Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

Cook pocketed his ID and started up the steps.

The other agents hung back.

Harley didn’t move.

“Get out of the way,” Cook said impatiently.

“Ambassador Steele,” Harley said without looking away from the short FBI agent. “Are we inviting them inside?”

“It will be quite crowded with three more people in here,” Steele said from behind Harley. “Is that necessary, Agent Cook? Indeed,” he added too softly for the other two agents to hear, “at this point is it even advisable?”

Cook narrowed his eyes. This wasn’t the first time he’d tangled with St. Kilda Consulting. He hadn’t learned to love them, but he’d learned they could bite.

Power was power, with or without a badge.

“Wait in the car,” Cook said to the other agents. “No point in crowding. Yet. I’ll let you know if that changes.”

“What about the others?” Gonzalez asked.

Cook glanced around the park. Agents in task force raid jackets waited in cars, blocking the exit to the park.

“Tell them to stand down. For now. When the warrants come through, let me know.”

Gonzalez didn’t say anything. She knew as well as her boss did that it was more like if than when. Even with a task-force-friendly judge, their probable cause was thin.

As in transparent.

Harley stepped aside.

Talon Cook walked inside the coach. The first thing he saw was Judge Grace Silva, Ms. No-Nonsense Nutcracker herself, in person, watching him with hawk eyes.

The cherry on the cake of this cluster.

“I’m sorry to see you here,” Cook said to her.

“I’m sure you are.” Grace’s smile was all teeth as she looked at the movie-star-handsome agent. Unfortunately he suffered from short man syndrome, which took about forty points off his considerable IQ. “Tell me, Agent Cook, just what basis in law you have for threatening Ambassador Steele with warrants and arrest in order to gain entry into his private motor home.”

“We have a warrant for the arrest of one Joseph Faroe.”

Grace didn’t even blink. “For?”

“Interfering with a task force investigation.”

She held out her hand.

“The judge hasn’t signed it yet,” Cook said. “We’re expecting it to come through at any moment.”

“And what is the basis for this purported warrant?” she asked evenly.

Cook didn’t answer.

“I thought so,” she said, glancing at Steele.

He just smiled.

“Obviously we have something you want, whatever that might be,” Grace said. “You have something we want. That’s the traditional basis for a negotiation. Have a seat, Agent Cook.”

OVER TIJUANA

MONDAY, 9:33 A.M.

THE HELICOPTER CAME IN from the north and circled the eastern edge of Tijuana like an American border patrol aircraft slightly off course. The pilot made slow orbits over the hillside slums and shantytowns of Colonia Libertad.

Galindo sat in the front seat, next to the pilot, looking a little dizzy from the circling. Faroe looked over his shoulder, orienting him to the aerial view of reality while Magon translated. Galindo had never been in an aircraft, much less in an aerobatic helicopter. He was having a hard time sorting out perspective.

Finally he spotted a crowded highway intersection.

“There, I remember,” he said over the intercom in rough Spanish. “We travel on that when they bring us to the warehouse.”

Ahead of them lay the patterned ground lights of the Tijuana airport looking sullen beneath a haze of jet exhaust, heat, and humidity from the storm circling over the Pacific. Beyond the airfield was the fenced and plowed border.

Faroe touched the pilot on the shoulder and pointed to the industrial buildings behind the airport perimeter fence.

“Then it has to be in there, right?” Faroe asked in Spanish.

Galindo nodded quickly. “Yes. Yes. I remember the noise. Big jets shake the ground and we dig deep.”

“Let’s have a closer look at those buildings,” Faroe said. “Maybe you’ll remember the shape of a door or windows or something.”

“That’s restricted airspace,” the pilot said in English over the intercom. “Unless you want to dogfight the Mexican air force, we can’t get any closer.”

“I think I see one of your status lights flashing red,” Faroe said.

The pilot looked at the status lights. Green. He ducked his chin, staring at Faroe over the top of his aviator glasses. Then he shrugged. “Sure. Why not? It’s not my bird.”

He fingered the dials of his radio and brought up the airport tower frequency.

While the pilot argued with the air traffic controller about just how urgent a need the helicopter had to land, Galindo stared at the ground, trying to recognize something, anything, that would identify which building might be hiding the entrance to the tunnel.

“Look,” the pilot said to air control. “I have a status light flashing red every time I get above sixty feet. I don’t know if I can make it over the border. I can declare an in-air emergency, land, and then we’ll all spend the rest of the day doing paperwork, or you can just give me clearance to fly straight and low for Brown Field.”

After a supervisor was called in, the pilot got clearance for a shortcut to the border.

“Going down,” the pilot said over the helicopter intercom. “Look sharp. This card can only be played once.”

The helicopter passed over the field, then dropped to about thirty feet above the taxiway that led to the warehouse area.

“Slow down and let Galindo have a good look,” Faroe said. “It’s got to be on this side of the airport, somewhere close to the border fence.”

The pilot slowed.

Magon talked urgently with the miner, who kept shaking his head and staring anxiously at the hangars and industrial buildings. Then Galindo started talking rapidly in creole, pointing to one of the warehouses.

“That’s it,” Magon translated. “He recognized the printing on the roof.”

The helicopter flew slowly over a large sheet-metal hangar with four twin-engine executive jets parked in front. From the look of it, part of the hangar also served as a warehouse.

Faroe read the sign painted on the roof. “Aeronautico Grupo Calderon. I’m shocked, dude. Just totally shocked. Who’d a thunk?”

The pilot snickered.

“Is he sure?” Faroe asked.

“They transported him in vans with curtains,” Magon translated, “but he remembers that name on the side of the vans.”

“Gotta love advertising,” Faroe said. “And there’s how they got rid of the dirt.” He pointed to the fake hills and raised landscaping that surrounded the building.

Magon was quiet.

Too quiet.

“You didn’t know about that nasty little alliance between the drug trade and Grupo Calderon?” Faroe asked.

“I knew there was a relationship,” Magon said, his voice thick with disgust. “I didn’t think it was this close.”

“It’s so close that I don’t know who’s pitching and who’s catching. Ask Galindo about the entrance on this side.”

“The tunnel entrance is at the back, on the left, in a big supply closet,” Magon said.

“What about the other end of the tunnel?”

Magon didn’t have to ask Galindo. The miner was already pointing toward another industrial sheet-metal warehouse a quarter mile away, on the other side of the border.

“It must be that building there,” Magon translated. “He can give you distances and compass directions from memory. They had to be very precise to come up in the right place on the other side.”

Faroe touched the pilot on the shoulder and gave him a thumbs-up. “Take us home.”

Magon kept translating. “The other entrance is in a bathroom in the manager’s office of that building. Galindo was in charge of the calculations. He only missed by one meter over a distance of six hundred meters.”