The Zarrabian Incident Page 10

  A large drop of water landed on the back of his neck, startling him. He looked up at the huge redwood tree that disappeared into the fog above him. As the tendrils of vapor swirled through the thick canopy of branches, some of the moisture condensed into tiny drops on the feathery needles of the trees. These ran together into bigger and bigger drops until they broke loose and rained down on the trees’ roots—or someone’s neck.

  The fog that was responsible for the perpetual gloom of California’s northern coast was also the lifeblood of these magnificent trees. They got over half their water from the fog. Where had he learned that little factoid? He couldn’t remember.

  He turned and walked into the forest, coffee cup in hand, following the faint road under the trees. After a few dozen steps, the canopy of redwood branches blocked most of the meager light that managed to penetrate the fog, turning the morning into twilight. A hundred yards in, the road turned, revealing the RV.

  They'd been here for almost two hours before stumbling on the RV; the redwood forest made it completely invisible from above and from more than a few dozen yards away.

  An FBI technician’s feet stuck out from under the chassis. He was probably looking for serial numbers, hidden compartments, and so forth. McCaig saw two other figures moving around inside. They’d be dusting for fingerprints and searching every nook and cranny for more evidence. He doubted they’d find much.

  The RV’s owner had been almost speechless when McCaig called him to ask about it. The owner didn’t even know it had been stolen. The guy only used it every month or two. The rest of the time it sat in a storage yard collecting leaves and dust. The local cops would have the security camera videos soon, but McCaig didn’t expect any surprises there, just a resourceful soldier “requisitioning” a vehicle.

  He walked past the RV and deeper into the forest, taking occasional sips from his coffee. The faint road disappeared. His footsteps were noiseless on the damp, heavy mat of redwood needles that covered the ground. A knee-high carpet of wet ferns brushed against his pant legs, soaking them as he walked. He continued, scanning the undergrowth.

  Suddenly he stopped. In front of him, the ferns were crushed in several places. The smooth mat of redwood needles that carpeted the ground was turned up here and there. A small chunk of redwood bark looked out of place on the ground; the tree showed a light spot on its trunk that matched the shape of the bark on the ground. Something had happened here. But what?

  McCaig looked back. He’d wandered farther than he thought. The RV had disappeared behind him, blocked by the huge tree trunks. His wet pants stuck to his legs, chilling him. He wrapped both hands around the coffee cup and felt the warmth seeping into his fingers.

  “Captain McCaig. We meet again.”

  McCaig spun around and found himself looking down the barrel of a gun.

  “So it is you. It’s ‘Special Agent McCaig’ now, Colonel Zarrabian. Drop your weapon. You are under arrest.”

  Zarrabian’s face was stone cold. “I am the one with the gun. I must ask for your weapon. You know the procedure. Be careful with your coffee.”

  McCaig took a hand off his coffee and pulled his jacket back to reveal his gun. Slowly, very slowly, he removed it from the holster, pinching the gun’s handle between two fingers. He held the gun out to one side and laid it on the ground, then kicked it carefully forward. Zarrabian leaned down and retrieved the weapon without taking his eyes off McCaig.

  “What the hell happened to you?” said McCaig as Zarrabian straightened up. “You’re now a colonel? You must have what, three thousand soldiers under your command? And now you're a damned terrorist! What have you become?”

  “Please do not spew colonialist, imperialist bull to me, Agent McCaig. You of all men must know why I am here.”

  “I really don’t.”

  “Maybe someday when this is over we can philosophize over a cup of strong coffee. I am not in the mood today.”

  “Colonel, when this is over, you’ll be dead or in prison. Where you belong.”

  “It is not as simple as that, Captain McCaig.”

  “It’s Agent McCaig now. And it is simple. I’m going to capture you and bring you to trial.”

  “Captain, there is something I need from you.”

  McCaig scoffed. “You think I’m in a mood to help you? After . . . after . . .”

  “You owe me. Your life, and the lives of your men.”

  “I did before you blew up that bridge. If I’d found you hanging from a cliff and I wasn’t a sworn law-enforcement agent, I’d have risked my life to save yours in an instant. Trouble is, I work for the United States government now, and I swore to enforce the law and to bring in the bad guys. That would be you.”

  “Just so, Captain. Yet, I am asking for payback.”

  “You can ask all you like. I’m still going to arrest you.”

  “Something is wrong here.”

  “Clearly. You’ve turned into a goddamned terrorist.”

  “Please, Captain. You know it is not that simple.”

  “It seems pretty simple to me.”

  “I do not have time to argue.” Zarrabian raised the gun and centered it on McCaig’s heart. “You understand the risk I took to contact you now, do you not?”

  McCaig thought about it for a moment. “This makes no sense. You had us fooled with the burnt cabin and the body. I’ll bet the ME will tell me the skeleton is consistent with a man of Middle Eastern descent close to your height and weight.”

  “Yes. And yet I revealed myself. To you in particular.”

  “OK, so you thought it was pretty damned important to talk to me.”

  “Exactly, Captain McCaig. Agent McCaig. You will be back in your office soon. You will have told everyone about this encounter, and they will be scouring this area looking for me. You will have a flood of information pouring through your computers and your head. Here is what I ask: in all that information that you collect, look for something that is not right. Find it. Find the truth.”

  “I always search for the truth.”

  “If you want to find the true villain, look harder.”

  “I found the villain. It’s you.”

  “I have to go now.”

  “You forgot something.”

  “Yes?” asked Zarrabian.

  “You’re under arrest. And you have my gun.”

  “You never give up, do you?”

  “Never.”

  “Good.” Zarrabian held McCaig’s gun up. “I will make you a deal. I do not want to kill you, but if it is your life against mine, I choose mine. But if I do not kill you, you will have to explain how you let me get away, and how I disarmed you. You will have to fill out paperwork and face professional embarrassment.”

  “Shit happens, Colonel. It won’t be the first time.”

  “There is an alternative. You are going to first set an alarm on your cell phone that will ring in five minutes. Then you will give me your cell phone and wait here for at least two minutes. After two minutes, follow me for two hundred meters, then stop and listen. When your alarm rings, you can follow the sound to retrieve your phone and gun.”

  “You’re saying I’m going to let you escape, and then not tell anyone? Why would I do that?”

  “You are not letting me escape. I am the one who captured you. I am offering you a way to stay alive, and an opportunity to escape professional embarrassment. Whether you use that opportunity is up to you.”

  He waited. Finally, McCaig spoke. “Do I have a choice?”

  “There are always choices. You can try to capture me now, but I will kill you. You can accept my terms. You can pretend to accept my terms, but then run straight back to the cabin the moment I leave. You will lose your phone and weapon and face the embarrassment and further damage to your career. And honor.”

  “Damage my honor?”

  “Yes. We are making an agreement here. You are trading your life for a few minutes of waiting. You are a man who keeps his bargains. If you break
your promise, that is a matter of honor among soldiers.”

  “A bargain made under threat of death is no bargain.”

  “Captured soldiers have been accepting parole since the time of Carthage. I am not demanding a full parole from you, just two minutes. Now, Special Agent McCaig, I am out of time. Yes or no?”

  McCaig took out his cell phone, poked its buttons, then tossed it to Zarrabian. “OK. Two minutes.”

  McCaig was fuming by the time he reached the still-smoldering cabin. He stopped at the edge of the clearing to catch his breath. Cordo, Texas had been the low point in his career. The women and children haunted his dreams—and his career—even though everyone said he’d had no choice. But this? How could he explain being caught flat-footed, warming his fingers around a cup of coffee, by the worst terrorist of the decade? And why had he kept his promise to give Zarrabian a two-minute lead instead of sprinting back here immediately to raise the alarm?

  “Crap,” he said out loud. There was no choice. He’d have to spill the whole story and face the music. Zarrabian couldn’t have gotten far, so they’d still catch him. They’d close off all roads, bring in the helicopters and dogs, and it would be just a matter of time. But even if they caught Zarrabian, this would be the final nail in McCaig’s coffin. His FBI career was dead.

  He sighed and jogged out of the forest. One fire truck had departed. Three firemen were packing the remaining fire truck. Bashir was finishing his preliminary interview with the medical examiner and the arson expert. Bashir closed his computer and slipped it into the bag hanging from his shoulder as they talked. All three looked up as McCaig jogged up.

  “Bashir, we’ve got a problem! Give me your phone; mine isn’t getting any signal up here.”

  “Sorry, boss, mine either. What’s up?”

  The sound of a helicopter interrupted. It thundered over them at high speed, flying low and fast, barely under the heavy the fog as it skimmed the treetops. In another instant, it disappeared over the treetops.

  The medical examiner shouted over the receding noise, “Hey! That was my chopper! What the hell?”

  “You came in a chopper?” McCaig exclaimed. “Where did you land?”

  “In meadow back that way, about a half mile west on the ridge. We flew up from San Jose because they wanted us here fast.”

  McCaig looked into the fog where the helicopter had disappeared. “OK, Zarrabian. Now you’re really pissing me off.”

  The others looked baffled. Bashir spoke up first. “Zarrabian?”

  “Bashir, have the ME take you to that clearing. You need to rescue his pilot. He’ll be either dead or tied up.” He called out to the firemen, “You guys have a radio, right? One that works here in the mountains?”

  Dale Jenkins crawled forward quietly through the underbrush until he could see the clearing ahead. There it was, his worst fear: a government helicopter, as big as life. It’s engine was off, but the blades were still rotating slowly.

  Any time a chopper flew over, the old memories returned. And each time, he’d waited until he was sure they were gone, then forced himself to calm down and go back to his work. But this time, the chopper didn’t fly on. Instead, it had banked around, hovered, and then landed just a half mile from his cabin.

  Goddamned fascists! He’d served his country, fought their colonialist war, flown his chopper into enemy gunfire dozens of times, killed a few Viet Cong, and come home addicted to heroin. They’d locked him in a psych ward for a while until he figured out what he was supposed to say to the doctors. Once he’d escaped their hospital-prison, he’d sworn he’d never go back. Now he lived in the mountains with few neighbors and fewer friends, and life was good.

  And he wasn’t the only one. The heavily wooded mountains of California’s northern coast were the perfect place for Vietnam’s dispossessed, men who’d been bent and broken and then cast away and ignored by a country ashamed of its defeat at the hands of an army of communist peasants. Dale Jenkins knew of at least six other men like himself nearby. They didn’t socialize, but occasionally would encounter one another in town. A passing nod was all the conversation they needed to acknowledge their brotherhood.

  Now this helicopter? No doubt it was coming after his marijuana crop. Shit! This was a disaster. Early summer, peak growing season, his plants in the ground in clearings and vales spread around the redwood forests above his cabin—this was going to be his best year! Couldn’t the government just leave him alone?

  The door of the helicopter opened and a man stepped out. He didn’t look like a federal agent. In fact, he looked like a trucker or logger, and from his olive skin, Jenkins guessed maybe he was Turkish or Arab or something.

  Dale Jenkins wasn’t a fool. This was a trick. If he asked the guy, he’d say he was from the utility company, inspecting routes for a new power line, or maybe claim he was from a logging company taking inventory of the forest. But Dale Jenkins knew: this was a government DEA agent. They were after him. They’d finally found him.

  The man looked around the mountains as if to get his bearings, then struck out across the clearing and disappeared into the woods. Jenkins held perfectly still and considered his options. He could wait until the federal agent returned and then kill him. But that would bring a storm of feds down on the whole area. Besides that, he didn’t want to kill anyone. He’d had enough of that.

  He could do nothing, just let the guy fly away. He’d come back with dozens more agents, destroy his crop, arrest him, and probably send him to prison or back to the psych ward.

  He could . . . heck, there were no options. He was screwed.

  Suddenly, he knew what to do. If he was going to get screwed, he could screw the government right back. He felt a laugh coming up from way down deep. That chopper was worth over a million dollars, and nobody was watching it. Who did they think they were fucking with? Dale “Corkscrew” Jenkins was the best of the best!

  He burst from the underbrush, crossed the clearing, and jerked the door open. The chopper was empty. The sight of the controls and instruments gave him an intense rush of deja vu, almost making him dizzy. Scenes flashed through his mind: flying low over trees, landing in a clearing so small his blades were chopping leaves from the jungle, blood-covered soldiers waving frantically at him . . . he shook his head to clear it and climbed in.

  Smith stood up and leaned forward over his desk, looming over McCaig. He slammed his fist down. “Goddamn it, McCaig, you really fucked up this time!”

  “You said that last time,” answered McCaig. He pressed back in his chair, unconsciously hoping to put another inch or two between himself and Smith. He’d never heard Smith curse before.

  “Just shut up and listen, you clown! You had the guy! Had him! He was on a mountaintop with just one road out. He used what’s-her-name’s phone—”

  “Garrett.”

  “I said shut up! He used Garrett’s phone. Goddamned idiot! Almost like he wanted to get caught. We’d already closed every road, in and out. There was No. Way. Out! But you, you buffoon, you practically handed him a ticket out. A goddamned helicopter with an unarmed civilian pilot. Unguarded! You might as well have put a huge ‘Steal Me!’ sign on it! Or maybe, ‘Get Out of Jail Free!’ Maybe you could have put up spotlights shining into the sky too!”

  “Those guys didn’t tell me they’d flown—”

  “This was your operation! Excuses are like assholes: everyone has one, and they all stink! I don’t want to hear it. This was your big chance and you blew it. Big time. Cordo wasn’t your fault, everybody knows that. You got reamed and took one for the team. Good for you. But this one . . .”

  Smith sat down hard in his chair. “Do you know what this is going to do to my career? I’m special agent in charge for San Francisco. I’ll be lucky if I’m in charge of the fucking outhouse when this is over! You get to retire in a couple years. But this shit is going to stick to me like old chewing gum for a goddamned decade!”

  “So . . .”

  “You’re off the
case! The director himself called me! Orders straight from the White House. Can you believe it? Man, you really made enemies this time.”

  “Do me a favor—”

  “Ha! You’re joking, right?”

  “Don’t beat up Bashir over this. He’s a good man.”

  “I’ll think about it. Now go write a report or something. I hope you’re good at twiddling your thumbs and picking your nose, ‘cause that’s all you’re going to be doing until your retirement day.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Smith’s phone rang. He glared at it for a moment, then raised his eyebrows and quickly snatched the handset from the receiver. “What? . . . Where? . . . You’re sure it’s the same helicopter? . . . Who is he?”

  McCaig stood up to leave.

  “Sit down!”

  McCaig sat.

  “No, not you, sorry,” said Smith into the phone. “OK, keep me posted.” He hung up and looked at McCaig. “It seems you are mistaken. They caught the guy who stole the helicopter. It wasn’t Zarrabian.”

  “But sir, it couldn’t—”

  “Shut up, McCaig! You left a helicopter sitting there unguarded, you idiot! The fact that some other guy stole it instead of the most wanted man in the world is no thanks to you. Now you’ve got every cop in Northern California chasing a guy who’s already dead!”

  “But he’s—”

  “Out, McCaig!”

  “So is the terrorist dead or not?” asked Senator Platte.

  “We think so, sir,” answered Patterson.

  “You think so? It’s either him or it’s not. Which is it?”

  “The forensics guys don’t have medical or dental records, and no DNA samples either. The body was too badly burnt to get fingerprints. We can’t get a positive ID.”

  “So we’ve got nothing? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No, sir. We have solid evidence. The body matches Zarrabian’s height and weight. The forensic anthropologist said the facial bones were those of a man from the Middle East, and the age is exactly right. The clothing matched. And the RV that Zarrabian stole was parked in the woods right behind the cabin. There were fingerprints were all over it that matched fingerprints we found at a diner up in Marin. They also matched fingerprints we found at a WalMart that was robbed in Healdsburg just after he escaped. There’s no doubt he was holed up at that cabin, and the body matches him perfectly. It’s him, sir.”