Sphere Of Influence (13 page)

"You've done an excellent job showing me the area," Pascal said, deciding to take another approach. "And I intend to tell General Yung how helpful you were. But I believe he is expecting me back and will be concerned if I don't return soon."

The man didn't respond, concentrating on maintaining the truck's momentum in the thick mud. Pascal clenched his teeth and tapped his foot impatiently on the ruste
d
floorboard of the vehicle. He let thirty excruciating minutes pass before he spoke again.

"This is ridiculous! We are in the middle of nowhere. Take me back to the city immediately!"

For a moment he thought his outburst had worked. The driver stepped on the brake and the truck came to an abrupt halt. But then he turned off the engine.

Pascal leaned forward, peering through the humidity-fogged windshield. The clouds had parted and he had to squint against the glare of the sun to see the grass but standing on three-foot stilts in the middle of a small clearing.

"Come," the driver said, throwing his door open and stepping out.

Pascal heard splashes as the men in back jumped to the ground.

"Why? Where are we?"

"Come." His voice was more insistent this time.

Pascal didn't move, trying to grasp what was happening. Why would he have been brought to such a place?

The passenger door was suddenly yanked open and he was dragged out into the mud. Confused, he didn't bother to struggle as he was pulled roughly to his feet and marched toward the hut. When he twisted around to look behind him, he saw that no less than five rifles were trained on him.

"I want to speak to General Yung! I want to speak to him now!"

He was shoved up the makeshift stairs and into the even more oppressive heat of the hut, where he was forced into a chair constructed of bamboo. A few moments later his hands and feet were secured tightly to it. The men who had bound him retreated outside, and Pascal looked around, his eyes beginning to adjust to the gloom. A recognizable shape began to form in a pile of debris next to the wall, and he leaned forward to see better. It was a man, lying as though discarded, with a profound stillness that could only signify death. His face was swollen and broken, making it unrecognizable, but his clothes revealed his identity: It was the broken body of his pilot.

The sound of an engine suddenly flared in the silence, followed by the splashing of tires as the truck that had brought him started back down the road.

"Wait!" Pascal shouted, starting to feel his own heart beating powerfully in his chest. "Wait! Is anyone there? Hello?"

He pulled hard on the leather straps securing him to the chair, but it was hopeless. The bonds were tight enough that his hands and feet were already starting to go numb. "Hello?" he shouted again.

No answer. Just the buzz of insects and call of birds. He felt another surge of adrenaline at the sound of a snapping stick outside the hut, and he swung his head desperately toward the open door. What had made it? An animal? Was it watching, trying to decide whether he was safe prey? "Go away," he shouted, trying again to free his hands but succeeding only in opening a cut in the top of his wrist. "Is there anyone out there? Hello?"

Chapter
14

CHET watched the crowd part respectfully, letting Mikey through the bar untouched. The stocky fifty-year-old made his way straight to their table, five beers dangling from his thick fingers. He forced himself into the booth next to his four companions, overcrowding it to the point that Chet could barely free his arm enough to get his beer to his mouth.

"Goddamn weeknight and you can't hardly move in this place," Mikey complained. "You used to be able to come in here at nine o'clock on Saturday and the place was empty."

Despite the cheesy and threadbare atmosphere, this former Mob-only hangout was becoming increasingly hip with the local yuppie crowd. While it was true that the pasta was cheap and above average, the well-dressed twenty-somethings who poured in every night were less interested in the cuisine than they were in mixing with the "criminal element."

Chet hated the place. He felt on display. But the aging and amply fed men surrounding him loved it. Their chances of slinking off to a cheap hotel with some slender young thing just out of college increased from zero to five or ten percent here--still far from a sure thing, but more than they had a right to hope for. The notorious Carlo Gasta, who made an appearance at least twice a week, generally batted a thousand.

"Well, we're all here," Mikey said, twisting around as best he could and looking directly at Chet.

"Yeah, I can see that."

"So, you gonna tell us what's going on?"

Chet shrugged and took a sip of his second beer of the evening. Mikey had put a third down in front of him and he was wondering what he was going to do about that: No was his absolute limit tonight, even with the huge plate of carbonara he'd just put away.

"What are you talking about?"

"What the fuck do you mean, what am I talking about? I'm talking about the sand niggers."

The wall of flesh surrounding him leaned forward in unison and murmured quietly. Chet couldn't make out distinct words over the horrible eighties music blaring from overhead speakers, but he got the gist.

"I don't know, man. I don't know what's going on with those guys."

"On the level? You're not bullshitting us?"

Chet nodded. He'd always liked Mikey, and he hated to pile on yet another lie, but Gasta had been clear that he was to keep his mouth shut on this particular subject.

"Damn it," Mikey said, taking another hit off his beer. "I don't mind telling you that I have a real bad feeling about this whole thing. I think that son of a bitch is finally going to get our asses shot off"

Chet looked around him at the thick faces of his colleagues. The dissent in the ranks had obviously been discussed and was unanimous.

The five men crowded into the booth made up the group closest to Gasta--his main management and muscle. At thirty-four, Chet was the youngest by probably fifteen years and the only one who was looking to make a name for himself The others had already paid their dues with Gasta's father in their younger years and weren't looking to drag their bad backs and clogged arteries into another shooting war. If Chet told them that Gasta was planning on executing and ripping off the formidable Mohammed and his partners, half of them would probably have heart attacks right there in the bar.

"Look, guys, don't worry about it," Chet said, pushing against the enormous man next to him.

"Where you going?" Mikey said. "You ain't gonna finish your beer?"

"Nab, I got some thinking to do and I need a clear head."

"Thinking? What kind of thinking?"

"I'm gonna think about how to keep you from getting your fat ass shot off."

That seemed to be the right answer because Mikey let him out. Chet was halfway across the bar when he heard someone yell his name. He spun and looked back at the table he'd just left.

"You think hard on that," Mikey shouted. "Okay?"

Chet ate the last of an entire roll of Life Savers but he knew he wasn't going to fool anyone. He was sitting in his car, parked a quarter of a mile down a dirt road that branched off a rural highway outside of L
. A
. It was an ideal spot. He'd been able to see miles behind him for most of the drive there. There were always risks, of course, but he felt confident that no one could have followed him. He was a little early, and probably five minutes passed before a set of headlights appeared over a rise, easily visible in the darkness despite the distance. He watched as they continued along the highway and then turned toward him.

Chet stepped out into the still air and walked forward as the approaching headlights went out and a car glided to a stop in front of him. It was too dark to see the faces of the two people who emerged until they were only a few feet way.

"Chet?"

He nodded and the blond woman offered her hand. "I'm Laura Vilechi. I don't think we've ever met."

Her handshake was firm but not so strong that it was like she was trying to prove something. Based on her reputation, he supposed she already had.

"Nice to meet you. You're a friend of Mark's, aren't you?"

"Mark Beamon? Yeah, I am."

"I used to work for him in flagstaff," Chet said, "before I got transferred to L
. A
." When she released his hand, the man standing next to her took it.

"How are things, Chet? Everything all right?"

"Yeah, I'm good, Scott. Things are still going good." Scott Reynolds was the special agent in charge of the FBI's L
. A
. criminal division. The fact that he and Laura Vilechi were here in person meant that the Bureau had taken the report Chet had filed a lot more seriously than he'd thought they would. This was a whole lot of high-level management to be standing around in the desert with a guy who'd only been an agent for five years.

"You okay to talk, Chet?" Laura said. She obviously smelled the beer on his breath.

"I just had a couple. Didn't have much of a choice, you know?"

She shrugged casually in an unsuccessful attempt to put him a little more at ease. "That's undercover work." "You're running the rocket launcher investigation, aren't you?" Chet said. He couldn't believe she'd flown all the way to L
. A
. to meet with him. What if he'd wasted her time?

"I'm sorry to say that I am."

"Uh, so . . . what are you doing here?"

"Scott sent me your last report. I thought it made for interesting reading."

"Really?"
,
The report she was referring to was his description of Gasta's meeting with Mohammed. Chet had toyed with the idea that there might be a connection between him and the terrorist in the photograph, but hadn't really given it all that much thought. There were a lot of Afghans and Arabs in the world. Ninety-nine point nine percent of them weren't psychos. Some of them were just plain old drug dealers.

"Look, Chet, there's a chance that the people with the rocket launcher might be tied to the Afghan heroin trade. Actually, it's an angle that Mark Beamon came up with. Far-fetched but . . . well, you know Mark: When it comes to things like this, he's right more than he's wrong."

Chet grinned. "Mark's pretty much nuts but I think he may be a genius."

"Yeah, that about sums up how I feel about him, too. Now, is there anything else you can tell me about this Mohammed?"

"Not much," Chet said apologetically. "I mean, the word is he's Afghan--or, more accurately, that he's from Afghanistan. But then, I heard that from Carlo Gasta, and he isn't exactly a geographer, you know? Jeez, Ms. Vilechi, when I wrote that report, I didn't think you'd come out here personally. The whole thing is probably nothing." "Probably," Laura said. "On the other hand, we think alQaeda may be trying to expand its presence in the heroin business. There could be a connection."

Chet tried to remember any detail of the meeting with Mohammed that he might have left out of his report. There was nothing, though. They'd talked, Gasta had thrown a tantrum, and then they'd left.

"Your write-up said that Mohammed postponed the transaction. Do you know when your next meeting will be?" Chet shook his head. "I'm not sure what's going on right now. I haven't had time to put this on paper yet, but Gasta took me to meet someone last night." He looked over at Reynolds. "I think it's the guy we've been looking for." "The money man?"

Chet nodded. "We met him in an office in the Sun America Center in Century City: it has First Federal Development Bank on the door."

Reynolds wrote the name on a small pad.

"The guy was pissed that Gasta brought me and didn't let me stay for the meeting. But when Gasta came out he had the idea that the Afghans were shopping for another contact. Now he's planning on killing them at our next meeting and grabbing the drugs. I don't think it's his idea, though--I think it's coming from this other guy."

"Can you describe him?"

"Not very well. Big guy, stocky. He looked tall, but he was sitting, so I can't be sure. His hair's almost black, short, and kind of slicked back. I'm honestly not sure I'd know him if I saw him again."

"Name?"

"Just John. He's nobody I've ever seen. Not connected to the families as far as I know."

Reynolds finished writing in his pad and stuck it back in his pocket. "Maybe there's a security camera tape. We'll get on it."

"There's more."

"What?"

"Gasta seems pretty set on hitting the Afghans, but he's worried about it. I managed to convince him that they weren't going to just roll over and play dead. . . ." "Yeah?" Reynolds prompted.

"He wants me to bring in Nicolai to help."

Reynolds took a deep breath and blew it out. "Great." "Who's Nicolai?" Laura said.

"I'll explain on our ride out," Reynolds answered. "What do you want to do, Chet?"

"I'm not sure . . . I take it that getting ahold of this Mohammed guy is kind of a priority now."

"Top priority," Laura said. "I admit it's a long shot, but under the circumstances it has to supersede your organized-crime investigation. We've got a rocket launcher floating somewhere out there. . .."