A False Dawn (22 page)

FIFTY-SEVEN

The next morning I left the house early.  I was beginning to feel very guilty about handing off little Max to my kind neighbors.  First, I felt like I was taking advantage of their generosity, even though they insisted I wasn’t, and secondly, Max genuinely seemed sad when I left her.

I thought about that glancing in my rearview mirror on my way to SunState Farms, and realized I was being followed.

The driver was good.  I hit my brakes for five seconds, and my pursuer or pursuers backed way off, almost out of sight.  I sped up.  The car followed, then it made an abrupt turn off the road, vanishing on a country road.  He or she knew I had made them.

I slowed down, less than twenty miles per hour and watched my rearview mirror.  Nothing.  No pursuit.  Only the flat topography of the rolling Florida landscapes.  

I turned off the state road and began driving down a country road.  The land was a mix of cattle pasture, scrub oak, and lakes.  As I rounded a curve, I slammed on the brakes.  A farmer drove a tractor at a speed of less than ten miles and hour.  It was an old John Deere green tractor, puffing diesel fumes and taking up most of the lane. 

 I checked my rearview mirror, pulling out into the passing lane, I noticed a car far off in the distance.  It was the same car that had been tailing me.  Nobody was that good.

I passed the farmer and brought the Jeep up to more than ninety miles an hour.  I wanted to put a lot of real estate between the posse and me.  I swerved off the paved road and took a bouncy ride down a dirt road.  I intentionally kicked up dust. 
Come get me, assholes!
  I found a wooded area, parked the Jeep, left the motor running, and ran to wait behind the natural cover.

 The dark blue Ford sedan rolled quietly down the road.  They were in no hurry, and I knew why.  There was nowhere I could run where they wouldn’t find me.  I knew they’d been tracking me by satellite. 

 There were two people in the car.  A man and a woman.  The man drove slowly, and I could see the woman pointing toward my Jeep.  As they stopped, I chambered a round in my Glock and waited.  Less than fifty feet from my Jeep they got out of the car.  Both of them had drawn their weapons.  The man approached the Jeep from the driver’s side.  The woman covered him.

I crouched behind the palmettos, lifted my cell phone, and started recording video.

“Out of the car!” ordered the man, pointing the pistol directly into the empty passenger seat. “He’s not here!” he said, about to turn my way.

“I have a gun aimed at the back of your head!” I yelled. “Drop your weapons! Turn around slowly!”  They hesitated.  “You’ve got two seconds!  One of you will have a bullet in your leg.  Drop the guns and hold your hands in the air.”  They both did as ordered and turned to face me. 

The man was mid thirties.  Teeth gnashing.  Disbelieving face that looked pained. He sported government-issued attitude and a crew cut.  The woman was striking, even from a distance.  Brunette.  Nice legs.  Hair pinned up.  Eyes testing.  I recognized her.

The man said, “You just committed a felony.”

“And I may commit a few more.” 

“You drew a gun on federal agents,” he said.  “You could be spending the next twenty years of your life in a federal prison.”

“You look more like a travel agent than a federal agent.”

He started to lower his hand.  “Hold ‘em high, pal, and let’s get something straight real fast.  You and your girlfriend drew on me first.  Got it all right here on cell phone video.  The video these phones record is good enough to use on TV news.  I have a permit to carry this gun.  I’m holding you at bay in self-defense.”

I touched a nerve in the woman.  She spoke up.  “I’m not his ‘girlfriend.’  I’m FBI Special Agent Lauren Miles, and this is Special Agent Mark Helmer.  We didn’t come here to harm or arrest you, Mr. O’Brien.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“My apologies.  We actually wanted to talk with you.”

“There are simpler ways than using GPS tracking to stalk me.  Maybe at Quantico they didn’t teach you to use the telephone.  I’m sure you have my number.  I know you visited my boat and my marina friends.  If there is anything you needed to know about me that you don’t already know, Special Agent Miles, all you had to do was ask, especially after I fed your bug to the crabs.”

“Would you please lower your gun and your voice?” she asked.

“Show me some ID.”  I approached them.  They produced their federal IDs, and I shoved the Glock behind my belt.

“Thank you,” Miles said.  Agent Helmer seemed as warm as a little league coach who’d just lost three in a row.

I said, “Before we get cozy, where’d you put the transmitter?”

“It’s inside the right front bumper,” Miles said, looking at the Jeep.

“Then let’s have Special Agent Helmer get it out of the special hiding place.”

“Find it yourself,” he said.

Miles said, “Mark, get it, okay?”

GI Joe’s nose wrinkled like a spanked puppy.

“Please,” Miles said, “just get the damn thing.”

Helmer pulled out a small penknife, worked the GPS tracker from under the Jeep’s bumper, and sat the bug on the hood. 

I said, “All right, what’s on your mind.  I’ll assume a least one of you is wired.”

“We’re not,” she said.  “We know you’re investigating the murder of the girl found not far from your home.  We believe her death and others involving farm workers is related.”

“Now that’s damn good police work.”

“Please, Mr. O’Brien.  Give us a few minutes to explain.  These deaths are part of a bigger picture.”

“Let me guess, you thought I was part of that big picture.  Maybe doing a little international export business out of my old home city of Miami.  Probably tipped off by a trusted detective with Volusia County SO.  You followed me via satellite to see if my path crosses paths with the vic’s.  Even for you guys, it’d be easy to calculate location and time of deaths.  Then, bingo!”

“You’re a first-class asshole,” the Little Leaguer yelled.

“Orwellian tactics before old-fashioned communications happen to rub me the wrong way.”

“It’s not surveillance,” Miles said.

“Maybe that’s not what the FBI calls it.”

She stepped forward, sighed deeply, crossed her arms over her breasts, and said, “Mr. O’Brien, I knew of you from Miami homicide.  I also know you had one of the best conviction records, actually the best in your department.  We were hoping you could lead us to the perp or perps doing these serial killings.  It’s that simple.”

“Either that’s the worse compliment I’ve ever received or the FBI is just plain lazy.  You’re looking for an ex-cop to help you do your jobs?  What’s the real reason?”

Little Leaguer shoved his hands in his pockets and said to Miles, “Let’s just get the hell out of here.  Last thing we need is a burned-out cop with a bad attitude.”

“And the last thing I need is two wannabes using me to help them do their jobs. Go back to Miami and put your transmitters on ships.  Catch some terrorists.”

I turned to leave, and she said, “Now you wait just a minute, Mr. O’Brien!”

“Or you’ll do what, bug my bedroom this time?”

“We’re short staffed.  The Miami office is in charge of keeping all the South American sleaze in check.  We do have more ports and open coastline to secure than any state.  There are more drugs, international gangs and criminals filtering through Miami than any city in the nation.”

“I served my time in Miami.”

“We’re aware you took early retirement after the death of your wife.  We know you’ve moved on but wound up in the middle of this.  Can we work together?”

 “Not interested in government work.”

“We’re not offering you a job.  We’re asking for some cooperation.”  

“Why?  Why and how has this evolved to get you guys out of your offices?”

She was hesitant, choosing her words carefully. “You’re involved because you care about innocent people.  We don’t have the means or manpower to keep check with the tidal flow of human trafficking into America.  We know there’s sexual abuse, sexual slavery, beatings, and murders.  No one will talk because they’re scared to death.  It makes it very easy for a serial killer to penetrate because these people are afraid of the government, afraid they’ll be deported, and they’re afraid of the contractors who they work for.  In the last few months, the prostitution ring escalated from serial murder to the sale of human organs.”

“So it takes the sale of hearts to get to the heart of the FBI?  Is that when you finally send in your troops?  Or is it because there are six months to the primaries, and this wouldn’t look good to the incumbent.  Unsolved serial killings, human trafficking, sexual slavery.   So not politically correct.”

Her nostrils flared, pupils at pinpoints, carotid artery pounding in her neck.  “What is
your
problem?  Why won’t you cooperate?”

“Problem?  The problem is it takes the media, the reports of human organs cut out of victims, to get the FBI moving.  It’s not enough for these people to be held as sex slaves, beaten and killed.  They’ve got to be sold like a side of beef to raise some red federal flags.”

She started to speak then abruptly stopped.  I said, “A friend of mine was just murdered.  It’s because of what’s happening in these sex slavery circles that she was killed.  For me, it started when I found a young women dying near my home.  Now a woman I cared about was shot in her home as she was coming to have dinner with me.  This is personal.” 

“I’m sorry this has happened to these people.  The point is we’re trying to do something, to find the person or persons responsible.  You’ve made inroads in this case.  You’ve penetrated the inner circles.  We know a lot of the abuse is coming from contractors working for SunState Farms, but we don’t know who their upscale clients are and who’s killing these women.”

I said, “In other words, you don’t know, as my best buddy in Special Forces used to say, you don’t know shit.”

Junior said, “That’s enough—”

“Mark!  Please!  Mr. O’Brien’s right.  We don’t know shit.  But we will, and we’ll do it with or without you, Mr. O’Brien.  If you become a problem, it’s obstruction of justice.  If you work with us—”

“It’s what?  Cooperation?  Save your threats for someone you can scare.  They mean nothing to me.  What does mean something is catching a man who’ll look you in the eye, Special Agent Miles, while he’s shutting off the air to your lungs, while he’s raping you.  Right before you pass out, he’ll place his lips on yours and blow the kiss of life into your lungs…just to do it again.  The second time he won’t bring you back.  He’ll literally suck the life out of you.  And after your heart stops, he’ll remove it.”        

She lowered her arms, stepping closer to me, her hazel eyes exploring mine. “Will you partner with us?” 

“Under one condition,” I said.

“What?”

“Never do I find one hint of bugging or surveillance of any kind from you.  That includes my boat, my car, or any of my or my friends’ property.  If and when I do find who’s doing this, you’ll arrest and prosecute vigorously.  No politics.  No bullshit.”

“A deal,” she said.

“I’ll call you.  Don’t call me.  And I’ll work only with you, Special Agent Miles.  Send Junior back to the farm.”

She nodded.  Agent Little League’s face turned crimson with anger.  He cocked his hands on his hips and watched me walk to my Jeep.  I picked up the GPS transmitter, and tossed it to him.  “You can stick that where the sun doesn’t shine.”    

FIFTY-EIGHT

It was after midnight when I parked my Jeep about a half mile away from the migrant camp.  I left the Jeep on the side of a dirt farm road, sprayed on mosquito repellent, and began hiking through the palmettos and Australian pines, dodging an occasional car headlight and gaining ground.  It was a long shot but one worth taking.

Moving stealthily, I could hear the sound of Latin music and cursing coming from one trailer.  A chained dog howled.  A man swore at another in Spanish.  The odor of burning garbage lingered in the night air.  Two pickup trucks were parked in front of the last trailer at the end of the dirt road.  A man came out of the trailer, turned, and said something to a woman.  He swore, shook his head, and drove off in one of the trucks.

I almost didn’t see it.  To the far left of the last trailer was a dark-colored van.  I crouched down near the front of the van.  I could smell human urine, a sickly smell that was produced from cheap wine passing through a diseased bladder.

 I stepped to the rear of the van, turned over on my back and wedged beneath the undercarriage.  Using the small flashlight I brought, I started searching.  I looked up into the wheel area and around the straps used to secure the exhaust system.  There was nothing but mud.  I crawled over to the other rear tire and began the same examination.  Just as I was about to chalk it up to a good effort, I saw it.

Wedged in fresh mud, was a small piece of green.  I used my penknife to scrape the mud away and removed the leaf from the undercarriage.  The tire had tossed mud over the leaf and sealed most of it like a caterpillar in a cocoon.  The leaf looked identical to the leaves I’d found at the bottom of the rut in the national forest.  I cradled it in my hand like a tiny broken wing of a butterfly.

I slipped a Ziploc bag from my shirt pocket and placed the leaf inside.  After I closed the seal, I started to shimmy out from underneath the van. 

The van rocked.

The door opened and slammed too fast.  Someone had seen me.  The driver knew I was under the van when he started the motor.  I had maybe five seconds.  I lay as flat on the ground as possible.  I turned my head and body away from the transmission gearbox.  The driver gunned the engine.  Tires spun and the van lurched forward.  Part of the undercarriage raked across my chest and tore through the skin. 

As soon as the van cleared over me, I rolled to one side, grabbing the Glock and springing to my feet.  I leveled the pistol at Juan Gomez’ face just as he was pulling a gun from his belt.

“Drop it!”  I yelled.  Gomez held onto the pistol and slowly lowered it to his side. 

He said, “You’re one dumb asshole!”

“Toss the gun!  Now!”

Gomez grinned and threw the gun a few feet away from him.  “You’re trespassing again, ex-cop.  Thought someone was stealin’ the van.  Lucky we just didn’t shoot you.”

I pointed the Glock straight at his head.  “It’s over!  Murder.  Black-market sales of human organs.  You’ve got a date with a lethal injection.”

The driver in the van turned around and hit his high beams.  Gomez was between the van and me.  He was a silhouette, the high beams blinding.  I yelled, “You move, you die!”  The driver fired a shot from the van.  The round hit a tree directly behind me.

The van gunned toward me.  The instant I saw the muzzle flash I heard the bullet whirr less than an inch from my left ear.  I fired one round into the van’s front windshield.  I rolled out of the way, scooping up Gomez’s pistol as the van came straight for me.  It missed my leg by inches and crashed hard into the tree.

When I jumped up, Gomez had vanished.  In the red glare from the van’s taillights there was no one. The engine raced, throttle stuck.  A loud hiss coming from under the hood.  I could smell coolant, oil, and raw gasoline.

I pointed the Glock at the driver’s window, approaching the van.  The driver slumped over the wheel.  I opened the door and held two fingers against Silas Davis’ wrist.  He was bleeding from his mouth, but his heart was still beating.  I put the pistol under my belt and pulled Davis from the van, sliding him at least fifty feet though the dirt. The smell of gasoline was strong.  I turned and started jogging toward the county road as the van’s engine exploded.  I looked over my shoulder to see flames half as high as the pine tree.

Through the roar of flames, I could hear the chained dog howling like a lone wolf in the night.