Wolf Trap (Casey Reddick Book 1)

by Charles DeMaris

  “There’s another ship coming in,” Casey said, looking out into the bay.

  “That could be the Qadira. It’s getting close to time.”

  The incoming ship headed straight to the empty berth where the box truck was parked and when it got closer, they could see that it was indeed the Qadira. They watched as the cranes were brought into place to remove the containers and as officials went aboard to check the paperwork. More trucks showed up nearby, container haulers designed to take the cargo containers to other parts of the country or into the U.S. In the middle of all of this, they almost missed the two men emerge onto the deck with a wooden crate on a dolly. The crate looked to be about six feet long by four feet wide. The two men wheeled it straight across the deck, down a gangplank to the shore, and toward the small box truck.

  Two men got out of the box truck, opened the cargo box, and extended a ramp to the ground. The two men from the ship wheeled the crate into the truck, went inside the box to secure it, and returned to the ship. The other men pushed the ramp back into the box, closed the door, and pulled away in the truck.

  Ken and Casey didn’t have to say anything. They walked to where their motorcycles were parked and hopped on, testing the wireless communications gear in the helmets.

  “You hear me, buddy?” Ken asked.

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Good. They’re probably taking Highway 180 out of town. We don’t want to follow them too closely in case they’re onto us. Let’s stay close while there’s enough traffic and once we’re sure what highway they’re taking, we can let them get away from the city before we take them down.”

  “I’m following your lead.”

  There was plenty of traffic so they stayed a few cars behind the truck and tailed it until it got onto Highway 180D heading west. When 180D merged with 180, the traffic thinned out, but the truck continued on 180. Ken throttled back and let the truck pull ahead a bit.

  “Let’s just keep them in sight. There’s another town a few miles ahead. They’ll either stay on this road, or take 140D there. Once we know what road they’re taking, we can catch up to them and stop them,” Ken said.

  “Gotcha.”

  They stayed well behind the truck, at times with several cars in between, and only closed the gap when they approached the junction with Highway 140D. When the truck continued north on 180, Casey sped ahead according to the plan they had formulated earlier. He passed the truck and continued on ahead, but keeping the truck in view in his side mirror. When they reached a rural stretch of road with no other vehicles around, Casey slowed down and let the truck catch up. He looked in his mirror and saw Ken closing in behind the truck. Casey continued to slow down until the truck was forced to slow down to avoid hitting him. The driver in the truck was about to change lanes to pass Casey when Ken pulled up next to him. Casey continued slowing down and Ken kept station next to the truck so it couldn’t go anywhere. Ken took one hand off the handlebars and gestured to the driver of the truck to pull over. He gestured with a pistol in his hand and the truck driver instantly complied.

  When the truck was stopped, Ken motioned for the drivers to get out of the truck and he held them at gunpoint while Casey moved around back and unlocked the cargo box door. The crate was right there secured by straps. He pulled out a hand- held radiation detector and approached the box. These people took no precautions. The inside of the truck’s box looked to be lined in lead and he had no doubt the crate was as well. The detector picked up nothing at all, even from a foot away. He thought it would have picked up something. There was only one way to find out. When he exited the box to look for a crowbar, he found Ken talking with the two drivers and he had put away his gun.

  “These guys are just hired couriers. They don’t know what they’re hauling. Did you verify it?” Ken asked.

  “Not yet. The detector’s picking up nothing. Need to pry the top off the crate.”

  One of the drivers went in the cab and came back with a crowbar, which he handed to Casey. When he went back into the box to open the crate, Ken and the two men were watching intently. He worked his way around the lid until he had it loose enough to pry open. He removed the lid and peered inside the crate, and what he saw made him pause and just stare.

  “Well, what do you see?” Ken asked.

  “Come and take a look.”

  Ken looked and muttered an expletive under his breath.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Casey said.

  There in the bottom of the crate, staring up at them, was a glossy poster of the smiling face of Michael Brooks, the president of the United States.

  30

  12:00 pm

  Milwaukee

  Rachel walked around the festival grounds staring at her phone. She should have felt awkward, but a close inspection of the crowd showed most people her age doing the same thing. She could almost hear what her father would say about people with no situational awareness, but in her case, the phone was helping her awareness, at least when it came to keeping an eye on the weapon stash. She was still working out what she would do when the terrorist showed up. The ideal would be to take him alive and get him out of the festival grounds. She knew their intel pointed toward this as a diversionary attack, but if there was any chance this guy would know anything, it was a chance she needed to take.

  When she arrived in the morning, she had set up a small Wi-Fi camera that she could monitor on her phone. Her thought was that it would allow her to walk around more and not be so conspicuous sitting in one place all day until her target showed up. So far it was working fine. She tried not to stray too far away from that area so she could make it back fast if she saw him. She had no idea what to look for other than an Arab, probably male and probably young. She was more relaxed than the previous day, knowing that she had essentially stopped the attack a few hours ago by removing the ammunition from the weapons. She almost drove home at that point and even now she thought of tipping the police somehow and walking away. They could nab the guy when he showed up and that would be that, but she wanted to know what he knew.

  She had already emailed Jenny and brought her up to speed. Jenny didn’t think they would get any useful intel out of this terrorist, but had advised Rachel to use her best judgment and not to take any undue risks. The only undue risks she had taken so far were with her diet. Her father would not approve of the festival fare she had eaten while walking around. Check that. Her mother would not approve. Her father would frown upon it, but would promise not to tell Mom.

  The thought of her parents brought them to her mind’s eye. As much as she tried to picture happier images, she couldn’t shake the sight of them the last time she saw them, with bullet holes in their heads. Taking out the guy who did it was a small comfort. She clenched and unclenched her fist a couple times and wiped a tear from her eye as she walked toward another concession area. Sitting down a couple minutes later with a hamburger and a Coke, she made an effort to calm herself down and focus. Her anger had a way of fueling her, but also of robbing her of her ability to focus, and she needed that now. She took a couple deep breaths, tried to get her heart rate back to normal, and took her time with the burger.

  The food helped and she was able to recall more happier moments with her parents, like the time Mom confided in her that she knew what Dad was going to surprise her with for Valentine's Day, but it would remain a secret. Dad liked surprising people, so they wouldn’t say anything and let him think he had pulled it off. She remembered countless lectures from her father, things that had gone over her inattentive head and now came back with surprising clarity. She never understood why Dad insisted on teaching her so much of what he had learned in the field. She understood the self- defense training and marksmanship, but he tried to teach her everything. Now it came back and she was glad. Every time she went out in public, she was aware of everything around her. She could turn it down a bit, but she couldn’t turn it off.

  She finished the burger and the Coke and just sat ther
e, reminiscing about her parents, people watching, and keeping an eye on the feed from the camera. There had been some children playing on the rocks, but so far nobody had made a move for the stash and nobody had discovered it. What would she do with the guy if she got him out of there and he didn’t know anything? How much would he know that they could use? Could he really help them stop the bomb? The answer to these questions was more obvious the longer she thought about it. With Ahmed, Miriam, and Jenny turning over every stone, there probably wasn’t much useful information they could get out of a terrorist who was essentially a decoy. This whole mission was designed to get them to waste resources and she was a resource that could be used elsewhere. The attack was going nowhere anyway.

  She threw her garbage away and walked toward the shore and retrieved her camera and put it in her fanny pack, then walked toward the rocks where she could just see part of the pack sticking out. There were police officers all over the park and one was just walking a few feet away eating a corn dog.

  “Excuse me, officer,” she said as she walked toward him.

  “Yes, Miss?” the officer asked, “Is there something you need?”

  “I…I’m not sure…just saw something weird over there in the rocks.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Not sure exactly. Someone lost a pack or something, but it’s kinda hidden. Looks strange. It’s right over there.”

  “Okay, why don’t you show me.”

  Rachel walked toward the rocks with the officer following close behind and pointed toward the pack.

  “I saw some little kids climbing on the rocks to get it. Hate to see one of them get hurt,” she told the officer.

  The cop walked out carefully onto the rocks and pulled the backpack out, whistling when he saw the weapons inside. He immediately got on his radio and two more cops showed up in a couple minutes.

  “Whatcha got there, Murph?” one of the other cops asked.

  “Look in the bag,” Murphy said as he opened it for the other officer.

  “What the hell?” Officer Reynolds said.

  “That’s what I thought. Why would someone stash these here?”

  “Only so many reasons someone would want weapons like that in a place like this.”

  “Yeah, but why stash ‘em here?”

  “You think anyone could get those in through the gate?”

  “Good point, so how’d they get here?”

  “Brought by boat at night,” Officer Connors said as he approached the other two, “Come over here and check this out.”

  Connors lead the other two cops over to the performance venue to their left where a band was busy doing sound checks.

  “Heard a dude talking about finding a couple of the chairs smashed up, so I walked around a bit before you guys got here. Look over here at this.”

  He led them to a wooden structure where the mixing board was set up.

  “I’m surprised nobody has noticed this. What do you make of it?”

  Murphy looked where Connors was pointing and saw what he was seeing, a spent bullet lodged in the wooden leg of the platform, about an inch up from the pavement.

  “Well, I’ll be. From the angle, it looks like it was fired from the water. Who was someone shooting at?”

  “Who knows. Let’s go back where you found the pack.”

  “I didn’t find the pack. Some girl found it and got my attention.”

  “Where is this girl now?”

  “She was right over there…wait…she’s gone. She was right there a minute ago. She just spotted something in the rocks and came and got me.”

  “You think she knew what was there?”

  “I don’t think so. Just some young millennial, reminded me of my daughter.”

  They went back to the area where the pack was found and something caught Murphy’s eye in the grass. He bent down and picked up a small brass object.

  “Check this out guys, 9mm from the looks of it.”

  “Think we have something here,” Connors said from the area where the pack was, “blood on the rocks. Not much, but a couple drops right here…hold on a sec…more here. Leads right over here to the shore and then stops. Looks like someone stood where Murph is and shot someone here, and dragged the body to the shore.”

  “Get a load of this,” Murphy said as he checked the weapons in the pack, “there’s no ammo here.”

  “Come again,” Connors said.

  “No ammo. We have weapons stashed here with no ammo. We have a large caliber bullet lodged in the sound guy’s table, a shell casing here, and blood drops heading to the water. Then nothing. Someone was being shot at from the water, someone was killed right here, and then the body was dragged to the edge of the water and disappears? How much sense does that make?”

  “Whatcha thinkin’, Murph?”

  “You want to pull off a crazy attack here and you need to get the weapons past security. You bring them by boat in the middle of the night. Then the nutjob who does the attack comes right in through the gate with a ticket, comes over here and grabs the guns, and then does the deed, right? Seems like it would work. But someone was here when the boat showed up. Person in the boat shoots at whoever was here, comes on to the shore to stash this pack, and gets taken out by our John Doe right here. Doe was probably over there by the sound table, comes around that building there, and surprises the dude hiding the pack.”

  “Mystery man takes out the guy hiding the guns and does what with the body? We don’t have a body in the water.”

  “We don’t have a boat either, do we?”

  “I would guess they’re both in the same place, either at the bottom of the lake or halfway across it by now. That’s my guess.”

  “So why leave the weapon stash with no ammo?”

  “Our John Doe saw what was going down, took out the dudes leaving the weapons, and took the ammo, but left the guns. Why leave the guns?”

  “Maybe to catch the other guy planning on using them?”

  “You think our John Doe is hanging around waiting on this whack job to show up?”

  “Not anymore, and I’m not so sure it’s a John Doe we’re looking for.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “There wasn’t much of that pack showing. That girl acted all worried like she saw something scary. I call you guys over and she’s gone. I think she knew what was there.”

  “What if she just thought something was suspicious?”

  “Ten feet away all you could see was part of the strap. There’s all sorts of junk in these rocks. That’s no more suspicious than anything else along this shore.”

  “Then why get our attention? Why not wait for the bad guy to show up?”

  “Only so many options when he does show, and not many good ones for a civilian. Gun- free- zone in here, right? Maybe she’s packin’, but if she whacks him, no way she gets out of here. She can’t take the guy alive without holding a gun on him. No way she gets him out of here that way either. She takes the ammo so the guns are useless and then turns it over to us.”

  “Who is this girl then?”

  “Who knows? FBI maybe? Maybe some kind of spook?”

  “You read too many spy novels.”

  “You got a better explanation?”

  “Not really, but you know what I figure? Maybe finish her job.”

  “You say we wait for the guy?”

  “You got anything better to do? I got another six hours on my shift. Put the pack back and we keep an eye out. First shady dude goes for the pack, we take him down. Whattaya say?”

  “Sure, sounds like fun.”

  31

  Rachel pulled out of her parking spot and started heading south when her phone rang.

  “Hello.”

  “Are you still at the festival?” Jenny asked.

  “Just left. Heading that way now.”

  “What about the other terrorist?”

  “Cops are on it. Didn’t think I had too many good options.”

&n
bsp; “Good thinking. If you were still there, I was going to tell you to head out anyway.”

  “Is something up?”

  “You could say that. I just heard from Casey and Ken in Mexico. It was a dead end. The ship came in and even went through the motions of loading a crate into a truck. The bomb wasn’t there. We figure they swapped it to another vessel somewhere, so now we don’t have much of a clue how they plan on getting it into the U.S.”

  “So where do I come in?”

  “I need you to get to Veracruz as fast as possible. You shouldn’t be far from the airport.”

  “If the bomb isn’t there, why am I going there?”

  “You need to meet up with Casey. We have a plan in the works. It’s risky, so we need all the backup we can have there. Casey will brief you when you get there.”

  “Okay, can you check flights while I’m driving?”

  “Sure thing,” Jenny said, and two minutes later, “Rule out Milwaukee. There’s a flight in an hour, but it has too many connections. There’s a flight leaving O’Hare in three hours but it gets there quicker. I’ll book you and send it to your phone. I’ll catch you when you get to Mexico. I gotta get back at it here.”

  “Where are Ahmed and Miriam?”

  “Meeting you in Mexico. Later.”

  July 2

  Veracruz

  Rachel arrived at the Veracruz Plaza Hotel and checked her phone for the room number Casey texted her. After picking up another room key from the front desk, she entered room 105 to find Miriam sitting on the other bed using her laptop.

  “I certainly hope I have time for a shower and a nap,” she said.

  “Plenty. We set out tomorrow.”

  Rachel came out of the bathroom a few minutes later with a towel around her hair and dropped onto the bed.

  “Did you have a good flight down?” Miriam asked.

  “As well as could be expected, but I’m just wiped out. Had a busy couple days in Milwaukee. So, how safe is it to talk in here?”