The Rescue

25

Bettina is up at sunrise in her silo room at the La Quinta Inn in Irvine, with maybe two hours of actual sleep the night before. Dreamed she was shooting an Olympic trap qualifier and Keith was there, watching from the stands.

She’s starved and foggy brained at the free breakfast, which she takes outside by the pool with Felix at her feet. The guy sitting at a table on the other side of the pool gives her a brisk nod. Looks like Dan Strickland because it is. A little chill runs the back of her neck. He may be generous and interesting, thinks Bettina, but he’s so focused on her and Felix it creeps her out. She tightens up on the leash and gives Strickland her back.

She’s just slipped Joe half a sausage link when the email arrives:

I am now confirming that you will sell Felix to me. As you know, my offer is $200,000.

Bettina gets right back:

Bettina forwards Godoy’s email to Special Agent Powers, who calls immediately and orders her to stay where she is and wait for instructions.

Unfortunately, El Gordo doesn’t get right back.

So she sneaks off with Felix to the nearest Turner’s Outdoorsman, where she buys a “point and fire” pepper gel pistol with a special trigger and a grip “deployment system” that will allegedly deliver maximum strength pepper gel bursts at fifteen feet. Plenty close for Valeria and Joaquín. It’s a stubby little thing, black with an orange slide, and small enough to fit into her purse.

El Gordo gets back fourteen hours later, at 10:00 p.m., by which time Bettina is crazy with frustration in her grain silo hotel room.

Bettina answers:

All of which Bettina sends to Powers, who tells her again to stand by and wait.

One thing that Bettina hates almost as much as being told what to do, is waiting.

But Powers is soon back to say they’ll have their people in place. All Bettina has to do is follow El Gordo’s instructions exactly. When she gets back to her car with the money, drive to the Laguna Riviera motel on Coast Highway, where a room has been reserved for her. Paid for, of course. The DEA will deliver Felix to her.

“Don’t let them take my dog.”

“They won’t get your dog. They won’t even know what hit them.”

This late, she easily finds a spot in the Laguna Beach Library parking lot, leashes up Felix, and crosses Coast Highway to Main Beach. The coastal eddy is in, and the night is misty and chill.

Nearing the lifeguard tower, Felix looks up at her three times. Sensing her nerves — Bettina guesses — that are surely running down the leash from her unusually jerky hands.

“I love you, Felix,” she says. “Don’t be afraid. I’m going to protect you.”

Which makes her think of the DEA, Billy Ray Crumley, and Dan Strickland, all offering to protect him. Her too.

“You have a good team on your side,” she says, and Felix looks up again, cocking his head intently.

The boardwalk foot traffic is light. The beaches are open until 1:00 a.m. Bettina watches the people coming across the sand, their bodies faint at first, then solidifying as they approach the lifeguard stand and its floodlights. A helicopter cruises by. Voices and bits of conversation drift past her as she joins the northwest bend of the boardwalk, headed for the big white plaster Laguna Beach Lifeguard tower, with its well-lighted emblem:

Her phone says 10:52 p.m., so she passes the tower on her left, heading toward the hulking black outcropping known as Rockpile. The waves are throwing up so much white water against the rocks that she can see the spray from a hundred yards away.

A runner pads by in big foamy shoes; a Dalmatian stops Felix for a friendly sniff; Bettina smiles faintly at the guy while she studies the faces coming past — no obvious Joaquín or Valeria among them, that she can see.

“Is this Felix?”

“Yes.”

“I loved that story. Really moved me.”

“He’s a terrific little guy. Night.”

“Good night, Ms. Blazak. I’m a big fan.”

“Thank you.”

“Richard.”

“Richard. Come on, dog!”

She takes a bench, studying faces, phone out, checking the minutes. Felix studies faces too. The March night is cold and Bettina buttons her wool duster all the way up.

At 10:59, she’s standing at the far inland side of the boardwalk, twenty feet or so from the lifeguard tower, Felix sitting at her feet. Bettina turns a slow, casual circle, degree by degree, meeting each oncoming face with a steady deadpan.

Sees Powers out on the grass, dressed in running clothes, stretching.

And Arnie Crumley sitting on the boardwalk facing the ocean, wearing an Angels jacket and cap, a white fast-food bag open on his lap.

Bettina’s really hoping and praying there’s not another Richard out here tonight, who might somehow foul the takedown. She wonders if Valeria will maybe pull a little gun from her purse, and if Joaquín will pull something bigger and more deadly. She knows that they were the ones at the La Quinta. Knows. Fingers the pepper gel gun deep in the pocket of her coat. Felix looks up at her with a mixture of concern and trust that breaks her heart. What have I gotten you into? she wonders.

“It’s going to be okay.”

Five minutes. Ten.

Then a woman’s accented voice by phone:

“Go back to your car and drive the dog to Moulton Meadows Park. When you get to the parking lot, park but do not get out of your car. Make sure Felix is on the leash. Control him.”

The park is in the hills above South Laguna, a tidy little place where Bettina filmed part of her video special on the club she belongs to, the Biker Chicks. Bettina drives toward it just under speed limit, hoping to give her confederates an easy target to follow.

Moulton Meadows Park is long closed tonight and the lot is empty. Bettina pulls into a space facing the street, cracks the windows and kills the engine. Up here, the fog is lighter. Felix sits in the Jeep’s passenger seat, curious as always, ears up, flaps out.

“They’re probably checking us out,” she says softly. “I didn’t see our federal friends, but I texted them. You heard me. We’re not on our own, little dog.”

Feeling that first little spark of hers, Bettina reaches into the back, flips the beach towel off the Model 12, and, hand on the grip behind the trigger, draws it carefully beside her. Wedges it barrel-down between the console and the floor.

She watches Capistrano Avenue, and the parking lot, and the homes across the street. Occasional cars. An SUV. Could that be her cavalry? Then a throaty, exotic-looking thing that looks green in the misty streetlights, and very much like Dan Strickland’s ride. Her wannabe guardian angel? Somehow, she’s not surprised. And she’s glad her self-defense guru is here.

Bettina feels the spark trying to light the flame that can become the fire inside her, the fire that stokes her excitement, lets her accept the danger, and, say, race down Coast Highway at forty miles an hour on her Cannondale with the Biker Chicks. Or, all alone, lets her drop into a marching six-footer at Brooks Street, the entire Pacific behind her, pushing her like a giant’s hand. Or stand in front of a video cam and let the world see her for what she is, a former shy tomboy who has become a reporter with a good story to tell, has her own show, and a possible Pulitzer in her future.

But the spark feels different to her now.

Like it’s damp. And it can’t get her flame going, because she knows that using this big shotgun on the Sinaloans would be dangerously stupid.

So she moves the Model 12 to the back seat again, and covers it with the beach towel, her heart thumping hard and her fingers growing cold.

Which is when a woman emerges from the foggy dark of the park and starts across the parking lot toward Bettina. She’s in jeans and boots and a black leather moto jacket, with a big red bag over one shoulder. A blonde. Looks nothing like the woman at the hotel.

Felix sees her first and growls low.

“Quiet.”

He whimpers, his attention on Capistrano Avenue now, where motion catches Bettina’s eye as a man crosses the street, coming toward her from another direction. He’s carrying a metal catch pole with a noose at one end. He’s older and smaller than the man at La Quinta.

“Quiet, boy. Mama loves you,” says Bettina, lowering the front windows half a foot.

Bettina feels like crying.

Then retrieving the shotgun and blowing them both away.

Calm down, she thinks. Down...

Valeria stops six feet from the driver’s side and Joaquín six feet from Felix’s window.

“Good evening, señorita I am Joaquín.”

The dog growls and Bettina hushes him again. She can’t believe how heavy she feels, almost numb, her hands and feet frozen.

Good evening, she hears herself say.

Bettina raises her open hands, then lowers them slowly, her right pressing deep into the duster pocket.

“Hello, Felix,” says Joaquín, peering in. “I see you are wearing a leash. Señorita Blazak, open the door and bring now the dog to me. When I have the leash, Valeria will give you the money.”

Something tells Bettina that this is going too fast, that her defenders have not gotten into place, that if she obeys Joaquín, Felix will be on his way back to Mexico in a heartbeat.

“I want to see the money first,” she says.

“You must trust us, as we trust you.”

“What if it’s just a few hundred dollars in that bag? Or bottled water?”

“It is all the money. Why are you not obeying my orders?”

Suddenly the dark, misty night is shot through by bright lights from all directions. Bettina, one cold hand on the door pull, squints into the beams, sees figures advancing, heavy-booted, military-looking people in black tactical wear, hung with weaponry and gear, night vision machine guns raised. She sees them through the windshield and both side windows, even in the rearview, an eerie war party on attack. A big white SUV comes slowly down Capistrano in the mist. Strickland’s exotic green sedan glides the opposite direction, slowly.

Bettina sees Valeria, blanched in the high beams, marching with her hands up toward the nearest phalanx, the bag dangling from one shoulder.

Then turns just as Joaquín pulls a pistol from his coat and muffled bullets rip the life out of him before he even hits the ground, his catch pole twanging on the asphalt.

Felix whimpers now, confused and eager to do something but no idea what. He looks at Bettina for guidance.

“We’re alive,” she says. “That’s all I know. We’re alive, Felix.”

She doesn’t move. Maybe can’t move with feet this cold. She hugs her heavy coat tight and watches a black helicopter descend from the darkness and touch down on the grass, not fifty feet away. No emblem, no ID, landing lights only.

The door opens and two tactical warriors drop to the ground then pull out a gurney. Its hinged legs automatically deploy when they clear the fuselage. A third man climbs out, covering his soldiers with a tactical shotgun. Bettina notes the slender red canister dangling from a carabiner on his chest.

One of the men toes Joaquín Páez’s head, which turns, then lolls lifelessly back into place. They lower the gurney and get him aboard while the cover man blasts the blood off the asphalt with the fire extinguisher, then hustles back to the chopper.

Bettina times this op on her phone. The reporter in her, always gathering information. Fifty-five seconds later, the machine corkscrews into the night in an unlit, ascending roar.

She pets Felix’s round little head and feels the warmth of him coming into her fingers.

Watches Powers and Arnie Crumley approach.