Ted Bell - Spy

His death had not been in vain, she told Dixon, and indeed Deputy Prudhomme was most likely going to receive a posthumous citation for bravery. Sheriff Dixon had told de los Reyes he’d like to handle all the funeral arrangements, take the boy back home to Texas with him.

“I’ll make arrangements for you and the deputy to fly home together, Sheriff.”

“’Preciate it. What’d they do about that truck?” Dixon asked.

“They’re putting it on a flatbed and taking it to Quantico. The technicians will take it apart bit by bit, see what makes it tick.”

“Making it tick. I hope that’s not a bomb.”

“We all do, Sheriff.”

As the convoy turned left and moved slowly through the small town of Morningside, heading northwest, Dixon was peering through the heavily tinted windows, trying to gather his thoughts and clear his head. The gunshot wound he’d received to the head had been purely superficial. A crease on his forehead. The EMS had stitched it up, splashed some brown stuff on it, and put a bandage over it. It still hurt pretty bad. More like a bad headache than a gunshot wound. He hadn’t had much sleep, either.

And it didn’t look like he was going to get much anytime soon.

“Where are we headed now?” he asked.

“There are some people at the White House who would like to speak to you.”

“We’re going to the White House?”

She nodded. “I’ve got a scheduled meeting there. They said you may as well come along. Tell me about that truck, Sheriff. How you came to find it.”

“We pulled the first one about three weeks ago. Homer insisted on calling it the Ghost Rider because we couldn’t find the driver anywhere. I thought he’d just run off into the desert. I’m afraid I didn’t do too good a job of looking for him. That was the night we found the, uh, my posse.”

“I know all about that, Sheriff. I’m terribly sorry about what happened to those brave boys. But I need to know everything you can tell me about those trucks before we go into this meeting with the President’s security people.”

“Homer stayed with it, no matter what I said. According to Wyatt Cooper, one of my deputies who talked to Homer, he followed one truck down to a town called Gunbarrel, right on the Rio Grande. That’s where they were coming across the border. They’d built a huge tunnel underground, came up inside a deserted warehouse.”

“They? Who built it?”

“Well, apparently, Mexicans, since that’s where the tunnel is from. But there was a fella from Prairie who was in it with them on the American side. Local man named J.T.Rawls. He must have been the one ran the operation on this side of the border.”

“What kind of operation? Had to be smuggling?”

“That’s what Homer told my deputy. I think they were bringing drugs in originally. Drugs and illegals. Had to be a pretty big outfit, too, all the money that must have been spent on that warehouse.”

“And a tunnel that size. We don’t understand the remote controlled aspect of these trucks. Tell me about that.”

“Heck, I don’t understand it either. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, the coyotes bringing in illegals that way. Or, drugs for that matter. Drivers and mules are dirt cheap down there. Expendable, too.”

“The one you found in Lee’s Ferry. The deputy told you that a small submarine had been placed in the river.”

“Yep. That’s what he told me.”

“He believed it to be an unmanned craft?”

“Yes he did. Said it took off with no one inside.”

“How’d you come to be there? At the farm.”

“Homer called me from the house where the terrorists were living. Right after I’d got back from your conference. My wife picked me up in San Antonio. She’d followed another truck herself up there. To San Antonio. Same black windows.”

“Where is that truck now?”

“I reckon she’s still looking for it. I haven’t had a chance to call her. Or, even Wyatt to tell him about Homer.”

“How do we get in touch with Mr. Cooper? We’ll do that for you. We’d like to speak with him as well.”

He gave her the Sheriff’s Office number at the Court House. The Secretary leaned forward and whispered to an agent in the front seat. Then she turned back to him.

“Homer told you there were a lot of trucks headed north?”

“Yes, ma’am. He said he’d followed about two dozen trucks out of Gunbarrel, moving in a convoy, all headed the same direction. They split up along the way. Taking different routes. He finally picked one and followed it to Virginia.”

“Northeast? All the trucks were headed that way? No one going south. Or, west?”

“He said north, ma’am.”

“He picked one truck and stuck with it all the way to Virginia.”

“He did.”

“The people living in the farmhouse. The doctor and his family. Tell me about them.”

“He was a doctor?”

“A pediatrician. Iranian. They’d been living in that house for four years. The son was in law school.”

“Well. A doctor. That’s something. You never know, I guess.”

“Don’t worry. We deeded the farm all the way back to a German ambassador and a small holding company in Dubai. This Iranian family, they were sleepers, all right. What your deputy did was the right thing. You, too.”

“You find that sub?”

“Not yet. We’ve got divers and salvage operations out from Fredericksburg all the way north to D.C.”

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“It’s always bad. Especially now that we’ve got the Inauguration coming up. Everybody’s a little tense. I’ve got to make a few phone calls, Sheriff. You put your head back and take it easy. We should be there in half an hour.”

73

S now day, huh?” Metro Patrolman Joe Pastore said. “Remember Snow Days?”

“The best, Joey,” his partner, Tom Darius said. “Man. I loved Snow Days. More than life.”

Joe said, “Snow forts. Snow wars. Your kids’ school close down, too?”

“It was on the radio at six or something, just as I was leaving the house. I think every school in DC is closed. Look at this shit coming down. Has to be a couple of feet already, right?”

“I hope it keeps snowing. Right through the frigging Inauguration. That way people will stay home and watch it on TV. Make our lives a whole lot easier, right? Hey! Watch out for that truck! You see that guy?”

“Is this fruit nuts?” DC uniformed Patrolman Tommy Darius said to his partner, Pastore, who was driving the cruiser. A huge tractor-trailer truck had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, turning into the road right in front of them, barely visible in the swirling snow.

Joey laughed and hit the brakes, nodding his head. Is this fruit nuts? You have to ride around in a car all day, it better be with someone funny. Like Tommy. The two of them had been together ever since the academy, hell, every since grade school in Silver Spring. Inseparable, even back in the day. Next-door neighbors. Spitshooters. Hellraisers. Crimebusters. Partners to the end. Close, that’s what they always said. Like wallpaper to a wall.

Their DC squad car, a white Crown Vic, followed the big tractor-trailer along a winding wooded road in the middle of Rock Creek Park. There were few people using the vast park today, because of the snowfall. They’d seen a few hikers, a couple of hardy folks on horseback, riding through the huge mounds of snow drifted up under the trees.

Darius and Pastore began following the truck on North Waterside Drive, headed southeast, the only two vehicles on the road. They’d only passed one other vehicle, a big Lexus SUV, going the other way. Not only were trucks not allowed in the park, ever, they especially weren’t allowed on Waterside. That’s because the damn drive was closed, all the way from Massachusetts Avenue to Rock Creek Parkway. Clearly marked “Closed,” and here was this guy.