Cartwright told me how Pennington had served as a liaison officer with a Mexican Navy drug interdiction unit. The Sinaloa Cartel penetrated it, a major intelligence breach, and Mexican marines ended up getting killed on a raid where the cartel had advanced notice. Although nothing was ever proved, Pennington was sidelined and left the U.S. Navy. That’s when he moved to Phoenix.
I said, “Now the man who called me in his office thinks I’m Pennington and he’s expecting me to call him back.”
“And you will.”
“No.” I stopped and forced down the volcanic anger inside. My voice was dishonestly steady. “I won’t. Lindsey was nearly killed and I’m only now learning this is all because of an internal FBI fuckup? And you don’t even know who shot her? This is where I get off.”
I started to turn back when he grabbed me hard by the shoulder with his good hand. His grip was strong enough to push me down if he’d been inclined.
“Look, boy,” he shouted like a drill sergeant, “Mike Peralta loves you like a son!”
His words stunned me. That word again, love, coming from the most improbable source.
His grip tightened until my shoulder, arm, and hand were immobilized with pain. I would have hated to be on the receiving end of his strength if he hadn’t been shot three days before.
The onyx glare fixed on me. “We’re not going to leave him out there. You are not going to leave him out there.”
He let go and walked ahead. “He’d do the same for us.”
By this time, we were fifty yards into the parking lot and approaching an ancient RV. A bumper sticker said, “Ask Me About My Grandkids.”
I followed and caught up with him.
He put his hand on my back and in a gentler voice said, “Come sit with me for a few. Then you can get back to the hospital.”
Unlocking the side door, he beckoned me in with a tilt of his head.
I reluctantly stepped up and inside. A poster directly ahead showed a nineteenth-century photograph of four warriors with rifles. It was bordered by the words, “Homeland Security. Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.” It wasn’t easy to read because the shades were drawn, including flaps to keep anyone from seeing in through the windshield. The air was stale.
A sound—was it a sniff?—caused me to turn my head left and through the gloom see the figure sitting on a bench. A black hood was over his head.
Something in the primal brain reacts to a hooded man whether he is the reaper or the reaped.
I started to turn back and speak, or flee, but Cartwright gave me a decisive shove and slammed the door behind us.
Chapter Twenty-three
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, Cartwright’s prisoner jerked at his restraints knowing we were in the RV. It sounded like a show from a horror house but he wasn’t going anywhere. The shackles allowed his legs to move an inch at the most. His hands cuffed behind him were useless. A seat belt completed his imprisonment.
Ed motioned for me to sit on the opposite bench, then he approached the man and slipped off the hood, revealing a black blindfold tight around his head. Next, he ripped open the man’s shirt, sending a little hailstorm of buttons onto the yellowing linoleum floor.
He was muscled up and his sunburned skin was about seventy percent tattoos. Prominent among them was a scroll with Cyrillic letters, two skulls with crowns and, running down his abdomen, an enormous onion-domed cathedral.
This was not the kind of thing you found on the average ASU student.
Or perhaps it was—I was out of it on the contemporary culture front.
In any event, the abundance of tats had overpowered a wider assessment of the man. He was in his thirties with short blond hair, a rawboned face, and thin lips. An X of duct tape covered his mouth.
“Ain’t he pretty?”
I said nothing. He looked hideous. If he wasn’t Russian mafia, he had paid thousands to a local ink-slinger to get the same effect.
Cartwright reached toward the man’s right ear and pulled off the duct tape in a slow sawing sound. The results showed the downside of wearing designed stubble. Scores of little hair follicles violated by the tape started bleeding.
The man flinched but made no sound.
Cartwright leaned close. “We had a deal. I get your diamonds and you pay me a hundred fifty grand. Now the diamonds are gone and the Mexican tried to kill me. You fucked me, Bogdan, and you’re gonna make it right.”