Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

“Why hostage rescue?” said Rhytag.

“It was a suggestion from one of our tactical commanders. He says that hostage rescue has expertise and training in vehicle breeches, mostly buses. It’s the same team that went in to try and extract Agent Mederios and the others from the bus. If we can locate the cargo truck, we’ll use the HR team as the spear to gain access to the container, followed closely by the NEST team, to try and defuse the thing.

“So all we need now is to find it,” said Rhytag. He asked what kind of equipment was set up along the border in terms of detection.

“That’s the problem,” said Thorpe. “None of our detection equipment does us any good if nothing’s moving. According to the people on the NEST team, it probably wouldn’t do any good anyway. I talked with Llewellyn, he agrees. He says the fissionable material in the bomb is highly enriched uranium, and since it’s probably shielded, the equipment we have is next to useless. It could read plutonium fairly easily. But with uranium we’d have to be right up against the carrier, no more than three or four feet away, to read anything. And we’d probably have to be there for an extended period of time before we got a sufficient reading.”

“In other words, Nitikin and his friends are in a position to sit us out and wait,” said Rhytag.

“We could use thermal imaging,” said Thorpe. “We’d be looking for high-density anomalies, lead in the shield, for example. We could reduce the number of vehicles to be searched. The problem is, the bomb, from everything we know, is on the other side of the border. The Mexican government is not willing to allow us to use imaging.”

“Why not?”

“They’re afraid if we find it, Nitikin and his cohorts will detonate the damn thing and turn Tijuana into a crater.”

“That would get rid of the cartel for them,” said Rhytag.

“No, that would get rid of the cartel for us. They don’t seem to mind. Especially now. With oil down that’s the only growth sector in their economy. Half of those factories on the other side of the border are shut down. What did they call those things?” said Thorpe.

“ Maquiladoras, ” said Rhytag.

In the late nineties, politicians eager to pocket million-dollar speaking fees from foreign trade groups embraced the concept of a global economy. They teamed up with Chinese businessmen and Mexican manufacturers and carved out a zone along the U.S. southern border where trade restrictions were virtually eliminated.

American politicians sold the country on the concept of our being an information economy, that we no longer needed manufacturing or heavy industry, as if you could drive words and eat sentences. They shipped entire job sectors abroad and then railed at the demise of the middle class.

Places like Ensenada with its sleepy port suddenly boomed. In less than two years, vast amounts of commercial cargo moved off docks in Los Angeles and San Diego and landed instead in northern Mexico. China began shipping oceans of cheap component parts to ports along the Mexican coast, most of which were delivered to factories known as maquiladoras on the northern border. There the parts were assembled into finished products that flowed into the American market on trucks owned and operated by Mexican trucking companies.

It was a win-win situation if you were looking to buy a cheap television, or a politician collecting on IOUs from foreign constituents. But for those who once worked in the shuttered factories or drove trucks for a living, it was the end of the road.

For more than a decade, the maquiladoras flourished, until they fell on hard times, in a way a victim of their own success. It’s difficult to sell televisions, even if they’re cheap, to millions of Americans who are out of work.

Liquida smiled at the thought as he wandered through the empty building, wondering why the raghead would want to meet him here. He got in by picking a small lock on a door at the rear of the building. The place was huge, cavernous, all under a single roof with overhead doors large enough to accommodate Noah’s ark.

Like all of the maquiladora facilities, it was situated in the trade zone nestled right up against the U.S. border. While the Americans controlled their side with vast areas of vacant land and highly trained dogs, the Mexicans punched right up against the fence in many places. Both sides of the border were arid desert with rugged ravines and hills. The American side was only sparsely developed, mostly commercial warehouses and trucking facilities with a vast array of border checkpoints. With the downturn in the economy, some of the warehouses on both sides were now empty, chained-up facilities waiting for better days.

Liquida was sweating because of the long coat he was wearing. It was necessary to conceal the heavy item underneath. He checked his watch. He was two hours early. He had parked his car several blocks away and walked so that his early visit would come as a surprise to his employer.

He had gone to the port at Ensenada earlier that day. From the overview on the knoll above the highway, overlooking the harbor, Liquida could see police crawling all over the ship, so many uniforms he was afraid it would sink.

He had watched with heavy-duty binoculars for some time and was pretty sure that Afundi had gotten away. Because of all the ongoing interrogations the police were still looking for someone or something. There were enough squad cars parked along the dock with hoods up and batteries missing that the chief in Tijuana would have to call Delco to get them all home.

He was musing over the events at the harbor when suddenly he heard a noise from outside the warehouse. It was the sound of a heavy truck coming from the direction of the large fenced-in parking area.

Liquida sprinted over to the door and peeked through a crack. A man was unlocking the gate out on the street. There was a large container truck and another smaller box truck that looked like a rental vehicle behind it.

Liquida watched for a few seconds as the man unlocked the chain and pulled the double gates open. The two trucks started to roll through the gate, toward the warehouse.

Liquida retreated to a ladder in the far corner of the building and climbed to an overhead loft area, a kind of industrial catwalk where he could perch and take in the show without being seen. He made himself comfortable, took off his long coat, and set it and the object strapped under it on the catwalk next to him.

A couple of minutes later the large overhead garage door was lifted by someone outside. For the first time Liquida realized it hadn’t been locked. The mammoth door was so delicately balanced that the man was able to hoist it with one arm and send it sailing along the track until it settled almost against the roof of the building.

Liquida wondered if anyone had been inside watching him. He was fairly confident there were no cameras. Those he had looked for. But the unlocked overhead door surprised him.

A minute later both trucks were inside the building. Liquida could smell the odor of diesel exhaust as it wafted up to the balcony where he lay. The engines shut off and four men climbed down from the two trucks. Three from the rental vehicle and the driver of the cargo-container truck. The fifth waited by the huge open door with one hand on the rope, as if he were going to pull it and close the overhead door. But he didn’t. He waited for several minutes, looking out the open door as if expecting someone else, while three of the other men talked. Liquida couldn’t understand a thing they said. They were speaking in a foreign tongue of some kind. The other man, the fifth one, stood not far from the rental truck and seemed to be off somewhere in his own world. He didn’t look like the others either. He was older, fair haired, and though Liquida couldn’t get a good look at him from up high, he appeared to be taller as well.