“Yeah? Coming in from where? Looks like you got a full load back there.”
“Drill bits, headed for China,” Dante said. There were, in fact, crates half-filled with drill bits, to compensate for the added weight of the lead-encased barrel the bomb was stored in.
The cop examined them for another minute. Dante could practically see the wheels spinning in his head. Obviously he and Creeper weren’t upstanding, law-abiding citizens; any cop worth his salt could smell that. But then, plenty of truckers had done time. Not a reason to stop them.
Please don’t inspect the truck, Dante thought over and over, a litany in his head.
“You folks mind pulling over? Think we’ll have a look inside,” the cop at Creeper’s window said.
Creeper said, “Yes, officer,” and drove to the shoulder where another cop waited with a clipboard. Dante’s pulse raced, and he fought to keep the tension from showing in his face. He glanced over at Creeper, who still wore an impenetrable mask. But his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. They were so fucking close now, too. They were the final truck in a caravan that originated in Houston. Over the past two days they’d driven a hard line north, then west, covering more than one thousand miles. They’d stopped to check preparations at each site, then moved on, their numbers dwindling until only he and Creeper remained. Somewhere around Tucson it occurred to Dante that in the past few days he’d seen more of the country than he had the entire rest of his life. Most of it by night, of course, but still. It was something.
And now this could be it, Dante thought. A traffic stop that ruined everything and sent him to death row or worse, Gitmo. The Feds claimed to have closed it, but that was probably a lie like everything else they said. Shit, being penned in with a bunch of towel heads would be worse than death.
Calm down, Dante told himself. Unless they dug past three rows of crates, they wouldn’t encounter anything suspicious. And like most cops, they were probably lazy at heart.
Creeper leaned forward, reaching for the piece under the front seat. Dante grabbed his hand, stopping him, and shook his head. Too risky. If things went south, Dante would handle it from the cab. In which case he’d probably be leaving Creeper behind, but no need for him to know that. Creeper climbed out of the truck cab and went to unlock the back. Dante sat there, legs jiggling up and down. He heard the panel door slide up. A scraping sound, wood on metal-they’d moved one box. The crates were heavy as hell, though, he’d made sure of that. Dante could picture them shining a beam over the wooden crates, trying to peer into the depths of the truck. Good luck, he thought. Now let us go.
The sound of the door sliding shut again, a clank as it latched. Dante released a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Creeper said something, and one of the cops laughed. A second later Creeper climbed back into the cab. The cop, face split wide in a grin, waved them back onto the highway. Dante watched the roadblock diminish in his side mirror, until they went over a bump in the road and it vanished completely.
“What did you say to him?” Dante asked, breaking the silence.
“Who?”
“The cop. Why’d he laugh?”
“Told him it was about time the Chinese had to deal with something stamped Made in Texas,” Creeper said.
It was the longest sentence Creeper had uttered in the four years he’d known him, which was startling in and of itself. But that, combined with the fact that he’d made a joke, and to a cop, no less…Dante processed that, then cracked up. “Jesus, Creeper. Didn’t know you had it in you.”
Thirty-Two
“Christ. It’s like looking for a truck in a truck stack,” Rodriguez muttered as he scanned through the printout with a highlighter.
“Tell me about it,” George complained, rubbing his eyes. “I might need glasses, this is giving me a headache. Jake, you wear glasses?”
“Nah. Not an old man yet,” Jake replied.
“Fuck you,” George said good-naturedly.
The three of them were ensconced in the trailer adjoining Leonard’s, scouring tax returns from the shell companies linked to Jackson Burke. A search of the remaining warehouses on Kelly and Rodriguez’s list had already been completed-the lead she’d used to stay assigned to the case. But unfortunately nothing had turned up. No more strange powder, or any evidence of radioactivity at the sites. Leonard had another team digging through the shell companies’ real estate holdings, but so far they hadn’t found any outside the list. Rodriguez’s friend at the IRS had been thorough.
That left them working the transportation angle, trying to track down semis. Problem was, Jackson ’s corporation owned a lot of legitimate businesses that used trucks to ferry goods and materials around the country. Any of the trucks could have been diverted from their usual routes to deliver the bombs.
Working on the theory that a major purchase, like a truck, would serve as a deduction, Jake, George and Rodriguez were going through years’ worth of depreciation forms. There were at least fifty trucks claimed so far, and they were only halfway through the stack. No way they could issue an APB on all of them, not without Burke finding out. And the Bureau was insisting they keep a lid on things until there was more concrete evidence. Jake suspected nothing would convince them short of the new senator showing up on Capitol Hill with a vest bomb.
ASAC Leonard had begrudgingly agreed to Kelly’s terms, which included keeping Jake on the case. He wasn’t happy about it, but Kelly had insisted. The tradeoff was that Syd was escorted back behind the yellow tape. Jake suspected Leonard hadn’t put his foot down because he knew he could assign Rodriguez, George and him the scut work. They’d been at it for hours now, and even though he’d never admit it to George, his eyes were swimming from the lines and bars of standardized IRS forms. They noted down the make and model of each truck and the company that purchased it, then ran that information through the DMV database for a plate number. Not that they’d be using registered license plates, as Jake pointed out. Leonard dismissed the complaint, which confirmed Jake’s suspicions.
“I think we’re going about this all wrong,” Rodriguez said, pushing back from the table.
“Yeah?” George asked. “You want to switch off, handle the DMV queries for a while?”
“Hell no. But I was thinking…if Burke is trying so hard to cover his tracks and smear some illegals for this attack, wouldn’t he take every precaution to make sure the trucks couldn’t be linked back to him?”
“Maybe. But they were purchased through shell companies, and it’s hard to prove he’s involved with those.”
“Hard, but not impossible. My contact found out in less than twelve hours. She’s good, but you know that if this goes down, they’ll have teams tearing apart every aspect of it for months.”
“You’re right,” George said. “And at that point, even a hint of an association with the attack would destroy him. That’s probably why there wasn’t anything in the other warehouses. Burke used one of his own for the nitty-gritty of the assembly, but for the rest of it, he could rent a different space. That way it wouldn’t link back to him if things went south.”
“No politician would risk it,” Jake agreed. “So what are we thinking? He rented the trucks? Paid cash, maybe?”
“Can you even do that?” George asked. “I thought you needed a special license to drive those.”
“You do,” Rodriguez said slowly. “But he probably wouldn’t use drivers linked to his company, either.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “He’s been using ex-cons and skinheads to do his dirty work. Maybe he recruited some of them?”
“Good theory,” George agreed. “Gotta be some truck drivers in that group. Question is, how do we track them down?”
Jake jerked upright. “Dante.”
“What?”
“Dante Parrish. The Corcoran warden mentioned him as someone high up in the Brotherhood leadership, but Syd and I didn’t get around to tracking him down.” Jake shuffled through some papers. “We got the lead on Madison, then Randall disappeared and I completely forgot about him.”
