Page 94 of Billion-Dollar Ransom
THE DROP SITE turned out to be somewhere in the wilds of the San Gabriel Mountains, a few miles west of Mount Baldy. This was not a move that Nicky Gordon had seen coming.
None of them had.
Was this the plan or was it some kind of accident? Why go through all this preparation and expense and trouble just to essentially throw away a billion dollars ?
Depending on where the bags had landed, they might be located quickly or months from now or never. Even experienced hikers could get lost in the San Gabriels and not found until there was nothing of them left but bones, belts, and shoes.
Nicky knew this had to be on purpose. They must have attached tracking devices to the bags so they could recover them quickly and make their getaway at ground level before the task force could catch up with them.
“I want to know exactly where those bags fell,” Nicky said. “Hardy, who do you have out there?”
“Nobody, Agent Gordon. That’s way outside city limits. Hell, I’m not even sure that’s Los Angeles County. The money could have been dumped in friggin’ San Bernardino .”
“I’m getting both sheriff’s departments on the line,” Hope Alonso said.
“I’ll reach out to San Bernardino,” Mike said. “Former colleague of mine runs their detective division. Give me three minutes and I’ll have black-and-whites crawling up the side of the mountain.”
“You know anybody with the LA County sheriff?” Nicky asked.
“Do I know anybody?” Mike asked as he thumbed a number into his cell. “Sure. But do I know anybody who would bother to piss on me if I were on fire? Not exactly.”
“I’ll contact them,” Hope said with a trace of disgust in her otherwise unflappable demeanor. Hardy frequently offended her, and Nicky kind of loved her for it.
Into this Sandbox frenzy walked James Haller. His eyes looked wild, and his gait was unsteady. Nicky assumed he had been fortifying himself with something stronger than coffee from the machine in the conference room.
“What the hell is going on?” Haller said. “I’ve got Schraeder on the line telling me the kidnappers threw all his money out of the goddamned helicopter?”
Exactly how Randolph Schraeder knew that was beside the point.
He most likely had an eager informant or two on Jeff Penney’s SWAT team who’d fed him or friends at Capital text updates as the chopper came and went with the ransom.
No, the troubling thing about Schraeder knowing was that he would be second-guessing her every move from here on out.
Maybe even to the detriment of his own family.
“We’re tracking the money right now,” Nicky told Haller. “If you have any friends or pull with LA County sheriff, we could use your help.”
Haller came to his senses enough to agree, then told Schraeder he’d call him back with an update. Of course he knew people who worked for the LA County sheriff; lots of disgraced deputies from there washed up on Capital’s shores.
From the multiple video feeds in the Sandbox, Nicky followed the hunt for the fallen money on three fronts:
Jeff Penney and his team were speeding east on the 138 through Llano and then down toward Phelan, where they could catch the 2 and head south up into the mountains.
Sheriff deputies from San Bernardino were gunning toward the same route but approaching from I-15 and then speeding west on the 138.
And finally, sheriff deputies from LA County were making their way up the 39 from Azusa.
Now it was simply a matter of who would reach the suspected drop site first—and whether they could find the fallen pallets of cash in the thousands of acres of wilderness surrounding Mount Baldy.
Nicky was aware of James Haller following the hunt on the screens as well. He took frequent breaks to tap on his cell phone and mutter a few brief updates to his number one client, Randolph Schraeder: Nothing yet. No, sir. No response. I am trying.
“You planted a tracking device somewhere in the ransom,” Nicky said.
“Of course we did,” Haller replied. “In the jewelry case. My associate Virgil saw to it personally. The device is inside one of the emeralds.”
“But it’s not working right now, is it?”
“No,” Haller said quietly. “Care to join me for a drink, Agent Gordon?”
An excited shout came over the comms. “We’ve got company out here!”
Company? Nicky thought. On dark mountain roads two hours before dawn?
But the LA County deputies who were close to the estimated drop site reported the same thing. They passed one late-model Jeep Wrangler and then, a mile up the road, a second, near-identical Jeep Wrangler. And then a third.
“We just passed two Jeep Wranglers as well,” Jeff said. “What the hell is going on? Someone else here we should know about? You guys call in Homeland Security?”
Air support was able to confirm there were a total of eight Jeep Wranglers moving away from the top of the mountain. They weren’t in any kind of formation or pattern; they were just ordinary vehicles headed down the sides of the same mountain.
Maybe it was a coincidence they were all the same make and model.
Maybe—if you were a complete fool.
“Turn around and stop them all!” Nicky shouted into her mic. “That is our only priority now!”
Goddamn, they were getting away with it.