The Enemy Inside

by William Christie

  Osman’s face actually quivered with emotion. “Thank you brother. God protect you and watch over you.”

  Nimri broke the embrace. “Go to the door now and let us out.”

  No one was in the Expedition. All the Chechens were milling around outside it. At first Nimri thought they were afraid. Then he realized that no one wished to enter first only to be crushed by the others. They had wanted to steal another vehicle, but he would not allow it. “Brothers, get in the car.” He gestured to Temiraev, as if to say: do something.

  “Get in the car!” Temiraev shouted.

  The Chechens wedged themselves in with more grumbling. Nimri got behind the wheel, Temiraev beside him. It was even tighter than before with the Chechens all wearing their full equipment harnesses.

  The GPS was already programmed to guide them to their destination. Nimri started the engine and tapped the horn to signal Osman to open the warehouse door. He shifted into gear and proclaimed in a loud voice, “Victory or Paradise!”

  “Victory or Paradise!” the Chechens answered him.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  At 8:00 A.M. Beth Royale was standing on the Customs island on the Laredo side of International Bridge 4, the World Trade Bridge. She was watching the Mexican side through binoculars. All six lanes of highway were empty. In front of her was the row of yellow Customs gates with their closed-circuit cameras and scanners. All closed. Weekdays the bridge closed at midnight and didn’t open until eight.

  The Customs supervisor beside her said, “You know which truck they’ll be on?”

  “No idea,” said Beth. “But we won’t have to go looking for them. They’ll just show up.”

  “You know them by sight?”

  “That I do.”

  “FBI or not,” he said, “they’re going to have to identify themselves.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Beth. He’d already made a copy of her ID, to cover his ass. She just hoped Ed and Lee still had passports. Or something.

  “Here we go,” said the supervisor.

  A solid wall of tractor trailer trucks were coming across the bridge. Once across the Rio Grande, on both sides of that wide band of highway was chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Then an expanse of empty grassland, mowed short to provide no concealment and burnt by the sun. More fence beyond. Designed to keep people from jumping out of trucks and disappearing into America before they reached the checkpoint.

  The trucks rumbled up to the gates, brakes blasting air. Inside the control center they were watching the banks of TV monitors. Running licenses. Checking out drivers. They could only search a fraction of what passed through on any given day. The sight of all those trucks gave Beth cold chills. It was one thing to understand it intellectually. Another to stand there watching them push up to the border like a huge herd of migrating animals and wonder what or who might be inside waiting to make their way up the Interstate 35 into the heart of the United States.

  She trained her binoculars from truck cab to truck cab, but all she saw were solo drivers.

  “Do you see them?” Sondra Dewberry asked.

  “Not yet,” Beth replied.

  “Does this happen on your Fly Squad all the time?”

  “This?” said Beth. “Meeting Special Ops guys coming across the border? No. But things like this—outside the usual Bureau routine? They do tend to happen every now and again.”

  “But this in particular is out of the ordinary,” Dewberry persisted, as if she really needed to have that confirmed.

  “Yeah. But look at it this way. You’ll finally get to meet my boyfriend.” Beth smiled behind the binoculars, knowing Dewberry wouldn’t quite know how to respond to that. And hopefully grant her a short interval of silence.

  The trucks kept coming. Beth wondered how many of them had been parked and lined up on the Mexican side waiting for the bridge to open. She decided to quit looking down the road and only concentrate on those pulled up to the gates.

  The trucks were pretty generic. Unmarked trailers for the most part. Dull cabs with the names of freight companies. Probably no one wanted to get too wild with their paint job and attract the attention of Customs.

  It was almost 8:30 and Beth could just feel Dewberry getting impatient. Then she caught a flurry of movement in a cab that had only held a driver a moment before.

  “We’re here,” the driver announced.

  The curtain opened, and Storey and Troy climbed down from the sleeping area in the back of the truck cab. Storey passed the driver a thick roll of cash. “Here you go, Bob. Just like I promised. We’re getting out in front of Customs, and this is the easiest money you ever made.”

  Bob was flipping through the roll, checking denominations. “You’re a man of your word. Vaya con Dios.”

  “Amen, brother,” said Troy.

  They climbed down and shut the door.

  “Let’s get out of traffic and find Beth,” said Story.

  “I feel like kissing the ground,” said Troy. “Like the Pope. There’s Beth,” said Troy. “Over there with the binoculars.”

  They each had a two-day beard. Both wearing suits and open-collared shirts that were looking pretty road-worn. As they got closer Beth could see stains that looked like rust on their clothes. She made a mental note not to ask about that when Dewberry was around.

  Beth knew Ed would be too shy to kiss her in public, and way too proper to even think about it when she was on duty. He slipped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a quick squeeze. “Thanks for being here.”

  Lee, of course, was never one to pass up an opportunity to embarrass his partner. With a loud, “Beth!” he threw his arms around her and gave her a big hug and a kiss.

  Beth gave him a friendly slap on the backside. “Good to see you, too.” She wrinkled her nose. “You’re going to need a shower one of these days. What have you been up to?”

  “If you only knew,” said Troy.

  “We really need to get moving here,” said Storey.

  The Customs supervisor took a step forward.

  “Have you got your passports?” said Beth.

  They dug in their pockets and handed over red diplomatic passports.

  The supervisor looked the books over, compared the photos, and said, “Wait here.”

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Beth said, “He’s going to make a copy to cover his ass.”

  Storey said, “He wants to look in our bags, everyone’s got a problem.”

  “We’ll see what we can do about that,” said Beth. “Oh, Ed, Lee, I want you to meet my partner, Sondra Dewberry.”

  Storey gave her one quick appraising look and said formally, “Pleased to meet you.”

  Troy was giving her a different kind of appraising look. “Likewise.”

  “Beth’s told me so much about you,” Dewberry said to Troy.

  Realizing what impression the hug and kiss had left, Troy burst out laughing. “I’m sure she has,” he said finally. “But this is the happy couple.” He was waving a finger between Beth and Storey.

  Storey was wearing a faint crinkle of amusment across his face.

  Beth’s was red.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Dewberry.

  “That’s okay,” Troy told her. “The best man doesn’t always win.”

  “Any day, any day,” Storey muttered as the Customs supervisor slowly ambled back up to them.

  The supervisor handed back the two passports and glanced down at the two duffel bags on the ground. “I don’t suppose I want to look in there, do I?”

  “Career-wise?” said Storey. “Big mistake.”

  That Master Sergeant authority combined with the country sincerity always worked, Troy thought.

  “Okay, you can go,” said the supervisor.

  Hurrying them toward the car, Storey said, “Beth, we’ve got to move fast. We’ve got twelve al-Qaeda Chechens and Abdallah Karim Nimri in an old warehouse on Carrillo Road, according to last information.”

  “Nimri?
” said Beth. “We heard twenty Chechens.”

  “Not all of them made it to the dance,” Troy broke in.

  “What happened to them?” said Dewberry.

  Storey gave Troy the eye to dummy up.

  Beth formulated her next question very carefully, like the lawyer she was. “How good is your source?” Not: exactly how did you come to know all this?

  “Pretty good,” said Storey. “The word is that there’s a leak somewhere in the Bureau. Nimri’s hearing what you’re doing. I don’t know how fast his information pipeline is working, or if he has real-time communications with it right now, but it’s something we need to think about before calling the troops in.”

  “What’s Nimri’s objective?” said Beth.

  “Don’t know,” said Storey. “Don’t know where he’s moving, don’t know when. Don’t even know if he’s still at the warehouse. All we know is, his plan was to go to the warehouse. But he got in a firefight with the Border Patrol, and that wasn’t part of his plan.”

  “That we know about,” said Beth. “They shot down a helicopter, too.”

  “Really?” said Storey.

  “And a State Trooper’s missing,” Beth added.

  “Well, they got AKs, two MAG machine guns, a sniper rifle, LAAWs, grenades, and explosives,” said Storey. “And night vision gear.”

  “What’s the address on the warehouse?” said Beth.

  “All we know is an old wooden warehouse on Carrillo Road,” said Storey.

  “Why do I think there’s going to be more than one?” said Beth. “Let’s run by and take a quick look, then we can decide what to do.”

  They finally reached the car.

  “I’ll drive,” said Dewberry, sliding behind the wheel.

  Beth stood there for an instant, flexing her fingers into a fist. Then without a word she walked around to the trunk, removing two heavy bulletproof vests, navy blue with gold FBI lettering. And an M-16 rifle. She donned one of the vests.

  Storey and Troy were already in the backseat. Beth passed them the M-16. “Here, hang on to this for me.”

  Troy accepted the rifle and laid it on the floor. “Thanks, but we brought our own.”

  Sondra Dewberry looked into the rearview mirror and watched the two men donning the cotton ammunition vests they’d liberated from Los Zetas. “They’ve got hand grenades,” she whispered to Beth.

  “Don’t worry,” said Beth. “They won’t go tossing them around. Will you, guys?”

  “Not unless we clear it with you first, Beth,” said Troy, rocking a magazine into his AK.

  “They seem to have automatic rifles, too,” Beth observed. “You guys pick those up in Mexico?”

  “From the same people who sold them to Nimri,” said Storey. “You think we can go a little faster?”

  “They’re not law enforcement,” Dewberry whispered to Beth.

  “It’s okay to speak up,” said Troy. “We can actually hear you back here.”

  “The president empowered them to act as such,” said Beth. “The Posse Comitatus Act is suspended for members of Joint Special Operations Command. So until the Supreme Court says no ... you going to put on your vest?”

  “Not while I’m driving.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Beth, slapping it down on the seat between them. “In that case you can drive faster.”

  “You want to stash the packs?” Troy said to Storey. The two daypacks held all the magazines and grenades that wouldn’t fit in the vests.

  “Keep ’em close,” said Storey. “If we need ’em, we’ll need ’em bad.”

  Dewberry kept glancing in the rearview mirror.

  It was rush hour, but Beth didn’t want to turn on the lights and siren. Clearing the loop road that fed the border bridge, they headed south on 1472. The traffic was heavy, everyone heading to all the nearby industrial parks. From San Bernardo they took a right onto Industrial Boulevard. Then across the train tracks onto Carrillo Road.

  Storey was dismayed. They’d kept passing shiny new industrial parks on the drive down. And there wasn’t just one old wooden warehouse, but rows of them. He’d hoped they’d be able to isolate the right one, then call in the FBI and the locals. But there was no way. And if they called in the troops right now, Nimri and the Chechens might very well notice all the activity and manage to slip out before the cordon closed.

  “You can slow down now,” Beth was telling Dewberry. “We really need to check these out.”

  They passed what looked like an old factory that butted up right to the edge of the road. A chain-link fence, and Dewberry braking suddenly. And less than twenty feet away, almost face to face, was a Chechen who looked like the brother of the ones Storey and Troy had killed in Rio, unlocking the padlock at the gate. And behind him a black Ford Expedition waiting to drive out.

  “Shit,” said Troy, giving voice to what everyone else was thinking.

  Storey threw himself out the passenger door on the opposite side, Troy following right behind him.

  With her side of the car exposed broadside to the gate, Beth popped her seat belt and dove into the backseat. As she landed she heard the loudspeaker pop on and Dewberry’s voice, unbelievably, announcing, “FBI. Turn off the engine and show your hands out the windows.”

  Oh, my God, Beth thought.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Abdallah Karim Nimri could hardly be faulted for that moment of frozen disbelief. Within his grasp. Within minutes of being within his grasp ...

  “Back up!” Temiraev bellowed into his ear.

  Within the cramped confines of the vehicle, the Chechens fought for the buttons. And the windows rolled down so very slowly.

  Chance contact was usually won by the side that fired first and put those rounds on target. Staying behind the front wheel, Storey rested his AK across the hood. The Chechen at the gate nearly had his pistol out. The post of Storey’s front sight settled onto his chest, and the AK bounced twice against Storey’s shoulder. His brain registered the Chechen falling, but he was already shifting targets. The fingers of his left hand draped over the receiver, pulling that awkward AK selector switch one notch up to full auto.

  Troy was already there. He was aiming at the driver, but the Expedition was backing up fast and then spun around as the wheel was cut over. He squeezed the trigger, holding the AK down against the recoil, and didn’t release it until the thirty-round magazine ran out. Contrary to all the rules of shooting, AKs didn’t jam from overheating—AKs didn’t jam from anything—and the only important thing was to get as many rounds into that vehicle in the shortest period of time. Fire superiority.

  Nimri cut the wheel just as Troy fired. The first rounds impacted just behind his head and stitched their way through the backseat and cargo area. Screams and frantic thrashing as men were hit.

  Storey fired full auto right after. Seeing Troy’s aim, he went first for the engine and tires. When the Expedition stopped moving it was sideways to them.

  “Get out!” Temiraev was screaming. “Get out and shoot back!”

  The one-sided part of the fight was now officially over. Return fire thudded into the side of the FBI sedan. The driver’s door came open. Annoyed at the interruption in his shooting, Troy leaned over, grabbed Dewberry by the back of her suit jacket, and dragged her clear.

  A few Chechens were now out and shooting from behind the Expedition. One of them darted out into the open, hands in the air, running toward them. Shouting in English, “Surrender! Surrender!”

  Storey was changing magazines. Beth hesitated—she couldn’t shoot a suspect with his hands up. Dewberry stopped firing her pistol and shouted back. “Halt! Get down on your knees!”

  The Chechen didn’t stop.

  Storey yelled, “Shoot him, goddammit!”

  Jesus Christ, Troy thought. He swung his rifle over and shot the Chechen through the chest.

  The Chechen blew up.

  When the smoke cleared there were two shod feet standing on the ground. A scorched black
circle, and two feet, jagged anklebones projecting up, in the exact center of the circle. Nothing else.

  In the time it took them to regain their wits and get up from where the blast had knocked them over, there was a fast string of much louder, ripping cracks. Accompanied by the singing of metal under strain.

  The sound told Storey they’d gotten a machine gun into action, and the holes told him the fire was coming right through the sedan. He threw himself back down onto the road. That was how quick the course of a gunfight could change, once you lost fire superiority.

  Also on the ground, though from a different perspective, Troy saw Chechens running for the warehouse under the protection of the covering fire. He pulled a hand grenade off his vest, yanked out the pin, and threw it from flat on his back.

  Beth fired her M-16 dry, then realized that she only had one more magazine left. Slamming it into the rifle, she heard Troy shout, “Grenade!” She’d learned what that meant some time before, and threw herself down onto the ground.

  The grenade hit the cinder parking lot, bounced once, and exploded near the side of the Expedition. Scoring the paint job and shaking the occupants.

  Storey used the cover it provided to roll twice so he was now firing from a prone position, under the sedan engine.

  After the first grenade blast Troy reared up and threw two more, taking the time for better aim.

  Nimri had grabbed a rifle from somewhere—it was very confusing—and was firing out his driver’s window.

  Temiraev was shouting orders. “If you can move, run for the warehouse! Otherwise keep firing!”

  He grabbed Nimri from behind and dragged him across the seat, over the center console like a speed bump, and out the other side of the car.

  Troy’s second grenade hit the side of the Expedition and bounced back before exploding, shattering glass and sending up new cries from inside.

  The third grenade landed short but kept skipping forward along the cinders until it came to a rest under the SUV.