I KNEW DAN Chulack to be a man of his word. Especially when talking business. At the next trash can, I tossed the remains of my pretzel and kept the soda. I’d lost my appetite. What the hell had I stuck my big nose into?
He didn’t say anything and waited for me to tell it.
“They came for me,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”
He stopped. “Who did?”
“The Sons. They pulled one of our children out of his regular routine and wrote with indelible ink on his back. Wrote their phone number with two lightening bolt S’s.”
“Those sons of bitches.” Dan Chulack never swore and he hated tyranny more than anyone I knew. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
“What could you do? Legally, I mean. We’re all the way down in Costa Rica. I’m wanted on federal fugitive warrants.”
He said nothing. He knew about Costa Rica and the warrants.
I continued. “The Sons want to get even for what I did to their clubhouse and . . .” I didn’t need to continue. He knew all about that, too. It had been his search warrant.
He’d been promoted out of the success of that bust that we . . . that he made. And he’d continue to ride that wave the rest of his career, known throughout the Bureau as the man who took down The Sons of Satan.
The Sons couldn’t go after Dan and his FBI. They did the next best thing—they came after me and my family.
“I needed to come back here to the States,” I said, “and make sure they got what they wanted, make sure they don’t come after my family again.”
“What are you going to do?” He lowered his tone, one of genuine concern.
“I don’t have a solid plan. Drago over there”—Marie and Drago followed along thirty or forty feet behind us, trying to blend in and failing miserably. “Drago wants to start a little program he calls Crimes Against The Sons, until they yell ‘uncle.’ ”
“Yes, with him along you might have a chance of making that work.”
I nodded. I looked again, double-checked to make sure Marie wasn’t sporting a new three-thousand-dollar purse on her arm.
We walked some more.
“Then what do you have to do with Bobby Ray and his group?” he asked.
“Independent of The Sons issue, Sonja called me, said she needed to see me, said it was real important.”
“Sonja Kowalski?”
“That’s right. Why? You working her?”
“How do you know her . . . Oh, you both worked Lynwood back in the day.”
“That’s right,” I said. He’d ignored the question about working her as an informant.
He’d done his homework on Sonja. “You watchin’ her, too?”
He didn’t answer that question either but asked his own instead. “That thing with Jumbo, tell me about it.”
“You have a tap on Bobby Ray’s phone, that’s how you got on to me, right?”
We stopped again. I said, “Bobby Ray’s son, Bosco, got picked up on a gun charge by ATF.”
Dan pulled out his phone and started typing, probably asking someone on his team to verify Bosco’s arrest.
If Dan’s team had been watching Bobby Ray’s operation, then how come he didn’t know Bosco had been picked up on a gun charge?
“This same agent who popped Bosco,” I said, “approached Bobby Ray and told him he could make the case disappear for fifty K.”
He stopped typing. “And that was this McCarty you were talking about with Bobby Ray just a little while ago?”
“That’s right, but I think the name McCarty is just a ruse thrown out there to mislead the investigation. Bobby Ray and Sonja wanted me to make the drop with the fifty K and talk to the agent. I also think that they wanted me to make the agent disappear, but I wasn’t going to do that. I just wanted to identify him, see what he was all about.”
He nodded, his attention on a new text message that had just come back. “There is an ATF agent name McCarty, but he’s not involved in this in any way.”
I didn’t know how he’d found that out so quickly. “Okay,” I said, “now I guess it’s time to trade the big stuff. You’re just gonna have to trust me on this one.”
“You have more?” he asked.
“One more thing.”
I had the name Larry Gerber that Jumbo gave me, and I held it back to see what Dan would give me in return.
“Bruno.”
“Did I steer you wrong last time? Tell me what you have, and I promise I’ll give you what I got. And you know I won’t tell a soul.”
Dan looked around to see if anyone stood close enough to hear. I’d never seen him act like this. I sensed his fear, and it scared the living hell out of me.
“Two weeks ago, four Hellfire missiles were stolen from March Air Force Base.”
He let me think about that for a minute. “That’s not a big deal,” I said. “If I remember from the briefings, those can’t be fired without the weapons system and the software. The software’s the only thing that can fire them. It’s like a failsafe, right?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Ah, man, you’re kiddin’ me.”
“A month and a half ago, no, two months now, a fully outfitted tactical military drone was taken from a lowboy train car in Barstow on its way to March Air Force Base. We can’t figure out how they did it.” He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “With that drone and its software, they could fly below most radar, fire on the White House, create havoc on Wall Street, blow Hoover Dam, the presidential motorcade, the list goes on and on. We could never prepare a defense for it, not if they’re smart about it. We have to get it back.”
My turn to look away as my mind raced.
Dan read my expression. “What? What?”
“And you don’t have a clue who has the drone?”
“No. Bobby Ray has been selling arms across the border to the cartel. There’s huge money in it. He’s laundering his money through his custom motorcycle shop. We know that and haven’t been able to nail him yet. He’s too smart. We think Sonja’s law enforcement experience, her cool head, is keeping him out of prison.
“We developed information that an Arab, going through the cartel, is about to pay four million for the drone and a million apiece for the Hellfire missiles. Word came through a third party that Bobby Ray Kilburn was going to be the middleman in the deal. That’s why we have a wire up on Bobby Ray. But like I said, he’s smart. He hasn’t tripped up yet, and we’re coming down to the zero hour when they’re going to make the deal. That’s all of it, and my ass is now hung out a mile, so give. What do you have?”
“I know who has your drone.”
Dan grabbed my arm and spun me around. I thought he might kiss me.