Bestiary

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When Sadowskl suggested that Greer rendezvous with him at the Liberty Firing Range that night, Greer smelled a rat. And once he got there, he knew he’d been right.

About a dozen men — all of them white, all of them service vets of one kind or another — were milling around in what Burt Pitt called the classroom. But between the poster for gun safety and the one that showed you how to clean your weapon, there now hung a banner showing the Liberty Bell and proclaiming SONS OF LIBERTY — ARISE! It was the same image Greer had seen tattooed on Burt’s arm.

The table in back had some chips and salsa, a cooler filled with cold beer, and a thick pile of stapled materials. Greer had the impression they were expecting more people. He picked up one of the packets; it was a hodgepodge of stuff, xeroxed copies of speeches by guys like Tom Paine and Patrick Henry and Pat Buchanan — wasn’t he that guy with the funny, high-pitched voice that Greer sometimes saw on TV? — along with pictures taken at Sons of Liberty rallies held in Green Bay, Wisconsin; Butte, Montana; Gainesville, Georgia. The last page was a picture of Charles Manson, with the words HELTER SKELTER across the bottom. Greer was still mulling that one over when Sadowski stepped up and said, in a louder voice than necessary, “Brew, Captain?”

He was holding out a can of Coor’s, and Greer noticed that several bystanders perked up — as Sadowski no doubt had hoped — at his saying “Captain.” It was as if Sadowski wanted credit for bringing in an officer.

Greer took the beer.

Burt waddled to the front of the room and called for order. Everybody but Greer, who had commandeered the sofa in back, took a seat on the folding chairs.

“First of all, I want to thank you all for coming,” Burt said. “I know you’re busy guys.”

Yeah, Greer thought, looking around at the motley crew nursing their free beers. These were guys who’d come straight from their delivery trucks and factory jobs, or, better yet, the local welfare office.

“Some of you already know all about us”—a couple of heads nodded sagely—“and some of you are here tonight because you’re wondering. You’re wondering who we are, you’re wondering what we stand for… and you’re wondering what the hell is happening to our country.”

Oh boy, Greer thought, here it comes. And he was right again. Burt launched into a long speech (better, actually, than Greer thought it would be) about the founding of the country by our noble forefathers, about the contributions made by men and women from all over Europe and Scandinavia (Greer noticed that Burt glanced at a guy in the front row who looked like a Viking when he said that), about how the culture was built on Christian values, and about how that culture—“once the highest in the history of the world”—was now in terrible danger.

“What is it in danger of?” Burt asked, looking around the room. Everybody stopped crunching on their chips or sipping their beers. “It’s in danger of falling apart.”

Not even a chair squeaked.

“And from what?” Burt asked. “Why is it gonna fall apart?”

“Because you can’t carry a gun anymore,” someone called out.

“That’s true,” Burt said. “In L.A., they’ve got more laws about guns than you can shake a stick at. But that’s not what I was talking about.”

“Pornography,” another guy threw out. “Ever’where you look, there’s nothin’ but porn, porn, porn.”

Especially under this guy’s bed, Greer thought, sipping his beer in back.

“That’s a problem, too,” Burt said, “but I’m getting at something else.” He clearly felt he had led his audience to the brink and then started to lose them. When another guy said something about divorce law and the rights of fathers, Burt jumped in and said, “Race, gentlemen, race.”

They all got quiet again.

“We’re in a race war, and most people don’t even know it.”

That dog’s too old to hunt, Greer thought.

“We’ve got a border with Mexico that’s nearly two thousand miles long, and it’s about as protected as…” He paused, trying to figure out how to complete his thought. “About as protected as anyone here would feel at midnight, on the corner of Florence and Normandie.”

A few obligatory chuckles, but his hesitation had killed the joke.

And, Greer considered, he was mixing his message. Who were we supposed to be worried about? Blacks in South Central L.A., or wetbacks sneaking into America through the back door?

“Every day hundreds — hell, thousands — of illegal immigrants just wade across the Rio Grande, stroll into San Diego or up here to Los Angeles, and flood our systems. Our schools, our hospitals, our highways.”

Now he was back on the more likely track. You could always get people fired up about the border, Greer reflected. If they weren’t worried about terrorists coming in, they were up in arms about all the spics taking those great jobs picking tomatoes and mopping floors. You could see Burt warming to his task, too.

“Just look around you the next time you go to the mall. I was out in Torrance last night, at a Denny’s, and I was the only white guy in the place. And I counted — there were sixteen customers, and maybe three waitresses — and I was the only authentic white guy in the whole damn place.”

He waited for that alarming news to sink in. But if Greer was any judge, only half the crowd — probably the ones who were already charter members of the Sons of Liberty — seemed moved. Two or three others glanced down at the sheaf of papers they’d picked up from the table, one glanced at his watch, then stared blankly out the window, undoubtedly wondering if he could have one more beer before getting the hell out.

But Burt was just hitting his stride. For another twenty minutes or so, he outlined the darkening skin, and the resulting decline, of the United States of America. Most of his warnings were about the Mexicans, the Guatemalans, the Salvadorans. Greer had never been able to tell one from the other, not that it mattered. For a second, he thought about Lopez, the guy he’d lost on that mission outside Mosul. The guy who’d just been… carried off in the night. Had he felt one way or the other about him? As opposed to, say, Donlan, or Sadowski, or anybody else in his unit? He took a long pull on his beer, and decided that he had not; there were even times when he felt bad about having gotten the guy killed.

As if he’d been reading his mind, Sadowski was now turned around in his chair, smiling at Greer, with an expression on his face that said, Isn’t this guy Burt great or what? Greer just tapped his wristwatch. Sadowski, looking disappointed, turned around again.

But Burt was finally wrapping up. “I hope you’ll all take a copy of the Sons of Liberty membership packet — you’ll find a new members form inside — and if you’ve got any questions, or you just want to shoot the shit, I’m here… all the fucking time!” He laughed, and a few of the audience members, maybe just because they were so happy to be free again, laughed along. “And don’t forget, when you join, you get a ten percent discount every time you come to the range.” Same discount Greer was offered as a vet.

While a couple of interested candidates milled around the front of the room with Burt, and the others grabbed a beer or headed for the men’s room, Sadowski ambled back to the sofa. “You got any questions for Burt?”

“Yeah. How come he talks so much?”

Sadowski started to look pissed. “You didn’t believe him? You don’t think it’s time we woke up and smelled the coffee?”

“I think it’s time we got in your little patrol car and did what we’re supposed to do tonight.”

Greer got up — damn, his leg had locked again, and he had to stop to rub some life back into the knee — and headed for the door. He saw Burt, busy recruiting a guy in a UPS uniform, look his way, and Greer raised a hand, giving him a thumbs-up. Yeah, right — he’d be joining up real soon.

In the parking lot out front, Greer waited by the Silver Bear Security car until Sadowski, after muttering something about the Fourth of July to another Son of Liberty, came over and unlocked it. He still looked pissy.

“I don’t know why you won’t listen,” Sadowski said as they got into the car and strapped their seat belts.

“Because it’s a crock of shit.”

“It’s not.”

Greer wondered if it was his turn to say, “Is, too.” Instead, he said, “Just give me the jacket.”

Sadowski, pulling into traffic, said, “It’s in the bag.”

There was a Men’s Wearhouse bag on the seat between them. Greer opened it and took out a gray Silver Bear windbreaker, with epaulettes and silver snap buttons, and a visored cap. A growling bear, rising up on all fours, was emblazoned just above the brim. He put the cap on and turned the rearview mirror to check himself out.

“I need that,” Sadowski said, turning the mirror back.

Greer laughed. “What, did I hurt your feelings?” he said.

Sadowski, his jaw set, just kept driving.

Greer shook his head; it was too weird. Sadowski didn’t mind Greer getting a lap dance from his girlfriend, but he got bent out of shape if you dissed his secret society. He looked out the window, trying to focus himself; there wasn’t time for this bullshit right now. He had to concentrate on what was ahead. He reached into the pocket of his dark gray jeans — as close to the jacket color as he could find at the Gap — and took out a couple of pills; one to kill any pain from the leg, and another to raise his internal alert level. This wasn’t like that job in Brentwood, when he’d stumbled into the dog-sitter at the doctor’s house. This was big time.

This was the al-Kalli estate.

And he would need to be as hyped and vigilant as he had ever been.

Once they’d passed under the arched gateway to Bel-Air, Greer started to take careful mental notes on the terrain, the street layout, the avenues of escape. He’d already studied the map of this area in his Thomas Guide, and pulled it up on MapQuest, too, but there was nothing like checking out the lay of the land for real. And the maps didn’t tell you just how dark — he guessed the locals would call it tasteful — the street lighting in here would be. No high-crime, low-sodium glare here, no rows of towering poles, humming softly, their heads bobbing in the ocean breeze. The street lamps were few and far between, and the light they cast was more like amber pools. As far as Greer was concerned, that was ideal.

The higher they went, the darker it got, and the less Greer could see from the patrol car. If there were houses back there, behind the high hedges and brick walls and iron driveway gates that bristled with warning signs and intercoms and surveillance cameras, you’d never know it. Once in a while, especially when they passed a Silver Bear sign, Sadowski told Greer what movie star or pop singer or athlete lived there. Greer could only imagine what kind of pickings those houses would provide. Why had he been bothering with guys who were just doctors, in Brentwood? He’d have to discuss that, later, with Sadowski.

“See that? Sadowski said, slowing on a narrow curve, beside a high stone wall.

“See what?”

“The gates.”

Greer saw an unmarked solid steel-plated gate, and a door, barely visible between some thick bushes, set into the wall beside it.

“That’s the back service entrance to the Al-Kalli estate. That’s where I’ll pick you up.”

“How do I get out without setting off an alarm?”

“Only the driveway gates are alarmed, and the door can only be opened from the inside,” Sadowski said, driving on. “You see any other car come by, just hide behind the bush.”

“I haven’t seen another car for the last fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, but up here, almost any car you do see is a security patrol.”

Greer nodded, as Sadowski completed the curve, then took them back up around a wide bend — Greer had the feeling that they were basically making a big circle around the top of the hill crest — before entering a long, dimly lighted, dead-end street. Greer hadn’t even seen another driveway gate, on either side, for a while — just ivy-covered walls, with impenetrably thick and high hedges rising right behind them. So all of this was one property? And all of it al-Kalli’s?

“Okay, that’s his gatehouse up ahead,” Sadowski said. “A guy named Reggie’s usually on duty.”

Greer straightened his cap and collar. “You’re doing the talking.”

“Yeah, I’ll get us in,” Sadowski said. “After that, it’s up to you.”

Sadowski flashed his headlights as they approached the lighted gatehouse. It looked like the kind of stone cabin you’d see when you were entering some national park. A black guy holding a magazine in one hand stepped out as Sadowski pulled to a stop and lowered his window.

“What’s up, dude?” Sadowski said in a friendly tone.

What happened to the coming race war? Greer wondered.

“Not much,” Reggie said, resting his hand on the door of the car. He looked into the car. “Who’s this?”

“This, my man, is our sensor expert.”

Greer lowered his head, nodded, but said nothing.

“Your what? Your sensei, like in Karate Kid?”

Sadowski faked a laugh. “No, this is the guy that checks out all the motion sensors around the house and grounds.”

“Whatever you say,” Reggie replied.

“Anybody home tonight?”

“Everybody.”

“Okay, then, we’ll get this done as fast as we can.”

Reggie stepped back and batted a lever with the end of the rolled-up magazine. The gates swung back smoothly.

Sadowski raised his window again as he steered the patrol car up the long, winding drive. Greer didn’t particularly like the sound of that — everybody home. He always hoped to hear that his targets were away on business or off on vacation. But he would work around it.

But he still couldn’t see any sign of a house. What he did see, standing by the side of the drive and staring silently at the car, was a pair of peacocks. When one of them, suddenly caught in the headlights, cried out, the sound took him right back to Iraq. To those eerie cries, at dusk, when he’d first ventured into al-Kalli’s palace grounds.

“Yeah, those fuckin’ birds are all over the place,” Sadowski said. “I don’t know how anybody gets any sleep up here.”

Greer wasn’t going to worry about it. “Is there a house somewhere, or are we just out for a ride?”

Sadowski snorted. “Yeah, it’s coming.” And then, under his breath, for no particular reason, “Fucking A-rabs.”

The car passed a lighted fountain, with lots of carved figures and water jetting up on all sides. Greer started to feel like he was in an amusement park — but he wasn’t amused. Maybe it was that damned peacock cry, maybe it was just the fact that it was al-Kalli’s place, but he was already getting a bad vibe about the whole mission. He’d had enough bad nights, nights when he bolted up in bed sweating, thinking about endless colonnades, slanting desert sun… and empty cages with bent bars. Just a couple of weeks earlier, he’d actually screamed in his sleep, so loudly his mother had poked her head in the door and asked if he was all right.

At first, he hadn’t been able to answer her; his mouth was that dry. And he hadn’t been able to shake that image… of a black fog, but stronger, and more substantial, rolling toward him, starting to envelop him. He’d been struggling to get free, to get out, before whatever was in that fog — and he knew there was something in it, something terrible — discovered him. He could hear its breathing, a low rumble, and he could smell it — the smell of putrid fur and dung and blood.

“Yeah, yeah,” he’d finally said to her, wiping his damp palms on the sheet. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t look it.”

“I said I’m okay.”

“Well, you don’t need to snap at me,” she’d said, before jerking the door closed.

He’d swallowed a couple of Xanax and spent the rest of the night in a stupor in front of the TV.

The wheels of the car had moved off the smooth concrete now and onto a rougher, cobblestoned surface. The car made another turn, and suddenly the house loomed into view. Greer had to lean forward in the seat to see all the way to the top of its spires and gables, silvered in the moonlight.

“They call it the Castle,” Sadowski said.

“No shit.”

To Greer, the place looked like a cliff of stone and timber, with here and there a shaft of yellow light creeping out of a curtained window.

Sadowski stopped the car short of the house and turned to Greer. “Okay, the pool and tennis court and all of that are back behind the house. Off to the left, that’s where the stables and some kind of barn are. That back gate, the one where I’ll pick you up again, is just past that; you can’t miss it, just follow the service drive.”

Greer didn’t move, and Sadowski waited. “Captain?” he said, maybe because they were back in reconnaissance mode.

“Yeah,” Greer replied, still taking in the sprawling house. “I got it.”

“How long you want?”

“Give me an hour, but stay on your cell in case I need you sooner.”

“Affirmative.”

Greer hated that military crap.

He got out of the car, making sure to close the door quietly; no point in emphasizing that you were there. The night air was warm, and a light breeze was blowing. He waved Sadowski off, and the patrol car backed up slowly, then made a slow turn back down the drive. Because the car would exit on the other side of the guardhouse, they were counting on Reggie not to notice that there was now only one occupant. If he did, Sadowski was going to tell him that Greer was working on a broken motion detector and he’d come back for him later.

Once the car was gone, Greer surveyed the house, which had a wide flight of stone steps leading up to a massive wooden door, and big, several-storied wings extending out on either side; dense ivy covered much of the walls. All the way on the left there was a garage with about six bays in it, and a weather vane on top shaped like, what else, a peacock.

What was it with this guy?

Greer approached slowly, but taking care not to look furtive. He straightened his cap, removed the flashlight he’d looped on his belt, and sauntered up the front steps, as if on a routine patrol. He tried the door handle — locked, big surprise — and glanced up at the surveillance camera neatly tucked above a stone gargoyle. This one, a grinning demon with a monkey’s snout, reminded him of gargoyles he’d once seen, when he was a kid, on an old church in downtown L.A. The last time he’d gone by the site, the church was gone and a parking garage was standing in its place.

But where, Greer wondered, did these cameras feed to? Was there some underground command center, with round-the-clock attendants, or did it just feed to Reggie in the guardhouse? Sadowski told him he’d checked the Silver Bear files, and there was nothing to indicate anything more than the usual camera setup. But Greer had been burned by Sadowski before, and knew enough not to rely on his information.

Keeping to the shadows, but at the same time doing nothing to appear suspect, Greer walked the length of the house, then moved into the porte cochere, where a golf cart, with a little fringed roof, was parked next to a top-of-the-line black Mercedes limo. Greer glanced inside the car, and he could see that this model was fully tricked out, with better body armor than his army Humvees had ever had. Al-Kalli knew how to travel… and he knew how to live.

Greer tried the side door to the house and it, too, was locked; Greer could even tell, just from rattling the knob, that there was a thrown dead bolt, with a metal reinforcement plate behind it. Brass lamps that cast a yellow glow were affixed to the exterior walls, and Greer followed them around to the back.

The estate really opened up back here, with a wide portico giving on to long rows of trees in full bloom, and beyond that a pool, and one of those little garden houses that reminded Greer of the open bandstands where old guys in straw hats would play Sousa on the Fourth of July. A wooden easel was set up next to a table with brushes and stuff all over it.

Turning back to the house, Greer saw a few lights on inside, some on the upper stories and some on the ground level; staying just out of range, he walked across the flagstones to peer into the first-floor windows; they were the casement kind, with lots of little diamond-shaped panes. Inside, he could see the back of a kid’s head, with curly black hair; he was bent over what had to be a PlayStation or an Xbox or one of those things. Greer could even make out, on the giant plasma TV screen, some kind of battle scene, with guys in camouflage blowing away guys who looked like Taliban. He had to laugh — his life was a video game now.

Suddenly, the kid looked up, and the action on the screen stopped; the kid was talking to somebody just out of Greer’s sight. Then the screen went dead, and the kid pushed himself up off the sofa. It wasn’t hard to figure out what this was all about. Greer glanced at his watch — it was almost midnight, on a school night. Greer moved back a bit, and to one side, and now he could see who the kid was talking to — a man with a bald head, in a black turtleneck, and a scowl on his face.

And Greer knew instantly that he was seeing, for the first time, Mohammed al-Kalli himself.

He had Googled him and surfed the Web, but for a guy with his money and power, al-Kalli kept a very low profile. The only photos Greer had been able to find showed a young man in a riding outfit in England, a couple of grainy shots taken at Arab summits, and one where al-Kalli was holding up a hand to hide his face as he stepped out of a limo in Paris. But this, now, was definitely the guy — Greer would have known it just from the way he held himself, like that emperor named Saladin in Kingdom of Heaven.

The kid shuffled out of the room, and al-Kalli followed right behind. The lights went out. And then another light went on, upstairs. The kid in his bedroom? Greer waited, for another light. Or a sound. But all the windows were closed, and there was little chance of hearing anything emanating from inside the house.

But then there was a noise from the area where the car and the golf cart had been parked. The sound of a bolt being thrown, a door opening, low voices. Greer quickly retreated into the shadows of the trees.

Al-Kalli was standing outside, holding a riding crop. The door stood open, and a moment later, Greer saw why — a muscular man in a dark blue tracksuit hauled a guy who looked half-dead outside. He dragged him over to the golf cart — the guy looked way past fighting back — shoved him into the seat, then squashed himself in, too. Al-Kalli took the driver’s seat.

Jakob, Greer thought — that was the muscleman’s name. And he was the guy Greer had given the box to in Iraq!

A second later, the golf cart jolted to a start, and Greer cursed to himself. This was way too interesting to miss, but how was he going to keep up?

The cart rumbled across the flagstones, then onto the lawn. Greer knew his leg would kill him tomorrow, but right now, all he could think of was keeping them in his sight. He hobbled along through the trees. The cart slowed down, as the lawn dipped, then picked up speed on the other side. Greer smelled horses, and sure enough, a stable showed up on his right. He could hear a horse neigh, softly. But that wasn’t where the golf cart was going. It glided past the stables and toward that back service entrance Sadowski had showed him.

Greer had to stop, to catch his breath and rest his leg. The cart disappeared into the trees. But what the fuck — it was a golf cart. If they were going far, or beyond the walls of the estate, they’d have gotten into the car.

He set off again. The grass was thick and lush under his feet; the rest of L.A. might be suffering from a drought, but al-Kalli was keeping his own lawn nicely irrigated. A narrow stream ran through the grounds, and though he hated to be so exposed, Greer crossed it over a little wooden bridge. Way up ahead, he could see, rising above the trees, the top of what looked to him like one of the massive ammo sheds in Iraq. He remembered Sadowski saying something about a riding ring; that must be it.

Rather than head right for it, Greer moved deeper into the trees and approached the ring at an oblique angle.

And he’d been right.

Because at one end, where there were two big doors, the kind you’d see on a barn, the golf cart was stopped. Al-Kalli was still at the wheel, but the prisoner was scrambling across the ground, aimlessly, while Jakob plodded after him, clearly not worried that the guy would get away. In fact, the prisoner stumbled and fell, and Jakob reached down, grabbed him by the collar of the jumpsuit they had him in — one of those orange jobs you see convicts wear — and hauled him back to the cart like a sack of laundry.

Whatever was going on here, it didn’t look good for the guy in the jumpsuit.

Al-Kalli turned and said something to the bodyguard. Greer couldn’t make out the words, but the tone told him it was an order. Al-Kalli reached up to the visor of the golf cart, where there must have been a remote; the doors to the ring — the biggest damn thing Greer had ever seen on a piece of private property — slowly swung open. Greer moved closer.

They were going to go in… but should he try to follow? Or would that be the biggest mistake of his life?

There was the sound of blowers — huge fans blowing out cool air from the interior — as the gates spread wide.

Greer moved closer.

The golf cart lurched forward, with Jakob firmly clutching the prisoner.

The gates held steady as the cart entered. Greer could see a vast open space in the center, with mountains of crates and equipment stacked along the near side and, more interestingly, what looked like barred enclosures along the far wall.

Even bigger, and more high-tech enclosures, than he’d seen in the palace outside Mosul.

And that’s when he made his mind up. He had to know. Keeping low to the ground, as if avoiding sniper fire, he scurried into the building, the massive fans nearly blowing his cap off, and then cut to the side where some crates would afford a hiding place. The ponderous doors swung shut with a thud behind him.