The Chase

  “But he was, and if that wasn’t bad enough, now he runs BlackRhino, the elite private security agency the Pentagon has been using to outsource the ugliest, dirtiest aspects of fighting our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we go after Carter head-on for stealing the rooster, he’ll expose every black op the Pentagon has ever hired him to do, which would only whip up the scandal into a media firestorm of epic proportions. You’ve got to steal the rooster from him. It’s the most expedient option.”

  “It’s not a run-of-the-mill break-in we’re talking about here,” Kate said. “Carter Grove’s house is going to be protected by a state-of-the-art alarm system and a bunch of BlackRhino operatives, the best-trained and best-armed mercenaries money can buy. If we’re caught, they’ll torture us to find out who we work for and then feed us into a tree shredder.”

  “So don’t get caught. I thought you were a tough cookie.”

  “I am. But I’m not suicidal.”

  “I’m sure Nick can come up with something,” Jessup said. “You can remind him that this is exactly the kind of situation we broke him out of prison to solve.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kate said, slurping up the last of her shake. “And when he talked you into doing that for him, did it ever occur to you that you were being conned?”

  “Sure it did,” Jessup said. “That’s why we teamed him up with you.”

  A little over an hour after her meeting with Jessup, Kate sat at the kitchen table in her sister Megan’s house in Calabasas, a San Fernando Valley community of guard-gated tract house neighborhoods. The neighborhoods were built around a shopping center with a clock tower that held the biggest Rolex on earth.

  Megan shared her chair at the kitchen table with Jack Russell, her Jack Russell terrier, who’d squeezed himself between her butt and the backrest. The sisters were eating the remaining half of a banana cream pie.

  Megan was married, had two kids, and was three years younger and thirty pounds heavier than Kate.

  “You should take advantage of all the opportunities that being single, childless, and disgustingly thin give you,” Megan said.

  “I am,” Kate said. “I’m eating this pie after having a three-by-three, fries, and a shake at In-N-Out.”

  “I hate you, but that’s not what I was referring to.”

  “I know what you’re leading up to, and I’m telling you right now that I am not going on a blind date with some guy you met in line at Costco.”

  “He’s not some guy. He’s an accountant at Roger’s firm, and I’ve thoroughly vetted him. He could be the man of your dreams.”

  Roger was Megan’s husband. He was watching Iron Man 2 in the den with their two kids, four-year-old Tyler and six-year-old Sara.

  “Forget it, Megan.”

  “He is stable, rational, and dependable.”

  “Gee, he sounds thrilling,” Kate said. “I’ve heard cars described in more passionate terms.”

  “He’s also a fantastic lover.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because he’s an accountant,” Megan said.

  Kate scraped up the last of the pie. “I don’t see the connection.”

  “They are very tactile. They have amazing fingers from tapping their calculators all day. And they are extremely methodical in their work. So what you get is a man who will tirelessly explore every line item until he can file a strong return and get you a whopping refund.”

  The analogy was totally disturbing, and yet it made sense to Kate. “I’m doing fine. I can get my own dates, thank you.”

  “The only man in your life is Nicolas Fox, and he’s a criminal that you’re chasing. That’s just sad.”

  “Do I look sad to you?”

  Megan studied her sister. “No, you don’t, and you should. So what aren’t you telling me?”

  Jack Russell suddenly lifted his head and perked up his ears. An instant later Kate heard the front door open, and the dog launched himself off the chair and ran skittering across the tile floor to greet Kate’s dad.

  “What a terrific guard dog we have,” Megan said. “He doesn’t bark until the intruder is already in the house hacking us to pieces.”

  Jake O’Hare was a stocky, square-shouldered man in his sixties who’d retired from the military years ago but still kept his gray hair buzz-cut to army regs and did a hundred push-ups every morning.

  “You don’t need a guard dog,” Kate said. “You’ve got Dad living in the garage.”

  “Casita,” Jake said. “This is a classy neighborhood.” He looked down at the empty pie pan. “Looks like I’m late to the party.”

  “You’re just in time,” Kate said. “I need to talk to you.”

  “If this is going to be gun talk you have to take it outside,” Megan said. “We don’t allow gun talk in the house. We’re a hundred percent PC.”

  “Sad and pathetic,” Jake said. “This country was founded on guns.”

  Kate dropped her fork into the empty pie pan and stood. “We can talk in your casita.”

  Megan had two detached garages, and she’d turned one of them into an apartment for Jake. The apartment still had faux garage doors in front to conform to the gated community’s rigid architectural guidelines, and while they called it a casita, the interior was more Embassy Suites.

  Kate sat on her dad’s Naugahyde sofa in his casita and told him about the Smithsonian, the bronze rooster, and Carter Grove. She could talk to her father about her secret life because he’d had one, too. Most of his missions for the military were still classified.

  “How much do you know about Carter Grove?” Jake asked.

  “Just what I read in the newspapers. Plus the scuttlebutt I heard around the FBI water cooler.”

  She knew that Carter Grove had been a hatchet man. His relationship with the former president went back to their wildcatting days in the Texas oil fields. Back then, the president was the “vision guy,” the smooth talker who made the big deals. Carter Grove was the iron fist who hired thugs to blackmail politicians, to strong-arm stubborn landowners into selling their mineral rights, and to silence any discontent among the underpaid workforce. He employed those same techniques in D.C. and used the FBI and the CIA as his thugs. Agents who chafed at doing his dirty work were fired, blackballed in law enforcement, and, if they were lucky, found jobs in shopping mall security.

  “Then you know only half the story,” Jake said. “Carter almost single-handedly made BlackRhino the elite international army-for-hire that it is today. While he was chief of staff he threw lucrative defense contracts their way and encouraged the president to wage wars. BlackRhino paid Carter back handsomely by making him their CEO ten minutes after he left the White House.”

  “Did you ever work with BlackRhino in your military days?”

  “Not directly. I saw them on the fringes, training rebels in countries where the U.S. wasn’t supposed to be involved but had an active interest in the outcome of events.”

  “So the Pentagon had BlackRhino do their dirty work.”

  “It gave them deniability.”

  “With your covert experience, you’d seem like a perfect pick for BlackRhino. Did they try to hire you after you left the military?”

  “No, and do you want to know why?”

  “Because you don’t play well with others.”

  “Because it’s not enough for BlackRhino that you know how to kill. It’s important that you like to do it. If you do, you’re not going to care who lives or who dies as a consequence of your actions. That’s not me. You don’t want to mess with these guys, Kate.”

  “I don’t plan to. Whatever plan Nick comes up with to get the rooster, I’m sure it’s going to be a con of some kind, not a straight break-in. We’re not going to confront these guys in battle.”

  “You will if the con goes wrong,” Jake said. “And you will lose. I suggest you consider a combat option.”

  “Like what?”

  Jake got a couple bottles of beer out of his fridge and gave one to Kate.
“Like me.”

  At ten the next morning, Kate pulled into Nick’s Malibu driveway just as a Bentley convertible was leaving. The Bentley’s driver was a bald Hispanic man with tattoos on his arms and neck. He was accompanied by a beautiful dark-haired, dark-skinned woman.

  Kate parked and met Nick at the front door.

  “Looks like you had visitors,” Kate said. “Are you serving brunch?”

  “That was Enrique Montoya, the new owner of this house.”

  “You sold it?”

  “It sold itself. It’s spacious, secluded, and the views are spectacular. It was a steal at fifteen million.”

  “You’re damn right it’s a steal. It isn’t your house to sell.”

  Nick gestured to a bulging gym bag on the floor in the entry hall. “He even left a two-million-dollar cash deposit, which will more than cover the incidental expenses of our heist. How great is that?”

  “You aren’t listening to me. We can’t keep that money.”

  “Sure we can,” Nick said.

  Kate was about to argue the absurdity of his proposal when something else crossed her mind. “Wait a minute. That guy just handed you two million in cash in a gym bag?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. How inconsiderate was that? Who wants to lug that much cash around over their shoulder? It weighs a ton. One of those suitcases with wheels would have made more sense and been a lot more thoughtful.” Nick led her into the kitchen, where there was a fresh pot of coffee and a platter of pastries on the counter. He held the platter out to her. “Bear claw?”

  She took one. “He’s a drug dealer, isn’t he?”

  “He’s bigger than that,” Nick said, picking out a cinnamon roll for himself. “He’s the point man for the Vibora cartel’s entire Southern California drug distribution network. He’s looking to launder some of his profits in real estate. This is going to be an all-cash deal. The balance is coming on Friday.”

  “When you’ll already be long gone with his money.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “The Viboras are bloodthirsty, homicidal maniacs. They’ve been known to cut off a man’s arm and beat him to death with it. Aren’t you worried about the Viboras hunting you down?”

  Nick waved off her concern. “I’m already on the run from all sorts of mobsters and countless law enforcement agencies. What’s one more? Besides, I’ve got you protecting me.”

  “We’re about to take on Carter Grove and BlackRhino. The last thing we need is a Mexican drug cartel chasing us.”

  “They won’t be. When Montoya comes back on Friday, one of my associates at the real estate company can be here to handle the sale.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me. It’ll be whichever FBI agent wants to accept Montoya’s thirteen million dollars in drug money. You could either nail Montoya on the spot for immediate gratification, or you could bug the place, let him live here for a while, and use all the juicy intel you’ll get to bring down the Viboras’ operation.”

  Jessup would like that. A fringe benefit of their secret op. “And what about the two-million-dollar deposit?”

  “Consider it a donation to our operating capital.”

  Jessup would like that, too. She had to admire Nick’s initiative. There was a reason he’d been such a successful con man right up until the moment she’d caught him.

  “I don’t want to ruin the moment for you,” Kate said, flicking bear claw crumbs from her shirt, “but have you given any thought to our rooster dilemma?”

  “I have it all figured out. I was inspired by Montoya when he showed up for the open house.”

  “So you know how we’re going to break into Carter Grove’s fortress?”

  “We aren’t going to break in. He’s going to invite us in.”

  “Really? And will he give us the grand tour?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Nick said, “he will.”

  Kate drank half the pot of coffee and had two more bear claws in the time it took Nick to tell her the broad strokes of his plan to run a con as a television show producer. Kate didn’t know what astonished her more, the audacity of his scheme or that she ended up believing it could actually work.

  There were still a lot of logistical and technical details to figure out, and a million ways that everything could go horribly wrong, but the outrageous, imaginative nature of the hustle was trademark Nick Fox, which was its biggest plus.

  “So what’s our first move?” she asked.

  “We call the Geek Squad,” he replied.

  When Joe Morey was six years old, a ramshackle traveling circus came to Northridge and erected its tattered big-top tent in a vacant parking lot next to Levitz Furniture. Joe’s mother took him to see the show, which opened with a parade of elephants trailed by a clown driving a yellow Volkswagen Beetle with an enormous red bow tied on top. The clown stepped out of the Beetle and immediately slipped in a pile of elephant poop. The crowd roared with laughter. It wasn’t part of the act, but it was by far the funniest thing the clown did and something Joe thought about now every day, almost thirty years later. It was hard not to, since Joe had basically become the clown himself, Dumbo dung and all.

  His big top was the San Fernando Valley, and his clown car was a Beetle painted black-and-white to look like an LAPD cruiser with the orange-and-black Geek Squad logo on the doors. Joe was a Geek Squad “Double Agent,” one of the computer repair technicians dispatched to homes and businesses from the Canoga Park Best Buy store. His clown costume was a short-sleeved white dress shirt with black clip-on tie, black trousers, white socks, and black shoes. His elephant poop was the chrome police-style Geek Squad badge he was required to clip to his belt and which doubled as guaranteed repellent to any attractive woman within a hundred yards.

  Joe might have been able to live with all this if he was more like his co-workers, who saw the $18-an-hour job as a stepping-stone to something bigger, like becoming the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg. But Joe was a paunchy guy in his thirties who through no fault of his own was a victim of an economy in the toilet. Joe used to make six figures a year in a corporate position commanding a crew that installed high-end security systems in Malibu mansions much like the one he was visiting right now. Joe’s Geek Squad job was a step down with no chance of stepping up. He had a monstrous mortgage on a house that was worth half of what he’d originally paid for it. His wife had left him and taken the dog. And his Lexus had been repossessed. He sometimes thought he’d like to become an alcoholic, but he couldn’t afford the liquor.

  Joe parked his Geek Squad car next to a sweet Aston Martin, hiked up his black trousers, and trudged up to the front door prepared to face yet another frustrated customer who couldn’t keep up with the ever-changing technology. He rang the bell, and Nick Fox answered.

  “Welcome,” Nick Fox said. “It’s so good to see you, Joe. Please come in.”

  “How do you know my name?” Joe asked, stepping into the entry hall, nearly tripping over a bulging gym bag.

  “I asked for you personally.”

  “Have we met before?”

  “No, but I’m a big admirer of your work.”

  Nick closed the door and led Joe into the kitchen, where Kate sat at the counter. A bottle of Cristal was chilling in a silver ice bucket. Beside it were three fluted glasses.

  Joe had been on Nick’s watch list for some time. Nick always kept his eye out for talented people with special skills, mostly civilians in a bind he could use as leverage to recruit them.

  Joe pulled the Geek Squad work order from his pocket and checked it. “Says here you’re having problems with your network. Point me to the router and modem, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Actually, your repair skills aren’t what we’re interested in,” Nick said. “It’s your work with Gant Security Systems that impressed us.”

  Joe felt a twinge of anxiety grip his bowels. The one benefit of working for the Geek Squad was that it had given him complete anonymity
. Nobody knew who he was or what he had done. He’d been able to leave his brief moment of infamy behind him.

  “Three years ago, you discovered that Gant Security, the company you worked for as an installation supervisor, was running a scam,” Kate said. “Gant sold celebrities high-end ultraexpensive home security systems, then used those systems’ surveillance devices to spy on them, selling the dirt they discovered to gossip magazines and private detectives. You figured it out and blew the whistle to the LAPD. It was the honest and honorable thing to do. I admire that. Thanks to you, your boss and the installers who were getting kickbacks from him all went to jail.

  “But instead of being congratulated for what you did, you were fired, sued for violating the confidentiality clause in your contract, and blackballed in the corporate world,” Kate said. “Even your motives were impugned. The news media implied that the only reason you went to the authorities was resentment over being the one guy in the office not getting a piece of the action. Now you’re buried in debt and wearing a Geek Squad badge. How would you like to get back at the people who wronged you and earn a hundred fifty thousand dollars at the same time?”

  It would take Joe five years to earn that much money in his current job, and it was close to his annual paycheck at Gant before he’d let his conscience get him into trouble.

  Joe narrowed his eyes and wondered if he was being set up in some way. “What’s the catch?”

  “You’ll be committing a felony,” Kate said. If she and Nick were going to use civilians in their schemes, she wanted to be sure they knew exactly what they were getting into. “You could end up spending ten years in a federal prison.”

  “Who are you people?” Joe asked.

  “We’re with a private security company called Intertect,” Nick said. “We’ve been hired by a major museum to recover a stolen artifact that is in the possession of Carter Grove, CEO of BlackRhino, the parent company of Gant Security Systems.”

  “By ‘recover,’ ” Joe said, “you mean steal it back.”