No Way to Die (34 page)

“Back it up a little bit,” I said. “Zoom out. I want to see the general lay of the land.”

Kenny zoomed back out.

“Okay,” I said. “The whole place is made up of small farms.”

“Mostly flowers; some berries,” Richard added.

“And you’ve got this little river winding through here between the farm and Mount Vernon.”

“Skagit River,” Richard said.

“The Skagit River,” I said. “It runs right along the eastern side of the property.”

“See there—the property looks like a big upside-down right triangle,” Doc said. “The base leg—what, maybe a half mile long? It’s on the north, here on top. Then you got this leg that runs south along the river to a point, and then you got the—what do you call it—the hypotenuse? It runs northwest along the west side here. It’s got a road all along it. Only way in and out.”

“I’m impressed you remember so much about geometry, Doc,” I said.

“One of my best subjects,” he said, smiling. “We used it to call in artillery.”

“Really?” The man was full of surprises. I turned back to the map. “Anyway, with the house right in the middle of the property, surrounded by fields, it looks like they have a good unobstructed field of vision all the way around,” I said. “Hard to approach undetected.”

“Hard for a white man like you,” Doc said. “What’s in these fields?”

“Tulips, most likely,” Richard said.

“How tall are tulips?” Doc asked.

“This time of year, I’d say eighteen, twenty inches.”

Doc smiled but didn’t say anything.

I studied the map quietly for a minute. “Why this place?” I asked. “Why would Marlowe pick this particular spot? Put yourself in his shoes.”

We considered that for a minute.

“It’s quiet,” Doc said.

“The local police force is tiny,” Bobby added.

“It’s a hike up there from Seattle, and that means, logistically, it would be a bit of a challenge for the FBI, especially on short notice,” Richard said.

I nodded. These were all valid reasons.

“I know why,” Kenny said suddenly.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“There’s an airport right there.” He pointed to an airport just north of the farm. “It’s pretty big.”

We all studied the map for a moment.

“He may have something there,” Richard said. “Aside from all the other things we mentioned, that airport is only a couple of minutes away from the property.”

Kenny measured the distance. “Seven point four miles. All straight.”

“With no traffic to speak of,” I said. “Less than ten minutes, easy.”

“Exactly,” Kenny said. “Think about it. Marlowe will probably have his jet sitting on the tarmac, engines running at nine in the morning. He figures he’ll get the key from you, and ten minutes later, he’s in the air on his way to a safe haven.”

I nodded my head slowly, considering this. Concepts began to solidify in my mind.

“So it’s simple,” I said. “We have to approach a farmhouse in the middle of an open field undetected, save Toni from the heavily armed bad guys, make sure Marlowe doesn’t get the key to Starfire, and then make sure he gets busted before he can skip off to his waiting airplane, only minutes away.”

“All the while making sure we don’t get blown up,” Richard said. “Best not to forget about that.”

“How could I forget?” I looked around at the guys. “Piece of cake, right?”

It was quiet for a minute as everyone considered our options.

“Toni said Marlowe would do the unexpected,” I said. “Pretty clearly, she was right. I’ll bet he’s not giving us the same credit. I think it’s time for us to do something unexpected. I’ve got an idea.”

All eyes focused on me as I stood up and went to the map. I explained my idea, and the comments started to flow. Two hours later, our plan was complete, and everyone was familiar with his assignment.

* * * *

I made it home just after eight o’clock. I took the Starfire box home with me because I was going to need to get a very early start the next morning, and I didn’t want to have to swing by the office. When I got home, I took it out of the duffle bag and checked the tiny slide switch. It was barely visible on the bottom of the case, but it was securely in the off position—no LED glowing. I took my shoes off and tried to relax. I say “tried” because I never really got there.

I walked over to the stereo but nothing sounded good, so I changed my mind and left it off.

I made a sandwich, but it turned out that I didn’t have much of an appetite. I played with it for fifteen minutes or so before I tossed what was left, which was most of it.

I turned the TV on to the news, but as I tried to watch, it somehow seemed incredibly trivial, so I turned it back off.

I poured myself an African Amber from the growler in the refrigerator and sat on my sofa and stared at the wall. I listened to the clock tick. I ran our plan through my mind, over and over, probing, looking for weaknesses. The plan was bold, even a little audacious. But it wasn’t stupid. It should work. I hoped it worked. It had to work.

I grabbed my Martin and tried running through some songs. My fingers played the notes, but it was mechanical—there was no passion, no feeling. Technically, I imagine I hit the notes; I really don’t remember. My heart was somewhere else.

* * * *

At nine thirty, the phone rang. Caller ID: Jennifer.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hi,” she said. “How’s it going?”

I hadn’t planned on telling Jen what had happened or about our plans until tomorrow. I figured, as an FBI agent, she’d feel the need to notify her higher-ups about our little clandestine operation. This would most likely turn it into my feared big, official operation with all the accompanying hoops to jump through and rules to follow. I guess I figured that our situation was way too fluid for this. I was afraid that that sort of big operation might lead to the sort of bungling that could get Toni killed. But I couldn’t very well lie to her. She was a friend, but she was also a senior FBI agent. Lying to her was a good way to get busted.

“It’s not going too well,” I said.

“Why? Did you hear from Marlowe?”

“Yeah, I did. He called a few hours ago.”

“Really? What’d he say? Why didn’t you call me?”

“Jen, while we were jerking around at Starbucks waiting for someone who it turns out never had any intentions of showing, he was busy. He kidnapped Toni and Holly Kenworth. He’s holding them hostage right now.”

The line was silent for a second.

“You should have called,” she said. “I need to call an emergency meeting—to get everyone back in tonight.”She thought about this for another second. “Why didn’t you call, anyway?”

Before I could answer, she said, “What’s going on, Danny? You’re trying to make a deal on your own, aren’t you?”

“We have a plan,” I admitted.

“A plan?You going to share it?”

“Sorry, Jen. I can’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“Jen, listen. This prick is holding someone I care a whole lot about. He’s threatened to kill her if I don’t play along. And you know what? I believe him. I believe him because he’s done it before. He killed Thomas Rasmussen.”

“Think for a second, Danny,” she said. “You can’t go charging in, guns drawn, with your own private army. You’re going to get people killed. You’re going to get yourself arrested. Also, you can’t give Marlowe the key. Think of the chaos that could cause. If he sells it to a terrorist group—it could cost lives. You can’t do it, Danny.”

“We’re not going marching in, and we’re not going to shoot anybody unless they start shooting at us first. If that happens, I think shooting back would be self-defense. I’ll take that heat. As to the key, I need you to trust me on this, Jen. I’ll protect the key—I won’t give it to Marlowe unless it’s the only way. But—and you need to know this, too—if it comes to it, I’ll trade that key for Toni’s life in a split. Fuckin’. Second. No questions asked. Toni never signed up for this shit. She never agreed to sacrifice her life for any sort of greater good. And I won’t allow it to happen. I’ll say this—if I do have to give up the key, I’ll call you and tell you where you can bust him. But I’m not taking one single extra chance regarding Toni.”

“We can do this, Danny,” she said. “We have the manpower. We can assemble our Hostage Rescue Team. We can rescue Toni and protect the key at the same time.”

“By first thing tomorrow?At a remote site? Jen, if I really believed that,” I said, shaking my head, “I’d have you do it. I’m in no great hurry to walk into a shitstorm. But—and don’t take this personally ’cause I don’t mean it that way—you guys have your way of doing things: the FBI way. It’s designed for certain types of situations. And it’s probably really good in those circumstances. But in my opinion, this isn’t one of them. Marlowe already outsmarted the FBI earlier today. I’m afraid that if I involve the FBI again, Toni might get hurt this time. And I will not allow that to happen. Will. Not. There—that’s as honest as I can put it.”

“So you’re saying that you and what—two or three other guys—you’re better at hostage rescue than the FBI?”

“I’m saying in this particular case, with this particular set of constraints, yes—we’re better than the FBI. We can move faster, quieter, and more autonomously than you guys. We can bring the appropriate levels of firepower to bear at exactly the right moment.”

“And you’d rather do it alone. Great. Can you at least give me the details of when and where, even if you don’t want us there?”

Hate to say it, but I didn’t trust Jen to not try something behind my back. “All I can say is, tomorrow morning, and north of here.”

It was quiet for a second, and then she said, “Look, Danny, you may not believe it, but you can trust me. For you, I will go against everything I’ve been taught and let you do it on your own. This conversation never took place. You’re bound and determined to do this anyway, and I don’t want to mess up your plan and get anybody hurt—especially Toni.”

“Thank you,” I said, relieved. “I’ll always owe you one for this.”

“Damn straight you will,” she said. “And one day, I will collect. But meanwhile, are you sure you don’t want us in some capacity? Reserve?Anything? What are you planning to do with these guys? Execute them? Or were you going to have somebody arrest them? Think about it. Think of the legal aspect. If we’re there and shooting starts, no heat falls on you guys.”

“Well,” I said, “we had planned on calling you guys in to mop up.”

“Great,” she said. “Mop up. Is that it? We are pretty good at certain things—as you point out. Sure you don’t need us for something that you might consider a little more critical than just mopping up?”

I thought about this for a second.

“Since you offer—and this is only if I have your absolute word that you’ll not try to do anything else—you won’t try to follow me, for example, you won’t suddenly drop in out of the sky, nothing like that. If you’ll agree not to try and bust into the operation, then yeah, we have a role for you.”

“I promise,” she said. “What is it? What do you need us for?”

I spent twenty minutes explaining a part of our plan to her. I couldn’t reveal the details of the whole operation because, despite her assurances, I still didn’t trust her completely. She worked for the government, after all. But she was right. There was a role that they could play—something they were very good at.

* * * *

I needed to be on the road by about six. I was meeting the boys at a rally point in Mount Vernon at eight in the morning, and in order to safely be there by then, I wanted to leave the house early. Assuming six hours of sleep, I needed to hit the sack by ten thirty or so, allowing half an hour for tossing and turning.

Turns out that half an hour wasn’t nearly enough tossing and turning time. I went lights out at ten thirty, as planned. At eleven, I was still thinking about what was going on—what had happened, what might happen. At eleven thirty, my mind was stuck on a potential problem with our plan. By midnight, the good news was that I’d worked out a solution—or rather, figured out that what I’d thought was a problem really wasn’t that significant in the first place. The bad news was that, realizing this, my mind was free to go back to worrying about Toni.

My emotions swung from anxiety to nervousness to anger to fear. Marlowe was going to seriously fucking pay for messing with my friend.

My friend. I ran the thought back through my mind. She was my friend—my best friend. She was a colleague. A mentor, even—sometimes, anyway. But there was something else, something more making me feel this way. If I was completely honest with myself, I had to admit that even though we weren’t lovers, Toni meant more to me than any other person on this earth except maybe my parents (and they were a given). That’s how important she was to me—that’s what she meant to me.

Lying there alone, thinking about her held hostage by Marlowe, I could picture her—afraid and vulnerable. Then, suddenly, it hit me. For maybe the first time in my life, I truly understood what “empty” really means. It sucks. It’s like a big, gaping hole, right in the middle of your being. It’s impossible to ignore, impossible not to address. It dominates your consciousness in the way that thoughts of Toni now dominated mine.