Cliff Ryder - Aim And Fire

“I doubt another hour is going to change anything out there. Come on, I know a great place on the way. They serve up chimichangas as big as your head.”

She glanced over at him with a frown. “For someone who was in such a hurry to get some action on this, you’re sure laid back now.”

“I just thought you’d like a chance to get situated a bit, review the materials we’ve gathered so far and have a decent meal before we run out into the middle of the desert looking at sand and scrub for several hours. You’re a real hard charger, ain’tcha? Most visitors from up north take the travel day off and start fresh the next morning.”

“I just don’t see the point in wasting daylight, especially if our suspects are on a timeline,” she said. Then her stomach rumbled, and Tracy shook her head, grimacing at her traitorous body. “However, a real meal would be good, and you’re right, it’ll be easier to review all of this without my computer bouncing around on my lap.”

“All right, then. And don’t worry about me—I’ll be sure to keep up with you.”

Tracy thought he might have winked at her, but she couldn’t be sure with the sunglasses.

Nate drove to Leo’s, a local place that was crowded, even at the after-lunch hour. The waitress greeted Nate by name, and showed them to a quiet corner booth. Tracy decided to follow his lead and ordered the chimichanga platter with beans and rice; her only difference was to get the salsa verde sauce instead of the red sauce Nate went with.

Tracy sipped some water. “Now, Agent Spencer, shall we get down to business?”

“Call me Nate, if you don’t mind—no need to stand on formality, and calling each other ‘Agent’ all day always gets on my nerves.”

“Fair enough, and I’m Tracy.” She flipped open her laptop screen, and Nate remained quiet for several minutes, munching on the complimentary tortilla chips and salsa.

Downloading the contents of the drive, she scanned them quickly, comparing them with the written reports. “Not much here so far,” she finally said.

“Well, the victims have barely been cold. Usually you all aren’t in such a hurry to get down here and poke around.”

“Time could be critical. So, what’s your take on this?”

Tracy asked.

Their meals arrived, the waitress warning them about the hot plates, and Nate waited until she was gone to speak.

“You already know about the e-mail, and when this whole thing happened, it just seemed to match up. What would be worth killing two dozen illegals over? Maybe a shitload of chiva, I suppose, but they’d all be carrying it—don’t make much sense to off your mules right after the crossing.

And they weren’t abandoned, like some coyotes do, because the truck was gone. These guys had a plan, and a backup, and when it looked like they were busted, they didn’t hesitate to break out the hardware and kill anyone that got in their way.”

“So, the question now is, where’d they go? If they’ve been on the move for the past couple of days, that would give them a range of roughly three thousand miles, give or take a couple hundred. That puts them into any major city on both coasts. We can’t alert everywhere—there’d be mass hysteria across the country.”

Nate scooped up a forkful of crisp, deep-fried tortilla and spicy shredded beef, chewed and swallowed. “That’s good, because I think they’re still around here. They came across the border here for a reason. If they had wanted to hit a major city, they wouldn’t come in here, then drive it across the country. Too much risk of discovery.”

“Okay, if they’re still here—and I doubt they’re planning on setting it off in El Paso, it’s just not central enough, no offense—what’s their delivery vehicle, private plane?”

“It’d have to be, wouldn’t it? We’ve already got agents looking into the records of anyone of, ahem, certain nationalities with a private pilot’s license in Texas and the surrounding states. I’ll say one thing about Travis—that guy I ticked off back in the office—he’s an ass, but he is good at his job.”

“Okay, so if that’s covered, then we try to find the truck.

Talk about a needle in a haystack, but I might be able to even the odds a bit. Excuse me.” Tracy pulled out the black cell phone and opened it. “Hi, Stephanie?”

The FBI’s agent’s voice was as clear as if she was sitting across from them. “Hello, Tracy. How’s Texas?”

“Hot. Listen, is there any way that you can find out if any satellites were over—” she flipped through the reports until she got the location of the massacre, then used her laptop to translate that into geographic coordinates and gave them to Kate Cochran.

“Great minds think alike. I’m already following that up.

I should be in touch with you with whatever we find shortly.”

“Good, we’re going out to take a look at the actual scene, and I’ll call in if anything else comes up.”

“All right. Otherwise, I’ll be in touch as soon as we have anything of import. Thanks, and good luck.”

Tracy closed the phone and turned to the remains of her meal. “Hopefully that’ll cut our haystack down to a more manageable size. This was delicious, but I’m more than done. Shall we?”

Nate took care of the bill, and they headed back out to his Bronco. He navigated through the neighborhood to the highway, heading southeast out of town toward the crime scene. Tracy tried not to let her anticipation show by tapping her foot on the floor or her fingers on the armrest, but she couldn’t stop the thrill of knowing that she was in the field, doing actual on-site investigation.

Now all I have to do is crack this case before these guys do something horrible, like kill several hundred thousand people, she thought as the reality of her situation hit her.

The sobering thought dissipated her excitement, and turned the food in her stomach into a leaden lump as Tracy realized the lives of tens of thousands might be in her hands, and if she failed them, each one would be on her conscience for the rest of her life.

With an effort, Sepehr al-Kharzi kept his hands from trembling in zealous excitement. The team that was about to insert the nuclear payload into the rocket was performing flawlessly, and he had never been more proud of any operation that he had overseen than this one.

Although there had been many successful insertions of sleeper cells in the U.S. over the past two decades, he was the most impressed with the men that made up this one.

They all worked together and lived in an El Paso suburb, spread out enough so as not to attract too much attention, but close enough to stay in contact easily—and to keep an eye on each other, to prevent slip-ups. Sepehr had seen all too many times how promising missions had been busted because of the wrong phrase said in the wrong place, or one member of the cell doing something out of the ordinary, and drawing attention to himself. In that way, the fact that this much larger operation had remained off the government’s radar for so long was even more impressive.

That was in part due to Joseph’s foresight in taking care of his personnel. If there was an immigration problem, his lawyers were available to any employee, day or night. If one of them broke the law, accidentally or otherwise, he got as much help as he needed to take care of the problem.

Spaceworks offered generous salaries and benefits packages, as well. The boss understood that religious zealotry and sound business practices could operate alongside each other without too much difficulty.

And now, everything was coming to fruition, praise Allah. The plan was in its final stages, and soon they would wreak the most terrible blow upon this nation that anyone had ever seen.