“The gun that any armed bodyguard would carry.”
“Know how to use it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Makes me feel better, too, what with all the heads rolling around lately.”
A silent beat while I scanned the parking lot for a metallic gray 4Runner.
“You were in Fallujah, weren’t you?” Blevins asked.
“The first one,” I said.
A half-turn, and half of the dazzling Blevins implants. “When it all went to shit.”
“A lot of bad things happened all at once,” I said.
“That was when I finally realized how much they hated us,” said Blevins. “Killing those American civilians like that.”
I cocked my head, figured why the hell not. “If they showed up here with a hundred and fifty thousand troops, you might hate them, too.”
Blevins growled. “So us being there excuses everything?”
“It set the table for people like Caliphornia.”
“We were helping them,” said Blevins. “You want to weigh in on this, Ali?”
“I was born in the U.S.,” he said. “I married an American woman. I’d fight to the death to defend my country from occupiers. Like anybody anywhere.”
“What gives Islamic State the right to cut off American heads?” asked Blevins.
“They’re fanatics with no country to defend,” said Hassan. “We should run them into the ground where we find them.”
“You got that right,” said Blevins.
Again I studied the lot for Caliphornia’s gray 4Runner. And again for a black Cube. At four twenty Blevins asked if we were ready. Helpfully, he reminded us not to screw this up.
Looking through the windshield, I saw the empty benches outside the museum. A security guard came from the building, looked around for a moment, then went back in.
“Good luck,” said Blevins.
Ali and I walked side by side on the nearly empty footpath, took a detour away from the Mingei, passed the visitors’ center and the Prado Restaurant. He carried the briefcase in his left hand. Wore wraparound sunglasses and a blue shirt open at the collar.
We looped back to the Mingei and my heart fell a little when I saw the empty benches. No Caliphornia visible on this late blustery afternoon in a beautiful park. Hardly anyone at all.
Hassan went to a bench, lowered the briefcase, and sat. I walked across the thin grass and stood under the big coral tree, thirty feet away from him. Buttoned my coat, snugged my lapels, mentally registered the gun against my backside, then checked my phone. All of us on the takedown team had linked our Telegram apps to group-receive from Caliphornia, but only Ali would answer.
Four thirty came and went. The darkness closed and headlights came on and I could see Blevins’s vague outline behind the wheel of the black Town Car. The darkened windows of the Challenger revealed no one inside at all. A moment later Agent Smith came whining down the drive on his motorcycle, revs high but speed low, apparently taking in the fetching scenery around him.
Then a buzz from my phone.
CAL 4:44 P.M. DECEMBER 18
Change of plan. Walk to Air and Space Museum. Stand outside of entrance. Your suit looks expensive. Your bodyguard’s not so much.
Ali and I walked south toward the Spreckels Organ Pavilion. The amphitheater sat empty in the near-darkness. Hall of Nations to our left. United Nations Gift Shop. Christmas lights. Palms and eucalyptus towering high and lit from below. On President’s Way, a blue Mustang went by, then an older 4Runner. White.
We walked along Pan American Plaza and another parking lot with more spaces than cars, our heels sharp on the walkway. Businesslike. Executive. Confident. An oncoming covey of teenage girls broke rank to let us through, lost in laughter and their phones.
“He’s seeing if we’re alone,” said Hassan. “When he’s satisfied that we are, he’ll leave. My guess is he’ll ditch this park altogether.”
“I agree,” I said. “He’ll want a better crowd to feel safe.”
“Are there usually more people here?” he asked.
“A lot more,” I said. “The fabled San Diego weather let him down.”
We stopped a few yards short of the entrance to the Air and Space Museum. The building is bulky and cylindrical, an old version of futuristic. Plenty of room for air and space. Out front, scale models of iconic fighter jets rise on pedestals — an old X-15 and a modern F-16. A huge, spotlighted banner above the entrance announced the current exhibit:
Around the building, streetlamps glowed and eucalyptus trees swayed in the cool breeze.
Under the X-15, Ali set down the briefcase, hiked a shirt cuff, and checked his watch. I walked off a hundred feet or so, stood just outside the pale pool of a streetlamp with my back to the building. Feet spread, hands folded dutifully in front of me. Roland Ford, bodyguard.
Felt like a smoke, but you can’t do that here.
Had some thoughts, none of them interesting.
Ten minutes later I saw Ali walking toward me, looking down into the glow of his phone. I read the message:
CAL 5:05 P.M.
Take a seat under the Unconditional Surrender statue by the Midway.
“That’s the nurse and the sailor kissing,” I said.
“Crowded?”
“Always.”
Then Darrel Blevins, group-texting the team:
BLEVINS 5:06 P.M.
(619) 555-5555
TUESDAY, 12/18/18
Ali — confirm with Caliph. You and Ford WAIT ten minutes before you leave for Unconditional. TEN! Smith, pick up Lark NE corner Hall of Nations and take side streets to statue to come in from south. JT and O’Hora wait FIVE and come to statue from north. I’ll be waiting and watching. Be alert.
Ali and I strolled back to my truck, stood outside, and snuck a couple of his cigarettes. Kept an eye out for park security. Laughed quietly at ourselves. Schoolboys. Waited. Our ten minutes felt like an hour.
Then we launched.
39
My nerves were steady and my eyes sharp and my body felt light and strong. How I used to feel before a fight. Took Park Boulevard to the 163 to I-5 north. Headlights and taillights, traffic heavy but moving. Off at the Lindbergh Field exit, then all the way to North Harbor Drive, which runs along the bay and comes into downtown from the north.
The evening was clear and the stars began to emerge above the city lights. The yachts bobbed easily on the water and the traffic was steady. We passed Glorietta. A weak light inside.
I drove past the smaller charter boats and the pleasure craft to where the Azure Seas, berthed at one of the cruise-line docks, disgorged a river of tourists onto the Embarcadero. Many headed for Unconditional Surrender, no doubt.
“Do you think he’s convinced?” asked Ali. “Or will he run us around some more?”
“If we passed his sniff test at the park, I think he’ll show,” I said. “He wants that money. But if something looked wrong to him, he’s gone by now and he won’t talk to the Warrior of Allah again.”
“The damned motorcycle,” said Ali. “It was conspicuous and noisy and out of place. Easy to remember if he sees it again.”
Traffic thickened near the Midway, and we picked our way toward the parking lot. The enormous aircraft carrier presided over the city waterfront like a city of its own, multi-storied and brightly lit, a chapter of history afloat on glimmering black water. Paid my money and parked.
We made the Embarcadero and rounded the stern of the Midway. Then mixed in with the steady flow of holiday visitors, cruise-ship patrons, and local families out for a look at the harbor lights and the city skyline and maybe dinner. I scanned the parked vehicles for Caliphornia’s 4Runner, Blevins’s Lincoln, and the Taucher-O’Hora Challenger. Up ahead I could see Unconditional Surrender — the sailor and the nurse, locked in their eternal public kiss — brightly towering in the night.