He ended the call.
“What’s the story?” Bertel said.
“Heading home.”
Bertel stared ahead at the road, drumming his fingers on his thighs.
“What?” Jack said.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay on them.”
“Why? They’ve got an empty truck. All they’re hauling is a bunch of air.”
“Shits like them give decent smugglers a bad name.”
Jack had to laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Not as much as you think. Slow down and let them pass us.”
Jack didn’t want to slow down, he wanted to move on. But he signaled for the right lane and eased up on the gas pedal.
“What’s your interest? And no BS about upholding the honor of smugglers.”
“Something else is going on.”
“Yeah. It’s a big fat trap.”
“Beyond that. Don’t you get a sense that there’s a bigger picture here? Something that goes beyond human trafficking and jihad?”
“Selling sex slaves to finance blowing up the country sounds plenty big to me.”
“It is. But I’ve got a feeling there’s something even bigger going on.”
“Like what?”
He looked at Jack. “If I knew, I wouldn’t need to stick with these pieces of human garbage.”
“But why do you ‘need’ to?”
He checked the speedometer—the pickup was doing about fifty-two.
“Because something’s happening here and I don’t know what it is—”
“Sounds like a Bob Dylan song.”
“—and I don’t like not knowing.”
“Can’t know everything.”
“True, but…”
“I’m pretty much fine with not knowing things. I’ll just add your ‘something bigger’ to the list.”
“That’s it? Just add it to some list and go your merry way?”
“Pretty much.”
“You’re not the only one in this world, Jack.”
Jack shrugged. “When I think about having to share it with guys like Reggie, I sometimes wish I were.”
“Good point. But don’t you feel any need to be part of something bigger than yourself?”
Uh-oh. Were they going to get all philosophical here? Okay. He’d play. He didn’t like talking about himself, but right now the only other thing he had to do was drive. Maybe he could get Bertel to reveal a little about himself.
“Not really. No, let me take that back: no need at all.”
“Just me, myself, and I? That’s your life?”
“I didn’t say that. But I don’t feel the need to join a church or a theater group or the Royal Order of Raccoons to feel whole. And to tell the truth, my immediate circumstances are about all I can handle right now.”
“How do you feel about your country, Jack?”
Where was this going?
“Best country in the world.” Easy answer because he truly believed it. “Not that it couldn’t be improved.”
“How so?”
“It’s a little too much in your business, don’t you think? I don’t mean ‘your’ as in you, Dane Bertel, I mean it in a more generic sense, because the government doesn’t even know about your cigarette business. If it did, it’d shut you down and toss you in the clink.”
“Well, I am breaking the law. I knew that going in.”
“But why should there be a law that says you can’t truck cigarettes from North Carolina to Jersey? Why should someone stop you? Where do they get that power?”
“It’s interstate commerce.”
Jack gave a prolonged shrug. “That’s supposed to mean something to me?”
“It’s regulated by the federal government.”
“Says who?”
“The federal government. Backed up by the Supreme Court.”
“The Supreme Court, huh? And who appointed them?”
“The federal gov—” Bertel paused, smiled. “Okay. I get it.”
“Do you? Sounds rigged to me. How’s it sound to you?”
Bertel pointed a finger Jack’s way. “So you think people should just ship whatever they want wherever they like?”
“Why not? Who are you hurting?”
“The tax man, for one.”
“And the tax man works for…?”
“Stop right there. We could spend the night going round and round on that.” He laughed. “Legalizing transport would put me out of business. I mean, I’d have no margin of profit if it wasn’t illegal.”
“Exactly. So if you’re asking if I feel a need to be part of that circle-jerk machine, the answer is no. But if I’ve got to be involved in any machine, I’d prefer it be as a ghost.”
Bertel sighed. “You’re misconstruing what I’m saying.”
“Am I?” Time to turn this around. “What about you? Do you feel a need to be part of something bigger than yourself?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Jack grinned. “Like the FBI? Or the CIA? Or the NSA?”
“Will you give that a rest—please?”
“Not until you admit you’re a deep-cover agent for some supersecret branch of the federal government.”
Bertel just shook his head, like he was disgusted. But Jack wasn’t done needling.
“Okay,” he added, “let’s just say you follow these guys and do find ‘something bigger’ going on. What do you plan to do about it?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“Report it to your handler, or directly to M?”
Bertel remained silent.
“Or maybe you’re working for the other side. Maybe you’re from SPECTRE or SMERSH or—”
A Ryder truck flew by in the left lane.
“Is that—?”
“It is,” Jack said, reading the license plate. “Follow?”
Bertel nodded. “Yeah. They’ll be stopping at the Chesapeake House.”
“You know that?”
“They don’t have a mobile phone, otherwise they wouldn’t have stopped at the Maryland House to call in. They’ll want to phone in about getting stopped by the cops.”
Jack liked the logic in that.
“Then what?”
“While they’re stopped, I’m going to see if I can tag that truck with a tracking device.”
Jack almost veered onto the shoulder. “What? You just happen to have some kind of tracking device handy?”
“It’s just a radio transceiver.”
“And you’re gonna keep tellin’ me you’re not a secret agent?”
“Stop talking like an idiot. I’ve had a few drivers I’ve suspected of making detours from their route so I’ve followed them from time to time. The tracer ensures I don’t lose them along the way.”
Sounded logical, but still … Jack couldn’t help feel that Bertel was connected to something bigger than he let on.
Turned out he was right about the Chesapeake House. Just a few miles up the road, the Ryder truck exited to the rest stop.
The Maryland House had looked like a real house. The Chesapeake House looked more like a stylish warehouse. Reggie and Kadir appeared to have given up all pretense—they parked near other cars this time, and both got out and headed into the building.
“There.” Bertel pointed to an empty spot a dozen or so feet away. “Pull in there.”
“If they spot us…”
“Only take me a second.” He twisted and reached behind the front seat. “I’ve done this before. Rented plenty of Ryders and know just where to stick it.”
He came up with a duffel bag and hopped out of the cab with it. Jack watched him hurry around to the truck and disappear as he crouched beside it. Less than a minute later he was back. He put the duffel on the floor and pulled out a little gizmo. He turned it on and soon a green light began blinking on its postage-stamp size screen.
“She’s working. Let’s get out of here.”
Jack didn’t have to hear that twice. He backed up a
nd pulled away.
“Now what?”
“We head back to the Jersey rest stop where we left your cute little car. Then—”
“—most likely you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine,” Jack said, unable to resist another Dylan lyric.
But he liked the idea of returning to Ralph and being back in control and on his own again. At least until he connected with the Mikulskis.
“Right.”
“And which is your way?”
Bertel shrugged. “I’m assuming they’re heading back to New York. After I drop you off I’ll prowl the northbound turnpike till I catch their signal, then see where they take me.”
Bertel and he had eased back onto better terms during the trip. But even if they hadn’t, Jack didn’t want to see him getting caught up in something he couldn’t handle.
“It is a trap, you know.”
“Don’t worry, Jack. I won’t be walking into it. I don’t need to be in direct line of sight for this gadget to work. They’ll never see me behind them.”
“Still … why?”
“Just scratching a curiosity itch.”
“You know how that ended for the cat.”
“Won’t end that way for me. But you never can tell what will happen to them.”
Jack looked at him but his expression was set in stone.
“What’s that mean?”
“Well, that Reggie guy did order Tony killed.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Just keep driving.”
* * *
“Answer, dammit,” Reggie muttered. “Answer!”
While Kadir was using the men’s room, Reggie had bought a coffee and plunked the change into one of the wall phones. At least this time he hadn’t had to climb a bunch of goddamn stairs to reach them.
Finally al-Thani picked up. Reggie gave him a quick rundown of the cop stop.
“And you asked why he stopped you?”
“Yeah, but the guy was as talkative as a rock. Said he’d had a report of a rental truck hauling contraband and picked us at random, but I don’t buy it.”
“How long were the rear doors open?”
He sipped his coffee.
“Less than a minute. I got them closed ASAP.”
“Did many cars pass while they were open?”
“Hell, yeah. But it don’t matter how long they stayed open or if anyone who matters passed while they were. If the guys you’re looking for—”
“Choose your words carefully.”
“What? Oh, yeah.” Mobile phone. Right. “What I’m saying is, if these guys dropped a dime on us, they didn’t have to see nothin’. The fact that we’re still on the road tells them all they need to know.”
“Only if they made the call. Since we cannot know that, we will proceed as if it was truly a random stop.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Do you know your final destination?”
“Yeah, your little buddy showed me. That’s like the ass end of nowhere.”
“Precisely why it was chosen. When will you arrive?”
Well, they sure as shit wouldn’t be hitting any traffic toward the end of the haul—not at this time of year.
“We lost about half an hour with all this. Add that to the last ETA.”
“One A.M. then. We shall be waiting.”
Reggie hung up, with a lot more force than necessary. Shit. This was turning into one major clusterfuck.
* * *
Bertel had swung through one of those “Official Use Only” turnarounds to put them back on the turnpike south so he could drop Jack off at the Clara Barton Rest Stop. After feeding Ralph a full tank of gas, Jack continued the half dozen miles or so to the end, then turned around and headed north again.
He felt a pang as he saw signs for Exit 4. So easy to cruise down Route 73 into Burlington County, take 70 to 206 South to Johnson. Roll up to the driveway of his old house, pop in the door and say, “Hey, Dad, what’s up?”
Home again …
No, he couldn’t go home again. That would undo the clean break he’d made, undo the new life he was constructing for himself, the new person he was fashioning.
He put his foot in the tank and accelerated. As the exit ramp slid by on his right, he found it hard to swallow past the sudden lump in his throat.
Where had that come from?
But it got worse farther north as he approached that overpass … the one where the now dead Ed had dropped the cinder block that crashed through the window of the family car, crushing the life out of his mother.
Hadn’t even noticed it on the way south. So intent on following Reggie and the Arab in their Taurus that he’d breezed under it without realizing.
But now, following his own course, with no focus outside his own ragged thoughts, it hovered ahead, seeming to glow in the darkness.
He turned on the radio—AM only in this old car, but anything was better than thinking about that day, that moment, hearing again the smashing glass and his mother’s final whimpering, agonized breaths. He never listened to AM so he twisted the tuning knob at random, looking for something, anything to distract him. He got a nice sampling of static, but as the overpass loomed large in his windshield, he found a clear signal playing “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” and almost lost control of the car.
He managed to guide the Corvair onto the shoulder and stop. That song. He’d always hated it. Mom had been a rabid Broadway fan. Hardly ever got to see the plays but always bought the sound tracks. The Muzak of Jack’s boyhood memories was a parade of Broadway tunes. Many he came to appreciate for their melodies and lyrics—like My Fair Lady and South Pacific—but he never cared for the Oklahoma! tunes, and “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” least of all. A dumb, dumb, dumb song, and he’d always begged his mother to put on another Broadway LP—any other Broadway LP—but she loved Ooooooklahoma! and wouldn’t hear of it.
They’d never been all that close. She was Mom and she was there, would always be there as a nurturing presence in his life. He’d always been her “miracle boy” who could do no wrong. The story behind the “miracle boy” designation, when he’d finally learned it, had left him with a feeling of vague unease, but he’d gotten over it. His father had been the central figure in his life. He’d been the one Jack had wanted to please. Mom was on his side, period. And maybe because of that he’d taken her for granted.
Damn, how he wished he’d appreciated her more while she was alive. He never got to say good-bye, never got to tell her what a nourishing, steadying influence she’d had on his life. Never intrusive, but always there. Someone he could count on—forever, he’d thought.
And then, that day in the car, one moment she was alive and well in the front passenger seat, the next she was gone.
He felt a pressure build in his chest and he began to sob.
Christ, what was wrong with him? Was he going crazy?
Had to remember to stay the hell out of Jersey.
WEDNESDAY
1
Nasser al-Thani let Mahmoud do the driving. After all, he operated a cab for a living. If he could navigate Manhattan traffic, surely the Montauk Highway in West Islip in the wee hours of the morning was nothing.
Besides, it gave Nasser time to think.
From the outside, everything looked perfect. Ali Mohamed had put a minion named Saleem Haddad in charge of setting up the auction—renting the house, notifying the interested parties. To prevent an accidental slip of the tongue, Nasser had instructed Kadir and Mahmoud to tell no one connected with Al-Kifah that the auction was a ruse and would never take place. He had been gratified to learn that Kadir was ahead of him—he already had told Ali Mohamed the same.
So, word of the auction had gone out through the pederasts’ clandestine and supposedly secure channels, the same as last time. The buyers were assembled in a rented house in a mostly empty neighborhood, the same as last time. Reggie, a man who had run children before, was behind the wheel of a northbound rental truck, the sa
me as last time. The situation was ripe for a hijacking, just like the last time.
But from the inside, where al-Thani sat, everything looked far from perfect.
He still didn’t know how the hijackers had located the transfer site last time. Had they followed the truck north or had they followed the limousine Tachus had hired for the transaction? Since he couldn’t know, he had gone to a lot of trouble to send Reggie and Kadir south to pick up an empty truck. He’d also rented a limo just like Tachus had done, and made it as obvious as possible that it contained only two men. The limo had come equipped with its own cellular phone and an extended-range antenna, which might come in useful, considering the remote location of their destination.
“Make a right up ahead,” he said as they reached the Robert Moses Causeway.
Mahmoud nodded but said nothing as he turned onto the bridge that would take them to the barrier islands protecting Long Island’s south shore.
Nasser had researched the location carefully. This causeway was stop-and-go traffic in the summer months, but the barrier islands were virtually deserted at this time of year. And why not? Strips of sand dunes and sea grass and a cold wind blowing off the endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. No place to be in early March, but the perfect spot for a clandestine exchange of human contraband.
And an equally perfect spot for an ambush.
To the unimaginative, only two routes led to the transfer spot: this causeway from the north and east, and lonely Ocean Parkway running the length of the thin barrier island from the west. If, by some stretch of the imagination, the hijackers had learned the location of the supposed exchange, they would be watching those two approaches. But if they were, they would see no truckload of jihadists arriving to take up positions from which they could ambush the would-be ambushers. Because the gunmen would be arriving by a third route.
Mahmoud followed the causeway across a couple of miles of Great South Bay’s choppy water until they reached Captree Island, little more than marsh and scrub with a few houses on its south shore. Then over a narrow channel to Captree State Park at the easternmost tip of one of the barrier islands. If they’d kept going they would have crossed more water and then landed on Robert Moses State Park. Instead Mahmoud headed west on Ocean Parkway for three miles to the edge of Gilgo State Park, then turned south onto a sandy path with the unlikely name of Sore Thumb Beach Road. Nasser had seen it on a map and the beach did indeed stick out like a thumb, but it didn’t look sore. He had never understood the English expression “stick out like a sore thumb.” Really, whatever did that mean?
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