Oath to Defend (12 page)

28

Drake sat still and watched in his rearview mirror as the black Escalade turned around at the gatehouse and drove away. He had seen that he was being followed shortly after leaving the Pronghorn resort. The Escalade had stayed four or five car lengths behind him all the way to Bend and maintained the same spacing as they drove through the city. He had tried to see who was in the SUV when he stopped to get the keys to his father-in-law’s cabin, but the darkened windows had obscured his view. He had gotten the Escalade’s license plate number and thought the security camera at the gatehouse might give him a better look at his pursuer.

Whoever it was, he or she hadn’t done much surveillance duty. Professionals worked in teams on moving surveillance, and they didn’t maintain distance and speed like this guy had. It was unlikely, Drake thought, that Vazquez had a bodyguard curious enough to follow him all the way to Crosswater. It was also unlikely the organizers of the polo match guarded their celebrity player that closely. That left Abazzano and the Arab groomers from the horse ranch as possibilities. Everyone else who knew he was in Bend was on his side.

He drove slowly along the golf course, which crossed and recrossed the meandering Little Deschutes River, until he came to the two-story log cabin on a secluded section of the resort. The Hazelton’s summer “cabin,” as they jokingly referred to it, was a four thousand square foot showplace of Northwest architecture and materials. When he and Kay had visited, they had always stayed in one of the four second-floor bedrooms, but now the master bedroom on the first floor was available. With the library and study adjacent to it, and the covered porch with a hot tub just through the bedroom’s French doors, Drake thought it might be just the place to relax and figure out what to do.

Of course, if he didn’t lay claim to the master bedroom before Casey and his team arrived, he knew Casey would make some lame argument that the room’s close proximity to the library and study meant that he should make the sacrifice and stay there to run the show. As much as he loved the guy, it was only right that he should be the one to make the sacrifice. Besides, the three guys he was bringing with him would feel abandoned if their boss stayed downstairs in the master bedroom.

Drake opened the door of the detached garage and pulled his car in. Grabbing his duffel bag from the back seat, he walked down the covered breezeway to the entrance through the utility room. When he opened the door with the key the property manager had given him, the lingering smell of the tung oil that had been used to seal the red oak floors greeted him like an old friend. The scent also brought such strong memories of Kay that he stopped to cherish the moment before he moved through the kitchen and into the great room, where floor-to-ceiling windows provided a view of the river past the deck that ran the length of the room.

One end of the great room was dominated by a massive river rock fireplace, and the doors to the master bedroom and the library opened at the other end. A dark brown leather sofa sat in front of the fireplace, with two matching leather arm chairs on each end, and a glass-topped coffee table supported by two sets of deer antlers in front. Drake thought he picked up the smell of cigar smoke as he walked over and stood behind the sofa. Running his hand over the leather, he thought the senator just might have used the cabin a time or two for a men-only weekend, as his wife, Meredith, didn’t let him smoke when she was around.

He turned, walked to the other end of the great room, and claimed the master bedroom by throwing his duffel bag on the king-size bed. Then he went in search of an adult beverage to take out on the deck while he called his secretary’s husband, Paul Benning.

Benning, who had been Drake’s favorite detective when he was a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office, had been a Marine who had deployed to Beirut, Lebanon, in September, 1982, as a member of a multinational force intended to stabilize the Lebanese government and serve as peacekeepers. The next October, Paul had helped pull the bodies of two hundred and forty-one dead American servicemen out of the ruins of the U.S barracks when it was destroyed by a suicide bomber driving a yellow Mercedes truck.

When he’d left the Marine Corp and returned home, Benning had joined the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and quickly risen through the ranks to become a senior detective working with the Special Investigations Unit. His wife, Margo, was the first secretary assigned to work with Drake in the D.A.’s office, and so the three had soon become good friends. Benning was good at thinking out of the box. He had also learned how to access information that was not available to most civilians. Which was why Drake was calling him for another favor.

“Paul,” he said, “this is Adam. Am I catching you at a bad time?”

“I’m sitting at my desk, trying to find a way to cut the unit’s budget by twenty percent for next year. What do you think?”

“Sounds like you need a break.”

“Something tells me you’re going to offer me an opportunity to do something other than what the county is paying me to do.”

Drake laughed. “Just consider this an extraterritorial investigation that will prevent a crime from happening.”

“What kind of crime?” Benning asked.

“Breaking and entering, for the purpose of obtaining information regarding the driver of a new black Escalade, Oregon license 294YYZ. It followed me from Pronghorn to Crosswater.”

“And the place where this crime might happen?”

“Enterprise Car Rental, probably somewhere in Bend.”

“This will cost you, you know.”

“Your usual fee,” Drake asked, “Burger and a beer?”

“For my speedy service, it’s now a burger and two beers,” Benning said. “Give me a moment.” Drake heard the sounds of his keyboard. “The car was one of two new Escalades leased for the week to one Timothy A. O’Neil at the Sunriver airport,” Benning reported.

“Is there an address for him?”

“No. I’ll attach a copy of the Enterprise registration and email it to you. Will that be all?”

“Thanks, Paul. Tell your wife I’ll call her.”

Drake sat out on the deck and watched a pair of ring-necked ducks paddling their way up the river. The microbrew he’d found in the refrigerator tasted good in the heat of the afternoon, but its slightly bitter, hoppy taste mated itself with an irritating pinging in his brain. The man who had leased the Escalades was nearby. If he was staying at the Sunriver Resort, they would have to pay him a visit when Mike arrived tomorrow.

As he walked back to the kitchen to get another beer, his cell phone vibrated.

“Hi Adam.” He recognized the voice of Liz Strobel immediately.

“Did you find the nuke?” he asked her.

“NEST is calling off the search,” she said. “We’ve had teams covering a five square mile area on foot, with gamma and neutron detectors, vans driving all over the greater San Diego area, and helicopters crisscrossing Southern California. It’s looking for the proverbial needle in a very big haystack.”

“Has intelligence turned up anything?”

“Only rumors, and because we’re waving dollars with every source we have, who knows how reliable any of it is,” she said. “Rumor is, the nuke may have come in from Venezuela.”

“From our best friend in South America,” Drake said. “What a surprise. Chavez is willing to help anyone interested in hitting us, so that’s not much of a lead.”

“Look,” she said, “I’m flying to Oregon tomorrow to brief the Portland FBI office on our final report on the assassination attempt on the Secretary. I thought I might stop by and go over it with you, so we’re all on the same page if the FBI wants to follow up with you.”

“I’m still in Bend. Can you send it to me?”

“There’s nothing in writing yet. Maybe I could arrange a short stopover in Bend if you have time to meet with me.”

“Sure, why not. Mike is flying to the Sunriver Airport in his new helicopter tomorrow at noon. If you can get here, why don’t you meet us for lunch? There’s a little Mexican-Peruvian restaurant called Hola! at the marina, right next to the airport.”

“Good. Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Drake grabbed another beer and went back out on the deck. He suspected there wasn’t anything that secret about the spin the government was putting on the assassination attempt. It was more likely that Liz Strobel wanted to know if he had turned up anything on the missing nuke and was too proud to ask him directly.

29

The morning sky was just losing its flush of pink when Drake left the Senator’s cabin for a run. The air was crisp at five-thirty and mist was rising over the Deschutes River. The peak of Mount Bachelor, where the U.S. Ski Team had trained in summers past, reflected the pastel sky and the sound of grounds keepers mowing the greens broke the night’s silence.

While his breathing adjusted to its normal running rate of four strides per exchange, he mentally sorted through the options for the day. After he fed Casey and his men, he needed to get eyes on the ranch where Vazquez was keeping his polo ponies and learn more about those Arab-speaking groomers. He also needed to locate the guy who had rented the black Escalade and find out why it had followed him yesterday. Abazzano’s ranch, where he visited yesterday, and the Sunriver Resort, where Timothy O’Neil was staying, were thirty miles or more apart. But they were connected somehow.

And he needed to meet Liz Strobel and find out what was so important that she needed to see him in person. He had followed the media’s reporting of the two attempts on the life of Secretary Rallings, the head of DHS. The pathetic attempt of the Portland imams to paint the killing of the terrorists as another example of the U.S. government’s war on American Muslims by luring them into conspiracies they knew nothing about had died a whimpering death in the media. The investigation of the three Muslims killed on his farm had also been quietly closed. The explosion that had reduced the Senator’s home to a pile of smoldering rubble had been reported as an unfortunate accident caused by a natural gas leak. The Senator’s closest neighbors hadn’t believed the story, but after a personal visit from him, they had agreed to corroborate the government’s story.

It wasn’t that he was opposed to meeting with Liz, he thought as he finished his second circuit around the golf course. He was willing to acknowledge that she was beautiful. And probably a lot of fun if she could ever forget for a minute she was the Special Assistant to the Secretary of Homeland Security. He just wasn’t ready to allow himself to be attracted to
any
woman. Kay’s death was still a painful memory that crept into his consciousness every day, and although his promise had been ‘till death do us part’, he knew he would never stop loving her.

The sudden thought of her made him slow to a jog, then stop alongside a bench. Five antlered deer were grazing in a meadow on the other side of the river. He could clearly hear the excited squeal of Kay’s voice telling him to look, look at the deer. She had loved seeing wildlife, especially deer and elk, whenever they had hiked the Cascades or the coast range of Oregon. She had loved everything about just about everything. She had also believed everyone was naturally good inside. Drake knew better, that evil existed incarnate, but he had loved her innocence and her unblinking trust in mankind. Like the deer, he thought, wild animals that now raised their heads to watch him but showed no fear in his presence.

With a shake of his head, Drake broke out of his reverie and headed back to the cabin. To clear his mind and focus his energy, he kicked up his pace and sprinted the last half mile.

After a shower and a quick breakfast consisting of a cup of coffee and a protein smoothie, he backed his Porsche out of the garage and drove slowly toward the gatehouse at the other end of Crosswater as the engine warmed up and settled into a throaty burble.

He wasn’t sure where to start his search for the man who’d leased the black Escalade, but he had plenty of time before Casey flew in from Seattle. With any luck, the restaurant at the lodge would have a receipt for a dinner or drinks that would provide him an address for O’Neil in the sprawling resort community. It was a place to start and would kill some time before lunch.

As he approached the gatehouse and slowed for the gate to draw open, Drake noticed an old Chevrolet pickup painted camouflage green and black parked off to the side of the road ahead. Gray exhaust rose from it in the morning air and drifted forward over the roof light bar with its four chrome spot lights. He paused for a moment to see if the truck was going to pull out in front of him. When it didn’t move, he drove on by. Accelerating ahead, he saw the pickup turn out and come toward him. It soon caught up and matched his speed, three car lengths behind. The jacked-up four-by-four had a massive black brush guard protecting its grill that looked like it could punch a hole in a cement wall.

Ahead, Drake saw a slow-moving flatbed truck loaded with hay in his lane. The two-lane country road was straight for a quarter mile or so, and he anticipated that he had plenty of time to pass it, but when he increased his speed as he approached the hay truck, he saw that the pickup was now only one car length behind.

What the hell? What was this guy doing? Drivers often pulled alongside to get a better look at his old Porsche, but they almost always flashed a thumbs up and drove on. For some reason he doubted the driver of the pickup was an admirer of old Porsches. Drake down shifted into fourth gear to pull into the other lane. Then he saw the bed of the hay truck start to tilt upwards. The bales of hay that had been stacked six high began to slide off and tumble toward him, breaking apart and throwing hay high into the air.

Touching the brake pedal lightly and dodging to the left to allow a bale of hay somersaulting end over end to sail over his roof, he saw the black brush guard of the pickup flashing by on his right, missing his car by inches. The pickup ploughed through the hay bales, and when its left front tire ran up onto the tilted flatbed of the hay truck, it was launched into the air and plunged into the river beside the road.

Shaking his head, Drake shot ahead of the hay truck and kept on going. From the menacing look on the face of the hay truck’s driver, he knew he had narrowly avoided being ambushed by two thugs masquerading as country bumpkins. If one of them was finding he was in over his head trying to be a bad boy, his partner would have to help him out of the river. He wasn’t going to stick around and lend a hand.

When his hands began to shake, he knew his sympathetic nervous system had triggered the old “fight-or-flight” mechanism. It was an old and reliable response that had gotten him through more than a few close calls. But he was always glad when it had run its course.

Five minutes later, he turned into the Sunriver Resort and drove to the lodge. The sports bar on the second floor probably wouldn’t be open yet, but he knew he could get a good Bloody Mary in the restaurant to calm his nerves.

He parked his car and walked up the stairs, through the lobby and straight to the Meadows Restaurant. After he was seated at the window overlooking the golf course and had ordered his nourishment, he took a pen he borrowed from the waitress and began making notes on a napkin. The pickup truck in the river had an Oregon license plate, 697DTB. Benning would find out who it belonged to. Its driver looked to have been Latino, but in Oregon as in most of the country, that didn’t provide much of an identifier. The driver of the hay truck had also looked Latino or perhaps Middle-Eastern. But he hadn’t gotten a good luck at the truck itself, except to see that it was old, had faded red paint and a tilting flatbed.

For the second time in as many days, Drake wanted to know why someone was interested enough to want him out of the picture. He had his suspicions, but as Liz Strobel kept insisting, suspicions weren’t getting them any closer to the nuke they were hunting. So far, it was just a string of coincidences that he couldn’t tie together.