For all of you who have read, reviewed and waited (maybe) for this. Thank you so much for your patience.
Drift 3
"Something's happening."
I'm in New York, in a room full of men with greying hair, when the call comes in. It's Felix and "something's happening" is not a code for anything other than what it is. I make my excuses to the board of Cullen Industries and leave to take the call.
"They're in trouble...glitches in the operation." The edge on Felix's voice is alarming but I stop myself into jumping to conclusions. Raids, as I know in my experience, rarely go as expected. "They're changing frequencies," he pauses, and I can hear him typing furiously in the background. "Explosion at 1500 hours. Fire on alarm three, firetrucks on scene."
A knot forms in my stomach when I realize he's quoting straight from a transmission.
"Status report?"
"None yet."
"Forward everything to my unit."
I hang up, knowing it'll take him a while to sort through the confusion. Felix is tapped deep into the FBI grid but he's no Jasper. Electronic surveillance doesn't come to him as naturally as breathing.
I go back to the men my father trusts most and tell them that I'm done for the day but they can carry on if they like. They stare at me in equal parts of fear and fascination and I realize, despite being on the job for a month, I still unnerve them. I wonder how much more are they going to fear me if I suddenly tell them that I had access to all the companies' records, even their personal files, when I was still in prison? They're old men, friends of my father, so I decide there's no point in them knowing. I bid them a good day instead, and walk out.
On my way to my office, I call up one of my PAs to cancel all my appointments.
"Even the one on the weekend, Mr. Cullen?"
"Yes, even the benefit performance." I'd kept my performance schedule as the opportunity gives me the cover to be anywhere I want. "Call Seattle and have one of the Cessna there ready for take off."
"To which destination should I tell them to go, sir?"
"Port Angeles."
In case Charlie Swan needs something to fly him out of Washington.
I dial Jasper's number.
He picks up his mobile on the seventh ring, in a way that he always does, launching on a detailed description on the new program he's developing. I cut him off before he goes into an overdrive.
"That sounds very interesting but right now, I need you to pull in all visuals, spot reports, cell and radio communications to and from an ongoing FBI raid on a warehouse in South California, address 53301 US Highway 111. Operation under the heading Project Pre-reckoning 2, case file N-0093488."
"Now?"
"Yes. Now. Get me everything."
He doesn't ask why.
I put him on speakerphone in my office and wait, the clicks he's making in the background strangely comforting. In my mind, I can see him hunched in front of his unit, knees up. His fingers fly over the keyboard as he types in his codes and algorithms in search for data. He's isolating signals, refining his searches, breaking down encryption and trumping security walls.
I'd hoped I wouldn't have to call him. I'd hoped I cruised through the days in a bored haze, humoring old men in suits, waiting for Bella to come back from her assignment, tired and giddy, happy to be home after weeks of pressures and near-death situations. I'd say she did well but won't ask for details. She's not going to tell me and besides, I already know.
They're against a slippery motherfucker. Marco Antonio Guzman, nicknamed El Brad Pitt, is an ex-cop who heads the Juarez Cartel's military wing, known for orchestrating multiple murders and capable of thwarting the most complicated FBI stings. After months of trailing him, Bella's unit had hit the jackpot when they discovered that he's due in Palm Springs to oversee a shipment.
I had Felix keep an eye on her. A team with rookie agents on a difficult case always carries an unavoidable risk. Somebody's bound to fuck up, make the wrong decision.
There's Rosalie Hale, Bella's roommate from Evergreen. Emmett McCarthy, also from Evergreen and Hale's fuckbuddy. Laurent Desantis, a hotshot detective from New Orléans who gave Bella hell when she first came in. Sam Uley, a Narc veteran, heads the detail. Paul Lahote, another veteran, stands as his second-in-command. Three more, with considerable experience, make up the rest of team. A solid combination but at their line of work, there are no guarantees.
It takes Jasper a while to get through but when he does, it's golden. "I'm sending you a transmission from one of the FBI channels. Gimme a few more minutes to clean up the visuals."
I work on decrypting the message as soon as it comes in. As the letters and numbers begin to form a more coherent pattern, a dull throb begins to form in the back of my head.
Gunshots fired, explosion on 1530 hours. Warehouse collapse. Signal 1. Major emergency. Signal 3: request for more staff Signal 9: firetrucks dispatched to the area. Signal 16: call for ambulance.
The throb begins to push from the back of my head towards the center as I search for descriptions and names. It takes less than a minute before I see it. Agent Down. Agent Swan. Signal 18. on the way to hospital. I hit the key to cancel the transmission, knowing Jasper will decode the rest for me.
I take a deep breath and weigh my options.
I can–and should–stay out of it for very obvious reasons. Isabella Marie Swan is a FBI agent who's good at her job and trained to deal with extreme situations. She's part of highly trained unit, with access to all the necessary resources, including medical attention.
Interfering with an ongoing FBI investigation is overreaching. There's nothing to be gained from it except maybe getting booted out of a lousy apartment by an irate Bella who guards her job like a rabid zealot. Add to that, it will jeopardise my standing in the underworld community, already precarious since it became known that I'm sleeping with a member of the much-disdained anti-cartel FBI unit. I have no interest or compulsion whatsoever in becoming the FBI's white knight, except, this isn't about the FBI at all. It's about Bella and how the mere thought of her wounded and bleeding is enough to make me nauseous.
Picking up a secure line, I dial a number, something I should have done months before. The phone rings, and rings, and I'm about to fling it against the wall when someone picks it up and answers.
"Irina, it's me."
"Darling!" She purrs in Russian, masking her surprise well. It occurs to me that she may not be alone, as Irina rarely is, but I find it hard to care. "How very nice to hear from you at four o'clock in the morning."
She makes her excuses to someone in the background. She's just going to take this call, she's saying, an old friend, she won't be long. A door opens, closes.
"Clear," she says, switching to English. I hear the rasp of a lighter. She takes a deep breath, exhales. "What can I do for you, Edward?"
"I want you to initiate contact with Deangelo Marcus."
"Marcus?" There's only a few things that surprises Irina, and this is one of them. I suddenly realize the insanity of calling her without preparation. "Of the 'Ndarangheta?"
"As soon as possible," I tell her. "Use intermediaries or Volturi proxies. We're not making ourselves known."
She doesn't answer right away so I light a cigarettte and wait.
"If you can't handle him–"
"I can handle him," she interrupts. "It's just that we've never dealt with them before. The Volturi, yes. Even the Cossa Nostra at some point but we've never done anything that has to do with drugs or prostitution."
"We're not doing business with him."
"Oh," she exhales, probably relieved. "What's this all about?"
"Remember Operation Solare?"
"The drug raids?"
Operation Solare was an interstate, international anti-narcotic operation involving drug cartels from the US, Mexico and Italy. It managed to break up alliance between the Los Zetos Cartel of Mexico and the 'Ndarangheta mafia which controls most of the cocaine distribution in the Mediterranean area and Western Europe. It ran the Los Zetos cartel to the ground but it failed to crush the 'Ndarangheta.
"They're here," I tell her. "In California. The "Ndarangheta came into an agreement with the Mexican Juarez Cartel last year. The FBI have tried to infiltrate them this past two years but they're running into usual fuck-ups. I'm willing to bet they have someone inside the anti-cartel task force."
"Ah," she says, "the FBI. I take it your gobushka is involved."
"She's just been hit."
Irina takes a sharp breath. "How is she?"
"I don't know yet."
"And you?"
"I don't know."
She's silent, probably doubting my sanity at the moment.
"You want to take Marcus out?"
"Not him, his partners. But we can burn him if that's what you want." We were just a bunch of spoiled, rich kids when we started, but even then, we were smart enough to steer clear from the hardcore cartels, refusing to do business with them. Most of them are too greedy, too undisciplined. Marcus Deangelo especially so. The Dverenko sisters hate his guts with a vengeance. "Im sure he won't be missed."
"You're taking quite a risk."
"I know what I'm doing, Irina. Trust me."
"I do, Edward, always."
"Then get me Marcus. Set him up with the Volturi, offer him a cut in our European operations. Use him to lure the Juarez Cartel out, I want them here, on my turf, where I can watch them. I want a total lockdown on this, Irina, don't give them a whiff of who you are or who you're working for. "
"Consider it done."
We set up a meeting in Moscow the following month and make other necessary arrangements. I apologize for interrupting her night and she teases me for a bit, an attempt in distraction, but I'm too wound up, too worried...too goddamn furious. The Juarez Cartel won't even know what hit them after I'm done with them.
My secretary buzz me just when I'm ending the call and tell me that my car is ready to take me to the airport.
The ride to the hangar is not long, and I spend the minutes staring out the window, trying not to think of the things that can still go wrong.
A Cessna waits for me in a private airport, as another is making its way to Port Angeles. I call Carlisle, ask him to check on Chief Swan and tell him to offer the jet if he needs one. I trust that he'll keep my name out of the conversation.
Jasper calls again after the plane takes off.
"Multiple GSW patient, male, GSW left anterior thigh, second degree burns," he reads from a report in monotone. "Multiple GSW patient; female, shot in the abdomen x 2, medevac to Eisenhower Medical Center, attending emergency physician Dr. William Lee … "
Jasper's voice drones on but I can barely hear him as the dull throb in the back of my head goes from barely tolerable to pain. Bile rises to my throat, pushing nausea out and I stand and stumble blindly towards the lavatory to heave my stomach's contents into the stainless bowl.
"Are you all right, sir?" An attendant stands looking at me a few feet away, a bottle of water in her hand. Her sympathy grates against the painful haze in my head.
"Get out."
The girl scampers away before I could apologize. I drag myself up to wash my mouth, my hands, look at myself on the small, lavatory mirror. I look the same, except for the bloodshot eyes and the rumpled clothes. Taking a deep breath, I force myself to think, measure, calculate.
I go back to my seat and read the rest of the transmission.
Multiple gunshot wounds, shot in the abdomen, x2, massive bleeding...
I check on Bella's records again, hoping but not expecting that she'd changed something crucial. Under next-of-kin, she listed Charlie Swan, father, Forks Police Department. There's no one else on the list, no longtime companion, no recently promoted fiancée. With the lockdown almost a certainty, I won't be allowed anywhere near her.
Anthony calls in after a while. One of his associates probably reported to him my strange behaviour. As soon as I fill him in, he decides he's flying in, his doctors be damned. I tell him, no, he doesn't have to. He insists and I cave in, remembering another place, when I was 15. The night my mother died, we sat a seat apart from each other, counting the minutes in our heads, willing her to live. She didn't, and he survived it. I tell him, ok, I could use some company.
The staff treats me with careful politeness after my outburst, unused to my rudeness. They served my father before me, and I know that Anthony is unfailingly polite to everyone, regardless of their station. I turn to apologize to the girl that I shouted at earlier.
"I'd like to have that water now, please."
She gives a wary smile and hands me a bottle.
"Thank you."
Jasper manages to tap me into the Eisenhower's closed circuit TV in record time and I run a scan of the corridors to find which operating room they'd taken Bella. I spot Rosalie Hale, looking like a fire truck just ran over her. She's in an argument with a male nurse, probably insisting in that loud, bitchy way of hers that she be allowed to wait in the hall despite her own injuries. Too bad, the nurse wins and she gets sent away. Minutes later, Sam Uley replaces her in front of the locked double doors marked "surgery."
The hours creep by as I keep watch on the same doors, a thousand feet up in the air. My eyes blur as doctors, nurses and staff pass through the monitors. Uley doesn't leave, even when some of the staff gestures for him to sit at some chairs at the end of the corridor. Right then, I decide to give him the Juarez Cartel, as soon as I can arrange it.
I count the seconds as they go by, keeping my mind a careful blank.
Two hours later, the doors swing and a doctor comes out.
"She's through," I hear Jasper's through the headset. "One of the doctors just called the switchboard for a transfer to the recovery room and not the SICU. That's good news, right?"
"I don't know."
The full medical report won't be in until her transcripts are encoded but there are other ways of knowing. When were children, Remus taught us the finer points of sign language and lip-reading.
"Zoom in on camera twenty-two," I tell Jasper. A doctor is talking to Uley in a corner. "Process the images and automate speech recognition."
"Abdominal trauma, tissue damage, profuse bleeding in operate …," the doctor's lips forming the words, and I listen in silence, "... without damaging the spinal nerves, enough blood despite shock. Clean exit wounds, removed splinters without causing damage. Inflammation expected, transfusion to bring blood levels to normal."
Onscreen, the doctor is describing what happened. A bullet went through Bella's stomach, in the retroperitoneal space, and while it didn't damage internal organs, it caused profuse bleeding. The second bullet grazed the skin and surface tissues near her spleen but didn't damage her spine or the nerves near it.
"She's going to be fine," he assures Uley. "A couple of weeks and she'll be good as new." The doctor is smiling, unaware how much he'd impacted my world in just a few seconds. "Has her family been notified?"
"Her father's coming."
I look down, realizing I'd crushed the water bottle, and will my hands to stop shaking.
Next chapter, coming up.