by Chad Zunker
“That about sums it up, Chief.”
Lloyd shook his head, exhaled. “We’re sure this has nothing to do with what happened last fall with Victor Larsen and Redrock Security?”
Epps shrugged. “We’ve turned over every stone there. We’ve found nothing that connects it. We’ve even spoken directly to Victor Larsen, who insists he’s not involved. And we’ve found nothing in his network that would make us believe otherwise.”
“So, what, Callahan is just a bad-luck kid? Last year, Victor Larsen’s former military assassins are hunting him down and trying to kill him. And this year, Callahan draws the short straw yet again, with an international assassin trying to do the same thing?”
“I can’t connect the dots yet, either.”
“Do we know where Callahan was trying to go tonight with this new alias?”
“He purchased a ticket for a midnight flight to New Orleans.”
“He have a connection in New Orleans?”
“Not that we can tell.”
“We have any leads yet on Gerlach’s whereabouts?”
“Nothing yet. We’re keeping tabs on local hotels and motels.”
“Alert the New Orleans office, just in case.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We need to find this guy, Mike. I don’t like the idea of a skilled killer roaming our streets and creating collateral damage.”
“Krieger thinks someone might have hacked into our system to keep tabs on our search for the Gray Wolf. His team found some suspicious activity.”
Lloyd’s eyes narrowed. “Same hacker that got Gerlach inside the country?”
“We don’t know yet. His team is working on it.”
“Our job was much easier before the damn Internet. We used to have real targets. Now they’re all hidden behind invisible computer networks.” Lloyd stared down at the report on Sam Callahan again. “I want to talk to this Agent Mendoza.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll set it up.”
“Any other connections to Callahan that we can monitor? Family? Friends?”
“His mother died a few months ago. He has a girlfriend. A reporter. Natalie Foster. Both of them were knee-deep involved with the Redrock deal last year. But we’ve been unable to locate her. Sent two agents to her place an hour ago, and no one answered her door. Her car isn’t there. She’s not answering her cell phone, either.”
“I don’t like how any of this feels. Double down on your search for her. If Callahan is on the run, he’s going to contact someone he trusts. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Yes, sir.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Sam drove the Saab north toward the Matamoros border crossing. There were roughly five hundred miles of open land to cover—basically the width of Texas—and he kept his foot nearly to the floorboard the entire way. With the potential conspiracy fresh in his mind, he kept running theories through his head. He tried to connect Rich Hebbard and Tom Hawkins with Francisco Zapata and whatever else might be going down, but he mostly thought about Natalie. With so much time on lonely dark roads, without seeing another set of headlights, it was difficult for him to think about much else. His thoughts kept drifting to dreadful places. He had visions of her getting tortured, or much worse.
He had to get to New Orleans at all costs.
Thankfully, Sam didn’t have to fight traffic driving through the night. He was careful with his speed upon entering the dozens of small towns, but on wide-open stretches of road, Sam stomped on it hard—the Saab hitting well above triple digits on the speedometer. He prayed he wouldn’t encounter a solitary police car out here in the middle of nowhere and see the sudden red-and-blue flashing lights behind him. He needed to catch a break if he planned to be at the border before daylight.
He was still unsure how he’d get across once he got there.
Using the cash roll Diablo had given him, Sam stopped to fill up with gas in San Luis Potosí around one in the morning. He figured he was more than halfway there. So far, so good. He quickly downed a can of Red Bull. Even at one hundred miles per hour, his eyelids were growing heavy. He couldn’t chance a nod off and find himself upside-down in a dirt field in the middle of nowhere—if he survived the crash at all.
He hit the highway again, feeling the impact of the caffeine.
He was good to go. For a while.
Although he tried to resist it, he again began to ponder the crazy possibility that Rich Hebbard might be his real father. According to Tommy, Hebbard had been living in Denver when Sam was born. Was it possible? Did his mom have some kind of relationship with the guy? If so, why would she make up the story about the drug dealer? Why would she lie to him about it? What would be the point? He felt a sudden pang hit his gut, something he’d experienced quite often over the past three months, when the brutal reality that she was gone washed over him. He could no longer call her up and ask her about it. He couldn’t ask her anything. He could no longer walk into her room and catch her sneaking a smoke. He could never again hear one of her crass jokes. He could no longer take the long walks with her through the neighborhood. He could never again see the love in the eyes of his own flesh and blood or hear the words she said to him almost every single time he was with her.
I love you, Samuel.
His mom was gone.
March 14
Four months ago
There was a small crowd at the funeral. Maybe twenty people.
This was not unexpected, of course. His mom had moved to DC only to get better care near him and had not established roots. Not that she had too many meaningful relationships back in Houston, either, where her life had been so wrapped up in doing drugs, and where she’d been in and out of rehab four times. Before that, she was a nomad who moved around constantly without keeping in touch with many. Sam, of course, had no other family members. So those who chose to attend were pulled from only a couple of places. Several of the workers from Angel Cancer Care attended, as well as her doctor, and a few of the other cancer-stricken residents. A group of the ladies came from the small church a few blocks up the road where his mom had started to attend a Bible study class. There was an old lady there who used to meet his mom at the park and feed the ducks.
That was about it. A sad end to a sad life, Sam thought.
The lone bright spot of an otherwise-sucky week was seeing Pastor Isaiah and his family. Pastor Isaiah had rescued him out of juvie as a teenager and given him a second chance at a normal life. He and his wife, Alisha, had invited him to live with them in their small home in Denver. They’d gotten him a job at the homeless shelter, helped him finish his GED, and even pushed him to enroll in college. The man and his family had rescued Sam from a surefire life of crime on the streets. Alisha looked as beautiful as ever and had whipped up a home-cooked meal their first night with him in the city. Their daughter, Grace, was already ten and much smarter than Sam. They held an impromptu spelling bee, and Grace beat him badly. It was hard to believe she was just a newborn when Sam had moved in with the family. The twin boys, Kevin and Myles, had just turned five and were full of energy. They nearly tackled Sam upon seeing him at the airport with cheers of “Uncle Sam! Uncle Sam!”
And, of course, in so many ways, Pastor Isaiah was his rock. An athletic-looking black man now nearing forty, Pastor Isaiah wrapped his arms around him, pulled him in close, and Sam nearly fell apart.
They held a simple graveside service. No bells and whistles.
Sam sat next to Natalie in front of the closed coffin. It was a cold and gray DC day. It felt even colder inside Sam’s hollow heart. Although his mom had always told him that God could take her at any point, now that he’d restored her relationship with her son after all these years, Sam was not feeling that same sentiment at the moment. It just felt cruel. He was angry about it. Had he not faced enough already in his life? The abusive foster homes? His life on the streets? His time in juvie? Hell, what about the added trauma of just last fall when he had bullets flying at him? And, what, now God wanted
to up the ante and snatch his mother away?
It didn’t sit well. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got.
Natalie reached over and took his hand. He held it loosely.
Pastor Isaiah said some nice things, told a few funny stories about his mom, and read a few scriptures. Sam held together pretty well for most of it. It wasn’t until Alisha stood up and belted out “Amazing Grace” a cappella that Sam completely lost it. The tears started to drip, slowly at first, but then he couldn’t stop them. He just let them pour down his face.
Each person in attendance came by and tried to say something nice to Sam, a quick word of encouragement, a funny story about his mom, but he couldn’t hear much of it. He tried to smile and acknowledge them, but he felt rather numb inside and out. Natalie kissed him on the cheek, walked with Pastor Isaiah and his family back to the cars, while Sam stayed behind for a few minutes.
He stood there, alone, stared at the coffin. He couldn’t believe his mom was inside. He couldn’t believe that, within the hour, a groundskeeper would lower her into the ground. And that was that. It was over. His only family—gone.
It started to rain. Now it was really getting cold. But he didn’t feel like running back to the cars to keep dry. He didn’t care if he got wet.
Standing there, he glanced beyond the coffin, thought he noticed something in the distance of the cemetery. Not something, but someone. Maybe a hundred feet off, standing beside a tree, but definitely looking right at him.
Sam squinted through the falling raindrops. An older man in a black trench coat. Could it be? It sure as hell looked like the gray-bearded man. Marcus Pelini. The mastermind ex-CIA agent who had helped Lisa McCallister, the congressional candidate’s wife, last fall during the Redrock scandal and toyed with Sam’s life—first, by putting him in constant jeopardy against sinister assassins and even the FBI, then by repeatedly saving him. The same man who had taken Sam’s mother from her cancer facility, with intent to harm, Sam initially thought, only to discover later it was to protect her.
A second later, the man was gone behind the tree. And Sam couldn’t find him again. He rubbed his eyes. Was he seeing things? He’d been crying so much that his eyes were blurry. There had been a couple of other times the past few months he’d thought he’d spotted the gray-bearded man pop up in random places. When Sam was out running. Or walking across campus. But he could never be certain. The man was a spook. A spy. It always felt a bit like an apparition—and then the gray-bearded man was gone. Just like now.
Sam stared back down at the coffin. Then he kissed two fingers, pressed them against the wood. “Good-bye, Mom.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Sam was exhausted when he finally pulled the Saab within a few miles of the US–Mexico border crossing a few minutes after four in the morning. There were four empty cans of Red Bull and several PowerBar wrappers on the passenger seat. His head was spinning with a cocktail of fatigue, caffeine, and protein. His back ached something fierce from sitting six hours in one position in the stiff car seat, but he’d actually done it. He’d survived the long drive without any extra peril. He’d navigated more than five hundred miles of a foreign country and made it all the way to the border before sunrise.
But now what?
He pulled off into the empty dirt parking lot of an old schoolhouse in the border town of Matamoros. Then he used the cell phone to log in to Leia’s Lounge. A few minutes later, Tommy was once again on the small screen in front of him.
“You still awake, Mav?” Sam asked.
“You know me, dude. Sleep is overrated. Where are you?”
“Matamoros. A few miles from the border.”
“Perfect.”
“How is that perfect?”
“Because I know how I’m going to get you across.”
“I’m all ears.”
“A drug tunnel,” Tommy declared, letting the words dramatically hang out there.
Sam frowned at the screen. “A . . . what?”
“There’s a secret tunnel dug deep belowground that one of the drug cartels uses to run drugs across the border and into the States. Right there in Matamoros. It’s over a half mile long and begins inside a house on the Mexico side and comes out inside another house on the US side. This thing is an amazing piece of work.”
“Are you kidding me, Tommy? How do you even know about this?”
Tommy frowned. “Come on, you think drug cartels don’t have their own sophisticated online networks? You may see only the violence and the beheadings and whatnot on TV, but these cartels are billion-dollar business empires that hire guys just like me to run online intelligence for them. They’re very dangerous people to mess with, but if you’re bent toward making money, it can be quite lucrative.”
Sam wondered if Tommy had been smoking weed—he couldn’t be serious. “So, what, you’re telling me one of these drug mercenaries is just going to let me walk into their house, buy a ticket like I’m at some kind of amusement park, and take their secret underground shuttle system into the States?”
“Look, you asked me to find you a way to get across the border, so I did. Actually pulling it off is entirely up to you.”
“Fantastic,” Sam muttered, having a hard time believing he was even considering the possibility. Were there any other options? This was crazy.
Tommy tried to give him a pep talk. “Dude, don’t undersell yourself. You’re the same guy who broke into Redrock Security headquarters last year—one of the most secure facilities on this planet—and walked away clean.”
“Clean? I got shot at by military assassins and chased by friggin’ helicopters!”
“And survived,” Tommy clarified. “I’m just saying, don’t underestimate yourself. That was a one-in-a-million task, and you actually did it.”
Sam sighed, feeling resigned. “Where is this house?”
Tommy grinned. “I’m sending you the details now. There’s an elevator inside.”
“Are you serious?”
“I don’t have the construction plans, so I can’t tell you how to find it. I just know it’s there inside the house, and it’ll take you down belowground.”
“Am I safe to cross through? Is this tunnel going to collapse in on me?”
“You’re safe. They’ve been using it for about a year now. They’ve built some kind of ventilation system inside and even have lights. There’s also a track system for carts to haul the drugs. It’s a very impressive setup, if I do say so myself.”
“If I somehow make it across, and that’s a big if, what’s next?”
“There’s a five-thirty flight out of Brownsville to New Orleans.”
“How am I going to board it?”
“I have something already waiting for you at the airport.”
“Then I better get on with it.”
Tommy smiled. “Attaboy!”
TWENTY-NINE
Sam parked the Saab a few blocks from the drug house.
He quietly got out of the car, walked the streets in the dark. No streetlights, no sidewalks, cracked and crumbling paved roads. Some of the houses already had graffiti-covered plywood nailed over windows and looked condemned. The drug house was a dingy white-brick number at the end of the road. Unkempt grass and weeds covered the yard, and an old green military-style Jeep was parked in the driveway. Sam examined the house from the street. No signs of activity. No lights on in the windows. It looked abandoned. He hoped perhaps no one was currently inside the house. Maybe he could just slip inside and get through this tunnel with no issues.
From driving slowly with headlights off through the neighborhood a few minutes ago, Sam noted that the backs of the houses on this street all bordered the river called the Rio Grande. On the other side of the Rio Grande was the United States. He could hardly fathom the idea that he might walk into this white-brick house in a few minutes, somehow find his way down a built-in elevator shaft, walk through a tunnel that had been secretly dug beneath an entire river, cross over an internationa
l border, and then reappear in a house on the other side. It never failed to amaze him the lengths criminals would go to for money and power. Sam trusted Tommy. The guy wouldn’t feed him bad information. The tunnel was there. Although this might be a crazy way to get back into the States, Tommy had at least given him a solid chance.
Sam took one last look up and down the street. No signs of life coming from anywhere. The sun wouldn’t be up for a few more hours. Most lights were still off in the surrounding houses. He found a wooden gate around back. Half the boards were rotten. He pushed the gate open, held his breath so he could hear even the faintest sound. Scanning the yard, he found no menacing red eyes staring back at him, heard no sudden growls.
Sam stepped up onto a brick patio, cupped his hands around the dirty square glass in the back door. Complete darkness. He did not spot any tiny red lights on walls or notice any security wires coming from the door frame. He figured if the neighbors knew this was a drug-cartel house, which was likely, they sure as hell weren’t messing with it. Not unless they wanted to be shot and dumped into the river fifty yards away.
Sam pulled out a pocketknife he’d purchased at the counter of the same convenience store where he’d grabbed Red Bull and PowerBars, thinking it could come in handy for a situation just like this one. He knelt by the back door, stuck the end of the small knife blade into the key slot. The blade fit perfectly. He wiggled and scraped for a few seconds and turned the door handle. He kept the knife blade open and squeezed the handle tightly in his right palm, just in case. He’d only stabbed one person in his life—a drunk foster dad who was abusing a young girl who lived with them—but he was ready to do whatever he had to do to get back to Natalie.
