Gone

CHAPTER 40

White light flashed in the pitch black and began fluttering. After a moment, a low and insistent electronic buzzing began sounding off, the measured pulses synched with the flutter of the light.

Vida Gomez woke in the back upstairs bedroom of the safe house on South Alta Vista Boulevard in La Brea. She sat up and unplugged the charger from the encrypted cartel cell phone as she lifted it from the nightstand.

For a fraction of a second, she stared at the green Accept and red Reject buttons on the smartphone’s screen. The more accurate choice would be Live or Die, she thought, finally accepting the call with a callused thumb.

She didn’t say hello. In fact, she didn’t speak once. She just sat in the dark, automatically listening and memorizing the new orders she was being given.

A half hour later, they were rolling backward down the suburban safe house’s cobblestone driveway in the team’s only legitimate vehicle, a black Honda Odyssey, Touring edition. Like Vida, the men were wearing shorts and T-shirts and sneakers. Instead of sporting their usual Kevlar vests and long guns, they were armed with small conceal-carry pistols, Glock 26 and Taurus PT 24/7 subcompacts in 9 mm. The orders were explicit that they keep a low profile.

Avoiding the freeways, they headed south and then west along side streets, Venice Boulevard to Lincoln to Washington Boulevard. Vida, behind the wheel, had to consult the onboard GPS only minimally in order to find the way. She’d been utterly lost in the confusing city the first week she had been here, but now she was getting the hang of it.

With the lack of traffic, they arrived at Marina del Rey in under thirty minutes. Vida had never been to the up-scale seaside area before. The pastel-colored high-rises and palm trees reminded her of a trip to Miami she had taken as a child.

They left the van in a parking lot and went out along one of the docks. It was an enormous marina, the berths containing at least a thousand vessels. The forty-two-foot sportfishing boat they were looking for was the third one down on the left of Dock 29. In the predawn murk, Vida could just make out its name on the stern, Aces and Eights.

The middle-aged American loading the bait bins on the deck was scruffy and blond and had a beer belly and enormous, scarred hands.

“Help you?” he said, dropping his bucket to the deck with a hollow bong.

“Are you Captain Scanlon? Thomas Scanlon?”

“I am,” the big blond man said.

“We’re the Raphael party,” Vida said.

Captain Scanlon looked at Vida, then at the six hard-faced killers behind her.

“Permission to board granted,” he said, waving them on.

Everything was all set up, the rods and reels, the charts. Even fishing licenses for all of them had been provided in case there was some kind of problem.

Vida stayed with Scanlon up in the flying bridge as they cast off. The American completely ignored her as he piloted the boat, humming to himself as he checked his charts and the compass on the computer in front of him. She wondered how many runs like this he had done for the cartel. This wasn’t his first. She was sure of that.

They met other sportfishers as they headed for the mouth of the marina. One of them, carrying a party of what looked like female college-volleyball players, hailed Scanlon with a horn blast. Scanlon honked back twice, laughing merrily.

“Enjoying yourself?” Vida said coldly.

“Siempre,” Scanlon told her with a wink. “Always.”

That makes one of us, Vida thought, grasping the cool railing of the bobbing ship and trying to keep down the churning contents of her stomach.