The Dark Root

by Mayor, Archer

  “Okay. Hang on.”

  The trick to mobile sensors was to place them strategically, far enough apart to give the listener not only a sense of which direction the object was moving in, but also at what speed. Richard and I were waiting for the second hit.

  “Got it,” he said moments later. “He’s heading toward you, and he’s on wheels, moving fast.” Then he added quickly, “I got another one on the first sensor—something big.”

  I aimed my binoculars to the left and then made a calculated gamble. “Drop everything and head back to your pickup, Richard. If he is mobile and I miss him, we’ll be shit out of luck without a vehicle. Steve, you find out what triggered that second hit, and call for reinforcements. I think this is it.”

  “What if this is another diversion? Or a midnight joyrider?”

  “Just do it. We don’t have much left to lose.”

  I heard something in the distance and tore the headphone off my ear to listen. It was the high-pitched whine of a small engine. I disconnected the radio from all its covert paraphernalia, the need for silence over, and told Richard, “I hear it coming. Sounds like an ATV.”

  Boucher was breathing hard, running for his pickup. “10-4. I’ll be headin’ your way in a sec.”

  The fog bank by the trees told me nothing. As before, it lay there, trapped, opaque as green phosphorescence through the low-light binoculars, disguising the source of the approaching engine’s growing howl. I was frustrated by the binoculars. Richard and a few of the others had been issued sophisticated night-vision goggles from the Border Patrol’s limited supply, which not only could be conveniently strapped onto one’s head, but could also be left in place while shooting a gun. If it came to that, I knew I wouldn’t do much with a pair of binoculars in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  At last, much closer than I expected, the fog gave up its malevolent gift. The dark, squatty form of a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle, towing a small trailer, burst from the bank like a shark clearing water, and came charging right at me, its lights extinguished.

  I exchanged the binoculars for a powerful flashlight, stood clear of the rocks, steadied my gun hand on top of the hand holding the light, and switched it on. “Police—stop.”

  But we were too close. It had happened too fast. There was no room left for either one of us to choose a peaceful option. The driver was also wearing night goggles, and the glare from my light totally blinded him for an instant, making him instinctively tear them off and throw them aside. He swerved at me, only barely in control of his machine. Just before diving out of the way, I saw the dazed face of Truong Van Loc.

  I ended up against one of the rocks, momentarily stunned, the stench of the ATV’s exhaust in my nostrils. He hadn’t missed me by much. I dug my radio from the holster on my belt. “Richard—it’s him. He got by me. He’s heading for the road.”

  I scrambled to my feet and began running, my flashlight now lost but my gun still in my hand. The road was a couple of hundred feet away, and Truong, now minus his goggles, had switched on his headlights. But I knew we were too late. Richard hadn’t been able to get to his pickup quickly enough. Even now, almost reaching the road and seeing Truong picking up speed in the opposite direction, I could barely see Richard’s lights coming over the rise far to my right.

  Breathing hard, I staggered into the road and waved at the pickup to stop. He slowed down enough for me to pile into the passenger seat, and then poured the speed back on.

  “He’s right ahead of us—four-wheel ATV with a trailer—using lights.”

  Over the radio, we heard Steve reporting that he’d secured a large truck, minus the driver, and that he’d contained its human cargo by locking the back door.

  Driving with one hand, the countryside ripping by in a frightening blur, Boucher unhooked his radio mike and relayed our situation to Dispatch in a calm, measured tone. “There is one thing going for us,” he said after he’d signed off. “Unless he really knows this part of the woods, he’s going to have to double back to keep on any kind of decent road. They all crap out about three to four miles east of here.”

  I remembered that from studying the map earlier. Somewhere near where Orleans County ended and Essex began, the dozen or so marked roads all either dead-ended or looped back around to the west. But there were a lot of them, mostly interconnected, and unless we could seal them off quickly, Truong still stood a good chance of escaping, especially if he put his cross-country vehicle to its intended use.

  “There he is,” Boucher murmured, almost to himself.

  Ahead of us, around a curve in the road, a quick, jittery glow flickered briefly across the treetops. I hung on as Richard approached the bend without letting up on the accelerator.

  Tires squealing, odds and ends shifting noisily around inside the cab, we took the corner almost on two wheels. Straightening out, we found the road ahead—straight, broad, and flat—totally empty.

  Richard slammed his hand against the steering wheel, coming to a stop. “Damn. The son of a bitch. I should’ve known it.”

  He threw the truck into reverse, turned us around, and sped back to a small gap in the woods I hadn’t noticed on the inside of the curve. Again, he grabbed the radio and gave a short update. Then he positioned us so our lights shined directly into the trees.

  I looked dubiously at the narrow gap, which in the shadows looked about big enough for a bicycle. “You sure?”

  “I know every deer path in this county. He’s down there, all right, playing hide and seek.”

  “So we wait?” I asked.

  A slow smile spread across his face as he shook his head. “Too many options in there. He could come out at a half-dozen places, cross another road, and keep on going. We’re going to have to force his hand.” He put the truck into four-wheel drive.

  “In this?” I asked incredulously.

  He laughed. “You never been Jeepin’ before?”

  The truck leaped from the road into the brush with a tremendous crash. Branches flew by the windshield as if caught in a tornado, and I could hear the truck’s undercarriage squealing and groaning with the strain. I held onto the dash with both hands, wondering how I could have been so wrong in gauging Boucher’s character.

  After the initial onslaught, the branches faded back a bit, allowing us some vision, and up ahead, exactly on cue, another pair of headlights suddenly came to life.

  “I got you, you bastard,” Richard shouted gleefully, and put on more speed.

  As he did so, two sharp muzzle flashes punctured the darkness. Our windshield cracked like a snapped bone, and we were sprinkled with tiny shards of glass. Boucher’s face, glowing green in the dash lights, merely hardened in silence.

  The chase became a slow-motion cataclysm of violent sound, motion, and half-perceived disasters. Adrenaline-pumping images of grazed boulders, hip-checked trees, branches further smashing the windshield, and an occasional view of the vehicle just ahead, its driver hunched over the handlebars, crowded in on me in chaotic order. The maelstrom of jumbled impressions was so confusing, so immediate, and so life threatening, I actually found myself wondering if any of it was real.

  And then abruptly it stopped. Boucher screamed, “Shit,” and slammed on the brakes. Ahead of us—almost under us—was Truong’s trailer, twisted, broken, completely blocking our way. Beyond it, receding rapidly, we could clearly see the fading lights of the ATV.

  Once again, Richard grabbed the radio. This time, however, I reached out and took it from him.

  “4-60 from Alpha One. Where’s the chopper now?”

  “Near the intersections of Holland, Morgan, and Selby Roads.”

  I glanced at Boucher.

  “That’s just ahead. If we can move that trailer, I can get you there in five minutes. We almost had him,” he added as an angry afterthought.

  “Can you land there?” I asked the helicopter.

  “10-4. What about the ATV?”

  “Have you inventoried the truck yet?” I ask
ed instead, knowing the noise of our cross-country pursuit had drowned out anything that might have come in over the radio.

  “10-4. One hundred and twenty illegals.”

  “Then I recommend you track the ATV, but do not apprehend. Watch for it to go back the way it came—over into Canada.”

  Boucher and I swung out of the truck. “Boy—they aren’t going to like that,” he said. “What’re you up to?”

  We both grabbed a corner of the trailer, noticing the tow bar had been destroyed, and pushed it farther into the brush. “Open it for a quick look,” I said instead of answering him.

  He slipped the catch from the top of the trailer and threw back the door. Inside, lit by our headlights, was a trashed jumble of suitcases, cloth bags, and bundled clothing.

  “The truck was the mother lode,” I explained with relief. “The armada on the lake was just to draw our attention.”

  We returned to the truck, and Richard drove us rapidly to the road a few hundred yards farther on. He took a hard right and accelerated to where we could already see the helicopter landing lights searching out a good place to settle down. The truck didn’t sound too healthy, despite the smooth road.

  We reached the crossroads simultaneously. I ran, doubled over, just as the helicopter touched down, opened its waist door, and jumped inside, surprised as I did so to see not just Spinney, but Lucas and Frazier as well.

  “Have you located him?” I shouted as the rotors revved up and we pulled away from the earth. Spinney handed me a pair of headphones similar to the ones Al Hammond had used in his airplane.

  Frazier answered my question. “Yes. We have him on a loose tail, and he is heading back for the border, but I’m not sure I’m real happy with this. What the hell’re you doing? I thought we wanted to nail this guy.”

  “Without the truck, he’s probably out a half-million dollars or more. I think he took his last gamble—like we thought he would—and he blew it. His only option now is to go after Da Wang directly, except that with the protection Da Wang’s got, Truong’s going to need Diep and anyone else he can round up to pull it off. If we really want to put an end to this, we need him to lead us to the others.”

  Lucas put his hand on my shoulder. “You will have a stronger case if you stop him in this country. With all due respect, your laws are tougher than ours when it comes to people like this.”

  “But the evidence against him is still here. Can’t we extradite him?” I asked Frazier.

  “I don’t have a problem with that, but we’ve got him now. Why risk losing him just because he may or may not lead us to Diep? And what if it goes wrong? This could lead to a bloodbath.”

  “Because we’re always grabbing what we can and letting the rest get away,” I shouted back, since even with our headphones on, the helicopter put out a terrific noise. “They expect that—they count on it. Why do you think he threw us all those poor bastards on the lake? Were any of them carrying contraband?”

  “We’re still rounding them up, but, so far, none of them are even illegals—they’re all Canadian landed immigrants. The ones we’ve caught are claiming they had full intentions of declaring entry at the port.

  I shook my head in amazement at the depth of Truong’s planning. “Let’s take the gamble and do it right. We’ve done pretty well so far. We already shut him down. Taking him now and letting the others walk would be a total waste. He’s the best chance we’ve got to round up the rest of them—maybe even Da Wang.” And Amy Lee, I thought privately.

  I looked at them all in the dim red glow from the bulkhead light. All of us were trained as rookies to do as Frazier had suggested—to be content with a clean bust as soon as you can get it. Conversely, we were by now all veteran officers, and we knew that carefully considered gambles were also a part of the business; that without undercover operations, stings, snitches, prolonged surveillance tactics, and the taking of risks, none of us could have made some of our bigger cases stick. It also didn’t hurt that my credibility was pretty good at the moment.

  Frazier finally turned to Lucas. “Jacques, this is as much your call as ours. We’re going into your jurisdiction.”

  Lucas nodded and moved toward the cockpit. He had the co-pilot key-in a special radio frequency and then plugged his headset directly into the dash, taking him out of our communications loop.

  I turned to Spinney. “Assuming he says yes, think we could fake a good pursuit, just so Truong doesn’t catch on?”

  Spinney grinned and switched over to the VSP radio.

  Five long, tense minutes later, when any decision was getting close to being too late, Lucas returned to us. “Okay.”

  Spinney immediately set his plan in motion, orders were given to the pilot, and the four of us moved to the windows to see what would happen.

  Far below, isolated by the blackness of the empty land all around them, we could clearly see two sets of lights—one small and jerky, the ATV charging cross-country—the other, farther off but closing rapidly, sparkling like some runaway Christmas ornament—the unit Spinney had set after Truong. I watched with growing concern as the two drew ever closer, wondering if the trooper understood that the ATV was supposed to escape.

  Suddenly, and with some relief, I saw the cruiser’s lights swerve violently and then come to an abrupt stop. Spinney burst out laughing: “Attaboy—right into the ditch.” He hit the send button on his radio. “You all right down there?”

  “You sure my butt’s covered on this?” was the reply.

  Spinney laughed again as we all watched the smaller light flicker down the field where I’d first met it and work its way back into the woods.

  The smiles slowly died on all our faces. I looked over to Lucas, the memory still painfully sharp of how I’d set Vince Sharkey against Michael Vu. “Guess I stuck it to us now.”

  He kept his eyes glued to the window, as if trying to memorize the details below. “I am hoping not,” he finally muttered, and turned away toward the cockpit.

  29

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER WE SWITCHED HELICOPTERS in a field north of the border, the landing zone marked off by a wide circle of police cars, all with their headlights pointing toward the center. Spinney, Frazier, and I left our unloaded weapons on the National Guard unit, and with them our authority. As we ran, crouching, from one thundering aircraft to the other, we became mere privileged observers, as vulnerable as our case to whatever vagaries the Canadian officials might decree. It was at that moment that my adrenaline for the chase—which at its height was no doubt as powerful as Truong’s—underwent a sudden and sobering nose dive. I began fervently hoping that Lucas was all I’d privately made him out to be.

  Certainly the influence of the Mounties seemed to live up to their reputation. Between the time we’d decided to let Truong return to Canada, and when we took off again in an official RCMP chopper, the quiet, diminutive Lucas had coordinated an impressively large operation.

  As the helicopter gained altitude, Lucas informed us. “Truong abandoned the ATV outside of Rock Island about five minutes after we saw him cross the border. He was followed on foot into town, where he picked up a delivery van not far from the Customs building. He then took Autoroute 55 North toward Sherbrooke. We are expecting that he will take Autoroute 10 West into Montreal. The van is white, with the name of a Chinese catering service in Montreal on its side. It has not been reported missing or stolen, so we are assuming it is being used with permission. We will be tracking his progress most of the way in this,” he patted the wall of the helicopter, “with the aid of several ground units.”

  The junction of Autoroutes 10 and 55 appeared in the darkness below us as the confluence of two sporadically dotted lines—each line being an irregular stream of vehicles. Given the hour, there wasn’t much to see.

  Lucas pointed to one set of lights in particular “That’s him. All we have to do is now keep our eyes on him until we approach Montreal.”

  An hour later, the traffic just outside Montreal thickened en
ough to make our vantage point unreliable. We handed the surveillance back to the ground units, and landed among a spider web of railroad tracks, just east of downtown, on the river’s north shore. There, Lucas led the three of us to an unmarked van.

  Once underway, he gave us another update. “He’s been followed to the Chinatown area—rue de la Gauchetière. He’s in his vehicle, parked on St-Laurent.”

  “Just sitting there?” Spinney repeated, grabbing the seat ahead of him as the van took a fast corner. “Isn’t that where Da Wang hangs out?”

  Lucas agreed. “Yes. That is the problem. You know Jean-Paul Lacoste, correct? He is going there with his team. There is much activity apparently. We are thinking the affair at the border has caused the need for a meeting, but Truong’s presence worries us.”

  I felt a sudden coldness settle in my chest, sensing at last the potential carnage I’d set in motion—the very bloodbath Frazier had cautioned against, and that Nguyen had said Truong was capable of creating. I realized then the significance of those two shots Truong had fired at Boucher and me. They’d been the mile markers of a man whose despair had hit bottom, whose last option was to offer himself up in the name of his cause. Just as my argument in the helicopter had reflected my own obsession, and had been used to browbeat others into an enthusiasm they weren’t sure they shared, so Truong had now dispensed with the niceties of any carefully thought-out plan, and had yielded at last to the despair and pure rage that had launched his vendetta at the edge of his brother’s open grave.

  I gave in to a moment of self-doubt and guilt. “Let’s grab him now. Get it over with before we lose control.”

  There was a moment’s startled pause at my abrupt turnaround. Spinney murmured, “Little late for that,” as Lucas shook his head. “We do not have enough men in place yet. Besides, I think it would be premature.”

  Suddenly distracted by a message on his radio, Lucas spoke rapidly to the driver. The van’s hidden siren burst to life, and the red and blue lights behind the grille pulsated off the dark buildings nearby, as other traffic made way for us.