He shrugged. Guess it made sense for them to make one more surveillance pass. Maybe they didn’t trust the two in the truck.
Cheese peered up. Yup, two in the truck cabin, craning around to see where the car was going.
The car disappeared to his right.
The two dirtbags checked their phones. The passenger said something. The driver shook his head, looked around.
Cheese’s phone vibrated. “Change of plans,” May texted. “They’ve been ordered to follow the car down the road.”
“That doesn’t work for me,” Cheese wrote.
“They don’t care.”
The two in the truck were arguing about something.
“Sit tight, asshole,” Cheese said to himself. He looked to the right. No sign of the car. “Shit.”
The argument in the truck seemed to slow down. Then stopped. The driver looked back over his left shoulder. Craned his neck.
He did not appear to be happy.
With any luck, Cheese thought, he’ll get even unhappier. Then, shortly after that his worries will be over.
The driver turned to the passenger and said something.
The passenger got out and was out of Cheese’s line of sight. He guessed he was looking back down the road hoping to see the car. No such luck.
He heard the door slam shut, then watched as the Mexican walked to the front of the truck.
The driver started the truck and the one on the ground began directing him toward what Cheese guessed would be a T-turnaround.
The truck moved forward starting a left turn straight at the one giving directions.
Cheese texted, “Shoot out the right front tire now! Shoot low.”
Cheese rose up with the M16 and pulled the trigger for a three-round-burst at the left front tire. Then another. Then pivoted to take out the left rear tire, pretty sure he wouldn’t hit May.
Unless she had moved.
The dirtbag in front of the truck looked to his left and shouted something to the driver. Then he pulled his gun and aimed to his left behind the truck. May.
Cheese dropped him with a burst of full auto cycle aiming bottom to top. At this distance, they’d be picking up pieces of the guy for a week.
The driver slammed the truck to a halt, looking around in a series of jerking head swivels.
Cheese came out of the arroyo just as he saw May coming up on the other side. He looked to the right. No sign of the car.
He knew they had to get to the driver before he could get to his phone and signal the other three dirtbags.
Hoping the truck wasn’t bullet proof, he pulled for a three round burst into the driver’s door.
Nope, not bullet proof.
He shot another burst just to be sure, arrived at the door, pulled it open and stepped away just in case he had missed.
He hadn’t missed.
The driver was all in one piece, but as dead as his passenger, his body flopped out of the cab, his phone on the floor where his feet would normally have been.
“All clear,” he said as he heard May approaching the other side of the truck.
She came around the front of the truck, and peered into the cabin from Cheese’s left.
“Nice shot.”
“You get the right front tire?”
“Yes. And the rear tire and the dirtbag.”
“The latter was unnecessary.”
“I didn’t know at the moment that his odd, spasmodic movements were courtesy of you.”
“Well, your bullet will give the FBI something to theorize about.”
“What now?”
“Let’s get the bodies back in the cab, and the doors closed.”
“What’s that noise?”
They both stopped and listened.
They could hear screaming and crying coming from the back of the truck.
May started to cry. “That breaks my heart.”
She put her ear up to the side of the truck.
“They’re scared to death. Can we let them out?”
“No. They’ll be running around the desert and the warehouses. Prey for all manner of two legged and four legged coyotes, and difficult for the cops to round up.”
He pounded on the side of the truck. When it was silent inside he yelled in decent Spanish, “You are safe now. The coyotes are dead. You will be saved and go home soon. Be quiet, though.”
“You are safe now,” May yelled in better Spanish.
She grabbed the two Mexicans’ phones. They both had received texts telling them to come quick.
She texted back that the truck had broken down and they couldn’t get it started, hoping that either her Spanish was good enough or the encryption was automatic.
“We are coming back,” the driver’s phone pinged.
“They’re coming back, Cheese. Get the bodies in the truck cabin.”
They ran to the dead passenger, dragged him back to the truck’s driver side, and pushed both bodies back into the cabin.
They both heard a car coming. It was fast and accelerating.
“Shit,” they both said at once.
They had no choice now but to run to the front of the truck and use it for cover.
“Use the tires as cover so they don’t see your legs,” Cheese said. “If they sense trouble and start shooting from back there. The kids are between them and us.”
They peered back to where the car had gone. Cheese reloaded the M16.
“That’s them,” May said. “That’s their car.”
It slowed as it approached, then speeded up to pass them on the right. One last surveillance pass.
“One chance, May. Go for the tires.”
Cheese duck walked to his left, knowing they’d see him sooner that way, but not able to take the risk of hitting May.
He saw the front end of the speeding car a split second before the driver could see them.
May shot out the left front tire as Cheese opened up full auto cycle at point blank range through the driver’s window and door, then the back door window, and the back window as it swept by.
May took out the left back tire.
Then they watched.
The car slowed down, lurched hard to the right, off the road, into the sand, then spun for ninety degrees and stopped at the edge of a ditch.
May and Cheese crouched and reloaded.
There was no movement in the car, which, of course meant nothing. The silencers had effectively reduced, but could not totally eliminate the noise. They could hear the kids again.
“How much time do we have?” May asked.
“Precisely what I was thinking. We’re good until we hear the first sirens.”
He continuing peering into the car. “If those three are out of action, we can leave. The cops’ll figure cartel fight at first. They won’t come looking for others until they get that someone else was involved.”
“No movement in the car, Cheese.”
“Well, let’s get this done.” He pointed to the right, “You sprint through that arroyo over there. But we both stay in front of the car. Go.”
And he duck walked as fast as he could toward the car, staying as low as he could.
No movement. No shots from the car.
They both arrived within twenty yards of the car. May came up in a crouch, Glock held out in front of her. Both hands.
“Ready,” Cheese said.
She nodded.
He pulled for a three-round-burst into the windshield. Nothing happened for three seconds, then the back seat door on the opposite side opened and a man stepped out, limping, almost fell, hands up in the air, shouting something in Spanish.
Three-round-burst in center mass.
Cheese and May then sprinted to the car, jerked open the front doors. Two dead cartel members.
May shot them each in the head just for good measure, then walked around the car and repeated the gesture for the one whose attempt at surrender had failed.
They heard sirens.
“We’re d
one here,” Cheese said. “Let’s go.”
“What about the kids? Do they have enough air?”
“May, let’s go. The truck had enough air to get them this far, and they were supposed to go from here to the next dirtbag drop-off. The cops’ll release them. Move.”
And he took off in a direct line to where he had left the getaway car the day before. On a dead run he went to his draft texts, found the one to Tom and Samms, signaling that they could go public, and hit send.
May looked at the truck, slumped, and then took after him. Crying.
*
It had taken them an hour and a half to skirt heavy Phoenix traffic and find the location to the north of the city where the final drop-off had been scheduled.
It was only in the last half hour that May had been able to talk through her grief.
“Hearing those little kids was horrible,” she had told him once they had gotten off side streets on to I17. “I don’t know why this was so much worse than the others.”
“Maybe it was the snake,” he had said.
“No, it was those helpless little kids. We’ve never come face to face with helplessness before this.”
“Almost all our dirtbags are helpless when we meet them. The one coming out of the back of the car with his hands up was helpless.”
“You know what I mean, Cheese. The children aren’t dirtbags. They are innocent victims.”
He had let her sit on it, not interrupting her as she cried for an hour.
*
He pulled over. “What do we know about this next drop-off? It’s up ahead, maybe five minutes from here. Maybe less.”
“Everything you’ve seen in writing. Nothing more.”
“Tell me again.”
She did, her voice strengthening as she did so.
“What is the client likely to do if he doesn’t hear from them?”
“No idea.”
“And he’ll be at this back warehouse lot in a Crown Vic?”
“Yes.”
“And how were the three now-dead Mexicans supposed to leave the drop-off?”
“They have their own car waiting for them. The client will take the truck and dispose of it once he distributes the children.”
“To where?”
“No idea.”
He looked up ahead. Pointed out something past the next traffic light.
“You see anything unexpected?” he asked.
She looked at the parked cars on each side of the street. Turned right, then left to look at the traffic and cars parked on the intersecting street.
Then did a double take and looked more closely up the other side of the street.
She looked at Cheese.
“Call Samms,” he said.
She looked at him more closely. Thought a minute. “Ah,” she said, “I didn’t think of that. My bad.”
Samms called them back in ten minutes.
“Sorry, I had to duck out of a meeting at the White House. Apparently Samms has struck again. First Times Square last night, and now in Phoenix an hour ago. Five dead Mexicans and nine saved kids. All hands on deck back here.”
Cheese reached out and took May’s hand.
“The kids are all fine?” she asked.
“Yes, scared and dehydrated, but fine.”
“Thank you,” May said softly.
“You all right, May?” Samms asked.
“She’s fine,” Cheese said. “We’re parked three blocks from the drop-off point for the kids. I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Suppose I tell you that this may be an FBI sting operation. That the guy in the Crown Vic and maybe six cars in the area are FBI and ICE, waiting to jump on the three unsuspecting coyotes when they drive in with the truck. Then freeing the kids. What if I tell you we are walking unknowingly into a trap for three coyotes, and we’re about to be, unexpectedly, the surprised prey instead of the victorious predators.”
There was silence at the other end of the line.
“Samms?”
“I’m thinking. I’m not sure how to find out.”
“Here’s maybe a way,” May said. “Get the Phoenix agent in charge of the JTTF to accelerate letting all members know about the freed kids and dead coyotes. If he…”
“…She…”
“If she does, then, if it was a sting, we should see a pretty sudden exodus of cars from this area.”
“Okay.”
“And Samms, could you see if one of the five coyotes was an informant?”
She looked at Cheese.
He got it immediately…the guy in the back seat who tried to surrender. Damn.
“Why? Do you have reason to believe one was?”
“I didn’t until now.”
“Shit. It would be our first case of collateral damage.”
*
Five minutes later, both their phones pinged.
“Come home.”
Chapter 12
Moose entered the room and looked at Tom, Linda, and Nancy.
He sighed. “The President will be here in a minute, and it is safe to say that he is furious.
“I feel it’s only fair to warn you that the President is in firing or resignation mode. He wants Samms and the Rogues found and brought in. In his present state, he feels if the three of you can’t do it for him, he’ll find somebody else.”
Killing the undercover FBI agent could be a permanent game changer. Our greatest fear. Our greatest risk. Only possible silver lining is to energize the rest of the community into constructive action out of this tragedy. But carefully. Very, very carefully.
“Moose,” Linda said. “Are you or the President of the opinion that the three of us wanted this job? There isn’t anything I would like better than to be asked to leave this Task Force.”
Moose looked at Nancy and Tom. They both shrugged.
“There’s nobody wants these guys pulled in more than the Director and me, Moose,” Nancy said. “Samms has now killed one of our agents. In cold blood. He was unarmed, working to bring in the four others they killed.”
When nobody commented, she said, “He was a good man. A valuable agent. With a wife and two young kids.”
“Are we sure this was our Rogues, Moose?” Tom asked.
Moose tossed a card on the table. “That was in Times Square on one of the jihadist’s bodies.”
He tossed a second card. “This one was found on the front seat of a car near the spot in Phoenix where the truck with the kids was stopped. They both say SFCOV on the back. I assume none of you know what that means, right?”
Three head shakes as they passed the cards around. An uneasy silence settled over the room.
“This is the second time the letter V has been in the initials on Samms’ cards,” Nancy said. “Maybe they’re code for some type of vigilante activity.”
“But what would be the point?” Linda said. “We’d be pretty stupid to not realize that they consider themselves vigilantes.”
“I have no idea. Sorry, just a shot in the dark.”
“Turn the cards over,” Moose said.
On the front of each card in all caps “Rogues” had been handwritten under Samms’ name. On each card it had been crossed out and replaced with “Paladins.”
“So I guess they objected to our calling them Rogues,” Tom said.
“Nice to know what they call themselves,” Linda said. “Paladins. Nice.”
“Sounds more sophisticated than Vigilantes,” Nancy said.
“Or Rogues,” Moose said.
“Paladins were originally knights,” Tom said. “Good guy vigilante warriors. There were originally twelve of them, I think. A thousand years ago.”
“Maybe Samms decided to give us a hint at the Rogues’ total size,” Linda said.
“I doubt it,” Tom said. “The tradition, both historical and fictional, has continued past the original concept.”
Nobody had anything to add to the discovery.
“By the way,
” Tom said, “all the way up the chain of command, and back down to both me and the President, the reports are that the Adjutant General is not overseeing some massive, covert domestic anti-terrorism effort. No opportunity. No training. No capability anywhere in their structure. I thought you all would be relieved to know.”
“You take the hit on the stupid question about the AG?” Nancy asked.
Tom just nodded.
They each apparently decided to hold their tongue after that, at least until they heard from the President. Each of the three Task Force members looked around the room as if they suspected that the President was watching the meeting.
After five minutes of silence, the door opened, and the President walked in.
“Needless to say, I’m not very happy,” he said. “Are we any closer to identifying Samms than we were?”
Nobody said a word.
“It wasn’t a rhetorical question,” he said. “Each of your bosses says ‘no’. Is that an accurate evaluation of where we are?”
All three nodded. Spread out their hands.
The President clenched his jaw. “Let me make this as easy as possible. We have a senior intelligence officer carrying out vigilante actions because of our inability to fully protect the American people. And now we have that same intelligence officer killing an undercover FBI agent in the act of doing his duty…”
“Sir,” Tom said.
The President signaled him to silence. “Colonel Edwards, I’ll let you know when the Q and A part of this meeting has started. Clear?”
Three nods.
“Samms and the Rogues are compromising domestic intelligence and committing felonies across the country on almost a weekly basis. On the one hand, they are doing our work for us. On the other, they are, like all vigilantes, breaking the law. And we are, after all, a country of laws. They just freed nine enslaved children headed for the disgusting sex market…”
He held his hand up again as Nancy started to say something.
“I know, Nancy. Your people would have done that if the Rogues hadn’t intervened. But we now know with a hundred percent probability that the Rogues succeeded, and we know our JTTFs’ record is somewhat less than a one hundred percent success rate.”
He hesitating, waiting in vain for a reaction from Nancy.
“So what do we all agree on?” he asked.
He held up one finger. “One. We agree Samms and her so-called Paladins are filling a need for the American people.”
The Point Of A Gun: Thriller Page 9