of these people? The answer was none. He smiled at Bruno. “Good! Then we shall wait until morning.”
“I knew that you could be relied upon to see reason. You have a good sense for business.” Bruno clasped his shoulders and embraced him, what Liquida took for the Chechen sign of death.
Whether Bruno realized it or not, Liquida was now working for himself. The first order of business was to find a way out.
The FBI finally managed to track down Adin’s flight from Langley Air Force Base. “Better late than never,” said Thorpe. “Right from under our noses. That little bastard is bold as brass.”
“They didn’t file a flight plan,” said Britain. “But radar tracked them out over the Atlantic heading due south. They were picked up again three hours later by Pensacola Naval Air Station on the Florida panhandle. By then they were out over the Gulf in international airspace. It was too late to stop them. But they tracked the heading south- southwest.”
“Mexico,” said Thorpe.
“What it looks like,” said Britain. “We may be able to narrow it down.”
Thorpe looked at him.
“Southcom, Southern Command out of Miami, had one of their AWAC flights loitering over the central Gulf track the C-130’s IFF signal from their transponder,” said Britain.
“I’m surprised the Israelis had it turned on,” said Thorpe.
“I guess they didn’t want to get shot down,” said Britain.
IFF stood for “identify, friend or foe.” It was a system of encrypted data sent by a plane’s transponder to provide radar data and identification as part of the early-warning air defense system.
“You can bet they’ll turn it off before they reach the Mexican coast,” said Thorpe.
“Yes, but by then we may have a fix at least as to heading. It gives us something to work with,” said Britain.
“What about the girl and Diggs?” said Thorpe. “Anybody at Langley see them board the plane?”
“No,” said Britain. “But there was no real reason for them to check. It was pretty much hands off. Hirst had it all well covered. According to the flight documents, they picked up a load of fuel and twelve boxes under consular seal from the Israeli embassy.”
“So nobody was watching,” said Thorpe.
Britain nodded. “Right.”
“He thought of everything.” Thorpe sat silent for a moment. “So what do we know?”
“We know Hirst and whoever else is on that plane is headed for Mexico, but we don’t know where,” said Britain.
“We can be reasonably certain that Madriani and his two companions are there, along with Liquida,” said Thorpe.
“That is, if anything Madriani has told us is accurate,” said Britain.
“I think what he’s told us is dead-on,” said Thorpe. “The problem is he hasn’t told us enough. No cell phone calls from him, right?”
“Nothing,” said Britain. “The last communication was an e-mail from Paris. That and the telephone call he placed to his daughter and the investigator in the condo.”
“According to the transcript of the phone call, we should be looking for a large antenna array somewhere in the Mexican jungle,” said Thorpe, “but where?”
“What about Intel Sats?” said Britain.
“The CIA?”
Britain nodded.
“I thought of it, but unless we can narrow it down, at least give them some kind of a reliable vector from that plane when it crosses over into Mexican airspace, their analysts could be looking at images for days. Something tells me we don’t have that kind of time,” said Thorpe.
“What do we do?” said Britain.
“Let’s hope that Israeli pilot keeps his transponder turned on,” said Thorpe. “In the meantime, get ahold of drug enforcement. Tell them we’re going to need help. Boots on the ground. The Mexican army, the judicial police, the whole nine yards. But only people they can trust. Any kind of political or law enforcement juice they have with the Mexican government, tell them we may need it all.”
It was a helpless feeling, throwing himself on the mercy of another agency, and burning whatever goodwill the bureau may have amassed with a foreign country. Whatever was happening in Mexico was beyond the reach of the U.S. government unless they were prepared to go to war.
Thorpe picked up the phone. It was not going to be a pleasant conversation. He would have to call the White House and tell Fowler that the bureau had lost whatever information they might have gleaned from Herman Diggs and that the Israeli government appeared to know all about Project Thor.
Chapter Fifty-Four
We decide to time our reconnaissance of the road north of Coba for late afternoon, to drive slowly, and if need be, to wait until dark to take a closer look.
Harry and I select a pair of hundred-power binoculars from a local sporting goods shop. We buy a half-dozen bottles of water, put them in an Igloo container filled with ice, and pick up two large hunting knives for defense along with a handful of road flares, anything that might come in handy if we need help. We would buy guns but we can’t.
Possession of a firearm or even a single round of ammunition by a foreign national in Mexico will net the visitor a long and harsh prison term. Mexico is a testament to the failure of gun laws to curb bloodshed. It has among the most severe firearm restrictions in the world. Yet the country has become a veritable war zone of gun- fueled drug violence. Any Mexican teen with a trigger finger can buy a fully automatic assault rifle and bandoliers of bullets for a few pesos from black marketers. The fact that the transaction is illegal means only that the dead victims are all law abiding.
Since guns are not available to tourists, Harry and I have to make do with what we can find. We settle on two rubber-sling spearguns from one of the dive shops in Playa del Carmen. All the while Joselyn is laughing. “Why don’t you get the mask and flippers and finish out the outfit?”
Harry is in no mood for humor. He throws one of the spearguns onto the front seat and nearly ends up sitting on the tip as he gets into the car.
By three thirty we reach the highway intersection at Coba. I turn, and we head north. We turn off the air conditioner and open the windows so that all of our senses are alive as I drive slowly up the road. Within two miles, the absence of any other traffic becomes obvious to all of us.
“Get the feeling we’re in the land of the dead?” says Harry.
We pass occasional mud-brick huts and small concrete houses, all of them abandoned. Some have their windows broken out with their front doors off the hinges. A few show the scorch marks and black soot of fire.
To Joselyn it reminds her of some of the test sites in the Nevada desert, what she calls “atomic city.” “All that is missing,” she says, “are the mannequins strapped to posts along the road.”
Harry and I are in the front seat. Joselyn is in the back, her head almost on my shoulder as her eyes give the road the thousand-yard stare. The three of us strain constantly to see what is up ahead.
Each curve brings us to a near stop until I can creep around and see what’s there. The foliage is so thick that it crowds the road in places, growing over the edges of the asphalt as if to reclaim the offending ribbon that runs through the jungle.
We come to an intersection with a dirt road off to the right.
“Stop!” Harry is halfway out of the car before I can hit the brake. “If anything happens, don’t wait for me.” With the speargun in hand, he runs cautiously toward the dirt road as Joselyn and I sit in the hot car with windows open, my foot ready to hit the gas pedal to pick him up if I have to. He disappears down the dirt road, and a few seconds later comes back and waves me forward. Neither Joselyn nor I have to ask what Harry is doing. We all
