Chapter 19

 

Wheeling the van off the hillside lot, its external lights extinguished, Griff paused long enough for Lopez to clamber aboard.

Cade powered off his phone and tucked it in a pocket. Regarding Lopez, he said, “Any new chatter on the PPD net we should be worried about?”

Lopez shook his head. “Nothing. But it sure is hot down there. Supervisor on scene is speculating a rival cartel is responsible for the hit. Went on to say that he thinks all-out war is imminent.”

Close, but no cigar, thought Cade. Occam’s Razor didn’t apply in this instance. But having local law enforcement think a turf war was popping off between gangs wasn’t a bad thing. The more resources they threw at exploring that angle, the less likely it was that they would follow up on citizen tips or evidence collected that might suggest otherwise. Getting Griff’s attention, Cade instructed him to find a pullout where they could stop and get a better look at the shitstorm their impromptu snatch-and-grab operation had brought down on Arroyo Motocross.

Griff drove to the first right-to-left switchback and stopped dead center in the road where, through the van’s dusty windshield, they were afforded a commanding two-hundred-and-seventy-degree view of the valley.

NODs flipped out of the way, Cade stuck his head between the front seats, pressed the binoculars to his face, and surveyed the distant scene. If anything, he thought, recalling how the place had appeared to him an hour ago, judging by the sea of flashing lights down there now, the number of emergency vehicles on scene looks to have tripled. The entire place was one big pulsating blob of colorful lights that seemed to have taken on a life of their own. Walking his gaze right, he saw a pair of vehicles stationed at the mouth of the main paved road. Following the north/south-running two-lane the main road branched from, he saw a patrol car blocking the intersection they had crossed a little over an hour ago. And though the hillside to the left of the van partly obstructed his view to the east, odds were great that there was also a county or state patrol unit posted at the mouth of the dirt road they had used to access Arroyo Motocross.

Craning to see past the quad tubes sprouting from Griff’s face, Cade said, “What’s our fuel situation?”

“Tank’s half full,” Griff came back.

“Please tell me we’re not driving back to Oregon,” Lopez quipped. “If so, I’m going to need something softer to sit on. This folding chair is mucho unkind to my culo.”

“How does it compare to the bitch seat?” asked Griff as he got the van moving again.

Lopez said nothing. They all knew his stance on riding in the middle forward-facing seat in any vehicle—especially helicopters.

“Nothing’s worse than the bitch seat,” confirmed Cross. “Worst place to be in a helo during a hot exfil. Rounds coming in both open doors. Sweaty door kickers coming at you from both sides.” He shook his head. “I prefer to be first one out, last one in.”

“We’re still on the job,” Cade said. Looking to Cross, he asked, “What’s our egress look like?”

Cross planted a hand on the dash to brace against the rocking of the van. With the other hand, he traced the proposed route as he spoke. “When we get to the T with SR-74, we’ll need to go west.” He tapped a place on the map called Wittmann. It was almost due south of their current position. “Two miles ahead is a two-lane that cuts south through the desert. Not much along the way but a few scattered homes and small ranches. We turn left there and make our way to Wittmann, where we jump on Route 60. That shoots off south by east and links to the 303 Loop South. The 303 will dump us onto I-10 East. The I-10 gets us back to Sky Harbor.”

Cade said, “How long until we’re wheels up?”

While Cross knew he could input the trip into the navigation computer and get up-to-date travel conditions and a firm ETA to their ultimate destination, staying as gray as possible from here on out was the best play. So he studied the screen, then paused for a beat, thinking. “It’s fifty, maybe sixty miles to Sky Harbor. My best guess is that we’ll be rolling into the hangar in ninety mikes.” He sat back and waited for the back and forth he knew was to come.

“How far to Wittmann?” asked Lopez.

“Roughly eight miles,” answered Cross.

Lopez shook his head. “Not good, amigo. If I was the commander who just had a whole bunch of shot-up bodies called in on his shift, I’d cast a wide net for the perps. We’re likely to hit a checkpoint before we reach Wittmann. I’d guess it’d be set up on the runout side of a hill, or around a sharp bend, someplace where, by the time a vehicle encounters it, there’s no turning back.”

“Like the sobriety checkpoints that used to be legal in most states,” Cade put in. “You come up on one and you’ve got a couple of beers in your system, your only choice is to bite the bullet and proceed. You turn around and try to rabbit, you’re tacitly admitting guilt.” He shook his head. “There was no escaping those things.”

“You get caught up in one?” Griff asked. “Is that why I’ve never seen you drunk?”

“I never did drink and drive,” Cade said. “Defied logic for me. Even as a teenager, I liked to always be in control of my faculties.”

“Like a good Eagle Scout,” Lopez added.

Cade nodded. “Pretty much. Some of my high school buddies drank. Most summer weekends you could find them at a keg party set up spontaneously on the fourth hole of the Eastmoreland Golf Course. A couple of guys on the football team got snared in those checkpoints set up near the main cruising strips.”

Griff braked hard as he steered the van into a tight hairpin, one of the last aggressive turns before the dirt track leveled off and shot laser-straight south, toward its eventual merger with SR-74. He said, “What do we know?” He didn’t wait for an answer to his question. “We know they’re blocking the road east of the T.” He glanced at Cade. “Only choice is to go west and take our chances. If Lopez is right about the roadblocks, we improvise.”

“I concur,” Lopez weighed in.

“I third the motion,” Cross said, sitting back in his seat.

Last thing Cade wanted was a confrontation with law enforcement. In the past, while on an op or training mission, he would just flash creds and pull rank to wriggle out of a minor scrape. If that didn’t move the needle, dropping the names of local public figures who would vouch for him usually did. Unfortunately, tonight, neither strategy was an option. If they were stopped and detained, they were on their own.

Help was not coming.

“West it is,” Cade said. “Pass back the NODs and weapons and make the front seat area look like it belongs to a work rig.” If they were to be stopped, he thought, the uniforms and prop clipboard (bolstered by one of Griff’s legendary yarns) would be their only defense against further scrutiny. If that failed to sway, then they were all in for a long, uncomfortable ride downtown in the back of a squad car.

“Copy that,” replied Griff, shedding the NODs and switching on the headlights. “If we hit a roadblock and I can’t dazzle with brilliance, know that I am prepared to baffle with bullshit.”

Cade expected no less from the man. Lord knew the smooth talker had saved the mission more times than he could count on one hand.

 

***

 

Sailing was smooth until they reached the northernmost boundary of Wittmann. There wasn’t much there. Just a sign planted beyond the shoulder a hundred yards before a nondescript four-way stop in the middle of the desert. The sign declared Wittmann, population 684, to be an unincorporated community of Maricopa County.

The roadblock was not a big production, either. Just one patrol car posted at the intersection they needed to cross to get to US Route 60. Initially, the short line of vehicles backed up at the stop sign hadn’t struck Griff or Cross as unusual. Which was why neither of them realized the bind they were in until the van was rolling up on a stopped Chevy Suburban and Griff spied the Wickenburg PD Crown Victoria the short queue of vehicles had been shielding from view.

The low-slung Ford was angled across the westernmost arterial of the four-way stop. For reasons unknown, the cruiser’s lightbar was not lit up. Only the amber emergency flashers were activated.

A road flare burned bright on the ground near the cruiser. Judging by the piles of ash and numerous scorch marks on the blacktop, the half-burned flare currently sputtering and spitting red flames was not the first to be deployed.

Cade’s first impression as he got eyes on the Crown Vic was that they had stumbled upon the westernmost edge of Lopez’s “wide net.” If they could get past what he hoped to be just a single local yokel eager to avoid mixing it up with those responsible for the carnage to the east, he had a good feeling the rest of the trip back to Sky Harbor would be uneventful.

Griff spit a couple of expletives and began scanning his mirrors, searching for a way out. “I should have spotted the fucking flare,” he chided himself. “I got us into this, I’ll damn well get us out.”

“Don’t rabbit,” Cade said. “We can’t outrun a radio.”

“PPD has air assets,” Cross said. “We’ll have a helo skid up our asses before we find a place to go to ground.”

“Robin Sage all over again,” Lopez groused, referencing the unconventional warfare exercise held at the end of every Army Special Forces Qualification Course. “Probably should have chosen somewhere more remote to interrogate Farouk.”

Cade didn’t take the comment as an affront to his decision-making. It was just Lopez being Lopez. “This isn’t Pineland,” he put in. It was the name of the fictional country featured in Robin Sage that the new Green Berets—along with local guerillas—were tasked with overthrowing, or, at the very least, throwing off balance. “We get caught out here, in the wild—the consequences are as real as a heart attack.”

Lopez made no reply. He was back to actively monitoring the PPD scanner.

Since the success of the mission hinged on the pending encounter with whoever was manning the roadblock, Cade was itching to see if it was a shiny new officer with a clean slate for a uniform blouse or a veteran cop with chevrons on the shoulder and a chest full of commendations. He hoped it was the latter and that he or she had been rousted from a warm bed and had arrived on scene surly and resenting the fact they were assigned a job easily handled by a rookie. If so, Cade liked their chances of being waved through after a cursory inspection. However, if they encountered the former, an officer whose every move was likely still subject to scrutiny, which led to every I getting dotted and T crossed, things were about to get interesting, real fast.

The first vehicle in line was a Jeep Rubicon with Utah plates and country music blaring from the radio. A Yakima rack protruded from the rear-mounted spare tire. Strapped to the rack was a pair of high-dollar full-suspension mountain bikes. Probably twentysomethings returning from a long day bombing singletrack. As the Jeep was allowed passage, signaling a right turn and slow-rolling past the Crown Vic, Cade got his first look at the middle-aged officer running the operation.

The officer’s features were all pushed to the middle of his face, crowding a nose two sizes too small for his massive head. His bushy eyebrows rose as his gaze settled on the van. And though he was of average height, the extra weight he carried was enough to put him high up on the body mass index. He was what the docs called “morbidly obese.” Looked as if he never missed a meal. And Cade doubted he would have passed PPD’s physical fitness requirements. He couldn’t make out the officer’s rank but guessed the man was a longtime member of the WPD and had likely scored near the bottom of the BMI chart at the onset of his career. Over time, thanks to a lot of sitting around and taking fast food meals in the cruiser, he had ballooned to where he was now: stretching out a uniform so ill-fitting that it tented over his utility belt. Everything about the officer fell well outside of the standards newly adopted by law enforcement entities nationwide. Cade doubted the man could run down a crippled tree sloth.

As the Jeep sped off to the west, the Suburban crept forward, slowly, as if the driver was dreading the encounter. It came to a complete stop with a squeal of brakes and the front bumper close to touching the officer’s bowed-in knees.

“Too bad we don’t have donuts,” Griff said under his breath. “Might be able to bribe our way through.”

“Just work your magic,” Cade commanded. “And make sure you don’t accidentally give him the Ronald McDonald ID.”

“Copy that,” whispered Griff.

While the officer scrutinized the SUV driver’s credentials, Cade and Lopez melted into the van’s dark interior, with Cade wedging his body against the bulkhead behind Griff’s seat and Lopez doing the same behind Cross’s seat.

Cade reached out and pulled their packs and folding chairs towards them. He laid the chairs out flat across their legs, then stacked the packs atop the chairs. After adjusting the packs so they broke up the outline of his and Lopez’s upturned toes, Cade sat back and inspected his handiwork. He came away confident, should the officer probe the van’s interior with his flashlight, that the van’s cargo would pass a cursory inspection. If the officer insisted on conducting an open-door inspection of the van’s cargo area, the jig was up.

As Cade felt the slight lurch of Griff releasing the brake, in his peripheral vision he saw Lopez performing the sign of the cross.

The van rolled forward. A couple of seconds later it was stopping again.

While Cade couldn’t see what was transpiring, he did hear the officer ask Griff for his license, insurance, and registration. He felt Griff’s seat pressing against his back as, presumably, the SEAL was extracting his wallet to provide the license part of the ask. Then he again detected motion in his peripheral and saw Cross pop the glovebox, retrieve the latter two items, then pass them across the van to Griff.

Following a shuffling of papers, there was a short pause, after which the officer asked Griff and Cross why they were masked up inside a moving vehicle.

Always the smartass, Griff said, “Trusting the science”—he glanced at the patrolman’s nametag—“Officer Cox.”

Cross leaned forward, made eye contact with the officer, then said, “It’s an after-hours call. Technically, even though we’re returning to home base, we’re still on the job.” He shrugged. “It sucks, but rules and regs require us to always wear our mask when on the clock.”

The officer held up Griff’s ID. “Francis J. O’Reilly of 334 Glenhaven Avenue.”

“Present,” Griff said.

Gesturing at Griff, the officer told him to remove the mask.

Leaving the mask attached to his ears, Griff tugged it down and tucked it under his chin.

The officer compared the picture on the license with the man at the wheel. A tilt to his head, he asked, “Why’s a lad from Maine unclogging drains in Arizona?”

“Just following the work,” responded Griff. “Economy isn’t so hot back east.”

The officer made no comment. Scrutinizing Cross’s ID, he said, “Shane S. Sommers from San Diego, California. No doubt you’re following the work, too.”

“California is a shit show these days,” Cross responded. It wasn’t a lie. Things were tough from Ocean Beach to Oakland. Sure, the well-heeled from La Jolla to Cupertino weren’t really suffering, but the working folks in between certainly were.

Cox nodded, then asked, “Where was your last call?”

With no hesitation, Cross held up the clipboard. “Had to go up in the hills and unclog some rich bitch’s toilet.”

“Real Karen, that one,” Griff interjected. “Couldn’t get out of there quick enough.”

The officer clucked his tongue. Clearly, he’d had his share of run-ins with the pushy know-it-all types who were always quick to ask to speak to the manager. In his case, though, it was probably his badge number the Karen wanted. Raising a brow, he said, “It was at one of those McMansions in the new development, right?”

Running with it, Cross said, “Yes, sir. She couldn’t be moved to touch a plunger. Told us it was her husband’s deuce that clogged the toilet. But, get this, Karen’s ring finger was naked. No tan line, either.”

Impatience creeping into his tone, Griff said, “Story time is great an’ all, partner.” He shot a put-on glare at Cross. “We need to get the van back to the garage, Officer. Plus”—he feigned looking at his watch—“it’s oh-beer-thirty.”

“I hear that,” replied Cox. “I was off-shift twenty minutes and cracking the first brewski of the night when Dispatch summoned me back.” He raised his flashlight level to Griff’s window, powered it on, and probed the cargo area with its blue-white beam. “Pretty empty back there. Where are your tools?”

Griff noticed a hint of skepticism in the officer’s tone. “Tools are in the bags back there,” he came back. It wasn’t a lie. Technically the sidearms and MP7s were tools; just not the kind used by plumbers. “We went light on this job on account it was only your garden-variety blockage we were looking at.”

The officer went up on his toes and worked the beam around the van’s interior. After a few more seconds spent eyeballing the cargo area, he said, “I’m going to have to look in the back.”

“Doors are unlocked,” said Griff, keeping his hands on the wheel. “Knock yourself out. The quicker we can be on our way, the better.”

Griff watched the officer waddle off toward the rear doors. Once the man was out of ear shot, he whispered, “What’s the play?”

Cade had already donned his NODs, slipped on a pair of surgical gloves, and drawn the suppressed Glock. “Are we still all alone out here?” he whispered.

“Affirmative,” called Cross. “All points clear. No lights approaching.”

“Sierra Oscar Papa, then,” Cade said as he powered on Griff and Cross’s NODs. Passing the NODs forward, he added, “This goes down just like that roadblock in Raqqa.” No reason to elaborate further. Escaping from a snatch and grab gone sideways, then shaking the pursuit of a team of Russian Spetsnaz, only to get stopped by a pop-up roadblock that was little more than a shakedown operation, had left a mark on the entire team. He matched Lopez’s steely gaze. “On the way in I locked the rear doors behind me. Means he’ll be your problem. You know the drill.”

Lopez moved a chair out of his way, then extricated his feet from the packs. Slipping on a fresh pair of surgical gloves, he shifted all his attention to the sliding door to his immediate left, then said, “Good to go.”

Cade leveled the Glock at the sliding door, its deadly end trained on the spot in space where he figured he’d first see the lawman’s ample silhouette.

The sound of the rear doors being tried was loud in the empty cargo area. Cade saw the man through the one-way glass. He was paused, hands on the handles, face aimed skyward. It was the classic pose of someone used to being thwarted. He imagined the officer mouthing an obscenity or three.

A few seconds ticked by before Cox resumed his counterclockwise trip around the van.

Before freeing his legs, Lopez had made certain his door was unlocked. When he heard the click by his head and the hollow thunk of the door’s internal mechanism at work, he went to his knees and raised both hands in front of him. He was ready to take hold of whatever presented itself to him.

As the door sucked out and parted from the frame, the internal wheels grinding against their tracks, the officer’s fleshy face was the first thing Cade saw.

Apparently, Cade’s face—most of it obscured by the mask and deployed NODs—was the first thing the officer saw, too. The look of utter confusion the man wore as a pair of hands reached out from the dark and grabbed hold of his uniform blouse was instantly replaced by one of sheer terror as Cade quickly relieved him of his sidearm, radio, retractable baton, and handcuffs. In the next beat, as Cox’s tactical flashlight was clattering against the van’s metal floor, Lopez was grabbing hold of his wide leather belt and helping to drag the stunned officer into the van through the partially open door.