Indigo Slam

'Stay down. Clark, you okay?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Jasper?'

'What the fuck just happened here?!'

Mon and another guy ran in through the big door with their shotguns, and I pointed upstairs. Mon and the other guy went up the stairs with practiced moves.

'Dak must've wanted his people to keep an eye on us. His people were across the street, and when they heard the shooting, they came.'

There was more shooting at the front of the building, and then from the street, and then a couple of cars roared to life and screeched away and the shooting was done.

Pike said, 'Charles.'

I ran to Sautin, kicked the gun away from his hand, and grabbed him by the shirt. 'Where's the little boy, Dmitri?'

Dmitri Sautin was making gasping noises. Mon and another guy ran back into the room, looked around, then high-fived each other like they'd just won the big game.

I shook Dmitri by his shirt. 'Damnit, where's the little boy?'

'With Markov.' You could barely hear him.

I shook him again. 'Where's Markov?!'

Dmitri Sautin made a soft gurgling sound, his eyes rolled back in his head, and all three hundred pounds of him died.

I pounded on his chest, and started CPR, yelling at him about Charles, demanding that he tell me where Markov had the boy, but Dmitri was beyond that now, and finally Jasper said, 'Jesus Christ, Cole, he's over. Lay off.'

I kneeled there, the points of my knees hurting from the cement floor. I said, 'Mon!'

Mon stopped all the high-fiving and looked at me with a big smile just as Dak walked in through the big door. He looked scared.

'They leave any cars?'

Mon shook his head. 'Two cars come, two go. We got three of the bastards!'

Pike said, 'I'm on it.' and trotted out through the big door.

I shoved between Mon and his pal. 'Get on the phone and describe their cars to the police.'

Mon's eyes went wide and he pointed the shotgun at me and when he did I rolled it away from him and hit him in the face with the barrel. 'You're safe from the cops, goddamnit. Now get on the phone and maybe we can find those people before they kill the kid.'

Mon looked like he wanted to kill me, but Dak said something in Vietnamese and Mon hurried away.

Sautin's shirt was wet with blood and the wet was spreading to his pants and along the cement floor. I didn't think about it. I rolled his body over and tore out his shirt pocket, and then his front pants pockets, hoping to find something that would point toward Markov. There was nothing. I felt something gritty in my eyes and I wanted to kick his dead body. Instead, I pushed up out of the warehouse and ran out into the parking lot to help Pike, but Pike had already found it.

Pike stepped away from the guy on the Pontiac with a hotel key card and said, 'I know where they are.'

It was a key card from the Disneyland Hotel.

CHAPTER 35

Disneyland was fifteen minutes away.

I used Dak's cell phone to call Marsha Fields, who said that she would contact the Orange County Sheriff's Department, as well as dispatch both Secret Service and FBI agents from the Orange County field office to the Disneyland hotel. She told me not to leave the crime scene. I said, 'Sure, Marsha.'

When I broke the connection, Pike said, 'If Dobcek tells Markov that it's over, Markov will kill the boy just so he can't testify in a kidnapping beef.'

'I know. You drive.'

Jasper didn't like it, but he came, too, the four of us piling into Pike's Jeep. We cranked hard onto the Garden Grove Freeway, then east to Anaheim. The Garden Grove was a nice straight shoot, but it was heavy with morning traffic, and Pike spent more time on the shoulder than on the freeway, blowing his horn and pegging his brakes, then jumping hard on the accelerator to shoot through gaps in the flow. Reed Jasper said, 'Do you have a death wish?'

Pike said, 'Pretend it's fun.'

We careened off the freeway at the Harbor Boulevard exit, then turned north toward the park and pretty soon we could see the peak of Matterhorn Mountain and then we were at the hotel. An Orange County sheriff's highway car was waiting beneath the monorail station, both deps sitting in the front seat with the doors open.

One of the deps was a tall ropy guy with a mustache, the other a slender African-American woman. Jasper flashed his marshal's badge, and the mustache said, 'They told us to wait here for the FBI.'

'You do that.'

We went inside. Jasper badged the desk clerk, then gave her the key card and asked for a room identification. Markov had four rooms blocked together on the ninth floor, one of them a suite. Jasper said, 'Okay. We'll wait for the others.'

I said, 'Come on, Jasper. If he's already taken off with the boy we're wasting time.'

Jasper looked worried. 'But if he's up there, we should go in with as many people as possible.'

Pike pushed past him. 'Forget it, Jasper.'

Jasper said, 'Ah, hell,' and followed.

The four of us walked fast across the back grounds past the swimming pool and into the rear building, and took the elevator to the ninth floor. Housekeeping carts were parked along the hall, and Andrei Markov's suite was open, the sound of a vacuum cleaner coming from inside. Markov was gone. We went through all four of Markov's rooms, trying to figure out what to do next when one of the housekeepers smiled at us. 'You looking for the man and the boy?'

All four of us stared at her. She was short and squat, and had probably come up from Ecuador. I said, 'That's right.'

She pursed her lips. 'They only go a few minutes ago. They said they were going into the park. The big man, he say he want to ride the mountain.' The big man. Markov.

Clark frowned. 'Matterhorn Mountain?'

She described how they were dressed as well as she could remember, then we thanked her and went back to the lobby. Clark was making little huffing sounds as we walked back past the pool, and I said, 'You okay?'

He didn't look at me. 'Fine.'

Two more Orange County deps had arrived, along with an FBI agent named Hendricks. They were standing with the manager and a tall blond guy named Bates who introduced himself as an executive with park security. When I introduced Clark, I said, 'This is the boy's father.'

Both Hendricks and Bates nodded, and Hendricks said, 'Maybe you should wait outside, sir.'

'But he's my son.'

Hendricks said, 'Please.' Polite.

Clark went outside. Jasper and I told them what we knew, and what the housekeeper had told us. More feds and Orange County cops were on the way, along with representatives from the Secret Service. Bates was calm and competent, and after we told him what the housekeeper said, he nodded. 'If they've gone into the park, we own them. We can put people at every egress, then just wait until they walk out.' He nodded, but maybe the nod was meant to bolster himself as much as us. 'We've worked with the authorities before. We know how it's done.'

It sounded workable. Markov wasn't likely to harm the boy inside the park, even if Dobcek found them. There was too great a possibility of being seen, and if he hurt the boy inside the park, what would he do with the body? So all we had to do was wait, and then we could recover Charles with a minimum of risk.

Pike and I left them to work out the details, and went back to the car to tell Clark, only Clark wasn't in the car. He wasn't standing around outside the hotel or in the lobby rest room, either. Pike said, 'He's on the monorail. He's going to get his son.' The monorail was pulling away from its station.

I yelled inside for Hendricks, and Pike and I were climbing the stairs to the monorail station when they ran out of the lobby. Jasper said, 'Hey, where are you guys going? Where's Clark?'

I told them, and I told them we were going in after him.