by Flynn Vince
Coleman just shrugged and went for the building’s only door.
The interior was painted in the same colors as the logo on the gate, but much of it was peeling or stained from leaks in the roof. Two windows had been covered in a mix of plywood and canvas to keep light from bleeding through and a bathroom with a collapsed sink was visible in the corner. Other than that there wasn’t much—not even a table. The operation was being run from the floor.
Claudia was at the far end of the building, staring at a map and talking excitedly into the phone. “Where? Yes, I understand. And how good is this information? Fine. Yes. Get back to me as soon as you can.”
She hung up and spun, fixing her almond-shaped eyes on him. The relief was clear in them but she let it show for only a moment. “We may have a functional lead. One of the coyote organizations Esparza gave us runs their operation out of a warehouse in Córdoba, southeast of Mexico City. That warehouse burned down three hours ago.”
“Kind of weird,” Coleman said. “But why risk setting it on fire and attracting attention? Are we sure it’s not just a coincidence?”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Rapp said, running a finger along a map hanging on the wall. “The one thing we have going for us is that Halabi fucking despises the United States. I know this asshole better than he knows himself. This isn’t about God. It’s about him. He doesn’t want to infect a bunch of coyotes with YARS and have them running around Mexico randomly spreading it. He burned that warehouse for the same reason he told Esparza to keep his men at a distance. Because he wants this to come from America. He wants everyone to think Allah himself slapped down on us. That we brought this on the world. Not Mexico.”
“If you’re right, then things might be finally moving in our direction,” Claudia said. “The coyotes that operated out of that warehouse were a boutique organization specializing in smuggling contraband in refrigerator trucks. Flawless paperwork and hidden compartments that are almost impossible to detect without cutting the trailer apart.”
“They’re moving slower than we thought,” Rapp said, continuing to study the map. “I’m guessing they stuck to back roads on their way to Mexico City and then hit traffic. After that, they had to load their people and fill the trailer with frozen food. Claudia, if we figure they rolled out of there around the time it burned, where could they be now?”
“Likely somewhere just to the east of Mexico City.”
Rapp used a pencil to create an arc centered on that area of the map. Then he traced multiple similar lines above at roughly fifty-mile intervals, labeling each with a time.
He pointed to the gap between lines marked 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. “The way I see it, we have a fully loaded refrigerator truck somewhere in this band. Claudia, tell the Agency to create a map that’ll give us real-time animation of the sections of road we need to focus on.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” she said.
“Scott—what about the people you told me we have in-country?”
“I’ll get Bruno, Wick, and Mas moving south. Two prop planes can be in the air in forty minutes searching the roads in your target area. And we’ve got around another twenty people spread out across the roads from the U.S. to Guatemala. Like I said, no one special, but all perfectly capable of looking for a truck. We’ve also got clear skies and some satellite coverage. But someone’s going to have to tell us how to differentiate a refrigerated truck from a regular one.”
Rapp nodded. “Claudia. Have Irene pull together all her Spanish speakers. If we spot a truck that looks like a good candidate, we’ll phone in a plate number and description. Then Irene’s people can call the company that owns it, confirm it’s theirs, get a final destination, and make sure it’s where it’s supposed to be. How much time do we have?”
“If you’re right about where they are now, it’ll take them at least ten hours to cross into the U.S.”
Rapp finally turned away from the map. There weren’t many things that could make the sweat running down his back turn cold, but this was it. They were trying to cover thousands of square miles in a country where they’d never operated with a team made up of people who had little or no operational experience. No military support. No support from local law enforcement. And a Mexican government that vacillated between useless and openly hostile.
“Should we be putting U.S. authorities on alert that they might have to close the border?” Coleman asked.
Rapp thought about it for a moment and then shook his head. “Once that word goes out, how long until the press gets hold of it? We’ve already had one leak and we know how Halabi reacted. If he gets spooked and turns those people loose in Mexico, we’re screwed.”
“What about additional inspections for refrigerator trucks?” Claudia suggested.
“Same problem,” Rapp said. “There’s no way ISIS doesn’t have people watching the border crossings, and it’s hard to imagine they’d miss our guys going over every refrigerated truck with a fine-toothed comb. Halabi desperately wants to believe this is working. All we have to do is not convince him otherwise.”
“So let’s say we get lucky and find that truck,” Coleman said. “We’ve got RPGs, but that’s going to make a mess. We’ll have half-burned bodies and thawing frozen food all over the place. There’ll be civilians, cops, maybe army. Can we control that?”
Rapp didn’t answer. He’d had a number of strategy sessions with Kennedy on his drive, and neither one of them had come up with a workable plan to keep this in Mexico. It went against every instinct he had, but he’d finally had to resign himself to the fact that the border was just a meaningless line on a map. Attia and the six terrorists he was transporting weren’t the enemy. It was the billions of germs they carried.
“No,” Rapp said finally. “We can’t control it. And that’s why we’re going to let them through.”
“Repeat that?” Claudia said, obviously thinking her less than perfect English had failed her.
“Gary Statham’s got a team standing by in New Mexico. We need that truck to roll across the border without any fireworks. He’ll be waiting for it on the other side.”
CHAPTER 49
WEST OF MONTEMORELOS
MEXICO
RAPP held the hand pump on top of a fifty-five-gallon fuel drum while Coleman worked it. Their pilot had the nozzle inserted in their rented chopper and was encouraging them with nonstop updates on their progress.
They’d set down on a remote dirt track fifteen minutes ago and, after a fair amount of searching, located the fuel cache left for them. The foliage was thicker and the terrain more undulating than Rapp had expected in this part of Mexico. Mountains were visible in the distance and they’d flown past cliffs that looked to be more than a thousand feet high. Population centers were pretty spread out and largely connected by two-lane rural highways. Road surfaces weren’t bad, but inconsistent enough that the myriad transport trucks traveling over them were doing so at fairly conservative speeds.
The phone in his pocket started to vibrate, and he squinted at the screen through the midmorning sun.
“Go ahead,” he said, picking up and leaving the former SEAL to complete the job.
“We’ve got a good candidate,” Claudia said.
“Another one?”
They had nine cars on the road, looking for refrigerator trucks, supplemented by two private planes and the chopper they were currently refueling. At first he’d thought it wasn’t enough, but now he was wondering if it was too many. Passing plate numbers and transportation company names to Agency analysts had turned out to be an inexact science. They’d already had three false alarms—one caused by some misfiled paperwork in Guadalajara, one by a simple transposition of a numbers, and one that probably was a smuggler, but not the one they were after.
“This is solid,” she said. “We have circumstantial evidence that it originated in Córdoba around the same time that warehouse burned.”
Rapp nodded. Soft, but at least it was something.
&nb
sp; “Do we have anyone in contact with it?”
“One car ahead. He’s stopped and will be in a position to get photos in about ten minutes.”
“What about Scott’s guys?”
“Bruno’s about half an hour from the target. Mas and Wick are probably more like an hour and a half out.”
“Understood.”
“Gary Statham’s waiting for your orders, and we have spec ops teams keeping a low profile at all the viable crossings. But this is starting to get tight, Mitch. Based on the maps we’re using, Halabi’s people could be within three hours of the nearest border. According to Irene, the president’s starting to panic. He wants to close them.”
Rapp looked out at the landscape surrounding him. The plan was still to let ISIS roll onto American soil unchallenged. Once they were on the U.S. side, a sniper would pump a single round into the driver and the army’s biohazard team would basically put a plastic bag over the entire site. On a gut level, it was a terrifying scenario, but it got better the more he thought about it. A semi at a border crossing was easily controlled—one car in front and one in back were enough to completely immobilize it. The driver was easily taken out and his body would be contained inside the cab. The likelihood that the people in back would have the ability to escape the trailer on their own was pretty remote, but even if they did, they wouldn’t make it two feet before they took a bullet to the chest.
“Tell her to hold him off. Right now we’re in reasonably good shape. We might not know for sure where Halabi’s people are but we’re fairly certain they’re contained and all together. If we lose that, we’re screwed.”
“I’ll relay the message.”
He heard a shout and saw Coleman waving him over. They were done refueling and the chopper’s blades were already starting to rotate.
“Send me the coordinates of that truck. We’ll be in the air inside of two minutes.”
• • •
“Did you say Grupo Amistoso?” Rapp shouted into the microphone hanging in front of his mouth.
Coleman, who was sitting next to him in the back of the chopper, gave him the thumbs-up. Rapp focused a pair of binoculars on a distant semi, but the trailer didn’t carry the logo they were looking for.
“That’s not it, Fred,” he said. “We’re still too far south.”
“Roger that,” their pilot said.
Coleman nudged him and slid a portable computer onto his lap. Rapp clicked on the file Claudia had sent and was rewarded with a series of high-resolution images depicting a truck driving along a straight stretch of highway. He enlarged one and focused on the windshield. Whoever had taken the photo was smart enough to use a polarizing filter, giving detail to the inside of the cab.
Muhammad Attia.
The surge of adrenaline that he expected didn’t materialize. The opposite, really. All he felt was a profound sense of relief.
“This is our guy.”
Coleman pumped a fist in the air.
“Fred, get eyes on him, but stay way back. We don’t want to get made. We need to find out where the closest exits off that road are and make sure they’re covered. Pull the planes back and keep our guy on the ground with him. Scott, what’s Bruno’s ETA?”
“Call it five minutes. Mas and Wick are still about an hour out.”
“Okay. We need to line up people and vehicles along every possible path so we can keep staggering them. We’re just here to keep an eye on him and stay invisible. Make sure everyone’s clear. No interference and nothing that could call attention to us.”
“Roger that,” Coleman said before isolating his radio to start coordinating their effort.
Rapp responded to Claudia’s email and then used his binoculars to scan the road again. Traffic was light—probably an average of two hundred yards between cars. The terrain continued to be rolling, with distant mountains now starting to soften in a dusty haze.
Another minute went by before their pilot’s voice came over Rapp’s headphones. “That’s gotta be him at eleven o’clock.”
He banked the chopper east so that Rapp could get a better look. Blue cab towing a yellow trailer with GRUPO AMISTOSO stenciled on the side. Exactly like the pictures.
Attia was staying just below the speed limit, driving smoothly and trying to keep a decent interval between his truck and the other vehicles moving in his direction. The closest was behind, a dilapidated sedan about three hundred yards back.
Rapp plugged his phone into his headset and dialed Kennedy.
“I understand the truck’s been located,” she said by way of greeting.
“Yeah. Southeast of Monterrey, Mexico, so he’s going for one of the East Texas crossings. We’re two and a half hours from the border by car. That can’t be more than a few minutes out by jet. Get one over here.”
“I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to do that.”
“Bullshit, Irene. This is a perfect scenario for us. He’s a sitting duck and there’s no one else close. We can slag that thing with zero civilian casualties and get our plane back across the border before the Mexicans even—”
“It’s not the president, Mitch. He’s authorized the strike.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
“I’ve had a number of demolitions experts and biologists looking at this. No one knows how much frozen food is in that truck or what kind. We also don’t know what the false chamber those people are in is made of. That makes it impossible to be one hundred percent sure we can incinerate the trailer and its contents with no chance of flinging infected tissue away from the blast site. According to the notes we’ve retrieved from Gabriel Bertrand’s university computer account, this disease likely started in Yemeni bats. That means we don’t know if wild animals in Mexico could be infected and—”
“Have you run this by Gary?”
“Yes and he agrees. Letting the truck cross the border is still our best chance for containment.”
“Shit,” Rapp muttered, but it was lost in the drone of the chopper. Gary Statham was the best in the world at what he did. Questioning his knowledge of biological threats was like questioning Stan Hurley’s knowledge of Southeast Asian hookers.
“Fine,” he said. “I’m out.”
“Wait, Mitch. There’s something else.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. What now?”
“I just got a call from a Mexican intelligence executive who I have a back channel to. His bosses have been asking about the possibility that the CIA is carrying out an illegal operation there. It seems that someone high up in the U.S. government has been calling and asking questions.”
“What the fuck, Irene? You know where these leaks are coming from as well as I do. Shut them down or I’ll fly to Washington and do it for you.”
“Right now, you need to focus on that truck. My concern is that these inquiries could get to someone being paid by Halabi. If that’s the case, things could become very unpredictable very quickly. We can revisit the subject of what to do about the leaks later.” She paused for a moment. “If there is a later.”
CHAPTER 50
EAST OF MONTERREY
MEXICO
THE highway below Rapp was split now, with two lanes running in each direction and a broad dirt median between. Low, scrubby trees extended to the horizon and traffic remained light. The truck driven by Muhammad Attia was little more than a dot in his binocular lenses. Joe Maslick and Charlie Wicker were in separate vehicles about one mile and one and a half miles in front of it, respectively. Bruno McGraw was bringing up the rear, hanging back about three-quarters of a mile.
For one of the first times in his career, things seemed to be going too smoothly. The truck’s last turn had put it on a highway that made only one border crossing practical. Gary Statham was currently loading his team on a transport and he’d guaranteed that they’d be ready when Attia arrived.
“Is he still holding his speed, Fred?”
“Yup. Two kilometers an hour under the limit. Slow and
steady.”
As expected. Attia didn’t need to hurry. He just needed to avoid attracting attention.
“Scott. Give me an updated ETA.”
“Some of those hills back there slowed him down a little. We’re around an hour forty-five to Texas. Our guys at the border crossing are reporting light traffic and they’re not anticipating any change to that.”
Rapp glanced down at his phone. No messages. “Maybe we should have brought beer.”
The former SEAL grinned. “Wanna bet? Your Charger would look good in my garage.”
Rapp didn’t respond, sweeping his binoculars east in an attempt to find a threat and again coming up empty.
The wisdom of not accepting Coleman’s bet became clear nineteen minutes later when Claudia’s voice came over the chopper’s comm.
“The rumors spreading around the Mexican government have finally made the press, Mitch. A story just appeared online about the U.S. tracking an anthrax shipment across Mexico without the government’s knowledge.”
Rapp swore under his breath and glanced at his watch. The truck’s time to the border had just gone under the hour-and-a-half mark.
“No need to panic yet,” Claudia said. “It’s one very speculative story on a pretty sensational Spanish-language site. All anonymous sources.”
“Halabi’s people aren’t just going to be monitoring CNN,” Rapp said. “And I’m pretty sure they know how to use Google Translate. If we found it, he’s not going to be far behind.”
“You’re probably right,” she admitted. “The question is when and what’s he going to do with the information?”
“Mas,” Rapp said. “Slow down. I want eyes on that truck. Wick and Bruno. Maintain your position.”
“Roger that,” Joe Maslick said. “But if I can see him, he’s going to be able to see me. I won’t be able to match his speed for long without making him suspicious.”
Coleman turned his laptop toward Rapp and tapped a blue dot on the screen. It represented a vehicle their people had stashed in the trees just off the main road.