“That’s a good observation,” Ryan said.
“My father very much liked your American idea of a sheepdog, protecting the weak. I am sure he wished he would have had a son…”
“I doubt that,” Ryan said. “I’d like to meet your father.”
Yuki gave a solemn nod. “Sadly, he passed away last—”
She paused, focused on the cell phone in the center of the coffee table. An audible click said the GSM bug had activated at the other end of the line. Hushed voices rose above a hiss of static. A female spoke in broken Chinese.
“That is Kim Soo,” Yuki said, whispering though she did not need to. She leaned forward to listen intently.
Chavez and Adara sat up in their respective sleeping spots, as if programmed to rouse at the sound of static.
Amanda Salazar wailed in Spanish, vowing revenge for the death of her friend Beatriz. Chavez translated. Apparently, none of them knew who had pulled the trigger. No one had seen someone named Matías since earlier that day. He and his machete were both missing. Amanda said she had never trusted him. He certainly had something to do with Beatriz’s murder. Several men began to speak at once, this time in Mandarin. Kim Soo’s voice came over the phone again, louder than the rest, probably nearer the mics. From her tone, it sounded as if she was flirting with one of the men.
Jack waited for someone to translate. Yuki suddenly looked up at him. She started to speak, but Midas beat her to the punch.
“They’re going to Japan,” he said.
The conversation continued for another ten minutes along with the clank of silverware and the slurp of someone eating soup. At length, the microphone turned off. The battery may have died, but it was late and it was more likely that they’d all gone to bed.
“So apparently,” Midas said, sitting up now, “somebody wants Chen in Japan for a meeting.”
“What kind of meeting?” Ryan asked.
“That is not clear,” Yuki said. “His statements make no sense. It is as if his operation was of his own making.”
“What operation is that?” Chavez asked.
“That I do not know,” Yuki said. “The conversation was too broken. Chen sounds unsure of himself. This is odd behavior for someone who has exhibited nothing but extreme self-confidence up to this point.”
“I heard no mention of the bombing,” Adara said. “It seems like that’s all they would be talking about.”
“Indeed,” Yuki said.
“Amanda Salazar has to be involved with that bombing,” Ryan said. “I watched her do something with her cell phone at the exact moment it went off. And if she is involved, then Chen is involved up to his ass.”
“That would certainly seem to be the case,” Yuki said. “But all we know for sure is that Vincent Chen plans to return to Japan with Kim Soo.”
Ryan rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling incredibly tired. Air Force One would be in Japan in less than forty-eight hours with his dad on board, touching down right in the middle of — Ryan didn’t know what, but it wasn’t good.
Yukiko was already on her feet. She pulled a bag from the closet and began to throw in her things. “I am very sorry,” she said, “but I must return to Japan at once.”
“How will you get back?” Jack asked. He started to offer a ride on the Gulfstream but caught the slightest headshake from Chavez.
“My embassy has an aircraft,” Yuki said. “I apologize abandoning you like this.” She looked at Jack and smiled. “Perhaps we will meet again, Jack san. Under more pleasant circumstances.”
He smiled. “I hope so,” he said.
She had little to pack and her toiletries were loaded and her suitcase zipped in under two minutes. She handed Ryan a business card — blank but for a telephone number. “I am not so stupid as to think you will not try to find a flight to Japan. If you work for who I think you do, and you are able to get there in the next few days, please give me a call.”
She gave a slight bow and then was out the door, leaving the entire team alone in her apartment.
“Okay,” Chavez said, snapping his fingers at the rest of the team. “She doesn’t realize we have our own airplane. I would have offered her a ride, but the fact that we don’t have any bona fides as government intelligence officers might have posed a problem when we landed. Better that we go in on our own as tourists. I don’t plan to get in the way of the Japanese government, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to just sit back and wait to see how this plays out. There’s no quick way to get to Tokyo. Our asses need to be on that plane ten minutes ago.”
49
Nada. Zip. Zilch.
No, this was worse than zero.
Special Agent Callahan pounded the hood of her Ford Expedition and screamed at the night sky. A whip-poor-will answered her back from the line of cedars that grew along the fence beyond the twenty-two other police cars. The creepy bird was probably confused by all the strobing red-and-blues. Callahan had read somewhere that whip-poor-wills could sense death. This one sure knew its business.
The cartel guy tied to the tree on the side of Emilio Zambrano’s ranch house had been dead a couple hours at least, but not quite long enough for the fire that killed him to burn itself out. What was left of his head glowed like the poster for the Nicolas Cage Ghost Rider movie. His face was unrecognizable — gone, really — but they’d be able to get one set of fingerprints. The corpse was missing a hand, probably since birth. That should help to identify him. The killer had wrapped the guy’s head in what looked like a bath towel, taking care to leave the area around the mouth and nose exposed so he wouldn’t suffocate and die too quickly. One of the crime scene techs said he’d seen it before. They’d doused the towel in lamp oil so it burned more slowly and lit the turban from the top to make a human candle. A slow and extremely painful way to die.
Maybe Caruso’s scary friend had done this. He certainly had the eyes for it. Callahan was pretty sure he’d whacked the woman in the swimming pool, and the dead guy by the grave. Some would call what he did a service, like taking out the garbage. But there were lines you just didn’t cross. She would catch him eventually, and that was sad because he was making a difference.
Just hours before, Fort Worth PD had received a bizarre Skype confession from a guy who was obviously under duress from someone off camera. Even conservative Texas courts would throw out that confession. According to the FWPD detective, Parrot Villanueva had been stabbed to death with a screwdriver. Maybe the sobbing confessor had whacked him. Captive girls had been rescued in both those cases.
She couldn’t help but believe that if the vigilante had killed the one-handed guy, Zambrano’s body would have been tied to the tree along with him. No, this guy had committed some infraction against the cartel. Zambrano had murdered him for it and then vanished. Callahan would catch them both, Zambrano and Caruso’s friend. Eventually.
She stared at the shadow of the smoldering corpse across the yard and smacked the Expedition’s hood a final time for good measure. A couple of the Dallas County SWAT guys gave her better-luck-next-time shrugs. Her logical brain said they were only trying to assuage the guilt of her failure. But Callahan wanted to feel guilty.
Special Agent John Olson came out of the house on his cell, squinted at all the flashing lights, and then started toward Callahan when he found her. He dropped the phone back in his pocket and approached tentatively.
She gave him a hard look that he didn’t deserve. “What?”
“No ID yet on the dead guy,” he said. “But get this. Witnesses where that guy got killed up the street from you reported seeing a Hispanic male hanging around just before the murder — and he was missing a hand.”