Karen Vail 01 - Velocity (44 page)

Robby blinked away tears. “That’s no one’s business, Diego.”

Diego wagged a finger at him. “The Lord is judging you, Robby. Here and now.

Do not lie. When you went after Soto, when you hunted him down, and then pul ed the trigger, you broke the law. You murdered him. In cold blood.”

“C’mon man. I was a kid.”

“I’m sure that’s what you’ve told yourself al these years. But you were a teenager. Doesn’t matter. Are you saying that excuses it? If you see a teen murder someone now as a cop, do you let him go because he was young, or do you arrest him?”

Robby’s hands were fisted knuckle-white. “What do you want me to say, Diego?”

“Say, ‘I accept responsibility for what I’ve done. And I wil pay the price and I wil ask the Lord’s forgiveness.’”

“Soto was scum, you know that. He kil ed my uncle, and I’m sure he’d kil ed others. He deserved it.”

“Not your decision, was it? That’s what you would tel the guys you hook up in handcuffs now, no?”

Robby did not answer. Ahead, out the window, he saw Wil ie Quintero—Diego’s partner—approaching.

“Wil ie wil be back any second. This ain’t up for discussion,
hermano
. You’re in or you’re out. I need to know.”

Robby watched Quintero’s shuffling gait as he moved closer. Less than fifty feet away. “Get us out of here, man. Now—he’s got no way to fol ow us. Turn around and drive right into the roadblock—”

“Wil ie doesn’t trust anyone, Robby. He took the keys with him. But I got us a plan.” Diego covered his mouth, turned, and looked toward the minimart. “He’s got a bad prostate, so he has to pee a lot. Next time he pul s over, I’m gonna make a cal . You got someone we can trust?”

“Hel yeah. Someone I trust with my life.”

“Next stop. I’l cal .” Diego turned back to Robby. “I need your answer. In or out?

Give the word,
hermano
, and we’l be on our way.”

Robby’s eyes scanned the car’s interior, came to rest on the dark gray grease-stained carpet. He had no choice. He had to confront the matter at hand. And that was finding a way to escape. If that meant agreeing to Diego’s demand to repent and turn himself in, so be it. But was Diego right? Was that the right thing to do?

Diego craned his neck around and then swung back. “He’s coming. Wel ?”

“I ask the Lord’s forgiveness for having sinned.” Despite the protein bar, the only thing he had eaten in days, he stil felt weak. The stress of his confession did not help. He let his torso lie back on the seat. “I ask forgiveness for taking the life of Gerardo Soto.”

“Very good. But make no mistake,
hermano
. If we get away, and you do not confess—if you do not tel them what you did—I wil .”

Robby nodded slowly. “Okay.”

The door flung open and Quintero got in the car. He threw a glance at Robby, then faced Diego. “How is he?”

Diego locked eyes with Robby. “I think he’s doing much better now.” He swung around in his seat. “Let’s get going. We’re behind schedule.”

77

M
ann did an admirable job of keeping the DEA’s Chevrolet SUV lined up with the Land Rover, but they were fal ing dangerously far behind. The road was rough and their vehicle had bottomed out several times. Their heads were slamming into the roof and their shoulders into the doors, despite their seat restraints.

Without night vision equipment to al ow him to see in the dark, DeSantos was beginning to think they were going to lose their target into the darkness of a rural, hil y countryside. Then his phone rang. Vail.

“We’re approaching your position,” she said. “I see you, in a cloud of dust, about a thousand yards ahead.”

“Do you see the asshole we’re chasing? We’re losing visual.”

With her headset off, Vail had to strain to hear him. “He’s about three-quarters of a mile ahead of you.”

“You see him?”

“Affirmative,” Vail said. “I’m wearing a set of NVGs.”

DeSantos looked skyward—and a lurch smashed his forehead against the windshield trim of the roof. He winced, picked up the phone that had dropped in his lap, then said, “I love you, Karen. Go get that sucker. Take him down, hard.”

“Wil do,” Vail said. “Fol ow us in.”

TURINO, ALSO WEARING night vision goggles, banked the Huey and brought them a few hundred yards above the Land Rover.

“You see what I see?” Vail asked.

“That huge body of water up ahead?”

“I don’t think he can see where he’s going,” Vail said. “No headlights, running dark. Unless he knows this rough terrain intimately—”

“We should force him straight into the lake, end this chase sooner rather than later.” Turino jutted his head forward, concentrating on the landscape.

“Can you do that?”

“I’ve landed a Huey at night in a Bolivian jungle. Ended up clipping the rotor tips because the clearing wasn’t very clear at al . Thick foliage al around us. But if I can do that, I can do this.”

“Yeah,” Vail said, “I was thinking the same thing.”
Not really. I know nothing
about landing in jungles and clipped rotor tips. Gotta admit, though, it sounded
damn good.

“I’m going to drop us down low, take us in alongside him. If you see anything ahead we don’t want to hit—trees, wires, poles, whatever—speak up. Anything like that’d seriously fuck us up.”

Vail leaned forward and peered out the window, concentrating on the approaching terrain. “How long til he reaches that lake?”

“Approximately half a mile. He’s moving about sixty. He’l hit it in about thirty seconds.”

“So the plan is to steer him into the water.”

“Unless you come up with something better, yeah, that’s the plan.”

Twenty-five seconds later, the Land Rover braked hard in a dramatic up-churn of dirt, then veered sharply right, executing the maneuver they had anticipated.

Turino dropped lower and lined up the chopper along the right side of the Land Rover, keeping a few dozen yards above the vehicle. He leaned forward and brought his face closer to the windshield. “Just thought of something. Hang on, I think I can pul this off.”

Hang on? You think?

Turino glanced over his left shoulder at the vehicle below. He clenched his jaw, then dropped hard and fast. He tightened his grip on the control stick and moved the Huey just ahead of the Land Rover.

Vail didn’t know a whole lot about helicopters, but she had seen videos of them catching a skid or rotor blade and jackknifing into the ground in a spectacular and deadly crash.

Jesus Christ. What the hell is he doing?

As Vail opened her mouth to ask that very question, a dense, bil owing cloud of dust rose and swirled in front of the SUV.

“This baby’s big enough to cause a brownout,” Turino said. “Main rotor downwash. Blown up dust and debris, driver can’t see where he’s going.”

The Land Rover slowed. “Okay, this is it!” Turino rapidly swung the Huey alongside the SUV. “Here’s the ‘hang on’ part—”

He shoved the chopper’s skids against the roof of the Land Rover, and the SUV

swung sharply left, down the graded embankment, skirting the water’s edge. With a sudden jolt, its right fender glanced off a boulder, sending the vehicle into the lake.

Turino banked hard right and upward, moving away from the Land Rover as it splashed against the water and stopped abruptly, as if caught in a giant spider web.

“He’s down!” Turino said.

Vail phoned DeSantos. “Target’s in the water. Repeat. Target is in the water.

We’re circling back to get a light on him.”

Turino and Vail removed their NVGs. Turino switched on the Huey’s spotlight and trained it on the Land Rover. Vail moved it around in a sweeping left to right manner, attempting to locate the vehicle’s occupant.

“There,” Turino said, pointing at a spot below. “Swimming back toward shore.”

“Got him.” Vail angled the light onto his position. The man was splashing desperately toward the lake’s edge. As soon as the area around him became il uminated, he stopped and looked skyward, the downdraft of the rotors flapping his hair and rippling the water’s surface.

Vail pul ed her BlackBerry back to her face and shoved it beneath the earpiece of her headset. “Your game now. When you’ve got him in custody, we’l join you on the ground.”

DESANTOS WAS FIRST to make it to the lake’s edge. He drew down on his target and waited for the man to approach. DeSantos could’ve jumped in after the suspect, but he didn’t have a change of clothes, and he reasoned that due to the temperature of the water, the man had no choice but to return to shore.

And a moment later, that’s exactly what happened. A thin man with what appeared to be a gold front tooth slogged onto the rock-strewn edge, then placed his hands behind his head.

DeSantos knew that having him provide answers might be a more difficult task.

“Search him,” he said to Dixon, who was closest. While DeSantos covered her, Dixon holstered her pistol, then moved to the prisoner and shoved him facedown on the ground. She pul ed a long switchblade from his back pocket, a cel phone, and ID that DeSantos was sure would turn out to be bogus.

As Mann stood guard, watching the area behind them, Dixon read the suspect his rights, then placed a set of flex cuffs around his wrists.

Fifty yards to the east, Turino set the Huey down. Vail deplaned and ran toward the knot of task force teammates.

Dixon yanked the prisoner to his feet and DeSantos stepped up to him, remaining far enough away that the man would not be able to land a kick.

“You speak English?” DeSantos asked.

“Yeah,” the man said.

“Your name?”

The suspect turned and looked off into the darkness. Vail tried to recal the photo she had taken from Cortez’s house, but whether or not it was the stress of the moment—of the past few weeks—she couldn’t retrieve the image from the recesses of her memory. She was not sure if this man was Arturo Figueroa.

“Silent treatment ain’t gonna work with us,” DeSantos said. “Believe me, you don’t want to know what I do for a living.”

The man lifted his face and turned it toward DeSantos. “And you don’t want to know what I do for a living.”

“We already know,” Vail said, Robby’s jacket flapping in the breeze. She walked past DeSantos and stopped a foot from the man’s face. “And I’m in no fucking mood to play games. You can either cooperate and answer a few simple questions, or we push you back into that water and hold your head down til your lungs fil up.

We cut your cuffs and let you sink. No one would question it. You drove into the water and drowned. And in case you didn’t notice, it’s pitch black and we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. You see any witnesses? Because I sure don’t.” Vail tilted her head back and observed. The man tensed his brow and narrowed his eyes.

The wind whipped up, sending a shiver shuddering through her body. She gathered the jacket tighter around her torso. “I get it,” she said. “You don’t believe me. Federal agents don’t kil innocent suspects. Wel , you got that right, asshole.

But you’re not an innocent suspect. And I need the answers
now
. So the rules aren’t what you think they are.” She stopped and waited for him to process that.

“Let’s start with your name.”

The man did not respond.

“Al right, fine. We don’t have time for this shit. Drown him,” she said, then turned to walk away. Dixon and DeSantos each grabbed an arm and dragged him backward. He fought them, kicking his legs and twisting his torso.

But as they approached the water’s edge, he yel ed, “Arturo. Arturo Figueroa.”

DeSantos and Dixon stopped but maintained their hold on either side.

Vail walked up to him. “Very good. I’ve got a few other questions, Arturo. Answer, and we may let you go. If you don’t answer, I think you know what’l happen.” She waited a beat, then said, “We’re looking for a federal agent by the name of Hernandez. He was running an undercover op against your cartel. We know his cover was blown and we know you brought him to San Diego.”

“Then you know a lot,” Figueroa said.

Vail waited, but he offered nothing further. “You’re pushing me, Arturo, and I’ve reached my end. Last chance. Where’s Hernandez?”

Figueroa struggled against DeSantos and Dixon. When he apparently realized his efforts were futile, he said, “I don’t know. He was being held at a house with smuggled il egals near Palm and the 805. Someone came and busted him out a little while ago.”

“Who? Who busted him out?” Figueroa set his jaw. “I don’t know. Information like that isn’t shared. We work in groups, so one doesn’t know what the other’s doing.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got the boss’s ear. We know that.”

“I’m tel ing you, I haven’t spoken to Carlos. I don’t know who took him.”

“If you had to guess,” Vail said. “Who?”

Figueroa glanced around, shuffled his feet. Licked his lips. Clearly uncomfortable. “We had some discussions with a guy repping Alejandro Vil arreal.

Know who that is?”

“Yeah,” Turino said. For his task force col eagues, he said, “Vil arreal runs a rival cartel. Smal er—much, much smal er than Cortez. But they make plenty of noise—

and money—in their own right.” To Figueroa, Turino said, “What kind of discussions did Vil arreal’s man have with Cortez?”

“I wasn’t there. I only know what my friend told me.”

“Who’s your friend?” Vail asked.

Figueroa again wind-mil ed his arms against the grip of DeSantos and Dixon. It was a fruitless effort that nevertheless reminded them to remain attentive.

“Your friend, Arturo. We want a name,” Vail said.