Redback (21 page)

‘No, he’ll come out.’

‘He’s done moving for now. You hit something with that first shot. He bled a lot.’

‘He’ll come out.’

‘We’ll put you down and he might come at you, but you’ll get a shot.’

Liu wasn’t going to do that, but Stoval stayed with it until they all understood that Liu was too cowardly to leave the safety of the helicopter. Liu took another shot and a tree branch dropped. He fired four more times before striking the bear. When it left the willows, it moved more slowly. Stoval found the new wound with binoculars, a lucky shot that had caught the bear near the right front shoulder, and it was easy to stay with the bear now. The pilot nosed lower, pulled in front of the big grizzly, and turned so that Liu’s next two shots were straight on. Both hit the bear but neither killed it. A fist-sized hole bled from its left side and still it kept moving. The big head swung looking for a foe on the ground that wasn’t there.

The next shot dropped the bear and after they landed Liu still didn’t want to get out of the helicopter. So it was Stoval who made sure the bear was dead, walking up to it unarmed with Liu watching him. Then he left Liu alone with his Chinese medical myths and ate a sandwich and drank a beer, talking to the pilot as Liu carved out the gall bladder he imagined would save his mistress from terminal cancer. She was already as good as dead, but Stoval still needed Liu a little longer so he’d set up the hunt.

Steam rose from the bear’s carcass as Liu lifted the gall bladder out. He slid it into a large Ziploc bag and the bag went in the cooler with the cold drinks and salmon sandwiches the pilot had packed for them. The other thousand pounds of bear they left to the wolves.

Liu’s jet was in Anchorage waiting, and all that really mattered here was that Liu’s gratitude for the hunt got Liu past any remaining worries he had about retribution from the Taiwanese government. Sooner or later, the Taiwanese would track things back to Liu and Liu was afraid the Americans with their paranoia over terrorism would then come for him. He was getting fat and fearful. Liu was not the man Stoval had first worked with. He was distracted by his mistress and had become cautious and self-important.

Stoval carried the cooler on to the jet. He rarely carried anything for anyone, but did this as a gesture Liu couldn’t mistake. They embraced and he watched Liu’s plane take off before driving to Seward. In the two hours it took to make the drive he decided he would do this last deal and not go any farther with Liu. After this deal he would throw his business to Liu’s rival and then prove his intentions to the rival by working to destroy Liu. It was time.

In Seward he found Darcey Marquez’s restaurant within minutes. Inside, he went upstairs to the bar. A large window looked out over the small boat harbor, allowing drinkers to enjoy the dismal gray clouds and cold water. A woman in a red flannel shirt and jeans cleaned glasses behind the bar and Stoval knew immediately she was Darcey Marquez. He smiled as he slid on to a stool. He picked up a menu. He made small talk, got her name and told her it was a pretty sounding name, but really it was a name typical of the new American peasant.

‘What kind of local beer should I order?’

‘You choose.’

‘Don’t you want to recommend something?’

It offended him slightly that she didn’t. Her offhand rejection irritated him and he ignored her joking now as he ordered a whiskey rather than a beer. He studied her legs in the tight jeans. There was always something sexual in this, but he didn’t desire this woman. He drank the whiskey and ordered a halibut sandwich and beer and watched her put the order in, then go retrieve it. After she returned and was behind the bar again she was watchful. He made her nervous and she was so right to be scared because he was studying her now as he did an animal he was hunting. When she turned to meet his gaze directly he smiled and imagined how she would look when they found her.

FORTY-ONE

‘
D
ad, where are you now?’

‘Crossing the Golden Gate on my way to the FBI Field Office to get sworn in. I start working with the task force in a couple of days.’

‘Did you hear about the condo fire in Arizona yesterday?’

‘Sure.’

It was all over the news and the FBI was calling it ecoterrorism. The fire burned seventy-two condos under construction in an Arizona canyon and now was burning through drought-weakened, beetle-infested national forest.

‘I might know something about it,’ Maria said.

‘What do you mean? How?’

Marquez slowed. He adjusted his ear piece so he could hear her better.

‘I overheard something in July when I was still going out with Jack that I want to talk to you about. When I heard about the fire last night on TV it all clicked. Jack was talking to a friend of his, Ben Marsten, the guy that founded 1+1Earth. But I don’t want to tell you over the phone, and I have to tell the FBI, but I want to talk to you first.’

Marquez remembered the name Jack Gant, but he didn’t have a face to go with the name. He knew that earlier in the summer Katherine had believed Maria was falling in love with Gant, but the relationship had ended abruptly and it really hadn’t lasted that long.

‘I’m on my way to the FBI Field Office in San Francisco to get sworn in. I become a Federal officer again today and you could—’

‘Oh, that’s right, Mom told me, congrats.’

‘Do you want to meet me there?’

‘No.’

‘OK, but tell me a little more. Where did you overhear this?’

‘In Los Angeles at the W Hotel in Westwood in mid July, the same day we broke up. July fourteenth.’

As she talked Marquez crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. Out of habit he reached for a pen and wrote the name of the founder of 1+1Earth, Ben Marsten, on a pad, Jack Gant’s name underneath it. Ahead of him, the traffic was solid going into the toll booths, and he was late. The Special Agent-in-Charge, the SAC at the San Francisco FBI Field Office had a tight schedule today. The swear-in was slotted for 11:45 to noon.

‘I’ll tell you the rest when I see you.’

‘All right, I’ll call you as soon as I finish at the FBI. It’ll probably be a couple of hours from now.’

He was going to say one thing more, but Maria was gone.

FORTY-TWO

M
arquez did the new passport photo and filled out the Federal form, the FD871. Desault ran the criminal check, and then with the help of Desault’s boss, the SAC, Mark Gutierrez, he’d pushed it through. Marquez knew the way he was dressed this morning made Desault uncomfortable, but he wanted to communicate with jeans and a fleece coat with a torn sleeve that, yes, he was signing on as a Fed agent, but only temporarily and he wasn’t here to conform and blend in. He was here for one specific thing and he didn’t mean to throw off attitude or come off as an asshole, but he did want to set a boundary. He was signing on as a Task Force Officer, a TFO, good for a year, a concession made to Desault as originally Marquez had wanted to hold it to six months.

When they walked into Gutierrez’s office, Gutierrez was on his feet on his cell phone, a conversation he ended abruptly. He offered his hand to Marquez.

‘You look like you’re ready to hike into the woods.’

‘I don’t want to forget where I’m coming from.’

‘The question is, do you know where you are right now?’

‘I do, and if I didn’t think this had a chance of working I wouldn’t be here.’

Marquez knew Gutierrez had read his file and knew the circumstances of how he’d left the DEA. He probably wondered if he was bringing in trouble. But he was also onboard with bringing him in and was curious about the bighorn poaching. His questions about that now proved he’d read the Fish and Game file Marquez had copied for Desault. Gutierrez asked questions and then in the same quick manner he’d ended the phone conversation earlier, he said, ‘OK, let’s get this done,’ as in let’s get you sworn in.

‘Let’s wait,’ Marquez said. ‘There may be a complication. I got a call from my daughter on the way here. She may have a lead on the condo fire in Arizona yesterday.’

Desault looked stunned and Gutierrez surprised, though immediately right on it.

‘What does she know?’

‘She overheard a conversation in a hotel, her ex-boyfriend talking to somebody. She put it together last night and called me as I was on my way here this morning. She’s not involved in any way. This is just something she overheard and I’ll bring her in today, but if it’s real and it sounds like it might be, who knows where it could go.’

Desault frowned and Gutierrez got it. Gutierrez saw Maria as a person of interest now and saw what Marquez saw, the Bureau embarrassed as the media discovered her father was on an FBI task force.

‘You believe we should talk to your daughter first?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, but listen to me, I’m saying my daughter is coming forward with something she overheard and was worried enough about to call me. My daughter broke up with this Jack Gant weeks ago. She’s not a link to him anymore. She’s not involved in any plot.’

‘We appreciate her coming forward.’

‘I want to be there when she’s questioned.’

Gutierrez said nothing and Desault stepped in now and revealed what Gutierrez might not have.

‘We’re already looking for Jack Gant. We’ve got an agent named Jane Hosfleter who heads the ecoterrorism squad. She brought up Gant’s name this morning. They’re looking at a Bay Area angle on the Arizona fire. Hosfleter will want to talk to your daughter as soon as you can get her here. Do you want to call Maria, right now, and you and I can go pick her up?’

‘I’ll get Maria here.’

It turned out Hosfleter wasn’t going to be back in the Field Office until mid afternoon and Maria wasn’t at work. Marquez left a message on her cell phone, told her he’d done what she and he agreed earlier. ‘Call me as soon as you get this.’

He hung up and Desault said, ‘OK, well, we’re waiting anyway so let’s go get lunch. I was going to take you to lunch.’

They walked to a Japanese restaurant Desault liked. It was cool and dark inside and there were slender tall aquariums with tropical fish. They took seats at the bar where CNN played on a big flat screen above them. Anderson Cooper was in Iraq talking about aging military equipment. An old Sherpa plane used for ferrying men and materials in Iraq showed on the screen and Desault read the caption aloud,
Workhorse of the Desert
.

‘I once flew into a drug bust in one of those,’ Marquez said. ‘We busted the pilot and cut a deal with him to pretend he was still bringing in the load.’

The report went on about the aging fleet of C-23 Sherpas, the complex procurement process, and the need to revamp after five years of war. Cooper returned to a final shot of the Sherpa and said, ‘No other aircraft in the Iraq war has carried more.’

CNN switched to the Arizona condo fire and footage of the fire line showed. A reporter questioned a tree ecologist about what he thought the prolonged drought had done to Arizona trees, and then they cut to an FBI spokesman out of the Phoenix office who appealed to the public for help. An aerial view from a helicopter looked down on the remains of the condos and the burned cottonwoods along the canyon floor, and as the obligatory shot of a plane dropping fire retardant appeared on the screen Marquez and Desault ordered lunch.

Desault ate a bowl of donburi, explaining that he liked the chicken and egg version they did here. ‘At home my wife badgers me about my cholesterol, but here I sneak eggs. Man, I love eggs.’ When Desault finished eating he pushed the empty donburi bowl away and said, ‘Here, I’ve got something for you.’

He pulled out Marquez’s new creds, badge, and passport. Marquez checked out the maroon passport that back when Marquez was a Fed agent had been called a redback. He picked it up and then the black wallet holding the creds. The feel, the shape, the weight was still very familiar.

‘A couple of details about traveling that you need to know, John. When you get there you go straight to the airline counter and get your tickets. You won’t have a gun, so there’s no issue there, but you’ve got to wait through security like everyone else. When the transportation security guys see your badge they’ll wave you through. Since 9/11 more of these flights have Federal Air Marshals or FAMs onboard, and if you don’t meet them or other law enforcement officers ahead of time, hold your boarding pass and creds like this.’

Desault held the cred and boarding pass together so you could make out both.

‘Don’t wave it, but hold it so that if there’s a FAM seated already or another LEO, they should acknowledge you. But good chance you’ll be the only one on the plane.

‘You’ll fly business class. You’ll always be seated forward. That way you can sacrifice your life when the time comes. You need the leg room anyway. You’ve got a knee, right?’

‘Yeah, but it doesn’t bother me much.’

‘It has to, because I wrote that you can’t ever fly coach because of the knee.’

Marquez smiled and Desault’s phone rang. Desault scooped up the creds and the passport and said, ‘I hope to turn these over to you later today.’ He pointed at the TV. ‘I’ve got to take this outside where I can hear.’

Marquez paid for lunch and walked out into the sunlight. He watched Desault on the phone and waited. After Desault hung up, he said, ‘That was Jane Hosfleter, the agent I told you about who runs the ecoterrorism squad. She and another agent were at your stepdaughter’s workplace half an hour ago. Hosfleter wants a call from you right now. Let me give you her number.’