Spy (41 page)

“They’re boarding us, Skipper,” Brownlow said under his breath. “Christ, they’re all over the damn boat.”

Screaming savages with torches appeared at the wheelhouse windows. The sounds coming from the howling Xucuru warriors were screams of anguish, not cries of war. The Xucuru appeared to be bouncing up and down beyond the windows; they hopped madly from one foot to the other on the carpet of tacks, grabbing their feet, howling and yipping in pain.

“Not staying long, I shouldn’t think,” Hawke said, grinning at Stokely.

“Look like they’re hopping mad out there,” Stoke said.

Most of the Xucuru, upon encountering Stoke’s unpleasant surprise, leapt immediately back into the river. Those few who remained, faces illuminated by torches, were yelping and beating angrily on the wheelhouse windows. Hawke thumbed a switch overhead and all the interior lights were doused. The deck lights remained on. Now they could see the attackers clearly.

Brownlow said, grinning, “We’ve got a million dollars worth of high-tech weaponry on this boat. But that was one hell of an idea, Stoke.”

“Best security system you can buy for four dollars a bag.”

A few seconds later, all the Xucurus were abandoning ship. Ten, fifteen, twenty leapt from the decks of
Stiletto
and into the Black River. No more boarded after that.

Brownlow looked at the surface of the river. The water was alive, frothing with darting and biting piranhas, swarms of them, lured by the sudden abundance of human blood in the water. The Xucuru, screaming, clawed the water, desperate to reach shore.

“Captain Brownlow, the river looks clear ahead,” Hawke said. “Let’s go get Mr. Brock. All ahead full.”

“All ahead full.”

Night had fallen in the jungle.

Soon, the torches of the war canoes and the cries of angry warriors were left astern, disappearing in the gloom.

Stiletto
surged ahead, piercing the darkness, setting her course straight for the heart of the enemy.

A
ir Force One lands some where around here, doesn’t it? I’ve seen that on the news a few times.”

“Eighty-ninth Airlift Wing. Right over there, Sheriff,” Consuelo de los Reyes said, pointing out a large hangar complex across the wide, snow-covered tarmac to their left.

The Secretary of State and Sheriff Franklin W. Dixon were in the middle seat of the heavily armored black Chevy Suburban. There were two DSS agents from the Diplomatic Security Service up front and behind them three more. They were riding in one of six identical vehicles, their rooftops all bristling with antennas and sat dishes.

The convoy was just now exiting the main entry gate at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland. Consuelo de los Reyes had been one of the small group of people standing in the freezing cold on the tarmac when the FBI chopper transporting Sheriff Dixon had touched down at Andrews ten minutes earlier. She had greeted the sheriff warmly, and expressed her condolences about the death of his deputy, Homer Prudhomme, in the line of duty.

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.”

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.

Now the guy braked and hung a right on Beach Drive, going wide, and headed toward the Riley Spring Bridge.

“Hit the lights, Tommy,” Pastore said, “I’ve had enough of this dick-head.”

“Yeah, let’s pull him,” Darius said, firing up the light bar and red flashers. “Then we’ll go get some supper.”

This driver of this rig, who was apparently hauling frozen seafood from Louisiana, was either lost or smoked up or both. “Crawdaddy & Co.,” that’s what it said on the truck. Big pink crawfish or something painted on the back and sides. Didn’t look all that tasty. Looked more like big bugs.

The guy was crawling through the park, ten miles an hour, pausing to stop at every intersection and then proceeding through it, moving along as if he owned the road. The truck being from way down south in Louisiana, Darius and Pastore assumed nobody’d told this ragin’ Cajun that this was a National park, run by the Department of the Interior, and trucks weren’t welcome.

“He’s not stopping, Joey. What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll pull along side this asshole. Roll your window down and flag him over to the shoulder.”

“It’s fuckin freezing out there, Joe.”

“Just do it.”

“He won’t stop. Look at those tints. Thinks he’s a movie star. We ought to bust him for those limo windows, too.”

“He stops at stop signs but he won’t stop for us. Jesus.”

“Hey! Watch it! You trying to kill me?”

Joey had pulled one car length ahead of the truck’s cab, then put the wheel hard over, jumping in front of the truck and then getting on the brakes, slowing to five miles an hour.

“Is he slowing down?” Joey asked, looking in the rearview. You could hardly see because of the snow and fog.

“Yeah. I think.”

“All right, that’s it, I’m stopping.”

“He ain’t,” Darius said, turning around in the seat and peering through the frosted rear window. The red and blue flashers lit up the snow-covered cab. “Jesus, he’s pushing us off the road.”

“He skidded. That’s all. He’s stopped now. Okay. Let’s go introduce ourselves, make this cracker feel at home here in our nation’s capitol.”

They both got out of the car and went back to the truck cab. Big Peterbilt, bright red. The windshield so dark you couldn’t see a thing inside. Tommy stepped up onto the running board and rapped on the driver’s window with his flashlight.

“What’s this guy, playing possum or something?”

“Bang harder. Break the fuckin’ thing.”

“Police!” Tommy said, rapping harder. “Open your window!”

“This guy’s unbelievable. I’m going to get the ram out of the trunk. We’ll bust his window for him he doesn’t open up.”

Joey jumped down from the truck and came back with the lightweight metal ram they used for taking doors down in a hurry. Tommy looked at him, then jumped down from the running board, shaking his head.

“Still nothing?”

“Maybe he’s dead.”

“Fuck it. I’m freezing my nuts off out here.”

Joey climbed up and used the ram on the driver’s side window. The glass was unbelievably thick. It took three tries. On the third, the window imploded inward in a shower of Saf-T-Glass. A weird smell came from the cab. Not sour sweat stink and tobacco like Joey and Tommy were accustomed to, stopping these rigs. Nothing like that. More like machinery and hydraulic fluid.

Tommy aimed his Mag-Lite inside.

“Holy shit.”

“What?”

“Nobody in here. Get up and take a look. Fucking Buck Rogers.”

Joey climbed up and peered through the window. “What the hell is all that stuff?”

“Some kind of remote control driving thing. I don’t know. Weird shit, huh? Listen, it’s beeping.”

“I don’t like beeping.” Joey said.

Tommy played his light across the polished stainless steel steering mechanism; saw that there was more elaborate machinery mounted on the floorboard where the pedals and transmission normally were. A split-screen monitor on the console showed four live views: front and rear, and on both sides. The two police officers stared at the screen for a moment, transfixed.

“Is that TV snow? Or, real snow?” Tommy said.

“Can’t tell. Should we call it in?” Joey said, staring at the little red light that was blinking rapidly.

“You see any cameras? You think we’re on Candid Camera?”

“Off the air. Reruns only. We gotta call this in. I don’t like it.”

“Let’s go see what’s in the back first. Must be some freaking hi-tech seafood, man.” Tommy jumped down into the snowbank and ran toward the rear. He was pumped about the robot truck. It was bad. But it was cool, too.

“I’m calling it in first,” Joey said, running back to his squad car.

It was a Rol-R-Door, which meant it rolled up from the bottom like a garage door. Slid up into the roof. There was a big steel padlock securing the door to the truck frame. Tommy used the ram on the lock, basically just took out the bottom third of the door. Joey was back.

“Call this thing in?”

“They think I’m crazy, but, yeah, I did.”

“They sending back up anyway?”

“Beats me.”

Patrolman Darius nodded and stuck his flashlight inside the opening. He leaned forward and peered into the dark body of the trailer.

“What’s in there? Baby robot Jobsters?”

“I dunno, but it ain’t seafood. Something big. Black and shiny. Two of them. Heavy plastic sheeting covering them up, whatever the hell it is.”

“Rip it off. The plastic. You want my knife? Here.”

“Thanks…hard to get my arm far enough inside to—”

The horrific explosion killed the two young police officers instantly, vaporizing them. It blew down every tree within a radius of a hundred yards and created a black hole in the frozen ground fifteen feet across. The blast completely destroyed the truck from Louisiana and its contents, as well as the Crown Victoria cruiser parked in front of it on the shoulder. Automobile alarms a quarter of a mile away were activated. Windows rattled at Walter Reed Hospital.

No one seeing the black hole gouged in the earth could quite believe it. A lot of neighborhood kids came out to see it. It looked like a flaming meteor had hit. Debris was scattered in the snow as far as you could see.

It was January 17.

The Day of Reckoning was near.