The next page made my pulse pound even harder:
“First Samaritan New Year Harbor Cruise.”
I read quickly. The party on Glorietta always started at six and the ship would leave the dock at seven. The dining boat was slow and would “take a while to get into the deep water.” Earlier that afternoon, Hector would be there with the other volunteers, prepping the food and decorating. He’d stash the gift-wrapped guns and extra magazines in the ship’s hold. “The boat is old and slow and takes until eight o’clock to get into the deeper water of the harbor,” he had written.
The plan was to “be patient” and let Glorietta get far out into the harbor. Caliphornia and Hector would kill the captain and crew first. Then shoot as many innocent people as they could. The people who jumped “will be easy targets in the water.” Some would drown. Kalima would pick up her men in a rented skiff and whisk them back to shore and away.
I folded the pages lengthwise and put them in an inside pocket of my jacket. Then took a handful of the notebooks and threw them across the room. Flipped over both card tables, scattering the deadly plans across the concrete floor. Toppled one of the gun racks and let the rifles clatter down. Swept some of the handguns off their pegs, and the janbiyas, then heaved the produce boxes across the room.
I turned to see Laney push the coatrack over. “Thieves cut in,” she said.
“Trashed the place and took a few guns,” I said, slipping a .40-caliber autoloader into one of my coat pockets, and a nine-millimeter into another.
I locked my loot in the steel container in my truck. Then pulled down the rolling door of the storage unit and watched as Laney worked the lock back on and arranged the neatly severed shackle to appear normal. At a glance, you couldn’t see the cut. All it had to do was fool casual thieves, and to make Caliphornia believe he’d been broken into when the cutter-proof lock came off in his hand.
I called Taucher to order a JTTF stakeout.
Liam Flaherty and I stood in the spacious dining room of Glorietta, where some two hundred and fifty holiday harbor cruisers would begin boarding at six o’clock on New Year’s Eve. For a moment I pictured them, some of San Diego’s finest, dressed in their best, ready to ring in a new year, overbid on auction treasures for a good cause, prepared to eat and drink and be merry.
Two hundred and fifty guests.
Crew and staff.
All of them aboard Glorietta, half a mile out in the harbor on dark winter water while two heavily armed men calmly take life after life, reload, kill again and again, blood running down the decks and scuppers while terrified people take their chances overboard.
I told Flaherty just enough of what I knew to bring a flush to his broad Irish face.
“How do we handle this?” he asked.
“Quietly,” I said.
A hard, blue-eyed stare from Liam. “This ship we’re on never leaves the dock, right?”
“New Year’s Eve it doesn’t.”
We climbed to the upper deck and looked out at the city, downtown rising above the bay into a winter-pale sky. I was looking forward to calling Taucher with what I’d found, but she beat me to the punch. I stepped into the breeze to take her call, away from Liam.
“Caliphornia wants his money,” she said. “Tomorrow! We’ve got an Arab American agent on his way to deliver it. We insisted on a bodyguard to protect our man and cash. You’ve got the job if you want it.”
“Why me?”
“You’ve got JTTF experience, you’re capable, and you’re cheap. And you don’t come off as a fed.”
“Yeah, I’m way better-looking.”
“Are you finished being a twit?”
“Yeah. So let me tell you about New Year’s Eve aboard Glorietta.”
38
Four p.m. the next day, a Tuesday. A pewter sky bellied low over Balboa Park, breeze rising and daylight falling. I had been cast in the role of armed bodyguard in this FBI Repertory Theater performance of Busting Caliphornia. The curtain was scheduled to rise in half an hour.
I was given no lines but was allowed to drive my own truck and pick out my own clothes and accessories. I had chosen a navy suit, white shirt, and yellow tie, my .45 handgun in my leather inside-the-waistband holster.
One hour ago I had driven into the heart of the park like any other visitor and parked near the Mingei International Museum. As scripted, a black federal Town Car was waiting. I opened a rear door and stepped in. FBI Special Agent Ali Hassan, flown in from New York, sat in the spacious backseat. He was young and trim, with black hair, a goatee, and an expensive suit. We shook hands.
Our black-suited chauffeur was none other than Directing Special Agent Darrel Blevins, who introduced the cast as soon as I sat down: Mike Lark the homeless was under the tree right there, Joan Taucher and Patrick O’Hora in the white Challenger over by the exit, Darnell Smith circling on a damned motorcycle in case high-speed pursuit ensued.
“He’ll come buzzing by here again any minute,” said Blevins.
We had a good view of the benches outside the Mingei, where Caliphornia claimed he would meet Hassan and his bodyguard at exactly four thirty. It made sense that he’d choose a busy, outdoor public place with fading daylight for the cash pickup — easier for him to remain unrecognized, and more difficult for law enforcement to operate — if Raqqa 9 and the Warrior of Allah were not who they had claimed to be.
But as I looked out the darkened Town Car window, I saw that the blustery weather and short daylight had kept some of Balboa Park’s usual holiday visitors away. A young couple hustled from the Mingei and across the parking lot toward their car. An old man with a cane rose from one of the benches and headed bent-backed toward the museum. A flock of pigeons lifted off the grass nearby, and the old man turned to watch. Lark, smudged and ragged, slouched against the trunk of a huge coral tree, his heavily laden shopping cart beside him. I pictured him in my barn, young and bright-eyed, stating his affection and respect for the beleaguered Taucher, telling me that he was the same age she’d been when she started out in the Bureau. And making the crack about his boss stepping in the dog’s mess.
Balanced across Hassan’s knees was a well-used leather briefcase containing fifty thousand dollars in twenties. He opened it so I could see. There were fifty bundles of fifty bills each, printed on five-plus pounds of paper. The Bureau had decided not to deploy exploding dye packs — too much risk that the suspicious Caliphornia would ask Assayed Hassan or his trusted bodyguard to handle or transfer the money first. Each bill number had been recorded, on the slim chance that Caliphornia might get away and start spending it.
“Yep,” said Blevins. “There goes Smith on his Kawasaki.”
I watched the leather-clad, black-helmeted agent coming down the drive and past the Mingei, the Kawasaki’s stinger burping in the afternoon quiet of the park.
Blevins turned and beamed us, implants perfect and polished. “Don’t screw this up, PI,” he said. “Just do whatever Caliphornia says, and we’ll take care of the rest. Remember, if either of you runs his left hand through his hair — we are coming in fast and hard. That’s your call-in-the-cavalry signaclass="underline" left hand through hair. So keep your left hands far away from your damned heads in the meantime.”
Ali shot me an annoyed look as he clicked the briefcase shut. “We’ll manage.”
“I love stuff like this,” said Blevins, turning away from us to face the windshield and the Mingei. “Gets my mojo up. What’s that in your waistband?”