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SEATTLE (Monday, Dec. 3, 2012, noon) — “What? You think this is an undercover rig?” Mac asked as he climbed into the pickup. Danny slid over, shoving Mac’s backpack toward him with his foot. Mac reached in, checked to make sure his weapons were still in place. Comforted by their feel, he leaned back against the seat.
“Not anybody going to believe I’m driving it, is there?” Shorty said. He swore as the pickup jerked when he let out the clutch. “And nobody going to believe they let you out of jail once they had you. I figure we’re as undercover as we get.”
Mac snorted. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school? Teaching the future of tomorrow?”
“Called in sick. They got a sub,” Shorty said briefly, not looking at Mac.
Mac nodded, didn’t pursue it. Shorty took teaching seriously for all the jokes. Mac doubted he’d ever taken a sick leave day before. The school would be sure he was in the hospital — probably raising a collection for flowers already.
“Any thoughts about where we find Parker?” he asked instead. “Or his two hostages?”
“I’d guess at his home on Lake Washington,” Shorty said. He exited onto Highway 520 to go over the floating bridge. “That’s got enough security to stop anything short of an armed invasion — and even — then I’d want a tank. We can see it from the bridge in a bit.”
He gestured to Danny who pulled out an Examiner article about the house when it was built and spread it out on his lap.
“Look,” Shorty said, jabbing at the plot line. “It’s built back from the Lake. You can see it from the water; sits back with probably 50 yards of open ground between the shore and the house. The house is huge, 30,000 square feet. You could fit a fucking Nordstrom in it. Electrified fences on both property lines, with an electrified gate at the top. The house is one-third of the way up the hill; cars park at the top off the road. It’s a dead-end road — everything is hauled down to the house in a little train. A guard station at the top of the hill; and a second one at the house — both ends of the tram. If our embassies were designed this well, we’d quit having people killed in them.”
“Keep your hands on the wheel,” Mac said, studying the drawing and pictures. “But he’s not rich?” he added sarcastically.
Danny grinned.
Shorty shrugged. “Maybe I’m getting jaded by teaching in a high school where the kids get a Mercedes coupe for their 16th birthday,” he admitted. He pointed out the windshield to the south of the bridge. “There. That’s the house.”
He slowed down as much as he could, but it still didn’t give them much of a look. A big white house sitting on the slope to the water. A security cabin at the top of the slope was just barely visible.
“We need a better view,” Danny said, as they passed by and on toward the shoreline.
Shorty nodded. “Best way to do that is by water. We can rent kayaks at Enatai Beach.” He tapped the map. “It’s just a couple of miles down the shoreline from there. Just innocent duffers out kayaking.”
“In December,” Mac added dryly.
“Feels like kayaking in a rowboat,” Danny grumbled as they launched the rental kayak. It was a cold gray day; the beach caretaker had been surprised anyone wanted to rent a kayak at all, but he took their money and hauled out the three tubs.
“Most folks who rent here want something stable,” Shorty said. “These things are stable.”
“Like I said, rowboats,” Danny said as he began to paddle. “Red, plastic rowboats.”
Mac said nothing, focusing on getting an even stroke going and as much speed as possible out of the tub. Danny shut up to concentrate on catching up with him. Shorty drifted along behind.
The shoreline was dense with fancy houses, each one more elaborate than the next it seemed. It took 15 minutes before the three of them reached the Parker place.
“Man, oh man,” Danny said, letting his kayak drift while he looked up at the white mansion on the hill. “They don’t make them like that in Shreveport.”
It looked even more unassailable in reality than it had on paper, Mac thought. He saw no way to breach it from the shore. Too much open territory. He drifted closer.
“Careful,” Shorty warned softly. “Someone with a pair of glasses might spot you.”
Mac nodded and started paddling his kayak onward to the north. He went almost to the 520 bridge before the chop forced him to turn around. He headed back south to the rental shop. They slowed again as they passed the Parker house.
Mac shook his head.
The three of them waited to talk until they were back in the pickup. Shorty turned the heater on; it was cold on the water even if the weather was dry for the season. Nothing happened. He cursed, hit the dashboard above the heater with the flat of his hand. The fan kicked on.
“We aren’t going to be able to just sneak in there,” Danny said, stating the obvious.
“No shit,” Mac said. “Let’s take a look at the top.”
Shorty navigated the twisty turns onto Bellevue Way, then chugged along past the high school where he taught and then through city center. He turned west, slowing to 20 miles per hour, as he followed the road along the backside of Medina, a neighborhood even ritzier than Bellevue proper. The road was narrow and busy. Moms in their Volvos and BMWs transporting kids. Traffic slowed to a crawl, made worse by traffic cops sitting alongside the road in key spots to prevent folks from going too fast through the neighborhood.
Mac slouched in his seat. These white flight neighborhoods make him itchy. Take your money out to the suburbs, then incorporate so you could run your own town and schools and not let your tax dollars go to support those other people. Those less fortunate. He mimicked their precise, prim voices in his head. Here there were no potholes under the swings at the elementary school. The high school could offer French and Spanish and Latin. And had money for chemistry labs. Shit. Wasn’t that way down in the city schools. Made Mac glad he covered cops where the good guys and the bad guys came better labeled.
Then he thought about his current situation and decided maybe that wasn’t true on the cop beat anymore either.
The Parker place was the third house from the end of the road. Shorty drove by silently. Turning around required backing up. Danny winced and shook his head. Shorty stopped.
“Well?” he said.
Mac frowned. “We aren’t going to be pulling any frontal assault on this place either. The people who built those gates were serious.”
The three of them sat silently, watching the house, or to be more exact, watching the gate and guardhouse.
“Someone’s coming out,” Danny said suddenly. The gate slowly swung open, and a small van, with tinted windows, pulled out. The gate closed behind it.
“Follow it?” Shorty asked.
Mac nodded. “Don’t let them see you,” he cautioned.
Shorty rolled his eyes. “Yes, boss.”
The van wasn’t headed to any place particularly interesting — the local Safeway store. Mac studied the two who got out. These men hadn’t been out of the military long. The haircuts, the well-muscled shoulders, they might as well been in dress uniform. He didn’t recognize them, but they were young, and he’d been out a long time. Seemed like forever.
“Now why do you suppose Parker has guards like that running for groceries?” Mac said softly.
“Janet said if Parker is here, he’s not admitting it,” Shorty said. “I like your boss by the way, even if she treats this pickup like shit. Official word is that Parker is in D.C.”
“I think he’s here,” Mac said. “He wouldn’t let someone else run this operation. He’s here somewhere. Although probably not at the house. So just who are they feeding at the Parker residence?”
“Don’t go leaping to conclusions,” Danny said. “He probably has live-in help and guards and all kinds of people running that place even when he isn’t there.”
Shorty grinned. “Even in this neighborhood, however, you generally don’t send the Marines out for your beer and pizza.”
“Ex-Marines,” Danny corrected. “Be my guess.”
Mac nodded. “Especially in this neighborhood,” Mac corrected, still watching the van. “That’s something the household help can usually handle.”
Danny nodded in agreement. “I’d say we’ve found them.”
“Bingo,” Mac said.
The two guards loaded groceries into the back of the van, climbed in front and drove away.
“So now that we know where they are, how are we going to get them out?” Shorty asked.
“This isn’t the ideal vehicle for being inconspicuous outside that gate. And we need to watch for a while,” Mac said. “Any bright ideas?”
The three sat silently.
Shorty sighed. “We need a green van — road maintenance thing. It’s the only thing that no one would notice.”
Mac nodded. “Set up a couple of barricades around a rough spot in the road, look bored, and barely busy. That would work.”
“Jules still working at parks and rec?” Shorty asked. “Their vans would pass.”
“No, she’s working as a court reporter. Did the training and everything,” Mac said. “Besides, she told me not to call her again until I was back to being Clark Kent.”
Danny snickered.
Shorty sighed. “I guess I got to call my old man, then, huh.”
“What does he do,” Danny asked.
“What do you think a first-generation Filipino does in this town?” Shorty said sarcastically. “He’s a gardener. We can borrow some stuff, make this pickup look like yard service.”
“No gardener in this town would drive this rig,” Mac said disgustedly. “Not without a fresh coat of paint, at least. And we can’t drive one of your dad’s — they might trace it back to him.”
Shorty grimaced but didn’t disagree.
“How hard would it be to hot-wire a city truck?” Danny asked.
Mac ignored that — he was on bail for God’s sake, he wasn’t going to hotwire a truck. He reviewed what he needed: A way to discreetly run surveillance on a place built and guarded by paranoids. Then the itch in his brain made itself noticed and he grinned.
“Son of a bitch,” he said softly. Not discreetly. “We’re going to run a press stakeout.”
“Say what?” Shorty asked.
Mac laughed. The answer wasn’t in his past, but in his present. “Let me use that cell phone,” he said.
Parked down the street from Parker’s mansion, the three sat in the pickup while Mac spent an hour on the phone, and Shorty and Danny watched. He talked to Janet first. She promised to make a few calls, send a reporter and a photographer.
“By the time you get done it probably will generate news anyway,” she said.
Mac then called a buddy at a television station. “You heard the news?” he asked casually. “Howard Parker — you know him? — he’s going to be nominated for Secretary of Homeland Security. Coming into town today, supposed to be an announcement tomorrow.”
Mac listened for a moment, laughed. “Yeah, I’m going to be staked out at the house for the afternoon and evening. We’d like to have it in the paper when it hits the streets.”
At a second station he was an anonymous tipster. At the Seattle Times, he told the political reporter he was a press agent for Parker.
Mac was still making calls when the first television truck slowly rolled past them. Mac grinned. “How’s that for a beautiful sight?”
“I don’t get it,” Danny said, confused. “You want witnesses to us breaking and entering?”
Mac grinned again. He felt high with the sheer joy of making up the news. “You’ve never seen a clusterfuck like a news stakeout, Danny Boy,” he said with glee. “You remember the Iraqi War, don’t you?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Be patient and watch what happens.”
It was a satisfying gangbang of a press stakeout, Mac thought, as he surveyed the scene. Within a few hours of his first call, three television stations were there with their trucks; reporters were doing stand ups in front of the gate to Parker’s place.
Janet had kept her word. The Examiner had a photographer and another reporter there. Both ignored Mac — or maybe just didn’t see him. The Times had a couple as well. A helicopter flew over.
“We’re outside Howard Parker’s place on Lake Washington,” one big-eyed, brown-haired reporter said breathlessly into her microphone. “Rumor has it that Parker will be arriving here sometime in the next hour or so to make an announcement about a possibility of a spot on the President’s new cabinet.”
Mac led the way through the throng, pausing to listen to the various standups going on. If television was lucky, there would be something for the 6 p.m. news, with more to come for the news at 11 p.m.
A couple of radio guys were setting up microphones next to the King 5 truck.
“This could be a big plus for the region,” said another television reporter, a young Black man, who gazed earnestly into the camera lens. “Howard Parker has been a loyal, favored son to the region....”
“Hot damn,” Shorty breathed as he squeezed through the throng behind Mac. Danny trailed along behind the two of them. Another van pulled up. Not media, this time, Mac noticed. Protesters. Even better. Whose inspiration was this? Janet’s? He grinned.
The protesters had hastily made picket signs — “Americans Have Rights Too.” Generations too late for that one, Mac thought sarcastically. “Democracy for Americans Now” and “Stop Spying on Americans.” The protesters organized themselves into a group and then pushed through the media to reach the front gates. A few cameras turned in their direction; a couple of reporters headed that way. Some protesters moved closer to the fence. A better backdrop for the photo op, Mac observed.
“We want Parker. We want Parker now!” the protesters chanted. “Say hell no, you won’t go.”
Mac worked his own way slowly through the crowd, headed toward a position close to the gates, but next to the property line. He had a camera around his neck, a notebook in his hands; no one paid any attention to him. He shouldered his way to the spot he wanted, stopping the protest of the Associated Press reporter with a raised eyebrow. Danny and Shorty stopped beside him, and the AP reporter faded back, grumbling quietly.
“Now what?” Danny asked.
“We wait. We watch.” Mac looked around; the crowd was growing. An officer pulled up in a marked car. He sat quietly, watching. Seattle area police had learned that it was not a good idea to bust up a protest with the media watching. It looked bad to the folks at home eating dinner.
Mac frowned at the cop’s arrival. He didn’t want cops breaking up his game. He made a mental note to not make any noise. This had to be a silent b&e. Well, he listened to the escalating noise around him. Somewhat silent. The chanting of the protesters got louder.
Shorty took a step back and into the bushes of the house next door. He stuck his head out. “I think I can go down along this property line and stay hidden,” Shorty said. “There might be a break in the fence.”
Danny grinned. “I can about guarantee a break,” he said, pulling a knife out of his pocket.
“Right. With a pocketknife.”
Danny smirked. “Wildcatter’s pocketknife,” he explained. “We don’t just cut string out there.”
Mac nodded to the two of them. “See if you can find a likely spot. Cut it open but don’t go through until I get there. We need a diversion.”
“And how will you do that?” Danny asked.
“You’ll know when you hear it.” And so will I, Mac thought with amusement.
Danny followed Shorty who was already disappearing into the shrubs that lined the property line.
Mac turned to the AP reporter who still wasn’t far away. “I hear Parker is actually inside,” he said casually. “What do you hear?”
The AP reporter shook his head. “Heard he’s due in about supper time.”
“I don’t know,” Mac said. “I saw a limo pull away just as we were arriving.”
“Really?” The AP reporter turned to his right. “Hey, Jacobs, you hear anything that Parker may have snuck in earlier today?”
“No shit?” the reporter from the CBS affiliate said. The noise level was getting intense and he had to shout back. “That would figure. When’s he going to come out? I got a deadline to make, you know?”
“What did you say?” another reporter called over. “Parker’s here? Well, get him out here.”
A cameraman from NBC put his lens through the gate bars, to film some footage. His soundman banged on the gate. “Come on, guys, open up. We want to talk to Parker!”
Some of the protesters helpfully amplified the request. “We want Parker!”
The guard didn’t respond. “Hey, you in the guardhouse,” a reporter yelled. “Is it true? Parker’s going to be on the President’s cabinet?”
Come on, come on, Mac thought in frustration. Respond. The banging on the gate got louder. More vehicles pulled up along the street. There wasn’t any way to get a vehicle out through that. Security wasn’t going to be following them, once they got what they came for. Janet’s rattle-bang pickup was parked in a driveway two blocks down; the house had looked vacant. Mac hoped it stayed that way.
Finally, the guard came out of the guardhouse and up to the gate.
“Mr. Parker is not here. We don’t expect him, either,” the young guard said. He was private security, not the same caliber as the two they’d seen earlier.
Two groups then, Mac observed. Say four to eight Marines? For a 24/7 shift. Maybe. Another set of on-site security. Two? Maybe four. They’d rotate home.
“Right. Well you’d better expect him,” said the NBC reporter, putting her hands on her hips. “He’s on his way. Unless, of course, he’s already here.”
The guard glanced at the pretty woman who made nightly appearances on his television station. “Believe me,” he insisted. “He’s not here.”
Two protesters used the guard’s distraction to boost a third over the gate. The man inside started trotting down the slope to the house, a poster held high over his head. Don’t send Parker, it said. The cameras immediately focused on him.
“Stop!” the guard ordered. He started to pull his weapon, looked at the television cameras behind him and thought better of it. “You’re trespassing!”
The protester didn’t hesitate as he continued to trot down the slope toward the house. The guard spoke into his lapel mic and headed down the slope after his prey. Behind them, the other protesters shouted encouragement to their colleague and jeered at the guard. Three others tried to climb over the fence as well.
Mac grinned and slipped down the fence line to find Danny and Shorty.