Riding the Snake (1998) (44 page)

"Let me put it this way. . . . Nothing you have said surprises me. I don't believe this information is counterfactual. We have assigned a very high probability percentage to Lebed's claims."

"Shit," Verba said

"How big are these damn things?" Alan Hollingsworth asked. "How much damage will they do?"

"According to Lebed, these are what we call NO FUN weapons. Another acronym, meaning No First Use Nuclear devices. They are only one kiloton, weigh sixty to a hundred pounds, and could kill a hundred thousand people if detonated in a populous area. They would take an average person less than a half-hour to activate, and once activated, can be detonated by radio wave. If Wo Lap Ling has one placed at LAX, he'll turn the airport into a pile of rubble and the resulting ejecta will most probably knock out a good portion of Marina Del Rey, as well as points north and south. Nuclear fallout will be dangerous, but not immediately critical, depending on how 'clean' the device is. I can't speak to increased incidents of cancer and the like."

They sat in silence.

"In fairness," Carter added, "I owe it to you to say that there is some countervailing opinion. The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee has gone on record as saying Lebed's charges are nonsense. He says they are political in nature and not substantive."

"Really?" Alan said. "Senator Peck said that?"

"Jesus Christ," Wheeler said, grabbing for the sheet of paper with the translated code names transcribed from Prescott's car tape. On the bottom of the page he found it:

SEN. JOHN L. PECK (D) WYOMING.

Chapter
41.

Cash Flow

After Carter DeHaviland's briefing, Wheeler and Tanisha were told to go home.

Alan said there was nothing they could do.

Verba said this was completely out of their hands.

T. Cameron Jobe said if they interfered he would personally bring charges against them for obstructing justice.

Then they were left standing alone in the fifth-floor corridor of Parker Center as activity swirled around them.

They were out of it. They left the building and found Rick Verba standing in the parking lot across from Parker Center. The hot noon sun was beating down on them. The outside of the architecturally uninteresting granite building showed no sign of the intense activity inside. Somewhere on the third floor, Willy Wo Lap Ling was sitting in a holding cell, his hands clasped on his lap, waiting to see what would happen.

"You guys did great work," Verba said to them. "If this turns out to be true, you've saved thousands of lives."

"Captain, can this bozack Attorney General just blow us of
f t
he case? We've been working this for almost two weeks," Tanisha said.

"What're you gonna do while NEST does its job, take pictures? You're counterintuitive or whateverGo home, get som
e s
leep. You look bushed," Verba said.

"I can't go home. That piece of Triad gangsta shit upstairs put a bounty of fifty keys of pure heroin on our heads. The gangs in South Central aren't going to know that Willy is busted. Wheeler and I are marked anywhere south of Crenshaw."

"You can sleep in my office at ACTF," Verba said.

That was finally what they decided to do. They followed Captain Verba back to Hill Street and left the Jag in the parking lot at the side of the leased Asian Crimes building.

Things took a strange turn once they got upstairs. Al Katsukura was complaining to anyone who'd listen. He grabbed Tanisha and told her what had happened last night. While they were dragging Wo Lap Ling out of the L
. A
. Triad headquarters, he was out in the ocean, in pea soup fog, losing a boatload of illegal aliens and three Major Crimes detectives. He had spent the night answering angry questions from Deputy Chief Pitlick. Al had just finished his paperwork, and the owl-eyed Japanese detective was frustrated beyond anything Tanisha had ever observed in him before.

"These three U
. C
. dicks from Major Crimes aren't missing, they're dead, Tisha," he said, glancing only occasionally at Wheeler. His Asian poker face twisted in anguish. "I was bobbing around out there like a fucking asshole while they got washed out. I let those guys get taken. Operation Dry Dock was my deal. I feel like shit."

"Let's get something to eat," Tanisha said. "We all need lunch. I'll buy."

"Anyplace but the fucking Westin coffee shop," Wheeler reminded her.

They found a little greasy spoon on North Hill and Alpine, just outside of Chinatown. They picked the diner because the place was absolutely empty.

They sat in the back and ordered sandwiches and steaming hot coffee. Wheeler told the Hispanic waitress to keep the coffee coming.

When the food arrived, Al was still on a talking jag, retelling his story, trying to find a version that didn't make him feel quite so shitty.

"Where was this?" Wheeler asked when Al finally paused to eat.

"Where was what?"

"Where you found the empty boat?"

"We were in the ocean, somewhere south of Marina Del Rey."

"How far offshore?" Wheeler asked.

"I don't know. Mile, mile and a half, maybe five. It's water out there. They don't have mile markers."

"That's roughly out by the airport then," Wheeler observed, picking at his fries with a fork. "How often do undercover officers get shot on a deal like that?"

"It shouldn'ta happened. These Bamboo Dragons couldn't have known my guys were U
. C. S
. They were dressed like a Hornblower crew in corny sailor outfits. They weren't carrying any badges or I
. D. S
. They weren't there trying to make a bust. The deal was strictly Watch and Report. There would be no reason for them to get killed. That's what makes this screwy. If I'd thought there was any danger, I would've had half-a-dozen guys with me on that patrol boat and I woulda had troops stashed on the Hornblower. We'da been screwed tight into their assholes."

The waitress brought more coffee and left the carafe, while they all sat, thinking.

"What if all this shit is connected?" Wheeler finally asked Tanisha.

"It is, but not like you think," Tanisha answered. "The boys on the boat were Tong gangsters connected to the Chin Lo and to Willy, but the Bamboo Dragons are doing a whole menu of crimes. Nothing would stop just because Willy came into town. This immigrant smuggle probably started in Hong Kong a week ago. Besides, what does a bunch of Snake Riders have to do with a bomb scare at the airport?"

"I don't know. But once the immigrants were off-loaded, why kill three guys for no reason?" Wheeler pondered.

"Because they're jacked up on speed or adrenaline," Al said. "Who knows why they pull this dumb violent shit? It happens all the time now. It's just what they do."

Wheeler poured himself more coffee out of the carafe. "Is anybody out there looking for these missing Snake Riders?"

"We had a full-scale helicopter search in place as soon as the fog burned off. Nothing out in the ocean. Empty as a junkie's wallet."

"Let's go look for ourselves," Wheeler suggested. "My uncle Alan has a boat at the marina. I'll call him. It used to be my dad's boat. He left it to Alan when he died. I've run it a bunch. I know where the key is."

"Why? Whatta we gonna find?" the Japanese detective asked.

"I don't know. Probably nothing, but to tell you the truth, I'd a helluva lot rather sleep on that boat than on the couch in Verba's office."

It was hard to get to the slip in Marina Del Rey. The National Guard was already evacuating the marina. They had barricades up and stern-faced young men in Hogan's Heroes helmets that said HAZMAT, for Hazardous Materials, on the back were stopping traffic and turning it around. Al asked why the city was being evacuated. The HAZMAT lieutenant said, "Gas leak," and that was all he would say. Al and Tanisha had to badge him and threaten to arrest him to get them through the barricade. Cops were at every intersection in Marina Del Rey directing evacuation traffic. It took them almost half an hour to get to the dock on Palawan Way.

The boat was named Cashflow. Alan had contemplated renaming it Legal Ease, but in the end had not changed it out of respect for his dead friend.

The boat was a fifty-two-foot Bertram Sportfisher with a tuna tower. Wheeler was on the flybridge with the twin engines burbling as Al and Tanisha threw the lines off. He backed it out of the slip, using the twin screws to rotate it in the channel before heading it out of the harbor at the mandated five miles an hour. They moved toward the jetty, past the junction of Ballona Creek, past the channel markers, and then turned left, heading toward the general spot where Al said the empty Hornblower had been drifting on the tide.

After the marine layer had burned off, it left behind a calm sea and a beautiful day. Wheeler and Tanisha stood on the fly
-
bridge while Al sat morosely in a fighting chair just outside the main salon. He was lost in a deep depression over his failure to protect the three detectives.

Finally, they were offshore about a quarter-mile out, looking in at LAX. Wheeler throttled back and watched as a United 747 took off, roaring out over the ocean six hundred feet above their heads. The jet thundered in the cloudless sky, raining sound pollution down on them. As soon as the jet was away, another took off from the parallel runway.

"I thought they closed this airport down," Tanisha said.

"I've been watching since we turned out of the marina channel," Wheeler said. "Everything is leaving, nothing is landing. I think the airlines are trying to get their equipment out of here."

Another jet roared overhead, banking right and heading east.

Al Katsukura got out of the fighting chair on the deck below and climbed the ladder to the flybridge.

"Is this about where the Hornblower was?" Wheeler asked.

"How would I know? You couldn't see shit. It was socked in. I didn't hear any planes, but the fog was so thick the airport was probably closed."

Wheeler put the binoculars to his eyes and again looked at the airport a quarter-mile beyond. Through the lenses he could see several olive-green canvas-covered military trucks driving around on the field. Off to one side, parked near the Federal Express hangars, were four military C-141s with no markings. He wondered if they were the four NEST aircraft from New Mexico. He looked at his watch. It was one thirty-five. Carter DeHaviland had said two hours would get NEST to LAX. He could see men in olive uniforms running between hangars.

"This either happens or it doesn't in two and a half hours," he said. Then he turned his binoculars on Dockweiler State Beach. It was a broad strip of sand that started at the Del Rey Channel marker and stretched all the way past the airport to the housing development at Vista Del Mar. Wheeler scanned the beach carefully.

"What is it?" Tanisha asked.

"If the Hornblower was around here and they off-loaded it with small rubber boats from the shore, then Dockweiler Beach would be perfect. Nobody is ever there because of the noise from the airport. Could be this is where they landed."

"If that's true, they'd be long gone by now," Al added.

Wheeler didn't know what he was trying to prove or why this seemed so important, but something was driving him, pushing him to go ashore. Maybe it was the look of indifference in Willy's eyes when Wheeler accused him of killing Prescott, or the fury that had flashed when Wheeler had challenged the Triad mobster. "I'm gonna put the Avon in the water and go take a look," he said.

"And leave us floating around out here? I did enough of that last night," Al whined.

"According to my depth finder, it's only fifty feet deep. I can anchor, and you both can come with me."

After backing down on his Danforth anchor to set it, Wheeler shut the engines down. He used the davit to put the rubber Avon boat with the fifteen-horsepower Yamaha outboard in the water. The two Asian Crimes detectives got in the Avon while Wheeler unlocked his uncle's gun cabinet aboard the sportfisher. He took out the shark rifle and two long-barreled Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum "Dirty Harry" revolvers, with drop-forged aluminum frames and full checkered walnut stocks. He grabbed a box of Remington ammunition. In a few seconds they were in the Avon headed toward Dockweiler State Beach.

He had to surf the boat in on the medium-sized breakers to get it ashore, gunning the motor as the wave broke, shooting ahead of the cresting surf, cutting the motor at the last minute, and running the light Avon high up onto the beach. They all jumped out and pulled the boat to safety ahead of the next breaker.

The sand on Dockweiler Beach was windblown and smooth.

"Let's split up, look for footprints," Tanisha said. "A whole boatload of Snake Riders should leave a pretty good trail."

Tanisha and Al went up the beach to the east, Wheeler went west. He had walked about 250 yards before he saw it: a windblown trail of footprints heading from the shore, up the beach to where he was standing. "Over here!" he shouted, but his voice was overwhelmed by a departing jet. He soon realized they were too far away to hear him over the thundering surf. He let out a shrill whistle, which they finally heard. He waved his arm and they began moving back toward him.