Out of Range: A Novel (8 page)

Chapter Eleven

C
harlie? Charlie?”

He awoke with a start, his pulse racing. He was lying on the floor. In the living room of his house, he felt sure of that. But he wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there. He tried to sit up but fell back against the couch. His head was pounding and his brain felt muddled and
slow.

“Charlie?” It was a woman’s voice, calling to him from the other room. A woman with an English accent.

It was Julie. This whole thing had been a terrible dream, a drunken nightmare after his meeting with Sal.

“Charlie?”

“In here. In the living room.”

He glanced at a clock—it was almost 9:00 am—and tried to steady himself, get a handle on what had happened. The only problem was that he didn’t remember going to a bar. Or drinking at home. Or the last time he’d gotten drunk for any reason.

The woman entered from the kitchen, obscured ever so slightly by the morning light shimmering through the tall windows.

“Charlie, are you all right?”

Charlie rubbed his eyes. It wasn’t Julie. It was her sister Becca. What in the hell was
she
doing here?

Becca walked toward him with concern. “The police called me last night. I took the first plane I could this morning. I didn’t even get your message until I landed. I just got here, the door was open.”

Then it all started to flood back to him. The cul-de-sac. The cops. Bull.

The kids.

Charlie brushed past her and sprinted up the stairs. If Bull had done anything to them . . .

Charlie tripped over Oliver’s PlasmaCar in the hallway, stumbled toward their bedroom and burst inside.

The first thing he saw was a lump under Meagan’s blanket. His eyes darted toward Oliver’s bed. A mat of his hair and half his face poked out beneath his covers. Meagan was closer so he moved to her first, ripping away the blanket. And there she was, her chest moving slowly up and down as she quietly took in breath. Charlie bent down to Oliver’s bed and lowered the covers. His boy—his sweet, precious boy—was sleeping soundly.

Unharmed. They were both unharmed.

Charlie sat on the floor and quietly wept.

A moment later, Becca appeared in the doorway. Charlie rose quickly, wiped his eyes and headed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

“They must be so tired,” Becca said softly.

But Charlie was in no mood for commiseration. He was furious and he wanted answers.

“She said she was going to New York and you lied for her. Now what the hell has she gotten herself into?”

Becca looked disconsolately at the floor. “I don’t know.”

“Well, what did she say to you? Why did she have you lie for her?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. I assumed she was having an affair.” Becca wiped away a tear. “I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m so sorry.”

“You told the police that I was suspicious of her?”

“No,” she protested. “I didn’t say that. I never said anything like that.”

“Well, somehow they’ve got me lined up as the number one suspect. She was seeing somebody in London?”

“I told you I don’t know. She called me last week, she said she had to go out of the country, she said she needed me to cover for her, to say she was visiting me in New York. When I asked her if it was about another man, she said she couldn’t get into it. I told her I was uncomfortable with all of it, but she kept begging me. She kept saying this was something she had to do. So I agreed.”

Charlie marched down the stairs again, Becca on his heels. “Well, I just had three spooks in here shooting me full of psychedelic speed, demanding to know who Julie’s working for.”

“Spooks?”

“Special Operations, black ops, American military intelligence of some kind.”

“Oh my God.”

Charlie hurried through the kitchen and barreled downstairs to the basement. “They kept asking me who she was working for. Is it possible she was meeting someone involved with her old work? Someone at World Vision?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

He turned on the lights and studied the basement. Everything was perfectly in place. Not the slightest sign that Bull and his men were here last night.

Charlie headed back upstairs, Becca following him once again.

“Why don’t you call the police?” she asked.

“They’re not going to believe a word I say.”

“But if these guys were in the house . . .”

Charlie paused, examining the kitchen. His famous marinara sauce (now burned and cold), the pot of overboiled water, the box of spaghetti on the counter—a poetic tapestry of the life they’d shared together. A life he thought he’d understood.

“Charlie,” Becca pushed, “if they broke into your house—”

“There’s no sign of forced entry. Nothing’s been left out of place. They wore gloves, so there won’t be any prints. The kids are perfectly unharmed and can’t vouch for my story. These guys were professionals. If anything, the cops will just assume I’m creating a smoke screen.”

“But isn’t it at least worth having the police take a look? To tell them what you suspect?”

“I’d rather have them spending their time canvassing the area where Julie was taken, even if they’re looking for evidence against me. Maybe they’ll stumble upon something useful. Besides, you don’t want to call the LAPD to take on the CIA or the NSA. I can tell you that.”

“The CIA?” Becca pleaded. “Why would the CIA want to kidnap Julie?”

Chapter Twelve

Q
uinn stood inside a shipping container, a ten-foot-tall corrugated steel box lit by a dim droplight hanging from a hook in the center of the space. A cot lay in the far corner. In the other corner sat a chemical toilet and a small refrigerator containing various medical supplies—IV bags, saline, glucose, hypodermics.

A medic and a guard were by the door, looking apprehensively at Quinn.

The medic was a fat, sweaty little guy, a former Iraqi Army doctor with a sizable heroin problem. The guard—a large, intimidating Uzbek with a gun—had several grams of pharmaceutical grade smack in a bag inside his shirt. The medic would do exactly what the guard told him, no problem there.

“Tell it to me again,” Quinn said as he closed the door.

“Me?” the medic said, holding a pudgy hand over his chest.

“Who the hell else you think I’m talking to?” Quinn snapped.

“Yes, yes, of course, sir!” The medic swallowed hard. “I keep the woman on the IV the whole time. Glucose, saline, vitamins. She will be fully sedated yet every eight hours I’m to let her come out of sedation just enough that she can stand and do her necessaries. As you say, letting her stand up and move around minimizes the likelihood of medical complications.” He hesitated and leaned forward in an insinuating way. “I presume, sir, your expectation is that once we reach our destination, she will not remember anything about the journey?”

Quinn gave the medic a cold smile. “You presume correctly, Doc.”

“Might I presume, also, to ask what our destination will be, sir?”

“Sure. And I might presume to tell you to shut your goddamn mouth and concentrate your meager attention on doing what I goddamn tell you.”

The medic’s head bobbed rapidly and he smiled a broad, please-don’t-hit-me smile.

“All righty then,” Quinn said, clapping his hands together. “Bring her in.”

The guard opened the door and waved to the van that stood outside the container. They were on Pier J at the Port of Long Beach, California, hidden in the middle of a giant tangle of semitrailers used for hauling containers.

At the other end of the pier, Quinn could see a tramp steamer peeping over the trailers. That steamer would take this container to Juneau. From there the rest of the trip would be by air.

Quinn watched as two of his men hauled Julie Davis out of the van. He’d given her a jab of something to knock her out earlier, so she was limp and essentially unconscious. As far as he was concerned, all of this was a needless complication. If it had been up to him, he would have had her in an abandoned warehouse outside Chino and been running the whole “red-green” drill on her right now, but the man calling the shots wanted her brought to him and there was nothing Quinn could do about it.

Quinn’s men dropped the woman roughly on the cot, her head thumping as it hit the thin foam mattress.

“What are you, morons?” Quinn shouted. “We didn’t go to all this trouble so she’d get there with a goddamn subdural hematoma.”

The men filed sullenly out of the container.

“Listen up,” Quinn said to the guard and the medic. “She’s a beautiful woman. You might be tempted to have some fun on the way. If she gets there and there’s a scratch, a bruise, a blemish, her hair’s messed up—swear to Christ, guys, I’m gonna put a bullet in both your goddamn brains. Got it?”

The medic and the guard nodded.

“Good.” Quinn said. “See you there then.”

Quinn closed the door and watched as the port inspector crimped the customs seal onto the door.

“What I’m giving you?” the inspector said. “This here’s a high-security bolt seal, more or less tamper proof, color coded, imprinted with a unique number so you can track it from shipper to destination. High-security seals receive faster customs clearance than standard, what we call ‘indicative,’ seals. Faster’s better, am I right?”

“You are indeed.”

The inspector looked up nervously at Quinn as he pocketed the crimping tool. “So, ah . . . now’d be a good time to take care of the other half . . . ?”

Quinn looked at him blandly, watching the man squirm.

“The five thousand,” said the inspector.

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that . . .” Quinn looked around. “And my feeling is . . . now’s not such a good time.”

In a flash, Quinn pulled out his telescoping baton and hit the man four times in the head. His skull was cracked by the third blow. But Quinn always gave himself that one extra lick. Because a life that was all business was no kind of life at all.

Chapter Thirteen

C
harlie let the hot water run over his weary body, though right now he couldn’t care less about getting clean. This shower was about knocking the cobwebs out of his brain so he could concentrate on what had happened last night. There were so many gaps in his memory, no doubt the effect of all the drugs, but he tried to piece it together . . .

The repetitive questions about whom Julie worked for and what she knew. Was there a safe in the house? Where did she keep her computer? On and on it went. Charlie with nearly nothing to give them. Except Becca. And he’d managed to hold on to that. To keep her out of it. Safe.

Who was Julie working for? That was the main one. The one they kept harping on.

Charlie and Becca had already called all of her old contacts at World Vision, but none of them had heard from Julie in months or had any idea that Julie was coming to London.

Then what was she doing there? Who was she seeing? How had it led to all of this?

Charlie forced himself to return to the interrogation, to try to put himself back in that basement.

He remembered now—that he was sitting in the chair, slumped over and depleted. There was a sharp prick in his arm and then a soft buzzing noise. The world began to grow shaky and dim, like a fade in some black-and-white movie from a hundred years ago. Later—he had no idea how much later—he felt hands pulling him out of the chair. Then the carpet against his cheek and a pair of boots walking in front of him. Then someone speaking in a foreign language.

Suddenly it dawned on him—it was Russian they were speaking.

One of the goons said, “Are we taking him to Tashkent?” He’d meant Charlie. And what did Bull say . . . ? Charlie opened his eyes and looked out the shower door, as if the memories might drift up here from the basement. What did Bull say?! He called the other guy “
durak
”—an idiot—and then he said, “We’re going to have a hard enough time getting the woman there.”

Charlie’s eyes widened.

Julie was alive. And they were taking her to Uzbekistan.

C
harlie hustled out of the shower, toweled himself off quickly and made a beeline for his cell phone. Many of his old contacts were still programmed into the phone and he would begin there. First on his list was Faruz: the most resourceful, most connected of them all. He only hoped Faruz hadn’t changed his phone number—six years was a long time. He dialed and waited. Uzbekistan must be one of the few places in the world where one still got an echoey faraway ring on a long-distance call.

Two rings, three . . .

Charlie glanced at his watch. It was after midnight in Tashkent but he certainly wouldn’t be waking Faruz. Finally, he heard a click and then an outgoing message in Russian: “You reach Faruz, tell me what you need.”

After a few seconds the beep kicked in and Charlie left a message: “Faruz, it’s your old friend Charlie. Charlie Davis. I need your help. Badly. Call me as soon as you can.” He left his cell and home numbers and hung up.

He was about to make the next call when he noticed Oliver standing in the doorway, bleary-eyed and disheveled and still wearing yesterday’s clothes.

“Dad?”

“Hey buddy.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“Oh, that was just . . . that was just an old friend. Someone who can help us find Mommy.”

But Charlie had a queasy feeling in his stomach. Because speaking the words aloud to Oliver made what he was saying naked and plain. He was phoning people ten thousand miles away, people he hadn’t spoken to in six years, people who no longer owed him much loyalty, people who may or may not have any resources whatsoever to help . . .

And in that moment, he knew that finding Julie was not going to happen from his armchair in Los Angeles. It was going to have to happen with his boots on the ground. It was going to mean leaving his children.

“Do you know where she is?” Oliver asked.

“I have some idea,” Charlie said.

“Are you going there?”

Charlie stepped toward his son and got down on a knee. “You know if I do that, you and your sister will have to stay here.”

“So?”

Charlie looked at him.

“You need to find her, Dad.”

Charlie searched his son’s eyes. These were not the eyes of a young boy demanding an extra birthday present or some ice cream. These were the eyes of a fully formed person, utterly serious, intuitively aware of the gravity of the situation.

“Find her,” Oliver said again, as if he suspected his father needed a final push.

Charlie brushed aside Ollie’s hair and touched his face.

“I will.”