a locked tool chest in the Trooper’s cargo hold, and made short work of the padlock.

“Ambulance is still stationary,” Stu reported. “If you’re going to do this, get in and get out in a hurry.”

The good father seemed to be in no rush at all. Once they had driven the Isuzu and the Escalade through the opening, he took his time closing the gate and replacing the chain and the lock, positioning them so the lock appeared to be engaged. “It might be enough to slow them down,” he explained in response to Ali’s clear exasperation. “Now, I believe I promised you vests and weapons?”

First he hauled out two Kevlar vests that they put on immediately. B.’s was slightly too small, and Ali’s was too big, but they were for protection rather than a fashion statement, and Ali was glad to have them.

Father McLaughlin reached back into the Trooper, opened a metal
case, and retrieved two handguns. “I trust you both know how to operate these,” he said. “They’re loaded: six in the magazine, and that red pop on the slide shows there’s one in the chamber.”

He handed over a pair of Kahr P380s. Ali hefted her weapon and then expertly stripped it down. The Kahr was unfamiliar to her, and if there was a chance that her life would depend on it, she needed more than a relative stranger’s word that the P380 was in good working condition. She checked the rounds in the magazine. They were .380ACP hollow-point bullets. Hoping the Kahr had been properly lubed and cleaned, she put it back together and passed it to B.

Once she had checked out the second weapon, she dropped it into the pocket of her vest. After a moment’s consideration, she took it out of the pocket and tucked it into the waistband of her underwear. She had the jerky unwrapped and at the ready, but so far there was no sign of any dogs.

Father McLaughlin looked around. “Seems like a big place. Do we have any idea where to look for those hostages?”

“Best guess, they’re in one of the metal buildings,” B. said. “I doubt there’s any sense in trying the front door.”

“Let’s try it anyway,” Ali suggested. “The hostages may not be there, but this way we’ll know for sure if someone is minding the store.”

“Okay, you take the front. We’ll try the back. If somebody does come to the door and asks what you want, tell them you’re looking for body parts for your husband’s 1962 Corvair Monza,” B. said. “That’s something almost no one will have on hand.”

Ali drove the Escalade to the front entrance while B. and Father McLaughlin, in the Isuzu, drove to the back. Peering in through grimy windows, she saw a grubby linoleum-covered counter with a pair of dilapidated stools parked in front of it. At the far end of the counter stood an old-fashioned cash register with the drawer wide open. No, Ali told herself. The guy who left isn’t coming back.

Her phone rang.

“Trouble,” B. said. “The ambulance is on the move.”

“We need to go, then.”

“We can’t. We think we’ve located the hostages. They’re in a locked shed with some kind of motor running inside. The doors are metal. One has a deadbolt and the other is barred on the inside. Father McLaughlin is hooking a chain up to the back of his Trooper and hoping to pull the slider loose, but it’s taking time. Once we get to them, we’ll need to get them out. If they’ve been in there long enough to have suffered carbon monoxide poisoning, that may not be easy.”

Ali looked at the northbound lanes of the freeway. There were cars visible but no sign of the ambulance. “Somebody needs to stall them, then,” she said. “How long before they get here?”

“Stu says five minutes, no more.”

Ali turned and looked at the junkyard’s front entrance, at a gate that looked locked but wasn’t. The padlock was all bluff. Squaring her shoulders, Ali decided she would be, too. “I’ll do it,” she said. “At least I’ll try. You guys do whatever you can to rescue the hostages. I’ll go back to the gate and use the Escalade to block it shut. The only way for Katerina and her henchmen to get to you or the hostages will be through me. If you have to, use Father McLaughlin’s bolt cutter and make a hole in the back fence big enough to drive his Trooper out.”

“Wait,” B. objected. “I didn’t mean for you to—”

“Too late,” Ali said. “I’m already on my way. I’ll leave my phone on speaker so you’ll know what’s happening.”

“I can’t let you do this,” B. argued. “I never should have put you in this position.”

“We got into this position together,” Ali told him. “We’ll get out of it the same way.”

From the far side of the building, she heard a boom that sounded like a mini-explosion followed by the clattering of metal. She hoped that meant Father McLaughlin had succeeded in popping the door off the shed. In the Escalade, she drove back to the gate and parallel-parked on the far side of it.

With the vehicle in park, she took a deep breath. In the stillness, even with the phone in her pocket, she could hear urgent shouting, ragged coughing, clattering, and banging—all of them the welcome sounds of living. She let out her breath and then sat there, trying to relax and calm her nerves; trying to summon the courage it would take to face down someone she already knew to be a cold-blooded killer. Having wandered into the thick of what might be a dispute between two warring drug cartels, she had come to the fight armed with a single pistol and seven hollow-point bullets. Her only hope was to try to deescalate a shooting war into a war of words. Was that even remotely possible?

“I’m in position,” she said. Her phone, on speaker, was in the left pocket of her vest. She shifted the pistol from her waistband to the right-hand pocket. Ali was a trained shot, a capable shot, but would that give her enough of an edge against two armed guards and a killer? Probably not. And if a hail of bullets came speeding at her, bent on mowing her down, would the paltry vest be any kind of help? Unbidden Ali recalled Jillian Sosa’s wide-open eyes as she lay dead in the back of LeAnne Tucker’s Taurus. Jillian had been shot in the head. Bullet-resistant materials could help with body shots, but no Kevlar vest in existence would protect against a headshot. None at all.

“Got ’em,” B. said breathlessly. “They need to be checked out in a hospital. Should we try coming out through the gate?”

“No,” Ali said decisively. “There’s not enough time. Use the bolt cutter and go out through the back.”

“All right,” B. agreed, “but once the hole is made, it’ll only take one of us to get them to the hospital. The other one should stay here with you for backup. You pick.”

“You go; Father McLaughlin stays,” Ali said. “He’s a better shot.”

If B.’s feelings were hurt by her unflinching assessment of his combat capabilities, he let it pass without a word.

Out on the freeway, Ali caught a glimpse of a tiny speck of red speeding north. “They’re coming now,” she said. “Still on the freeway, approaching the exit. Go now. Get Phyllis and Thad to safety.”

“Ali, I—”

“Don’t talk,” she urged. “Go! Please.”

She opened the car door and got out. In order to pull off this colossal bluff, she would need to look perfectly at ease, as though she didn’t have a care in the world and wasn’t scared to death. Her knees still shook as she walked up to the front fender of the Escalade and leaned against it. With the back of one foot propped against the tire and with her hands stuffed casually in her pockets, Ali hoped she looked relaxed even though every nerve in her body was strung tight. If need be, she was fully prepared to use the poised foot to kick off from the vehicle and propel herself forward.

The ambulance slowed as it approached the stop sign at the top of the exit. She tried to prepare herself. She knew that four lives hung in the balance: Lance’s, LeAnne’s, Sister Anselm’s, and her own. What could she possibly say that would be powerful enough to win this war of words? A moment later, she knew. “I’ll lie,” Ali Reynolds said aloud. “I’ll lie like crazy.”

The ambulance turned right at the top of the overpass and then, after a few short yards, turned left onto the two-way frontage road. In a block or so, it slowed again and prepared to turn in to the junkyard. Having prepared herself to face down the two guards, Ali was astonished to see LeAnne Tucker behind the wheel of the rumbling ambulance. In the passenger seat was a woman. Although Ali had never seen her before, she realized this had to be Katerina Barnes.

The passenger door swung open. The dark-haired woman with shoulder-length locks who swung to the ground from the cab of the ambulance was probably a decade younger than Ali. Her figure was nothing short of spectacular. She was dressed in a smart knit pantsuit that spoke of money and power. Almost as an afterthought, Ali noticed the weapon in Katerina’s left hand, pointed directly at Ali’s chest.

Automatically, Ali tried to assess the weapon’s capabilities. It was most likely a semiautomatic. There would be lots more shots in the clip than Ali’s paltry seven. Forcefully, she pushed that self-defeating
thought out of her head. If you started comparing numbers of potential shots, you had already lost.

“Who are you?” Katerina Barnes demanded. “You don’t look like DEA. No letters on your vest. Besides, they don’t drive Escalades, and they wouldn’t show up with a search warrant in hand and leave the gates locked.”

Years earlier, when Ali was starting out as a television news reporter, she had suffered dreadful cases of nerves before those first few stand-up live reports. Over time, she had learned to look at the camera and focus. In this case, the weapon pointed in her direction served the same function, giving her focus and purpose.

“And you don’t look like an ambulance attendant,” Ali said with a toss of her head. “I guess that makes us even.”

“Move your vehicle. Now.”

“No,” Ali said.

“Move it, or I’ll shoot.”

“If you do, you’ll be very sorry.”

Katerina frowned as though she didn’t quite grasp what had been said. Maybe it had been spoken in a foreign language. “What do you want?” she asked.

“I want the people you’re holding prisoner,” Ali said. “Lance, his mother, and Sister Anselm.”

Katerina laughed. “You can’t be serious. You think I’m just going to hand them over?”

“I am and I do,” Ali said calmly. Inside the pocket of her vest, her hand felt steady on the firm grip of her pistol.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I have GHOST and you don’t,” Ali said. “You need GHOST, too, but you shot the person you hired to run it. The only other person who can do that for you is the person in the back of that ambulance. If something happens to Lance Tucker, you’re screwed.”

“He’ll do what I say,” Katerina said. “Otherwise his family dies, starting
with his mother.” She turned back to the ambulance and waved the gun in LeAnne’s direction. “Out,” she ordered. “Now.”

LeAnne opened her door and stumbled to the ground. The open plea for help in her expression came close to disrupting Ali’s concentration.

“Move your vehicle,” Katerina repeated. “I have a helicopter to catch.”

“It’s not coming,” Ali said, hoping that was true. If Katerina had been playing both ends against the middle, she suspected Felix’s Auto Recycling was fully stocked with operatives on either side of the Cabrillo/Diaz line. Word of the DEA raid would have gotten back to her friend Alonzo. Surely he wouldn’t risk losing a helicopter.

“Of course it’s coming,” Katerina said. “Why wouldn’t it?”

“Because Alonzo Diaz knows you betrayed him—that you set up this meeting for the sole purpose of allowing the DEA to confiscate his aircraft,” Ali said.

“But I didn’t,” Katerina objected. “I wouldn’t do that. Ever. Besides, you’re not the DEA.”

“Believe me,” Ali said, “there will be plenty of proof to show you did,” Ali said. “As for your father? Ernesto will receive a flurry of e-mails containing a sampling of the documents that you and Jillian stole from his organization. He’ll also have copies of e-mails that spell out the mutually beneficial relationship you’ve established with his most dangerous competitor.”

Katerina’s olive skin paled in the harsh afternoon sun. “Those files don’t exist anymore,” she hissed. “Jillian told me they were gone, that we couldn’t get them back.”

“That’s because Jillian thought she knew how to use GHOST when she didn’t. I have it, I know how to use it, and I’m fully prepared to unleash it on you.”

Father McLaughlin appeared as if out of nowhere, rising up from the far shoulder of the frontage road and strolling into Ali’s line of vision,
then disappearing at the back of the ambulance. Behind him came a second figure. It took Ali a moment to realize who it was: Detective Hernandez. How had he gotten here?

If there were any sounds as the back doors of the ambulance swung open or as Father McLaughlin and Detective Hernandez hefted the gurney out of the vehicle, they were masked by the roar of traffic speeding by on the freeway. Moments later, Ali caught a glimpse of the two men rolling the gurney to the far side of the road and out of immediate danger. They were followed by the spare, hurrying figure of Sister Anselm. Ali felt a moment of pure joy. She was winning. Four of the people in the line of fire were now in safety. Two remained: LeAnne Tucker and Ali.