Oath to Defend (10 page)

23

The next morning, Barak called his man watching the young polo star, Marco Vazquez.

“How is our celebrity?” he asked.

“He is still in bed,” the watcher said. “But unless he rides today, he will head to the bar for his breakfast.”

“Has he had any visitors?”

“Only ones asking for his autograph or women seeking his bed. He keeps to himself mostly, watching soccer matches and drinking. He makes everyone angry when he won’t let others watch baseball, but he doesn’t care. He just gives the bartender money. For a big star, he doesn’t look very happy.”

“I need to talk to him,” Barak said. “How long will he be in the bar?”

“If today is like yesterday, until he has lunch.”

“I’m on my way. Follow him if he leaves.”

Barak left the Sunriver Resort and drove north to the Pronghorn Resort. The high desert of Oregon, with the snow capped peaks of the Three Sisters on his left and range land and sagebrush on his right, made the drive north on Highway 97 pass quickly. Except for the heavier traffic on the bypass around the city of Bend, he was able to keep the big SUV at sixty miles an hour the whole way as he considered his options for dealing with the polo playboy.

The celebrity fundraiser featuring Vazquez was a big deal for the region and the amateur players of the Northwest. It had required a substantial financial commitment to cover the young star’s appearance fee and travel expense, but the organizers had eagerly agreed to add such a star to their program. The star’s fee, however, did not include the cost of transporting the six polo ponies he traveled with. But that was only a small part of the cost of the entire operation, and it had provided an excellent way to move the nuke north from San Diego. Moving it to the intended target, the last critical stage of the plan, wouldn’t be nearly as expensive.

Which was why Vazquez’s heavy drinking worried him. One slip of his liquor-loosened tongue could cause all their careful work to go to waste. The young man was vaguely aware of his father’s involvement with the Alliance over the years, and he was also astute enough to understand the danger to his father and the rest of his family if he didn’t fully cooperate. He wasn’t aware, however, of the demolition nuke that had ridden along with his polo ponies all the way from San Diego, or that the crew driving the trucks consisted of Hezbollah warriors. In that sense, he was an innocent involved in a deadly plan. But he needed to be reminded he would be just as dead as the rest of his family if he betrayed Barak’s mission in any way.

The Pronghorn Club and Resort where Vazquez was staying fit the young playboy, Barak thought. It was as luxurious as any of the golf resorts he had played in Las Vegas before he’d had to disappear, and it was far more scenic. It was a shame he didn’t have time for eighteen holes on the Jack Nicklaus-designed course.

Although the organizer of the polo invitational had offered to let Vazquez stay at his ranch, he had declined and rented a suite. He apparently didn’t spend a lot of time there, however. According to reports from the watcher, the young star preferred the bar in the clubhouse when he wasn’t in the room of one of several young female admirers. If Barak wanted a private word with him, it would have to be around noon in the bar.

After parking his rental Escalade, he found Vazquez right where the watcher said he would be, seated at the end of the bar in the Trailhead Grill. Barak sat on the stool next to him.

“Your father would be disappointed in you, Vazquez,” he said in a friendly voice. “He told you to behave yourself when you came to Oregon.”

“How would you know that?” Vazquez asked without looking up.

“Because I told him to tell you to behave. He’s a smart man. He cares what happens to his family, unlike you.” Now Barak’s voice was less friendly.

Vazquez turned and looked into the eyes of the man to his right. “You? You are the one he’s afraid of? The one who made me come here?”

“Quiet your voice,” Barak said. “Get up and go out to the patio where we can talk.”

Barak led the way and stopped at the wrought iron railing. Without turning toward Vazquez, he said, “Don’t ever raise your voice to me again. If you do, I will have your little sister kidnapped and raped until she pleads to be killed, and then her head alone will be sent to your mother to be buried. If you continue to get drunk every day and whore around every night, I will have your two brothers hacked to death with machetes and fed to your father’s pigs. And if you do not do everything I tell you to do, I will have your mother and father killed, and then I will come for you. Now do I make myself clear?”

Vazquez stared at him.

“I asked you a question. Answer me.”

Vazquez continued to stare, but he couldn’t make a sound. He nodded and when he could finally speak, it was a quiet “Yes.”

“Good. We understand each other then. Ride your ponies. Show everyone what a star you are. Sober up. And pray we don’t have to meet again.” With that, Barak turned and walked away.

Vazquez remained on the patio, looking out toward the mountains for a long time before he turned and headed to his suite.

24

After a morning run and a light breakfast, Drake headed to Bend in his metallic gray Porsche. The last of the air-cooled Porsches, his 1997 Carrera was the gold standard for many Porschephiles. Drake liked the car because it was fast, looked great, and was fun to drive, which was the main reason he was looking forward to his time on the road to Bend. It was a chance to drive as fast as he wanted while his radar and laser protection system kept him from getting a speeding ticket. The concentration the drive required would also give his mind a chance to sort out why he thought an international polo star might be involved in nuclear terrorism or with his arch enemy, David Barak.

One brochure about a polo match, left in a Mexican villa that Barak might have stayed in, didn’t exactly link the Argentine polo player, who happened to be in San Diego when a nuclear device was possibly detected, with a nuke in Bend. Or mean David Barak was involved in any way. Still, it was a coincidence that Drake couldn’t overlook, even if the feds could. If a short road trip was required to check things out, well, that was just great.

One detail still had him puzzled. The piece that was missing from the mosaic of his intuitive masterpiece was the reason Barak would take the time to smuggle a nuke of any sort to Oregon. Bend, if that was his target, had a population that didn’t top a hundred thousand or so. Portland, the largest city in the state, had a metropolitan area with just a little more than two million, and San Diego, where the nuke was thought to have crossed the border, had about three million residents in its metro area. Well, Drake thought, if a target of three million wasn’t big enough, there was always Los Angeles with sixteen million residents.

So, he asked himself, what kind of target would attract a terrorist like Barak? If he was still intent on killing the Secretary of Homeland Security, he would have to get the nuke all the way across the country to Washington, D.C., which didn’t make any sense. If he was out for revenge because Drake had foiled his assassination attempt, he didn’t need a nuke to take him out. A car bomb or a sniper would suffice. No, the target had to be something that would further the jihad in some big way. Killing one meddlesome attorney would hardly accomplish that.

Drake let his mind shift into neutral as he pulled off the I-5 freeway and turned east on Highway 20 toward Bend. Ahead on the two-lane highway that cut through the Cascade mountain range was the little city of Sisters, named after the three snow-capped, extinct volcanoes called Faith, Hope, and Charity by Oregon’s early Methodist missionaries. Sisters was the first city you drove through on the other side of the mountains. Beyond Sisters, the high desert country of Oregon ran from the border with Washington in the north all the way south to the California border. Ranching and wheat farms dominated the northern reaches of the high desert, while resorts and golf courses surrounded the central plains city of Bend and the arid desert running south of Bend to the border.

Drake’s father-in-law had grown up in Bend and loved his cabin at Crosswater, a golf resort south of the city. Just north of Crosswater was the mega-resort and private residential community of Sunriver, which had its own airport, two golf courses, and a private school, among other attractions. Both resorts straddled the Deschutes River, where Drake had learned to fly fish under the tutelage of his wife two summers ago.

Driving through central Oregon had always been an adventure for Drake. The highway cut through the Cascades amid forests of fir on the western slopes and Ponderosa pine on the eastern slopes. The road was twisty in sections and challenging at speed, with enough passing zones to let you open your car up from time to time. The only dangers you might encounter were deer running across the road and impatient motorists too eager to pass slower cars or trucks. To those limited risks, Drake usually added another by setting an arbitrary time limit for getting from Point A to Point B. Today, he was shooting for a time of two hours and fifteen minutes to cover the one hundred fifty eight mile distance. With a fifty-five mile an hour speed limit most of the way, though, he would have to exceed the legal limit a little.

After two hours of exhilarating driving fun and listening to the raspy exhaust notes of the Porsche, Drake slowed the car to a crawl as he drove through Sisters. With its 1880s frontier theme and variety of shops, the town was a favorite stopping place for tourists traveling to central Oregon. For him, it was a favorite place to stop for a burger in Bronco Billy’s Ranch Grill and Saloon. Today, however, he continued on to the outskirts of Bend and turned north on Hwy. 97 toward the Red Lava Ranch, the home of the High Desert Polo Club and the host of the Pacific Polo Invitational.

Drake followed a line of semi’s headed north until he turned off the highway and followed the directions from his voice-activated navigation Garmin to the white-fenced equine ranch and polo facility. The ranch got its name, he could see, from the red lava rock road leading to the clubhouse and offices of the polo club. On the south side of the road were sectioned pastures where horses, he assumed were polo ponies, grazed on green pasture grass. On the north side of the road was an incredibly flat polo field with white goal posts at each end. On ahead, behind the clubhouse and office building, were two stables with stalls and turnout paddocks and several outbuildings. All of the stable facilities and outbuildings were painted a soft red and had white roofs. The clubhouse itself, with a river rock façade, was a rich chocolate color.

Drake parked in front of the clubhouse and walked in. At one end of an empty great room stood a floor to vaulted ceiling fireplace made of river rock that matched the facade out front. Dark brown leather sofas and armchairs provided conversation islands near the fireplace, and a magnificent antique bar stood silent duty along one wall, waiting for thirsty patrons. An opening on his left led to a dining area, and on his right, a small office and reception area greeted visitors and members on their way to their lockers. A young woman wearing jeans and a white T-shirt sat behind a desk, checking off names on a list while she twisted the end of her pony tail.

“Hi,” she said when Drake stopped in front of her desk. “May I help you?”

“I thought I might attend your polo match this weekend. Do I need to buy a ticket here, or will tickets be available at the gate?”

“Tickets are ten dollars per person. You can buy them here or at the gate Saturday.”

“Great, I’ll buy one now and see if I can round up some friends to join me.” He handed her a ten dollar bill. “Are there practice sessions or preliminary events? I don’t know much about polo.”

“The Pacific Polo Invitational match starts at eleven Saturday morning.” She sounded like she was reciting memorized text. “That’s what you’ll want to see. We’re extremely proud to have Marco Vazquez on one of the teams. He’s one of the top-rated polo players in the world, and he came all the way from Argentina to be here. There will be some junior events earlier in the morning, but the Invitational is the big event.”

“So Saturday is when all the polo players show up? Or do they get here before then?”

“Most of the players and their ponies will arrive fairly early Saturday morning, but Mr. Vazquez is already here. He’s keeping his ponies over at the Wyler Ranch. That’s Mr. Abazzano’s place.”

“Is that where this Vazquez fellow is staying?”

She shook her head. “I think I heard he’s staying at the Pronghorn Resort, but he’s probably over at the Wyler Ranch making sure they’re feeding his ponies correctly. Polo ponies need to be fed differently than those thoroughbreds Mr. Abazzano breeds. Can I help you with anything else?” she said as she looked down at her list of names.

“No, you’ve been a big help. Thank you.”

Drake took his ticket and walked out to his car. Michael Abazzano was a name he knew. He was a rich Hollywood producer who made movies only the Cannes International Film Festival loved and documentaries about the plight of the Palestinians. A big contributor to every liberal cause, Abazzano was famous for fundraisers hosted at his mansion in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, and parties before the Kentucky Derby when he had horses racing.

Abazzano’s beautiful wife, Nadine, who was from Lebanon, had starred in several of his movies. Drake had seen her interviewed on CNN and MSNBC where she had described living in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon as a young girl and seeing her parents killed during the
Shatila
massacre during the Lebanese civil war in 1982. She blamed the Israeli Defense Forces, of course, for allowing the massacre to happen.

Drake decided a visit to Abazzano’s Wyler Ranch was in order.

25

Wyler Ranch was a thoroughbred breeding farm located eight miles north of Sisters, Oregon. Telling his voice-activated navigation device to find the ranch, Drake located it easily and followed the directions from the female voice he’d named Lucy.

The ranch was located in a canyon with a good-sized stream running through it. Once Drake left the highway and dropped down into the canyon, he was in a private world of natural beauty. The road followed the stream for a short way, then veered off through a thicket of aspens. Beyond the aspens was a long pasture with high, white fencing like the horse farms of Kentucky. He saw a dozen or more stallions grazing and a group of young fillies and colts racing around with their tails raised high. At the far end of the pasture stood the stables, a long, low building and a cluster of equipment and storage sheds. On a rise halfway to the edge of the rimrock above the pastures a Tuscan-style villa stood watch over the ranch.

Drake drove along the fence and watched as the young horses raced him to the end of the pasture. Even at this stage of their development, they were both graceful and powerful as they ran. They had racing in their blood, that much was plain to see.

As he pulled to a stop in the parking area near the stables, he saw several horses being groomed in the private paddocks outside their stalls. The men working on the horses watched him closely as he got out of the Porsche and walked toward a man standing next to the biggest pickup truck he had ever seen.

“Hi,” Drake said, extending his hand to the man. “I’m looking for
Marco Vazquez.
Is he here?”

“This is private property,” the man replied. “Didn’t you see the No Trespassing signs?”

Drake drew his hand back and casually looked around. The man looked like an old farmhand, but his eyes suggested he was younger than he looked. “You in charge here?” he asked.

“I’m the ranch foreman. Who are you?”

“I’m here to speak with
Marco Vazquez.
Is he here?”

“You from the polo ranch?”

“Just came from there. Can you get him for me?”

“He isn’t here yet. He usually checks on his ponies after he’s had a liquid breakfast at the Pronghorn.”

“Isn’t that what big stars do these days?”

“Big star, my ass. Mr. Abazzano’s a big star, and he doesn’t wobble around like this guy does. He might be good looking and can ride a horse, but he’s no star in my book.”

Drake smiled. “I take it you don’t care much for him or his horses?”

“I don’t have to like him or his horses,” the foreman said. “Mr. Abazzano’s doing a favor for a friend, letting him keep his horses here.
Vazquez
brought his own guys to take care of the polo ponies, so it doesn’t matter much to me.”

“Those the guys over there, the ones he brought with him?” Drake glanced in their direction. “The ones giving me the evil eye when I drove in?” They were still looking at him.

“Those are the ones. They don’t talk much. I’m not sure they know much about horses, but, again, not my problem.”

“Well, I should be going if I want to catch him at the Pronghorn. Thanks for your help,” Drake said, and turned away.

The two men grooming
Vazquez’s
horses continued to watch Drake as they worked.

“You guys know when
Vazquez
will get here?” Drake called out midway to his car.

Neither answered him, so he walked closer. “I asked you if you knew when
Vazquez
will get here,” he said, raising his voice just slightly.

“
No se
,” one of the men said, and continued brushing his horse.

“Did you come from Argentina with
him?”

“
No se
,” the groom said again.

Then the other man walked around his horse, said something softly to the first man, and they both walked away.

In that moment, Drake knew he was right to check out this ranch. He had heard the exchange. The second man had spoken colloquial Lebanese, a dialect developed from Syrian Arabic that he had been taught to recognize before he deployed in the Middle East. It was the dialect spoken by Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. And Hezbollah.

He left the ranch. Driving back along the road that followed the meandering stream, he called Casey in Seattle.

“I know you miss me,” he said in greeting, “so I thought I’d invite you back to Oregon so we could spend a little more time together.”

“My, my, my, how the time flies,” Casey said. “It seems like it was just yesterday when we said our goodbyes. Oh, wait—it
was
yesterday.”

Drake grinned into the phone. “Does that mean you don’t miss me as much as I miss you?”

“No. It means I don’t miss you as much as I miss my wife. What’s up?”

“I just heard a guy say something to another guy in Arabic.”

“Where, on Al Jazeera news?”

“No, on a ranch here in Oregon. I thought I’d see if that brochure about the polo match I found in the villa in Mexico had anything to do with the nuke they detected in San Diego. I think it does, and I’m going to need your help to prove it.”

“Whoa, back it up a bit,” Casey said. “You didn’t tell me about a polo brochure you found in the Mexican villa.”

“It was in the room upstairs, the one we thought Barak might have slept in. It’s for a polo fundraiser here in Bend this weekend, starring some hotshot polo player from Argentina. I thought it was odd that a drug dealer in Mexico, or even Barak, would be interested in polo, so I took it. When I mentioned it to Liz Strobel, she told me if I found it had anything to do with the missing nuke to let her know. So I drove up to Bend today and started poking around.”

Casey thought about this for a second or two. “What does the polo star have to do with the nuke?”

“I don’t know. The brochure was about this fundraiser. He’s the big attraction. They found radiation in a van abandoned next to the San Diego Polo Club. At the ranch I just left, I saw an International RXT truck with California plates towing a luxury horse trailer with the polo star’s name on it. The trailer has enough room for four horses, all the equipment…and a nuke or two. No one would suspect an international polo star of hiding a nuclear device in his horse trailer.”

“But why would a guy like that get involved in nuclear terrorism?”

“Who knows why the
uber
-rich do anything. Maybe he loaned them his horse trailer. Maybe he doesn’t know anything about a nuke.”

“Who are they?” Casey asked.

“Maybe it’s Barak. Maybe it’s Hezbollah. They dig tunnels under the border in San Diego for the drug smugglers. Maybe it’s the guy who owns this ranch, Michael Abazzano. I don’t know.”

“Abazzano…the Hollywood guy with the gorgeous wife half his age?”

“Beautiful, young and extremely anti-Semitic, yeah. Her parents were killed in the
Shatila
massacre in Lebanon.”

“Home of Hezbollah, what a coincidence! So, buddy, what is it you want me to do?”

“Abazzano’s ranch is in a narrow canyon, with rimrock on both sides. Video surveillance of any activity there won’t be difficult, but I’m hoping we can get audio surveillance as well. Did you go ahead and buy those Draganflyer surveillance drones you were talking about?”

“I bought two,” Casey said. “We equipped one with a Nikon SLR for still photos and the other with a Sony Handycam for video and sound. The Draganflyer’s motors don’t make any noise so if someone’s talking we’ll hear them. In hover mode at fifty meters, they won’t see it either.”

“That’s what I was hoping for,” said Drake.

“How big a team do you need this time?”

“Are you able to get away?”

“Well, I do need a reason to take my new helicopter on a cross-county flight,” Casey said. “Seattle to Bend really isn’t cross-country, but it’s a start.”

“What new helicopter?” Drake asked.

“With all the new customers we’re getting since you put ISIS out of business, I upgraded our capabilities a bit and bought a new Bell 525 Relentless. It was delivered when we were in Mexico. Wait’ll you see it, Adam. There’s nothing like it in the air.”

“How many passengers can it carry?”

“Sixteen. You need that many?”

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe you and three others. If we find this polo angle has anything to do with the nuke the government is looking for, I’ll call in the cavalry.”

“When do you want me there?”

“Okay,” Drake said after doing a quick mental calculation, “today is Wednesday. How about tomorrow sometime? That gives us two days before the polo match on Saturday. You and your guys plan on staying with me at the senator’s place at Crosswater. There’s plenty of room.”

“I’ll land at the Sunriver airport, about noon. You buying lunch?”

“Sure, why not. Meet me at Hola! at the Sunriver marina. We can eat on the deck and watch the tourists trying to paddle their canoes on the Deschutes.”