Robert Crais - Taken

“If I have to, yes. And you. Where is he?”

She wet her lips, a secret gesture in the back seat shadows, betrayed by a glint of blue light on her tongue.

“The date farm. A commercial listing.”

“Where?”

She told him. It wasn’t far.

“Don’t lie. If you’re lying, you won’t get a second chance.”

“I’m not lying. He wanted a bigger place. I had the farm.”

He followed her directions back to Coachella, then south and east into the desert again, well outside the city. The date farm was laid out in a perfect rectangle between paved streets, fifteen hundred feet on the long sides, seven hundred fifty on the width, split down the center by a road of crushed gravel, and crowded with rows of trees. The trees were dead and had long ago dropped their fronds. They reminded Pike of Marines frozen in permanent ranks. A large painted sign stood at the entrance: FOR SALE-READY FOR DEVELOPMENT-DESERT GOLD REALTY. He saw the outline of a building set well back on the gravel road, but nothing more. He saw no lights.

“He’s here now?”

“I guess. I don’t know. He asked for a bigger place, and this is what I had. I don’t help him move.”

Pike studied the building, and realized he was seeing two buildings. He wondered if Elvis Cole was inside one of them, and if Cole was still alive.

“How many buildings?”

“The property is twenty-eight acres, with five buildings, metal-and-wood construction covering fourteen thousand square feet of usable floor space. You have three septic tanks, and it’s fully plumbed with county water.”

Pike looked at her.

“I don’t want to buy it.”

“It was a farm. The buildings were used for processing and packaging dates. Two of the buildings were used for maintenance and equipment storage. One of the buildings has offices and a commissary for the staff.”

“How many ways in?”

“Just the main entrance here. There was a gate on the west side, but the owners put in more trees.”

Pike wondered at the size of the place. The three other addresses had all been small, single-family homes.

“Why bigger?”

“He thought Dennis and the others had been arrested. He wanted to get his crews out of the places Dennis and the others knew about.”

“How many crews?”

“Three, I think. He was using three houses.”

“Everyone came here?”

“This is the only new property I gave him.”

Pike found a spot to park on an unpaved road north of the farm, put fresh tape over Megan Orlato’s mouth, and slipped between the trees. The five buildings were grouped together in the center of the orchard almost five hundred feet from the street. Three were on the east side of the drive, and faced the two on the west. Glints of light showed from the east buildings, but not the west. Pike moved to the lights. He searched for sentries as he approached, but found none.

Pike studied the fronts of the buildings for several minutes, noting the doors and windows, then crept along the rear. Snoring and the occasional low voice came from the first building. A man spoke too loudly in the middle building, and two other men laughed. When Pike reached the end of the south building, he found several pickup trucks outfitted for off-road use parked outside a long sliding door, along with a large box truck. Pike wondered if this was the truck Sanchez used on the night Krista Morales was taken. Pike decided the prisoners were in the north building, the guards were housed in the center building, and the south building was being used as a garage. The garage was likely the only way in or out of the buildings.

Pike stood between the trucks and looked down the length of the gravel drive to the entrance. It was almost two football fields away. Only way in, only way out. Two football fields was a long way.

Pike worked his way back to the Rover, checked that Megan Orlato was secure, and considered his options. He could not see the building through the trees, but he knew where it was and stared at that place in the moonlit shadows. Three crews meant about eighteen armed men and an unknown but large number of innocents. The doors and windows would be reinforced. Pike would have to enter through the garage, fight his way through guard country to the last building, locate Cole and the kids, then fight through the guards a second time on the way out. He wondered again if Elvis Cole was inside.

He said, “I’m coming.”

The odds didn’t scare him, but better odds meant a better chance at success, and Pike believed he had a way to improve the odds. He glanced at Megan Orlato, then phoned to see if Jon Stone was still in jail.

Jon Stone

Jon Stone walked out of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Station beneath an overhead full moon at the beginning of its lazy slide to the west. Everything in Jon’s possession at the time of his arrest had been returned with the exception of Khalil Haddad, who would remain a guest of the United States government. No loss.

Jon was miffed when Nancie Stendahl stomped out of the room because the folks in D.C. cut him free. At least the two young deps who processed him out had the good grace to be impressed he got to keep the M4. They asked if he was a spy.

Jon burst out laughing. Spy. Jesus.

Nancie Stendahl said, “You always laugh at yourself?”

“If you heard the crap in my head, you’d laugh, too.”

Stendahl was leaning against Pike’s Jeep, which had been released along with everything else. The parking lot was near empty, though he saw the big white ATF van on the far side.

Stone was pleased to see her. He sympathized with her personal involvement, and respected the all-in effort she was making to find her kid. Jon was big on all-in effort. He hoped she wouldn’t ruin the moment by lecturing him about the rule of law. If she started with that crap, he was going to recite Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in the original Russian to freak her out.

She didn’t. She looked beat to hell, strained, and frayed at the edges. He wanted to buy her a cup of coffee, but he had things to do.

“Do you know where my boy is?”

“Nope. Know who has him, though. So does Haddad.”

She perked up.

“Who?”

“Dude named Ghazi al-Diri. Haddad’s boss. You have a pad, something to write with?”

He stowed the M4 in the back seat while she searched herself for paper, and put his pistols, ammo, GPS, and phones on the driver’s seat. When he turned back, she was poised with a pen and a napkin. He rattled off a longitude and latitude, then checked her napkin to make sure she had it right.

“These coordinates bring you to a body dump. You’ll find eleven or twelve people wrapped in plastic. Haddad probably murdered half of them. You’ll find two stiffs who aren’t in plastic. They murdered the rest.”

“Who killed the stiffs?”

Jon ignored her question.

“Don’t be misled by Haddad’s agreeable manner. These are evil fucking people. You wanna walk while we talk? I want to look over this Jeep.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You want to shut these guys down at the border. The more Haddad gives you on the Syrian, the more intelligence you’ll have on how the cartels do their thing. Good intel is everything. I know that firsthand.”

Stone gave the Jeep a quick walk-around with Stendahl for company. It had picked up a few dings. Pike wouldn’t be happy.

“Ghazi al-Diri is the Syrian?”

“The Mexicans call him the Syrian. For all I know, he’s from Bakersfield. You know what a bajadore is?”

She shook her head.

“He works the border, stealing whatever the cartels send up. Mostly, that’s people trying to sneak in without documents.”