“Why is it all you ex-military boys talk about the tactics, techniques, and procedures and refer to a bunch of drug dealers as having a ‘chain of command’?”
“Because we’re not ex-military. We are always military. And because that’s exactly what it is.”
“I’m just busting your balls.”
Moore smiled as he remembered the conversation and now glanced back at the laser trip wire they’d marked with a small piece of duct tape on each tree. Those were the areas through which they could not pass, and Ansara had twice prevented Moore from slipping up and breaking a beam. He’d taken a little baby powder between his fingers to show Moore exactly where the laser traversed, dusting the beam ever so slightly with the powder.
A camera mounted on top of the tent from within which the men were moving the bricks panned toward the hill, then tilted up, toward Moore and Ansara, who dug deeper behind the log they were using for cover. At that precise moment, footfalls and the crunching of leaves came from behind them, the southeast. Guards on patrol. Voices. Spanish. Something about bear tracks.
Bears? Not good.
Ansara gestured to him.
The men below finished their loading, and just three of them climbed into the truck’s cab, and the driver started the engine.
Moore and Ansara needed to get back down into the valley, where they’d retrieve their full-suspension mountain bikes and ride soundlessly down to the main roads to their 4x4 pickup truck. The cartel truck would have a significant lead on them, but it would be tracked by satellite, those feeds piped directly to Moore’s smartphone. Somewhere along the line Moore would need to get close, to plant a GPS tracker on the vehicle, which would provide more accurate data on the truck’s location. The satellite feeds were often interrupted by the weather and terrain, and this was one truck they
Once the voices of the guards grew faint, Ansara led the way through knots of pines and across the beds of needles crackling under their boots. It was 11:35 a.m.
By the time they reached their bikes, they heard the truck lumbering slowly down the dirt road, a single narrow path that had been cleared by cartel workers and lying about twenty meters east of their location. Ansara mounted his bike and took off. He was an experienced bike handler, having trained extensively with his buddy Dave Ameno, who’d taught him to navigate some of Central Florida’s most technical trails. Ansara’s skills annoyed Moore, who could barely stay on his wheels as he leapt over roots and made small jumps. Ansara knew exactly when to come out of the saddle and throw his weight back, while Moore got thrown around on the bike like a rag doll whose wrists had been duct-taped to the handlebars.
That Moore fell only twice before they reached their truck was sheer luck. That he hadn’t broken anything or drawn blood was the miracle they needed. They threw their bikes in the back of the pickup and took off, heading southwest down Sierra Drive, with Moore studying the map and the superimposed blue blip that represented the truck.
“How far up are they?” Ansara asked.
“Three-point-four-five miles.”
The FBI agent nodded. “Remind me when this is all over to teach you how to ride a mountain bike. I can see that wasn’t part of your extensive training.”
“Hey, I made it.”
“Yeah, but you looked real tentative through those whoop-de-doos. I told you to relax and let the bike tell you where it wants to go.”
“I don’t speak bike.”
“Obviously.”
“The bike wanted to go in the trees.”
“You must become one with the machine, grasshopper.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Ansara laughed. “Hey, you got a girlfriend?”
He grinned crookedly at the man. “You always talk this much?”
“Hey, we’re following a truck.”
“That’s right. So let’s stay on it. Signal’s still good. Any speculation on their first stop?”
“Well, if they get onto 198, then I’m thinking Porterville. There’s been some trafficking through there before. DEA scored big a couple of years ago, I think.”
Moore was about to broaden his view of the map when he turned to Ansara and said, “And to answer your question, I don’t have a girlfriend. I was with a very nice lady in Afghanistan, but I’m not sure when I’ll ever get back.”
“A local?”
“Oh, that would go over well, eh? They’d string me up by my you-know-whats, so no, she’s an American. She works for the U.S. Embassy.”
“She hot?”
Moore grinned. “No.”
“Too bad.” Ansara’s cell phone rang. “Oh, this is a call I need to take.”
“Who?”
“Rueben. The kid I recruited. What do you have for me, young man?”
Moore picked up only bits and pieces of the kid’s voice on the other end, but Ansara’s reaction filled in the blanks: The cartel had completed some kind of extensive tunnel running between Mexicali and Calexico. Rueben was one of about ten young men who were going to begin making major shipments through the tunnels, probably cocaine from Colombia and opium from Afghanistan. This was a brand-new avenue of approach for the cartel, and after the call, Ansara said that the mules had already made several dry runs. Now they felt certain the passageway was clean and undetected, thus the real product would begin moving north, while the money and weapons flowed south.
The cartel truck moved at no more than forty-five miles per hour through the winding roads, and Ansara’s guess had been right. They’d driven directly into the small town of Porterville, California, population about fifty thousand, and headed straight for the Holiday Inn Express, where they parked in a space behind the three-story building.
Moore and Ansara watched them from the parking lot of the Burger King across the street. All three men remained in the cab, nixing Moore’s plan to affix his GPS tracker to the underside of the vehicle. They dared not get any closer.
“You want a cheeseburger?” asked Ansara.
Moore looked at him in mock disgust. “Well, the In-N-Out Burger is the best burger on the West Coast, in my humble opinion, because it is one hundred percent pure beef. And their fries are cooked in one hundred percent pure cholesterol-free vegetable oil.”
“Are you serious? You want a burger or not?”
“Get me two.”
And by the time Ansara returned with their food, another vehicle had pulled up beside the cartel truck. This second one was a white cargo van with tinted windows.
Staring through the long lenses of his digital surveillance camera, Moore nearly choked on his cheeseburger as he watched the men transfer at least forty cinder-block-size bricks from the cartel truck to the van — in broad daylight.
The driver of the van, another Hispanic man wearing a denim jacket and sunglasses, handed the cartel men a backpack, assumedly bulging with cash.
“I can’t believe they’re this bold.”
“Believe it,” answered Ansara. “Hi, there. Here are your drugs. Thanks for the money. Have a nice day.”
The van left, and while the Agency would track it via satellite and Moore’s photographs of its tag number, intercepting it might result in a call back to the cartel guys in the truck, who would panic and not complete their distribution, so the van would be left alone. The truck pulled out of the parking lot and headed west, back out toward 65. Ansara kept well behind them, and by the time they merged onto the highway, heading south, the cartel
