Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

What usually happens is that you get to the checkpoint, tap your brakes, and, if you’re white, the Border Patrol agent waves you through with a bored sweep of the hand. That’s what usually happens, she thinks as she stops about a dozen cars before the checkpoint, and that’s what she’s expecting.

Except this time the Border Patrol guy signals her to stop.

Art looks at his watch-again. It should be going down now. He knows when she crossed the border, when she hit the rest stop. If she didn’t turn around somewhere, if she didn’t get hinky and change her mind, if… if… if…

Adan paces the office. He also has a timetable in mind, and Nora should be calling in soon. She wouldn’t risk a call near the surveillance at Pendleton, and there’s nothing for her to say until she’s through San Onofre, but she should be through by now. She should be in San Clemente, she should be…

The agent signals for her to roll down the window.

Another agent walks over to the passenger side. She rolls that window down, too, then looks at the agent beside her, gives him her best beautiful look and asks, “Is there something wrong?”

“Do you have ID on you?”

“Sure.”

She digs through her handbag for her wallet, then holds the wallet open for the agent to see her license. As she does, the agent on the passenger side pushes the tracking device between the headrest and the seat as he leans in to examine the back.

The first agent takes a long time looking at the license, then says, “Sorry for the inconvenience, ma'am,” and waves her through.

Art grabs the phone before the first ring stops.

“Done.”

He hangs up and blows out a long breath of relief. He has the aerial surveillance in place now, a mix of military-aircraft “traffic” helicopters and private planes, and can track her all the way.

And when she meets with the Chinese, we’ll be there.

Nora waits until she’s in San Clemente before she picks up the cell phone and punches in the number in Tijuana. When Fabian answers, she says, “I’m through,” and hangs up.

Now it’s just a matter of driving north until the Chinese give them a time and location for the meeting.

So that’s what she does.

She just drives.

Adan gets the call from Raul that Nora is through the San Onofre checkpoint, and goes outside for a walk. Now it’s just a matter of waiting.

Yeah, he thinks, just waiting.

Fabian has trucks standing by in Los Angeles, waiting to take delivery of the arms and drive them to the border at an isolated spot in the desert, where they’ll be transferred to different trucks, driven to several different airstrips and then flown to Colombia.

It’s all in place-but first Nora has to make that first, all-important transaction with the Chinese. And before she can do that, the Chinese have to tell them where and when.

Art also has men standing by-squadrons of heavily armed DEA agents, Federal Marshals, FBI-holed up in San Pedro waiting for the word. The San Pedro Harbor is huge, and the GOSCO facilities there are enormous-row after row of cargo warehouses, so they have to know, specifically, which one to hit. It’s a tricky operation because they have to lay off until the deal is in place, but then get in there quickly.

Art’s in a helicopter now, watching an electronic map of Orange County and a red blinking light that represents Nora. He debates with himself. Put a ground unit on her now, or wait? He decides to wait as she takes the 405 North exit off the 5 and heads for San Pedro.

No surprises there.

But he is surprised when the blinking red light gets off the 405 at MacArthur Boulevard in Irvine and turns west.

“What the fuck is she doing?” Art says out loud. He tells the pilot, “Pull in on her!”

The pilot shakes his head. “Can’t! Air-traffic control!”

Then Art gets what the fuck she’s doing.

“Goddamnit!”

He calls for ground units to hustle to John Wayne Airport. But the map tells him that there are five potential exits out of the airport, and he’ll be lucky to cover even one of them.

She gets off MacArthur at the airport exit and pulls in to the parking structure.

Art’s helicopter hovers over the 405, north of the airport. It’s his best hope, that she pulled into the airport to block audio surveillance, is getting the location in San Pedro, and will shortly pull back onto the highway.

Or, Art thinks, she’s taking millions of dollars in cash and getting on an airplane. He watches the screen but the blinking red light is just gone.

Nora gets on the cell phone.

“I’m here,” she says.

Raul gives her an address in nearby Costa Mesa, about two miles away. She pulls out of the structure and turns west on MacArthur, away from the 405, then turns onto Bear Street into the nondescript flat gridiron of Costa Mesa.

She finds it, a small garage on a street full of small warehouses. A man with a Mac-10 machine pistol slung over his arm opens the door and she pulls in. The door closes behind her, and then it’s like the Formula 1 race she once went to with a client-a crew of men instantly jump the car with power tools, take it apart and put the money into Halliburton briefcases and then into the trunk of a black Lexus.

This, she thinks, would be the moment for a rip-off, but none of these men are even tempted. They’re all illegals with family back in Baja and they know that Barrera sicarios are parked in front of their homes with orders to kill everyone inside if the money and the courier don’t leave that garage quickly and safely.

Nora watches them work with the smooth, silent efficiency of a first-class pit crew. The only sound is the whine of power drills, and it takes only thirteen minutes to disassemble the car and reload the money in the Lexus.

The man with the machine pistol hands her a new cell phone.

She calls Raul. “Done.”

“Give me a color.”

“Blue,” she says. Any other color would mean that she’s being held against her will.

“Go.”

She gets into the Lexus. The garage door opens and she pulls out. Gets back on Bear and ten minutes later she’s back on the 405, heading toward San Pedro. She drives right under a traffic helicopter circling the area.

Art stares at the empty screen.

Nora Hayden, he finally admits to himself, is in the wind.

She knows it, she gets it, she’s driving north into God knows what and now she’s doing it alone. Which is nothing new for Nora-except for her too few years with Parada, she’s been doing it alone her whole life.

But she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to get this done now. Or what’s going to happen. The easiest thing in the world would be to just take the money and keep going, but that won’t get her what she wants.

It’s nighttime as she passes through Carson, its natural-gas drills burning like signal towers in some sort of industrial version of hell. Working the plan, she gets off this time at the LAX exit and calls in.

They have the place for the meet.

An AARCO gas station heading west on the 110 exit.

On the way to San Pedro.

“Give me a color.”

“Blue.”

“Go.”

For a second she thinks about just using the cell and calling Keller on the hotline number he gave her, but then the number would show up on phone records, and besides, the car might be bugged. So she just drives to the gas station and pulls up by the pump. A car flashes its lights. She pulls over by a row of phone booths (God, does anyone use pay phones anymore? she wonders) and sits there while an Asian man with a small briefcase in his hand gets out of the other car and walks over to the passenger side of her car.

She unlocks the door and he gets in.

He’s a young man, probably mid-twenties, dressed in the black suit, white shirt and black tie that seem to be a uniform for young Asian businessmen these days.