The Pressure of Darkness (33 page)

Pal rose up—the preacher ends the sermon. He adjusted the expensive suit and tie, walked briskly to the front door. The action left Burke behind, subordinate. He remained seated, feeling an odd mixture of guilt, resentment, and fear. Pal opened the front door. The dapper Mr. Nandi leapt at once to attend. Pal hesitated, with the eye lightening of someone who just remembered a long-lost joke. "The cause of suffering is desire, yes?" His tone was sweet, the meta-message corrosive. "If you can find it in you, please try to have the decency to allow an old man to die in peace."

Mohandas Pal left. Nandi gently closed the door. Their exit seems to suck all the air out of the living room.

FORTY-FIVE

Later, Burke would have no idea how long he'd sat alone, impaled by the consequences of his behavior, writhing in exquisite shame. The shadows lengthened over the area rug and somewhere down the hall a timer lamp kicked on. The light reflected on the hardwood flooring, like a yellow flare over a darkening sea. Burke began to mourn, small sobs at first. Finally, he slapped his own face. He had betrayed Mary in her endless, sleepless sleep and disgraced himself by interfering in the Pal's marriage a second, even more damaging time. Burke felt beneath contempt.

Well, what do I do now?

Fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes later than that someone knocked. Burke palmed the .22 and padded to the door, more afraid of a return visit from Professor Pal than a hired gun. He peeked out and saw a man in a brown delivery uniform under the glare of the porch light; he was tall, slight, and blond with a thick moustache. The driver was holding a small, manila folder-sized package.

Burke opened the door, shaking his head. "Bro, what the hell are you doing? I think you need to get some professional help."

"Don't start," Major Cary Ryan muttered, as pushed his way into the room. "Do you ever turn any lights on around here?"

"I was thinking."

"About what? Your recent visitor?" Burke blinked, wondering how much he should say. Ryan went on without a break. "I was down the street in the delivery truck when I saw the little fart on the porch. Then I watched the bald guy leave. Who is he?"

"An old professor of mine," Burke replied. He clicked the table lamp, brightened shadows. Ryan seemed ridiculous in short pants. His fake moustache looked exactly like a fake moustache. "Cary, what are you doing here?"

Cary sat on the couch with the package in his lap, noisily unwrapped. "This couldn't wait for me to run an ad or fuck around with the usual stuff, and I didn't want to say anything over the phone."

Burke turned with spread palms. He couldn't guarantee his own home wasn't bugged.

"No, you can relax," Cary said, offering a slightly apologetic smile. "I had your house swept earlier today."

"Thanks for asking." Burke parked in the easy chair. He was not annoyed. It would be good to have something to distract him from the awful sense of anguish Pal had left behind him like the fluttering tail of a kite.

Cary finished unwrapping the UPS box and removed some files. He spread several photographs on the table like a bad poker hand.

Burke spun one around, right-side up. "You already showed me these the other day. The Gamma shots from the Predator drone, right?"

"Los Gatos, northern Mexico. But look at the date stamp."

Burke squinted. "Last night."

"And now look at these UV prints."

Burke thumbed through the aerial photographs. In some, small crimson clusters dotted the landscape like sloppy flower arrangements. The shots were taken every ninety seconds over a nine minute period. "Is this what I think it is?"

Cary removed the fake moustache and rubbed his red upper lip. Burke noted his face looked wan from lack of sleep. "We sent in Steve Lukac and a short team. He picked that new kid, Charlie Carney, also Del Howison and Kevin Kramer. We jammed radar, did a fake drug flight and took them in low over the border from Texas. The chopper dropped them a half-mile downwind of Los Gatos. The insertion went perfectly."

Burke remained silent. He liked Steve Lukac and served with him for a time. It is suddenly, chillingly obvious what happened.
A fire fight.

Cary spoke in a monotone that belied his tension. "You know this has never happened to me before, Red. Not in fourteen years of service. I have seldom lost a man, much less an entire team."

Burke blanched. "The whole team?" He looked down at the UV scan again, those scattered little splatters of light. "So this was a running gun battle, those are muzzle flares and explosions."

"Yes."

"The team is presumed dead."

"As near as we can tell, Howison and Kramer bought it right away. Charlie Carney and Steve Lukac got pinned down. They were badly outnumbered, but did their best to make the LZ. They never got there. One of them was killed, the other captured. We don't know which."

Burke felt stunned. "Caught and questioned by a freak drug lord like Buey? You know what they're going to do to him, don't you?"

Cary swallowed. "The last DEA agent he got his hands on ended up flayed from the crotch to the shoulders and then buried alive. We know because they found dirt in his lungs."

"Jesus H. Christ."

Burke and his former boss glared at the pictures. Finally Burke got to his feet and stumbled toward the kitchen. "I need some coffee. You want a cup?"

Cary Ryan stayed behind. His body sagged so deeply into the couch he looked physically diminished. "Sure. Just black for me."

Burke understood why Ryan had come. He wanted time to think it over. Cary stacked the UV photos again, shuffled them just to have something to do. He heard the gurgling of the coffee machine. Burke came back into the living room, sat down.

"What's the rest of it, Cary?"

Ryan removed more photographs from the folder. He slid them over. "These photos are from the day before. That area we suspect may be a mass grave just got larger. At least one other object about the size of a grown man's body was added to the pile."

"You're thinking that the agent that survived, Lukac or maybe Carney, is likely to be next. Let's get real. He's probably already dead. You know that, don't you?"

"Maybe, maybe not."

"And the kind of torture a prick like Lopez uses would break any man down. They know everything about your operation, now. And why you sent a team into Mexico."

Cary shrugged, miserably. "Worse case scenario, Buey knows what Lukac knew. And Steve didn't know where the headquarters would be moved to this month, or what the new codes would be, because we never told him. If it was Carney that lived, he knew even less. I'm not that worried."

"Then why come here?"

Cary Ryan tapped the photographs with a stiffened ring finger. "Because this fucker is toast, brother. I want him punished for what he did to my boys."

"You want me to enter a foreign country illegally and off the record? Sure, what the hell. But drop into a drug lord's compound right after he's already slaughtered a solid, professional team? You're out of your mind."

"I want someone good and you're the best we've got."

"I'm the best you had, Cary. There's a difference. I'm just a contract guy, now. I pick and choose. And this one looks like a suicide run."

Ryan leaned back into the swallowing couch. "I'll double your fee."

"Still not interested." Burke's stomach clenched and his self-esteem took another swan dive.

"You and Steve were friends, Red. I know you well enough to know that this gets to you."

From down the hall, a wall clock ticked inexorably forward. Neither man spoke. Burke sat quietly, weighing his obligations and the varied challenges piling up. He had a wife in a coma, a former lover who was married to a dying man, a mountain of outrageous medical bills, a client who had just been assaulted by a professional for mysterious reasons, and a suicide that rapidly morphed into a murder investigation. These days, everything he touched seemed to rapidly spiral out of control
. Fecal alchemy, man.

"I need to mull this over," Burke said, finally. He drained the coffee mug. He put it down on the table. End of discussion.

"You'll at least think about it?"

"I will. You had my home swept?" He waited for Cary to catch on and nod. "Okay. If I understand you correctly, officially you want a fresh team to go in there and see what's up and also investigate the long shot that our boy may still be alive."

"Yeah."

"But
un
officially you want my team to go in there, find those miserable cock suckers and level the place when we leave."

Cary Ryan leaned forward to rest his knuckles on the coffee table like a challenged simian. "Off the record?"

"Off the record."

"No cute euphemisms necessary, Red. I want Juan Garcia Lopez taken out, terminated, wasted. I want you to find Buey, and the rest of the lowlifes who killed my boys and blow up their shit."

Burke responded quietly, firmly. "I don't do hits, you know that."

Ryan shrugged. "Come on, Red. If you take this job, you know as well as I do how this is going to go down. It will be scorched earth, baby. Buey and his boys won't let you do it any other way."

"Cary, this isn't like you. What is it you're not telling me?"

"Nothing."

Eye to eye for a long beat. Ryan broke first. "There's a lot of heat. The Mexican government is a little pissed off, and our own guys upstairs are less than thrilled about things getting botched. Even Homeland Security is pissed because we didn't fill them in."

"You're in hot water."

"Let me put it this way, a lot of folks would prefer I let this slide. But I can't do that. I'm not willing to, okay?"

"I understand."

"But?"

Burke rubbed his knuckles. "Cary, I've got a lot on my mind right now."

"Does that mean you're not up to working? If you are going to take this on, I need you at the top of your game. I have my neck right on the chopping block. I need you cool as ice, man. It's too hairy otherwise."

Burke stared into the middle distance, hearing long-ago battles in deep mental echo. "What about Walker, can you use him instead?"

Cary seems to deflate. "If I have to, sure. But I was hoping you'd see this my way. Why don't you think it over and then get back in touch?"

"No, I can give you my answer right now." Burke ceased debating, grimaced. "I don't want to pass on this, I really don't, but I have to. I'm sorry."

FORTY-SIX

FRIDAY

The tinny, impersonal voice comes from the computer speakers, but somehow manages to sound smug anyway. "Check."

"Damn!"

Doc Washington slaps his hand down on the keyboard in frustration. He rolls his wheelchair back; stretches his arms, rolls his neck. Needles of pain are starting to tingle all over his shattered body, particularly down his neck and upper spine. Doc looks around the office and is surprised to find it empty. He has been playing chess alone for several hours and is being roundly trounced by the advanced level of the computer program.

Doc closes his eyes, willing himself to be elsewhere and in another when: . . .
A young stud again, a high school running back from the L.A. ghetto, feeling his cleats dig into the crisp, scented fall grass when he makes one sweetheart of a cut and smoothly shifts the hard-cornered pigskin to his outside arm; Doc can see the defender bite on the hip fake and slip and fall and he can still hear the echoing crowd . . .

But he's here, now. Fucked up beyond belief, strung out on dope, and frozen forever in a cripple's go-cart.

Rolling himself to the counter, Doc parks the chair and opens his med box. He has tried to wean himself before, and this is his latest attempt; it is an Oxycontin IV drip coordinated by an electric pump and a timer. It is out of the illegally-obtained painkiller. Doc carefully pours another day's dose into the glass container and replaces the tiny mechanism. He moves the IV to a different vein; he rotates it daily. He is still heavily addicted to the powerful drug, but now a normal dose lasts him two full days. He must adjust things carefully. The entire dosage, all at once, would doubtless prove fatal.

"Check," repeats the voice. The computer flickers and rolls to get his attention.

"Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, you stinking pile of junk," Doc mutters, "I taught you everything you know." The computer stares back without blinking.

Doc is sweating lightly, now. His stomach has begun to feel queasy and the aches have begun to spread. He eyes the dosage meter again, rests the tip of his finger on the button but holds back. He tells himself to wait thirty minutes, endure feeling sick for thirty minutes and then he can give himself another dose. He knows it is the only way he will ever get clean and sober.

His hand shakes.

Doc turns the electric wheelchair and rolls it back to the computer. He types in a forfeit and closes the program. He checks his e-mail. It puzzles him that no one has responded to the tissue samples he sent. Out of curiosity, he rolls back through his SENT mail and finds the mail is not listed at all. It has been deleted.
Say what?
A chill runs down his neck, along with rivers of perspiration. Doc types in several commands and traces the communication. No luck. Someone has blocked it somehow, made it impossible for him to send a file to his superiors. The e-mail has not even remained on his computer.

What the hell is going on?

Doc opens his files and checks the folders. As he watches, the one regarding the homeless woman, marked MARY, winks out.
Deleted!
Eliminated by someone who has access to the mainframe computer? The chill comes again. Whoever it is, he is working at precisely the same moment to eliminate Doc's hours of work. But why?

Doc types as fast as he can. He shifts a rough draft Word copy of the file regarding MARY to the first folder that comes to mind, BURKE. He changes pages and checks. The document is present. He rapidly changes the title to UNSUB and hits "save." As he watches the screen, the Burke file called STRYKER winks out. Doc goes online, types an e-mail to Gina at Burke's office, then adds UNSUB as an attachment. He drops it in "mail waiting to be sent" and puts it on a timer. Seconds later UNSUB winks out as well. For a long moment all he is aware of is the clacking of his fingers on the keyboard and the timid patter of his pulse. He stops, reaches for the telephone.