Harvath had no idea if she could see it or not, but he stuck one hand over the top of the generator and waved. “It’s okay, Maggie,” he replied. “It’s me, Scot. Lower your weapon.”
There was the sound of her weapon being decocked and then Maggie Rose stepped out from behind the olive trees carrying a Mossberg lever-action rifle. “What are you doing out here?” she asked, walking over to him as he stood up and emerged from behind the generator.
“We had a problem with the power a few minutes ago. What are you doing out here?”
“I saw something on the CCTV cameras and wanted to come check it out.”
“What did you see?” he asked.
“A group of illegals crossing the property. If the Knights were here, their security people would go out and question them. The problem is, we don’t have a procedure for this. If it was just staff here, we’re told not to engage, just let them pass. You’re here, though, and that makes me responsible for you. Though maybe I don’t need to worry,” she added, looking at the weapon in Harvath’s hand.
“When was the last time this was serviced?” he said, walking around the generator.
“About a month or two ago. Why?”
Harvath motioned her closer and pointed at the boot prints. “These are fresh. Does anyone on the ranch wear boots like these?”
She studied them for a moment and replied, “No. None of us do.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said as his eyes tried to penetrate the darkness around them. “I want to know exactly what you saw on the cameras. Where are they now?”
“A group of what looked like four males, but by the time I noticed them, they were already leaving the property. I didn’t see any others in their wake, but I wanted to make sure.”
“Were they carrying anything? Any weapons?”
“If I’d seen weapons, I would have called the sheriff.”
“How tall were they? What were they wearing—”
“Come up and see the footage for yourself,” Maggie said, interrupting him and pointing in the direction of the main house. He was uneasy, and though she didn’t know why, it was catching. Looking over her shoulder she added, “Suddenly I don’t feel so comfortable standing out here like this.”
CHAPTER 37
There they are. Right there,” the ranch manager said as she backed up the closed-circuit footage.
They were sitting in the security office on the first floor of the main house, built and decorated in the same Tex-Mex Mission style as the other buildings. “I have a monitor with a live feed at my place,” she continued, “but I have to come here if I want to rewind anything.”
Harvath used a trackball to slowly roll the footage backward and forward. “Do you get a lot of people who cross through the ranch?”
“The illegals, you mean?”
“Anyone. Illegals, poachers, whatever.”
“Most of them tend to be illegals moving their way up from Mexico. They hide and camp during the day, then move across the ranches down here at night. With the cloud cover and no moon, they’ve got a perfect night for it.”
It wasn’t the only thing a night like this was perfect for. “Does this happen every night?”
Maggie shook her head. “A couple of times a month, maybe.”
“When was the last time?”
She shrugged. “We’d have to go through all the footage. No one watches the cameras unless the Knights are here.”
“But you were watching.”
“I happened to be awake and something caught my eye. I wouldn’t characterize that as watching. Like I said, I only came out to make sure you-all were okay.”
Harvath froze a frame of video. Despite hunching over when they moved, they couldn’t hide their size. “These guys look pretty big to me,” he said, “or am I wrong?”
She leaned in next to him and looked at the monitor. “No, you’re right. They do look big.”
“Are the groups normally made up of four people?”
Maggie shook her head. “There isn’t a standard. For every one you see, there can be five or ten more.”
“What about clothing? Is this the kind of stuff you normally see?”
“The clothing is perfect.”
“Even with all four men wearing baseball caps?”
“It’s all perfect, but there’s something missing.”
Harvath looked at her. “What?”
“Anything these people own, they’re usually carrying it with them. But these four aren’t carrying anything. No food, no water, no plastic grocery bags.
It was a very good observation. “How do I zoom in?” he asked.
She showed him and Harvath tightened up as close as he could. “What do those look like to you?”
“Whatever they are,” Maggie replied as she studied the pixilated, infrared image, “they definitely aren’t cowboy boots.”
She was right. In fact, even with the rough quality of the extreme close-up, the boots they were wearing looked exactly like what Harvath envisioned had left the prints near the generator.
Zooming out, he scrolled through the rest of the night’s footage, trying to ascertain when and how the men had crossed onto the property, what they had done while there, and when and how they had left. The problem was that there were large gaps. The men had been captured on only a couple of the cameras, and they never showed their faces. They’d either been extremely lucky or had known exactly what they were doing, purposely avoiding the cameras.
As he played some of the footage again, Maggie said, “Freeze that.”
Harvath stopped the feed and peered at the image. “What do you see?”
“Now that I look at it again, there’s something not right about the clothes.”
“How?”
“It can be pretty cold at night this time of the year. You normally see these people wearing multiple layers that they can take on and off as they need to. It’s warm tonight, but none of these guys has any extra clothes tied around their waists. Now zoom in on the last one in that frame there.”
“What am I looking for?”
“The shirtsleeves. See how high up the cuffs ride on his arms? Now pull out just a bit and look at all four of them. Their pants and boots fit, but nothing else does.”
“Because those aren’t their clothes,” stated Harvath.
“Then where’d they get them from?”
Harvath remembered the buzzards from earlier that were circling the watering hole and wondered if maybe it wasn’t deer that had stopped to drink there. “I think I may have an idea,” he said.
Before leaving the house, Harvath talked Maggie into opening up the gun room for him. It looked like something out of a British castle: rows of mahogany cabinets filled with expensive hunting rifles, watched over by exotic animal heads adorning the walls. Down the center was a long glass table with drawers containing a range of handguns.
Some of their barrels were threaded, which meant there probably were suppressors somewhere. Maggie confirmed this, but explained to him that they were kept in a separate safe that only the Knights had the combination to.
It would have been a helpful thing to have, but he’d have to live without it.
Harvath selected a Heckler & Koch Mark 23 pistol, took a handful of spare magazines, and helped himself to one of Mr. Knight’s Benchmade knives. All told, he was in and out of the room in under two minutes.
