Renegade (2013), page 4
part #2 of Called To Serve Series
Dundee cleared his throat. “Maybe we could take a little break.”
“Is that what you think?” Pike’s voice was a low roar in the room. “That you’re protecting me?”
Clement was fast on the uptake, obviously realizing he’d screwed up, but he was too stubborn or too stupid to let go of it. Like a dog that had shoved its head through a hole in the fence to get a bone but was unwilling to drop it when it wouldn’t fit back through. “Of course we’re protecting you. If not for the protection we provide, the Diablos would have killed you after they killed Peter Tull. You’d be dead by now.”
For a moment, Pike wasn’t in the interview room anymore. He was back in that roadside bar off Interstate 35 outside of Dallas trying to hold Petey together. Blood stink filled Pike’s nose, something he’d become familiar with, and something he could never forget.
Petey was trying to talk again, trying to say he was sorry for getting them crossways with the Diablos. And Pike knew in his heart that if Petey had gotten away with his score and they’d gotten down to Mexico the way he’d thought they would, Petey would have been laughing, buying the beer and the women.
That was a nightmare that played through Pike’s evenings on a regular basis. That scene was always there waiting for him, poised patiently to steal over him at a moment’s notice. As he held his friend, Pike remembered all the good years, back when Petey hadn’t gotten hooked on drugs and alcohol and playing against the odds. They’d been friends, sharing some of the same foster homes, sometimes at different times.
But all through that, they’d had each other’s back.
A sack of venom broke open inside Pike’s chest. He rose from the chair, surging to his feet like a lion, barely keeping himself on his side of the conference table.
“You’re not protecting me! The only reason I came to you people was so I could get all the Diablos responsible for killing Petey! Now three years have come and gone. Months ago, I was told I was done with this, that those guys who killed Petey were going away forever. Now you’re telling me that the prosecutor’s office wants to open that case back up, that those guys have cut a deal and are gonna walk?” Pike still couldn’t believe that. Everything had been locked in. Now the legal team had dropped the ball and everything he’d done was for nothing.
“They’re not going to walk.” Clement strained to be calm, but his tone was so forced it was like he was talking to a child. “We’ve got a chance here to do some more good. To take down more of the Diablo organization, as well as some of the crime families they’re in bed with. I promise you, those guys who killed your friend will not walk. That’s not going to happen. We just need you to testify some more.”
Pike cursed and slapped the table with his open hand, causing Clement and Dundee to flinch. “I didn’t sign on to make a career out of this!”
“Yeah, you did. When you took on that new identity, you guaranteed your compliance.”
“Then there’s no more compliance.” The back of Pike’s neck felt hot.
“Their defense attorney is prepared to put guys on the stand who will say they killed your friend, not the men we put away.”
“They’re lying.”
“We know that. But it will end up being your word against theirs in a court of appeals. What we have to do is work together. We need you to leverage a takedown of more of the Diablos. We’ve got to get the whole organization, not a handful of guys.” Clement’s face hardened. “You’re going to do what we need you to do, Mr. Morgan. You’re going to play ball the way we tell you to.”
Teetering on the edge of control, Pike leaned across the table. “No, I’m not here for your protection.”
Dundee stood at Pike’s side. The marshal tried to take Pike by the arm.
Pike yanked his arm away, never shifting his gaze off the prosecutor. “Don’t expect to come down here and order me around like I’m somebody that belongs to you.” He regained control of his voice. “I don’t. I’ve been my own since I can remember. You want to know the only man that’s ever protected me, Counselor?”
Clement looked pale and stared down at the tabletop. In the background, on the other side of the glass walls, the marshals went on alert. Situations arose pretty quickly in the office as tempers flared.
“Petey, that’s who. I had trouble, I didn’t have to look over my shoulder. Petey was there.”
Until the day I wasn’t there for him. The thought hit Pike between the eyes like a sledgehammer. The guilt that he’d thought dead and buried for so long came screaming back like a Harley running straight dual exhaust, popping and snarling.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking you and these marshals are replacing Petey. You’re not.” Pike’s chest tightened. “You’re just a means to an end, brother. Nothing more. If you have a problem with me, we can call it quits right here. I’ll go on my way and take care of this situation myself. I’m not a big fan of your department right now.”
“Pike.” Dundee spoke calmly. “That’s not what he’s saying. That’s not what we want. They need you now more than ever.”
Clement evidently grew some courage with Dundee standing between him and Pike. “Did you threaten to kill the Diablos? Is that what you just did?”
Pike leaned around Dundee. “I didn’t threaten. That’s a promise.”
Clement looked at Dundee and shook his head. “My office can’t deal with this attitude, Marshal. Surely you see that.”
Dundee held up a hand. “Maybe you could just refrain from speaking for a moment, Counselor.”
“Me?” Clement looked apoplectic. “Marshal, I’m not the one who just threatened to commit murder or walk out on this arrangement, and I’m not the one who burned down a crack house.”
Dundee kept focused on Clement and spoke in a flat, no-nonsense voice. “Get some air, Mr. Clement.”
For a moment the attorney looked like he was going to argue; then he cursed, pushed up from the table, and stalked out of the interview room.
Without a word, Dundee leaned a hip on the conference table and crossed his arms. He held his silence for a time, then looked at Pike. “If it was up to me, I’d give you a commendation for burning down the crack house.”
Pike sat back in his chair and placed his hands behind his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Denying knowledge of anything criminal was second nature to him.
Dundee smiled. “I didn’t think you would, but this office has had to dissuade a determined homicide cop in Tulsa from looking at you for that crack house. And he’s pretty certain you did it.”
“Look, if you guys were going to pull the pin on that, we’d already be at it. Nobody got killed in that crack house. How many people did those dealers kill while they were in operation? How many teenage prostitutes did they put into business? No, that crack house was a blight. It had to go, and the local PD didn’t seem overly concerned about it.”
“It’s not the crack house the DA is concerned about. They’re afraid that the other Diablos are going to figure out where we’ve got you stashed if you raise your profile. If those guys do learn where you’re at, you know you’re a heartbeat away from becoming a dead man.”
“I’m not worried about the Diablos.”
“Yeah, I didn’t figure you were. Clement out there thinks you’ve got some kind of death wish.” Dundee silently studied Pike. “You don’t, do you?”
“If I did, I’d have already been dead by now. You run the roads I do, dying gets to be pretty easy.” Just ask Petey.
“Maybe. But Clement’s boss isn’t happy that you’re serving in the Marines either. The Marshals Office had to work long and hard to close that deal. Being a Marine isn’t exactly a low profile.”
No, it wasn’t, but being in the Marine Reserve—getting to go overseas to handle different theaters of action—had helped keep the edge off. Putting the crack houses out of business had helped too. If Pike could have, he probably would have joined the Marines full-time for a while because now that Petey was gone, he didn’t know what to do with himself, but his record prevented him from a full-time bid at the moment. The Marines didn’t know exactly who he was, and they were a selective breed. Pike respected that about them.
“I’m not a guy who’s going to sit on his hands, Marshal.” Pike kept his voice low and level, but the anger inside him still struggled to get out. He hated these meetings. They underscored his helplessness to get all of Petey’s killers. “I told you that when Mulvaney brought me to you people.”
Dundee chuckled. “That you did, Pike, but I guess we weren’t expecting you the way you are. You’re kind of raw.”
“I say what I mean.”
“A little tact might help.”
Staring through the glass walls, Pike watched Clement as he spoke on his cell phone and gestured in short, explosive movements. The man clearly wasn’t happy.
“Is the DA going to make a deal with the Diablos?” Pike asked the question almost offhandedly, like he didn’t truly care. But the pure truth of the matter was that he only stayed put right now to make sure the Diablos who killed Petey got taken down. He thought he’d accomplished that, and now it was about to slip through his fingers.
“Yeah, he is if he has to. But it doesn’t have to come to that, Pike. They need you to work with them some more, tell them more about the Diablos and their organization. If you do this—if you can deliver—they’ll take the Diablos gang down.”
“Then why hasn’t that already been done?”
Dundee sighed. “Because the Diablo biker gang is turning out to be more connected than anyone had thought. Besides the drugs and prostitution rackets you told us about, that gang is tied in pretty tightly with human trafficking and the Mexican cocaine cartels. The Diablos are running product and money up I-35 and across I-40.”
“So? Sounds like more reason to take them down.”
“If the prosecutor was just after the Diablos, sure. But now he’s not just after them. He wants more. Your testimony gives us some of the Diablos through the murder of your friend. Guys who are important to the organization, but they can be replaced. Subsequent investigation has netted us inroads to the trafficking networks, but the prosecutor has to have one to connect the other. You’re the connection. That’s why the prosecutor’s office doesn’t want you getting inadvertently burned by the Tulsa PD. We lose you, we lose the house of cards the prosecutor has been building for the last three years. Believe me, nobody wants to give that up.”
Pike understood that because the situation had been explained to him dozens of times. In fact, he’d been counting on it to keep him from getting into any serious trouble.
“The prosecutor doesn’t want those guys you put away back out on the street either. He’s coming up on an election year, and he’s not going to settle for getting the small players the Diablos want to dangle out there for him when there’s so much more ripe fruit hanging on low branches to be plucked by anybody savvy enough to figure it out.” Dundee shrugged. “So that means you have to cool your heels a little longer and let justice take its course.”
“Any idea how soon that’s going to be? Because justice has been dragging its tail for the last three years.”
“All I’m told is soon. And to be ready so I don’t have to get ready.”
“The DA’s getting greedy.” Pike shook his head. “I’ve seen that happen too many times to guys with more on the ball. He’s going to screw around and not be able to prove anything.”
“No, he’ll settle for what he can get soon. Like I said, we’ve got an election year coming up. He’s going to want to put points on the board. Give this thing another few months, Pike. That’s all I’m suggesting at this point. Another few months and you’ll be done with this.”
Pike took in a deep breath and let it out. Listening to Dundee made him feel good, and what the man said made sense, but Pike felt like ants were crawling all over his skin. He needed to be up and moving. The highway was calling.
And even when he was done with his part of the testimony against the Diablos, Petey would still be gone. Being done with his part didn’t mean winning.
6
THREE DAYS AFTER HE MASSACRED the convoy in the Safed Koh mountains, Yaqub led the donkey train carrying the seized cargo down the city’s war-torn streets without being challenged. Parachinar was under the auspices of the Kurram Agency, a part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. The military policed the city and neighboring regions and patrolled the border, but corruption ran deep.
For a portion of his cargo, Yaqub had tacit permission to conduct business within the city.
Once, Parachinar had been a beautiful place filled with orchards and breathtaking views of the surrounding snowcapped mountains. During that long-ago time, tribesmen had hiked down out of the mountains to winter their livestock. Goats and cattle grazed on the lush green grass that had filled the valley.
Before that, the Mogul emperors had traveled from Delhi, India, to while away lazy summers in Parachinar. That had been back when the land belonged to Afghanistan. These days, it was on the wrong side of the Durand Line, which had been drawn up in 1893 by the British and the Afghan emir, who had truly not had a choice in the matter. Those august beings had transferred the land to British India as a means of appeasement, but it hadn’t settled harsh territorial feelings.
That division of land was still hotly contested by Afghanistan and Pakistan, who had later claimed the land. But these days, a loose border between countries benefited both.
Al Qaeda could cross the border into Pakistan and remain relatively secure from Western forces. The Pakistani government gave lip service to the United Nations and other countries about patrolling that border to stop drug trafficking and terrorists, but they didn’t strain themselves doing it. In fact, they took considerable profits from those endeavors.
Potholes covered the street like a pestilent disease. Two- and three-story structures lined the thoroughfare, and occasionally Yaqub caught sight of armed men hiding inside rooms. Some of them would be corrupt policemen. Others would be greedy tribesmen looking for an easy mark they could profit from. Some of those would hope for material goods they could take and use or hawk, but others would be watching for information they could sell to the Kurram Agency or to Western intelligence officers on the other side of the Durand Line.
He walked with the AK-47 canted beside him, his eyes watchful and ever moving. Twice before, men in the city had made the mistake of thinking him an easy target. He’d left their bodies lying wherever they had hit the ground, and children had raced out of the shadows to loot the corpses in his wake.
Yaqub had no friends in Parachinar. Only people he did business with.
The air carried the stink of cooked meat and burned wood. Most of the traffic through the city was on foot. A few bicycles whished by on rubber tires, and donkey-drawn carts loaded with sale goods—produce as well as clothing—clattered by on wooden wheels.
Wali halted beside a three-story building that had once housed a hotel in better days. Reconstruction in the city was halfhearted and extremely slow. Spending money to resurrect targets for warring factions was foolish and wasteful, and it cut deeply into those corrupt profits. The hotel’s outer wall had been blown away years ago, and canvas had been strung over the gaping hole. All the loose stones had been mined from the wall, stripping it down to the supports. Everyone wanted the extra stones to build with, but no one wanted to accidentally undermine the building and make it fall.
These days, Zulfigar and his sons and grandsons kept watch over the building after claiming it as their own. They defended their property with assault weapons and knives and had shed their own blood as well as that of anyone foolish enough to think they could take the building from them. Zulfigar rented the building out to travelers who stayed in the rooms in the top two floors, and he used the bottom floor as a catchall for anything he wanted to sell—usually things that found their way into his possession.
Yaqub nodded at Wali, and the young man immediately disappeared into the building. In a few minutes, he would be on the rooftop with a pair of binoculars, watching the streets for anyone who might be observing them. And he would be scouting for the American military drones as well. Pakistan enforced the border as much as they could against the Western powers, but the Americans still sent their unmanned aerial vehicles across the border to spy. The Americans knew al Qaeda went there to regroup and train, but they couldn’t do much about it without risking an international incident.
Still, if the Americans had a confirmed target that was worth the risk, they would cross the border. Osama bin Laden had discovered that, and he had died for letting down his guard.
As Yaqub neared the canvas-covered wall, Zulfigar stepped out of it into view.
The man was old and fat, but still too mean and canny to die. He was a short man, barely over five feet, but he was almost as broad as he was tall. A fierce mustache and a beard white as the snow on the distant mountains stood out against his dark face. His two-tone brown pakol sat at a rakish angle on his head. His shalwar kameez covered him in layers of linen down to the American military boots he wore.
Three of Zulfigar’s sons or grandsons stood in a loose semicircle behind the old man. They were not as trusting as their progenitor. They kept their weapons at the ready.
“Ah, Yaqub, you have returned safely.” Zulfigar peered past Yaqub at the donkeys. “And with so many donkeys.”
“I have been blessed by God with a bounty, my friend.” Yaqub stopped and waved back at the smelly beasts. “Will my good fortune strain your generosity?”
“Of course not. I am charging you by the head, am I not?”
That hadn’t been the agreement, but Yaqub ignored that. The opium cargo had been greater than he’d expected. He could afford to be lavish. He didn’t intend to go into the drug business. That was only the means to an end.
