Old Growth & Ivy (The Spook Hills Trilogy Book 1) (13 page)

With the wet weather, their drive had
been slow down to the Lodge and both of them were glad to make it to their
spacious room, finding it welcoming with its casual furniture, stone fireplace
and warm interior.  The Lodge impressed Steve with its quiet setting in
the woods overlooking the peaceful Siletz Bay.  He liked the layout of the
sprawling grounds where they could walk from their room to the Lodge without
becoming wet by following the covered walkways.  When the rain turned to
fog late that afternoon, they strolled along the golf course, veering off onto
a rustic path through the woods and coming out to cross a bridge over a pond
before trekking on the golf cart path back up to their room. 

While they walked, Steve found himself
stopping to examine the different varieties of moss, or to crouch down to check
out some late mushrooms or simply to inhale the fresh air, bright with oxygen
and scented with cedar and spruce.  Each new aspect he discovered in the
Northwest drew him to its magic, except maybe those big banana slugs.  He
had greased a few of those under his big feet, as he slopped along though the
mud and leaves.  Up ahead, Ivy was giving the corgis a boost over a tree
that had fallen on the trail.  He stopped, realizing that his life was
like a physical book.  The front cover had been his childhood and
formative years.  The pages thus far had been his career.  He wanted
Ivy to help him write the remaining pages -- their future.  He jogged a
few steps to catch up, took her in his arms and kissed her, hoping that she saw
him in her future too.

As they continued on, Ivy pointed out
a big old stump amidst tall, younger trees.  The stump was massive,
soaring up about twelve feet and was nearly six feet in diameter.  Ferns
and a shrub she called salal grew at the base, while some plush green moss
crept up here and there.  Small bushes sprouted out of the top, nourished
by the slowly decaying wood.  Ivy told him the old trees as living
specimens were rare now and were referred to as “old growth”.  This stump
was a majestic remnant of the forest as it had once been. 

Steve walked forward and put his hand
on the big stump’s silvered surface, feeling the smooth wood where the bark had
peeled off decades ago.  He moved around the old tree, trying to not tramp
on the ferns.  The term “Old Growth” reminded him of himself and the
changes he was going through.   When he came back to where Ivy was
waiting, he thought of the two of them in terms of nature.  He was solid
and at times immoveable resembling the hard stump and true to her namesake, she
was more flexible wrapping around his heart like curling twine.  Together
they might be called Old Growth and Ivy.  He had read that ivy growing in
the wild could become invasive, choking trees and plants, but as far as he was
concerned, Ivy could wrap herself around him as much as she wanted.

On Sunday morning, Ivy took Steve out
on the long spit that separated the ocean from the Siletz Bay.  The waves
were enormous and pounding the beach hard, leaving only a narrow strip of dark
sand next to the grassy dunes for walking as the tide came in.  While he
stood staring at the waves, Steve noticed that the tops were capped with white
foam, so thick it was almost like a whipped icing.  When the wave peaked
into the wind, the foam was pushed back, streaming out behind the wave like a
white fluffy scarf.

Steve wanted to look for shells, but
few survived the relentless pounding of the surf.  They did gather a few
small translucent agates and found one sizeable one that still had most of its
white outer coating.  Ivy explained how they were likely trapped in rock
that washed down the river or eroded from cliffs, went out to sea and then were
returned with the outer rock layer more or less worn off.  Steve put them
in his pocket, wanting to take these bits of the Oregon coast away with him as
good luck charms to bring him back to Ivy.  They walked back to the car
along the quiet road that ran the length of the spit, chasing each other as
they sloshed along in the rain and playing with the corgis who scooted around
their feet prancing and wriggling with excitement.

From the beach they went to the
Salishan Spa where Steve had booked a romantic couples massage.  They were
a little early and spent some time dangling their feet in the warm water of the
spa pool, enjoying the motion of the jetted water and splashing each other with
their feet in a way that was both playful and flirtatious.  The room they
went into at the spa had a fireplace with a quietly burning fire.  During
their massages, soft music played in the background, while the rain outside drummed
its own soothing tune on the metal chimney cap.  Afterward, they took hot
cups of tea to the lounge area and watched the softly colored waterfowl
cruising peacefully on the serene Siletz Bay, ducking down every now and then
after some tasty morsel.  While there, Steve talked about wanting to see
more of the world.  Ivy looked at him in surprise, knowing that he
traveled most of the time.

“I want to see places as a tourist,
not as an agent.  You know -- go to the historic sites, take walks in the
country, enjoy the food . . .”

Over the years, she had seen most
American cities, but usually on business trips where she rushed in and out of
town.  Her vacations had been travel to spots where she could drop out for
a time.  “Even coming down here is refreshing, but I know what you mean
with going to museums, buying fresh foods at village markets, and learning
about the people and culture.  Where do you want to go first?”

“Travel to Norway to learn about my
heritage.  Roam the English countryside.  Drink aged malt scotch and
wander the Highlands in Scotland.  Learn how to slow down in Provence or
Tuscany to savor the experience.”

“See the rugged mountains in
Patagonia.”

“Island hop in the Galapagos. 
Buy a really good camera and take photos along the way.”

Ivy smiled over at him, realizing that
retirement with Steve, if things worked out between them, might become the best
time of her life.  Torn between the tranquility of the spa and wanting
more intimacy, they soon dressed and departed for their lodge room to be close. 
The day had been one of tenderness and romance and Steve knew that he wanted
Ivy full time in his life, even though he could not yet see how to make that
happen.

On Monday it was raining hard again
and they spent the morning in their room, reading, talking and packing. 

“Steve, are you religious?”

He looked at her in surprise. While he
had been baptized and raised in the church, religion had ceased to be a part of
his life.  “Guess I’m kind of a failed Lutheran.  More of an
agnostic.”

“You want to hedge your bets, just in
case the general populace is right about having a God to watch over us?”

“More like I just don’t know. 
You?”

“Dyed in the wool atheist. 
Raised as an Episcopalian, but in high school the question was raised in a
debate and I realized that the formal religious stuff did not make sense to
me.”

“No faith?”

“I have faith,” she said, jutting out
her chin and looking determined.  “In myself, in some of mankind, in the
beauty of nature.”

“Independent wraith, aren’t
you?”  He pulled her close.  “Faith in me?”

Her face grew serious then, “Beginning
to.  Yes, but then,” she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek.  “I
am foolish enough to hope there are angels.”

Steve laughed, knowing he was no angel
but he thought of himself as solid and trustworthy.  As they loaded up and
talked on the drive home, they found their views coincided on most topics,
although sometimes they enjoyed debating their differences.  They
exchanged opinions on alternative lifestyles, on racism and other forms of
prejudice, on politics and on their President. 

"When I fly back tomorrow, I have
to pick up the threads of a case against a major drug lord -- the one who made
fools of us during a sting in Mexico.  We're working this case with the
DEA, but I have the lead on it.  It was the damn DEA who got bad
information on the perp that last time in Mexico.  They claim to have a
more solid lead this time around.   At any rate, it will be some time
until I can return, maybe not until after the holidays.  The good news is
that if we nab this perp, I can take time off to spend with you."

"How much danger will you be in
when you go after the perp?"

"There will be agents all around
me."

"That is not what I asked,"
Ivy said, using her firm business tone.

"Ivy, I am a federal agent. 
I go after major perps. There’s always danger.  However I have been doing
this for more than 35 years and I'm still here.  FBI actions are different
than police cases.  Our mortality rate is much lower."

"Like how low?"

"Less than sixty agents killed in
the line of duty."

"Annually?" she asked.

"No, that is less than 60 agents
killed
ever
.  Check our website.  Their names are listed there
as an honorarium.  My teams do everything possible to reduce risk. 
We stay fit and do target practice.  We wear protective gear.  We
plan extensively.  Often a SWAT team skilled in approaching explosive
situations goes in ahead of us.  We are careful and methodical.  We
do make a federal case out of it."

She had to smile at his little twist
of humor and then reached over to squeeze his hand, wishing she had some
extra-human power to give him to repel bullets.  How had this man attached
himself to her heart so quickly?   Their long Thanksgiving weekend
had her wondering how she could handle their sporadically developing
relationship.   She had such a deep passion for Steve.  He was
so tender, so loving, and so gentle that the desire came from deep inside of
her to flow out to him.  Never had lovemaking been like this for
her.  He was an unselfish lover, seeming happy to lead or be led, but
Steve was much more than the passion.  Ivy delighted in the warmth, the
romance, the conversation, the emotional exhilaration and the plain fun of
being with him.  Tomorrow she would have to deal with his long absence and
the worry.  For these next hours, he was hers to enjoy. 

His car came at four the next morning
for his flight back to D.C. and to the drug lord case.  He made no
promises, except that he would be back, as soon and as often as he could. 

"My Ivy Vine," he whispered,
holding her in the front doorway while his driver took his suitcase to the car
in the pre-morning light.  "Can I trust falling this much in love
this fast?" 

She nodded against his shoulder, gripping
him tighter, and whispered.  "With me, you can."

"Then how are we going to handle
these long separations?"
 

Secure
Email from Steve Nielsen November 30, 2012

Ivy my Ivy, staying with you, talking
with you, making love with you is so heavenly, that compared to my regular
life, it is as if I have changed galaxies, especially during times like these
when the days on a case threaten to stretch out into weeks.  Every time
you turn, every time you speak, I discover something new about you.  I may
hear a different tone in your voice, or learn your point of view on a
topic.  I see even the smallest things about you, like the way your left
eye crinkles a little more than your right when you smile.  I take mental
snapshots of each observation to imprint them in my memory and play them back
when I dare to let my mind wander to you, which happens far more often than it
should.

I am so torn now between my work for
the Bureau and spending more time with you that I resent how my work will keep
me away so much.  This case we are concentrating on started when we traced
a money laundering scheme that led us to a suspected drug ring.  Sometime
in the upcoming weeks, when we have enough intelligence to be effective, we
will make our move. 

Please believe me when I tell you that
I want so much to be with you, especially over the holidays.  I will break
away if I can, but the stakes are high on this one.  For my teams and me,
they always are.  We are working as much of the 24/7 schedule as our
bodies can handle to position ourselves to nail these traffickers.  Times
like these, I feel as if my career has been in Dante's nine levels of hell,
where, no matter how much we battle or how successful we are, we only are able
to clean-up some anterooms. 

Ivy, while we talk most days or nights
and email and text, nothing replaces being with you.  I miss seeing
you.  I miss touching you.  I miss our banter and playful
moments.  Until I can be with you again, you will be in my heart. 
Yes, I know things are moving quickly between us in terms of hours spent
together, but still in all, the word "us" has become very special to
me -- I never appreciated that it could be.

Your
loving Steve

***

Early the next day Steve and Mathew
left for Houston to work out of the local FBI office with a team from the
DEA.  Steve had Brian and Moll handling follow-up on the child trafficking
case where they would finish organizing the evidence and work with the legats
on preparing the FBI's case against Matka and the other arrested perps, both
domestically and internationally. 

The DEA located a warehouse a few
miles south of the international airport in Mexico City which they suspected
housed one of Astuto's drug repackaging plants.  At the site, they
understood that the perps were taking in bales of cocaine from Colombia, then
breaking them down into small packets for street distribution and boxing those
up for shipment.  Steve estimated that each 55-pound bale had a street
price of $2.5 million, once it was cut and repackaged for sale.  The
warehouse could contain tens of millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine,
potentially making it one of the bigger busts in history.  However he
would only consider it a victory if they also apprehended the head of the drug
ring.

Their limited knowledge of the
physical layout of the building made planning the sting challenging.  From
the outside, it appeared to be a long, flat warehouse, with a loading dock and
a small parking lot, all surrounded by a chain link fence.  Using
photogrammetry software with satellite and aerial photographs, FBI HQ derived
the dimensions of the building.  From the surveillance team's
observations, they were aware that the operation ran over three shifts. 
In their understanding, El Zorro Astuto made unannounced trips to inspect the
facility, arriving on any day at any time of day.  The DEA claimed that
their undercovers had recently sighted Astuto several times in Bogota, but he
always managed to give them the slip when they went to follow him.  They
did have more success in tailing his pilot.  For now, they were waiting
for the DEA operatives in Colombia to receive word that Astuto's pilot had
filed a flight plan from Bogota to the target city in Mexico.  They would
track the flight and prepare to catch Astuto at the cocaine-repackaging
warehouse. 

Additional agents were assigned to
Steve in Houston from the local FBI office and the DEA, including the same
leader from the DEA who they had dealt with on the last operation in Mexico. 
Having relied on bad DEA info once, Steve was suspicious of any insights
brought forward by them that his FBI agents could not verify as factual. 
That weekend, they poured through the DEA case files on the drug operation in
Mexico, its location, the estimated volumes of drugs, how the logistics worked
to move the cocaine from Colombia to Mexico and from there, packaged now for
street distribution, to various locales in the United States.  They could
have moved in to shut down the operation at any time, but Steve’s goal was to
catch this suspected El Zorro Astuto red-handed.  He wanted a visit
confirmed and then he wanted to apprehend him at the site.

On Monday Steve was waking up from his
usual short night sleep when his cell phone rang.  He checked the incoming
number and saw it was the leader from the DEA.

"Yeah," he said, forcing
himself to sound wide awake and a bit grouchy.

"The subject's plane just filed a
flight plan to Mexico City."  The DEA lead spoke in an overly
aggressive tone as his defense about the mistake in Mexico.

"You're sure this
time."  Steve was careful to make it a statement to be refuted and
not a question.

"His creds check out.  You
know we had the perp under observation for the last six weeks."

"And yet, all you know is that he
calls himself 'Astuto'?"

"We've been all through
this.  Are you joining us or what?"

Steve was in a corner.  If he did
not go and Astuto showed, it would end his career in a very sour way.  If
he and his FBI team went and Astuto was again an actor, they would have egg on
their face, however they would also have commandeered a warehouse with cocaine
and shut the operation down.

"At the airport and in the Bubird
at 04:00 hours," he said tersely, clicking off his phone. That gave him an
hour to get the Bubird crew alerted, their flight plan activated and the plane
warmed up.  His team had just enough time to be armed, ready and on
board.  While the timing would be tight, they could do it.  He hit
the speed dial key to alert Mathew and then they would each make a bevy of
other calls.

Their flight landed in Mexico City
well before dawn, giving them cover of darkness.  Once they were taxiing
on the runway, they confirmed that Astuto's plane had landed on schedule. 
They took a fast drive south from the airport to the cocaine repackaging
plant.  Fearful of a tipoff, Steve only alerted them about the actual
sting when their cars pulled up near the site housing the suspected operation.

  With the agents all packed into
two vans, they stopped around the corner from the warehouse.  Their
undercover jogged over and confirmed that a limo had entered the site about
five minutes before, carrying only a driver and one man.  He was fairly
certain there were less than ten people inside the target site but several
would be armed. 

Two Houston-based agents quickly and
quietly overcame the gate guard who was left gagged and bound with the
undercover.  Steve then led the team at a run across the parking lot to a
small side door.  He stepped back to allow a skilled agent to blast open
the door lock.  Then Steve barged through and shot the first armed man he
saw.  Mathew flew by his right side, leading two agents.  Shots
started coming from several directions, including from above.  Running
across the warehouse, Mathew was taken down by shots to his left hip and thigh,
spinning around and landing hard on his stomach.  The two agents with him
dove behind a worktable, leaving Mathew stranded on the warehouse floor. 
He started crawling crabwise towards cover dragging his damaged leg.

Steve fired his submachine gun upwards
in an arcing motion aiming for the guards who unexpectedly patrolled a catwalk
from 12 feet above that circled the warehouse.  He kept shooting back and
forth.  Mathew managed to scrabble his way about five feet when another
shot creased his forehead.  He flattened himself on the floor.  Steve
ran over, still firing upwards, swinging his gun in a wide arc.  With his
left arm, he grabbed Mathew around the chest, and still firing, pulled him to
cover behind a metal worktable that he upended to serve as a shield.  He
ripped off his tie and bound it around Mathew's upper thigh as a tourniquet,
while yelling for a medic.  Blood was streaming from Mathew's hip, which he
was trying to staunch himself by pressing his hands against the wound. 
More blood dripped down from his eyebrow from where a bullet had skimmed under
the edge of his helmet.  A medic ran in and started to tend Mathew's
wounds.  One of the DEA agents had taken a bullet to his upper right
arm.  Luckily he was now behind cover. Steve jumped over to him, ripped
the sleeve off his shirt and bound up the wound.  He glanced around,
assessing the situation.  Another DEA agent lay sprawled on the
floor.  Steve was certain he was dead.

Steve jumped back out, blasting away
with his weapon and took out the remaining guard on the catwalk, freeing up a
couple of agents who had been pinned down behind a worktable.  Shots rang
out from the back of the warehouse where two agents slid down the wall behind
some heavy racks of shelves to corner a pair of armed men. 

For the next minute, shots kept
ringing out and bullets were flying.  Local forces arrived and the two
remaining perps surrendered.  The man they believed to be Astuto, four
armed guards and one DEA agent were dead.  Two agents were wounded, along
with a worker hit in the crossfire.  Steve's gaze swept the
warehouse.  Only one partial bale of cocaine was visible.  He ran to
the back of the building, checked behind some racking and a forklift. 
Aside from that bale, the place only contained packaging materials. 
Either they were expecting a big shipment that day or Astuto had been tipped
off again.  The DEA leader went through the pockets of the dead perp they
believed to be Astuto.  Again what surfaced was a passport for an American
with the occupation of an actor.  By phone he verified the dead man's
identity, with a more detailed check to be run back in the office.  Steve
stopped and snapped a photo with his iPhone.  Something about the dead
actor was off.  Steve leaned down and tugged at the mustache, which came
off in his hand.  None of passport photos that they had for the sham
company officers in the money laundering scheme had mustaches. 
Apparently, this perp did not have one either.  Was the heavy dark
mustache on this actor a ploy to make him seem familiar to the guards or
workers?  Still, the dead man closely resembled the perp/actor on the
yacht in Mexico, although his hairline was higher and he had a small cleft in
his chin.

Again it appeared as if the DEA and
the FBI had been setup.  Did Astuto hire these actors to impersonate him
and handle the inspections of his operations or had he learned that the
warehouse would be hit and sacrificed the actor?  Was the entire warehouse
a sham setup?  Outside of arranging the plane and alerting the other
agencies at the last minute, no one should have been aware of their
plans.  That left certain possibilities, across the DEA, the Bureau and
Border Patrol making Steve again wonder if they had a mole at the FBI or the
DEA serving as an informant to the real El Astuto. 

Madder than hell at being foiled,
possibly by his own government's staff, he ran back to check on Mathew. 
The medic had stopped the worst of the bleeding and was giving him oxygen and
fluids.  After conferring with the medic, Steve pulled out his cell phone
and forcefully gave commands to have the Bubird ready for a medical evacuation
to D.C.  Steve would have Mathew airlifted out for treatment along with
the Washington-based DEA agent who had taken a bullet in the right arm. 
Given that the mission was again a failure, Steve decided to take the plane
with the two wounded men and a medic, appointing the DEA leader to oversee the
cleanup.  The wounded worker would be treated locally, held and charged
along with the others they captured.  The agents would also stick around
to try and nab anyone who showed up for the next shift.

The team had taken over what might or
might not be a major drug re-packaging plant.  The amount of coke at the
facility was minimal.  Even more, Steve wanted El Zorro Astuto either dead
or alive.  After that they could shut down his operations.  As it
was, two good agents had incapacitating wounds and one was dead.  He was
upset about Mathew whose injuries were serious.  Steve worried that the
best agent he ever worked with, and maybe the best man he knew, would never
walk right again.  Standing there as the medic worked on Mathew, Steve
realized that he had become more of a son to him than his birth son from his
misfit marriage had ever been.  This was his time for him to be there for
Mathew.

He thought then of Ivy and her
concerns about his safety when they were last together.   For the
first time since his parents passed away, he had someone who worried about
him.  He had to watch out for her too.  It was time to report the
incidents of the tail in D.C.  For now he would keep his suspicions about
a mole at the Bureau or the DEA to himself.  Someone was out to make them
appear incompetent by laying false trails and offering up hired actors as
bait.  The whole setup stunk, making Steve more determined to hunt this
Astuto character down, no matter how long it took.