Mortal Pursuit

  Mortal Pursuit

  Brian Harper

  Mortal Pursuit (Michal Prescott writing as Brian Harper)

  Its just another night of routine patrol in Californias Santa Barbara hills for a female rookie police officer. But an investigation of a reported burglary has her stumble upon a wealthy family held captive in their mansion by a team of vicious killers. Somehow she must find a way to free them...without becoming a hostage herself. The odds are already against her and the sudden unveiling of a devastating secret makes staying alive seem even less likely!

  MORTAL PURSUIT

  MICHAEL PRESCOTT

  writing as

  BRIAN HARPER

  1

  Cain pulled on the black ski mask and checked the pistol’s clip.

  Seventeen rounds. He nodded, satisfied.

  “Rack ‘em back.”

  Five clicks as the slides were cycled on five Glock 17s, his own and four others, each feeding a 9mm Black Talon round into the chamber.

  “Let’s move.”

  He slung a black duffel bag over his shoulder and headed out of the clearing, pursued by a low tramp of boots.

  Moisture fogged the air, a breath of mist carried from the lake. The buzz-hum of every cicada, the rustle of every leaf, was sharp in the stillness. There was no other sound, even on a Saturday night in August-no traffic noise, no car alarms or boom boxes, not even the distant barking of a dog.

  Cain thought of the places he had lived when he hadn’t been in prison, the one-room holes in urban war zones where the thump and howl of ghetto music chased a man even in his dreams.

  Nothing like that here. This was a peaceful place.

  But not for long.

  At the edge of the road he looked back, squinting into the last sparks of twilight.

  The dark green GMC Safari van, parked in the clearing, was screened from sight by a stand of ponderosa pines. The four figures treading in single file behind him were nearly invisible also.

  Like him, they were outfitted in black. Black Magnum Hi-Tech SWAT boots, high-cut. Black nylon sweat pants with elasticized drawstring waists. Black leather gun belts, the stainless steel buckles covered in electrician’s tape to cut glare.

  Clipped to each belt, a ProCom M54 handheld transceiver, brushing lightly against the sheath of a Cold Steel Tanto combat knife.

  On the opposite hip, the holstered Glock, its sound-suppressor tube poking through a hole in the swivel holster’s base. Adjacent to the holster, a cartridge case holding two spare magazines.

  Black nylon jackets, Velcro-fastened, the manufacturer’s decals taped over. On each left wrist, an Indiglo digital watch, the steel band replaced with black leather, a red filter taped over the LED display to preserve night vision.

  Black Isotoner gloves. Black ski masks-no mouth cutouts. Black camouflage paint around the eyes, striping any visible portions of skin.

  All four toted knapsacks and backpacks. The backpacks contained miscellaneous equipment-rope, padlocks, a length of chain, extra flashlights, other things.

  The knapsacks were empty. Soon enough they would be filled with treasure, the haul of a lifetime in a single night.

  Yet only a minor bonus, a fringe benefit when compared with the ultimate payoff.

  Mindful of that payoff, Cain had spared no effort or expense in mounting tonight’s operation. Clothes, radios, guns, silencers-all of the highest quality.

  Every detail had been reviewed, every tactic rehearsed. Nothing could go wrong. Failure was not merely unacceptable. It was unthinkable.

  He would succeed or die. There was no other option.

  Drawing slow breaths through his mask, Cain looked down the road. A mountain road, rutted and winding, lightless, empty of traffic.

  It dead-ended fifty yards beyond the gated entrance to the Kent estate, directly across the way.

  2

  Late and running scared.

  Trish Robinson shrugged off her pullover as she crossed the ladies’ locker room. The room was empty, the silence ominous.

  She opened her locker, then sat on the bench, quickly shed her clothes, and began to change.

  Normally she was never late-certainly not for work during her first week on the job. But this was a case of circumstances beyond her control.

  At seven P.M., just as she was leaving, her toilet had overflowed … again. The landlord had ignored her repeated pleas to fix it, and her jury-rigged repair job hadn’t lasted.

  By the time she found the shutoff valve, the bathroom was flooded. It took ten minutes to mop up the mess.

  Then naturally her car wouldn’t start. She spent an additional ten minutes cranking the ignition key before the engine finally turned over. The ‘79 Honda badly needed a tune-up-or something-but after her recent moving expenses, she didn’t have the means to pay for it.

  Bad apartment, bad car, no money. She supposed life was meant to be like this when you were twenty-four.

  Roll call was at 7:45. She checked the clock on the locker-room wall. 7:42.

  Pull on trousers, then a short-sleeve shirt. Button down. Tuck in. Hurry.

  Trousers belt. Shoes.

  7:44.

  The leather gun belt hung from the inside of the locker door. She snugged it over her hips, hooking it in place.

  Rapid check of her gear. All there. The Smith .38 heavy in its high-ride swivel holster.

  Her badge was already pinned to her shirt. She slipped her I.D. holder in the back pocket of her pants.

  Anything else Her hair.

  She wore it shoulder length when off duty, but was required to keep it above her collar while in uniform.

  From a shelf in the locker she grabbed a barrette, wound her blonde hair in a chignon, clipped it in place.

  Done.

  The locker slammed. Padlock clicked.

  7:46.

  Go.

  She sprinted out the door, through a puzzle of windowless corridors lit with fluorescent panels.

  Rounding a corner, she nearly collided with two plainclothes officers. One of them put a fatherly hand on her shoulder.

  “Whoa, darling. No running in the halls.”

  He and his partner laughed.

  Jerks.

  She continued, walking at a brisk clip, red heat on her face.

  The roll-call assembly room lay at the end of the corridor. She eased open the door.

  Sergeant Edinger paused in his remarks as she stepped into the room.

  He made no comment, didn’t even look at her, but in the momentary interruption of his monologue, he communicated an unmistakable reproof.

  She sat in a chair in the last row. Pete Wald, her training officer, cast a glance in her direction, then turned coolly away.

  Edinger resumed speaking. “Four eighty-eight at Chet Kesler’s Mobil station late last night. Maybe fifty, sixty bucks in quarters ripped off from the Coke machine. Same M.O. as the Thrifty-Wash theft last weekend. You find any juveniles carrying sharpened screwdrivers, I want to have a word with them.”

  Trish struggled to catch her breath as she glanced self-consciously around the room. Aside from Wald and herself, only two other cops were in the audience, each cruising solo. A total of three units-standard for the mid-P.M. watch on a late-summer Saturday night. The watch ran until 4:00 A.M., overlapping the tail end of the night watch and the first hours of the graveyard shift.

  “Another bicycle theft at Crestwood Apartments. They took somebody’s Schwinn off a bike rack in the carport. If you’re in the vicinity, swing through the parking lot and check it out.”

  The steel rims of Edinger’s glasses flashed, his eyes screened by ovals of glare. He had the most completely hairless head Trish had ever seen.

  “Oh, and one more item. You’ll be glad to kn
ow we successfully supervised another duck crossing at Lake and Third. There were no casualties.”

  A scatter of ironic applause. Trish managed a smile.

  Duck crossings, she had learned, were a common police call in town. Traffic would be stopped while a sluggish procession of waterfowl marched from curb to curb.

  “That’s about it. Any questions” There were none. The meeting started to break up when the sergeant added, “Robinson. See you a minute”

  The others, filing out, avoided looking at her as she made her way down the aisle.

  This was bad. This was a demerit noted in her phase-board review.

  Edinger stood with head lowered, making check marks on his legal pad, for a good deal longer than he probably had to, while Trish waited stiffly.

  Finally he looked up. “Bored, Officer”

  She didn’t understand. “Sir”

  “Bored with your job Disappointed, maybe Work not living up to your expectations”

  “No, sir-“

  “I guess you’re finding it hard to take your duties seriously. Vending-machine rip-offs. Stolen bikes. Duck crossings. Not what you drilled for, is it”

  She knew no answer was required.

  “Drama, excitement. That’s why you joined up, right You wanted to be Starsky and Hutch. Didn’t you”

  “No, sir.” She didn’t even know who Starsky and Hutch were.

  “This is, what, your sixth night on patrol What’s the most exciting call you’ve been on”

  “Uh … shots fired at Graham Park.”

  “And it turned out to be …”

  “Kids setting off firecrackers.”

  “That’s fairly typical of a busy night here. You know, the last homicide we had in this part of Santa Barbara County was back in 1984. You would have been how old then Ten”

  “Eleven. Sir.”

  “Long time ago. Now, down in L.A. it’s a different story. L.A.’s got two thousand homicides a year. That’s where all the crazies are. You want excitement, go to L.A. You read me”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t be late again.”

  He turned away, and she realized she had been dismissed.

  Her stomach rolled and her shoulders shook as she retraced her steps toward the door where Wald waited.

  Excitement, Edinger had said. What a joke.

  She’d already had more than enough excitement for one night.

  3

  Alone, Cain crouched by the wrought-iron gate and unzipped the duffel bag.

  Outside the gate stood an intercom mounted on a post. Below the speaker was a second, smaller panel featuring a digital keypad and an alphanumeric display-an alarm-system controller.

  The system covered only the front and rear gates and the twelve-foot fence. Magnetic contacts on the gate latches would trigger an alert if separated while the system was armed. Motion detectors aimed at the fence made climbing into the yard impractical.

  To disarm the system, Cain needed to enter the four-digit access code.

  From the duffel he withdrew a digital decrypter.

  Last Saturday night, exactly a week ago, he had opened the controller and wired the decrypter to leads running from the keypad to the central control panel inside the house.

  With his tampering concealed, he had waited until the Kents returned from a night out and disarmed the system at the front gate. The decrypter’s I.C. chip had recorded and stored the access code when it was keyed into the pad.

  Later he had removed the decrypter to prevent its discovery. Now he had to reinstall it.

  His black leather gloves, skin-tight, compromised his dexterity not at all as he pried open the bottom of the controller console with the blade of his knife. Quickly he again wired the decrypter to the leads.

  Then he downloaded the stored data, sending the access code to the controller in a burst of electronic information.

  He looked at the keypad’s one-line liquid crystal display.

  SYSTEM DISARMED.

  The words remained in view for ten seconds, then blinked off, the screen going blank.

  The gate’s latch was easy to defeat. He didn’t even require his locksmithing tools. The knife was enough.

  He motioned to the others. They came fast across the road, brushing past him as they slipped through the open gate.

  Before following, Cain downloaded the access code a second time.

  A low buzz sounded, a pre-alarm warning, as the alphanumeric display flashed a new message.

  SYSTEM REARMS IN 30.

  The two digits ticked down, counting seconds.

  29. 28. 27.

  The grace period was designed to allow the homeowners to reset the alarm before entering. Very convenient.

  He had no time to disconnect the decrypter, but that was all right. He was happy to let the police find it. The equipment, purchased on the black market, could not be traced.

  He closed the bottom panel, sealing it with a strip of duct tape from his duffel. From the street no sabotage could be detected.

  11.10. 9.

  Better move.

  Toting his duffel, Cain stepped through the gate, then let the latch click shut behind him.

  The buzzer fell silent.

  It was doubtful anyone inside the house would check the system in the next five minutes, but taking this precaution cost him nothing. And he wasn’t being entirely paranoid. One of the interior keypads was visible from the dining area, and there was at least a small chance someone would look in that direction.

  Turning, he surveyed the grounds of the Kent estate, spacious, dense with shadows.

  The front yard was empty. Already his crew had fanned out to the side and rear of the house, taking up their positions. They would stay clear of the fence to avoid being picked up by the motion detectors.

  He checked his watch. 8:00. Right on schedule.

  Despite the high stakes, the operation ought to be simple enough. Cain’s sole concern was the two Sharkey boys-last-minute replacements for Hector Avalon.

  Avalon was a seasoned ex-con, cool and professional, ideal for this job as long as he was clean, and he’d sworn he was. Then two nights ago Cain found him dead in the front seat of his rusted-out Palomino, white powder frosting his nose. Cardiac arrest or some goddamned thing.

  And suddenly Cain’s crew was short-handed, with the deadline closing in.

  That was when Cain, not an introspective man, discovered something about himself. He was getting old. Old for this line of work, anyway.

  He had no network of contacts. The men he’d known well enough to trust were mostly dead or in prison or burned out on booze and smack.

  In desperation he’d remembered somebody Hector had mentioned in casual conversation, a kid in San Diego named Blair Sharkey. Cain wasn’t sure exactly what business the two had transacted, but Hector had put the kid down as a comer, and Blair’s number was jotted in Hector’s address book.

  Six hours later, Blair had arrived at Cain’s trailer in the Mojave, bringing with him an unwelcome surprise-his baby brother. Gage, all of sixteen. Cain didn’t want any damn kindergartner in his crew, but the Sharkey boys had been adamant. It was a two-for-one deal.

  There had not been enough time to train them properly or to learn if they were reliable under stress.

  But probably they would work out okay. Hell, they had to.

  Nothing could go wrong tonight. This was it, his big score, the climax of his career, and it would go off without a hitch.

  Of course it would.

  Sweating, Cain moved forward into the dark.

  4

  The blue-and-white Chevy Caprice was parked at the rear of the police station under a bank of sodium-vapor lamps. Trish slid in on the passenger side, and Pete Wald climbed behind the wheel.

  Trish was silent, her heart still pumping hard. With peculiar vividness she recalled a visit to the principal’s office when she was in the first grade. The specific offense that had occasioned the reprimand was long
forgotten, but the awful mixture of embarrassment and guilt still clung to her memory, tenacious as a barnacle.

  Had the principal used the same tone of voice she’d heard from Edinger Probably.

  Wald cranked the ignition key and steered the cruiser onto Adams Avenue, the town’s main thoroughfare. Though it was only eight o’clock on a Saturday night, the street was empty of traffic, void of activity. Cardboard signs reading CLOSED were propped in shop windows. No cars lined the curbs.

  The police scanner under the dashboard cycled between the two main frequencies used by the department. Both were quiet. Slow night. As usual.

  “Ed gave it to you pretty good,” Wald said over the engine’s drone.

  Trish wasn’t sure if Ed was really Sergeant Edinger’s first name or only a nickname. Somehow she hadn’t had the nerve to ask.

  She frowned. “I was late.”

  “You didn’t miss anything. No serial killers or terrorists in the area, at least as far as we know. Incidentally, Officer, your shirttail needs a little work.”

  “Oh, God.” She groped behind her and felt a flap of fabric overhanging her waistband like a panting tongue. Hastily she tucked it in. “You mean I was running around the station like that” She wanted to die.

  “I’m sure nobody noticed.”

  Trish thought she saw a grin tucked away at the corner of Wald’s mouth. She couldn’t be certain, but the odds favored it. Pete Wald seemed characteristically amused by her.

  Perhaps it was his prerogative to feel that way, a privilege of age and experience. He was a veteran officer, a twenty-year man, two decades her senior-big and gray-headed and molasses-voiced like some frontier patriarch.

  She remembered his exaggerated astonishment upon learning that Reagan was the first president she distinctly recalled. “I watched Kennedy debate Nixon,” he’d said, chuckling.

  “I saw a kinescope of that on PBS,” Trish had offered, but the comment merely elicited another, heartier laugh.

  Smiles and laughter and lightly stressed superiority-that was Pete Wald. Trish almost preferred the screaming insults of her drill instructor at the academy.

  The car cruised north on Sullivan. The lighted marquee of a movie theater glided past. Double feature, both films six months old, one of them already available on video.