The Scorching Read online

  “Get out,” Norris said. He was staring straight forward, his jaw clenched. “Beat it right now, or I’ll break both of your arms.”

  Azar took a business card from his wallet. “I have a lot of money, Mr. Norris. And I’m trying to help your cause. Think it over.” As he got out of the pickup, he laid the card on the passenger seat. “Please call me.”

  Norris drove out of there, spraying gravel in every direction. A small pebble stung Azar’s cheek, drawing a speck of blood. Thunderclouds gathered to the west, the bright day shaded into gloom, and a rising wind whispered among the canopies of the nearby pine trees.

  As he waited for one of two cars that had followed them off the bluff, Azar smiled. He knew that he’d planted a seed, and that negotiations were just beginning. Mike Norris would get back to him soon. The man was obsessed, and obsession was a form of madness. Oh yes, the American would call . . . tomorrow . . . or the next day. Very soon.

  A black, battered Mercury Grand Marquis pulled up and the passenger door opened. The young Palestinian man inside said, “Peace to you, brother.” He wore a white polo shirt and tan slacks, and designer sunglasses were pushed up over his thick black hair. A Khar CM9 lay on his lap in a Kydex holster.

  “And to you, peace,” Azar said. He slid onto the car seat, and when the driver made to drive away, he stopped him. “Wait. Did we hear yet from Fahim Shalhoub?”

  The driver shook his head. “Not yet. He called and said that that he and his holy warriors were about to attack the car of the devil named Cantwell, the murderer of our men at Indian Wells. Since then we have heard nothing.”

  “Then let us hope that Allah smiled on them and their strike was a success,” Azar said. “I assume our intelligence from Washington on the man Sensor has not changed?”

  The young Palestinian driver said, “Nothing has changed, master. Sensor will travel to Phoenix, Arizona, the day after tomorrow, and then to a firefighting base camp an hour north of the city,”

  “Where so many died in a flash flood,” Azar said.

  “Yes, master, the very place.”

  “We can rely on this information?”

  The younger man nodded. “In Washington the politicians go to dinner and talk, talk, talk. Who among them even notices the silent, brown-skinned waiter who hears their every word? Yes, we can rely on this information.”

  Azar smiled. “Then praise be to Allah for such good and faithful servants.”

  He was sure this day would prove to have been a profitable one. He would pass on the Sensor information to his rich client for a good price, but the lack of news from Fahim Shalhoub was worrisome. He should have heard something by now.

  CHAPTER 5

  As Cory Cantwell left the Black Butte Lookout retirement ceremony, he turned his confrontation with Mike Norris over in his mind. They’d been friends once, but there had been no mistaking the look of anger, almost hatred, on Mike’s face when he’d approached him.

  A shame. Cantwell had great respect for the man. Mike Norris was the stuff of which legends are made. But something had happened to his mind that day at Indian Wells, something dark, something twisted. He’d quit soon after the disaster, rather than be fired for his outspoken opposition to his bosses and the new satellite fire-spotting technology.

  The Indian Wells investigation had exonerated Mike Norris and his crew. They’d been fed the wrong information, dropped in the wrong place, and the topography had led to an entrapment no one could have predicted.

  And, more important, the presence of Islamic pyroterrorists had not been foreseen either.

  Cantwell’s own career advancement was partly because he’d killed two of the terrorists and now led a unit the CIA called the Punishers and others in the National Wildfire Service called the James Bond Squad.

  No matter what it was called, it was supposed to be top secret . . . meaning that everyone in government and out knew of its existence. The scuttlebutt was that a hostile Congress and media were dead set against the Punishers unit, and only the President and her adviser Jacob Sensor seemed to be in favor . . . and the President was wavering.

  Cory Cantwell’s driver, a blond, ponytailed NWS administrative assistant with a Maine accent and a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs charm bracelet on her wrist, suddenly cut into his thoughts. “Mr. Cantwell,” she said. “I think we’re being followed, a bunch of ragheads in a Jeep Cherokee.”

  Cantwell turned and looked out the rear window. The car was there, no more than fifty yards away. Two, no three, perhaps four, occupants. He also noticed the massive purple boulders of thunderheads building to the west.

  “Let them pass,” he said. “Maybe they’re in a big hurry to get home before the storm.”

  “Tried that, sir,” the woman said. “They slowed down too. And when I sped up, they sped up. They’re tailing us, no doubt about that.”

  A faint but insistent alarm bell rang in Cantwell’s head. He was on a deserted stretch of road, trees on either side, and it was still a few miles to the nearest town. Was he really being followed? A cautious man, he unzipped his ballistic nylon laptop bag and opened the compartment designed to carry a firearm. He drew a Glock 19 from its Velcro-attached holster and said, “Pull into the trees . . . I don’t know your name.”

  “Nancy, sir. Nancy Payne.”

  “Okay, Nancy Payne, pull into the trees and then get your head down. If shooting starts, stay right there.”

  “Do you think we’re in any danger, sir?” Nancy said.

  “I don’t know,” Cantwell said. “Probably not, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  “Ooh, this is exciting,” the woman said.

  She swung the Forest Service SUV into the pines . . . and behind him Cantwell saw the Cherokee slow to a stop.

  It should be noted here that a week earlier an interoffice CIA memo mentioned that National Wildfire Service supervisor and anti-arsonist chief, Superintendent Cory Cantwell, had spent enough time with the Glock 19 to learn its manual of arms. However, in the last month he’d devoted just one hour and twenty minutes on range practice, asserting that constant firearm recoil pained his arthritic shoulder. The memo claimed to be just an FYI, and ended with, “No conclusions have been drawn from Superintendent Cantwell’s behavior.”

  But later conclusions would be drawn . . . after a couple of minutes of hell-firing gun fury put any doubts to rest about Cantwell’s ability with the Glock.

  * * *

  “Down!” Cory Cantwell yelled. Now the Jeep was coming on fast, one man hanging out the rear window with a gun in his hand. Cantwell opened the SUV door, jumped outside, and then hit the dirt, his Glock in a two-handed hold pushed out in front of him.

  BOOM! Not a gunshot but a sudden slam of thunder.

  “Sir, are you all right?”

  This from Nancy inside the truck.

  “Stay down!” Cantwell yelled.

  A bullet kicked up a startled exclamation point of dirt two inches in front of his face. The swarthy, dark-haired man at the Jeep’s rear window was in a cramped shooting position and wanted out of there. He kicked the door open and stepped onto the blacktop, his Smith & Wesson. 357 revolver coming up fast. Cantwell fired at the man, rolled, shot again. Hit hard, the swarthy man dropped to his knees and returned fire. A miss, the bullet crashed into the door of the SUV. The front of the gunman’s green T-shirt was stained with blood, and his mouth was a scarlet O of pain and shock. Cantwell dismissed him and directed his attention to the driver, who’d just exited the vehicle. Armed with a semiautomatic, the driver yelled something in a language Cantwell didn’t understand and cut loose. As bullets whined around him like angry hornets, Cantwell laid the Glock’s AmeriGlo front sight on the man and squeezed the trigger. His 9mm bullet hit the steel slide of the driver’s pistol, smashed the weapon out of his hand, and then, badly mangled, caromed upward, plowing into the underside of his chin, through the roof of his mouth and into his brain. When the man hit the ground, he was deader than hell in a parson�
��s parlor.

  His ears ringing, Cory Cantwell stood, his gaze fixed on the car. Had there been two gunmen in it or three or four? Thunder crashed, and lightning scrawled across the sky like the signature of a demented god. The wind was stronger now, tossing strands of Cantwell’s brown hair across his forehead. Behind him, he heard Nancy’s cell phone ring, and to his right, chugging toward him, a battered Dodge pickup trailing a blue cloud of smoke straddled the road’s centerline.

  Slow seconds ticked by. The pickup driver laid on the horn, an insistent demand to clear the goddamned road, and Cantwell cursed under his breath. A testy motorist was the last thing he needed right now.

  Then the Jeep Cherokee moved, a slight rocking of the cab on its springs, and Cantwell tensed. There was still someone inside. He two-handed the Glock to waist level.

  “Hey, you!”

  The Dodge had stopped, and an older man dressed in denim overalls and a frayed straw hat stomped toward him. And so did his wife, a plump, determined-looking woman in a floral dress who white-knuckled her brown leather purse as though she believed there could be highwaymen about.

  Cantwell’s heart sank . . . Ma and Pa Kettle, straight from the late, late show, were walking into his gunfight.

  Then two things happened very quickly . . .

  Nancy Payne, looking official in her olive-green Forest Service uniform and silver badge, ran toward the couple waving her arms. “Back! Back!” she yelled. Then to reinforce her newly acquired authority, “Police!”

  At that moment a third gunman burst from the car, a pistol in each hand. Firing both weapons, he charged Cantwell at a run, screaming, “Allahu Akbar!”

  The man was not directing aimed fire at Cantwell, more a spray and pray that was totally ineffective. Whoever he was, pistols were not his usual weapons of choice.

  One of the terrorist’s bullets tugged at Cantwell’s sleeve as he returned fire at a range of five yards and triggered the Glock dry. It was enough. Hit multiple times, the man staggered and then fell flat on his face. He groaned, tried to rise, and then flopped down again, dying in the blood that spread under his body like spilled red paint.

  Footsteps pounded to Cantwell’s right, and alarmed, he swung in that direction, the slide back on his empty gun. But it was Pa Kettle, a single-barreled shotgun in his hands. “I’m a lifetime NRA member, and I’ll stand with you, Officer!” he yelled. He looked around him. “Bring them on. I’m locked and loaded.

  Then, from his alarmed wife, “Oh dear, you’re wounded, Officer!”

  Now Cantwell felt the pain from the wound in his left upper arm. He’d been burned by a bullet that had drawn blood. It hadn’t pained him at the time, but now it hurt like hell.

  “I called 911 for the police and an ambulance,” Nancy Payne said.

  Cantwell nodded. “Good, but I don’t think they need an ambulance. They’re all dead.” Then as the violent reality of the gunfight hit, he shook his head in wonder. “I killed them all. I killed three men in less than two minutes.”

  The woman’s eyes shone with admiration and her lips were moist and slightly parted. “You were very brave, sir.” She sounded to Cantwell as though she was speaking from the far end of a long tunnel.

  He said nothing. The role of gunfighting hero was not setting well with him.

  Then a frown of concern showed on Nancy’s face. “Sir, you’re bleeding,” she said.

  “I’m fine, it’s only a flesh wound,” Cantwell said. He shook his head.

  Oh, God, now I sound like John Wayne.

  Pa Kettle had been inspecting the bodies, He returned, stood beside Cantwell and said, “Hey, young feller, them boys are all foreigners. Arabs, or the like, if ’n you ask me.”

  Cory Cantwell nodded. “Seems like,” he said.

  The farmer stared into the younger man’s face. “Islamic terrorists. That’s what they call ’em on TV.”

  “Yes, that’s what I call them too,” Cantwell said.

  “Three of them,” the older man said.

  Cantwell nodded. “Yes. Three of them.”

  “You did good, Officer, defending yourself an’ all,” Pa Kettle said. Without taking his eyes from Cantwell’s face, he called out to his wife, “Betty, get these officers an apple from the back of the truck.” Sirens sounded in the distance. “An Oregon apple will do you good, son, settle your nerves.”

  “While your wife’s at it, have her put your shotgun back in the truck,” Cantwell said. “When the sheriff gets here, I don’t want him to see a weapon in your hands. Bad things can happen when a cop arrives at a violent crime scene with a gun in his hand and his adrenaline pumping.” He passed his Glock to Nancy. “Better put this out of sight for now as well.”

  Cory Cantwell held the red and green apple, untasted, in his right hand when a couple of sheriff ’s cars and an ambulance, lights flashing, arrived on the scene. The sheriff, a lean, blue-eyed man with iron-gray hair, looked around at the carnage, placed his hand on his holstered Glock, gave Cantwell the stink eye, and said, “Mister, you got some explaining to do.”

  Cantwell looked at the sheriff, at his nervous young deputies, and talked fast . . . as though his life depended on it. And it probably did.

  * * *

  Cory Cantwell described the events following his speech at the lookout tower, identities were checked, calls were made and returned, and Nancy Payne and Ma and Pa Kettle, who turned out to be apple growers named Bob and Betty Potter, were interviewed.

  The thunderstorm passed, but a drizzle of rain remained as the state bomb squad checked the Jeep Cherokee but found no suspicious device.

  The sheriff, a man named Erickson, stepped beside Cantwell and said, “Mr. Cantwell, until I’m told otherwise, I’m writing this up as you being the victim of an Islamic terrorist attack.”

  “Sounds about right,” Cantwell said. “But how the hell did they know who I was?”

  “I’ll show you something,” Erikson said. He took a folded newspaper from his car and handed it to Cantwell. It was a small publication with an ad for a supermarket on the front. “This shopper is published in Bend,” the sheriff said. “Look at the story on page three, alongside Square Deal Henry’s used cars ad.”

  Under the headline “Lava Butte,” the single column story about the watchtower closure was only six inches long, but the last sentence did the damage: Mr. Cory Cantwell, head of the new National Wildfire Service’s anti-terrorist unit, will be the keynote speaker.

  “Damn,” Cantwell said.

  “The Department of Homeland Security and the CIA should know better than to make that kind of information public,” Erikson said.

  Cantwell was surprised. “You already spoke to them?”

  “They just now spoke to me,” the sheriff said. “All they said was to leave you the hell alone, and all I said was, ‘Yes, sir’ . . . ‘No, sir’ . . . ‘Three bags full, sir.’ They think I’m a hick.”

  “Sorry about that,” Cantwell said.

  “Don’t be. It happens all the time.”

  “Where’s your weapon? I was warned not to confiscate it as evidence.”

  “Glock 19 like yours, Sheriff. It’s in the truck. You want to see it?”

  “Nope. I want nothing to do with it.”

  The sheriff stared hard into Cantwell’s face. “You’ve got some powerful friends.”

  “And with friends like those . . .”

  “Who needs enemies?” Erikson said. “Yeah, friends like them can get you killed quicker n’ scat.”

  “Seems like somebody is trying hard to do just that,” Cantwell said.

  “Watch your back,” the sheriff said. “That’s all I’m going to say.” Sheriff Erikson remained until the bodies and the Jeep were removed, and Cantwell thought it his duty to stay with him. The day was moving into late afternoon when the sheriff got into his car, rolled the window down, and said, “Hey, Cantwell.”

  Cory Cantwell stepped to the patrol car.

  Erikson smiled for the first time t
hat day and said, “You done good.”

  * * *

  Nancy Payne waited until Cory Cantwell seated himself in the truck and then she opened the glove box and produced a pint of Jim Beam followed by a pack of Winstons and a red Bic lighter. “Take a couple of slugs of the bourbon, Mr. Cantwell,” she said. “You look like you can use it.”

  “The farmer gave me an apple,” Cantwell said. “He thought it would calm me down.”

  “And did it?”

  “I didn’t eat it. I don’t know what I did with it. Dropped it probably.”

  “Bourbon is better,” the woman said. She handed over the Beam bottle but held on to the cigarettes. “Do you smoke?”

  “I’m trying to quit,” Cantwell said.

  “Now is not a good time,” Nancy said.

  Cantwell snatched the Winstons like a drowning man grabbing for a life jacket and said, “Do you give bourbon and cigarettes to all your customers?”

  “I always like to supply what a senior manager might want,” Nancy said. She fluttered her eyelashes. “Well, within reason.”

  Cory Cantwell laughed. It felt good.

  “One more thing,” Nancy said. “The Homeland Security people called while you were . . . ah . . . busy. They’ve booked a motel room for you in Bend. You’re to check in there and await further instructions.”

  “What do they mean, further instructions?” Cantwell said.

  The woman shrugged. “I don’t know, I’m just the messenger.” Then, “Thirty minutes to Bend, Mr. Cantwell. Enjoy your whiskey and cigarettes.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Winter Blossom Inn was one step up from a no-tell motel. It probably dated from the 1930s and had an ash parking lot out front. White stucco and windows with water stains underneath that gave them the look of baggy eyes. Camellia plants with red blooms the size of baseballs pushed up against each side of a glass front door that was engraved in the art deco style and was probably as old as the inn.

  Inside, the room was small, clean, and slightly musty. A couple of old Civil War battle prints hung on the walls, and the worn, rust-colored carpet on the floor looked as though it had been laid during the Great Depression.