Darwin's Blade (38 page)

Syd had taken her hands off the riser controls and had the 9mm semiautomatic held firmly in both hands. Her legs were apart in the proper shooting stance—just a thousand feet too high—and she was emptying the Sig's entire second clip into the Plexiglas windshield of the Bell Ranger.

The helicopter missed Dar, but not by so much that he did not literally pull his legs up to avoid the rush of the rotors. Then the heavy machine continued to spiral down faster and faster.

Syd's pistol had locked open. Dar watched her drop the empty magazine, pull the last one from her belt, and slap it into place, even as her orange-and-white parachute swirled her around in spirals above him. She was just a bit too far away for shouting, so all that Dar could do was point toward the risers, pull on the right one to spill enough air to send him dipping and spiraling in that direction, and then point to an open meadow area.

Syd nodded, holstered the weapon, and began tugging her riser D-rings, attempting to follow Dar into the clearing. Then both of them quit struggling and watched the Bell Ranger's last seconds four hundred feet below them.

The pilot was good, but not quite good enough. A helicopter in autorotation is essentially so much dead weight controlled by a mostly dead stick, but the pilot managed to time the death spiral so he missed the trees and came around into a clearing and lined up, more or less, with the thirty-degree slope. If Dar had been piloting a sailplane, he would have followed the rules for off-field glider landings and attempted to land going uphill, both to reduce his roll-out and to use the last bit of lift the hillside offered. But the hillside offered nothing to the massive Bell Ranger, and the pilot had no choice but to land headed downhill, at a good clip, and let the skids slide along the ground like the runners on a bobsled.

Even from several hundred feet up, the meadow looked smooth enough. Dar was wise to the lie of that appearance: there would be large rocks and small boulders, gullies and rock-dense shrubs, and probably larger obstacles. Whatever the Bell Ranger hit, it hit hard, the front of the skids digging in and the helicopter going nose over in an instant, the free-wheeling rotors slamming into the earth one second later and sending a cloud of dust a hundred feet into the air.

Through that dust Dar could make out the Bell Ranger tumbling end over end, the tail boom ripping free, the cockpit bubble smashing inward. The sound was audible and terrible even from two hundred feet above it all. Then the mass of twisted fuselage came to a stop against two larger boulders about a hundred yards downhill. There was a lesser noise to the south and Dar twisted just in time to see the folded mass of the Twin Astir disappear into the tall pine trees several hundred yards away.

Dar concentrated on trying to land gently, showing Syd how to do it by example. It was not much of an example. He ended up hitting a thick willow crotch first and catapulting head over heels into the weeds, coming to rest on his back with the chute dragging him across the slope. Syd landed gently fifty feet uphill…on her feet. She took two hops and stood there, apparently dazed but certainly in one piece.

Dar struggled out of his harness and jumped to his feet to help her out of her gear before the wind came up and started dragging her back up the slope. Suddenly everything began to spin again. He decided to sit down for a second until the movement stopped, and he had no sooner flopped on his butt than Syd was there—free of her harness and helping him disentangle his feet from the chute fabric billowing all around him.

“Come on,” she said, and the two of them started moving down the hill toward the debris field of the Bell Ranger.

Syd paused to look at the tail boom and mangled rotor—pieces of their sailplane's wing still entangled—but Dar stupidly jogged the last hundred feet. He could smell the raw stink of aviation fuel in the breeze and knew that if anything ignited the passenger cabin, anyone surviving the crash would have done so in vain.

The cockpit was completely smashed in. The pilot was dead—still in his harness and seat—eviscerated and almost decapitated by the twisted Plexiglas and metal floor. Dar could not see in the back. Fuel was running freely from the wreck. He pulled himself up the skids of the toppled machine and stood on the main cabin, looking down into the backseat. Constanza was not there.

“Dar!” Syd shouted from seventy-five feet uphill, and then froze.

Tony Constanza had just staggered from behind the larger of the two boulders. He was battered and bloody, his suit jacket and shirt almost torn off, but he was pointing the AK-47 assault rifle at Dar.

“Freeze!” shouted Syd, going into a crouching stance and aiming the little Sig-Sauer.

Constanza gave her a fleeting glance. He was not eight feet from Dar and the Kalashnikov automatic weapon was aimed at Dar's chest.

I can jump him,
Dar thought muddily.
No, you can't, asshole,
was the more clear mental reply.

“You going to shoot me with that little thing from way back there, bitch?” shouted Constanza. “Not before I cut this motherfucker in two. Drop your gun, cunt.”

Hearing that word almost made Dar leap. The AK-47 kept him standing in place.

Syd lowered her weapon.

“No!” shouted Dar.

“I said
drop it,
bitch,” screamed Constanza, raising the assault rifle's muzzle toward Dar's face.

Syd brought the Sig-Sauer back up and fired three times, the shots so close together that they sounded like one continuous hammering to Dar. The first bullet blew Tony Constanza's left knee into a flap of red meat and white gristle; the second struck him high in the left leg; the third hit him in the left buttock and swung him around.

The AK-47 emptied half its banana clip into the dirt.

Dar jumped down and kicked the weapon away. Syd bounded down the hill in great strides, keeping her pistol trained on the screaming, rolling man the whole way.

“Help me, Jesus fuck,” said Constanza as she slid to a stop next to him. “You shot my balls off, you bitch.”

“Not likely,” said Syd. She kicked him over on his belly, held the pistol to the back of his head as she expertly patted him down, and then pulled his wrists behind him and cuffed him.

“Syd,” said Dar softly, “didn't they train you at Quantico to shoot for center body mass at that pistol distance?”

“Of course they did,” said the chief investigator. “But we need this guy alive.” She holstered her weapon. “Is this the only way you know how to deal with felons?” she said. “By crashing into them?”

Dar shrugged. “It's what I know best.” He knelt next to the whining man. “He's going to bleed to death from that thigh wound,” said Dar, “if we don't do something.”

“Yes,” agreed Syd, with no emotion visible on her face.

Dar held Constanza still while Syd removed the man's belt and lashed it tight high on his upper thigh, using it as a tourniquet. He screamed when Syd put full pressure on the belt, and then he fainted.

Dar sat heavily on the dry grass. “He's still going to bleed to death before anyone finds us. It'll be hours before Steve or Ken gets worried.”

Syd shook her head. “Sometimes, Darwin, my dear, you are such a Luddite.” She took her cell phone out of her vest pocket and punched a speed-dial number. “Warren,” she said. “Jim…Syd Olson here. Yeah. Well, we've got Tony Constanza with us, but he's hurt pretty bad. If he's going to be our star witness, you'd better get a medevac helicopter to…” She lowered the phone. “Where the hell are we, Dar?”

“East face of Mount Palomar,” said Dar. “About the four-thousand-foot level. The helicopter has a box of colored flares in the back…Tell Warren that we'll pop smoke when we hear the dust-off chopper.”

“Did you get all that, Jim?” said Syd. “OK. Yeah…we'll sit tight.” She looked at Dar. “They're sending a Marine medical chopper from Twenty-nine Palms.”

“Tell him that this area is thick with rattlesnakes,” said Dar.

“We'll sit tight,” repeated Syd, “but Dar says that this hill is rife with rattlesnakes, so please tell the Marines to move their asses if you want your witness and his captors alive.” She rang off.

They looked at each other, at the unconscious gunman, and then at each other again. They were both wet with sweat, blue with bruises, red from blood flowing from small cuts and gashes, and sticky with dust. Suddenly they grinned at each other.

“God, you're beautiful,” said Syd.

“I was just going to say that to you,” said Dar.

Then they were holding each other and kissing so passionately that a stray boot almost woke up the moaning but still unconscious hit man.

Almost but not quite.

D
ar was invited to be in on the arrests, but he declined. He had work to do. He heard the details later.

In England, Syd explained later, the police prefer to wait for a suspect to enter his or her home before making an arrest. There is less chance of violence and of innocent by-standers being hurt that way. In America, of course, exactly the opposite is true. A home, all too frequently in America, is an arsenal and fortress. American cops prefer to make arrests in semipublic but controlled places, where the suspect can be—at the very least—outgunned. The exception in this case was to be the ranch house where the five Russians—including Zuker and Yaponchik—were known to be hiding out and where the FBI wanted to hit them with surprise and overwhelming force.

The FBI claimed precedence and jurisdiction on the Thursday morning raids, and because of the death of three of their agents, no one argued. Los Angeles–based Special Agent in Charge Howard Faber personally led the tactical team of eighteen helmeted, Kevlar-vested, submachine-gun-toting special agents into the Century City tower at 6:48
A.M.
Pacific time. SAC James Warren would have liked to have been there, but he had taken charge of the stakeout and raid on the Russian mafia men's isolated ranch house near the Santa Anita Racetrack. Chief Investigator Sydney Olson, also decked out in a Kevlar vest labeled “FBI” in bright yellow, was second in command to SAC Faber on the Trace assault. Like the others, she carried a Heckler & Koch MP-10 submachine gun.

Dallas Trace was on the air live, his CNN
Objection Sustained
program airing at its usual 10:00
A.M.
Eastern time. Special Agent in Charge Faber and each of his tactical team leaders carried a tiny TV monitor and they watched as the show's titles rolled, the intro music ended, and the New York anchor—another ex–defense lawyer—announced the day's topic and welcomed her friend and colleague from California, famous defense counselor Dallas Trace. The silver-haired attorney was at his usual post at his desk, slouched back in his leather chair, wearing his usual buffalo-hide leather vest, the windows behind him showing a smoggy early L.A. morning.

Ten of the FBI tactical team agents swept through the offices, herding early-bird legal secretaries, young lawyers, secretaries, and receptionists out of their rooms and cubicles, corralling them in the outer reception room where two agents in black Kevlar stood guard. Having secured the hallways and offices, two of the agents then kicked open the door to the conference room that served as the “greenroom” during the television broadcasts. Three of Counselor Trace's four American bodyguards were sitting in there, watching the monitor, drinking coffee, and wolfing down donuts. They looked at the tactical team in openmouthed surprise and then they were down on the floor, hands behind their heads, being brusquely frisked by the FBI team members. Each of the bodyguards was carrying at least one firearm, and the biggest and meanest of the bunch was carrying a second pistol in his back belt and a tiny revolver in an ankle holster. Two of the three also carried long-bladed folding knives that were illegal for street use.

Watching their portable monitor, sure that none of the disturbance had been heard in Trace's office, Faber, three of his agents with H&K MP-10s, and Syd waited just outside the lawyer's office.

Dallas Trace was just drawling, “… an' if ah had been the defense attorney for these poor, prosecuted, persecuted, and harried parents—who are obviously innocent of theah daughtah's tragic death—I would be bringing lawsuits against the city of—” when the FBI kicked in the door and the four agents and Syd came in with guns drawn.

The two cameramen and the single sound man looked to their floor producer for guidance. The producer hesitated two microseconds and then she gave the finger-spinning gesture for “keep rolling.” Dallas Trace merely looked up at the intruders with his mouth wide open.

“Counselor Dallas Trace, you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to defraud,” said Special Agent in Charge Faber. “Stand up.”

Trace continued sitting. He tried to speak, obviously finding it difficult to switch gears from the mythical lawsuit he was about to announce for the poor, persecuted, and prosecuted parents of the murdered child, but before he could make a sound, two of the FBI men in black grabbed the attorney's arms and dragged him to his feet. His arms were pinned behind him, and Syd snapped on the cuffs.

After what probably had been the longest period of speechlessness in Dallas Trace's adult life, he found his voice—in fact, he roared. “What the
hell
do you think you're doing? Do you have
any
goddamn idea who I am?”

“Defense Attorney Dallas Trace,” Special Agent in Charge Faber said again. “And you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent—”

“Silent my
ass!
” screamed Dallas Trace, his western drawl magically replaced by a nasal New Jersey accent. “Tell that sow-bitch to get those cuffs off me.”

Later polling showed that it was this comment, aired live on a popular CNN program, that most alienated potential female jurors.

“Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law,” continued SAC Faber as the two men in black Kevlar stripped the lawyer of his lavalier microphone, belt-pack, and wiring, and then guided Trace out from behind his desk. “You have the right to an attorney—”

“I
am
an attorney, you dipshit!” shouted Dallas Trace, spittle flying. “I am
the
foremost defense attorney in the United States of—”

“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you,” continued Faber, calmly, as the five of them—three agents, Trace, and Syd—shoved past the goggling floor producer. Both cameramen were grinning broadly as they panned the lenses around to the door where the other tactical-team agents waited with their weapons at parade rest.

Dallas Trace looked back over his shoulder at the cameras. “Greta!” he cried, calling to his New York CNN cohost. “You
saw
this. You
saw
what they did to me…”

And then Trace was gone.

The line producer lunged for the still live lavalier mike and thrust it in Syd's face.

“Why this outrageous arrest in the middle of—” began the producer, before Syd interrupted with, “No comment.” She and the two agents walked out the door.

On that same Thursday morning, six FBI men and five Sherman Oaks plainclothes officers raided Dallas Trace's home. There was no resistance. The bodyguard who had been left behind to guard Mrs. Trace happened to be in bed with her at the time the black-garbed FBI tactical team kicked open the bedroom door.

The bodyguard disentangled himself from Destiny Trace's enveloping and unyielding legs, rolled over, looked at his shoulder holster and pistol on the chair twenty feet away, looked into four suppressed H&K muzzles with laser sights dancing small red dots across his forehead, and held up his hands.

Mrs. Trace sat up in bed, apparently resisting any impulse to cover her bare breasts. One of the FBI men's attention must have strayed for an instant, because a laser dot flickered across Mrs. Trace's bouncing breasts, before returning to the bodyguard's forehead.

Destiny Trace frowned, pursed her lips, and looked at the hulking man in bed with her, looked at the crowding FBI agents in their storm-trooper helmets, goggles, and flak jackets, looked at the Sherman Oaks detectives in their Kevlar vests, frowned again and suddenly shouted, “Help! Rape! Thank God you're here, Officers…This man was assaulting me!”

The Monday before the Thursday raids, Lawrence spent most of the day helping Dar set up the new surveillance cameras.

“This is costing you a shitload—with overnight delivery and everything,” volunteered Lawrence as they carried the first video unit, its battery, cables, and waterproof camouflage tarp from the Trooper into the trees along the road to the cabin. “If you'd given me a couple of weeks, I could have saved you about a thousand bucks on this stuff.”

“I won't need it in a couple of weeks,” said Dar.

They positioned the first camera in a tree along the side of the gravel driveway about one half kilometer from the cabin. It was a sophisticated video unit—not much larger than a paperback book—with zoom lenses and a remote controlled motor that allowed it to pan and swivel. Thin cables ran to its own triple-lithium battery pack and the tiny transmitter, which were both easily concealed in the base of the rotted-out birch. The remote controlled camera had two lenses: one for daylight use and the other for electronic light amplification after dark. It and the other gear had indeed cost Dar a metaphorical shitload.

When the camera was properly situated, Dar drove up to the cabin and sat in his Land Cruiser while he used the remote unit to swivel, pan, zoom, and switch lenses. He practiced turning the unit on and off. He checked the reception on his portable receiving and control unit with its three-inch black-and-white monitor. Then he called Lawrence on his cell phone.

“Works fine, Larry.”

“Lawrence.”

“Come on up to the cabin and I'll fix us some coffee before we mount the other cameras. Also, I'll show you something I found in the woods.”

After coffee, Dar left the boxed video equipment in the cabin and took Lawrence for a stroll. They headed east toward the sheep wagon but then cut uphill from the trail, through boulders, toward the high ridge above the cabin. From there they bushwhacked downhill until they came to a Douglas fir about thirty meters above the cabin itself. Dar silently pointed to a bulky video camera set in a camouflaged nook in the tree. The camera's lens was aimed at the cabin.

Lawrence said nothing, but inspected the thing as carefully as a munitions expert would inspect a land mine. Finally Lawrence said, “No microphone. No pan or scan or zoom or night-vision capability. It's just a fixed lens—wide angle—but it gives a good view of your parking area and cabin entrance. Plus, it has one hell of a strong battery, an extra-long-play recorder, almost certainly a time-stamp feature, and the whip antenna is way the hell up there. Whoever's monitoring you can call up several days' worth of video and fast-forward through it to see who's in the cabin and when they arrived.”

“Yeah,” said Dar.

“With that powerful a transmitter and the antenna way up there, it could be broadcast for several miles,” said Lawrence.

“Yeah,” agreed Dar.

Lawrence crawled up the sap-covered lower trunk and inspected the instrument again. “It's not FBI technology, Dar. Foreign…Czech, I think…crude but tough. My guess is that it's transmitting on a PAL format.”

“That's what I thought,” said Dar.

“The Russians?” said Lawrence.

“Almost certainly,” said Dar.

“Want me to disable it?”

“I want them to know where I am,” said Dar. “I just wanted to show this to you so that we don't reveal anything about our work while we're in front of this lens.”

“Are there others?” asked Lawrence, squinting suspiciously into the dappled daylight of the forest.

“None that I've found.”

“I'll take a look for you,” said Lawrence.

“I'd appreciate that, Larry.” Dar had great respect for his electronic surveillance expertise.

“Lawrence,” said Lawrence, sliding back down the tree like a noisy bear.

Tony Constanza had sung like a canary after coming out of sedation for surgery on the previous Saturday afternoon. Even though his hospital room was guarded by half a dozen FBI agents, he was obviously terrified that the
Organizatsiya
hit men would come after him as soon as they learned that he was alive. Constanza must have figured that his best chance was to squeal and to squeal quickly, before Yaponchik, Zuker, and the others discovered where he was being guarded. He obviously had a healthy respect for their lethal capabilities. He also had some enthusiasm for being in the Witness Protection Program and living—he was quite specific about this—in Bozeman, Montana.

Constanza said that he didn't know exactly where the Russians were holed up, but that it was “like a ranch house, you know, all by itself, somewhere out beyond Santa Anita Racetrack somewhere past Sierra Madre Boulevard…up in the brown hills there with all that tumbleweed shit.” The FBI had already received such an address from an anonymous mailing—it was the address of one of the phone numbers that Dar had seen Dallas Trace dial during his overnight surveillance of Trace's house. Now the FBI's own surveillance pinpointed the house and confirmed the presence of the five Russians.

SAC James Warren assigned twenty-three FBI agents to carry out constant surveillance on the location—a Mediterranean-style ranch house set half a mile from its nearest neighbor—from that Saturday evening. He told Sydney Olson that he would have preferred to move in immediately, but that it would take several days to obtain search and arrest warrants for the others now being incriminated by Constanza, and any premature arrest of the Russians would have tipped everyone else. In the meantime, every move the Russians made was being followed carefully by FBI agents in vans, via undercover roles as phone-company and street-repair people, by video surveillance, and by helicopter. The phone line into the house was not only tapped, it was trapped. Warren had twenty more agents with tactical assault training available at a minute's notice. Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank, and LAPD SWAT teams were volunteering to help, even though they knew no details of the operation.

The first arrests took place Sunday morning when LAPD Detectives Fairchild and Ventura were called into separate offices by Internal Affairs Divisions, told to surrender their shields, weapons, clips, and IDs, and told that they were to be formally charged with accessory to fraud and conspiracy to murder the four FBI agents. Ventura was informed that IAD and the FBI knew about the secret transfer of funds to his newly established offshore accounts—installments of $85,000, $15,000, and $23,000. No bank transfers had been found in Detective Fairchild's name, but the officer was informed that the investigation was still ongoing. Both detectives were interrogated.