McGinley would love to talk to someone who knew the Khaled woman, really knew her, but that wasn’t too likely and the Feebs would whack his pecker for getting in their chili. This investigation was an Office of Professional Responsibility production, and knowing the Bureau the way he did, he doubted anyone in D.C. would talk to him about it. OPR was Internal Affairs, or “the Inquisition” as the Feeb guys called it when they had enough liquor in them.
Then there was REDCAP. And REDCAP smelled like a pig farm.
Those four Yemeni fuckers from 10/19? REDCAP. Twelve, almost thirteen years ago, and they were still Top Secret? The Free Montana Militia vanished three months after 10/19; seven years of the usual intel, then zero. Why? REDCAP. Dugan, Conners, Seybold? REDCAP. The bomb forensics? REDCAP. Case notes? REDCAP. Witness statements? REDCAP.
The Bureau was either protecting a source or method, or a result. All the tech they had back then, you could buy on the Internet now, and the methods were on the spy shows on the web. Locking down everything to protect one or two sources made no damn sense at all, not after this long. But if they were hiding a result…
Maybe Ojeda’s new rag girlfriend wasn’t full of shit after all.
That idea just chapped his ass.
McGinley’s phone rang. He checked the screen: the SAC. “Yes, sir?”
“Mac, what are you doing in the Bureau’s shorts?”
McGinley rubbed the spot above his ear where he knew the headache would start. “Sir?”
“I got a call from one of Mazarik’s people. They’re saying you’ve been trying to get into SCI data since yesterday. Are you?”
“No, sir, I’m not trying to get into SCI data. I’m trying to run down something I got from a snitch and it all turns out to be SCI. Ain’t the same thing.”
Long silence on the other end. “Whichever way it is, back off. The Bureau wants to shut you down. I’ve got it covered now, but if you do it again, they’ll come after you. Understand?”
That was awful strong for only hiding sources or methods. “Sir, how do I know if something I need is classified ‘til I look for it?”
“Don’t overthink this. Stay in your lane. Do you understand?”
McGinley really wanted to say “no,” but he’d learned early on that throwing rocks at things bigger than him is a good way to get a stomping. “Yes, sir. I understand.”
But that didn’t mean he’d stop.
49
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— “DM3000 Field DNA Sequencer/Analyzer,” Bio-Rad Laboratories
SUNDAY, 16 MAY
Back in the parking lot, Luis scanned the CBP compound from the Santana’s driver’s seat. His binoculars brought the signs close enough to read. The two-lane entry station and its service building sat at the south end, a tall, flat overhead structure on white posts flanked by a squat tan building not much larger than a double-wide.
Hope had vanished into that tan building across the street half an hour ago. She hadn’t come out, and no CBP vehicles had headed north since then. Luis had counted nine CBP troopers so far: one at the southbound exit booth, two going over the southbound traffic, two (one with a dog) inspecting the northbound vehicles at the entry station, two at the pedestrian entry booths, a roving supervisor and the guy who’d snagged Hope. Call it an even dozen, just to be sure.
“What’s your plan?” Nora snapped during her hundredth circuit around the car.
“What’s yours?”
“Go in there and get her out.”
“And get yourself killed or arrested? Good plan.”
“Start talking, then.”
Her constant circling was getting on his nerves. Worse, it might draw attention. “Keep pacing like that and you’ll melt.”
Nora glared at him without stopping. “It’s not your daughter they took.”
“I wish I still had a daughter for them to take.”
She ducked her head and mumbled, “Sorry.”
Luis couldn’t really blame her for being anxious and angry; he would be too. But he needed her to think, since he’d drawn a blank. He flexed his aching shoulder, screaming now after fighting with Nora.
“I thought these IDs of yours were supposed to work,” Nora snarled.
“It wasn’t the IDs. The guard gave them back. If they’d failed, CBP would keep them.” Luis replayed the scene at the crossing for the hundredth time. “Paul was jumpy as a cat around a vacuum cleaner, though.”
Nora whirled on Luis. “Don’t you dare blame this on Paul!”
“Just saying. It wasn’t the IDs.”
After stalking a few more laps around the car, Nora stopped at the open driver’s door, arms crossed, her big sunglasses reflecting two tiny pictures of Luis. “You know how the system works. What are they doing to her?”
He set down his binoculars. “First thing, they’ll run her ID to figure out who Mommy is. That takes a Level 2, so they may already know she doesn’t exist. They’ll know for sure when they drill down into Mommy’s records. So, assume her cover’s blown. Next they’ll try a flash DNA search—”
“They can’t do that without a warrant or parental consent.”
“Get real. That’s like saying you guys can’t search a house without a warrant. They’ll try to get a family match. I know you guys are in the system, so that’s when all the flashing red lights’ll go off. Those take forty-five minutes or an hour to finish depending on how far the search has to dig. So, they may not know yet who she really is, but they know she isn’t who her ID says she is. I’ll bet she hasn’t memorized the cover identities, has she?”
Nora snorted. “She’s four. What do you think?” She stared across the street at the tan CBP building. “So we have fifteen minutes or so before they know she’s my daughter.”
“Something like that.” Put that way, the situation looked even worse.
He hadn’t brought it up, but he hadn’t heard from either Paul or Beto. Half an hour wasn’t long enough to start worrying, but Luis was surprised Paul hadn’t called to find out what happened to Hope. He’d take one bad omen at a time.
“Open the trunk,” Nora ordered.
“Why?”
“I need my dress.”
“Why?”
“I’m going in there to get Hope.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind. They’ll bottle you up in a minute.”
Nora thrust an angry finger at him. “Then come up with a better plan. Right now she’s just a lost little girl with a flakey ID. Once they get her real name, it’s too late.”
She stood straight, shoulders back, waiting. Luis didn’t have a comeback. It wouldn’t work, she’d get caught, and he’d have only a few minutes to get away. But he didn’t have a better idea. If they waited, Hope would end up at the ICE detention center in El Centro or the transit camp at MCAS Yuma and either way, they’d never get her out.
He popped the trunk.
Sweat rolled down Nora’s back and sides as she neared the CBP building’s single glass door. The sweat made the sundress’ yellow elastic top cling even more than usual. Against her better judgment, she’d pulled up the skirt a couple inches and hid the extra material behind a wide belt; now the hem hit mid-thigh. She wasn’t ashamed of her body—she’d worked hard to keep fit—but hated flaunting it this way, having men leching on her boobs and legs.
At least they weren’t looking at her face.
An electronic bell binged when she pushed through the door into the air-conditioned office. A wood-and-laminate counter split the space lengthwise, linoleum and plastic chairs to her left, metal desks and computers to her right. A young CBP officer slumped on his stool behind the counter, fiddling with a bulky ruggedized slate.
“Mommy! Mommy!”
Nora’s heart shot into her sinuses. She turned just in
time to see Hope bound off a plastic chair next to the desk closest to the entry and come running toward the counter. “Cupcake!” Nora trotted to the counter as fast as she could in these stupid wedge-soled canvas shoes. In any sensible outfit, she’d just vault the thing. “It’s okay, I’m here now.”
A graying, balding CBP cop—captain’s bars on the epaulets of his dark-blue uniform—slowly climbed out of his desk chair and ambled to the counter. “Are you this little girl’s mother?”
“Yes, I am.” She grabbed Hope’s outstretched hand and shook it. “I hear she was a bad girl and ran away from Daddy, isn’t that right, Cupcake?”
“I’m sorry, Mommy. I was scared.”
The captain touched his splayed fingertips to the countertop and spent several moments examining Nora. She’d done a terrible job putting on her makeup—she’d done it in about thirty seconds in the car’s rear-view mirror—and hoped she didn’t look too sketchy. She gave the cop her very best smile. “She wasn’t too much of a problem, was she, officer?”
He gave her an old-cop smile, the same kind the veteran agents at the Bureau used: a sliver of teeth, a couple crinkles at the corners of his mouth, no change in his gray-blue eyes. “She was fine, ma’am. She doesn’t have any ID, though.”
“Oh, dear.” Nora tried to mold her face into something that looked like frustration. She’d never been an actress and she’d spent a lot of her adult life masking her emotions from the men around her, so she had no idea what actually came out of her effort. “My husband must have it.”
“I see.” He spent way too much time looking at her face, his eyebrows creeping closer together every second. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I have to ask. Have you been here recently? You look very familiar to me.”
“Oh, no, it’s been over a year.” She tried for an apologetic smile, wasn’t sure which muscles were supposed to go where. “I just have one of those faces, you know?”
The cop nodded. “May I see your ID please, ma’am?”
Nora let go of Hope even though every nerve in her body told her to hold on. She fumbled her fake ID from her wallet, steadied her hand, passed the card to the cop. “I think it still works.” Her voice had climbed an octave since she’d walked in.
The cop ambled back to his desk, then fed her ID into the card reader attached to his computer. Nora squeezed Hope’s hand again. Just those few minutes apart had filled Nora with a terror she hadn’t ever felt, not in combat, not with the Bureau. Her hands still trembled and her heart pounded. Or was that from waiting for these cops to notice she was about to fly apart?
“I was so worried,” she told the younger cop on the stool to her left. He nodded.
“Nicole Ramirez?” the captain called out.
“That’s me.”
“Could you confirm your address, please?”
She recited the fake address, trying not to let her voice squeak with strain.
“Thank you, ma’am. Any idea why the girl would say your name is Nora and you live in Virginia?”
She needed to gulp down the boulder in her throat, but the younger cop still watched her (although maybe he was watching her boobs, she couldn’t tell). She coughed out a little laugh. “Oh, dear, did she?” The captain lifted a graying eyebrow at her. “We just recently moved, she hasn’t gotten used to our new—”
“Mommy, that’s—”
“Hush, Cupcake. I’m talking to the nice policeman.” Her brain scurried to pull her train of thought back onto its tracks. “Sorry. Anyway, our new neighborhood looks a little like where we came from.” Why Nora? Why Nora? “And…um, do you have children?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He hadn’t taken her ID from the card reader yet. That meant a Level 2 scan. What had Luis said? A 50-50 chance it would work. She tried to decide if she could pull Hope over the counter while she held a gun on these two cops. How far could she get before they shot her?
“Well, when they were little, did you ever tell them stories before they went to bed—” she could smell the smoke from her brain straining to lie so much so fast for so long “—maybe you made them up, and you and your family were in them, but you had adventures? My husband does that, and my character is named Nora, and—”
“Mommy! That’s—”
“Shhh, I’m talking, don’t interrupt—”
“But Mommy—”
“Hush! Don’t make me tell you again.” Nora flashed a genuinely frazzled smile at the older cop. “Well, you know how kids are.”
The captain focused on his screen, scrolled the display with his forefinger. He scowled. “She also said you’re a detective.”
Nora glanced at her watch. They’d had Hope for fifty minutes. When had they done the DNA scan? How much time was left? “That’s my character in the story,” she said, trying and failing to sound patient. “I—my character—finds treasure and things. Hope loves it.”
The captain aimed a long, penetrating look at her. His eyes were like pale marble, hard and unrevealing. “Your husband ran from one of my officers. Do you know why he’d do that?”
She’d had time to think of an answer to this one. “He’s very nervous around police. We’ve had some problems with the contract cops in our area, some bad arrests, a couple of beatings. They don’t like Latinos.”
“I see.” The captain’s fingers drummed his desktop for a few moments. “Ma’am, would you mind letting me take a DNA sample I can compare to the girl?”
More time, plus they’d have positive proof she’d been there. She was already on camera. “Is that really necessary?”
“We need to make sure you’re really her mother before we release her to you. You understand, of course.”
“Of course. You’ll need hers too, I guess.”
He took a clear vial from his top desk drawer. A long, sterile swab ran its length. “We already have hers. We’re running it through the system to find a parental match. If you want, we can wait for that to come back, but it may be another ten or fifteen minutes. We can do a match here in about five.”
Ten or fifteen minutes left…maybe. She caught a real breath for the first time since she climbed out of the car. “Oh, well, in that case, sure.”
He took the sample from the inside of her cheek and fed the swab into a low, boxy machine in an off-white case with a video screen on top. A DNA analyzer; she’d seen them in police offices all around the country. The cop poked at the screen and stabbed some buttons and yellow lights flashed on the control panel and the machine peeped.
Five minutes. She had to stand there for five minutes and smile and pray that Hope didn’t say the wrong thing and that their scan of Hope’s DNA didn’t come back early. And not pass out from not being able to breathe.
“Excuse me, officer?” she said to the younger cop on the stool. “Can my daughter sit up here on the counter? It’s hard to keep bending over like this.”
The younger cop mulled this over for a moment, looking first at Nora, then Hope. Then he swiveled his stool and said, “Cap’n?” The captain nodded from his desk. The younger guy slid off his stool, paced to Hope, clasped his hands under her arms and said, “Here you go. One, two, up!” Hope’s rear thumped onto the countertop.
“Say ‘thank you’ to the nice man,” Nora told her.
“Thank you.”
“What brings you out here to Andrade?” the captain asked.
Once again, she was prepared. “My husband needs some dental work done. We wanted to stay away from Tijuana, and one of our neighbors recommended a dentist in Los Algodones, so—” she shrugged, hoping she wasn’t laying it on too thick “—here we are.” Nora gathered up Hope in her arms, snuggled her so if her daughter said anything, no one would hear it.
Four minutes.
Cars stuttered through the two lines outside the window, getting their trunks checked, their tires sniffed by a big black-and-brown German Shepherd-looking thing. Nora suppressed a shiver. Dogs had always scared her. She didn’t know if it was tribal—“dog” is an insult to most
Arabs—or just hearing her little school friends talk about getting bit, but she’d never wanted anything to do with a dog.
“You shouldn’t have run away from Daddy,” Nora murmured into Hope’s ear.
“Sorry.” Hope pushed out her lower lip. “Don’t leave me again, Mommy. It’s scary.”
“I won’t. You’re staying with me.”
Three minutes.
Out in the southbound traffic lane, the two CBP officers worked over an old sedan with skin cancer, checking the trunk and under the hood, running the occupants’ IDs. Could Luis just drive her over the border here? She could meet up with Paul and Peter and they could all go together. Her ID had passed the Level 2 scan, after all. Was it 50-50 every time, or if it works once does it always work?
Two minutes.
An officer working the northbound lanes banged through the door. His M4 carbine, slung muzzle-down across his chest, clanked off the push bar. The big black-and-brown German Shepherd-looking thing panted in after him. “Captain? The repeater just fritzed out again.”
“Aw, shit. Hold on.” The captain lurched out of his chair and disappeared through a door into the back. He’d miss the test result. How long before he came back?
The dog settled on its enormous rear just behind Nora. She tried to ignore the huha huha huha of its panting, the bursts of warm air against her bare calves.
The dog’s handler scooped the ball cap off his close-shaven head, drew a sleeve across his forehead. “Hot out there, huh?” he asked Nora.
“Yes, hot. Nice in here.” The lead the handler clutched in his left hand was thick as a man’s belt, but it looked like a shoestring to Nora. Get that creature away from me…
“Try it now,” the captain’s voice boomed from the back room.
Dog Cop checked his field reader, tapped it a few times. “No, sir, not yet.”
A yawp noise made Nora glance down and behind her. The dog’s huge mouth gaped open in a yawn. A mammoth tongue, T-Rex teeth. That thing could swallow Hope whole. It finished its yawn, lapped at its lips (do dogs have lips?). Its round, black eyes gazed up at her with an expression that said, “Are you dinner?”
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