Kirk Russell - Redback

He drove three miles back to 395 and then south to the metal buildings and the runway alongside the highway where the dull gray Sherpa sat. The dogs had arrived from Reno and the handler was waiting. The dogs picked up on cocaine as soon as they got in the cargo bay and Marquez wiped his hand across the cargo floor and came up with white powder. He looked at flattened KZ Nut cardboard boxes from the warehouse in Calexico and figured they shipped the cocaine double-bagged and in KZ boxes. He counted boxes as he talked to the dog handler, and then thanked her for coming down and walked back through the afternoon wind to his car.

To the west the high rock on the peaks was white in the sun and he was looking at country he hadn’t seen in years. He felt a wistful familiarity and love of the high clean granite that somehow he’d lost touch with. When he got back into Mammoth he washed the coke off his hands and sat down in a holding cell with the pilot, Del Weaver.

He waited for Weaver to look at him and then asked, ‘Do you want to talk and see what we can work out?’

Turned out it was debt, an overdue balloon payment on the plane, insurance, operating costs that he hadn’t anticipated, and alimony payments to a schizophrenic wife who would never work again. He put his living expenses on credit cards as he staved off his creditors. The Salazars paid cash and he was only going to do it until his debts were paid off.

Marquez took him through the drill, cited a couple of recent prison sentences of two guys who didn’t cooperate, and Weaver rolled over so fast Marquez had trouble keeping up.

‘I was supposed to take the load to an almond ranch in the valley, KZ Nuts. I haven’t told them I dumped it yet.’

‘But they know something has happened. You’re way overdue, so what are they thinking right this second?’

‘Those guys, they’ll think I stole the load.’

‘Who’s in charge? Give me a name.’

‘Mendoza. Raymond Mendoza, but he goes by Rayman.’

‘This Rayman works for the Salazars?’

‘He’s their main guy in California and he’s really only a kid.’ Weaver shook his head and then put a hand to his forehead, covered his eyes and spoke to the table. ‘I can’t go to prison. Everything will fall apart.’ He looked at Marquez. ‘I’ve got my mother in a nursing home. I’m paying them month to month.’

‘That’s going to be beyond me, Del. I can write it down and testify to what happened, to how you cooperated after we arrested you, but the decisions you’re talking about aren’t the ones I get to make. What if you called Rayman now and told him you had to land at Mammoth with mechanical problems but you’re almost back in the air? Then I fly with you to the almond farm.’

As he said this, he knew what a leap it was going to be to sell the idea in LA. He could see Holsten frowning, his expression saying, what are you doing in my office asking something so stupid?

‘What kind of deal would I get?’ Weaver asked.

‘That would be up to the US Attorney. But this could go a long way toward helping you.’

‘What happens after we land?’

‘You taxi away from them and I’ll have a lot of backup there. SWAT teams.’

In a perfect world they’d land somewhere first and pick up the SWAT team, come in like a Trojan horse. But there was zero chance of that getting approved. Marquez waited, knowing Weaver was scared and that he couldn’t coerce Weaver into doing this, and that it wasn’t likely to get far as an idea anyway. He gave Weaver another minute and then pushed his chair back and stood.

‘I’ve got to make a call.’

He called Sheryl and ran it by her with the idea she try to talk Holsten into it. ‘It’s his bold idea,’ Marquez said. ‘He keeps talking about us making a bold stroke. Talk up what the press will do with it.’ She laughed. ‘No, I’m serious, Holsten will hear that.’

Twenty minutes later she called back.

‘We’re on,’ she said. ‘Holsten is game.’

‘OK, I’ve got to talk to Weaver again.’

‘Talk him into it fast, and then call me before Holsten changes his mind.’

They flew south with their shadow flickering over the highway and the dry desert plain. The highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada sat off their right wing. From the co pilot’s seat Marquez looked across at Mount Whitney and remembered the summer he was eighteen and drove his car through the scrub and sage past the outcroppings of volcanic rock in the Alabama Hills and on up toward the granite and pine of Whitney Portal. He hiked the first sandy switchbacks in the last moonlight, strong, young, and alone. Higher up, he watched the sun rise through the V-notch and the sky burn crimson above the White Mountains. He still remembered the cool of the morning and the way the high white rock reflected on Mirror Lake. He remembered how it felt drawing deep breaths and rising along the trail with an electric feeling of elation at the clear light and the high peaks ahead.

None of where he was now could he have foreseen then, though maybe he should have. He felt a strong longing as he looked out across at the mountains, then turned back to Weaver and the acrid sweat smell of Weaver’s fear.

‘How are you doing?’ he asked him.

‘Can you get me in a witness protection program?’

Marquez had lied to suspects to provoke a confession, but he never bullshitted a guy on his way down.

‘Not with what you’ll be charged with.’

‘It’s not the Salazars I’m afraid of. There’s another guy and he’s not Mexican. He came to see the plane once and told me he had a lot of money in making this work. I’m pretty sure he was telling me I’d die if it didn’t. I was working on the plane one Saturday.’

Weaver pointed toward the back.

‘I was back there attaching some strapping and never heard him get in the plane. He came in so quietly I thought he was there to kill me. He stayed maybe five minutes. I never saw him again, but I’ll never forget him.’

‘What did he look like?’

Marquez listened to the description. He carried a sketch with him now. That came out of his new friendship with Kerry Anderson. He got it out, unfolded it, and showed Weaver.

‘That’s him,’ Weaver said. ‘Who is he?’

‘When did he come see you?’

‘About a year ago.’

‘You been flying for them that long?’

Weaver never answered that. They followed the highway out and when they came around the mountains banked right and flew northwest, crossing the Tehachapis as Marquez went back and forth by radio with the SWAT team leader and Sheryl as they got closer. As they started their descent and a white concrete runway rose toward them, two SWAT teams were fired on as they approached the main house and outbuildings. Row after row of almond trees flashed by. The plane bounced hard and Marquez had Weaver run out to the end of the runway and shut the engines down. SWAT vehicles rolled toward them and a helicopter passed overhead as he got Weaver off the plane.

Four cartel guards died in a firefight that ranged between the main house and a storage building where a large stash of cocaine, dope, and pills were found. Rayman surrendered, temporarily blinded by tear gas but able to recognize Marquez’s voice. He was clean cut and looked like he could be working at a bank. Marquez watched him guided into the backseat of a county cruiser to get run to a hospital to get his eyes flushed. With Sheryl Marquez walked the storage building, past plastic bags of cocaine stacked on pallets and stamped with images of furniture, a chair, desk, bed, or table, and coded that way so phone conversations were easy. They took inventory.

When Brian Hidalgo and Ramon Green arrived, they were still counting thousands of pills and weighing dope on the almond scales. Hours later he took a break with Sheryl, moving out into the trees in the night. In the darkness he could still feel the heat radiating off the ground. Sheryl talked about the almond farm the DEA would now impound and the TV coverage the bust had already gotten. Sheryl was always thinking about the house she wanted to buy and she made him smile as she looked around the farm and speculated on a DEA auction of the property. She walked close to him, her hand brushing his as they moved out into the trees.