“If we’re on the job, where are we going?”
“DC Ranch.” One of the silver spoon developments in the McDowell Mountains. We sped on, climbing through Dreamy Draw and the North Phoenix Mountains and quickly reaching the 101 beltway. The big Olds engine seemed barely challenged; my foot had plenty of room between the accelerator pedal and the floor. I tried again.
“And what’s at DC Ranch?”
“Yuri.”
I felt an involuntary shiver. I glanced at Peralta, who stared ahead.
“If our intelligence is correct, we’ll find Yuri in the Page-Frellick House. Ever been there?”
“Nope.”
“It’s a custom job that backs up to Thompson Peak. When they built it in ’98, it was priced for $3.7 million, and a retired executive from Canton, Ohio, bought it. I went there once for a Christmas party, bunch of Republican bigwigs. The fireplace was bigger than my first apartment. Anyway, it’s been vacant for a year or so. The economy, you know. So they rented it out…”
“How did we find this out?”
“Your wife, Mapstone. She gets results.”
We got no closer than a command post just off Scottsdale Road. The parkway was blocked, and deputies and city cops were turning away homeowners in their Ferraris and Rolls Royces.
Peralta walked over to a redone bus that held the sheriff’s mobile command center. Beside a large golden badge, lettering proclaimed MARICOPA COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE, and in smaller letters below, MIKE PERALTA, SHERIFF. My old friend had done OK. I slid my badge onto my belt, borrowed a pair of binoculars, and wandered around. This had been empty desert even when I was an undergraduate. As a kid, I would come out here with Grandfather to hike and target shoot. I remembered the preternatural silence, where even a buzzing fly sounded loud. Now it was the province of the superrich, retired CEOs looking for anonymity and Lasik surgeons from Minneapolis looking for a winter home. The houses dotted the rocky hillsides and perched above dry washes and arroyos. Walls and gates reminded anyone who forgot that this was private property.
For the moment, at least, the sheriff had suspended property rights. The air was full of screeching tires and revving engines as angry residents were turned away. It mixed in with the traffic sounds from Scottsdale Road and the occasional scream of Lear jets taking off from Scottsdale airport. My eye went to a group of men in black uniforms, Kevlar helmets, and vests. They were saddling up on all-terrain vehicles, with exotic-looking weapons slung over their shoulders. Emblems on their backs said FBI. In a moment, they drove single-file across an expanse of sand and rock, then disappeared down a bank into a wash. The ATVs were amazingly silent.
“An FBI team,” Peralta said, reappearing behind me, with his suit coat gone and his shoulder holster prominent. “It’s their operation.”
Eric Pham walked up behind us and nodded. He had covered his starched white shirt with a Kevlar vest bearing the letters FBI.
“I think we’ve got them, David,” he said.
“All we have to do is hope the dust storm doesn’t hit,” I said. So far, the wind was up, whipping us with occasional sand, but the sun was still out and we had at least an hour’s daylight.
“All we have to do,” Peralta said, “is sit here and enjoy the show.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Even the binoculars didn’t provide a very good view of the house. I saw native stone, a wall of tinted glass, and a roof set at a rakish angle. Then I didn’t see much. The storm came on, cloaking the mountains and then the scattered houses in dusty haze. At this time of day it almost looked like the fog in San Francisco, except for my persistent coughing. Back to the west, Camelback and Mummy mountains were barely visible. I heard some deputies cursing. I made my way quietly into the command post, where two rows of consoles were being monitored by deputies and FBI agents wearing slender headsets. TV screens showed a view of the desert, then the house- apparently the assault team carried cameras so the brass could watch the fun. An agent turned to Pham, Peralta, and a Scottsdale police deputy chief: “Team Blue is in place.” In another minute: “Team Red is in place.”
Barely audibly, Pham said, “Begin operation.”
Peralta turned and walked outside. It didn’t take much to bore him, especially if it was a multi-jurisdictional operation like this one. I decided to follow him. Just as I stepped onto the ground, I heard a muffled “whump.” Turning toward the house, I saw a flash and heard another concussion. From the command center I heard someone call, “Showtime.”
Peralta faced toward the action, his hands behind his back, his powerful shoulders tensed.
“You think they’ll screw it up, don’t you?” I said, trying to ease my own anxiety, tamp down my hope that Lindsey and I might be reunited soon.
“What I think doesn’t matter, Mapstone.”
“What about what you know?”
He faced me, one black eyebrow barely raised.
“The Pilgrim case,” I said. “You know more than you’re telling me.”
He studied me with a slow orbit of his eyes. “The Kate Vare thing? Don’t be paranoid, Mapstone. She was convinced you were holding out on her about some vagrant chick you interviewed. She was raising a stink with Chief Wilson and the county supervisors, so it seemed easy enough to let her check the files in your office. Don’t worry, we didn’t disturb your precious library of history books.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What then?” he asked, his voice suddenly impatient.
I was about to launch into it when we heard an unmistakable crackle from the direction of the house, then expletives from the command center. Peralta hurried back in, and I followed him enough to stand in the doorway.
“…taking fire…one suspect is down. He’s down in the kitchen. An officer is down. Officer down…”
“How many do we think are in there?” I asked, and was ignored. Over my shoulder, the sound of automatic weapons fire had become steady. But these were short bursts, apparently from both sides. We were dealing with trained, disciplined scumbags inside that three-million-dollar pile of rocks.
Then the only sounds were wind and traffic.
“Building is secure. Building is secure. We have one officer down and four suspects down. Send in medics.”
Two ambulances were flagged through the roadblock, escorted by a Scottsdale PD unit. The tightness in my gut started to let up a little.
Someone shouted, “One of ’em’s unaccounted for. Hang on…”
Then, after a few centuries: “Yuri. Yuri’s not among the suspects.”
I stepped back outside, as if propelled by the Russian’s dark magic. My hand clutched the butt of the Colt Python, as if Yuri would suddenly appear from around the corner of the bus and kill us all. It didn’t seem impossible. The dust storm was full upon us now, the wind coming in hard horizontal bursts. The timeless logic of the desert trying to reclaim its own. The mountains were no more than a quarter mile away, but I could only see murky oblivion in that direction. I closed my eyes against the flying particles and prepared to step inside the command center. But a bulk came the other way, nearly knocking me down. Peralta.
“Let’s go,” he said, a rare wild look in his eyes.
“What?”
He spun me and pushed me like I weighed ninety pounds. Behind me, “Goddamn it, David, let’s go!”
I ran to the car. Peralta was right behind me, but he had retrieved a shotgun from one of the cruisers.
“Go!” he ordered. I assumed he meant to the house, so I blew past a befuddled deputy and aimed the Oldsmobile up Thompson Peak Parkway, then into a side road and quickly climbed into the foothills. Getting closer, I saw the ambulances and sheriff’s cruisers pull around to a wide driveway where a gazillion-car garage was built into the rocky face of the hillside. Medics were talking to one of the ninja tactical guys.
Then everything changed.
