Kirk Russell - Dead Game

“Maria, I’m going to hang up. I’ve got to call the FBI back.”

Lift one door, then the other, and you’d walk down four or five steps and be in a storage room under the house. He got Ehrmann’s son again when he called.

“Dad said you should call him on his cell phone. He’s got a new one. I’m supposed to give you the number.”

Marquez copied it down. The kid was as efficient as his father. He called Ehrmann.

“I’m on my way to you,” Ehrmann said, “but there are two agents who’ll get there in a few minutes, and if anything looks suspicious, just wait.”

“Why did you decide to start driving here?”

“Something fit with a piece of conversation we eavesdropped.”

“This is one of the two things I really like about the Bureau.”

“What’s that?”

“When you decide to move, you don’t waste time.”

“And what’s the second thing?”

“You don’t seem to need to ask anyone anymore before going in to look at something. I’m here with my daughter. No one seems to be home at the house. There are heavy steel doors and hardened steel chain and two padlocks like you don’t see often around here. Someone wants to restrict access to the basement. You’ll need tools to get in, if that’s what you decide to do.”

It was half an hour before the first government sedans came through the vineyard. It was another hour before they had the tools to break in. Then the doors got opened.

Maria was in the truck cab on the phone to her mother. Marquez left her and walked over as the first of the FBI went down into the basement. He knew from their voices they’d found something, and looking down the steps he saw them squatting near long metal boxes. Behind the boxes he saw hundreds of guns.

“Kalashnikovs,” Ehrmann told him, and then walked a distance away with him. “This is it, Marquez. This is what we were looking for. A whole lot of people are on their way here now.”

“What else is in there?”

“Handheld missiles. Some other hardware. They’re going to chase you out of here.”

“That’s okay.” He looked at Ehrmann. “Are you sure it’s what you were looking for?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a printed list. We’ve been a buyer, but someone here in the States had outbid us for some of this.”

“The handheld missiles?”

“Yeah, somebody really wanted them.”

“And you don’t know who that other buyer is?”

It was a stupid question. Obviously, they hadn’t found the other buyer, and no wonder they were so anxious to find the arms cache.

“Would Karsov have come back for these?”

“Probably. Eventually. He had the other buyer; he’d try to make it work. It’s all about money.”

They watched more cars come down the road, and then a couple of special agents started toward them. Ehrmann pointed at a car pulling in.

“That’s our S.A.C. I’ve got to go talk to him.”

Marquez stayed where he was and waited for the special agents to walk up to him.

“You’ve got to back away, sir,” one of them said. “Your daughter and you will need to leave the premises now. We’re closing off the area.”

“Yeah, Stan just told me.”

Marquez felt the tension coming off them, and they were trying to be nice. He started toward his truck.

“They wouldn’t even let me move,” Maria said. “I wanted to come over to where you are, and they told me to wait here. What’s over there?”

“Come have a look.”

The first FBI agent who spotted Marquez and Maria walking back knew it was Marquez who’d found the house. He hesitated, and it was the next two who moved to block them.

“She’s going to see this, and then we’re gone,” Marquez said.

“No, she’s not, sir.”

“This is the world she’s inheriting, and I want her to see it.”

One of the handheld missiles had been carried up into the sunlight, and the box opened. Marquez used his bigger frame to shield Maria’s approach and repeated they were just going to take a look and leave. She got a look and a glance down into the basement.

A few minutes later they were in the truck, driving back through the grapevines. From the levee road they could still see the government cars down in the field in the distance. Off to their right the river was running hard. Does the way we treat other species say a lot about our chances of making peace among ourselves? Marquez was pretty sure it did. He was thinking about that when Maria spoke again.

“It’s weird that a sturgeon is how we found those,” Maria said. “Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?”