The Gatekeeper

by Michelle Gagnon

  “How the hell would you?” Leonard said. “Agent Jones, you know too much about all this for my comfort.”

  “Maybe because she’s good at her job,” Jake said, stepping forward, fists clenched.

  Kelly flashed him a look, and he stepped back. “Like I said, it’s my case, I just didn’t know what we were following. But now…” Something dawned on her, and she froze.

  “Well?” Leonard said impatiently.

  “What’s the date tomorrow?” she asked, turning to Rodriguez.

  “The fourth.” His eyes widened. “Oh, shit. The Independence Day parades.”

  “Exactly.” Kelly nodded. “That’s why there was a float in the warehouse with the illegals.”

  “Yes, that occurred to us,” Leonard said drily. “It’s the most logical date for an attack.”

  “So you’ll be checking parade staging areas?” Kelly asked, deflated by his response.

  Leonard barked a laugh. “What, all of them? We know they had multiple tractor trailers in the warehouse, they could have driven the bombs hundreds of miles by now. Based on the vic’s time of death, our best guess is they pulled out twenty-four hours ago. That gives us a range of nearly twelve hundred miles.”

  “Jesus, they could be almost anywhere in the country,” Jake said.

  “Wait,” Syd said. “Bombs? Meaning there’s more than one?”

  Leonard glanced around at them, seemed to decide something, and nodded. “Inside the warehouse we found iridium, the main component in radiography cameras. They have a few industrial uses, mainly oil pipeline inspection. Once we got that info, we matched up deliveries to facilities, and it turns out-” he glanced at Syd “-three trucks were rerouted on the twenty-ninth by our vic. Each held one camera. And each camera has enough raw material for a dirty bomb. Based on the tire tracks, we’re looking for three semis, and maybe that many bombs. Or they could have consolidated the material into one bomb, or spread it among dozens. We have no idea.”

  “Jesus,” Jake said. “How many people could one of these bombs take out?”

  “Depends,” Leonard said. “The initial blast wouldn’t be as strong as a nuclear explosion. But in a major city, a bomb goes off and people hear radiation…” His brow darkened as he said, “It could induce mass panic. Plus the fallout would pollute the area for months, or years. Cleanup would be in the billions.”

  “It could cripple the country,” Kelly said.

  “And make 9/11 look minor by comparison,” Leonard concluded.

  “So you’re looking at likely targets,” Syd said.

  Leonard nodded. “Unfortunately, there are parades in nearly every major city tomorrow, and a hell of a lot of minor ones. Some of the parades require registration permits for floats, some don’t. And there’s no way we can cover them all.”

  A pall descended over the trailer.

  “So what do we do?” Jake said after a minute.

  “We’re already doing everything we can,” Leonard said, ushering them out. “So thanks for the help, and we’ll be-”

  “I have a lead you can follow up on,” Kelly said. “But in exchange, I want to stay on this case.”

  Dante tensed as they approached the checkpoint. Looked like a standard agriculture stop, but now that the Feds had found the warehouse, it could mean almost anything. Creeper was driving, and he glanced at Dante.

  “Be cool,” Dante said. Creeper got his nickname by being so notoriously unflappable it creeped people out. He’d killed a family of five once, then made himself a sandwich and watched TV before leaving. Dante figured on a run like this, the most important thing was to have someone who wouldn’t get flustered by a speeding stop. Plus Creeper had a license to drive these rigs.

  One of the cops let through a white Toyota and waved them forward. Creeper eased the eighteen-wheeler between the orange cones. The cop motioned for Creeper to roll down his window.

  Dante gnawed on the inside of his lip, rankled by the cop’s attitude. Typical CHP asshole, he thought with disdain. Always power-tripping. Another cop appeared on his side of the truck. He made a show of grinning, even waved and said, “Morning, officer.”

  “Where you boys headed?”

  “ San Diego,” Creeper said.

  “Yeah? Coming in from where? Looks like you got a full load back there.”

  “Drill bits, headed for China,” Dante said. There were, in fact, crates half-filled with drill bits, to compensate for the added weight of the lead-encased barrel the bomb was stored in.

  The cop examined them for another minute. Dante could practically see the wheels spinning in his head. Obviously he and Creeper weren’t upstanding, law-abiding citizens; any cop worth his salt could smell that. But then, plenty of truckers had done time. Not a reason to stop them.

  Please don’t inspect the truck, Dante thought over and over, a litany in his head.

  “You folks mind pulling over? Think we’ll have a look inside,” the cop at Creeper’s window said.

  Creeper said, “Yes, officer,” and drove to the shoulder where another cop waited with a clipboard. Dante’s pulse raced, and he fought to keep the tension from showing in his face. He glanced over at Creeper, who still wore an impenetrable mask. But his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. They were so fucking close now, too. They were the final truck in a caravan that originated in Houston. Over the past two days they’d driven a hard line north, then west, covering more than one thousand miles. They’d stopped to check preparations at each site, then moved on, their numbers dwindling until only he and Creeper remained. Somewhere around Tucson it occurred to Dante that in the past few days he’d seen more of the country than he had the entire rest of his life. Most of it by night, of course, but still. It was something.

  And now this could be it, Dante thought. A traffic stop that ruined everything and sent him to death row or worse, Gitmo. The Feds claimed to have closed it, but that was probably a lie like everything else they said. Shit, being penned in with a bunch of towel heads would be worse than death.

  Calm down, Dante told himself. Unless they dug past three rows of crates, they wouldn’t encounter anything suspicious. And like most cops, they were probably lazy at heart.

  Creeper leaned forward, reaching for the piece under the front seat. Dante grabbed his hand, stopping him, and shook his head. Too risky. If things went south, Dante would handle it from the cab. In which case he’d probably be leaving Creeper behind, but no need for him to know that. Creeper climbed out of the truck cab and went to unlock the back. Dante sat there, legs jiggling up and down. He heard the panel door slide up. A scraping sound, wood on metal-they’d moved one box. The crates were heavy as hell, though, he’d made sure of that. Dante could picture them shining a beam over the wooden crates, trying to peer into the depths of the truck. Good luck, he thought. Now let us go.

  The sound of the door sliding shut again, a clank as it latched. Dante released a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Creeper said something, and one of the cops laughed. A second later Creeper climbed back into the cab. The cop, face split wide in a grin, waved them back onto the highway. Dante watched the roadblock diminish in his side mirror, until they went over a bump in the road and it vanished completely.

  “What did you say to him?” Dante asked, breaking the silence.

  “Who?”

  “The cop. Why’d he laugh?”

  “Told him it was about time the Chinese had to deal with something stamped Made in Texas,” Creeper said.

  It was the longest sentence Creeper had uttered in the four years he’d known him, which was startling in and of itself. But that, combined with the fact that he’d made a joke, and to a cop, no less…Dante processed that, then cracked up. “Jesus, Creeper. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  Thirty-Two

  “Christ. It’s like looking for a truck in a truck stack,” Rodriguez muttered as he scanned through the printout with a highlighter.

  “Tell me about it,” George complai
ned, rubbing his eyes. “I might need glasses, this is giving me a headache. Jake, you wear glasses?”

  “Nah. Not an old man yet,” Jake replied.

  “Fuck you,” George said good-naturedly.

  The three of them were ensconced in the trailer adjoining Leonard’s, scouring tax returns from the shell companies linked to Jackson Burke. A search of the remaining warehouses on Kelly and Rodriguez’s list had already been completed-the lead she’d used to stay assigned to the case. But unfortunately nothing had turned up. No more strange powder, or any evidence of radioactivity at the sites. Leonard had another team digging through the shell companies’ real estate holdings, but so far they hadn’t found any outside the list. Rodriguez’s friend at the IRS had been thorough.

  That left them working the transportation angle, trying to track down semis. Problem was, Jackson ’s corporation owned a lot of legitimate businesses that used trucks to ferry goods and materials around the country. Any of the trucks could have been diverted from their usual routes to deliver the bombs.

  Working on the theory that a major purchase, like a truck, would serve as a deduction, Jake, George and Rodriguez were going through years’ worth of depreciation forms. There were at least fifty trucks claimed so far, and they were only halfway through the stack. No way they could issue an APB on all of them, not without Burke finding out. And the Bureau was insisting they keep a lid on things until there was more concrete evidence. Jake suspected nothing would convince them short of the new senator showing up on Capitol Hill with a vest bomb.

  ASAC Leonard had begrudgingly agreed to Kelly’s terms, which included keeping Jake on the case. He wasn’t happy about it, but Kelly had insisted. The tradeoff was that Syd was escorted back behind the yellow tape. Jake suspected Leonard hadn’t put his foot down because he knew he could assign Rodriguez, George and him the scut work. They’d been at it for hours now, and even though he’d never admit it to George, his eyes were swimming from the lines and bars of standardized IRS forms. They noted down the make and model of each truck and the company that purchased it, then ran that information through the DMV database for a plate number. Not that they’d be using registered license plates, as Jake pointed out. Leonard dismissed the complaint, which confirmed Jake’s suspicions.

  “I think we’re going about this all wrong,” Rodriguez said, pushing back from the table.

  “Yeah?” George asked. “You want to switch off, handle the DMV queries for a while?”

  “Hell no. But I was thinking…if Burke is trying so hard to cover his tracks and smear some illegals for this attack, wouldn’t he take every precaution to make sure the trucks couldn’t be linked back to him?”

  “Maybe. But they were purchased through shell companies, and it’s hard to prove he’s involved with those.”

  “Hard, but not impossible. My contact found out in less than twelve hours. She’s good, but you know that if this goes down, they’ll have teams tearing apart every aspect of it for months.”

  “You’re right,” George said. “And at that point, even a hint of an association with the attack would destroy him. That’s probably why there wasn’t anything in the other warehouses. Burke used one of his own for the nitty-gritty of the assembly, but for the rest of it, he could rent a different space. That way it wouldn’t link back to him if things went south.”

  “No politician would risk it,” Jake agreed. “So what are we thinking? He rented the trucks? Paid cash, maybe?”

  “Can you even do that?” George asked. “I thought you needed a special license to drive those.”

  “You do,” Rodriguez said slowly. “But he probably wouldn’t use drivers linked to his company, either.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “He’s been using ex-cons and skinheads to do his dirty work. Maybe he recruited some of them?”

  “Good theory,” George agreed. “Gotta be some truck drivers in that group. Question is, how do we track them down?”

  Jake jerked upright. “Dante.”

  “What?”

  “Dante Parrish. The Corcoran warden mentioned him as someone high up in the Brotherhood leadership, but Syd and I didn’t get around to tracking him down.” Jake shuffled through some papers. “We got the lead on Madison, then Randall disappeared and I completely forgot about him.”

  “Okay. But if Syd had trouble digging something up, why would we have better luck?” Rodriguez asked.

  George shrugged. “Hey, we got the resources of the entire U.S. government at our disposal. It’s worth a shot. Why don’t you call Syd? Maybe she found something out and forgot to tell you.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Jake dialed her number. He’d been meaning to check on her anyway. He knew that getting escorted off the scene must’ve smarted. Syd wasn’t acclimated to being told that her security clearance was insufficient.

  She picked up on the third ring. “Hey, I only have a sec. The plane is about to take off.”

  “What? Where are you flying?” Jake said. “I thought you went back to the hotel to sleep.”

  “Hard to sleep when we’ve got a bombing to thwart,” she said archly.

  “Syd…”

  “Relax, I won’t get you in trouble. Just tell your girlfriend I headed back to New York in a huff.”

  “Is that where you’re going?” Jake asked. “Back to the office?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Jake shut his eyes. Why was every woman in his life so bullheaded? “Syd, this is nuts. If you figured something out, tell me and I’ll let them know. We could have a swarm of agents on this.”

  “Not big on swarms. I work best alone. You of all people should know that, Jake.”

  “Shit.” He knew that his chances of swaying her were slim to none. He could rat her out to Leonard and have her tracked on a flight manifest, but he squirmed at the thought. They were partners, even if he was the only one who seemed to get what that meant. And besides, thanks to her former profession, she probably had a drawerful of identities on hand. It was unlikely she was traveling under her real name. Although in retrospect he wondered if he was even privy to that information. After all, what kind of parents named their girl “Sydney”?

  He sighed, then said, “All right. I need to know if you dug up anything on Dante Parrish before we got sidetracked.”

  There was such a long pause Jake wondered if he’d lost the connection. “Nice one, Jake. Totally forgot about our friend Dante,” she finally said. “Huh. You’re right, if we could track him…”

  “We’re pretty sure he was tied to Madison ’s kidnapping, right? So if he’s part of the larger plot-”

  “Then he might know where the trucks are headed. It’s a long shot, but maybe. Wish I could help, but my sources came up dry.”

  “Maybe we’ll have more luck. And, Syd?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful, okay?”

  “You know me, babe.”

  “Yeah, that’s the problem,” Jake muttered to the dial tone.

  “So we’re trying to track down Dante Parrish?” George asked.

  “Yeah. Syd didn’t have any luck, but maybe the long arm of the U.S. government will.” After all, Jake thought, the FBI likely had databases she couldn’t touch. “And while we’re at it, let’s see if we can gain access to prison records. I want the names of any Aryan Brotherhood gang members who did time with Mack Krex and Dante Parrish. Maybe some of them have licenses to drive big rigs.”

  “Probably a lot of them do,” George said, cocking his head to the side. “It’s a pretty common job for ex-cons. Bosses don’t care if you killed someone, long as you didn’t do it while driving.”

  “Well, it’s worth a shot, right?” Jake pointed out.

  Rodriguez shrugged. “Hell, I’ll switch out one mindless search for another. At least this one doesn’t involve tax forms. Doing this made me realize I forgot to file this year.”

  “And you call yourself a government employee,” George said.

  “Hey, what they’re paying us,
we shouldn’t even have to file. That should be a perk of the job, you ask me.”

  “Amen to that, brother.”

  Jake watched them tap knuckles. “All right. I’ll call the prison since the warden knows me. You two start on Dante. Anything you can find on him would be helpful.”

  “Including an address?”

  “That, and his exact location on a GPS.” Rodriguez snorted. “Sure. We’re on it.”

  Jake watched as they set to work with renewed vigor. It wasn’t much of a lead, in fact it might prove to be more busywork. But at least it was their own busywork. And if they found something, he was not above rubbing Leonard’s face in it.

  “No, I understand completely that there’s no official organizer. Still, you must keep track of-” The agitated voice erupted in another stream of accusations, and Kelly winced, holding the phone away from her ear. “I’m afraid you misunderstood me,” she said when he finally trailed off. “We have no interest in interfering with your right to free assembly. We’re just trying to find out if you have a list of participants-”

  There was a renewed tirade about McCarthyism and witch hunts. When he invoked Abraham Lincoln, Kelly said, “Thanks for your time, sir,” and hung up.

  Leonard glanced at her. “No luck, huh?”

  “Same as the rest of them.” Kelly leaned back in her chair. She had spent the past few hours calling parade organizers in cities under the Houston field office’s jurisdiction, asking for the names of everyone who had been issued a permit for a float. Unfortunately, by and large the parades were ad hoc affairs. Sometimes it was even hard to determine if anyone was in charge.

  Kelly had to admit, she was happy Jake and the others were in the other trailer. It would have been distracting having him here. She’d had to fight for him to stay, but figured she’d rather have him where she could keep an eye on him. Especially after the way he’d behaved during her Berkshires case. And separating him from Syd, who had an even weaker moral code, was a critical part of her plan. The best way to make sure he didn’t do something reckless was to keep him close by. Ideally, one trailer over. She, Leonard and three other agents were manning the phones in this trailer. Every other field office nationwide was doing the same thing, trying to procure lists of participants in Fourth of July parades.