Archer Mayor - The Dark Root

“10-4. One hundred and twenty illegals.”

“Then I recommend you track the ATV, but do not apprehend. Watch for it to go back the way it came-over into Canada.”

Boucher and I swung out of the truck. “Boy-they aren’t going to like that,” he said. “What’re you up to?”

We both grabbed a corner of the trailer, noticing the tow bar had been destroyed, and pushed it farther into the brush. “Open it for a quick look,” I said instead of answering him.

He slipped the catch from the top of the trailer and threw back the door. Inside, lit by our headlights, was a trashed jumble of suitcases, cloth bags, and bundled clothing.

“The truck was the mother lode,” I explained with relief. “The armada on the lake was just to draw our attention.”

We returned to the truck, and Richard drove us rapidly to the road a few hundred yards farther on. He took a hard right and accelerated to where we could already see the helicopter landing lights searching out a good place to settle down. The truck didn’t sound too healthy, despite the smooth road.

We reached the crossroads simultaneously. I ran, doubled over, just as the helicopter touched down, opened its waist door, and jumped inside, surprised as I did so to see not just Spinney, but Lucas and Frazier as well.

“Have you located him?” I shouted as the rotors revved up and we pulled away from the earth. Spinney handed me a pair of headphones similar to the ones Al Hammond had used in his airplane.

Frazier answered my question. “Yes. We have him on a loose tail, and he is heading back for the border, but I’m not sure I’m real happy with this. What the hell’re you doing? I thought we wanted to nail this guy.”

“Without the truck, he’s probably out a half-million dollars or more. I think he took his last gamble-like we thought he would-and he blew it. His only option now is to go after Da Wang directly, except that with the protection Da Wang’s got, Truong’s going to need Diep and anyone else he can round up to pull it off. If we really want to put an end to this, we need him to lead us to the others.”

Lucas put his hand on my shoulder. “You will have a stronger case if you stop him in this country. With all due respect, your laws are tougher than ours when it comes to people like this.”

“But the evidence against him is still here. Can’t we extradite him?” I asked Frazier.

“I don’t have a problem with that, but we’ve got him now. Why risk losing him just because he may or may not lead us to Diep? And what if it goes wrong? This could lead to a bloodbath.”

“Because we’re always grabbing what we can and letting the rest get away,” I shouted back, since even with our headphones on, the helicopter put out a terrific noise. “They expect that-they count on it. Why do you think he threw us all those poor bastards on the lake? Were any of them carrying contraband?”

“We’re still rounding them up, but, so far, none of them are even illegals-they’re all Canadian landed immigrants. The ones we’ve caught are claiming they had full intentions of declaring entry at the port.

I shook my head in amazement at the depth of Truong’s planning. “Let’s take the gamble and do it right. We’ve done pretty well so far. We already shut him down. Taking him now and letting the others walk would be a total waste. He’s the best chance we’ve got to round up the rest of them-maybe even Da Wang.” And Amy Lee, I thought privately.

I looked at them all in the dim red glow from the bulkhead light. All of us were trained as rookies to do as Frazier had suggested-to be content with a clean bust as soon as you can get it. Conversely, we were by now all veteran officers, and we knew that carefully considered gambles were also a part of the business; that without undercover operations, stings, snitches, prolonged surveillance tactics, and the taking of risks, none of us could have made some of our bigger cases stick. It also didn’t hurt that my credibility was pretty good at the moment.

Frazier finally turned to Lucas. “Jacques, this is as much your call as ours. We’re going into your jurisdiction.”

Lucas nodded and moved toward the cockpit. He had the co-pilot key-in a special radio frequency and then plugged his headset directly into the dash, taking him out of our communications loop.

I turned to Spinney. “Assuming he says yes, think we could fake a good pursuit, just so Truong doesn’t catch on?”

Spinney grinned and switched over to the VSP radio.

Five long, tense minutes later, when any decision was getting close to being too late, Lucas returned to us. “Okay.”

Spinney immediately set his plan in motion, orders were given to the pilot, and the four of us moved to the windows to see what would happen.

Far below, isolated by the blackness of the empty land all around them, we could clearly see two sets of lights-one small and jerky, the ATV charging cross-country-the other, farther off but closing rapidly, sparkling like some runaway Christmas ornament-the unit Spinney had set after Truong. I watched with growing concern as the two drew ever closer, wondering if the trooper understood that the ATV was supposed to escape.

Suddenly, and with some relief, I saw the cruiser’s lights swerve violently and then come to an abrupt stop. Spinney burst out laughing: “Attaboy-right into the ditch.” He hit the send button on his radio. “You all right down there?”

“You sure my butt’s covered on this?” was the reply.

Spinney laughed again as we all watched the smaller light flicker down the field where I’d first met it and work its way back into the woods.

The smiles slowly died on all our faces. I looked over to Lucas, the memory still painfully sharp of how I’d set Vince Sharkey against Michael Vu. “Guess I stuck it to us now.”

He kept his eyes glued to the window, as if trying to memorize the details below. “I am hoping not,” he finally muttered, and turned away toward the cockpit.

Twenty minutes later we switched helicopters in a field north of the border, the landing zone marked off by a wide circle of police cars, all with their headlights pointing toward the center. Spinney, Frazier, and I left our unloaded weapons on the National Guard unit, and with them our authority. As we ran, crouching, from one thundering aircraft to the other, we became mere privileged observers, as vulnerable as our case to whatever vagaries the Canadian officials might decree. It was at that moment that my adrenaline for the chase-which at its height was no doubt as powerful as Truong’s-underwent a sudden and sobering nose dive. I began fervently hoping that Lucas was all I’d privately made him out to be.

Certainly the influence of the Mounties seemed to live up to their reputation. Between the time we’d decided to let Truong return to Canada, and when we took off again in an official RCMP chopper, the quiet, diminutive Lucas had coordinated an impressively large operation.

As the helicopter gained altitude, Lucas informed us. “Truong abandoned the ATV outside of Rock Island about five minutes after we saw him cross the border. He was followed on foot into town, where he picked up a delivery van not far from the Customs building. He then took Autoroute 55 North toward Sherbrooke. We are expecting that he will take Autoroute 10 West into Montreal. The van is white, with the name of a Chinese catering service in Montreal on its side. It has not been reported missing or stolen, so we are assuming it is being used with permission. We will be tracking his progress most of the way in this,” he patted the wall of the helicopter, “with the aid of several ground units.”

The junction of Autoroutes 10 and 55 appeared in the darkness below us as the confluence of two sporadically dotted lines-each line being an irregular stream of vehicles. Given the hour, there wasn’t much to see.