17

17

IF THE TWO men in the front of the van knew that Ballard was hiding in the back, they didn't give any sign of it. Neither opened the curtain to look. The engine started, and Ballard felt the van jerk into motion. The driver pulled out onto the coast highway and started heading north. Ballard heard Bosch's panicked voice in her ears.

"Renée, I'm right behind you in the Defender," he said. "Can you speak? Probably not. What about text—can you text? I need some kind of a signal from you or I gotta stop this. I'll figure out how to do it. If I don't get something from you in three minutes, I'm going to stop the van, even if I have to run it off the road."

Ballard raised her head slightly and looked over the pile of bedding to the front of the van. The curtains were still closed, and judging from the banter between the driver and passenger, they didn't know of her presence. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked that it was set to silent mode, then texted Bosch an all-clear message.

Code 4. Don't stop the van.

She waited for Bosch to acknowledge.

"Okay, I got your text," he said. "But if you say my name, that will be the signal for me to make a move. Anything goes sideways, just say my name. I don't know if you can see where they're going, but right now it's north—actually, I guess it's more west now—on PCH through Malibu."

Ballard knew what he meant. Most of Malibu's coast had a southern exposure as the coastline jutted out. It was what made several of its beaches good surfing breaks.

She thought of something and sent Bosch another text.

I can hear them when they talk. Send him a text about the SIGs, get them talking.

Bosch acknowledged verbally and she waited for his text to land. Soon she heard a phone ping, and the men up front started talking.

"Read this, I'm driving. It's from the gun guy."

"He says, ‘I've got another offer. You still need four?' Fucking guy, just trying to jack up the price."

"Doesn't matter, we're not going to pay for them. Tell him, yeah, we need four, and we can make the deal tomorrow. Tell him we also need shoulder slings and reload mags."

There was silence; Ballard presumed the passenger was typing the text. Soon Bosch told her that they had responded and wanted to make the deal for four mini machine guns the next day.

"They want slings and extra magazines," he said. "I don't know what they're up to but it sounds like they're going to be carrying multiple weapons and lots of ammo."

The van stopped and Ballard froze, wondering if they had heard something from the back.

"You're at a traffic light," Bosch said. "Las Flores Canyon."

Ballard could picture it. She drove this road every day to and from work and when heading south to surf. They were at La Costa Beach and then it would be Carbon followed by the pier and then Malibu Lagoon.

The van took off again. Ballard thought about what she had heard and understood that if they were not going to pay for the mini machine guns, that meant they were going to either rob or kill the seller. But with the integrity of their plan—whatever it was—at stake, it seemed unlikely that they would only rob him.

Soon the van slowed and then jogged to the right and stopped. Ballard guessed that they had slipped into a parking space.

"It'll be nice and crowded Monday," the driver said.

"Perfect," the other man said.

"Go back?"

"Let's hit up Mickey D's on the way."

The van started moving again and almost immediately made a U-turn. Ballard wasn't ready for it, and the centrifugal force threw her against the back of the van with a thud. She froze and then let her breath out slowly, trying to deflate her body, make it as low as possible behind the pile of bedding and pillows.

The light in the rear compartment changed and she knew that someone was looking through the curtain. Then the darkness returned.

"You gotta tie your shit down, man."

"I do. I think it's the spare. It's underneath and it gets loose."

Less than a minute later, the van made a ninety-degree turn and Bosch whispered in Ballard's ear that they were in the drive-through lane of a McDonald's.

Ballard listened while they ordered seven combo meals. They paid and waited for their order to be handed through the window. Ballard couldn't see it but she could picture it. Then the men up front spoke.

"This will make that thing in Vegas look like child's play," one said. "The precision of it, you know?"

"Oh, yeah," said the other.

Soon they had their food and were on the move again; they exited the drive-through and turned left onto the PCH. The smell of McDonald's filled the van, and Bosch's voice came to Ballard through her earbud.

"Looks like they're heading back to the caravan with the food," he said.

But Ballard barely heard him. She was concentrating on what she had heard from the front of the van and what it meant.

Ten minutes later there was another U-turn and the van parked. Ballard knew that they had returned to the original place in the line of campers. The hot food saved her from discovery as the men got out of the van without further investigating the sound they had heard from the back.

"Am I clear?" she whispered.

"They're going back to the grill fire with the food," Bosch said. "Get out of there."

"Not yet. I have to finish putting the hinges back on."

"Then hurry. Luck is a fluid thing, and you've been lucky so far."

"I get it."

Ballard rolled the mattress back to access the top of the box and the hinges. She had left the screwdriver and the screws there, and the mattress had held them in place. It took her less than five minutes to re-anchor the last hinge and put everything back.

"How does it look outside the van?" she asked.

"You're clear," Bosch said. "Use the driver's-side door and they won't have an angle on you."

"Got it," she said. "Where are you?"

"Back in the lot across the street."

"On my way."

Five minutes later Ballard was safely across the street. Bosch was still behind the wheel of her Defender, so she took the passenger seat.

"Before they made the first U-turn and went to the McDonald's, they pulled over for a minute or so," she said. "Where were we?"

"Yeah, I had to drive by them," Bosch said. "They were in front of a vacant business. It looked like it used to be, like, a chicken-in-a-bucket place."

The description didn't match anything in Ballard's memory. "What was across the street?" she asked.

"The Malibu pier," Bosch said.

"Shit."

"What?"

"They talked about how crowded it would be on Monday."

"Monday's a holiday. Presidents' Day. A lot of people go to the beach if it's warm enough. And the pier—they've got two restaurants there. What are they going to do?"

"Whatever it is, they said it would ‘make that thing in Vegas look like child's play.'"

"The mass shooting at the concert?"

"I assume that's what they meant. They already have an arsenal and now they want machine guns and extra ammo? Has to be something like that. They talked about ‘the precision' of it. I assume that means it'll be a close assault, not sniping from a faraway structure like in Vegas."

Bosch was shocked into silence.

"At least we know when they're planning to do it," Ballard said.

"There's that," Bosch said.

He was staring across the street at the row of vehicles he called the caravan.

The biggest RV shielded their view of the grill fire but the glow from it climbed up the rock face of the cliff above the motor home.

"How many of them are involved in this, you think?" he asked.

"I don't know," Ballard said. "They ordered seven combo meals at McDonald's. When I walked by their bonfire, they all looked like they were pretty tight. It was five men and two women. Maybe they're all in it, or maybe it's just the two in the van."

Bosch nodded.

"They want the guns," he said. "All four. Maybe that's where we set up a takedown."

"They talked about that after you texted," Ballard said. "And they aren't planning to pay for the guns."

Bosch nodded again. He knew what that meant.

"This has gotten too big," Ballard said. "It started with me looking for a pissant car burglar and my badge, and now we're talking about possible domestic terrorism. We can't sit on this."

"The bigger this thing is, the bigger the consequences for you," Bosch said. "If the media gets hold of it and finds out that your badge ended up with terrorists who were going to shoot up the pier—"

"I know, I know, I'll be lucky if they put me back on the late show in Hollywood."

"You'll be lucky if they put you back on patrol in Devonshire."

"Thanks for being so supportive, Harry."

"I'm sorry, but I don't support career suicide. Not when it's your career."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"I don't know, but the good thing is that we have some time. You heard them yourself. Monday is the day. That gives us four days to come up with a plan."

"And what if we don't?"

"Then, fine, you call in the troops."

Ballard nodded. "Okay," she said. "But I'm not waiting till Sunday night. Two days, Harry. We figure this out in two days or I take it to CTSOB and the sheriff's department."

The Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau handled all organized threats to public safety. The sheriff's department had jurisdiction over Malibu and the pier.

"I'm good with that," Bosch said.

"So what's our next move?" Ballard asked.

He pointed across the street at the caravan. "We try to find out who these people are," he said. "And why they needed a badge."

Ballard nodded.

"I know a place we might want to start," she said. "There was a key ring in the van with keys to a You-Store-It in Santa Monica. I think our badge buyer has a couple storage lockers there. There were numbers on the keys."

"Sounds like a lead," Bosch said. "Let's go check it out."