Oath to Defend (17 page)

41

It was two thirty in the morning, three hours before sunrise, by the time Gonzalez and Montgomery reached their observation post on the rimrock above Wyler Ranch. Both men were equipped with night vision optics. Gonzalez was using ATN night vision goggles, Montgomery, an ATN night vision rifle scope mounted on his M24 sniper rifle. They were concealed beneath camouflage netting that matched the brown hues of the rocks and grasses around them.

Nothing moved below them. The polo ponies were in their stalls, and the ranch hands were asleep in the bunkhouse. But they had already spotted four men sleeping on the ground in sleeping bags beside the long horse trailer.

“Wonder why these guys are sleeping outside,” Gonzalez muttered.

“Maybe they don’t get along with the ranch hands,” Montgomery whispered back. Drake said he overheard a couple guys speaking Arabic. A couple of
no comprendes
from the regulars might have hurt their feelings.”

“Or they’re practicing for their
hajj
pilgrimage. Don’t they sleep on the ground under open sky one night before they get up the next morning to gather pebbles to throw at the devil?”

“Something like that,” Montgomery said. “How good are you with that drone? Will you be able to get it close enough to hear what they’re saying?”

“I should be able to. With any background noise at all, they won’t hear the seventy-two decibels the drone makes. I can put the thing right over them and the built-in zoom mike on the Sony Handycam will focus the audio recording right on them. Yeah, we should hear them loud and clear. Then we’ll just feed the recordings to Drake and he can translate whatever they’re saying.”

“Good.” Montgomery took another look around. “We won’t need the drone for awhile, so why don’t you get some sleep. I’ll keep an eye on things. There’s enough moon light, I don’t think I’ll even need to use night vision.”

“Thanks, Billy. Wake me in an hour.”

Gonzalez laid his head on his forearm and, like a good soldier, was asleep in minutes.

His companion studied the area below. The bunkhouse was on the left, fifty yards east of the stables. He could see the door at the front of the long, single-story structure, but he couldn’t tell if there was another door to the rear. There was one window at the end of the building closest to him, and he thought there would probably be another at the other end. There were no windows along the front of the bunkhouse.

The stables were ahead of his position at eleven o’clock, a hundred yards from the bunkhouse. The paddocks for the horse stalls were empty, and he could look down the open center of the stables to about the middle of the building. There were two overhead light fixtures that lit the interior, and there was a dog that looked like a border collie curled up on a hay bale near the door.

To the right of the stables at two o’clock was the longest horse trailer he had ever seen. It was silver with black lettering that proclaimed it carried the polo ponies of Marco Vazquez. There were four windows at the rear of the trailer, and a door on the side near the front that opened into what looked like a small sleeping quarters and tack room. Unhitched nearby was an International RXT towing pickup. It was painted in the same silver as the trailer and had the same black lettering.

In the distance, sitting on a small rise overlooking the fenced pasture that ran along a small creek and single lane road, was the main ranch house. There were no cars that he could see and no indication that it was occupied.

Montgomery was surprised when Gonzalez suddenly raised his head and checked his watch.

“You let me sleep for two hours! It’s almost sunrise. You want to grab a few winks before things get started down there?”

“Looks like it’s too late for that, one of the guys on the ground is getting up.”

Both men watched as the first horse groomer woke the others and spread a prayer rug on the ground next to his sleeping bag. The others slowly followed, each man spreading a prayer rug and facing toward the southeast.

“This is their pre-dawn prayer, the
fajr
,” Gonzalez muttered
.
“They’re facing toward where they think the Ka’aba in Mecca is located.”

Montgomery gave an almost soundless whistle. “No wonder they’re sleeping outside. If they woke up the ranch hands each morning before sunrise, someone was bound to get hurt.”

“Yeah. Keep an eye on them while I get the drone ready.”

Gonzalez slid back out from under the camouflage netting until he was out of sight from the canyon floor. The Draganflyer X8 drone was carried in a round, black, carbon fiber tube. After unscrewing the cap on the top of the tube, he pulled the drone out and laid it on the ground. With its four arms folded, it was just over twenty-seven inches long. Each arm had two rotors on the end, one above and one below. When the four arms were locked into place, the miniature aircraft was three feet long and three feet wide and had two landing skids and a bullet-shaped body packed with sensors, gyros, GPS, and a lithium polymer battery. Beneath the body of the drone was a mounting bracket for the video camera that was stored in the backpack Montgomery had carried. It also contained the handheld controller and the high resolution video glasses that would allow Gonzalez to see exactly what the drone was seeing.

When he had the video camera attached, he slipped on the video glasses and held the drone chest-high in front of him. When he switched on the rotors, he gently lifted it into the air and sent it on its way. Using the handheld flight controller, he flew the Draganflyer straight up until it was a hundred feet overhead, then he aimed it out over the rimrock. A minute later, he put the drone in a GPS position hold directly above the four men, who were standing in line waiting to perform their ablutions before they prayed.

One man held a hose as the others washed their right hands three times, then their left hands three times, then swirled water around in their mouths and rinsed their noses three times. Then they washed their faces, then their arms and hair, their ears, and last their feet. When the first three men had finished, one man held the hose for the fourth man until he was finished, and then all four returned to their prayer rugs.

Montgomery used the handheld controller to swing the video camera slowly around the area below, looking for anything that might explain what these Muslim so-called groomers were up to. There were no black Escalades in sight, no weapons lying around, no crate labeled
Nuclear Device, Danger
.

As he crawled back under the netting, he saw that Montgomery was watching the telemetry feed from the drone on a handheld ground control station that was recording the video it received in its internal memory.

“I’ll keep the drone up for another five minutes or so,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t think we’ll hear much from them until they’ve finished their prayers.”

Montgomery nodded. “We might as well save as much battery life as we can. I think Drake expects us to watch this place until we learn something. Other than confirming these four are Muslims, there’s nothing to report so far, although I’m tempted to call in and see if anyone’s up yet at the cabin.”

“Not a good idea. The only person awake is likely to be Liz. You get her out of bed with nothing to report, and Drake might keep you out here until it snows in December.”

“You think he likes her?”

“
Like
? I haven’t been around him long enough to answer that. But he’s trying too hard not to look at her like the rest of us do. That tells me he’s trying not to like her, which tells me he does but doesn’t want to allow himself to admit it.”

“You learn to think like that in counseling or something?” Montgomery asked.

“Careful observation and a lot of experience. Keep your eyes on our friends. They’ll be finishing up soon.”

42

Drake was awake early enough to see the rising sun shining through the slats of the rustic oak plantation blinds in the upstairs bedroom. He’d found an empty bed in Gonzalez’s room and had stretched out fully clothed. But he hadn’t been able to sleep much in the five hours since saying good night to Liz. His Kimber .45 was on the night stand to his right, next to the night vision binoculars he had borrowed from Casey. When he wasn’t standing alternating guard duty, he had searched the area across the river several times to see if the sniper had returned, and when he wasn’t kneeling at the window with the binoculars, he was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, seeing again that flash of reflected light from the sniper’s rifle scope and shoving Liz down. Finally, an hour ago, he had forced himself to close the blinds and get a little sleep. Now, with the sun rising, he was alert and eager to move ahead. This was going to be the day he found out what Marco Vazquez and his friends were up to.

After a quick shower, he followed the smell of brewing coffee downstairs to the kitchen. Casey was breaking eggs in a large mixing bowl. He had a big smile on his face.

“Hope you’re hungry,” he said. “Because I’m fixing us the best scrambled eggs you will ever taste. It’s a secret recipe, known only to a select group of men. But I’m willing to let you try it so you’ll have the strength to win the day.”

“What select group of men are we talking about?”

“Men who know what made 007 a special agent. This is James Bond’s recipe for scrambled eggs; twelve eggs, salt and pepper, six ounces of real butter, and
fines herbs
.
Those are the ingredients, but it’s all in the preparation.”

“Does your wife let you eat eggs with that much butter?”

“She does not. That’s why I’m having them today. Butter the toast for me and we’ll eat.”

“Want me to get Liz and Larry to join us?” Drake asked.

Casey shook his head. “Larry’s only been sleeping for an hour, and Liz is showering. She said to go ahead, she’ll join us in a minute.”

With a bowl full of the scrambled eggs, a plate of crispy bacon, toast and jam, and cups of coffee in front of them on the breakfast counter, the two men sat on the nearby stools and started eating.

“These eggs are really good,” Drake admitted.

“Thanks. It’s the butter. Ricardo called a couple minutes ago. He used the drone to search the area at the ranch. Four men were sleeping outside on the ground when they got there. Sun comes up, and they go through their routine for morning prayers. Same thing we watched in Iraq and other places. Nothing looked suspicious, he said, except for the four guys sleeping out on the ground.”

“Let’s keep Ricardo and Billy out there a little longer,” Drake decided. “These guys are involved with Vazquez. If we rattle him today, maybe we’ll hear something if he goes out to check on his ponies for the match tomorrow.”

Between forkfuls of eggs, Casey asked “How are you going to rattle Vazquez?”

“He’s not.” Liz walked into the kitchen. “I am.” With her blond hair pulled back over her right ear, it was easy to see that the right side of her face and neck was splotchy and swollen. Her smile did nothing to conceal the trauma she had suffered the night before. “I’m going to tell him I know he’s responsible for this,” she said. “And when I prove it, I’ll use everything in my power to make sure he spends the rest of his life in prison. I might even threaten to have him arrested so he’ll miss his polo match tomorrow.”

“That should do it,” Casey said. “Latin men have a reputation for treating women badly, so seeing your face won’t necessarily scare him. But keeping him away from playing polo tomorrow might. You feel like confronting him today?”

“Let me have some of those eggs, and I’ll be fine.”

Drake watched her carefully as she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat next to him while Casey brought her a plate of the scrambled eggs. The symptoms of a concussion were subtle, he knew, and not easy to identify. But she didn’t appear to be dizzy or confused, and she wasn’t showing any sensitivity to the bright lights in the kitchen area.

“You look gorgeous,” he said. “I was right last night when I said you’d be turning heads at Pronghorn. How’s the headache?”

“Better, thanks for asking. I’ll be ready to go as soon as I eat something.”

“I doubt Vazquez gets up too early, so there’s no rush. If we catch him mid-morning working on his suntan, we’ll be fine. You mentioned threatening the boy with arrest. Is that something you can do?”

“Actually, I can. When I first transferred to the Department of Homeland Security from the FBI, I was designated as a special agent. I still have that designation. It carries with it investigation and arrest authorization. I haven’t had to exercise the power as the Secretary’s executive assistant, but I can use it here if I need to.”

“Liz,” Casey said as he passed her a piece of toast that had just popped out of the toaster, “did you see if Vazquez has anything in his past that would make him nervous about talking with you? Does our playboy have a record in Argentina?”

“When Adam mentioned him, I checked with Interpol and the Argentine Federal Police. Other than noise complaints about some of the parties he’s thrown after polo matches, he has a clean record. None of his known associates have records or ties to any of the terrorist organizations we track.”

“He doesn’t strike me as someone who would get involved with terrorists,” Drake said. “He might be friends with Hollywood liberals, but that’s as close as I can see him getting to terrorism.”

“Ouch,” Liz said. “There you go again, Mr. P.C.”

Casey laughed. “Don’t get him started.”

“You know a man by the friends he keeps,” Drake said. “That’s all I’m saying. Vazquez is obviously a friend of Abazzano’s, THE Hollywood lib, and his host at Wyler Ranch. Abazzano is known to be pro-Palestine, pro-Hamas, pro-Muslim everything with all the fundraising he does in Hollywood.”

“Liz,” Casey said, “do you have anything on Abazzano that might help?”

“His name has come up as a contributor to Palestinian causes, but nothing that’s directly linked to known terrorist organizations. I’ll call the head of our intelligence and analysis division and see if there’s anything new.”

Casey turned to Drake. “What do you want me to do while you’re going to see Vazquez?”

“If your IT guy gets anything on O’Neil and the Escalades he rented, follow up on that. Otherwise, see if Ricardo and Billy need anything. If we finish by noon, I think it’s time we paid another visit to Wyler Ranch. With Ricardo and Billy out there, they might see something when we come visiting. Plan on meeting us in Bend, and we’ll go from there. And bring the hardware in case we run into our sniper friend.”

“If we do,” Liz said, “he’s mine. He ruined a good glass of wine.”