Guardian of Lies

“Some of the crew members said it looked as if the Russian was being held captive. According to them he was being guarded pretty heavily and was locked in a cabin on the ship most of the time.”

“You think he’s acting under duress?” said Rhytag.

“Who knows?”

“What about the others, the people with him?”

“All foreigners. One of them spoke Spanish and some other language. He seemed to be doing all the interpreting. The crew members said they didn’t know what the other language was, and they claim they didn’t overhear any of the translated conversations. The Mexican authorities don’t believe them. According to them somebody had to overhear something. It’s why they’ve got the captain and the others belowdecks having discussions.”

Rhytag took a deep breath and thought for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was a near whisper so that none of the others in the room working the computers or the telephones could hear. “For the record, I didn’t ask this question,” he said, “but have the Mexicans taken them surfing?”

“Surfing” was a euphemism for waterboarding. ACLU types condemned it as torture, but experience had proved that when time was of the essence, it was the one sure way to extract information and to do it quickly. Oftentimes less than two minutes.

“That may be a touch too subtle for the Mexicans,” said Thorpe. “According to our agent on the scene, they got the captain hooked up to a car battery with a coil and alligator clips, charging up his nipples and various other body parts every minute or so. They let him rest just long enough to stop glowing. If he knows anything, he’s not talking. Seems the Mexicans are willing to keep at it all night. If they have to, they’ll bring the crew down in shifts and get some more batteries.”

“The problem is that if the crew doesn’t know where the truck is headed, all that pain is likely to extract is false information. Which means we could find ourselves sent on some wild-goose chase,” said Rhytag. “What do we have by way of assets up along the border?”

“You mean besides the world’s biggest traffic jam?” said Thorpe. “At last count we had two hundred highway patrol men, another hundred on the way. The NEST team is already deployed to San Ysidro. We’re assuming that’s the nearest border crossing, so that’s likely to be where they try to come in. We’ve pulled in border patrol from as far east as Yuma. We have two FBI SWAT teams, and Delta Force is sending us two of their crackerjack sniper teams, but we’re told that’s not for public consumption. We’re also bringing in one of our own hostage-rescue teams.”

“Why hostage rescue?” said Rhytag.

“It was a suggestion from one of our tactical commanders. He says that hostage rescue has expertise and training in vehicle breeches, mostly buses. It’s the same team that went in to try and extract Agent Mederios and the others from the bus. If we can locate the cargo truck, we’ll use the HR team as the spear to gain access to the container, followed closely by the NEST team, to try and defuse the thing.

“So all we need now is to find it,” said Rhytag. He asked what kind of equipment was set up along the border in terms of detection.

“That’s the problem,” said Thorpe. “None of our detection equipment does us any good if nothing’s moving. According to the people on the NEST team, it probably wouldn’t do any good anyway. I talked with Llewellyn, he agrees. He says the fissionable material in the bomb is highly enriched uranium, and since it’s probably shielded, the equipment we have is next to useless. It could read plutonium fairly easily. But with uranium we’d have to be right up against the carrier, no more than three or four feet away, to read anything. And we’d probably have to be there for an extended period of time before we got a sufficient reading.”

“In other words, Nitikin and his friends are in a position to sit us out and wait,” said Rhytag.

“We could use thermal imaging,” said Thorpe. “We’d be looking for high-density anomalies, lead in the shield, for example. We could reduce the number of vehicles to be searched. The problem is, the bomb, from everything we know, is on the other side of the border. The Mexican government is not willing to allow us to use imaging.”

“Why not?”

“They’re afraid if we find it, Nitikin and his cohorts will detonate the damn thing and turn Tijuana into a crater.”

“That would get rid of the cartel for them,” said Rhytag.

“No, that would get rid of the cartel for us. They don’t seem to mind. Especially now. With oil down that’s the only growth sector in their economy. Half of those factories on the other side of the border are shut down. What did they call those things?” said Thorpe.

“Maquiladoras,” said Rhytag.

SIXTY

In the late nineties, politicians eager to pocket million-dollar speaking fees from foreign trade groups embraced the concept of a global economy. They teamed up with Chinese businessmen and Mexican manufacturers and carved out a zone along the U.S. southern border where trade restrictions were virtually eliminated.

American politicians sold the country on the concept of our being an information economy, that we no longer needed manufacturing or heavy industry, as if you could drive words and eat sentences. They shipped entire job sectors abroad and then railed at the demise of the middle class.

Places like Ensenada with its sleepy port suddenly boomed. In less than two years, vast amounts of commercial cargo moved off docks in Los Angeles and San Diego and landed instead in northern Mexico. China began shipping oceans of cheap component parts to ports along the Mexican coast, most of which were delivered to factories known as maquiladoras on the northern border. There the parts were assembled into finished products that flowed into the American market on trucks owned and operated by Mexican trucking companies.

It was a win-win situation if you were looking to buy a cheap television, or a politician collecting on IOUs from foreign constituents. But for those who once worked in the shuttered factories or drove trucks for a living, it was the end of the road.

For more than a decade, the maquiladoras flourished, until they fell on hard times, in a way a victim of their own success. It’s difficult to sell televisions, even if they’re cheap, to millions of Americans who are out of work.

Liquida smiled at the thought as he wandered through the empty building, wondering why the raghead would want to meet him here. He got in by picking a small lock on a door at the rear of the building. The place was huge, cavernous, all under a single roof with overhead doors large enough to accommodate Noah’s ark.

Like all of the maquiladora facilities, it was situated in the trade zone nestled right up against the U.S. border. While the Americans controlled their side with vast areas of vacant land and highly trained dogs, the Mexicans punched right up against the fence in many places. Both sides of the border were arid desert with rugged ravines and hills. The American side was only sparsely developed, mostly commercial warehouses and trucking facilities with a vast array of border checkpoints. With the downturn in the economy, some of the warehouses on both sides were now empty, chained-up facilities waiting for better days.

Liquida was sweating because of the long coat he was wearing. It was necessary to conceal the heavy item underneath. He checked his watch. He was two hours early. He had parked his car several blocks away and walked so that his early visit would come as a surprise to his employer.