At 8:05 I got back in the company car and keyed the phone. Dalili transferred me to Joe without even checking with him. Obviously he'd told her to expect my call.
"Joe," I said, "I've had second thoughts since last evening."
"What do you mean, 'second thoughts,' Seppanen?"
"Tuuli got back last night. She doesn't want me to go to Mexico. So we're hiding out. We're in a National Forest campground about an hour from town. She's freaked, afraid I'll be killed, scared the SVI will track me down. I know this is a lot to ask, but— Could you send a couple guys out as bodyguards? From the security division? They wouldn't have to be top men; she won't know the difference. I'll pay for them myself if you want."
Joe put on a testy voice. "Damn it, Seppanen, you're stretching my patience."
I put a little edge on my own tongue. "Keep in mind what happened to our apartment house."
Long pause. "I don't know. You're a fugitive . . . How long do you want these guys?"
"A day or two. Yesterday I recorded a statement from a runaway SVI man, a guy named Robert Myers. It tells all about the SVI abducting and murdering Christman, and fits our earlier information perfectly. I've got it on microcube; it's in my pocket right now. The thing is, I sent a copy to KCBS-TV, via a runner named Hector Duncan. The whole thing ought to be playing on the noon news today—the evening news anyway. I'm surprised it wasn't on yesterday or this morning. I suppose they're doing some checking, to make sure it's not a hoax.
"After I sent off Myers' statement, he told me the LAPD is involved with the SVI. The SVI's terminated some heavy dons for them, in the Spanish mafia. He didn't know what the payoff was. Not cash, I wouldn't think. Probably privileges and an information pipeline. That's one reason Tuuli's so scared; the LAPD involvement."
"Huh!" Long pause. "Martti, you'd better not be lying to me. Okay, I'll send three good men. But if it comes to a face-off with the police, they'll have my orders to lay down. You got that? Now, where to?"
I told him. We were camped at the Rito Oso Picnic Area north of Fillmore, on a spur road off Forest Road 14. There were directional signs. Joe said the guys would get there about 11 o'clock.
Then we disconnected. He'd done a good job of acting. We both had.
Wayne had one of the guys drive back to where the spur road met Forest Road 14. The directional sign there had another sign hanging from it that said no camping, which contradicted my story, and we wanted it out of sight when the SVI arrived. Assuming they came. When he got back, we moved all the vehicles but the company sedan to the back end of the picnic area, where they couldn't be seen from the ambush zone. Then I had the men take their positions.
One of the considerations was that the guys would get sleepy. So Wayne was up the road a ways, hiding in a thicket of chaparral oak, watching. He was an inveterate varmint hunter—he lived in the Simi Valley near the edge of development—and carried a crow hunter's call in his glove compartment. When he saw someone coming, he was to caw three times, pause, then repeat, to alert us so everyone could get prone and ready. The guys were stationed in pairs, responsible for keeping each other awake.
I sat at the first picnic table, 60 or 70 feet from the road and next to a chimneyed stone fireplace I could duck behind. Then I waited, reading a copy of Sports Afield that Wayne had had in his pickup. Reading a bit and thinking a lot. Any battle plan, even a simple one like ours, is based on assumptions, and battles are famous for not going as planned. Things come up. Things go wrong. Everything goes to hell and confusion. If you've read much history, you know that.
The SVI might not have heard my talk with Joe, and the LAPD might not get the word to them. Hell, no one might have been monitoring at all; we could have been talking to ourselves. Or Masters might smell a rat and stay away, or send in a whole squad of men. Hopefully he'd come in personally with only two or three guys, and that would be all. But he might arrive with a squad, and send scouts in first, and we'd think the scouts were the whole party. Then we'd have the rest of them down on us after we'd committed ourselves, and the shit would hit the fan.
That was my biggest worry—that he'd send in scouts first. After all, most of his guys were ex-Rangers or ex-Special Forces, and if he didn't think to send out scouts, they'd remind him.
But then, if they were only expecting a guy and his wife, why send scouts?
Unless Masters smelled a rat. Back to that again. The stuff was running in circles through my mind. I'd read a little, then discover I didn't know what I'd been reading—that I was too busy worrying. A time or two I was interrupted in all this by crows cawing, but it was never three caws, then pause, then three more. It was always some other pattern, and answered from somewhere else—genuine conversations among genuine crows. They helped keep everyone more or less alert.
In my planning, I'd figured the SVI people might come out in ground cars, but I'd allowed for the chance that they'd fly to Fillmore in a floater or maybe two, which would be a lot quicker. Then fly in the rest of the way at near road level, in order to follow the signs. They'd surely have flown to L.A., and Masters no doubt had an LAPD temporary permit to operate out of the city's various shuttle fields.
At 9:12 by my watch, I heard Wayne's crow call, and my guts tightened. I was glad I'd taken time to relieve myself at the restaurant. Ten or twelve seconds later, an eight-passenger skyvan floated into sight, just centimeters above the road. I recognized the driver as Masters; this was no scouting party. Steinhorn sat next to him in front—I could see his black eyes—and there were several guys behind them. They saw me almost at once and stopped in the road. Masters gave an order, then got out, leaving Steinhorn in front. I got up slowly, staring as if I'd just then realized who they were. Three guys got out of the back, carrying old AK-47s. Masters himself held a .45 caliber service pistol pointed loosely in my direction.
The hair bristled on the back of my neck.
"Mr. Seppanen," Masters said with exaggerated courtesy. "I'm delighted to meet you at last."
I dropped the pretense. "The feeling is mutual, Masters. Please drop your weapons. My people are all around you, ready to blow . . ."
That's all I got out. Masters raised his automatic with both hands and I started to throw myself behind the fireplace. There was a lot of gunfire—the boom of the .45, the brief vicious sound of AK-47s, the heavier boom of shotguns, and the swoosh-whump of two car-killers hitting the engine compartment, all of it seeming simultaneous with a stunning pain in my head, a searing pain in my buttocks. Somehow I was still conscious, even though my vision had turned off. Someone was shouting "Jesus Christ, guys, hold your fire! Hold your fire!"
By that time it had already stopped. Voices called sharply; I don't recall what. Then someone right next to me said "Shit! God damn it! He took one right in the head!"
It hurt, all right, and my butt felt like someone had run a red-hot poker through it from one side to the other. I couldn't see anything, but for some stupid reason tried to get up. All I accomplished was to nearly pass out.
"Hey, he moved! He's alive!"
I wanted to say "Hell yes I'm alive," but didn't. It occurred to me I might vomit, and choke on it.
The next thing I was aware of, an indeterminate time later, I was on a stretcher, being loaded by paramedics into a floater.
35
LEGAL WRAP-UP
I was more or less conscious in the ambulance at first. I was aware of a paramedic saying, "I don't think his wound is that serious," and then, "Him? We may lose him." And realized vaguely that I wasn't the only casualty in the ambulance. When they were satisfied my skull wasn't fractured, they shot me up with something, after which I didn't remember anything for a while.