Gone (Michael Bennett)

you’ll actually have to put it on the back burner, Mike. Tip came in last night, late. Apparently, someone spotted Perrine over the border in Tijuana. The army scrambled Gray Fox to check it out. The rest of the gang is on standby.”
    Gray Fox, as Parker had explained to me the day before, was the code name of a division of the army’s Special Ops. They were an airborne unit that worked with the CIA on covert operations. Using small, single-engine aircraft or drones, they scanned search areas with sophisticated listening equipment. They could tap as well as pinpoint the location of any and all cell-phone transmissions in a given area on the ground.
    The rest of the gang she was referring to included the Delta Force and SEAL Team Six members who had been assigned to the task force to do the actual boots-on-the-ground arrest once Perrine was found.
    “Well, I hope it’s credible. Where does that leave us?”
    “I just got off the phone with the LAPD federal task force working the cartel murders in LA. They need bodies. I know I said it would just be a couple of days down here, Mike, but if you want, we can get on board there.”
    “But what about my military speaking engagement?” I said. “I’ve been working on my Patton impression all night.”
    “The troops can wait for now, General Bennett,” Parker said. “How about pretending to be a cop again for a couple more days? Last time I checked, you were pretty good at it.”
    “I was, wasn’t I?” I said, finally putting the phone back down on the shelf. “When can you get here?”
    “I already am,” Parker said from the open doorway of the bathroom behind me.
    I spun around, blushing, as I gripped my towel, but she was already turned, laughing as she hurried away.
    “Not funny, Parker!” I yelled. “No girls allowed in the boys’ room!”

CHAPTER 43
     
    A FEW HOURS LATER , after I was allowed to put on some pants and we’d grabbed some breakfast, we were on Interstate 10, speeding west toward LA.
    It was a long, strange sort of trip from the air base to the city. First, we went through the edge of the Mojave Desert, then up and down through the San Gabriel Mountains. I didn’t spot one yellow cab or dirty-water-dog/tube-steak cart on any of the blocks. Actually, there weren’t even any blocks.
    As we neared the LA city limits, Parker pointed out the spot in El Monte where the two LA County detectives had been gunned down with automatic fire.
    I couldn’t believe it. There was a Burger King on the corner, beside a furniture store, and a car dealership across the street. It looked like your typical suburban strip. It definitely didn’t look like a war zone.
    As we drove closer to downtown LA, I sat looking out at the blue sky and palm trees, the San Gabriel mountain range now in the hazy distance off to my right. I had actually been to LA once, the summer before college. After watching a bunch of Stanley Kubrick films, me and a buddy of mine had gotten it into our heads that we would come out here, find work, and become either screenwriters or directors.
    What happened instead was that we got depressingly drunk for three days in a row in a crummy, run-down motel near Hollywood Boulevard, found no work, and eventually had to have our parents wire us money for a ticket home. Aren’t eighteen-year-olds brilliant?
    Watching the glittering downtown LA skyline come into view in the forward distance, I just hoped my second visit to La-La Land would prove more successful.
    The task force HQ was set up at the LAPD’s Olympic Station, a new glass, metal, and brick building located on South Vermont Avenue, in the Wilshire neighborhood business district. The multi-agency squad had originally been housed at the LAPD’s Hollywood Station, but the paparazzi and media, who had camped out after the deaths of the rap mogul King Killa Leonard and pop singer Alexa Gia, had been such a nuisance, they had decided to move.
    Upstairs, in a conference room, Parker introduced me to FBI agents Bob Milton and Joe Rothkopf. The veteran agents couldn’t have been more welcoming or accommodating in setting us up. They’d already dragged in some desks from somewhere and placed them in the corner, with a couple of computer monitors.
    Agent Rothkopf was placing a file about the Mob-boss killing in Malibu on my desk when a group of burly LAPD detectives swaggered in. Coming in from a late lunch , I thought, checking my watch. A semiliquid one from the looks on their red