Oath to Defend (19 page)

46

As Drake was helping Liz out of his Porsche in front of the clubhouse at the Pronghorn, he noticed her flinch a little as she turned her head to the right and reached for his hand.

“How’s the head?” he asked.

“It’s not my head,” she replied. “It’s my neck. I think it’s sore from holding still for so long while Ricardo picked the glass out of my face. It’s nothing a little time in the hot tub won’t cure.”

“The tub’s all yours as soon as we get back. You sure you want to do this?”

“What? Pass on the opportunity to threaten this guy with a cell in Gitmo for the rest of his life? I wouldn’t miss it.”

“All right,” Drake said. “Let’s go find our boy.”

He followed behind her a step or two as they made their way through the clubhouse and to the pool area outside. Most of the poolside chaise lounges and chairs were occupied. The men in several of them watched Liz carefully through the dark lenses of their sunglasses, while their wives watched them to see how long they would stare.

Drake himself wasn’t immune to the effect Liz had on men. He hadn’t decided whether it was her natural beauty or her aura of confidence that caused it. She walked gracefully, with the light step of an athlete, the opposite of the stomping prance of a runway model, though it had much the same effect on the opposite sex. Her figure was full in the places it needed to be, and slender in the places where it didn’t. And her eyes looked straight into the eyes of everyone she met, taking a quick reading of that person’s intent and purpose and returning a small smile or a nod of her head. It wasn’t that she demanded attention, he knew. She just knew that she would receive it.

She was looking around. “He’s not here,” she finally said. “Maybe he’s at the bar.”

But the polo player wasn’t there either, and the bartender said he hadn’t seen him since last night. When they looked for him in the Trailhead Grill, they were told he had checked out.

“A fellow met him for lunch,” the manager said, “and he left to check out shortly after. They left together,” he added.

“What did the fellow look like?” Liz asked.

“Young, maybe thirty, good looking and maybe Hispanic. He had a little color in his complexion, anyway.”

“I don’t suppose you got his name,” Drake said.

“Didn’t ask. Vazquez charged both of their lunches to his room tab.”

After thanking the manager, they walked outside and stood facing each other in the warm sun.

“Now what?” Liz asked.

“Now we think.”

“Maybe Mike’s learned something.”

Drake pulled out his iPhone. “Let’s see.”

Casey answered on the first ring. “I have an outside table waiting for you at the Bend Brewery looking out on Mirror Pond. Do you want me to order something for you so it’ll be ready when you get here?”

“Are you already eating?”

“I’m just sampling a few things while we wait for you.”

“Did you find O’Neil?”

“Indeed we did. He’s in one of the hangar houses at the Sunriver airport, a couple hundred yards south of where I parked the Relentless. He’s a pilot, has his own jet, and is planning on leaving tomorrow.”

“Is he alone?”

“That I don’t know. I wasn’t sure how you wanted to handle this, so we didn’t pay him a visit.”

“Vazquez checked out before we got here, so we have nothing new on our end. Have you heard from Ricardo and Billy?”

“Larry talked to Ricardo. They watched some Muslims sleeping outside the stables and then saying their morning prayers, but that’s about it. You want to keep them at the ranch?”

“Vazquez is the key,” Drake said, “and we don’t know where he is. Tell your guys to meet us for lunch. We’ll spread out this afternoon and see if we can find our polo star. Liz and I will be there in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

When they pulled into the parking lot of the Bend Brewery, they saw Casey and Green waving at them from a table on the riverside patio.

“I have never met anyone as excited about food as your friend,” Liz said.

Drake smiled. “He’s been like that as long as I’ve known him.”

“How long have you known him?” she asked as they walked to the patio.

“I met him in the army. We’ve been friends since then.”

She glanced sideways at Drake, noticing the brevity of his answers. She already knew they were brothers in arms and that they had been together in several of the hell holes in the world. She had seen Drake’s Delta Force file, the one that wasn’t supposed to exist, and knew the broad details of missions he and Mike shouldn’t have survived. They were more than friends and probably always would be.

“He’s a good man to have as a friend,” she said.

“Yes, he is,” Drake said, letting her walk ahead of him through the scattering of tables on the patio.

When they reached their table, Casey stood up. “You’re going to love the food here,” he said. “Larry likes the brewery fries, but you need to try some of this spicy bean dip.”

Drake shook his head as he sat down. “If you like the dip, I know it’s going to be too spicy for me. Are Ricardo and Billy on their way?”

“They had to crawl out with their gear, but they should be here before we finish the appetizers. Liz, what are you hungry for?” Casey asked.

“Something cold I can hold against my cheek. Iced tea would be nice.”

“I’ll try their IPA,” Drake told Casey.

When Casey had ordered for them, Drake tried to focus his friend on the business at hand. “Were both of the Escalades at Sunriver?” he asked.

“Just one at the hangar house. Kevin said the other one was on the road north of Bend headed toward Redmond.”

“And we don’t know who’s driving that one, right?”

“No clue.”

“Is Kevin able to keep tracking the Escalades for us?”

“For as long as we want, or until OnStar finds out they’re sharing information with us.”

“Okay, let’s keep Kevin on this. If we can’t find Vazquez again, that’s the only lead we have right now.”

Green turned to Liz. “Could you find out where O’Neil’s jet has been recently?” he asked. “It might tell us something about who’s traveling with him.”

“I can probably do that,” she replied. “O’Neil can block the Federal Aviation Administration from officially tracking his jet’s flight. It’s a routine request that’s made to the National Business Aviation Association so corporate competitors don’t know where each other are going and who they’re seeing. But plane geeks track aircraft status messages sent to each other and to ground stations through ACARS. That’s the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System.” She smiled. “I think we have a plane geek or two at DHS I can call. Do you have the plane’s registration or tail number?”

“Mike has it in the Yukon. I’ll get it for you after lunch.”

“Do we have any idea where Vazquez is?” Casey asked.

“No,” said Drake, “but my hunch is he’s going to turn up at Abazzano’s ranch, where his horses are. I’d like to ask Ricardo and Billy to go back out there after lunch unless they’ve already spotted him.”

Green was still talking with Liz. “Is there anything new from your office on the nuke? I called a friend in Los Angeles this morning. He said from what he’s hearing at LAPD, they’ve called off the search.”

“Your friend’s right,” she said. “Without something new to go on, NEST doesn’t know where else to look. I checked in this morning, and other than informants saying the cartels are bragging about being able to smuggle anything you want into the U.S., there’s nothing solid to follow up on. I told my secretary to tell Secretary Rallings that I’d had a minor accident and needed another day or so here. He wants me back in D.C. to coordinate a new approach to finding this thing. The White House is trying to keep everything quiet, but word is about to go public that someone smuggled a nuclear bomb into the country.”

“Did you tell the Secretary that I think the bomb is here?” Drake asked her.

“Adam, you know I couldn’t do that, and you know why. He trusts you. He’d send in the Army if you said he should. But where would you tell him to look? Besides, I think you have as good a chance as we have at finding some evidence if it’s here. And as soon as you do, he’s my first call.”

“I think we have a better chance, too, but if it’s here and we blow this, there’ll be hell to pay. And you’ll be the one who pays the price. Not me.”

She nodded. “I realize that. But I know that if I set off alarms, and the full might of the government comes swarming in here, we’d close this town down and accomplish nothing. Look, Bend is what, seventy-eight thousand? San Diego is a million, three hundred thousand, plus or minus, and we nearly caused a panic there.”

“She’s right,” Green said. “I saw what a terrorist alert does to a place when I worked in Los Angeles. That’s why L.A. and New York City keep things quiet. There’s only one main highway in and out of Bend, and if people saw the army on the streets or FBI agents and black helicopters overhead, nothing would move. Highway 97 would become a parking lot.”

“Adam,” Liz said, “we’ll find the bomb if Vazquez is involved like we suspect. I trust you, but I don’t want to put this in the hands of all the agencies that would have to be involved. It would take weeks for them to investigate the possibility that a nuclear device was smuggled all the way to Oregon, let alone find the thing.”

“Well then,” Drake said, “I guess we should have lunch and get back to work. I’d hate to make all those people work just to consider the possibility I might be right. Besides, here come Ricardo and Billy, and I know they’re going to be hungry.”

47

Saleem drove down the Wyler Ranch road fast enough to scare the blackbirds from the trees and raise a huge cloud of dust behind him. He didn’t care. He was tired of running errands for David Barak, tired of babysitting a plan that any fool could carry out with the demolition nuke his men had smuggled into the country and would deliver to the target. His name would never be linked to the thousands that would die. He would never be praised by his people as a holy warrior, never be extolled by the imam in his mosque.

As he steered the black Cadillac Escalade off the ranch road and up the driveway to the Tuscan-style villa his Hollywood host had built to replace the original modest ranch house, his ego screamed at the insult he was being forced to endure.

He hit the button on the overhead console to open the garage door and drove straight into the villa’s four-car garage. Without a word, he got out and walked around and opened the passenger door for Marco Vazquez.

“We are alone,” he said to the polo player, “and there is no one to stop me if I decide to end your miserable, spoiled life. So do not test me. Get out and walk to that door over there and go down the stairs to the billiards and rec room. Entertain yourself until I come for you.” He stood back from the SUV and watched his captive turn in the seat and look at him before getting out.

“I don’t know what you are planning,” Vazquez said, “but if any harm comes to me or my family, I will find you and I will kill you. That is a promise.”

Saleem laughed. “Aside from hitting someone by accident with your polo mallet, I doubt that you have ever hurt anyone, let alone killed someone. Do not make a threat you can’t carry out. If you do as you are told, your precious family will not be harmed. Now get downstairs. I have to call your dinner hosts and tell them you’re too ill to make an appearance.”

After making sure Vazquez had followed his orders, Saleem locked the door out of the garage as he had done earlier with all the exterior doors on the lower level. Then he walked through the mud room and kitchen to the living quarters of the villa and the owner’s office.

The walls of the office were covered with framed posters of the motion pictures and documentaries Michael Abazzano had directed or produced. Among the posters hung framed photos of the director with stars and starlets, politicians and people Saleem assumed were either rich or powerful. These were the celebrities that Americans worshipped and, worse, listened to. Why any thinking person cared what a beautiful movie star with cosmetically enhanced features thought about anything, especially politics, was a mystery to him.

He stopped and peered closely at one framed photograph of a group of men standing on the rear deck of a large yacht. So that was Abazzano’s connection. Four men stood facing a younger Abazzano and holding flutes of champagne in their hands. Two Saudi princes in traditional white
thobes
and headdresses; the Shia cleric and co-founder of Hezbollah, Abbas al-Masawi; and Yasser Arafat, the Fatah and PLO leader, with his arm around Abazzano’s beautiful wife, Nadine. It was rumored that Arafat had met her in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and started her on her career as a PLO operative. Saleem knew about the lovely Nadine, but he had not known of her husband’s involvement in the cause of holy war.

Leaving the photo, Saleem made the necessary call to the woman in charge of the polo fundraiser and dinner that night and apologized for the star’s temporary illness. He promised that Marco Vazquez would certainly appear tomorrow morning for the polo match. Yes, he assured her, the star would get a good night’s sleep. With that out of the way, he walked back to the great room and poured himself four fingers of Abazzano’s Scotch, a twenty-one-year-old Old Pulteney single malt. The bottle was sitting on a bar near the covered patio that provided a view of the ranch in the canyon below. Swirling the amber liquid around in his tumbler, Saleem started to walk out to the patio when he heard someone walking through the kitchen from the garage.

“Pour me a glass, Saleem,” Barak said without greeting. “I’ve wanted to try that. Abazzano swears it’s the best single malt scotch in the world.” He gave the room a cursory glance. “Is our boy down stairs?”

“Yes, and if I had my way, he would die downstairs. He promised he would kill me if we harmed his family.”

Barak gave a thin smile. “Well, we don’t need to worry about that, do we?” He tasted the scotch. “Citrusy lemon and pear,” he said. “Do you enjoy scotch?”

“Not really.”

“That’s too bad. There are pleasures in the world we didn’t invent. It doesn’t hurt to sample them.”

“Are you meeting with my men before their evening prayers?”

“Yes. I want to see if they’re confident they can find the dam.”

“They haven’t been all the way to the dam on their practice runs,” Saleem admitted, “but they’ve been to the turnoff from the highway that takes them there. They know how far it is from there. They’ll get the bomb to the dam. Don’t worry.”

“They’re your men, but it is
my
worry. We both know what will happen to the two of us if we fail.”

“Like you failed last month? You’re still here.”

Barak set his tumbler on the bar and walked over to Saleem. Stopping inches in front of him, he said, “Do you know why you were selected to bring the bomb here, but not be in charge?” Before the younger man could reply, he went on. “It’s because your blood is not pure. You’re a half breed, half Arab and half Mexican. You’re a warrior, they know that, but they aren’t sure they can trust you with big plans. You have to prove yourself, like I have. You have to prove that you can follow orders, that you respect those who give you those orders. And, as you just demonstrated by insulting me, you have not proven that yet.”

Saleem looked at Barak’s eyes, which had suddenly become bloodshot and red, as if specks of dust had flown into them. At that moment, he knew he had pushed the older man too far.

He dipped his head and retreated. “I meant no disrespect,” he said.

“Show me you mean that by doing what you are told. See if your men have returned. Go. I want to finish my drink.” Barak’s voice was cold.

~~~

Before Saleem could walk past the door at the top of the stairs to the lower level of the villa, Vazquez quickly closed the door he stood behind and returned to the rec room. He had been playing billiards by himself before becoming bored. He had wanted to see if Saleem was still upstairs guarding him.