‘He’s their main guy in California and he’s really only a kid.’ Weaver shook his head and then put a hand to his forehead, covered his eyes and spoke to the table. ‘I can’t go to prison. Everything will fall apart.’ He looked at Marquez. ‘I’ve got my mother in a nursing home. I’m paying them month to month.’
‘That’s going to be beyond me, Del. I can write it down and testify to what happened, to how you cooperated after we arrested you, but the decisions you’re talking about aren’t the ones I get to make. What if you called Rayman now and told him you had to land at Mammoth with mechanical problems but you’re almost back in the air? Then I fly with you to the almond farm.’
As he said this, he knew what a leap it was going to be to sell the idea in LA. He could see Holsten frowning, his expression saying, what are you doing in my office asking something so stupid?
‘What kind of deal would I get?’ Weaver asked.
‘That would be up to the US Attorney. But this could go a long way toward helping you.’
‘What happens after we land?’
‘You taxi away from them and I’ll have a lot of backup there. SWAT teams.’
In a perfect world they’d land somewhere first and pick up the SWAT team, come in like a Trojan horse. But there was zero chance of that getting approved. Marquez waited, knowing Weaver was scared and that he couldn’t coerce Weaver into doing this, and that it wasn’t likely to get far as an idea anyway. He gave Weaver another minute and then pushed his chair back and stood.
‘I’ve got to make a call.’
He called Sheryl and ran it by her with the idea she try to talk Holsten into it. ‘It’s his bold idea,’ Marquez said. ‘He keeps talking about us making a bold stroke. Talk up what the press will do with it.’ She laughed. ‘No, I’m serious, Holsten will hear that.’
Twenty minutes later she called back.
‘We’re on,’ she said. ‘Holsten is game.’
‘OK, I’ve got to talk to Weaver again.’
‘Talk him into it fast, and then call me before Holsten changes his mind.’
FIFTEEN
They flew south with their shadow flickering over the highway and the dry desert plain. The highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada sat off their right wing. From the co pilot’s seat Marquez looked across at Mount Whitney and remembered the summer he was eighteen and drove his car through the scrub and sage past the outcroppings of volcanic rock in the Alabama Hills and on up toward the granite and pine of Whitney Portal. He hiked the first sandy switchbacks in the last moonlight, strong, young, and alone. Higher up, he watched the sun rise through the V-notch and the sky burn crimson above the White Mountains. He still remembered the cool of the morning and the way the high white rock reflected on Mirror Lake. He remembered how it felt drawing deep breaths and rising along the trail with an electric feeling of elation at the clear light and the high peaks ahead.
None of where he was now could he have foreseen then, though maybe he should have. He felt a strong longing as he looked out across at the mountains, then turned back to Weaver and the acrid sweat smell of Weaver’s fear.
‘How are you doing?’ he asked him.
‘Can you get me in a witness protection program?’
Marquez had lied to suspects to provoke a confession, but he never bullshitted a guy on his way down.
‘Not with what you’ll be charged with.’
‘It’s not the Salazars I’m afraid of. There’s another guy and he’s not Mexican. He came to see the plane once and told me he had a lot of money in making this work. I’m pretty sure he was telling me I’d die if it didn’t. I was working on the plane one Saturday.’
Weaver pointed toward the back.
‘I was back there attaching some strapping and never heard him get in the plane. He came in so quietly I thought he was there to kill me. He stayed maybe five minutes. I never saw him again, but I’ll never forget him.’
‘What did he look like?’
Marquez listened to the description. He carried a sketch with him now. That came out of his new friendship with Kerry Anderson. He got it out, unfolded it, and showed Weaver.
‘That’s him,’ Weaver said. ‘Who is he?’
‘When did he come see you?’
‘About a year ago.’
‘You been flying for them that long?’
Weaver never answered that. They followed the highway out and when they came around the mountains banked right and flew northwest, crossing the Tehachapis as Marquez went back and forth by radio with the SWAT team leader and Sheryl as they got closer. As they started their descent and a white concrete runway rose toward them, two SWAT teams were fired on as they approached the main house and outbuildings. Row after row of almond trees flashed by. The plane bounced hard and Marquez had Weaver run out to the end of the runway and shut the engines down. SWAT vehicles rolled toward them and a helicopter passed overhead as he got Weaver off the plane.
Four cartel guards died in a firefight that ranged between the main house and a storage building where a large stash of cocaine, dope, and pills were found. Rayman surrendered, temporarily blinded by tear gas but able to recognize Marquez’s voice. He was clean cut and looked like he could be working at a bank. Marquez watched him guided into the backseat of a county cruiser to get run to a hospital to get his eyes flushed. With Sheryl Marquez walked the storage building, past plastic bags of cocaine stacked on pallets and stamped with images of furniture, a chair, desk, bed, or table, and coded that way so phone conversations were easy. They took inventory.
When Brian Hidalgo and Ramon Green arrived, they were still counting thousands of pills and weighing dope on the almond scales. Hours later he took a break with Sheryl, moving out into the trees in the night. In the darkness he could still feel the heat radiating off the ground. Sheryl talked about the almond farm the DEA would now impound and the TV coverage the bust had already gotten. Sheryl was always thinking about the house she wanted to buy and she made him smile as she looked around the farm and speculated on a DEA auction of the property. She walked close to him, her hand brushing his as they moved out into the trees.
SIXTEEN
Sheryl rode with Marquez. They drove south ahead of the rest of the squad that night and stopped by the house of the on-call judge to get the search warrant for the Calexico warehouse signed, then bought burgers at a Jack in the Box and a six-pack of Corona at an all-night store. They were still an hour’s drive from Calexico when they checked into the only motel they could find.
Sheryl unlocked her room, dumped her bag on the bed and showered. She pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, and with her hair still dripping, walked down and knocked on Marquez’s door.
He was barefoot, an open beer in his hand, the TV on low. He looked beat, but the energy of the bust was still running hard in her.
‘OK if I come in?’
‘Of course.’
He opened a beer for her and then showered with the door mostly closed, but not closed, and she wanted to walk in there, but didn’t. She watched steam drift out. She flipped through the crap on TV looking for something funny, looking for something to wind down with.
‘Find anything?’ he asked as he came out.
‘Not yet.’
‘Keep trying.’
She took a pull of the beer and watched him sit down on the only chair in the room and smile at her. Sheryl loved that smile. It carried the whole day in it. He lifted his beer to her, leaned forward and clicked his bottle against hers.
‘We did it,’ he said.
‘Yeah, we did.’
She took another pull of the beer and felt her heart beating. She didn’t know which way it was going to go tonight, but she turned the TV off.
‘Weaver said something to me when we were in the air.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He wanted to know if he was going to be protected.’
‘We can get him a prison out of state, if that’s what he wants.’