Ted Bell - Spy

“I’ll be right here, Sheriff.”

The scene had been carefully protected for about five hundred yards. The two-lane road curved back and disappeared into some trees. There were still two sets of tire tracks in the snow, lightly covered with fresh snow but you could still make out two distinct tread patterns. Dixon bent down and looked at a point of intersection between the two. He got his pocketknife out and stuck the blade into the snow. He’d seen something while staring at the treads. He pried it out and picked it up with his handkerchief. It was shiny, maybe some kind of glass.

Black glass.

“What have you got, there?” the bomb technician said, walking over with his robot in tow.

“Piece of glass.”

“Lots of that around. A lot of this black shiny stuff. Kinda weird, isn’t it? Here, hold your piece up to my flashlight. See that? Something inside, like another layer or something.”

“Yep. I do. It’s mirror.”

“Mirror. That’s what I thought, too. Now, what do you suppose that is all about?”

“Excuse me, will you please?”

Dixon turned and hurried back through the deep snow to the crater. Hernandez was still there, working the dog.

“Could you take a walk with me over here a little ways? The trees over yonder.”

“Sure.” Hernandez followed the sheriff to a nearby tree, away from the crowd. “What have you got?”

“Got your flashlight?”

“Right here.”

Dixon showed him the piece of glass he’d found, turning it over in his hand so it caught the light. Hernandez said, “You’re seeing something here, Sheriff. I’m not.”

“That truck Homer and I stopped that first night? The Yankee Slugger. Had heavily tinted windows. Blackouts with a layer of mirror in the middle. I tried to see inside that truck’s windshield, with my light right up against the glass just like this. Couldn’t see through the stuff. Just like this piece right here.”

“You check the truck in Virginia?”

“Identical glass in the cab. That bomb technician over there says this glass is all over the place. Lots of it.”

“So, you think this truck was one of the remote-controllers?”

“I’d bet on it.”

“Keep an eye on Dutch for me? I’m headed to my car to get the boss on the radio. Tell him what you’ve found. See what he wants us to do about it.”

Dixon nodded, “Won’t let him out of my sight. Borrow your flashlight while you’re gone?”

Dixon took the Superlight and walked back to the crater. He watched Dutch working something on the far side of the crater. Nobody in the crowd was paying any attention but he was on to something, all right. Dixon wasn’t a trained dog handler. But you didn’t need to be. You could see the whole thing in his body language. He was all over something or other.

“Hey, Dutch,” Dixon said, rubbing his ears, “What have you got, boy? Huh?”

There was a jagged piece of blackened metal lying between the dog’s feet. Dutch was guarding it, but decided to let Franklin look at it. Dixon took out his hanky again and held the thing up to the light. Twisted metal, burned, but you could make out some letters stamped into it.

R-O-L-E.

“The dog found this,” he said to the FBI man standing in the open door of the van.

“Who are you, sir?” the skinny man with the thin black tie asked. Franklin told him as he flashed his shield, climbed up a step to hand the piece of steel to him. “Where’d he find it, Sheriff?”

“Near the crater. He’s a White House K-9 dog, name of Dutch. That sticky stuff on the other side there’s probably bomb residue, way he’s acting. I’d take him seriously if I were you. He’s pretty good.”

“We’ll add it to the pile. Check it out when we can. Thank you, Sheriff.”

“I was thinking. Those letters? R-O-L-E? Could be the middle of a word. Chevrolet.”

“Chevrolet. Well, that’s an interesting idea. But hardly likely. There were two vehicles involved in this explosion. We’ve seen the tread marks. A Ford Crown Victoria and a Peterbilt tractor trailer rig riding on Goodyear. That’s confimed all the way to the top.”

“Well, you may be right.”

“Thanks again.”

The man turned to go back inside the crime van.

“There could have been a vehicle inside the truck,” Dixon said to his narrow white back.

“What’d you say?”

“I say there could have been another vehicle inside the truck. Truck that big, could have been two vehicles inside of the trailer. Two Chevrolets.”

“Two Chevrolets.”

“I rode in one just this evening. Over to the White House to meet with the President. Big black Chevy Suburban belonging to the Secret Service. You know the ones I’m talking about?”

“I know the ones.”

“I’ve been seeing a lot of them since I got up here to Washington. All over town. I guess for the Inauguration?”

“I guess.”

“All with blacked-out windows.”

“Right.”

“A lot of busted black glass on the ground over there. I found this piece down the road a ways.” Franklin handed him the piece of glass he found.

“Will you look at that? Huh.”

“Well. It’s just an idea. Add it to the pile.”

Dixon turned and headed back to the crater to find Agent Rocky Hernandez, Dutch trotting happily along right beside him.

Good dog.

77

THE BLACK JUNGLE

S tokley Jones stuck the flat of his hand in the air. His patrol froze at the signal. Ten minutes had elapsed since the squad’s insertion into extremely dense terrain. Two-hundred-foot trees loomed above their heads; he’d never seen anything like it. The squad was moving out carefully in patrol formation. They were moving much too slowly for Stoke, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.

It was raining up there somewhere. The water streaming down from above made the jungle floor a boggy mess. And there were tripwires everywhere.

Stoke was acting as point man, followed by Froggy, who’d been designated patrol leader. Right behind them was the radioman/grenadier, now using a back-up PRC 117 emergency VHF radio providing instant communications with the boat; he was giving Stiletto’s fire control officer the exact coordinates of the squad’s location. He could call for fire support if needed, but he didn’t want shells landing in his own backyard.

Behind the radioman was the first of three heavily laden M-60 machine gunners whose job it was to lay down a base of fire of 7.62 rounds if the squad got hit. His objective was to use the heavy machine gun to keep the bad guys with their heads down until the squad either flanked the enemy or got the hell out of there. Bringing up the rear was another M-60 man and a second point man covering the squad’s six. Should they need to reverse direction, he automatically became the new Point.

It was rough going, wet and muddy, but Stoke felt good. If there was a tougher, better trained, meaner Hostage Rescue Team on earth, Stokely had yet to hear of those lying sons of bitches.

Stoke had a CAR-15 with an M-203 grenade launcher slung over his shoulder. He was also carrying a Mossberg shotgun loaded with buckshot. It would give him a broader kill zone in the tight confines of jungle combat. The shotgun could also come in handy clearing foliage in the event of a firefight. Each man also carried a machete to hack through the dense undergrowth. All were wearing identical woodland cammies, jungle boots, and floppy bush hats.

“Tripwire,” Stoke said softly into his lipmike. It was the fifth one he’d seen in the last ten minutes. They were all over the place, slowing them way down. Some of them were even strung with little Voodoo dolls and spooky artifacts so you couldn’t miss them. Keep the natives from bothering Papa Top, he figured. Problem was, some of these little trinket clotheslines were real live wires. Blow your bottom half off. Some were not. So you had to take them all very seriously.