by Bill King
“We have stocked enough non-perishable food and supplies to last you for a month, if we need it,” she said. “If you have any specific requests for perishable food, just let me know. Most of the meat and vegetables come from the Rancho and our neighbors.”
“I think we’ll be fine. The plan is for us to only spend three days with you before moving on,” said Calderón before turning to address his four compatriots. “Drop your bags in one of the bedrooms, compañeros.”
“Sí, Fósforo,” said one of them, a mousy-looking woman wearing glasses. She appeared more like a librarian than a terrorist. The men proceeded to toss their bags into one room, the women into the other, before quickly returning to the living room.
Calderón set his backpack in one of the stuffed chairs and looked over at Graciela, who was standing by the front door to the apartment.
“Let’s go take a look at the supplies, shall we?” he said. It was more of a statement than a question.
As they left, she locked the door behind them. They walked back down the short hallway to the door to cul-de-sac. After Graciela opened it, the six of them then walked diagonally across the big round room toward one of the doublewide steel doors. This one was identified by the letter D.
Graciela entered the security code into the keypad on the wall. When she heard a loud click, she pushed open the door. Thirty feet down a wide corridor was a second door. She entered another code, which caused a steel pocket door to automatically slide aside. It made a low, rumbling sound until it eventually disappeared into the wall. The lights in the room, triggered by the motion, came on, exposing a large, nearly empty storage facility.
The room measured roughly forty feet by fifty feet and off in the corner were several large wooden crates, stacked two high. A shiny new yellow utility forklift was parked about ten feet away from the crates.
“Those crates arrived just after dawn this morning,” said Graciela, pointing to the wooden crates. “The rest should be arriving this evening.”
“Good. Good,” mumbled Fósforo, slowly walking about the concrete-walled room, checking the lighting and placement of power outlets. He looked up at the high ceiling, which was eighteen feet above the floor. A single Big Ass Fan—the kind you find in industrial warehouses around the world—kept the air circulating throughout the room.
“As long as we’re down here, let me show you the big room,” said Graciela, extending her arm outward and signaling for them to head back to the doorway.
They retraced their steps back to the cul-de-sac and stopped in front of a wide door marked with the letter F. She entered the security code. The large steel pocket-door slid open, exposing a twenty-foot hallway that led to a massive storage facility measuring two hundred feet by one hundred fifty feet. Floor-to-ceiling support columns every thirty feet held up the massive steel beams that reinforced the ceiling.
The underground warehouse covered thirty thousand square feet in all. Three light and two heavy forklifts, also painted bright yellow, were parked beside the entrance. Otherwise, the large room was empty.
“Will we be the only ones down here?” he asked.
“No, I always maintain a small security team down here whenever we’re using these facilities,” said Graciela, wondering if that was just an innocent, conversational question or if she should be worried. “Follow me. I’ll show you where my people stay.”
They returned to the cul-de-sac and she entered the security code for the door marked with the letter E. The first thing they encountered was a small anteroom. In the middle was a console with two chairs, where the security guards could monitor activity in each of the large storage facilities, as well as any activity in the living room in the Visitors quarters.
“No cameras in the bathrooms or sleeping quarters, I hope?” Calderón asked light-heartedly.
“Certainly not,” she replied in mock horror. “People do have a right to some privacy, don’t they?”
Of course, she was not telling the truth and he suspected as much. If this were his facility, he damn sure would have every square inch under camera, and nothing The Frenchman had told him about El Indio would lead him to believe the man wouldn’t do the same.
“Is there anything else I should know about?”
“Just one more thing,” she said, picking up a remote control and turning on a flat screen television mounted on the wall facing the console. “We have a series of cameras installed above ground. We call it the periscope, for obvious reasons, so that we know the coast is clear before we send anything up the freight elevator. We then send four men up the ladder beforehand to the silo exit to do a quick ground reconnaissance. When they’re satisfied, they’ll clear away the equipment tack board that masks the elevator door.”
“How long does all of that take?” asked Fósforo.
“Five minutes, at the very most,” she replied. “Then we can send up the elevator to the ground level. If necessary, we also send up a small forklift with the first load to help move the cargo the rest of the way so that it can then be loaded onto a vehicle.”
“Excelente,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
He was pleased with what he saw and felt that, if this was any indication of the woman’s attention to detail, this was going to be a very smooth and profitable business arrangement, as well as a deadly one for the Americans.
“Bueno, let’s get some food and rest and we’ll start first thing in the morning.”
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Chapter 9
THE NEXT THREE DAYS at the Rancho were busy ones for the Venezuelans.
On the first day, Calderón and his team of M-28 revolutionaries inventoried and organized the crates, not all of which were for their current mission. In fact, most of them weren’t. They were for the follow-on missions. This one was simply the first, a proof-of-concept test run.
After completing the inventory, Claudio and Anna, both of whom were chemists recruited by Calderón from la Universidad Central de Venezuela, set aside the various components that would make up the bomb they would use on their upcoming operation. Both were graduate students and had come highly recommended by his mentor, Umberto, who still headed the university’s teacher union. They were also responsible for preparing the various component packages so that they could be safely transported to the target destination. There, they would undergo final assembly before being delivered to the blast site.
“Remember, the packages must be small enough to be easily transported while hidden in plain sight,” he said, adopting the know-it-all tone of a professor speaking to impressionable young students. “They also must be safely transportable. After all, the whole idea is to blow up the target, not ourselves.”
On the second day, Calderón and the other four Venezuelans sat around a conference table in one of the ten-by-ten, concrete-walled rooms. For three hours, Calderón went over the impending operation step-by-step, minute-by-minute, detail-by-detail. The plan had been developed by Umberto and two of his university colleagues. They studied the blueprint for the target building, as well as dozens of photos taken in the lobby during various high-traffic times throughout a typical day, all projected on an eight-by-ten-foot white screen that dropped down from the ceiling.
“Notice the locations of the surveillance cameras,” he said, using a laser pointer to pinpoint each of them. “Remember to wear your ballcaps pulled down low and keep your faces hidden. Whatever you do, never look up at the cameras.”
Calderón also showed them precisely where they were to place the bomb and exactly what time to set the detonator to go off. For the next three hours, he went over every detail again and again, peppering them with questions to make sure everyone understood instinctively what each of them was supposed to do.
At one o’clock, they broke for lunch, which Graciela’s kitchen staff had prepared and recently delivered. Forty-five minutes later, they were back in the small conference room, where Calderón fired questions at them in rapid succession, until he was satisfied that
they had everything down pat.
Graciela was looking forward to seeing them go. For the past two nights, following dinner, she had been forced to listen to Calderón ramble on for hours on end as he drank Irish whiskey in the comfort of the Rancho’s library. He ranted and raved about how the Americans were the source of all the world’s problems.
Having spent six years living in Palo Alto and going to school there, she had developed a certain fondness for her neighbor to the north…not that she mentioned that to the Venezuelan. It would have just sent him off on another tirade.
On the third day, they all took it easy, relaxing and resting up for their departure later that night. Following a light lunch, Graciela came down to their area underground and briefed them on their transportation arrangements to Cleveland, Ohio, and, equally important, on their escape route back to the Rancho.
“Now, everyone, let’s get some rest,” said Fósforo after she had finished. He was struggling to keep his excitement under control. After dozens of operations in Venezuela, this was his first in the United States and he was pumped. He glanced down at his wristwatch. “It’s three o’clock now. We’ll have a light supper around seven and then start loading the cargo for our journey north.”
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“It is time,” said Fósforo to his team of four, who had been waiting anxiously in the living room of the guest quarters talking excitedly about their upcoming trip. It was their first opportunity to strike against the American homeland and they were eagerly looking forward to it.
He motioned to his other team members to follow him out to the central rotunda. Four of Graciela’s men were there waiting for them when they entered the large open area. The square digital clock on the wall read eight o’clock, which meant the sun had already set.
Graciela was monitoring the outside video feeds from the underground security room just off the rotunda. The large, bulletproof glass window gave her an unobstructed view of the M-28 activity by the service elevator. Armed drones had been up in the air for the past hour, patrolling the north side of the river, while armed scouts had been deployed along the primary access routes to the old barn that masked their exit point from the underground complex.
They had finished inspecting the equipment in the crates earlier in the day and had repackaged everything for transport. Using the forklifts, they moved two crates to the service elevator, where they were loaded inside. It would only take one trip to move them both to the surface.
Ten minutes earlier, Graciela had dispatched ten of her men to climb up the thirty-foot silo ladder to secure the perimeter around the barn, as well as the elevator exit inside the weathered old building on the American side, two-and-a-half miles beyond the Rio Grande. The entrance to the freight elevator up top was normally hidden from view behind a large tack board that held rusty old farm tools, so that any unsuspecting person entering the barn would probably never suspect that the elevator shaft was even there.
Pepo, her righthand man who was responsible for the operation topside, called down to let Graciela know that everything was ready.
“Bueno, Mateo,” said Graciela, turning to face Calderón, who was now standing next to her in the security room. “It looks like the coast is clear. There is no human activity on the American side for at least a ten-kilometer radius. It’s time to begin your journey.”
“I’m impressed with your attention to detail,” he replied. He reached down to pick up his backpack by one of its shoulder straps. “Let us hope the travel phase of the operation goes as smoothly.”
“I’m an engineer by training…and by disposition,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and smiling. “It’s what we do.”
By the time the Venezuelans reached the surface, the entrance to the service elevator had already been cleared away. The elevator’s door opened, revealing the cargo inside. Two wooden crates were stacked on pallets with heavy duty straps. The pallets were lifted one at a time from the elevator by the forklift, where they were then loaded into the two awaiting vans.
The Venezuelans climbed into two vehicles and began their journey north, across country, along dirt trails. The convoy, led by two of Graciela’s men driving a black SUV, proceeded slowly and under strict light discipline, headlights off. Each of the drivers was wearing military-style night vision goggles to help them see as they drove slowly at first to minimize jostling the crates too much as they traveled down the bumpy dirt road. Reflective tape was placed on the rear of each vehicle in the shape of a cross to enable the van behind it to more easily follow in the moonlight without attracting attention.
As they approached the state highway twenty minutes later, the lead driver flicked on his headlights, a signal to the others behind his vehicle to do the same. Less than a minute later, they were met by four grey pickup trucks dispatched earlier that evening from the Rancho.
The two vans then split up, each of them sandwiched between two pickups. One group headed westbound, the other eastbound. The plan was for the pickups to escort the two vans to a rendezvous point in Dallas, four-hundred-fifty miles to the north.
Of course, the gravest danger was during the first hundred miles north of the border, where they were more likely to run into border checkpoints. Escorting them all the way to Dallas was just an extra precaution by Graciela, primarily because this was their maiden run. After that, it was simply a matter of them maintaining a low profile while driving at, or perhaps a mile or two under, the speed limit.
In Dallas, they would switch to different vans for the second leg of the trip, which would take them to Springfield, Missouri. There, they would again switch vans for the third leg of the journey that would take them to Indianapolis. The final leg would take them to Cleveland. Driving only at night and switching vehicles after every leg, it would take them four days to reach their destination.
Calderón looked at the lighted digital clock on the vehicle dashboard. It read ten o’clock, so they still had another eight hours until dawn. Graciela’s men had already posted advance scouts along the route for the first hundred miles they intended to travel, reporting on any border patrol activity.
It was a simple plan, well-executed, and El Indio would be proud. Graciela had no idea how much money Calderón was being paid, but she did know that her personal performance bonus would be a quarter of a million dollars, deposited into an offshore account her Tio Memo had opened for her several years earlier, on her fifteenth birthday. She also realized that this was just the beginning of greater, more lucrative, things to come.
Even for a young Stanford graduate, that was not bad. Not bad at all.
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Chapter 10
CHUCHO WAS LAYING ON his stomach, hidden from view by the scattering of mesquite bushes that clung to the hillside. He was watching…and waiting.
Night had fallen on the river. Not as in early evening, when the sun goes down, but real nighttime, when most decent people are home asleep in their beds. It was just past three in the morning and the waning crescent moon, while it might appear spectacular through the eyes of a skilled National Geographic photographer, made for extremely poor visibility. Pitch black, with the air so still that the mosquitos faced no resistance as they sought nourishment.
He had received a tip from one of his newly recruited sources that there would be a fair-sized shipment of cocaine being smuggled across the river sometime during the night. He had brought along two of his underlings to help him send a message that nothing could cross the river in this sector without his approval. He was patiently observing the scene through Zeiss Victory night vision binoculars.
Sturdy nylon ropes stretched across the water to keep the small boat from drifting off its course, much like river-crossing ferry sites used since the dawn of time. A reed-thin man, his filthy tee shirt ripped by the thorns of nearby mesquite bushes, kneeled in the center front of the raft and pulled on the rope, hand-over-hand. A second man swam in the water behind it, his feet paddling softly as he pushed the raft forward tow
ard the opposite bank.
It took roughly three minutes to propel the boat—loaded down with drugs, shrink-wrapped in plastic to waterproof the contents—from the Mexican side of the river across to the Texas side.
The coolness of the moving water felt good against the skin of the man in the river. The air that night was suffocating, especially with the high humidity that took on a near-physical presence as it hung in the air like an invisible wet blanket. Even though the temperature had cooled off a bit as the evening wore on, it was still difficult to breathe. Rain would be a blessing, if only to beat down the bugs and the stench of rotting fish and sewage coming from upriver.
As the two men struggled to drag the raft up onto the riverbank on the American side, three new figures quietly appeared from out of the shadows. Each was dressed in black from head to toe and had been waiting patiently, observing the crossing from a safe distance while also keeping an eye out for any indication of law enforcement activity.
The five quickly formed a “bucket brigade” and began passing back the illicit cargo, one by one, from the raft to a staging area about fifteen feet up from the bank of the river. There they stacked the plastic bundles into a pile. When they were done, the two swimmers returned to the water’s edge and silently paddled the boat back across the river to pick up a second load.
Customs and Border Protection activity on this remote stretch of the river had been light over the past few months, giving both the smugglers and Chucho a greater sense of security. Unfortunately for them, it was a false sense of security. The CBP was watching everything in real time from their regional headquarters in Laredo through a live video feed of the site.
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“Hey, Carlos, come on over here and check this out,” said the shift supervisor, a stocky man in his forties whose nametag read RAMIREZ. His dark green uniform looked to be at least a size too small and, unfortunately for him, he no longer had a spouse to point out to him that he was probably never going to lose enough weight to ever fit into his old uniforms again.
