Last shot

Chapter 3

Bear accelerated down the Harbor Freeway, his overused Ram protesting with a whine of engine and shocks. For a prison break, as with a missing-persons, the first twenty-four hours are key. Since 1979, when the Justice Department shifted responsibility for fugitives from the FBI to the Marshals Service, federal prison escapees had fallen into the Service's domain. Tim and Bear had swung by the district office downtown to grab whatever files Guerrera had been able to pull together. Consigned to light duty in the squad room after a questionable use of force during a raid last spring, Guerrera had accompanied them down the hall on their way out, right up to the awkward moment when the elevator doors banged shut in his envious face.

Bear, proud godfather, kept a photo rubber-banded to the cracked sun visor-himself holding Tyler upside down by the ankles before Legoland's pint-size Empire State Building. He laid on the horn, then passed a soccer mom in a Hummer with a NO WAR FOR OIL bumper sticker, the Dodge, hardly fuel-thrifty itself, shuddering its disapproval.

Tim thumbed through a sheaf of printouts, stopping at Walker Jameson's presentencing report and squinting at the fax-squashed letters at the periphery. U.S. Marine Corps. Enlisted. MOS: Infantry Rifleman. If the brief, unofficial write-up of his nine years in the Corps was accurate, Jameson had seen action in Jordan, Kosovo, Somalia, Sudan, and Iraq. After 9/11 he'd requested to retrain on an Anti-Terrorist Task Force and attended Scout/Sniper School at Quantico, making corporal as a sniper with First Force Recon. A photocopy of a grainy picture showed a lean, powerful man, fist tensed around a combat knife. His camo-smeared face was turned to the shadows, a near-perfect seam of dark claiming the left side. His rifle was slung, stock to his right shoulder, barrel at his opposite knee.

Having spent eleven years as a platoon sergeant with the Army Rangers, Tim was only too aware of the experience Jameson had amassed in his diverse deployments. Tim studied his fugitive's face. A Spec Ops warrior trained at taxpayer expense to think as Tim once thought, to stalk as he stalked, to shoot as he shot. Tim set the photo on the dash. His eyes pulled to the bottom line of the PSR. Dishonorable discharge. Reduced to E-1. Six months in Leavenworth. No further explanation.

"Remind me to tell Guerrera to get ahold of Jameson's SRB."

"His who?" Bear asked.

"Service Record Book. His file." He and Bear had worked together for so long he sometimes forgot that their shared lexicon didn't extend to military jargon.

Jameson's personal section was surprisingly spare. Thirty-one years old. Married once, long separated, though the divorce wasn't on paper yet. No kids. One sister, five years older. During his marriage he'd lived in Littlerock. The rural community of about ten thousand was located fifty miles northeast of L.A., smack in the middle of pretty much nothing. After his last deployment and vacation in Leavenworth, he hadn't returned. From what Tim knew of Littlerock, it was easy to see why.

The Dodge veered onto one of the Long Beach exits and flew across the channel on a green suspension bridge. Bear finally eased off the gas as they arced down onto Terminal Island. Home of the prison that had accommodated inmates ranging from Al Capone to Charlie Manson, the island was also an integral part of the Port of Los Angeles. Semis lined the roads end to end like building fronts. Shadowy container ships crawled in and out of berths, some large enough to give the illusion that it was the land that was casting off, washing the Ram with it. The white, ribbed tube of a pipeline twisted overhead through the island like a monorail.

Jameson had been handed a five-year sentence for stockpiling explosives. He'd gotten rolled up in a federal sting attempting to acquire two crates of frag grenades. Good-behavior credits had won him a one-year reduction.

"Five years seems a bit steep for a first-time weapons beef," Tim said. "Did Guerrera give any background?" When Marshal Tannino, roused from sleep, had pulled Tim aside at the office to remind him in a rare facile lapse of the importance of a quick takedown, Tim had missed Guerrera's full rundown.

Bear raised his voice to be heard over the loose dashboard and the garbage truck rattling by. "Jameson refused to cooperate-wouldn't name names, wear a wire, nothing-so they played up the aggravating factors and stuck it to him. Cost him years, probably."

The watchtower loomed into view. The dark plain of the harbor, glittering to the east beyond an ornamental strip of well-tended grass, underlined the tower's beaconlike appearance. The prison rose above a cyclone fence, its concrete blocks pallid yellow. Coils of razor wire formed a dense and forbidding underbrush. Rust-red bars obscured dim windows and the thousand-man confraternity of the Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institute. To the west stood a cluster of coast guard administrative buildings. They looked ready to crowd the prison right off the land, its eastern wall hanging over the water. Officers jogged along the building's walls, hauling semiautomatics, their shouts faint in wind off the ocean. The tower spotlight glared off the fake quartz rocks in the narrow run between expanses of chain link, making Tim squint. The escape had to have been as spectacular as billed. Again Tim found himself musing on Jameson's considerable training.

Bear flashed his creds at the guard in the station, who spit tobacco into a paper coffee cup and said, "Warden's expecting you. Guns stay in your vehicle."

They pulled through the gate, parked, and slid their guns into the glove box. Tim removed the handcuff key from his key chain and taped it under his watch.

He frowned at the file in his lap, and Bear plucked up the top page and studied it, as if to pin down the cause of Tim's taking offense. Tim chewed his cheek and conned the choppy harbor. The air smelled strongly of tar. The distant, sonorous call of a tanker vibrated the window.

Tim said, "Why's a guy who's racking up good-behavior credits serve most of his sentence, then break out?"

"Convicts move in mysterious ways." Bear jiggled the key to free it from the ignition. "But we work that out, we're in the game."

Across the parking lot, the warden stepped from the building and raised a hand in greeting. Tim waved back, and he and Bear unsnapped their seat belts.

Tim threw open his door, then paused. "Gimme his identifiers again. Jameson."

Bear held up the sheet to the faint light. "Six feet. Hundred ninety pounds. White."

"Great. He looks like everyone. He looks like no one."

Bear glanced at the photo on the dash. "He looks like you."