I was parked up in my rental Saab 9-3, knocking back a cup of coffee and smoking a Dunhill, when my radio scanner crackled to life:
Speeding black Ford Crown Victoria. Wilshire Boulevard near Federal Avenue. Two occupants, witness didn’t catch the license plate. Car 16, you nearby?
It was the sort of dull broadcast you hear routinely on the LAPD’s public police frequency. The sort of broadcast likely to disappoint any member of the public tuning in on their store bought scanner (as I’d been doing all day) hoping for a cheap thrill.
That’s what Hollywood doesn’t tell you – that most police work is boring as sin.
I yawned as squad car 16 responded five seconds later:
Gonna give it a miss – we’re two miles away.
No surprises there: a speeding car in LA was about as urgent as a cat stuck in a tree. Besides, by the time the squad car arrived, the speed demon would likely be long gone.
I tapped my finger on my steering wheel, then thought, Fuck it, I’m a block over, and have time to kill – might as well check it out.
Stubbing out my smoke, I fired my engine, and crawled round the block.
A couple of minutes later, I spotted it: parked on the north side of the busy stretch of high-street near UCLA. But when I saw the two innocuous-looking East Asian men to whom it belonged – one behind the wheel; the other on the sidewalk, standing against the passenger door, holding an umbrella like a walking stick – I knew I’d wasted my time. And this was no surprise – after all, these guys had been speeding, not conducting a drive-by.
Strumming my steering wheel again, I parked up on the south side of the road. But then, as I absent-mindedly scanned the opposite sidewalk, another individual registered on my radar – a woman fast approaching the Crown Vic’s vicinity.
Sure, she was pretty. But that wasn’t what caught my eye. It was the way she was walking: purposeful, tense, strained.
But though I registered that she was probably in her late twenties, also of East Asian extraction, maybe 5’6”, I was still only really half-watching her as she competed with the dozens of other distractions on the bustling sidewalk.
But then I started really paying attention. Because as she drew even with the man leaning against the Vic, he momentarily pointed the umbrella at her thigh and almost immediately, the woman stopped in her tracks and clutched her leg, suddenly dazed-looking. The next instant, the guy placed his arm around the woman, neatly bundled her into the back of the car, and got in himself. Then the vehicle started moving.
As far as I could see, nobody but me had noticed.
Blinking with incredulity, I hit the gas, and started following.
My first thought was: this is a professional job. Back in 2007, when I was working at the FBI’s Office of Intelligence, I’d investigated the case of Oleg Markov, an ex-KGB dissident who was assassinated at a bus-stop in DC by a Russian spy using an air-rifle concealed in an umbrella. So the apparatus indicated sophistication. But whereas with Markov the air-rifle had administered a ricin pellet, and the spy had fled to let the drug do its work, this woman – though clearly also drugged – had been abducted, too.
This was more than a simple assassination attempt.
But no sooner had I tailed the Crown Vic onto the east-bound lane of the I-10 than I started questioning my knee-jerk decision to follow. After all, I was a wanted man – a man who should be doing everything in his power to keep his nose clean. A man who should be tipping off the LAPD and returning to his goddamned life. And what was I intending to do once these guys got to their destination? I may have had plenty of historical experience in dealing with this sort of shit, but I hadn’t seen action for almost two years. And these guys looked capable – very capable.
Then there was the small fact that I was completely unarmed.
Already my heart was pounding and the metallic tang of fear was on my tongue.
And yet I continued following. Because I knew not only that nobody else had tipped off the LAPD – my scanner was silent – but also that by the time the LAPD reacted to a call, it’d probably be too late. And I wasn’t going to have this woman’s life on my conscience.
Besides, I knew I was lucky to be on their trail at all. The chances of someone calling them in for speeding had been slim. And the chances that they’d in fact been racing to kidnap someone, practically anorexic.
Eventually, after twenty-five minutes of pursuit, and one tense spell during which I lost sight of them for maybe ninety seconds, the men came off the Interstate. Shortly after, they turned down South Pembroke Lane – a narrow road nestled between Washington Boulevard and West 18th, no more than 180 yards in length – and nosed into a small garage.
I overshot the road, and parked in the next one along – South Hope Street. I was in a small nexus of streets which, though a stone’s throw from the Interstate, seemed practically deserted. And, like much of LA, it was rundown as hell: filthy clothes strewn on railings; rotting furniture populating the sidewalk; a faded billboard – ‘Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Life’ – towering over the scene.
The perfect urban environment to conduct covert activity.
I walked quickly back to South Pembroke, and approached the garage I’d seen them enter – a dilapidated red building, scarred by graffiti. Then I poked my head round the vehicle-sized entranceway.
The men were carrying the woman – who was now entirely unconscious, gagged, and handcuffed – from the car parked to the left-hand side of the space to a Volkswagen Transporter van, parked to the right. Now I was closer, I could see the men were both around six foot, lean, and well-built – though I couldn’t see whether they were packing heat.
I had to work on the basis that they were.
I moved back out of their potential line of sight, and took a deep breath. I knew I had to retrieve this woman. And I knew, also, that I had to act fast. For one thing, the van indicated that they were planning on transporting her a decent distance, and attempting an extended tail-job was incredibly risky. For another, the woman had god-knows-what in her system, and could be in urgent need of medical attention.
But the woman’s state also narrowed my options for dealing with these men, because it meant I couldn’t simply kill them. After all, murder scenes are examined with a fine-tooth comb, and it’s nearly impossible to take a life without leaving some shred of DNA – a big problem when you don’t have the luxury of time to clean up your mess.
An even bigger problem when you’re also on the run.
I peered into the space again. The woman was now nowhere in sight – she was presumably already inside the van – and the two men were leaning into the car, and giving it a once over with handheld vacuum cleaners.
The van was facing away from me, perhaps twenty-five yards away. My best bet was to get myself over to its passenger side, then catch the one who happened to come round my side by surprise. And I wasn’t gonna get a better chance to move across the room than right now.
I darted over the threshold, and counting on the sound of vacuuming to tell me whether I’d been seen, started bolting across the black-top…
The instant I ducked behind the van the hoovering stopped. For a sickening moment, I was convinced they’d seen me; that they’d shut off their vacuums to draw guns. But then they started speaking, and though they appeared to be doing so in Chinese, I could tell by their tone they were calm. After a few seconds, I managed to pick out what sounded like a place name – Springfield or Springville – and then they transitioned to English.
‘Is that all we need to do to the Ford?’ The speaker had a generic East-Coast American accent.
‘Eventually all the cars will be incinerated,’ said the second man, in a similar accent but deeper tone. ‘But since we may use this one again, that’s thorough enough for now.’
I could hear them moving towards the van.
‘So who’s driving?’ said the first man.
‘I will – you need to sleep. But here, take the bag.’
The first man grunted. Then the footsteps came to a stop and the driver’s door opened and closed. I held my breath as I desperately listened for the next move – for whether the other man would walk around the front or back of the vehicle to get to the passenger side. And I was praying it’d be the back, because the windows towards the front would make it near-impossible to disable the guy without his accomplice seeing.
After a second or two of silence, the guy – to my enormous relief – started moving towards the back of the vehicle.
I also moved towards the back; then I crouched low and waited.
All at once, the man – with a rucksack over his shoulder – appeared before me, and his jaw dropped. But, before he could react, I shot up, and drove my head into the underside of his chin, while pounding the left side of his ribcage with an open palm.
Instantly, the guy crumpled into an unconscious heap. But while my blow stopped him falling into the side of the van, he still went to ground with an audible crunch. However, I got lucky: almost in the same instant, the other guy started the engine.
Yet though the other guy wasn’t yet alert to my presence, I knew that if someone didn’t get into the passenger seat pretty damn soon, he’d realize something was up. And scarcely had I thought this when I stepped towards the passenger door, opened it, and got in.
The driver, who was busy examining the fuel gauge, didn’t even notice I was the wrong guy. And I capitalized immediately: I reached over with my left hand, grabbed the seat-belt that extended over his left shoulder, and pulled it tight round his neck – while hugging him close to put his right arm out of action.
But the driver, confirming my suspicions he’d been professionally trained, didn’t panic: he reached with his left hand to a blade at his waist concealed by his jacket. But I was ready for this and grabbed his wrist with my spare hand and smashed it against the door and he dropped the knife. Then I started pounding his face with his own hand.
At that, his panic started: he started rocking violently against me, and his knees shot up and pummeled my shoulder. But I held on tight, increased my grip on his purpling neck and, after fifteen bruising seconds, he was finally out for the count.
I took a moment to catch my breath; then I got to work.
First, I removed the driver from the car, laid him by his accomplice, and frisked them both: the head-butted man had a .22 Walther P22 handgun, fitted with a suppressor; an iPhone, which had broken as a result of his fall; a short-wave walkie-talkie, not pre-set to any particular frequency; and, in his bag, the umbrella-cum-rifle, two vacuums, and keys to both the handcuffs and the Crown Vic – while the strangled man had a Walther P22 and $2,000 in cash. Next, I retrieved the knife, and slashed the Crown Vic’s tires. Finally, I got behind the wheel of the van, and exited the garage.
Fifteen seconds or so later – and after encountering only one other vehicle on Washington Boulevard – I parked the van behind my Saab. Then I got out, opened the van’s side-panel, put the limp woman over my shoulder, and laid her in the back of the Saab; after which, I slashed the van’s tires and got behind the wheel of my car.
Then, before anything else, I opened the rucksack and pulled out the umbrella: I had to ascertain what they’d used to drug this woman.
I carefully pried it open. Inside, was a US-made Bigot – an adapted automatic pistol which fires sub-miniature darts, and which has often been used by American Special Forces for stealth operations due to its lack of muzzle flash. A serious piece of kit. And when I looked at the two darts still loaded within, I breathed a sigh of relief: I could see “M99” in a tiny font – a tranquilizer often used on guard dogs, and not something that’d do much more than knock someone out for a few hours.
I put the umbrella away, fired the engine, and set off.
Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at my rental apartment on East 5th Street, in the gritty Skid Row district and soon enough, after discreetly carrying the woman into the apartment block, I had her on my bed, and divested her of gag and handcuffs.
I knew she simply needed to sleep off the drugs. But I was antsy and wanted to find out more about her, so I frisked her to see if I could find anything. Sure enough, in her jeans pocket I found a small wallet, containing a UCLA Access Card that identified her as Ellen Kelden – a twenty-eight-year-old Junior Lecturer in Mathematical Physics.
That was all I found. I reckoned the broken cell I’d recovered from the men had been hers, but had been confiscated for obvious reasons.
Accepting I’d have to wait to find out more, I opened the rucksack again, and took a closer look at the items. Both the guns were identical, and both had a full ten rounds in their magazines. But what was noteworthy about them was that their .22 long rifle bullets were subsonic – that is, if they were fired, they’d fail to break the sound barrier – meaning that with a suppressor in play, these weapons would be practically silent.
It was illegal in California to possess models of the Walther P22 that were compatible with suppressors. But I had a hunch these folks weren’t too bothered.
Next, I turned my attention to the short-wave walkie-talkie. The device itself was a high-quality, hard-wearing item; but the fact they were even using short-wave radio spoke volumes. Unlike a cell, which law enforcement can use to triangulate your whereabouts if they know your number, a short-wave radio device won’t give away your location – and whereas the NSA logs every single phone-call made in the country, short-wave communications go practically under the radar.
In a post-9/11 America in which the NSA’s up everyone’s ass, using a back-to-basics technology like this is a serious statement of intent.
Then there was the fact they’d kept the walkie-talkie switched off and not pre-set to any particular frequency – another sign of professionalism. It meant I couldn’t communicate with anyone else in their team, nor attempt to eavesdrop on communications.
Placing the items back in the bag, I finally found myself calming down, and the adrenaline dissipating. And as I lowered myself into an armchair, I suddenly became aware of the pain in my shoulder and head: both were battered and tender; though the bruising on my head was largely hidden by my hair – which was fortunate, given that injuries often attract the wrong sort of attention.
I looked at Ellen Kelden – the woman responsible for my state; then I glanced at my watch. 6:27. The event I’d booked into at UCLA – a conversation with crime writer Marc Bavcic – was over. But really, I didn’t much care – it was a triviality compared to what’d taken me away. And though a part of me resented being drawn into the orbit of this woman’s trouble, and feared attracting the attention of the authorities, a much larger part of me knew that regardless of what I’d been telling myself, I hadn’t been listening to the police radio just to pass the hours, and was simply thankful I’d been in the right place at the right time.
I let go a big sigh, then a short choke of laughter. I’d come to California to retrace my father’s footsteps: he’d lived in the state in his early twenties. But in fact this was the first time I’d felt even remotely glad I’d come.