Fault Line

23 OUTTHOUGHT

Ben drove south on 280, the cruise control set for seventy because with the rage still coursing through him he couldn't trust himself not to speed. It was late and traffic was light. The hills glowed faintly under a high crescent moon.

He had already decided to do one more thing tonight, and he was going to do it. Most likely nothing would come of it anyway, but by God he was going to stick to the plan no matter how hard the little shit tried to get under his skin.

He forced all the bullshit out of his mind and concentrated on tactical considerations. He started to feel better. This is who he was. This is what he was good at.

They'd sent someone for Alex at the hotel. Meaning they knew he was moving around. Meaning they probably wouldn't bother making another run at his house. But there was a chance they might, depending on how healthy their numbers remained after they'd lost two at the Four Seasons. If they had no other leads, they might go with the only information they had: work address during the day; home address at night. He imagined himself in their shoes, whoever they were. He would know it was unlikely the target would reappear, but nor was it impossible. Alex was a civilian. It would be hard for him to break out of the patterns and habits of his daily life. He'd be in denial, too. Eventually the two could combine-an item left at home that he realized he needed, a moment of wishful thinking, and the target might reappear at a known nexus. Ben had seen it happen before, and had been there to take advantage of it.

He'd seen at the Four Seasons that the objective of their operation had changed. It was no longer about interrogating Alex first; now it was a straightforward elimination. Under the circumstances, the question then became: Knowing what you know about Alex, where would you lay an ambush at his house?

The answer was easy. The house and a detached garage formed an L at the end of the driveway, with a wooden gate separating them and leading to the backyard. Wait behind the gate. You'd have perfect concealment, and line of sight over the whole driveway. When Alex gets home, it doesn't matter whether he parks in the driveway or the garage. All you need to do is step out from concealment, blow his brains out with a suppressed pistol, and walk to whatever quiet side street you'd used to park your vehicle. Thank you for playing; next contestant.

If someone were waiting there, his attention would be focused on the driveway and, to a lesser extent, the street beyond it. He wouldn't be thinking about the backyard. It wouldn't occur to him that someone might know this terrain, and use it. Someone who, say, used to cut through the backyard, and the neighbor's yard behind it, on his way to and from school every day.

He got off 280 at the Portola Valley-Alpine Road exit and headed south on Alpine past the low-slung wooden buildings of the Ladera shopping center, where his mom had bought groceries and his dad made sure the cars were gassed up and the tires full. His parents’ house- Alex's house-was on a cul-de-sac called Corona Way, one of many such small streets in a neighborhood dotted with rambling houses and large, hilly lots. He made a right on La Mesa Drive, then a left on Erica Way, uneasy at how comfortable the turns were, how familiar the landscape.

There were some cars parked on the tree-lined streets, Lexuses and Mercedes and Volvos that looked like they belonged. He cruised by them slowly, checking the interiors. They were all empty, the windshields and hoods covered in evening dew.

He pulled over and killed the headlights, then opened up his bag and took out a pair of night-vision goggles. Night Optics USA D-321G-A, about six grand a pair if you could find them outside the military. And small and lightweight enough to make a perfect stocking stuffer. He adjusted the headgear and clicked on the unit, and suddenly the world was in sharp, green focus. Rock and roll.

He turned left on Escanyo Way, a cul-de-sac roughly paralleling Corona and separated from it by two winding rows of houses and yards and a thicket of trees. The street was empty of cars and there were no streetlights. He parked alongside a stand of redwood trees between two houses-the Levins’ and the Andrewses’, he remembered, if they even still lived here. Alex used to play hide-and-seek out here with their kids. He made sure the car's interior light was set to the off position and got out, easing the door closed behind him.

The air was cold and moist and smelled of conifers and peat moss. He closed his eyes and stood with his head cocked for a moment, listening. The wind rustled in the tops of the trees, carrying with it the faintest whoosh, whoosh of the thin traffic on 280. How many nights had he snuck out, or in, along this very route, nights that smelled and sounded exactly like this one? He remembered standing in this very spot, taking a drunken leak among the trees, hoping his parents were deeply asleep, coming up with stories in case they weren't. And then there was the time-

Enough. Focus.

Right. He eased the Glock out and headed up the grass at the extreme edge of the Levins’ front yard. He moved slowly, placing each foot carefully toe-heel against the damp grass, pausing after each step to look and listen.

It took him four minutes to cover the fifty feet to the wooden fence enclosing Alex's backyard. It wasn't a high fence, only six feet, built less for privacy than to contain the family dog, Arlo, a mildly neurotic poodle their mother had doted on but whom Ben had mostly just tolerated, and who in any event had long since shuffled off that mortal canine coil. He stood on his toes in the shadows of a clump of oak trees and looked over the fence. He could see the spot at the corner of the house and garage as clearly as though someone had thrown a spotlight on it. It was empty. He glanced around the yard. It was exactly as he remembered. The clubhouse their father had built them when they were kids. The hot tub no one ever used. It was like Alex was living in some kind of family museum. It was pathetic.

He scanned the yard and, seeing no one, put the Glock back into the holster and pulled himself carefully up onto the fence. He turned sideways, eased over his right leg, then his left, then slowly lowered himself to the ground. He brought out the Glock again and waited, looking and listening. Nothing.

Most of the yard was covered in wood chips or gravel. He avoided those areas, keeping to the grass, staying in the shadows. Step. Stop. Look and listen. Step. Stop. Look and listen.

The spot by the garage was so perfect an ambush point that once he had confirmed it was empty he doubted anyone was here. Probably they were short on manpower at this point. Or they figured Alex wasn't coming back tonight. Or both.

Still, best to be certain. The only other spot that would make any sense as an ambush point was the opposite corner of the house, which faced the street at the end of a narrow dog run framed by the house on one side and the fence on the other. You could stand at the front corner in the dark and still see the street, then head back toward the garage when you saw a car turn in.

He moved carefully toward the house, stopping at the raised wooden deck that led to a pair of sliding doors and the kitchen. Step. Stop. Look and listen. He hunkered low, taking advantage of the cover and concealment the deck offered, and began to move laterally.

He was almost at the left corner of the house, and getting ready to take a quick peek past the edge, when he heard a voice from behind him, quiet but cutting with deadly intent through the silent night air.

“Don't turn around. I'm wearing goggles, too. I'm behind cover, and there's a laser dot right on your spine.”

Ben had a nanosecond to decide whether to instantly turn and engage or to comply. The calm confidence in the voice, and the facts it had just articulated, persuaded him the second choice was better. For now.

He remained motionless. Where was the guy? From where the voice had come from, he must be behind the hot tub.

“Drop the gun and lose the goggles,” the voice said. “Move very, very slowly. The laser is attached to a Taurus Judge.”

Ben knew the model-a revolver that could be chambered with.410 shotgun ammunition, rifled to disperse the shot and shred a fist-sized hole from twenty feet out.

In instant mental shorthand, his mind processed the available information. The accent was American, the diction idiomatic. He understood Ben knew firearms, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to count on the mention of the Taurus having the desired effect. He didn't want Ben dead-yet-otherwise he'd be dead already.

So they wanted something from him. He would find out what soon enough. In the meantime, he had a few advantages. Very small, under the circumstances, but better than nothing at all. He closed his eyes.

“Drop the gun and lose the goggles,” the voice said again.

He waited, figuring he'd get one last warning, using the extra seconds to think, to give his eyes more time to adjust to the dark he would face without the goggles.

He understood the nature of his mistake. He'd assumed they would be laying an ambush for Alex, a civilian. Instead, they'd been ready for an operator, him, and adjusted their tactics and positioning accordingly. He was furious with himself for failing to have foreseen this. After they'd lost two at the Four Seasons that morning, they would have known there was serious opposition. They'd outthought him. And outplayed him.

Then he realized. The girl. Goddamn her. Goddamn himself, for letting his guard down. She was plenty smart, smarter than you'd have to be to figure out what he was planning on tonight. She'd made a call, after their little moment in the corridor. And that clueless pat-down in the bar… she played dumb like a pro.

“One more chance to lose the gun and the goggles, and then I put you down.”

Without turning, Ben extended the Glock away from his body, moving very slowly as though trying to reassure the guy of his docility, but in fact giving his closed eyes precious seconds more to adjust. The Glock dropped to the wet grass with a quiet thump.

“Now the goggles. Slowly.”

The empty holster felt like a hollow in his guts. The knowledge that Alex had his backup made him want to puke. Slowly, slowly, he loosened the headgear and eased off the goggles. He opened his eyes. He had a little night vision back. But not enough. Not yet. He extended the goggles to his side and let them fall.

“Where's the one who lives here?” the voice asked.

Thank God he'd put Alex in the extra room. They must have checked the one where the girl thought he was sleeping. It was something, but it wouldn't last. In just a few hours, Alex would wake up and probably knock on Sarah's door. Without Ben to warn him, he'd be toast.

He didn't answer. The guy had given him three tries on the gun and goggles. Now that Ben was disarmed and running blind, the guy could be expected to be at least that patient again.

“Where is he?” the voice asked.

“I don't know,” Ben said.

“We don't want to hurt him. He has something we need. If he hands it over, he walks away. Simple.”

If he hadn't been a hair away from being eviscerated with buckshot, Ben might have laughed. He knew what the guy was doing: helping Ben rationalize giving Alex up. Don't help us, and you die, went the implicit calculus. Do help us, and your brother will be fine. Easy, right?

“I really don't know,” Ben said. He shifted his eyes left, then right. Things were coming into focus now in the faint moonlight. And he knew the layout, knew it by heart.

“Let me tell you how it's going to be,” the voice said. “You tell me where he is. I make a phone call. Some people go talk to him. You and I wait here, in his nice, warm house. When the people call me back to tell me they have what we need, we all go away, and everyone lives happily ever after. Sound good?”

This time, Ben did laugh. “Yeah. Like a fairy tale.”

He was five feet from the corner of the house, a gap that in his present circumstances looked as wide as the Grand Canyon. There was something just on the other side he could use. Assuming it was still there, of course. If it wasn't, even if he made it around the corner, he was dead. But Alex hadn't changed anything else. And regardless, it was his only chance.

“Listen, buddy, you're in a bad spot, I know. But here's the way it is. Maybe I'm bullshitting you. Maybe I'm not. But trust me on this, okay? When I ask you again? This one more time I'm going to ask you? If you don't tell me something I can work with, the thing you'll see a second later, the last thing you'll see ever, will be the mist that used to be your insides.”

Without letting any sign of it come to the surface, Ben tensed to move faster than he had ever moved in his life. Then he laughed, long and hard and with a confidence he absolutely didn't feel. The laughter was inappropriate and incongruous, and no matter how good the guy was, trying to process it was going to momentarily suck up a few precious neurons.

“Something funny?” the voice said.

“For me it is. He's in the tree right over you.”

The instant the last word was out of his mouth, Ben dove for the corner like he'd been shot out of a cannon. And it worked: the laughter, the momentary shift in the guy's focus to what was going on above him instead of in front, and good old action beating reaction-it was just enough. He hit the deck on his stomach like he was sliding into third base and heard the boom of the Taurus behind him, felt lead flying through the air just above his head. He rolled in close to the house, got his feet under him, and dove forward again.

The woodpile. There was always a tarp-covered half cord or cord of firewood here, stacked parallel to the side of the house and two feet away from it because his dad didn't want termites to have an easy jump from the wood to the foundation. And it was still here, thank God, not as much as he remembered but chest high. He scrambled to his feet and turned, his back to the house. He flexed his knees and dropped his hips low, getting his head and body below the top of the pile. He brought his palms up against it, his elbows in, his forehead pressed against the protruding ends of the logs.

And then the guy made a mistake. In his fear that Ben might clear the fence and escape, and in his confidence that Ben was effectively blind now, he followed in too fast. Ben tensed, forcing himself to wait the extra second, to let the guy narrow the gap, and then blasted up and through the wood like an offensive lineman crashing into a blocking sled. Two-foot lengths of hard white oak-splits, rounds, and everything in between-exploded out. Ben charged out behind them. He heard a heavy thud, heard the guy cry out, and then he was on him, wrapping his left hand around the barrel of the gun and twisting hard to the left, driving the other hand into the guy's throat, shoving him backward, slamming him back into the fence. The gun went off again but the muzzle was pointed away from him and then he felt the guy's trigger finger break and the gun tore free. He reversed direction instantly, bringing the gun in muzzle-first in a hammer fist grip, driving it into the guy's temple like he was pounding in a nail. The guy spun away and doubled over, his hands suddenly invisible, clearly reaching for a backup weapon. Ben took the Taurus in his right hand, put the front sight on the guy's back, and rolled the trigger. There was a flash from the muzzle and the gun kicked in his hand. The guy's body jerked as though he was trying to shrug something off, then he dropped to his knees. Ben kept the gun on him and moved in, wanting to shoot him again but hating the thought of the noise of a fourth discharge.

There was no need. The.410 ammunition had shredded the guy, and in the pale light of the moon Ben could see blood flowing from all over his back. The guy groped a hand around to the gore, then held it before his face. “Fuck me,” he whispered, his tone faintly wondrous, and pitched face-forward to the ground.

Ben moved in, keeping the gun on the guy. He turned him over with a foot and checked for a pulse in this neck. Nothing. He was done.

He retrieved the goggles he had dropped and got them back on, then picked up the Glock. He went back to the guy and pulled the goggles from his slack-jawed face. Caucasian, close-cropped hair, about thirty, maybe younger. That didn't tell him anything. His tactics had been good, though, at least until he'd followed Ben around the corner of the house. But that could be excused-he wouldn't have had a way of knowing how well Ben knew the terrain. And his equipment was good, too. The Taurus, of course; and his goggles were Night Optics, like Ben's.

He crouched next to the body for a moment, sucking wind, trying to clear his head and figure out what to do. A series of snapshot images clicked open and closed in his mind: Tossing a baseball with his dad. Throwing a Frisbee to Arlo. Katie, laughing, throwing barbecue sauce at him after he'd squirted her with a water gun. He looked down at the body and for a moment was paralyzed by the colliding past and present.

Come on, he thought. Focus. Three shots fired. Pretty damn loud. The lots were big in Ladera, though, typically separated by fences and trees that would suppress some of the sound. Could be people slept through it all, or convinced themselves it was something other than gunshots, or thought it might be gunshots but figured someone else would do something about it. Could be someone picked up the phone and called the police. He couldn't afford to wait around to find out.

He went through the guy's pockets quickly, not expecting anything. This one was better than the Russians. He was a pro. It wasn't like he was going to be carrying a business card.

A bunch of spare Taurus rounds. Useless. A SureFire E1E mini light. Same. And…

A car key. No rental agency fob or other identifying characteristics, but it belonged to a Volvo. He'd seen a few Volvos parked on the streets on his way in. A good bet one of them belonged to his new dead friend here. Or if not, then another one, somewhere within, say, a one-mile radius from the house. After all, the guy didn't parachute in here.

He dragged the body back behind the hot tub. He took the guy's goggles and the Taurus-the less physical evidence left at the scene, the better-and headed back over the fence and to his car. He drove away with the headlights off, switching them on again only when he was back on Erica. He parked far back in the Ladera Center parking lot. There were only two streets in and out of Ladera, and from here Ben could see both. If the police came, he would quietly drive away.

He waited, watching and thinking. Leave the guy, or move him? There were risks either way. If he left him, it wouldn't be long before someone saw the body. And a body in his brother's backyard was too close a connection to himself. Okay. This guy had to go for one last ride and be found somewhere else, if he was ever found at all.

After a half hour with no sign of police, he drove back to Escanyo and parked as he had before. He crossed the yard, hopped the fence, and walked over to the woodpile. He grabbed the tarp that had been covering it, got the guy onto it, and dragged him back to the fence. The tarp was plastic and sledded easily across the wet grass. At the base of the fence he rolled the guy into the tarp, managed to scoop the package up onto his shoulder, and then, using both hands and his head, shoved it over the side. From there it was an easy drag to the car.

He passed two Volvos parked in the street on the way out. Both times he hit the remote unlock button on the key he had taken from the dead guy, hoping for a bit of luck. No good either time. Okay, take care of business and come back later. Too risky to drive around looking for the guy's car with his body cooling in the trunk.

Two minutes later he was back on 280, heading north. He made two stops: first, San Andreas Lake, where he punched the necessary holes in the body to prevent it from floating and then dumped it, along with the guy's pistol and goggles and the knife he used for the aeration; second, a Dumpster in the Mission, where he unloaded the bloody tarp. Then he drove back to the hotel, smiling grimly at the prospect of the girl. Wasn't she going to be surprised to see him now.