Kage (32 page)

I nodded. I had been to Fort Benning and seen the Spe-

cial Forces training at work. There’s a special school there, the

Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which

trains military personnel from Latin America.

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Kage

“Well, the Alphas are expanding their reach. The word I

get is that they’re here. And they’re even scaring our pals from

TM-7. My guess is that you’ve got more than one problem and

soon the Alphas will be on your case as well.”

His voice was somber, almost reflective in the dim recess of

the car. Then he stirred, prompted by a new thought.

“You’re not carrying a weapon, are you, Burke? My profes-

sional opinion is that you’re gonna need one.” He dropped the

Blazer into gear, seeming relieved at the prospect of concrete

action. “Fortunately, here in the West, that’s something that’s

easily fixed.”

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19

Ground

Distant hills washed pink in the early morning light. Small

birds fluttered in the bushes. I could smell water and cut grass.

The golf course itself was an expanse of lush, dark greens. It

was as if all the moisture had been sucked down out of those

far hills, leaving them to ring the horizon like the fossilized

remains of ancient monsters.

Parties of golfers dotted the course; men and women in

brightly colored sportswear and sunglasses, tanned and intent

on the game. Noises were subdued: the distinctive
whuck
of

someone hitting a ball, and the faint snippets of conversation

across the fairway. I stood in the shadow of the clubhouse,

waiting.

Charlie Fiorella spotted me as he approached the final

hole, walking with Lori Westmann. A good cop never loses the

knack of scanning the environment for threats, and Charlie

had been a good cop. I saw him look my way, once, but other

than that he didn’t react. His movements on the green were

smooth and unhurried, focused. When he was done, he spoke

quietly to Westmann. She looked up sharply, her head turning

in my direction. Fiorella touched her on the arm, a reassuring

gesture. Then he came my way.

“It’s a private club,” he told me. “She wants to have you

arrested for trespassing.” There was no greeting or handshake.

He stood about five feet away, his tanned face professional.

“What if I were just here to see you?”

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Kage

“Then maybe
I’ll
have you arrested.” But his body language

was relaxed and there was a hint of levity in his voice.

I shrugged. “You’ll probably have to wait in line.”

Charlie took off his sunglasses and looked at me carefully.

He jerked his head. “Come inside, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

Another nice view, another table with clean linen and heavy

silverware. There was the aromatic scent of coffee and bacon.

It was surreal. In the subdued and civilized clubhouse dining

room, I was oblivious to comfort, conscious only of the danger-

ous world stirring with another dawn, of time ticking away and

the need to be moving.

The waiter was Latino. His dark, sunburned skin made a

nice contrast with the elegant white jacket he wore. He word-

lessly delivered a stainless steel carafe of coffee to our table,

flashed Charlie a knowing smile, and left.

Fiorella sat across from me, waiting.

“Ever get to the bottom of that bogus attack with the

shuriken
when I was out here, Charlie?”

“What makes you think it was bogus?” he said.

“You never followed up. I never heard anything. It’s not like

you.”

Fiorella swung his head back and forth, mulling over what

to say. He finally decided. “Westmann put him up to it. Her

boyfriend, Xochi. The Chief. I didn’t know it at the time. It

was a harebrained stunt, but Lori was looking for something to

spice up the negotiations about re-releasing her father’s books.

She figured resurrecting the old man’s bullshit fantasy about

Asian assassins would help drive up her advance.”

“She was probably right,” I said. “Ever wonder why her

boyfriend was so eager to help out?”

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John Donohue

He shrugged. “You’d have to ask him.”

“Xochi,” I said. “I’ll bet he has all kinds of information.”

“He might,” Fiorella said noncommittally, “but he seems to

have disappeared.”

“Convenient.”

“For him,” he told me.

“I hear that he’s laying low, Charlie. He may have gotten

in over his head and needs to hide out until things blow over.”

“Things?” His voice sounded skeptical, but Fiorella didn’t

smile. He also didn’t seem to care whether I went on or not. He

poured some cream into his coffee and meticulously stirred it

with a spoon. The act didn’t fool me: there was watchfulness

in his eyes—they were the still eyes of a man looking hard at

hostile terrain.

“He knows a lot about the desert, Charlie,” I began, “about

the border. And before he died, Elliot Westmann was writing

down the lore that Xochi proffered. Westmann didn’t know it,

but some of that stuff was valuable information.”

“What makes you say that, Burke?” He didn’t betray any

interest, but he was letting me talk to see where this was going

to go.

“That stupid project I started for Lori Westmann,” I said.

“I ended up with copies of some of her father’s notes on a new

book.”

“All of which is property of the Westmann estate,” he

instructed. “I’ll want them back.”

“You’re not alone.”

Charlie carefully picked up his coffee cup and sipped at

it, like someone working very hard not to react. “What’s that

mean?” he said.

I leaned back in my chair. “Let’s say that perhaps Xochi,

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Kage

who is, I think we can both agree, a man on the make, was

looking to cash in on some of his knowledge about the desert.”

Fiorella shrugged. “Let’s say that.”

“Elliot Westmann takes an unfortunate spill and that

potential gravy train gets derailed. Xochi’s sleeping with Lori

Westmann, which is nice for him I suppose, but he’s looking

for more. Maybe he wants to impress her; maybe he suspects

that theirs is not a long-term thing. So maybe Xochi, who is

not hindered by too many scruples, puts some feelers out to

the sorts of people who are interested in little known, relatively

unused trails across the desert. He wants to sell them his maps.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Fiorella commented. “Wouldn’t be

a brilliant move in my opinion.”

“Unfortunately for Xochi, he didn’t ask you,” I concluded.

He said nothing, but tipped his coffee cup in acknowledgment.

I sat forward in my seat. “Problem is, Charlie, that these

people are very committed to the idea that Xochi’s trails stay

their little secret. And when they learned I might have inadver-

tently stumbled onto this information, they were not pleased.”

Fiorella’s face went slack; he set his cup down on the table

and waited.

“They sent someone after me, Charlie,” I hissed. I tried to

stay calm, but my voice was tight. It trembled with memory.

“They tried to kill my girlfriend Sarah. They tried to kill me.”

I could feel the anger starting to spiral out of me. The implica-

tions of what I was going to do sparked to life inside my head.

They made me more like them than I cared to admit.

He looked down at his hands, dark and thick things against

the expanse of clean linen. His eyes came up and met mine. “I

didn’t know,” he said simply.

I pushed the anger down and got some control back. “If I

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John Donohue

thought you did I wouldn’t be here,” I finally said.

Fiorella took a deep breath and gazed out the window. He

exhaled slowly through his nostrils, shaking his head. “Idiots.”

He could have meant Xochi and Lori Westmann. He could

have meant the people who came after me. It could have been a

global comment on humanity. I didn’t respond to it.

“I’m not sure what they told you, Charlie. How much you

know.”

He looked back at me. “My job,” he said with mild disdain,

“is to know only the things I need to, and not too much more.

Makes it easier on everyone and keeps me out of trouble.”

“Nice theory,” I told him. He didn’t say anything, so I con-

tinued. “Let me fill you in on some of the things you maybe

don’t know. Xochi sold the maps to his secret trails to the local

members of TM-7.”

“Oh, for Christ sake,” he muttered.

I held up a hand. “Wait, it gets better. Now a new group

is moving into town and they want to take over. Xochi by this

time is smart enough to realize that he doesn’t want to be any-

where near this dogfight. And he needs to go to ground. He

could hide out in the desert, of course, but that’s where all these

very angry new people are. He could maybe hunker down in

the
barrio
, but it wouldn’t take long to find him there either.

He needs to go somewhere that they can’t. My guess is that he

turns to Lori Westmann. But my experience of rich people,

Charlie, is that they are not particularly good about saying no

to themselves. And hiding out takes some discipline, involves

some discomfort.”

Fiorella grimaced. “They were both pretty clueless,” he

admitted.

I nodded. “They needed a pro, Charlie. A fixer. Xochi,

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Kage

I think, was realizing that he was getting expendable. He fig-

ured he’d lay low until all the shouting ended. Works out for

him, I suppose. But what he didn’t tell you was that the local

head of TM-7 was still looking to kill me to keep the desert

routes secret.”

Fiorella clasped his hands on the table, leaning in on his

forearms. “Burke, I had no way of knowing this.”

“I know Charlie, a round of golf every morning.” I poured

some more coffee into his cup. “You owe me nothing, but I’m

asking for some help; something very simple.”

Outside the sun was climbing. The sky was a bright, hard

blue. The expanse of the golf course shimmered in the rising

heat. Far away in the distance, the image of rocks and scrub and

hills danced in the thermal pulse of desert air. In the restaurant,

Charlie Fiorella was very still, dreading what I might ask.

“Tell Lori Westmann I can help her. TM-7 is gonna clean

up by eliminating anyone who knows about it, including her.

So, she’s got to convince Xochi to serve as a go between for me.

I need to meet with the man he sold his secrets to.”

“You sure?” Fiorella could read between the lines.

But I didn’t answer him. I wasn’t sure, just in motion.

Later, Daly had listened to my description of the ideal meet-

ing place: secluded, away from the city, with a high enough rise

to create a field of fire and enough cover on the ground to give

a reasonable chance of escape. He thought for a while, took out

a map, and checked some coordinates. Then we were off.

Southwest of the city along Route 86, he pulled off at a

town called Three Points, heading north toward the Ironwood

Forest National Monument. He made a series of turns onto

increasingly poor roads. On our final turn, the gravel gave out

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John Donohue

quickly and we bounced along the packed dirt road through

the dusty scrub brush toward our final destination.

The road didn’t end, it simply dissipated. A single-story

adobe building sat along the northern edge of the fan-shaped

clearing. The windows were blown out and there was no door

remaining. Some blotchy fifty gallon drums were scatted

around the side wall of the building. Odd pieces of old metal

laid tangled in sporadic clumps around the area.

Hills rimmed the clearing. I squinted into the sun, checked

my watch, and mentally noted due west.

“When will the sun be hitting the hill line over there?” I

asked. Daley told me. I nodded. “That’s when we’ll set the

meet.”

I strode across the clearing and up the western slope, work-

ing my way around rocks and through the scrub until I thought

we were high enough. At a jumbled cluster of rocks, I looked

down on the clearing and the building for line of sight. Then I

came back down. Daley watched me silently and said nothing.

“When we meet, I’ll ask him to come alone. How likely is it

that he’ll comply?” I asked him.

Daley snorted. “Not likely at all. These aren’t the boy scouts.

One way or another, he’ll bring backup.”

We were down by the building. “Could we get him inside

the building?”

“I wouldn’t go in, why would he?”

“So it happens here,” I said, standing in the dusty wash

where the road ended. I poked around. “There’s a gulley behind

the house, trending north and west. If we had to scramble, we

could get in it and head uphill to those rocks.”

“It would take some real scrambling, Burke.” Daley sounded

doubtful. “And what do you mean, ‘we’?”

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