Van Horn, Texas
It was just a little roadside motel, not part of a nationwide chain, but it was affordable, easy off and on from the interstate, and Barry’s Kenworth wasn’t the only big rig in the lot. It didn’t stand out from the other four trucks parked there, either.
Jake and Barry had shared a room. They would have gotten Gretchen the one next door, but there weren’t two adjacent units available when they pulled in late the previous night. In fact, they had gotten the last two vacancies.
Jake trusted Gretchen to be able to take care of herself. He had seen ample evidence that she was capable of that. And as far as he was aware, the night had passed quietly and peacefully.
Even so, he was going to be glad to see her again and know that she was all right. He lifted his hand and rapped his knuckles on the door of her room.
She opened it a moment later and said, “I’m just about ready to go.” She was tucking her shirt into her trousers as she spoke.
“You, uh, look good this morning,” Jake said.
She stopped what she was doing and looked at him. “Really? You feel like you have to pay me a compliment?”
“No, I’m just, uh . . . Well, it’s the truth.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “These are the same clothes I had on yesterday, and I don’t even have a brush for my hair.”
“Doesn’t matter. You still look great.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Next time we go on the run together,” she said, “remind me to pack a few things first, okay?”
“We can stop and get you whatever you need,” Jake said. “You don’t have to worry about anybody tracking your credit card, either. Barry’s got plenty of cash.”
“I’ll bet he does. Operators like him, they pick up whatever they come across while they’re working, right?”
“Well . . .”
Gretchen held up a hand and said, “Never mind. None of my business. Let me get my purse, and we can get out of here.”
“There’s a fast-food place just down the highway. We figured we’d stop there and get some breakfast since the motel doesn’t have a coffee shop.”
“That’s fine,” Gretchen said as she came through the door carrying her purse. Her jacket was draped over her arm. “Is this what it’s going to be like from now on? Cheap motels and fast food?”
“Life on the run,” Jake ventured with a smile.
Gretchen shook her head again and walked toward the truck.
Barry met them there. He nodded to Gretchen and said, “Ms. Rogers. You look—”
“Don’t you start,” she said.
“Just trying to be polite,” he said with a shrug. “But I guess there are more important things. Nobody bothered you during the night?”
“I killed a cockroach in the bathroom. Other than that . . .”
“That’s better than some of the vermin we may have to deal with pretty soon.”
“What do you mean by that?” Jake asked.
Barry didn’t answer until they had all climbed into the truck. Then he said, “I don’t think Saddiq will just sit back and wait for us to interfere in his plans again. Once he hears that we’re not in government custody anymore, he’ll figure that we intend to come after him, so he’ll think it’s best to eliminate us first.”
“Wait a minute,” Gretchen said. “How is a terrorist going to find out we’re not in custody anymore?”
“He’s working with the Zaragosas,” Barry explained. “Francisco Zaragosa has eyes and ears all over the Southwest. If he’s paying any attention at all, he knows by now that we’re on the loose and ready to cause trouble.”
Jake said, “I thought Saddiq just paid the cartel to smuggle him into the country.”
“Maybe . . . but teaming up with Zaragosa gives him a lot of soldiers to draw on for help, the way Paco Reyes recruited Carlos Molina to steal that C-4 from Fort Bliss. That makes me think there’s a good chance they’re still working together.”
“Great,” Gretchen said. “So now there are probably drug cartel death squads looking for us.”
“Could be,” Barry said with a grin.
“Well, I suppose that means things can’t get any worse, anyway.”
“Never say that,” Jake told her.
* * *
It was two hours earlier in the Pacific Northwest, but Alexander Sherman sounded wide awake as his voice came over the secure, scrambled phone.
“What is it, Mitchell? I assume my pilot got you back to El Paso last night?”
“Yes, yes, no problem with that . . . but I found out this morning that Jake and Barry Rivers have disappeared.”
Several seconds of silence from Sherman, then an edge of annoyance had crept into his voice as he said, “I thought the FBI had them in custody.”
“They did. They gave their guards the slip. And I’m convinced that Walt Graham, the agent who’s taken over the case, intended for that exact thing to happen. Graham has known Jake Rivers for five years and helped him get into the FBI. I have no idea how well or how long he’s known Barry Rivers.”
“This is unacceptable, Mitchell. Based on everything that’s happened so far, those two will crop up again and cause trouble for us.”
“I know. That’s why I intend to get rid of them.” Cavanaugh bit back the curse that tried to escape from his lips. “We’ve taken the discreet approach for long enough.”
Sherman grunted and said, “Too long, maybe. You have men you trust to handle this job?”
“Yes. There are any number of men in the bureau, at Langley, and in other agencies who agree with our objectives. It won’t be any trouble to find volunteers to deal with those two, and the woman with them.”
“Woman?”
“Gretchen Rogers, the Homeland Security agent who was with Jake Rivers at the freight yard.”
“I see,” Sherman said. “She’s disappeared, too?”
“That’s right. I have absolutely no doubt that she’s with them.”
“Then she’ll share the same fate that they do. We can’t afford to be sentimental about this, Mitchell.”
“That never even entered my mind,” Cavanaugh said honestly.
“Very good.” Sherman’s tone was brisk and businesslike again. “Let me know when it’s done.” He paused. “Those rogues are about to discover that they’re on the wrong side of history.”
CHAPTER 45
Jake, Barry, and Gretchen holed up at a motel in one of the suburbs of Fort Worth for a few days while all three of them worked their contacts through burner phones and the dark web.
Jake and Gretchen took the law enforcement angle through friends in the FBI and Homeland Security who, while they couldn’t exactly be trusted completely, were at least unlikely to try to track them down. And with Barry’s vast experience at staying off the grid, by following his advice they were going to be almost impossible to find by conventional methods, anyway.
Barry himself navigated a much more shadowy path, since he could reach out not only to people in the intelligence community but also to criminals. Living as Barry had in the past three decades sometimes required more of an amoral, pragmatic approach. As he had phrased it to Jake, sometimes you couldn’t clean up the bigger messes without wading into the edge of them.
On a practical level, the motel was a good place to lie low. The parking lot extended around to the back of the property in an L shape, and there was plenty of room back there to leave the truck where it was mostly out of sight.
Across the highway, less than a quarter of a mile away, was a Walmart where the three of them were able to buy clothes and personal needs. Also, there were seven or eight fast-food joints within walking distance, so they didn’t have to take the truck out in order to get meals. Gretchen complained some, but Jake and Barry had figured out by now that this was just her nature.
All three of them were looking for increased traffic among suspected terrorist cells or unusual activity involving weapons dealers, especially those
who sold explosives. The first two attacks had centered on blowing up railroad tracks, and as Barry put it, “Once terrorists try something that works, they tend to stick with it. That’s why you saw a lot of activity directed at air traffic after 9/11. Actually, that goes all the way back to the rash of plane hijackings starting in the seventies. They’ve targeted trains a few times over the years, and that seems to be what Saddiq’s bunch likes.”
“Then we should also be on the lookout for any unusual activity involving railroad employees,” Jake pointed out. “They had gotten a number of men into that freight yard in El Paso as workers just recently. Any spate of new hires might be worth taking a look at.”
“That sounds like something your contacts at the FBI might be able to find out,” Gretchen said.
“Like Homeland Security doesn’t do domestic surveillance all the time?”
“Well, that’s sort of our job by definition, isn’t it?”
Barry said, “We’ll all look into it, and I’ll work the munitions angle extra heavy. Somebody out there knows something that’ll start us in the right direction. We need to just keep on trying to shine some light into the dark corners.”
As time went by with no real results, however, their frustration grew. Jake was restless, wanting to be on the move again, and he could tell that Gretchen felt the same way.
Unfortunately, until they had a lead, there was no point in going anywhere else. At least here in North Texas, they were in a good central location and could head for any part of the country if they turned up something to indicate another attack was brewing.
By the time five days had passed, Jake’s nerves were stretched almost painfully tight. The gap between the attacks in Nevada and El Paso had been only a couple of days. Whatever Saddiq and Lashkar-e-Islami tried next probably would be a more complicated operation that would take more time to set up, but it could be happening soon.
He was on his way back to the motel from the Mexican food place down the road, walking alongside the four-lane farm-to-market road with a plastic bag holding an order of super nachos each for him and Barry and a plain bean burrito with no onions and no sauce for Gretchen. The road was busy with midday traffic, and so was the state highway down the hill. Out of habit, Jake watched the passing cars for signs of trouble.
Everything appeared normal as he approached the motel. The office was in the front of the complex, which stretched away from the road in an L shape that matched the parking lot. The room Jake and Barry were sharing was at the far end of the L’s longer leg, and Gretchen’s room was right around the corner.
A car turned into the parking lot as Jake started along the sidewalk that would take him past the office entrance and to the room doors. The driver went all the way to the back corner of the building before pulling into one of the empty parking spaces. Some instinct made Jake stop and turn toward the office window as if he were looking at something there. He lowered his head and hunched his shoulders a little to make his height less conspicuous.
And then he watched from the corner of his eye as five men got out of the newly arrived car, two from the front seat, three from the back. All five looked Hispanic, and despite the warmth of the day, each wore a fairly long coat.
Jake breathed a curse and set the bag of Mexican fast food on an iron bench just outside the office door.
It looked like lunch was going to be delayed today.
He had the Browning Hi-Power under his shirt at the small of his back. Moving his hand to wrap it around the grip, he angled across the parking lot as if going to one of the cars parked on the far side. With his left hand, he took the burner phone he was currently using from his shirt pocket and thumbed a quick text message to Barry, warning him that trouble was about to erupt.
By now, three of the guys from the car had pulled handguns, and the other two were holding sawed-off pump shotguns. One of the guys with a pistol lifted his foot and poised it, ready to kick the room door open.
Barry opened the door before the would-be assassin could kick it open. He said something—Jake couldn’t make out the words—and then the 1911 in his hand boomed as he slammed a round into the man’s chest.
The .45 slug knocked the man back off his feet. His arms and legs flew out to the side as he skidded across the asphalt.
The men with the shotguns were on either side of the door. By now, Jake had the Browning out and shouted, “Right!” as he aimed at the man on Barry’s right. Barry pivoted to take the man on his left.
The Browning and the Colt went off at the same instant, as perfectly timed as if Jake and Barry had practiced it that way. Jake’s man went down with his shotgun unfired as the 9mm round drilled through his head and dropped him instantly, like the proverbial puppet with its strings cut.
Barry’s man jerked the trigger of his shotgun, but he was already going backward as the weapon boomed and sent a load of buckshot harmlessly into the air. Blood geysered from the man’s throat where the bullet from Barry’s gun had torn through the big artery there. He would bleed out in less than a minute and was already too weak to pump the shotgun again.
Three members of the death squad were down in as many seconds, but the other two were diving for cover and wouldn’t be as easy to kill. As they leaped behind cars, Jake angled sharply toward the motel building, gun up and ready to fire. Barry went the other way along the sidewalk instead of ducking back into the room. The motel’s thin walls wouldn’t stop high-caliber bullets.
They might have been able to reach cover and trap the assassins in a crossfire, but at that moment Gretchen ran around the corner, holding her gun in front of her. Her momentum took her right past one of the men, who surged up from behind the car that had been protecting him. He grabbed her from behind with his left arm and reached around with his right to chop down with his pistol on her wrists. She cried out in pain and dropped her gun.
The man swung around toward Jake and hauled Gretchen with him, using her as a shield. Jake crouched at the back end of a parked car and grimaced. The gun in the man’s hand spouted fire at him.
Jake dived to the asphalt as the slug spanged off the trunk. From his belly-down position, he had a good view of the gunman’s feet, as well as Gretchen’s. She was struggling in the man’s grip, which meant they stumbled back and forth. Jake cursed again as he tried to aim at the moving feet.
Then he squeezed the trigger. The bullet sizzled underneath the car and struck the assassin’s left ankle, shattering the bones into millions of pieces. He screamed as that leg went out from under him.
Gretchen must have helped him fall, maybe with a well-placed fist or elbow, because he landed hard and seemed stunned as he writhed from the agony of his wounded ankle.
Jake put him out of his misery with a head shot.
Bouncing to his feet, Jake saw Gretchen scoop up her fallen gun and then fire twice, aiming down into the space between cars where the man had fallen. Jake knew the guy was already dead, but he didn’t try to stop Gretchen from letting out her anger. If she wanted to blast his head so that it looked like a broken gourd, then so be it.
A few yards away, the last member of the death squad let out an incoherent yell of fury as he charged around a car to blast shots at Barry as fast as he could pull the trigger. Barry had to dive and roll as the slugs chewed up asphalt around him.
He came up on a knee as the slide on the guy’s gun locked back. The weapon was empty. But he was still barreling down on Barry.
Barry fired. Pure bad luck made the man juke slightly to one side just as Barry squeezed the trigger. The bullet ripped the top of the man’s left ear off instead of going right between his eyes as Barry had intended.
Momentum kept him going. He crashed into Barry, bowling him over. The impact sent the 1911 flying out of Barry’s hand. Both men rolled across the parking lot.
They came up at the same time. The assassin had dropped his empty gun, but he tore his coat off and reached behind his back to pull a machete from a sheath strapped there.
With blood gushing down the side of his head from the mutilated ear, the man waved the machete and rushed forward. Barry ducked as the blade swept over his head. He thrust out a leg to try to trip the man, but he leaped over it with surprising nimbleness and slashed back at Barry, who barely avoided the machete this time and had to go to ground and roll in order to do so.
The guy was good with the big blade and must have had quite a bit of experience fighting with it, Barry realized. He sprang up and had time for a glance toward the motel, where Jake and Gretchen appeared to have finished off the other members of the death squad. The two of them hurried toward him, guns in hand.
As the killer came toward Barry, slowly weaving the blade back and forth through the air, Barry said, “You’d better drop that machete and get on the ground, amigo. That’s the only way you’re gonna live through this.”
The man spat curses in Spanish at him, then said, “Are you afraid to fight me, mano a mano?”
“Nope,” Barry said, “but I’m also practical.”
He nodded to Jake and Gretchen.
Too late, the machete wielder realized his mistake. He tried to spin around, but two shots rang out, and the bullets ripped through him, driving him off his feet. The machete clattered away. The man gasped a couple of times, then lay still.
The whole town seemed to have gone silent, except for sirens wailing not too far away.
“Grab your stuff, or as much of it as you can in thirty seconds,” Barry told Jake and Gretchen. “Time for us to move.”
Jake glanced toward the office, where the bag of food was still sitting on the iron bench.
Well, they could always pick up something somewhere else, he thought as he sprinted toward the room.
* * *
They made it out of the parking lot and onto the farm-to-market road heading north just in time. Barry looked in the truck’s mirrors and saw the flashing lights as the local cops reached the motel. He drove at a deliberate pace, staying right at the speed limit and stopping at the red light beside the town’s high school.
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