The Heist

  “Sounds like a winner to me,” Jake said. “And even if it goes to hell, it’s not like you’re going to be backed against a wall in some third-world country and executed by an army of illiterate rapists that the bozos at the CIA, in their infinite wisdom, armed with U.S. weapons.”

  “But I could end up in prison.”

  He waved off her concern. “I’d break you out.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “You’re my daughter, aren’t you?”

  Kate smiled. Sure, he’d missed a lot of Christmases and birthdays during her childhood, but not many fathers could be counted on to mount a prison break.

  When Neal Burnside was a kid, he wanted to be Superman. Over the years, especially those he’d spent as a federal prosecutor, he decided that fighting a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way was a lousy line of work if you weren’t born on Krypton. By Burnside’s thinking, the Man of Steel could afford to be the all-American hero because his overhead was low. He didn’t have to pay a mortgage, property taxes, or even utilities on his Fortress of Solitude. He also didn’t have to deal with any crap. He could leap tall buildings in a single bound, change the course of mighty rivers, and bend steel with his bare hands without having to worry about FAA regulations, environmental impact reports, or union contracts. And at the end of the day, he could be satisfied going home with Clark Kent’s paltry paycheck because he knew he’d won clear, unambiguous victories.

  Burnside never reached the Clark Kent level of satisfaction as a federal prosecutor, because after a couple cases Burnside realized he didn’t so much care about the clear, unambiguous victories. Burnside cared about the money. And federal prosecutors didn’t make much money. So Burnside had no regrets or moral qualms about leaving the Justice Department and becoming a criminal defense attorney, trading his Men’s Wearhouse suits for Tom Ford, his Chevy Malibu for a Maserati Quattroporte, and his two-bedroom Culver City apartment for a secluded Bel Air mansion.

  As far as truth and justice goes, he’d decided those were flexible concepts that depended entirely on a person’s social and political standing, and how much money they earned. That’s why he didn’t represent accused murderers, child molesters, kidnappers, or rapists unless they happened to be movie stars, major sports figures, or CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

  Burnside’s sleep aid of choice was a big steak dinner washed down by a bottle of excellent wine with a chaser of sex. Tonight he was presently about to move on to the chaser stage. He was at Mastro’s in Beverly Hills with a woman he’d “friended” on Facebook and was seeing in the flesh for the first time. And there was a lot of flesh to see because she was wearing a skintight, very low cut, slit-sleeve little black dress that might as well have been painted on her knockout body. She’d devoured her steak, lobster mashed potatoes, and a whole side of mushrooms like a mountain man and hadn’t gone slinking away to the bathroom to cough it back up, which Burnside took as a very good sign. In his experience, a woman with a voracious appetite for food also had one for sex. Okay, maybe she was a little older than he’d expected, but she was hot all the same, and he wasn’t in the mood to start over searching out a good time at this hour.

  The older woman happened to be Wilma Owens, off and running on her first assignment. Willie was full of steak and lobster and looking forward to rounding out her night by getting behind the wheel of Burnside’s Maserati and delivering Burnside to Nick.

  “Well, my goodness, will you look at this car,” Willie said, jiggling her double-Ds in the excitement of the moment, almost giving Burnside an on-the-spot stiffy, as the restaurant valet pulled up with Burnside’s Maserati Quattroporte. “I’d do anything to drive this car,” Willie told Burnside. “Anything.”

  “Sounds like a good deal to me,” Burnside said, taking the shotgun seat. “Just be careful. This is a high-powered car.”

  “Sugar, I’m a high-powered kind of girl. Hold on to your hat. We’re gonna have fun.”

  Willie put the pedal to the floor and Burnside sucked air as she blasted through the streets of Beverly Hills, down Sunset Boulevard, and up into Bel Air like she was racing in the Monaco Grand Prix, hugging the curves, weaving through traffic, and never slowing for anything.

  “Sweetie, this is just like being back on the dirt tracks in Texas,” she said to Burnside. “I’m lovin’ this. I’m downright moist.”

  Burnside was approaching moist too, but he was trying to control himself. By the time the car came to a screeching, sudden halt at the end of the long circular driveway in front of his house, he felt like he’d already run the bases and was ready to slide home. Apparently his date felt the same way, because she turned, grabbed his face in her hands, and gave him a kiss that nearly set his clothes on fire.

  “I like the way you drive,” he said.

  “I’m just getting started.”

  Burnside would have dragged her across the console and done the deed without even unbuckling his seat belt, but Willie was already halfway to his front door.

  “Come on, hot stuff,” she said. “I can’t wait much longer. If you don’t hurry up and get out of the car, I’m gonna have to start without you.”

  Burnside’s sprawling one-story home, with its white-gravel roof, floor-to-ceiling windows, and Jet Age angles, was set back far from the street. Designed by some once-beloved, now-dead architect, it was considered a classic example of early 1960s modernism. Burnside had bought the house and saved it from the wrecking ball not because he believed in the preservation of historic architecture but for the publicity and the stature of living in a famous property. The truth was, he hated the house, which was dated and poorly designed, and he often regretted not leveling it when he had the chance. Tonight his thoughts weren’t of the house when he punched his code into the security panel and unlocked the front door. His thoughts were about burying his face in the double-Ds.

  He led Willie inside and slammed the door shut, and she grabbed him again and pulled him into a kiss. Burnside pressed her back against the wall and was hiking up her dress when he felt her suddenly stiffen, and not in a good way. She was looking at something over his shoulder. He was just registering that when someone yanked him away from her and backhanded him across the face.

  He staggered back, momentarily stunned at the sight of two men with black ski masks over their faces, holding him at gunpoint. His first reaction wasn’t fear but anger, and not toward the armed intruders but at the high-end security company that had installed his outrageously expensive, and supposedly state-of-the art, alarm system. I will sue them into oblivion, he thought.

  Willie was frozen against the wall, staring at the man nearest Burnside in wide-eyed terror.

  “What do you want?” Burnside asked.

  The man pointed his gun at Willie and shot her in the forehead, killing her instantly. Burnside’s gasp of horror was louder than the muffled gunshot, which had a deceptively gentle, pneumatic sound. Willie’s head slammed back against the wall with a thunk, and she slid lifelessly to the floor, leaving a wide streak of blood.

  Burnside stared at her and backed away, holding his hands up in front of him and waving them as if that simple gesture would, like shaking an Etch A Sketch, just make it all go away. “No, no, no.”

  His attention was so focused on the shooter who’d blithely killed Willie that he wasn’t aware of the other man next to him until he was jabbed with a stun gun. And then he wasn’t aware of much at all because fifty thousand volts coursed through him. He felt heat, heard something go zing in his brain, and he was on the floor staring up at the ceiling. His mind made an attempt to reboot, but his body lagged behind, and his first clear thought in that helpless moment was the hope that his sphincters had held.

  He was dragged outside as a black panel van roared up his circular driveway and slid to a stop on the far side of his car, just past his front steps. One of the hooded men opened the back doors of the van, and Burnside was about to get tossed inside when a woman shouted at
them:

  “Halt, FBI.”

  While the scene that was unfolding was a fake, the FBI part was true, because the FBI agent was Kate.

  The two men dropped Burnside, whirled around, and exchanged gunfire with Kate. The shooter nearest to Burnside took a hit and was blasted clear off his feet and into the side of the van, his chest covered in blood. Scrambled neurons notwithstanding, Burnside made a feeble, uncoordinated attempt to crawl for cover. Car doors slammed, more shots were fired, and the van sped away.

  Kate looked down at Burnside. “If you want to live you’ll do exactly what I say.”

  She pulled him to his feet and dragged him down the driveway toward the street, where her Crown Victoria was parked, the engine running. She opened the door to the backseat. “Get on the floor.”

  “What?”

  “On the floor!”

  Kate shoved him into the car and slammed the door shut. She ran around to the driver’s side, jumped behind the wheel, and floored it, the tires burning rubber and the rear fishtailing as she fled the scene.

  “Who are you?” Burnside asked.

  “FBI. Are you okay?”

  He did a quick check of his body. There were no injuries, and he hadn’t peed his pants. His body and his dignity were intact. Thank God for that.

  “Yes, I’m fine, but they killed my date.”

  “Of course they did. They never leave witnesses. Anything with a pulse gets put down. If you had a goldfish, they would have killed that, too. Do you have a cell phone on you?”

  He felt around in his pockets and found his phone. “Yes.”

  “Toss it onto the front passenger seat,” she said.

  He flipped the phone over the seat and Kate threw it out her open window.

  “What? Why?” he said.

  “Do you want to live?”

  “Yes, of course,” Burnside said.

  “Then do as I tell you. If they are tracking your cell phone, then another hit squad is closing in on us right now, so we only have a few minutes head start. Give me your shoes.”

  “My shoes?”

  “You heard me. Your shoes. And your jacket, too. Make it fast.”

  He slipped them all off and handed them to her, and she tossed the whole bundle out the window.

  “What did you do that for?” he asked. “What was the point to that?”

  “In case they slipped a tracking device into your shoes or the lining of your jacket.” She shook her head. “Have you forgotten everything you learned as a prosecutor?”

  He fought back the bile rising up in his throat. It wasn’t the horror of what he’d witnessed or delayed anxiety that was making him sick—it was her driving. She was no Wilma.

  “Who are they?” he asked.

  “The Viboras.”

  Burnside felt like he’d been jabbed with a stun gun again. One that delivered fifty thousand volts of raw, primal fear. He knew all about the Viboras. They’d started out as a dozen Mexican soldiers trained by the U.S. Army to be elite narco-commandos. But the dirty dozen went rogue in 1998 to become protectors and enforcers for the Gulf Cartel, then turned on their masters. They used their U.S. military training and the tricks of the drug trade that they’d learned from the cartel to create their own criminal organization and declare war on their competitors. They quickly amassed ten thousand soldiers and became known for the horrific scale of their atrocities, like decapitating dozens of their rivals and putting their heads on stakes along a popular smuggling route, and their willingness to blithely kill civilians, massacring entire villages with any ties to rival cartels.

  The Viboras’ influence, and their terrifying use of violence, spread beyond Mexico’s borders into the United States, where they made inroads by recruiting, arming, and training urban street gangs.

  The Viboras were like rabid dogs, but Neal Burnside had no idea how they’d picked up his scent. He’d never gone after the Viboras when he was a federal prosecutor, and he’d never represented one of them—or, worse, one of their rivals—in his years as a criminal defense attorney.

  “This is a big mistake,” he said. “I haven’t had any dealings with any of the Mexican drug cartels. What do they want with me?”

  “They want their money back,” she said.

  “I don’t have it.”

  “But Derek Griffin does,” she said.

  While Burnside was cowering behind his car for cover and Kate was shooting blanks at Nick and Chet, Willie slipped around the corner of the house and replaced Tom Underhill in the driver’s seat of the van.

  Nick jumped into the van beside Chet, who was the gunman who’d pretended to be blown off his feet by Kate’s shot, and closed the door. Willie put the van in gear and drove off.

  “This is a real step down after that Maserati,” she said. “It’s like driving a lawn mower.”

  “Good, you won’t be tempted to speed,” Nick said, sitting down on the floor across from a grinning Chet Kershaw.

  “That was awesome,” Chet said.

  Nick relaxed back against the side of the van. “Thanks to your Hollywood magic.”

  “Bullet hits and exploding blood packs are old school,” Chet said. “My granddaddy was doing them before I was born. This was easy.”

  Nick had designed it to be easy. He was working with an amateur civilian crew and had no idea how they’d react once the hustle was in play. He’d purposely devised the moves so he wouldn’t push the crew too far beyond their comfortable fields of expertise, and that included Kate. All he’d asked them to do was what they already did well. The only one outside his element now was Tom Underhill, but he’d simply been required to drive the van into the driveway, park it at the right angle to mask Willie’s escape, and position it for a quick exit to the street. With a wife and three kids, Tom had plenty of practice driving an SUV and dealing with distractions. Everything else, at least from Nick’s perspective, had been basic. He hadn’t bothered trying to hack Burnside’s alarm system. He’d simply bumped the locks on the back door, waited for Burnside to disarm the system himself, and then, while Willie was groping Burnside, he and Chet rushed in.

  Tom turned up the police band radio under the dash, tuning in to the constant stream of dispatch orders and cop chatter. “Are you listening to the police band?” he asked Nick. “They’re after us. One of the neighbors reported gunshots and gave a description of the van to the police. Black-and-whites and a chopper are on their way.”

  “It’s okay,” Nick said. “We have an escape plan.”

  “I’ve never been chased by the police before,” Tom said.

  “You aren’t being chased,” Nick said. “The van is.”

  “I’m in the van,” Tom said.

  “They don’t know that,” Nick told him.

  Willie drove west on Sunset, skirting the northern perimeter of the UCLA campus, and Chet pulled off his bloodied shirt and removed the exploded blood bags that were taped to his chest. They were crossing the intersection of Sunset and Stone Canyon Road when they heard the dispatcher notifying patrol cars in the area that a van matching the description of the one reported by Burnside’s neighbor had been spotted by the chopper heading west on Sunset toward Westwood Plaza Drive. Willie made a hard left into the UCLA campus and sped down the long ramp into the parking structure beneath the athletic field. A soccer game was going on and there were thousands of fans in the stands.

  No one was talking now. Tom and Chet were hanging on to their seats with white knuckles, listening to the dispatcher announce that patrol cars were seconds away. Willie was in the zone, concentrating on executing turns in the cumbersome van. Nick was watching his crew, confident in the outcome, knowing they would sail through the garage entrance because he’d purchased a parking permit in advance.

  Willie parked at an angle in a loading zone. It was a spot Nick picked so the van would block the surveillance camera aimed at the elevator and stairwell. Everyone grabbed a gym bag, burst out of the van, ran to the stairwell, and stuffed themselves
into UCLA Bruins shirts, sweats, and hats. They dumped the bags in the trash, bolted up the stairs, split up, and disappeared into the crowd watching the game just as police cars drove into the parking structure and the chopper circled overhead.

  Topanga Canyon runs through the Santa Monica Mountains between the San Fernando Valley and the beach. It’s a secluded, deeply wooded enclave that became known in the 1960s as a bohemian hideaway for artists, poets, actors, beatniks, hippies, lesbians, communists, and anyone else who delighted in being cast as a rebel, radical, or outsider. And for the most part, that was how Topanga Canyon had remained, a place where the sound of tinkling wind chimes drowned out the birds, where the air was redolent with incense, and where you could still find braless women wearing tie-dye shirts and flowers in their hair driving VW Beetles.

  Kate drove Burnside deep into the canyon toward a cabin that was at the end of a dirt trail, far from any neighbors, even farther from a paved road, and surrounded by tall trees and dry, overgrown brush.

  The one-bedroom cabin was a fire waiting to happen. And if it did, it would be history repeating itself. The cabin had been badly damaged in the Malibu fire a decade ago and abandoned ever since, mired in a complicated legal dispute among the owners, the bank, and the insurance company. It was perfect for Nick’s needs. He had Tom Underhill fix it up, patch the roof, install a generator, and make sure the water, electrical, and septic systems were working.

  Kate’s Crown Vic wasn’t made to be driven hard over unpaved roads and it bounced like a boat on a stormy sea, but Burnside didn’t complain. He’d been silent ever since their discussion about the Viboras and Derek Griffin. She was glad for that, but knew the questions would be coming soon. He was a former prosecutor and she expected to be grilled like a hostile witness on the stand.