truck had a two-mile lead.
“So this girlfriend of yours,” Ansara said out of nowhere. “You still talking to her?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t have much luck with women.”
“Because of this.”
“The job? Hell, yeah …”
“Well, I’m the wrong guy to ask for advice.”
Ansara cracked a grin. “Maybe one day I’ll find a guy who knows how to do it. I’d forgotten you were a SEAL, so that pretty much dooms you.”
“Hey, I knew some guys with families.”
“They’re the exception, not the rule. Women nowadays want too much. I think some think we’re selfish for spending so much time away. When I was in the ’Stan, I didn’t know anyone on any of the ODA teams who wasn’t either single, divorced, or going through a divorce. It was kind of pathetic.”
“I’d forgotten you were Special Forces. I thought you were just an ex — mountain biker looking for fame and fortune.”
“Yeah, that’s why I joined the FBI — so I could work ridiculous hours and get underpaid while people try to kill me …”
“You love it.”
“Every minute.”
Moore glanced down at the map. “Hey, bro. They stopped. Gas station. Near Delano.”
“Could be just to refuel — but if it’s another exchange, we need to boogie, otherwise we could miss it.”
Moore was about to zoom in on the image when the satellite feed froze up. “Shit. Lost the signal.”
30 DEAR LADY
Gloria Vega was sitting in the unmarked sedan across the street from the hotel. Inspector Gomez was at the wheel. At Gomez’s request, they were dressed in civilian clothes but wearing their Kevlar vests. The desk clerk at the hotel, a man named Ignacio Hernandez, had been found dead the night before, shot once, execution-style, in the forehead. The owner of the hotel, Mr. Dante Corrales, was nowhere to be found, and neither was his girlfriend. Gomez had contacted several other employees of the hotel, along with construction workers involved in a renovation project, and he and Vega were going to interview them today.
“You see them up there,” said Gomez, referring to the two men sitting on the hotel’s roof. “They’re spotters, but not the usual ones. These men I haven’t seen before.”
“Maybe Corrales killed his desk clerk and took off,” said Vega.
“Why would he do that?”
She shrugged. “He was stealing.”
“No. It’s a lot more complicated than that.”
“How do you know?”
He faced her and snapped. “Because I’ve been doing this for most of my life. Wait here until I come back for you.”
With a little snort, the old man levered himself out of the car, slammed the door shut, and ventured across the street, toward the hotel’s main entrance. Vega watched as the spotters marked his every move.
When would the hammer fall? Everything had to be carefully timed and planned, Towers kept telling her. In point of fact, she was running out of time, and being careful was a hell of a lot harder now. Could she survive another attempt on her life? Was any of this even worth it anymore?
She looked to the hotel.
The spotters were focused on something else.
She heard the engine first. Then a dark blue sedan came barreling around the corner with two men hanging out the passenger-side windows. They wore T-shirts, jeans, and balaclavas over their faces.
Vega bolted out of the car as their shotguns swung around, toward her. She was already returning fire as they opened up on her, their guns booming, buckshot ripping into the car.
But their shots were accompanied by two more, and her gaze flicked up to the rooftop of the hotel, where both the spotters were now holding rifles and firing at her.
A breath later, a needling pain woke in her neck, and two more needles pierced her shoulders as blood began pumping onto the pavement. Her hand went reflexively for her neck, which was now bathed in blood. She shuddered, wanted to scream, opened her mouth, but her vocal cords no longer worked. She collapsed behind the car as the other vehicle screeched to a halt, and Vega barely turned her head in that direction as one of the men approached her, lifted his shotgun, and fired point-blank into her face, which was already going numb.
It might’ve been a minute or two, or just a few seconds, she wasn’t sure, but she looked up with one good eye and through a haze of blood and saw Gomez leaning over her.
She should be dead already. She knew that. But her body was as stubborn as her spirit.
“I’m sorry, dear lady,” said Gomez. “I’m so sorry …” He reached into her pocket and fished out her cell phone. “I’ve been doing this for too long to let myself get caught. You know that. And I know they sent you to find a rat. It’s a terrible business. Terrible, terrible, terrible.”
He rose and turned back to another man. “Pablo? What are you doing here? Where’s Dante?”
“He’s safe. We had some trouble with the Guatemalans.”
“What can I do?”
“Dante sent me with a message: Leave Zuniga alone. Don’t touch him.”
“Zuniga? Are you crazy? He’s the one we need to kill.”
Vega tried to listen, wished she could contact Towers, and then her thoughts broke off from their constricted orbit and floated away to her dead parents. She wanted to see them, to see the light, but for the time being there was only a numbing darkness.
And from that void came a final exchange of voices.
“Dante is making a horrible mistake. Tell him I want to speak to him before he does anything.”
“I will, senor. I will.”
And now the cold set in, pushing back the numbness. She shivered violently. There it was now, a pinprick at first and then a glorious beam of light as hot and warm as the summer sun. This was not God, some argued, only a reaction of the brain. But Vega knew better. She knew …
Despite losing the satellite signal, Moore and Ansara went to the truck’s last known location at the gas station, and by the time they arrived, Moore had reacquired the satellite and confirmed that the truck had not moved. Sometimes they picked up a little luck in their travels, most times not.
A surprise phone call from ATF Agent Whittaker as they were nearing the station left Moore’s breath shallow.
“You’re looking for a silver Honda Odyssey van,” the man said. “Should be reaching your location pretty soon. They’ll pull out back behind the car wash, I think. Towers says we let ’em make the exchange.”
“Roger that,” said Moore. “And you’re sure those are the same weapons that SEAL smuggled out of the ’Stan?”
“Oh, I’m positive.”
“Jesus …”
“Yeah, well, he’ll be going down — because that’s only part of the shipment on that van. The rest of it is still up in Minnesota, and that’s the evidence I’ll be collecting. Glad they weren’t stupid enough to try to smuggle it all in one shipment. Their attempt to be smart works in my favor. We should have him and the weapons in custody by tonight.”
