Bosch realized that if Ivan and Igor were indeed the killers who had wiped out the pharmacy in San Fernando, then they had made the call themselves. The end of the case was right in front of him.
The plane turned and positioned for a run down the airstrip. Bosch felt he knew how this ride was supposed to end for him. He put the cane across his thighs and pulled out his wallet, yanking it off the chain seemingly by accident. He hoped the pulse alert was delivered to the DEA team that supposedly was watching over him.
Bosch made a show of taking the currency from the plastic bag and putting it into his wallet. He then put the wallet and the bag of pills into his pockets.
The plane started moving down the runway, gathering momentum. Wind started blasting through the compartment. The Russians hadn’t closed the jump door. Bosch pointed at the opening and yelled.
“You going to close that?”
Ivan shook his head and gestured toward the opening.
“No door!” he yelled back.
Bosch hadn’t noticed that before.
The plane took off. It rose steeply and Bosch was pushed back against the rear wall of the passenger compartment. Almost immediately, the craft started to bank left while still in its climb. It then leveled and was on a course west.
Bosch knew that would take them over the center of the Salton Sea.
28
The unseen pilot throttled back once the plane leveled off. The engine whine lowered significantly and that served as a signal to Ivan. He got up and started moving toward Bosch at the back of the plane. He had to hunch down to keep his head from hitting the curved ceiling. As he came forward, he reached into a front pocket and pulled out a phone. When he got to Bosch, he crouched on his haunches like a baseball catcher. He looked at Bosch, then at the screen of his phone, and then back at Bosch.
“You cop,” he said.
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
“What?” Bosch said. “What are you talking about?”
Ivan referred to his phone again. Over his shoulder Bosch could see Igor still in his seat watching.
“Har-ree Boosh,” Ivan said. “You cop.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bosch said. “I’m not—”
“San Fernando PD! It say so.”
“What says so?”
Ivan turned the phone so Bosch could see the screen. On it was a photo of a folded section of a newspaper. There was a photo of him that he could tell had been taken last week outside La Farmacia Familia on the day of the murders. It was the continuation page of a story, but not a story on the pharmacy murders. The headline across the body of the story continuation and his photo told Bosch all he needed to know.
Somebody had leaked the story to the Times. Kennedy. He had gotten word that Bosch and Haller were going to make a move in the Borders hearing and had acted to push Haller back on his heels and vilify Bosch. The story had included his current employment, and the photo of him outside the pharmacy had been a big glaring tip-off to the Russians.
Ivan lowered the phone and put it in his back pocket. A crooked smile formed on his lips as he grabbed hold of the barrel of Bosch’s cane and they struggled for control of it. Ivan reached his free hand behind him and pulled a gun from under his shirt. With his other hand he pushed the barrel of the cane in on Bosch and leaned into him.
“Get up, cop,” he said. “You’re going to jump now. Maybe you find your friend Santos, yah?”
Bosch checked the gun. It was a chrome-plated automatic, not the disabled revolver the DEA had planted in Bosch’s backpack and that Ivan had brandished on Friday night.
He riffed off of the Russian’s last words, hoping to distract him.
“You killed Santos, didn’t you? You killed him and took over. And that boy in the pharmacy. You killed him and his father.”
“That boy was punk. He did not listen to his father and the father could not control the son. They got what they deserved.”
Ivan tilted his head back toward Igor as if to acknowledge their work on eliminating the problem of José Esquivel Jr. For a split second his attention was divided, and that was all the time Bosch needed. He twisted his wrist and turned the curved handle of the cane. He heard the release snick and in one quick motion pulled the handle and stiletto free, then drove the point into Ivan’s right side with an upward thrust. The thin, sharp blade punctured the skin and went through the ribs and deep into the Russian’s chest.
Ivan’s eyes widened and his mouth formed a silent O. The two men stared at each other for a second that seemed to last a minute. Then Ivan dropped the gun to clutch at the stiletto’s handle. But blood had already spilled over the weapon and Bosch’s hand. The surfaces were too slippery for Ivan to find purchase. He brought his left hand up and grabbed Bosch’s throat. But he was weakening and it was the desperate move of a dying man.
Bosch looked past Ivan to Igor, who was still seated at the front. He was smiling because he had not seen the blood yet and thought that his partner was sadistically choking Bosch out before throwing him from the plane.
Bosch had killed men face-to-face before — as a young man in the tunnels back in Vietnam. He knew what he needed to do to finish the job. He pulled back on the stiletto and went in again, two quick thrusts up into the neck and near the armpit, where he knew major arteries waited. He then pushed the Russian back. As Ivan fell to the floor, dying, Bosch grabbed the gun.
He stood up, the stiletto dripping blood in his left hand, the gun in his right. He started moving up the plane toward Igor.
Igor rose from his seat, ready for battle. Then his eyes fell to the pistol. He made a stutter move, first to one side, then the other, as if his body were moving ahead of his mind and seeking escape. Then, inexplicably, he lunged to his left and went through the jump door.
Bosch held still for a moment, stunned by the move, then quickly went up to the door, dropping the stiletto and grabbing the steel handle that skydivers hold before stepping out onto the jump platform. He leaned out. They were flying over the Salton Sea at about two hundred feet. Bosch guessed that they had flown low to cut down on the chance that someone might witness Bosch’s drop from the plane.
Bosch leaned further out to look down on the water behind the plane. The sun’s reflection off the surface was almost blinding and he could see no sign of Igor. If he had survived the jump, he was miles from shore.
Bosch went to the cockpit door and rapped hard on it with the pistol. He figured the pilot took it as a signal that the disposal of Bosch had been completed. The plane throttled up and started to climb.
He then tried the door and found it locked. He grabbed on to overhead handles for leverage and kicked his heel into the door, bending it on its frame enough that the lock snapped loose. He quickly flung the door open and thrust himself through the narrow opening, leading with the gun.
“What the fuck?” the pilot yelled.
He then did a double-take when he saw that it was Bosch and not one of the Russians.
“Oh, hey, wait, what’s going on?” he yelped.
Bosch dropped into the empty copilot’s seat. He reached over and put the muzzle of the gun against the pilot’s temple.
“What’s going on is I’m a police officer and you are going to do exactly what I tell you to do,” he said. “You understand me?”
The pilot was late sixties and white, with gin blossoms across his nose. A pilot no one else would hire.
“Yes, sir, no problem,” he said. “Whatever you say.”
His English was unaccented. He was likely native-born American. Bosch took a chance, noting the man’s age and the blurred tattoos on his arms.