by Bill King
Chucho nodded his head but said nothing. Cortez could tell by his reaction, though, that the man definitely recognized him.
“Okay, let’s begin,” said Cortez, folding his hands and leaning forward. “Please walk us through how you came to believe you had information relating to individuals involved in the recent bombings of Federal Reserve Bank buildings in Cleveland, Kansas City and St. Louis.”
Over the next five minutes, Chucho led them through the story about how he was sitting on a hillside overlooking the river, drinking a beer and enjoying the night air when two vehicles pulled up to an old barn, opened the big doors and drove inside. He spoke in Spanish and Leo dutifully translated into English, even though everyone in the room had native fluency in Spanish.
He explained that simple curiosity led him to walk down to the barn and go inside, where he found the two black SUVs parked, but saw no sign of the drivers or passengers. Before leaving, he told them he opened the doors of each vehicle and found a shopping bag from Kansas City in one, and a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap in the other. He told them this piqued his interest because the bombings in those two cities had taken place just two days earlier.
“That’s a very interesting story, Mister Ramirez, but it won’t even earn you extra dessert with your dinner tonight, much less full immunity,” said Contreras, speaking for the first time. “Tell us about the man you talked to later on, the technician who worked at the crossing site.”
Chucho related the story about how he had encountered the computer programmer while watching the barn. He was interrupted early on by his lawyer, who asked for confirmation again that any potential or actual crimes he may admit to during the course of his answers would be covered by the immunity agreement. Everyone at the table looked at Contreras, who nodded her head in the affirmative and said, “Yes, that’s correct. You will not be charged with anything you say that is in direct response to one of our questions.”
“Excellent,” said Leo, turning his head toward Chucho. “You may continue.”
Chucho went on to say that, when he asked about the connection to the Kansas City and St. Louis bombings, the man confirmed that they had been involved in both incidents, as well as the earlier one in Cleveland.
“So, he just up and admitted it, huh?” said Janak, shuffling his bulking frame in his chair. He had developed an annoying itch in a location he couldn’t scratch in mixed company.
“Yeah,” said Chucho in English, a crooked smile appearing on his face. “I can be pretty persuasive when I want to be.” Leo briefly rested his hand on Chucho’s forearm, an unspoken reminder not to taunt the Americans.
“What about the current teams, the ones you say are presently in the United States?” asked Cortez, beginning to gain confidence that Chucho might actually be telling the truth. “Tell us what you know about them and don’t hold back anything. What you’ve told us so far is just the appetizer. This is the main course.”
Chucho related how the man told him that four teams, each with four people, had left earlier that week for Dallas, Chicago, New York and San Francisco. He said the man told him that there would be a coordinated attack over the Memorial Day weekend.
No one needed to look at their calendars to know that it was already Wednesday afternoon and the Memorial Day weekend was little more than a week away. That didn’t give them much time—less than ten days—but at least now they were slightly ahead of the game and in a position, for once, to be proactive rather than reactive.
“Did he say anything about who these people are? Names? Country of origin? Anything that can help us track them down?”
“He said they were all Venezuelans,” said Chucho, feeling surprisingly comfortable, as if they were having a pleasant dinner at a restaurant. He now had the manner of a man who knew he was playing a winning hand. After all, he had extremely important information to impart, he knew that it was true and, clearly, time was not on the Americans’ side. “He also said that the leader was a very tall man who went by the name of Fósforo.”
Cortez was visibly taken aback by the mention of that name. He had gone to school in Caracas with a boy who went by that name, the son of a prominent Caracas lawyer. His real name was Mateo Calderón and they had played soccer together since grade school, until Cortez’s parents had moved back to the States right before his senior year in high school.
“Did he say anything about El Movimiento Veinteocho de Julio, or M-28?” asked Cortez. He had heard from old friends over the years that Calderón had drifted into radical politics rather than take his place alongside the Venezuelan elite.
“No, he just said they were Venezuelans,” said Chucho, pursing his lips and shaking his head slowly from side to side.
“Did he ever mention the name, Mateo Calderón?”
Again, Chucho shook his head.
Could it possibly be the same man, thought Cortez? He remembered Calderón towering over him as teenagers and, even though Cortez had eventually grown to be six-foot-two, Calderón would still be four or five inches taller than him.
“Those are all pretty big cities,” said Cortez, setting aside the matter of Mateo Calderón for the moment. “Did he know where they would be staying, who their contacts might be…anything that would help us narrow this down a bit more?”
Chucho paused for a moment, giving a furtive glance over towards Leo, who nodded ever so slightly. Cortez took notice.
“My client is in a position to give up the names of the local contacts in each of the four cities,” said Leo, looking across the table at Gretchen Contreras. “In return, we want your guarantee on the immunity deal. No ifs or buts or maybes. Guaranteed.”
“How is it that this computer geek would know the names and contact information for these individuals?” she asked.
“He told my client that one of his jobs was to communicate with the local logistical contacts in the target cities,” said Leo. “He said he spoke with them on an almost daily basis for several weeks before his encounter with my client.”
“Names and how to get in contact with them, correct?” she said, to make sure there was no misunderstanding of her expectations.
“That’s correct,” said Leo, his eyes still focused on Contreras. This was the money shot, his ace in the hole. He had nothing more valuable to them than this information. “Worst case, you stop four terrorist attacks before they happen. Best case, you stop the attacks and you also round up a bunch of Venezuelan terrorists operating within the borders of the United States.”
She paused and slowly looked around the table one last time before answering. No one seemed to be giving off any vibes that they thought this would be a bad trade.
“We have a deal, Mr. Bustamante,” she said finally, trying to remind herself of the overriding good that would come only by enabling this slimy dirtbag to live peacefully in freedom. Still, she had mixed feelings.
The interview went on for another twenty minutes, during which time Chucho told them everything he knew about the local logistics contacts in each of the four target cities. The clock on the wall now read four o’clock, which meant five o’clock on the east coast. Assuming he was telling the truth, whatever was going to happen was most likely going to happen within the next ninety-six hours.
Chucho also showed them on a map where the old barn and the crossing site were located. If it was up to Cortez, they would wait to shut down the crossing site until after they had addressed the more immediate threats. If it turned out they were unable to stop the attacks in time—a fifty-fifty proposition at best, even assuming the information Chucho had just provided was correct—the Americans now knew their escape route and could be waiting for them before they crossed the border back into Mexico.
Or they could play the long game and allow the crossing site to remain in place in hopes of using it to gather more intelligence on future terrorist threats. Either way, they were now in the catbird’s seat…or at least they thought they were.
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��Dios mío, these Americans sure are talkative,” said Graciela, shaking her head in disbelief at what they were watching and hearing.
The old man and Graciela were sitting in the new leather theatre seats in the Bunker, listening in sheer amazement to the conversation displayed on the large video display that took up much of the front wall of the recently decorated operations center at the Rancho. The border patrol agents in Laredo were briefing their superiors in San Antonio and Washington on the details of the FBI interview of Chucho less than an hour earlier.
“Transparency is very important to Americans,” said El Indio, a wry smile on his face. “That’s all they ever seem to talk about. Transparency. It’s a good thing for us that discretion doesn’t carry the same importance for them.”
“It also helps that, in their arrogance, they believe that everyone else in the world is stupid,” she said. “They are reconciled to the fact that Facebook knows every time they go to the bathroom, yet they don’t think that modern technology can also tap into their most secret communications. Incredible. Dumb, but incredible.”
What struck them most, though, was the depth and accuracy of the information the Americans now possessed.
Graciela had feared the worst when Miguel’s gruesomely disfigured body eventually had been discovered behind the old abandoned gas station, but this was even beyond that. The fact that his role had given him access to just about all the inner workings of the Bunker was a problem she and Rhonda had been discussing ever since his untimely disappearance.
But that was about the future, about ensuring that something like that never happened again. Their immediate concern was about the present, about mitigating the damages and consequences.
“Rhonda, use back channels to notify the team leaders that they have been compromised,” she said to Rhonda Shaughnessy, who had become her de facto number two since her arrival three weeks earlier. She was seated to her left. “Tell them to abort and return home immediately. Also, tell them to clean up any loose ends before they leave town.”
“And remember, time is not our friend,” said El Indio, getting up from his comfortable chair and offering a hand to Graciela as she stood up, too.
Graciela and López Navarro walked out of the Bunker and strolled down the corridor to the elevator that would take them up to the hacienda on the surface, thirty feet above.
“I will have someone in Laredo within the hour, a Sicario I have worked with many times in the past,” he said. “I have had him on standby the past week for an eventuality such as this.”
“What do you need from me?” she asked.
“I just need to be able to tell him where to find this Chucho fellow. Hopefully, they’ll be moving him for security reasons sometime tonight and, when they do, my man will kill him.”
The clock was now ticking loudly, and on multiple fronts.
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PART THREE
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The Big Bam Boom
Chapter 29
THE EARLY MORNING SUN was still low on the horizon as Graciela and El Indio were enjoying an early breakfast in the Rancho’s rustic dining room. A row of floor-to-ceiling windows allowed in the natural light while also opening the room to a view of the river.
Anita, the Rancho’s matronly cook, poked her head through the French doors leading from the kitchen and announced that the sentry at the main gate had just notified them that Señor Lefebvre had arrived and would be pulling up to the front of the hacienda in a minute or two.
“He’s running a little early this morning,” said the old man, glancing down at his wristwatch before wiping his lips with his white linen napkin and laying it on the dark rosewood table. “But that’s good. Everyone needs to be especially sharp for the coming week.”
The two got up from the long, highly polished table and walked through the house to the front door just in time to see a mud-splattered white panel truck pull up underneath the front portico. Bernard Lefebvre opened the passenger door and stepped out of the van, a broad smile on his heavily scarred face.
“Everything went smoothly in Tampico yesterday,” said the Frenchman, stretching his arms and legs to get his circulation going after the grueling nine-hour drive. “I’m still a nervous wreck, even though I knew the damn thing wouldn’t blow up on me. I’ll be glad to put some distance between me and that bomb.” He was referring to the large package in the rear of the truck.
“Let’s just hope you don’t start glowing in the dark, my friend,” said the older man, laughing as he patted him on his shoulder. “Your many girlfriends might start complaining.”
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
“I’ve already let Rhonda know that you’re here,” said Graciela, stepping forward toward Lefebvre. The two exchanged an awkward hug. “She’ll want to take a look at the package before we transport it downstairs to the lead-lined room…ah, there she is now.”
Rhonda smiled as she walked through the front door and out onto the sprawling porch. She was wearing blue jeans and an unbuttoned blue work shirt over her yellow tank top. Her red ponytail poked through the back of the black ball cap she wore pulled down low on her head to keep her morning hair under control.
“Sorry I’m late but I had some last-minute things to check out in the special storage room,” she said, pausing briefly to catch her breath. “I ran most of the way…except for the elevator, of course.”
She skipped excitedly down the porch’s three front steps and walked around to the back to the vehicle.
“I assume the crate is back here?” she asked, smiling while she waited patiently for the driver to come around to the back and open the vehicle’s rear doors. She was carrying a small yellow Geiger counter to measure the radiation exposure.
“Rhonda studied nuclear engineering at Stanford while I was there,” said Graciela to the Frenchman. “In fact, she was working on her doctoral thesis in physics when I convinced her to take some time off to come down here and work with us.”
“You never cease to surprise me, Graciela,” said Lefebvre, his steely blue eyes revealing a slight twinkle. “You make me feel there actually is hope for the next generation.”
The driver opened the back door to the delivery vehicle, revealing a wooden crate measuring roughly five feet long, three feet wide and three feet tall. Inside the crate was a solid metal box containing the nuclear device. The container appeared to be intact, with no signs of having been tampered with, at least at first glance. Rhonda climbed inside the rear of the van and, Geiger counter in hand, began checking the radiation levels.
She swept the crate several times from end to end before saying, over her shoulder, “It looks safe enough to bring inside.”
“You mean through the house?” Lefebvre asked incredulously.
“No, we have a separate entrance that leads to the lead-lined room underground,” said Graciela, laughing at the thought. She pointed to a large metal shed about fifty yards to the west of where they stood. “There’s a heavy-duty service elevator inside the shed over there. That’s how we get most of our large equipment and crates downstairs. It connects with a tunnel that runs directly to the big storage rooms, as well as to the special handling room.”
“Then let’s get moving,” said the Frenchman. “We have a busy week ahead of us. Our clients are very anxious to see if we can really deliver on our promises. If this works as planned, we can begin to make some serious money.”
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It was Friday morning and Pete Cortez was back in his office at the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Houston for an update meeting when the news broke nationwide in mid-morning. The FBI had experienced a major breakthrough in the Federal Reserve bombings case. The New York office announced that it had just arrested a man believed to be intimately involved in the planning of an attack on the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The man, whose name was being withheld, was alleged to have been a key player in the planning and logistics o
f the now-thwarted attack.
According to the New York FBI spokesman, the Bureau was currently in the process of rounding up the rest of the people involved in the conspiracy. In plain English, Cortez knew what that really meant is they had one of the support people in custody, but the others—the people who would actually carry out the attack—had managed to elude the authorities.
“Any word on the other raids?” asked Jack Gonçalves. From what they had been able to determine, the four raids—although taking place in locations throughout the United States—had been synchronized to occur at the exact same time.
“The Chicago office is reporting a shootout in the central business district,” said Cortez. “Initial word is that there are casualties—fortunately, none of them good guys—but, so far, nothing else.”
“By any chance was anyone taken into custody?” asked Gonçalves with more than just a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “You know, it’s a whole lot harder to conduct a thorough investigation when we kill everyone we uncover…just saying.”
Before Cortez could reply, a breaking news flash appeared on both television sets in the ASAC’s office. Both networks—Fox and CNN—were reporting a major gun battle in Chicago had resulted in the deaths of four individuals. The reports further stated that a woman in her early thirties had been apprehended several hours earlier and had provided them with the information that led to the eventual firefight.
“I have to admit, Chucho really came through with some good information,” said Gonçalves grudgingly. “Sounds like we got to their local contact, just like in New York.”
The only other information released was that all four of the individuals killed in the Chicago shootout, according to identification found in their wallets, were believed to be from California. While the FBI declined to speculate about the reason behind the attacks, other than to confirm that the New York and Chicago incidents were related, the news media was not so reticent. Most were reporting that they were almost certainly members of a right-wing militia known to be operating somewhere in the central valley of California.
