Rising Phoenix (17 page)

Hobart grunted as he hefted the cooler into the back seat of his car, centering it for easy access from the driver’s seat. Pointing the Jeep back toward the freeway, he glanced at his watch. He wanted to get in at least five hours of driving tonight.

“How’d the bank thing go, John?” It was eight o’clock and Robert Swenson was already staring intently at his computer screen.

Hobart tossed three cashier’s checks on the desk. “Went okay. File these, would you?”

Swenson took them and walked to the filing cabinet in the back corner of the office.

“You’re working on the ad?” Hobart asked, motioning to the computer, though his partner’s head was still stuck in a file drawer.

“Nah, playing solitaire. I finished the ad yesterday. Hang on and I’ll print it out.” He slammed the file drawer shut and sat down at the computer. When the whirring sound of the printer stopped, he pulled a single sheet off the top and laid it on the desk in front of him.

“I went out and bought this software package called CorelDraw—it’s like a desktop publishing thing—does graphics. But I haven’t had time to figure it out. So I ended up just doing it on Word.”

“Shit, looks okay to me. It gets the point across. I like what you did with making us look remorseful. It plays well.”

“Hey, John, if I didn’t believe that this would save lives in the end, I wouldn’t be here.”

Hobart backpedaled. “I know, Bob. I wouldn’t, either. Hey, I talked with my friend in Mexico. You’re set for next week. He offered to let you stay at the house—but I told him the hotel would be fine.”

“You haven’t had time to tell me anything about this guy, John. How about a little background. I’m about to bet my ass on the reliability of his information.”

“His name’s Richard Penna—call him Rick. We met years ago when we were both with DEA. Actually, I haven’t seen him in almost ten years, but I still get a Christmas card every December. Hell, I’ll bet there’s one at my house now.”

Hobart settled himself into the chair more comfortably
and put his feet on the desk. “Could I get a Pepsi, Bob?”

Swenson dug through the small refrigerator at his feet.

“Anyway, back in ’83, Rick and I were on a four-man detail to apprehend some dealers in DC. To make a long story short, these guys somehow got tipped off and they were ready for us. Things got ugly real fast, and Rick got hit in the leg while he was in these guys’ backyard. He managed to get behind a tree and stop the bleeding in his leg, but he was pretty much pinned down. I went in and dragged him out.”

Hobart took the can of Pepsi offered him and continued. “The whole thing really got to him, and he ended up taking an early retirement—got some disability pay—a pretty good deal, if I remember right. But he credits me with saving his life.”

“Sounds like you did.”

Hobart smirked. “Not really. Like I said, he was behind a tree and he’d stopped the bleeding. The guys out front took care of the perps in about ten minutes. Truth be told, he’d have been better off sitting it out behind that tree than getting dragged across an open yard by me. Stupid move on my part, but shit, we all do stupid things when we’re young.”

Swenson nodded.

“So Rick retires and gets hooked up with some investors in an up-and-coming resort area in Mexico. I understand that he got in on the ground floor there and he’s done really well. Word is that he’s still pretty plugged into what’s going on, though—kind of as a hobby. I suppose it’s also helpful to be able to get whatever your customers need.”

Swenson looked skeptical. “And you think Rick will let me in on what’s going on with the heroin trade down there. C’mon, man, I’ve never met him and you haven’t seen him in years.”

“Rick’s a guy who likes to drink a lot and talk big. And he trusts me. You’re not gonna have a very hard time maneuvering him into telling you anything you want to know. Shit, you’ll probably just have to sit there and take notes.”

S
teve Garrett smiled mischievously. “So fess up, Mark. Deep down, you’re missing all that high-powered headquarters stuff, aren’t you?”

Mark Beamon sighed and adjusted his seat belt to rest more comfortably across his chest. “Oh, yeah. It’s been tough, but the opportunity to work for a man of your stature doesn’t come along every day.”

Garrett laughed. “No, seriously, Mark. You’re not getting bored are you?”

“Not a chance,” he replied honestly.

Beamon had been at his new job as the number two agent in Houston for only a couple of months, but he already felt like a new man. To him, the field agents
were
the FBI and Washington was just there to make their lives easier. Unfortunately, his view wasn’t a popular one with management.

The fierce loyalty and sense of belonging that had made the Bureau special was quickly fading in Washington. It was becoming just another nine-to-five
government organization, run by typical social-climbing bureaucrats.

He had been overjoyed to find that his cynicism wasn’t shared by the agents on the street. They were out there chasing the bad guys with the same dedication that he remembered as a young man. He felt he was back where he belonged.

“I was beginning to think those guys at headquarters just kept me around for target practice.”

His new boss chuckled. “Well, you sure as hell gave them enough ammunition.”

“You know how it is.”

Beamon turned and stared blankly out the window, surveying the hard earth and stones as they flashed into view and then just as quickly disappeared. His mind wandered back thirty years to the last days of summer after his graduation from high school. The small concrete schoolhouse where he had spent a good deal of his childhood had long since been torn down, but it hadn’t been far from where they were now.

His family had been so proud when he was accepted to Yale on a full academic scholarship. Like many of his friends from that period, he had been the first of his family to go to college. The fact that he was accepted to the Ivy League was completely lost on his father, who saw all colleges as equally regal and mysterious institutions. Until the day he died, he would brag to anyone who would listen that his son had gone to college. When they asked which one, he’d reply that it was a place “back east.” Beamon never quite understood that particular mental block.

On the day before he left, he finished packing and drove out to the desert with his girlfriend. Driving the obscure desert roads with a case of warm beer had been a favorite pastime in an era of quickly disappearing drive-ins and skating rinks.

He had never seen her again. Her parents moved to Dallas about halfway through his freshman year at Yale. They had written at first but the time between letters grew longer and longer as the months passed. He could still see the way she looked with the desert sun setting behind her. Strange what the mind grabs and holds on to. It had seemed at the time to be a pivotal moment in his life, but had turned out to be nothing.

The harsh ring of a cellular phone interrupted Beamon’s daydreams, and he turned his head away from the side window, not yet ready to be pulled back into reality. They still had an hour of driving before they reached their destination and what would undoubtedly be a very long and very dull meeting.

Garrett punched the button on the side of the phone, turning it to Speaker. “Steve Garrett,” he announced.

“Mr. Garrett, this is Bill Michaels. We just had a report of a branch of Houston National being robbed and a guard there being killed. A single marked unit is in high-speed pursuit on Limestone Road about forty miles west of Houston, heading north. We’ve dispatched agents to the scene.”

Beamon sat upright and looked behind him out of the back window of the car, then scanned the landscape all around.

“Keep me posted, Bill, I’ve got my portable with me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Garret punched the button one more time and the phone went silent.

“Did you know that I grew up around here, Steve?” Beamon asked.

Garrett looked at him strangely. “I think someone mentioned that to me once. It might have been you, actually.”

Beamon wasn’t listening. “I spent about six years here as a street agent, too.” His voice was rising in volume.

“So?” Garrett replied, dragging the single syllable out longer than he needed to.

“Well, I’d swear that if we take a left onto an old dirt road about a mile up here,” Beamon pointed through the windshield, “we’d get to Limestone. It’s not a very long road, as I recall.”

Garrett looked at him blankly.

“Are you suggesting that I get us involved in a highspeed chase on a dirt road in my wife’s car?”

Beamon looked around him in disgust. “Jesus, Steve, I thought this was a Bureau car. Couldn’t you have gotten her something a little more sporty?”

Garrett frowned. “You got a gun?”

“Nope. You?”

“Huh-uh.”

Beamon shrugged. “Shit, Steve, they gotta be most of the way up Limestone by now. Well just take a leisurely drive up there, pull in way behind the cops, and show up after they’ve got the whole thing sewn up. You know how the Director’s always harping on
our relationship with the locals. Lots of PR points to be had here, you know? Besides it’ll be fun.”

Garrett mumbled something under his breath that Beamon didn’t catch. Then he spoke up in a defeated tone. “Okay, where’s the turn?”

Beamon smiled broadly. “You should be able to see it up on the left in a minute or two.”

A narrow dirt road appeared as they came over a rise, and Garrett swung the car onto it, slowing to under forty miles per hour. He simultaneously grabbed the phone and hit a speed-dial number.

“Bill Michaels, please.”

“Bill? It’s Garrett. Please advise the police that Mark Beamon and I are heading up …” he paused and looked to his new ASAC for help. He didn’t get any.

“Shit, I don’t know. Some road that goes to Limestone.”

Beamon strained to hear what was being said on the other side of the phone, but it was impossible over the noise of the car. It wasn’t used to being off the asphalt.

“That’s right. We should hit Limestone in—” he looked at Beamon, who held up six fingers, “—six minutes. I’m driving a blue ’92 Ford Taurus. Tell ’em not to shoot at me.”

He hung up the receiver.

The Ford’s suspension did an admirable job on the old road, though the low-slung bottom scraped the ground every few minutes. Each time metal scraped rock, Garrett winced as if he could feel the car’s pain.

Beamon knew that he wasn’t making points by shaming his new boss into this chase. The thought of a couple of young kids in a squad car coming up
against a proven killer didn’t sit well with him, though. And as an added bonus, they’d almost surely miss their meeting.

“We should be coming up on it pretty soon, so stay sharp. If I remember right, this road’s gonna dead-end into it.”

Garrett leaned forward slightly, squinting through the dust kicked up by the car’s tires. A low ridge bobbed up and down on their left like a buoy in the ocean. The wail of a siren became barely audible from the north.

“Shit, it looks like we may be closer than we thought.” Garrett touched the brakes, slowing the car to a little over thirty miles per hour.

“Sound travels funny out here—that squad car could be anywhere,” Beamon said, trying to sound casual.

The crossroads appeared in front of them, following a natural gully, and marking the end of the ridge to their left. Garrett pulled the car as far to the left as he could without getting into the rocky soil that guarded the road’s edge, and set up for a hard right turn.

Just as his hands tightened on the wheel, a dark green car rocketed into their field of vision, heading at a speed that was going to put the front grill of Garrett’s wife’s car into its passenger side door. Beamon’s hands flew instinctively to the dashboard, bracing himself for an impact, as Garrett slammed on the brakes and spun the wheel hard to the right. The tires didn’t bite into the loose dirt and gravel, and the car’s forward momentum continued, back wheels drifting left in a lazy arc.

It turned out to be just enough to avoid a major collision,
and their front bumper only lightly tapped the back of the car in front of them. The impact was enough to send the other car into an exaggerated fishtail, finally slamming its front end into a sturdy rock outcropping along the left side of the road.