The Puppet Master

The sun was barely up, and there was very little traffic when we left in two private vans. Plus Wayne's personal pickup, and the unmarked company car—with the locater off. Everyone but me had Glocks as side arms. In addition, there were eight twelve-gauge pumpguns loaded with buckshot, and two spare box magazines for each. Since they've come out with a good automatic tube loader, shotguns have regained a lot of favor for police work. Actually I couldn't imagine needing to reload—if there was any shooting, it would be brief—but it seemed foolish not to take them. Two men carried car killers—lightweight, 50mm, low-muzzle-energy rocket launchers, only twenty-eight inches long. They'd been designed after the massive civil demonstrations and street fighting during the Great Crash. Wayne brought along a Colt Suppressor, a police version of the old Colt Commando. It's a fully automatic .22 caliber carbine, also only 28 inches long.

On the road, the weapons were stashed out of sight. As for me, I carried only the Walther in my shoulder holster. I wanted to seem unarmed.

We didn't want to look like a caravan, so we strung out. I led off, and each vehicle kept only the vehicle ahead of him in sight. It was a short drive to the Golden State Freeway, then north to the Valley Freeway and west out of the city, out of the LAPD's jurisdiction. From there we took a state road north to Fillmore—a small town by southern California standards—where we broke up to eat breakfast in two different restaurants, in three seemingly separate groups. I was the only one of us who went to breakfast armed. If we'd met the SVI there, we'd have been in real trouble. From Fillmore, we drove north a few miles into the Los Padres National Forest, to a picnic area Wayne knew. At that hour, no one was there but two drifters sleeping in the back of their eleven-year-old Ford pickup. It was a beautiful May morning, and I hated to do it, but I hassled them out. I had leverage: the area was posted against camping, I'm built like a wrestler, and there were two other guys in the car with me. Then, consulting with our ex-Ranger and marine noncoms, we decided on our ambush locations. The wooded picnic ground was strung out along a nearly dry creek. We chose the down-road edge; that way, if any early picnickers arrived before things got interesting, they'd be farther up the creek, hopefully out of harm's way.

By the time all assignments had been made, it was almost 8 o'clock: nearly time to call Joe at the office. I was depending on the phones there being monitored by either the LAPD, or hopefully the SVI. My bet was the SVI, using access provided by the LAPD; their conspiracy had to minimize officer involvement. The more they involved honest cops, the more likely that questions would get asked. Questions without safe and convincing answers. Then someone would call Internal Affairs, and the fat would be in the fire.

At 8:05 I got back in the company car and keyed the phone. Dalili transferred me to Joe without even checking with him. Obviously he'd told her to expect my call.

'Joe,' I said, 'I've had second thoughts since last evening.'

'What do you mean, 'second thoughts,' Seppanen?'

'Tuuli got back last night. She doesn't want me to go to Mexico. So we're hiding out. We're in a National Forest campground about an hour from town. She's freaked, afraid I'll be killed, scared the SVI will track me down. I know this is a lot to ask, but— Could you send a couple guys out as bodyguards? From the security division? They wouldn't have to be top men; she won't know the difference. I'll pay for them myself if you want.'

Joe put on a testy voice. 'Damn it, Seppanen, you're stretching my patience.'

I put a little edge on my own tongue. 'Keep in mind what happened to our apartment house.'

Long pause. 'I don't know. You're a fugitive . . . How long do you want these guys?'

'A day or two. Yesterday I recorded a statement from a runaway SVI man, a guy named Robert Myers. It tells all about the SVI abducting and murdering Christman, and fits our earlier information perfectly. I've got it on microcube; it's in my pocket right now. The thing is, I sent a copy to KCBS-TV, via a runner named Hector Duncan. The whole thing ought to be playing on the noon news today—the evening news anyway. I'm surprised it wasn't on yesterday or this morning. I suppose they're doing some checking, to make sure it's not a hoax.

'After I sent off Myers' statement, he told me the LAPD is involved with the SVI. The SVI's terminated some heavy dons for them, in the Spanish mafia. He didn't know what the payoff was. Not cash, I wouldn't think. Probably privileges and an information pipeline. That's one reason Tuuli's so scared; the LAPD involvement.'

'Huh!' Long pause. 'Martti, you'd better not be lying to me. Okay, I'll send three good men. But if it comes to a face-off with the police, they'll have my orders to lay down. You got that? Now, where to?'

I told him. We were camped at the Rito Oso Picnic Area north of Fillmore, on a spur road off Forest Road 14. There were directional signs. Joe said the guys would get there about 11 o'clock.

Then we disconnected. He'd done a good job of acting. We both had.

Wayne had one of the guys drive back to where the spur road met Forest Road 14. The directional sign there had another sign hanging from it that said no camping, which contradicted my story, and we wanted it out of sight when the SVI arrived. Assuming they came. When he got back, we moved all the vehicles but the company sedan to the back end of the picnic area, where they couldn't be seen from the ambush zone. Then I had the men take their positions.

One of the considerations was that the guys would get sleepy. So Wayne was up the road a ways, hiding in a thicket of chaparral oak, watching. He was an inveterate varmint hunter—he lived in the Simi Valley near the edge of development—and carried a crow hunter's call in his glove compartment. When he saw someone coming, he was to caw three times, pause, then repeat, to alert us so everyone could get prone and ready. The guys were stationed in pairs, responsible for keeping each other awake.

I sat at the first picnic table, 60 or 70 feet from the road and next to a chimneyed stone fireplace I could duck behind. Then I waited, reading a copy of Sports Afield that Wayne had had in his pickup. Reading a bit and thinking a lot. Any battle plan, even a simple one like ours, is based on assumptions, and battles are famous for not going as planned. Things come up. Things go wrong. Everything goes to hell and confusion. If you've read much history, you know that.

The SVI might not have heard my talk with Joe, and the LAPD might not get the word to them. Hell, no one might have been monitoring at all; we could have been talking to ourselves. Or Masters might smell a rat and stay away, or send in a whole squad of men. Hopefully he'd come in personally with only two or three guys, and that would be all. But he might arrive with a squad, and send scouts in first, and we'd think the scouts were the whole party. Then we'd have the rest of them down on us after we'd committed ourselves, and the shit would hit the fan.

That was my biggest worry—that he'd send in scouts first. After all, most of his guys were ex-Rangers or ex- Special Forces, and if he didn't think to send out scouts, they'd remind him.

But then, if they were only expecting a guy and his wife, why send scouts?

Unless Masters smelled a rat. Back to that again. The stuff was running in circles through my mind. I'd read a