Devil's Run (29 page)

I jackknifed out from
under and onto the driver’s seat. A steady stream of rounds shattered the
windshield. Pebbles of safety glass rained on my head. Bullets thumped into the
driver’s seat and twanged off metal. Any moment, he’d come to his senses and
move in on me. I fumbled for the headlight switch and turned on the brights.

After hours in darkness,
the light shining directly in his eyes dazzled him. The firing stopped
momentarily and he threw his left forearm across his eyes. I ran towards him.
He began firing blindly just as I tackled him. The air whooshed out of his
lungs, bringing the wad of tobacco with it. He fell backwards. I knelt on his
chest and gave him a couple of hard rights to the face. He tried hitting me
with the rifle, but I wrenched the gun out of his hand and butt stroked him.
The impact broke his nose and some front teeth. He howled with pain, clamping
both hands to his bloody face.

I was a little pissed
and not entirely in control. I rose and stepped back, reversing the rifle so
the barrel was pointed at him. His eyes widened.

“You gonna shoot me?” he
said. His voice was thick and had a slight whistle now.

“I’d probably be doing
the world a favor,” I said, imitating his accent.

He began to sob,
spitting blood and spittle. “Please, please don’t.”

I like to think not, but
my finger may have been tightening on the trigger when an amplified, metallic
voice boomed.

“Lower your weapon. This
is the United States Border Patrol. Lower your weapon and step back.” The
command was then repeated in Spanish.

I didn’t wait for the
Arabic translation. I let the Ruger fall to the sand and stepped away from it.

“Lie face down and place
your hands behind your head.”

I did as I was told.
Murphy rolled over and did the same. We ended up facing each other across five
feet of sand.

I heard horses approaching
from several directions. I turned my head and watched three mounted men in
green uniforms come carefully down the steep slopes of the arroyo. Two more
came up behind the jeep. Each was armed with a pump shotgun or assault rifle.

Murphy looked around
anxiously as the riders spread out to encircle us. He looked back at me.

“Remember,” he
whispered, “you’re my cousin.”

I could only stare at
him in disbelief.

In prison movies
solitary confinement is portrayed as the ultimate punishment, but I was rather
enjoying it. While I could see it growing old over an extended period of time,
it was a refreshing change from my busy schedule of cross country travel and
shootouts. The cell wasn’t much smaller than my New York apartment, was
definitely cleaner, and its whitewashed cinderblock walls created a Zen-like
ambience conducive to idle reflection. I had a bunk, a sink, a toilet, and
three squares a day of acceptable cuisine. What more could one man ask?

The first few hours
after my arrest had been spent in the cage with a number of other detainees,
but a dispute over seating arrangements had arisen between me and three other
occupants. A brief altercation resulted in them being carried off to the
infirmary. Since they appeared to have friends and supporters in the remaining
group, and I was the only Anglo, I was placed in solitary to prevent an
embarrassing murder, not to mention that blaming me for the fight cooled
passions and made the other prisoners more malleable. So, for the better part
of two days, the world sailed on without my input, and I could have cared less.

The only thing my tiny
resort lacked was reading material. To alleviate the boredom, I fell back on a
trick I’d learned from a Vietnam POW: mentally playing rounds of golf on my
favorite courses and pleased with how much better a golfer I was in my own
head. By late afternoon on my second day, I was playing Pebble Beach and I had
just executed a daring shot on the 17th. It’s a long hole for a par three,
unless you aim your drive right over the bizarrely shaped sand trap on the left
side of the sloping green. My drive was perfect. The ball bit hard and stopped
just a foot short of the pin. At least, I was honest enough not to fantasize a
hole in one.

I was lining up the
birdie putt when the cell door clanged open. It was not the usual CO. Instead,
two burly guys in dark suits crowded the doorway. Neither one looked
particularly happy.

“Get up and assume the
position,” said the taller of the two.

I leaned against the
wall, spreading my arms and legs.

“Cross ‘em,” said the
other man.

I crossed my arms at the
wrists and my legs at the ankles, which left me precariously balanced. I’d
heard about this technique, a variation on the standard search position, but
never seen it used. The upside was it gave the searcher more control. At the
slightest wrong move by the suspect, you simply kick away the crossed feet,
sending them face first into the ground. The downside was it made it more
difficult to search the crotch and wrist areas.

The shorter man stepped
up on my left side and placed his right foot firmly against the tops of my
crossed feet. After an expert frisk, he stepped away.

“Uncross ‘em and
continue facing the wall.”

I complied. He stepped
up again and snapped a cuff on my left wrist, twisting the arm behind my back
and pulling me back from the wall. Then he pulled the other arm back and cuffed
it, too. He shifted his grip to my upper arms, his strong fingers digging into
my flesh.

“Don’t panic,” he said.

A cloth hood was slipped
over my head and everything went dark. Don’t panic, I thought, as I began to
panic. Something cold snapped around my right ankle, then my left. I heard the
clank of chains. Leg irons. I was being rendered.

“Let’s go,” said the man
holding me.

He turned me towards the
door. When he let go the other man took my left arm and guided me through the
door. I shuffled along like Marley’s ghost, the clanking leg manacles echoing
hollowly in the narrow hall. Then we were in a wider area, an office most
likely, but there didn’t appear to be anyone there. There was no sound of
conversation and several phones were ringing unanswered. So, they’d cleared all
local law enforcement. That took some juice.

A door opened and some
of the dazzling Texas sunlight briefly pierced the fabric of the hood before I
was placed in a metal box.

“Bench behind you. Sit
down.”

I sat. I heard someone
take the seat across from me. A motor started and the metal box began moving.

“Where are we going?”

“Shut up.”

I surmised we were
headed for an airfield, the beginning of a journey that would end, where? Some
former Soviet republics were popular choices, now that the Arab Spring had
removed Cairo from the list. With luck I’d end up wherever Karen was and we
could have Christmas dinner together.

After forty-five minutes
or so, the truck pulled off the paved road onto a rough, pitted surface and
stopped. I heard a door slam up front. After some fiddling at the rear, I was
again bathed in sunlight. The hood was pulled from my head by the man who’d
cuffed me. He tossed it on the floor and bent to unlock the leg irons. While he
did, I looked out the door at a sliver of unremarkable desert and the rear end
of a tow truck. The other man was waiting patiently, one hand on the door. With
the other, he held a bulky manila envelope to his chest.

The manacles clanked to
the floor.

“Let’s see ‘em.”

I twisted to present my
cuffs. He unlocked them and stepped aside.

“Now, get out.”

I climbed out, squinting
in the harsh sunlight.

I saw we were just off a
two lane blacktop in the rutted parking lot of a gas station.

“What now?” I said.

“You might want to get
something to eat,” said the second man. He tossed me the manila envelope. The
other man slammed the rear door and latched it.

I looked inside the envelope
and found my wallet and money belt.

The two men walked up
opposite sides of the truck.

“Wait,” I said, “you’re
just leaving me here?” When they ignored me, I added, “I’m a dangerous criminal
on the loose.”

The taller man paused
while stepping into the driver’s seat. He shook his head and said, “You oughta
be ashamed of yourself.”

He got in, started the
engine and pulled away, turning onto the road and heading back the way we’d
come. I could see now that I was in a truck stop that included a diner. A couple
of tractor trailers were parked on the dirt lot beyond the diner. The only
other vehicle was a Ford sedan parked in front.

I checked the money belt
and it still contained cash. I was kind of hungry. Tucking the envelope under
my arm, I walked over to the diner and went in.

A buxom, middle-aged
waitress in a pink uniform was standing at the register sorting receipts. She
greeted me with a big smile.

“Hello there. Welcome!”

“Afternoon,” I said.

“Sit anywhere you want,”
she said, waving a chubby arm. “As you can see, it ain’t our busy hour.”

“Thanks.”

The two truckers on
stools near the register looked at me with mild curiosity. At the far end of
the counter an earnest looking young man in a dark suit was giving me the
steely eyed look. He might as well have had ‘Federal Agent’ stenciled on his
forehead. However my attention was drawn to the man sitting in a booth near
him. I strolled over and the young man stood up to block my way. I looked past
him at the man in the booth.

“Hello, John,” I said.

“That’s Director Roma to
you,” said John Roma. He gestured at the opposite side of the booth. “Have a
seat.”

By the time I finished
my story, I’d gone through steak, eggs, a stack of buttermilk pancakes, and two
cups of passable coffee.

“You’ve been busy,” said
Roma.

The waitress came by to
refill my coffee. Roma smiled at her and held a hand over his empty cup.

When she was gone, I
said, “Are you ever going to tell me why you’re not here?”

“What am I going to do
with you?” he said, not looking or sounding as if he really cared.
“Manslaughter, gun running, entering the country illegally, consorting with
known drug lords, theft of government property, to whit a passport and credit
card.”

“Ripped the tag off my
mattress, too.”

“You were warned to stay
out of this.”

“Oh, bullshit. I’m not a
complete idiot.”

“That is one man’s
opinion. Explain yourself.”

“At first I thought you
were treating me like some four year old, telling me you didn’t want me to eat my
spinach just so I would eat my spinach. That’s why you fucked with my passport
and bank accounts and planted a stakeout car. You knew after Raviv was killed I
wouldn’t let it go, but you needed it on the record that you did everything to
stop me. That little drama you staged at your office, treating me like a long
lost son in front of the troops, wasn’t for my benefit.”

“It kept you alive. They
were less likely to kill you if they thought you were a government agent.”

“That was a side effect,
not your reason. There’s a leak in your office. You needed a distraction.”

“I have limited
resources, and not many people I can trust.”

“I can imagine.
Investigating a corporation with ties to a powerful U.S. Senator. You’re
running something off the books, using assets you can trust, like Raviv. Why
not just ask me?”

He smiled. “I wasn’t
authorized to read you in. Besides, you turned your back on us once already.”

“You guys turned your
backs on me. Besides, I was a red herring. You wanted them chasing me.”

He smiled. “Perhaps.”

“And while they were,
Timmy the bartender might have more freedom to act.” I smiled. “You’re a hell
of a poker player, but I saw you twitch.”

“I heard about your
little pronunciation lesson. Tim can be overly theatrical.”

“Well, it’s gonna get him
killed.”

Roma looked as if he was
going to speak, but folded his hands on top of the file and said nothing.

“She’s coming back,
isn’t she?” I said.

“How about some pie,
Hon?” said the waitress.

“Honestly, Ma’am, I
don’t think I can cram one more bit of your excellent food into me, much as I
would like to.”

“Well, thank you for the
compliment, Sug. You enjoy your coffee now.” She hurried off.

Roma opened the file.
“This says you have a distinct distrust and dislike of authority. And a
challenge brings out the best in you. I am the authority figure who made things
as challenging as possible.”

“What’s that, my
eHarmony profile?”

“It’s your psych profile
from North Carolina.” He smiled at my reaction. “I told you I knew.”

“You’re a plugged in,
devious motherfucker, I’ll give you that, but, I didn’t stick with this because
of you.”

“Raviv?”

“And Kenneth Boyd. I was
hired to find him, or what happened to him. And when I do, I’ll find who killed
Raviv.”

“Not buying the Black
September revenge angle?”

“Never did.”

I heard the sound of air
brakes and saw a bus pulling into the parking lot.

“There’s my ride, so you
have thirty seconds to tell me why I’m here.”

“I’m now authorized to
read you in.”

“I’m not interested in
working for the government.”

“I know what happened in
Paris, and how you feel about it. You think it was your fault.”

“It was.”

“I agree. It was.” His
smile widened a little. “Ah, no one’s ever said that to you before, have they?”

I had no answer.

“I’ve read your whole
file, not just this one.” He tapped the folder for emphasis. “All the way back
through Customs. You were all about the job and nothing but the job. That’s why
you had so many problems with guys like Imperatrice. You’re terrible at
politics, but a hell of a cop. And you threw it all away, for this.” He tapped
the file again.

“It was something I
needed to do.”

“You could have done
something else. Joined the Army, the Peace Corps, run for office. They used
you, used your anger and your grief. And you thought you were getting revenge.
Tell me, did it make you feel any better? Is she resting any easier?”

“Leave her out of it.”

“I can’t.” He leaned in
a little. “I knew your wife, worked with her. She was a great cop and a devout
Catholic. I think we both know what she would have thought about this.” He
tapped the file. “People like me and her we’re about justice, not vengeance.
You stepped across that line, rejected everything she believed in, that you
believed in, government sanction be damned.” He lifted a page. “Raviv knew that.
He wanted you scrubbed from the program.”

“So, why wasn’t I?”

“He was overruled. After
all, he was just a consultant who barely knew you, and he was openly against
the whole program anyway. Meanwhile, your former boss gave you a glowing
recommendation, and you seemed like a natural.” He closed the file.

“My meeting with Raviv
was not chance, was it?” I said. “Nor was his friendship with Boyd. He was
working with you. He said there were others watching me. You were behind Raviv
hiring me, weren’t you?”

“No one is ever
completely off the grid. We kept tabs on you.”

“We?”

“Raviv, me, other
interested parties.”

“Why? What do you want?”

“We can talk about it
later.”

“What ‘later’?”

“After you’ve done what
you intend to do.”

“You have no idea what I
intend to do.”

He just smiled.

“It’s deflating to my
ego,” I said, “that everyone finds me so easy to read.”

“Then grow up.”

“Thanks, Dad. In the
meantime, I’m getting a little tired of being everyone’s butt boy. Tell me what
you want.”

He spun his coffee cup
slowly in a circle and said nothing.

“Today, I meant.”

He looked at me over
those glasses with bemused patience.

“I can’t imagine how you
were ever accused of insubordination.”

“Ha, ha.”

“Tell me about it.”

I looked outside. The bus
was pulling out of the parking lot.

“Craig, tell me about
that incident. What happened?”

“I called my boss some
unflattering names in front of a roomful of witnesses.”

“What were the
circumstances?”

“The circumstances were
him not letting me do my job.”

“Tell me more,” he said.

“We had a string of
minor busts, mules flying in from South America, always the same airline. After
a while I noticed that nearly every time we’d catch one of these people, a big
shipment of coke hit the market.”

“The mules were decoys,”
he said.

“That’s what my partner
and I figured. They gave us a small fish as misdirection, while they got the
real shipment through. I started investigating and found a pattern in the crew
assignments that seemed to match up. A female flight attendant. My partner and
I worked it quietly for a few months.”

“Why quietly?”

“Around that time things
had a way of leaking, so we kept it between us. The flight attendant had a
sister who worked at the airport. The sister’s boyfriend was a thrower.”

“Thrower?”

“A baggage handler. The
guys who unload the luggage. The inside girl handled the ground crew
assignments. She made sure he always worked the right plane. Someone had rigged
a way to have the dirty bag bypass our inspection process during the baggage
transfer.”

“How were they doing
it?”

“Pulled a switch on the
trolley, replaced the dirty bag with an exact duplicate and swapped the tags by
switching bag handles. The suitcase with the drugs got mixed in with bags from
an incoming domestic flight. The courier on this end simply picked it up in
baggage claim and walked out.”

“And the flight
attendant?”

“She helped get the bags
through at the South American end and kept her eyes open for any hint we were
watching.”

“What did you do about
it?”

“We took a plan to
Imperatrice. Flip the stew and let her keep bringing the stuff in while we
traced the whole pipeline. I also wanted to bring in the DEA, utilize their
resources at the other end.”

“How could you trust
her?”

“She knew she was
caught. She was only doing it because her little sister had been threatened.
The kid sister didn’t know, she was head over heels for this guy and did
whatever he said. She didn’t realize he was using her or why. Big sister
offered to give us the whole operation. In return, they would both get
immunity, and then witness protection.”

“So, what could go
wrong?”

“Imperatrice rejected
the idea. Went for the quick hit to pad his arrest stats and keep DEA from
getting any credit.”

“He had to have more
reason than that.”

“He did. The usual one,
money. When you expand an investigation like that, it needs extra manpower. You
need to give the informant some rope, so you need people to watch and protect
them. You need to put people on the people they meet, and more people to secure
the meeting places.”

“To be fair, Craig,
those operations are risky and rarely pan out. They can be a budget buster,
which makes it a black mark on the career of the officer who authorized it.”

“This one was worth the
risk. There was major weight coming in. Those girls were just one part of a
bigger operation. Someone at the airport was involved, someone high up, I could
feel it.”

“But, Imperatrice went
for the easy bust.”

“Right. We arrested the
women and tried to make a case against some of the ground crew.”

“The boyfriend?”

“Vanished. Never saw him
again.”

“Tipped off?”

“Had to be.”

 “What happened to
the sisters?”

“Someone bailed them
out,” I said. “They never made it home. Vanished into thin air.”

“You ever find them?”

“Sort of. About a week
later, a Newark cop saw some homeless guy playing soccer on the sidewalk
outside the abandoned Westinghouse factory. It didn’t look right to him, the
ball was bouncing funny, or something, so he went to check it out.” I looked
Roma in the eye. “It wasn’t a ball; it was the younger sister’s head. They ID’d
her from dental records.”

“I see.”

“Newark PD searched the
building. Found a sort of torture chamber in one of the rooms, blood all over
the walls. I saw the place. There was a metal chair with manacles and one of
those old claw foot bathtubs. The tub was caked with dried blood.”

“Hers?”

“Among others. They used
it to cut up the bodies of people they killed. The FBI lab said there was DNA
from a dozen different people in that tub.” I looked down. “God only knows what
the last hours of that girl’s life were like.”

“And her sister? The
flight attendant?”

“Her DNA was in the
tub.” I grinned without humor. “Guess they must have mislaid the one head while
they were hauling all the parts out of there.”

“How does this relate to
your insubordination?”

“I told that fucking
bureaucrat where to get off, how he’d gotten those women killed.”

He consulted the file.
“Witnesses said they were afraid you were going to hit him.” He looked at me
over his glasses. “Why didn’t you?”

“He wanted me to. I
didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of getting me fired.”

“A rare instance of
restraint on your part.” He closed the file. “And that’s when you were
transferred to the Towers, correct?”

“Yes. He requested an
FFD and I was assigned to administrative duties.”

“Why weren't you there
on 9/11?”

The diner suddenly felt
cold and it wasn’t the air conditioning.

“Craig?” he said. “Why
weren't you at the office that day?”

“My wife, she had a
dental appointment that morning. She said she couldn't make it, work related.
She’d gotten them to switch it to me.” I stopped for a moment, thinking about
the colossal impact of seemingly insignificant decisions. “I didn't want to go,
but she insisted.” I felt the emotion rise and fought it down. “She said those appointments
were so hard to get.”

“Did you know she was
going to the Trade Center that day?”

I shook my head. “No,
she didn't work there. She was Justice. Inspector General’s office.”

“I know. I knew your
wife since her undercover days, since before you two met.”

“I know that. You were
at her funeral.”

“I also know she seemed
to make damn certain you weren't at the Towers on September eleventh.”