by Gary Ponzo
“With my cell phone,” Sadeem answered.
Garza felt his pocket to make sure he still had the suicide bomber’s phone. As they walked further down the tunnel, Garza noticed Sadeem’s pace slowing, leaving a gap between them and the lead group.
Victor was glancing at his cell phone as usual.
Garza shoved Sadeem with the tip of his gun and once more the man turned.
“Do not touch me again,” Sadeem demanded. “This is not a video game, Mr. Garza. Real people are going to die tonight and people like you who delegate your manhood for profit, will be left staring at an empty image in the mirror each day.”
Garza felt the man was beginning his descent into the next world already. He wasn’t even making sense now.
They continued deeper into the tunnel. Occasionally an overhead light flickered. Sadeem’s pace continued to slow, so Garza added another push of his gun to get him moving.
The man swung around and stepped toward Garza with determination on his face. Garza readied himself as the man approached.
A gunshot rang out in the tunnel and reverberated throughout the long underground tube. Garza’s men whirled and crouched into an attack position, their rifles ready to fire.
Sadeem fell to the floor. Another gunshot. Sadeem writhed in pain, clutching at his chest while a couple of dark stains grew on his white shirt. Victor stood with his arm outstretched and his gun still aimed at Sadeem.
“Why did you do that?” Garza asked.
Victor held up his cell phone with his free hand. “I just received word from a contact in Libya. Sadeem was the CIA plant. He was sent here to kill you.”
A sense of relief washed over Garza. Sadeem was a constant source of stress for him, but now he had to consider the reality of Victor’s actions.
Garza took a breath and watched the spy slowly slipping away on the floor of the tunnel. The man lifted his head to say something. He moved his lips, but nothing came out.
Garza looked at Victor. “I appreciate it,” he said. “But now what? We’ve already been paid to have this bomb detonated in the United States. A lot of money, I may add.”
“No,” Victor responded. “We were paid to transfer this man and his bomb across the border. Once he is there, we cannot control what he does.”
“Go ahead,” Garza said, liking what he was hearing so far. “Then what?”
“We drive his body and that bomb out into the desert,” Victor said. “We call our Border Patrol contact and have him send a man out to retrieve the body. While he’s there, he pumps the corpse full of bullets and finds this nuclear weapon in the trunk. The Border Patrol agent is a hero and we did our job. Everyone gets what they want. Back home, Sadeem is declared an incompetent.”
Garza watched the bomb still rolling away from them in the cart and gestured to his men. “Can you please stay with the weapon?” he asked in a fiery tone.
All five men scrambled back down the tunnel to catch up to the bomb.
“Okay,” Garza said to Victor. “Let’s get to work.”
Chapter 28
Sonny Chizek was in the recreation room of the Chizek Mine Company’s main building, walking around the pool table, looking for his next shot. He had his iPod playing on the overhead speakers while he stalked the nine-ball in the corner pocket. He was a heavy man so it allowed him great stability when he leaned over and drew back the pool stick between his large fingers. He hit the cue-ball with such force, it skidded sharply into the nine-ball and knocked it into the pocket so hard, it jumped up an inch before dropping in.
Chizek swaggered around the table, chalking the tip of his pool stick as Aerosmith wailed overhead. The recreation room was an open portion of the bottom floor with a pool table, a couple of vending machines, and a long countertop against a window overlooking Denton. Since the mine sat on a hill, the window offered Chizek a picturesque view of the Denton skyline at night.
Steven Tyler was screaming, “Walk this way,” as Chizek lined up his next shot. He slammed the cue-ball into the five-ball and almost sent it over the lip of the table into the dark fringes of the room. On the opposite wall from the window was a large industrial garage door which gave access to the loading dock just outside.
From a mile away, Chizek could see a truck’s lights coming up the solitary road which led to the mine; the road paralleled the Mexican border by just a few yards. He kept the interior lights low so he could keep an eye on the exterior of the building at all times.
Chizek grabbed his bottle of beer from a tall side table next to him and took a long drink. The truck stopped at the fenced-in entrance and blinked its lights. The lack of moonlight accented the truck’s headlights as Chizek pulled a remote control from his pocket and entered the four digit code. The gate opened and the truck found a parking space just below the window.
Chizek put down his beer and lined up another shot on the pool table. He cracked the six-ball against the cushion for a bank shot and watched it jump into the side pocket with a crisp thump.
A buzzer sounded and Chizek pushed a new set of numbers into the remote and the front door unlocked. Eight of his men came through the door, all smiles and looking for praise.
“Nice work,” Chizek said, giving Carlos Grider a fist bump.
“Edgar took the shot,” Carlos said, as he opened the fridge and handed out beers to the crew.
“Good job, Edgar,” Chizek said, over the sound of Joe Perry’s lead guitar. “Carlos, I need you to be ready for the delivery. The rest of you go scout the perimeter and make sure we remain alone.”
When the men left, Chizek glanced at the clock. “It’s nine thirty. They’re supposed to be here in a half hour.”
Carlos sat on a stool by the window and glowed in the aftermath of his accomplishment. He drank his beer while Chizek lined up another shot.
“How much will it cost me to repair the damage?” Chizek said.
“To the motel?” Carlos asked.
Chizek looked up. “What else did you damage along the way?”
Carlos gave an impish grin and shrugged. “Nothing else, I guess.”
Chizek tried a combination, hitting the three-ball into the eight-ball, but missed the mark. The balls scattered around the table, but didn’t fall in a pocket.
George Thorogood and the Destroyers were now playing “Bad to the Bone,” while Chizek strutted around the table, prowling his next shot and bobbing his round head to the beat of the drums.
“You did good, Carlos,” Chizek said. “We’ll have to get you a nice little bonus once this job is completed.”
“I like the sound of that,” Carlos said, raising his beer bottle up in a mock toast.
Chizek was mentally preparing for a special package. Garza had told him it was a volatile piece of merchandise, not the typical drug shipment. He’d hinted about its explosive nature, so Chizek didn’t have to guess it was a bomb. What bothered him the most was that Garza had paid him five hundred thousand dollars up front for the transfer. Ten times the going rate. It made him wonder how much Garza was making on the deal.
Chizek was lining up his next shot when the music overhead came to an abrupt halt. It left the cavernous room in barren silence. From the darkness came three figures, all dressed in black, with black ski masks covering their faces. They approached the pool table with a calm, unfettered stride. They didn’t wave any weapons. The one on the left had a pistol tucked into his waist, the one on the right had a black bag.
“How the fuck did you get in here?” Chizek snapped.
The one in the middle took off his ski mask.
A beer bottle crashed to the cement floor and echoed throughout the room. Carlos’s eyes widened in terror as he saw the man’s face. “No . . . no, this can’t be. You can’t be . . .”
Chizek gritted his teeth and glanced outside.
“They’re all dead,” Nick Bracco said.
Chizek gripped his pool stick and whacked Carlos on the side of the head. The guy went down fast; his arms cover
ed his face as Chizek kept swinging the stick and connecting.
Bracco came over and yanked the pool stick from Chizek, getting between the two men.
“It’s not his fault,” Bracco said, throwing the pool stick into the darkness. He pointed to the guy with the black bag removing his mask as well. “That was all Stevie’s doing. He shot a hologram image against the curtain to make it look like we were inside the motel room. He blasted a recorded argument to go with it.”
The third guy removed his mask and Chizek recognized him as Bracco’s partner. The sharpshooter who had messed up his bar. The guy stood with his gun tucked into his waistband, almost daring Chizek to make a wrong move.
“Then Matt here shot his truck with a GPS device wrapped in an adhesive glue-ball,” Bracco added. “You surround yourself with suck-ups and it gives you a false sense of your intelligence.”
Chizek looked at the wall clock. Almost ten. Garza and his men would be arriving soon. He smiled at Bracco. “You have no idea how fucked you are.”
The FBI agent seemed to nod at that. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I know.”
* * *
Walt was still pacing with the phone in his hand, his long strides taking him around his office in just three or four seconds. With every minute that passed, he wondered the prudence of his strategy. Was he feeding his best agents to the wolves by letting them operate alone in the hostile environment of Denton, Arizona? Just a couple of miles from Mexico’s deadliest assassin.
His phone chirped.
FBI Agent Ron Mantle was calling from the Arizona barricade.
“What’s up, Ron?”
“We’ve got reports of an explosion at the Denton Motel. You know anything about that?”
Boy, was that a great question. That’s where Nick’s team was staying, but he had no idea whether they were there at the time. “I don’t,” Walt said.
“Well, you want us to head down there early?”
Walt looked at the clock on the wall. They were inside of two hours from Nick’s time limit. “Listen, Ron, how far are you from Denton?”
“Forty miles.”
“Okay, take one team down there with you. Drive an undercover car. No markings. Drive the speed limit.”
“All right,” Mantle said. “What about the rest of the crew?”
Walt chewed on his fingernail, then spit out a sliver. “Tell them to wait until the deadline.”
“Got it.”
“And, Ron.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t cross the border, no matter what. You understand?”
“Whatever you say.”
Walt pressed the end button not sure if what he’d said was right or wrong. He’d lost sight of that line long ago. Now it was a matter of survival. How many lives could he save while keeping his team alive? He’d finally felt the weight of his decisions and dropped down into his chair; every limb was exhausted.
He leaned back and placed the phone to his forehead. “Please, guys. Just tell me what’s going on.”
* * *
Nick moved around the room, examining the contents, looking for something to tell him he was on the right track. His heart was running a little quick and he took a deep breath while searching for clues.
The guy who Chizek smacked was holding the side of his face, blood trickling between his fingers. Nick gestured to Stevie and he pulled something from his bag to take care of the guy’s wounds.
Bracco kept lurking around the pool table, his eyes darting left and right.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Chizek said, suddenly looking smug about the security of his facility.
“I won’t know until I find it,” Nick said.
“Well, the Border Patrol was just here a while back,” Chizek said. “They spent two days, scrutinizing every inch of this place. They had dogs and guys with black bags like him and you want to know what they found?” Chizek made a circle with his index finger and thumb. “Zilch.”
Nick kept looking. “Yeah, well, maybe you were tipped off ahead of time. Maybe the Border Patrol agents weren’t searching where they should’ve.”
Chizek chuckled. “Agent Bracco, you’re wasting your time as a government employee. You should be a fiction writer.”
The room was still while Bracco got on his knees and examined something on the floor near the base of the pool table. Something about the table bothered him. It sat on a wooden platform which served no purpose. The floor was cement, so there was no need to protect it from scrapes or scratches. He squeezed his finger under the platform and felt a crack in the cement. Maybe a forced break, maybe not.
He looked up to see Chizek acting casual, like he was having a cup of coffee with friends. Matt just kept staring at the guy, dying for him to do something stupid.
“He okay?” Bracco asked Stevie, working on Chizek’s henchman.
“He’ll be fine,” Stevie said.
“Good. Tie him up.”
Stevie sat the guy on a stool against the counter and pulled his hands behind his back and began taping him up.
His partner seemed to focus on a set of lights which stood out among the desert landscape. Garza’s complex.
“That’s Mexico,” Chizek told him. “No need to look over there.”
Matt said nothing, but Nick knew what his partner was thinking. There it was, beckoning him like a meteor being pulled into the earth’s gravity.
Nick was fighting time now. Within a couple of hours Garza would see the cavalry coming and scurry back into his hole. He’d be out of reach and untouchable. Nick wanted to lure him over the border and snatch him up before he was warned. Especially since Nick and Matt were now considered dead.
Nick found a remote control sitting on a side table next to Chizek’s beer. He held the device for a moment, then walked over to Stevie and handed it to him.
“Look at this,” he said.
Stevie removed a microscope from his black bag and placed it on the pool table. Then he slid the remote under the lens.
Chizek didn’t seem to like that move, but he wasn’t lawyering up, so he must’ve felt comfortable with everything so far.
“Three digits,” Stevie said, while staring through the single eyepiece. “That’s how many buttons are depressed routinely.”
“Good,” Bracco said. “That means there’s only six combinations of that sequence. Try all six.”
Stevie picked up the device and tried pushing the three numbers all different ways.
Nothing happened.
Chizek smiled, looking more confident with every minute that passed. “Do I need to be here while you do this?” he said. “I could use some beauty sleep.”
“You’re a funny guy,” Nick said.
Stevie kept playing with the remote while Nick pulled out his mini-flashlight and found a set of tracks on the floor leading to the garage doors on the north side of the room.
“You have a lot of mining equipment on this floor?” Nick asked.
“Nope,” Chizek said. “This is strictly the administrative wing of the building.”
“I see,” Nick said, following the tracks to the massive door and shining the light outside. “What’s the loading dock for then?”
Chizek hesitated before answering that.
Nick looked at him.
“We throw parties sometimes,” Chizek shrugged. “We need a wide access for our deliveries. Sometimes we’ll have a band play for the Christmas party.”
“Now who’s the fiction writer?” Nick said.
Chizek’s face became even wider, showing Nick a mouthful of teeth.
Stevie was back at the microscope, eyeing the remote again. “I think I know what’s going on,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I think it’s a four digit number, but the first three are the same, that’s why they’re so worn. The fourth number is different for each command.”
Chizek’s smile vanished.
“Go on,” Nick said. “I’m listening.”
Chizek lost his enthusiasm altogether. He seemed to be checking out an exit strategy, but Matt was paying close attention.
Stevie played with the remote, pressing a sequence of numbers, then glancing around the room for activity.
Nothing.
“You look worried,” Nick said to Chizek.
The man stood there like a trapped squirrel.
Stevie tried a new sequence.
Nothing.
Nick pointed to Chizek and said to Matt, “Get him wrapped up, so we don’t waste any time.”
“You’re playing with fire, Agent Bracco,” Chizek said, taking a step back.
Chizek’s henchman also seemed concerned, but kept still.
“You need to work on your threats,” Nick answered, examining the room for movement every time Stevie tried a new sequence.
Matt secured the large man to a stool, wrapping his legs around the legs of the stool, then needing both arms to drag his bulk along the cement floor until he reached the refrigerator. He handcuffed the man to the handle of the fridge, then followed Stevie’s attempts.
Stevie held out his arm each time he imputed a new series of numbers. Now, he held it out and said, “Shhh.”
“What?” Nick asked.
“I hear something.”
Stevie repeated the sequence into the remote, then stood still. There was a distant creaking noise. Chizek pulled at his bindings, making noise as he rubbed the handcuffs against the refrigerator door.
Matt pulled out his pistol and aimed it at Chizek with an angry glare.
Chizek stopped.
Stevie did it again.
Again a scraping sound.
Finally, Matt pointed out the window. “There.”
The front gate was opening.
Stevie smiled.
Nick’s heart raced. He knew they were onto something. He pulled out his pistol and checked out his surroundings. He felt like they were being watched.
