“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.
72
WASHINGTON, DC
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?”
