Critical Mass (5 page)

Stumbling onto the porch, he shouted, “Federal officer; I need help!”

THE DOGS OF NIGHT

The house was small, it was dark, and it was silent. Jim hammered on the door.
“Federal officer!” He prepared to break it down.

Lights came on inside, then on poles in the pasture that surrounded the house. In those lights he saw figures. Simple uniforms, perhaps official Mexican, perhaps not. Frozen now, calculating the changed odds.

Then the voice of the man in the house, a gravelly shout: “Awright, boys, time to go on home. My dogs is hungry tonight.”

The man connected to the voice then came onto the porch, and Jim recognized him. He’d been riding horseback down the highway near here as Jim had driven past. It was the same tattered, ropelike old man, unmistakable. With him came a pack of dogs as lean and ornery looking as their master.

At the far edge of the light, a gun chinked. The Kalashnikov had been reloaded, was now being cocked.

“Watch out.”

“Boys—
take ’em
!”

A dozen snarling, eager dogs swarmed off into the dark. The Kalashnikov chattered wildly, the flashes arcing in a crazy motion. Then there was a shattering blast beside Jim’s head and he thought he’d been hit—but a fountain of sparks spewed away into the night. What had happened was that the old man had fired a shotgun, a big one. Then again,
whoom
!

The old man turned to him, gave him the meanest, most toothless, most dangerous-looking grin he’d seen since Afghanistan. “Jus’ tryin’ to warn ’em off ’fore they get et.”

From off in the dark came the barking of the dogs, faint screams, growling, then louder screams that grew quickly frantic.

“Well, they gettin’ et,” the old man said. “Them dogs is gonna go blood on me, Vas-kez don’t stop his invadin’.” He dropped down into an ancient steel lawn chair that guarded the porch. “Gawddamn ticker, it gets goin’, it don’t stop. Gonna be the death’a me, of course. Now, what we got here?”

“I’m a federal officer—”

“Oh, how surprising. I’d never have thought that of a feller in a Sunday go-to-meetin’ suit, getting chased through the damn
brasada
in the middle of the night.”

“Who is Vasquez?”

“Emilio Vas-kez, local border control officer, Mex side. Moves flesh. He works closely with our border boys. Money changes hands.”

“Where can I find this man?”

“In his office in Piedras Negras, be my guess. Me, I never cross. Be a one-way trip.”

Piedras Negras, the Place of Black Stones, the Mexican city across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass.

“You say that Customs and Borders know Mr. Vasquez?”

The old guy gave Jim a look that was a lot more careful than he had expected to see. “Now, you listen up, Mr. Federal Officer. This is Texas, here. It’s another country, see. You got your border cops and whatnot, but that’s only in the towns. Out here, there’s another law, old-time Texas law.” He rose from the chair, cupped his hands over his mouth, and called, “Boy-eees! C’mon, you devils!
Boy-eeees!
” Then he looked at Jim, eyes twinkling. “Won’t need to feed ’em for a week, best guess.” He stared off into the dark. “Might be one or two of those fellers still out there though. They must want you bad, Federal Officer.”

“Let’s go inside,” Jim said. “I need to make a call.”

As they entered the dark house, the old man turned on a floor lamp.

“Kill that!”

“Vas-kez ain’t gonna come up here, not when the dogs’re out.”

“For my sake.” He picked up the phone—and got silence. “Does this need to be turned on?”

“It’s a phone.” The old man took it, listened. Cursing under his breath, he returned to the porch. “Vas-kez, you damn cur, you cut my line again! I’m comin’ over there, fella, and I’m goin’ huntin! I know where you live, goddamn you!”

The dogs returned, quick shapes speeding under the thin light from the light poles. Jim stood in the shadows alongside the house, holding his cell phone at arm’s length. Still no signal. He closed the phone. The dogs, he noticed, looked more like hyenas. “What are those, anyway?”

“Dingoes,” the old man said, “smarties. I feed cattle, and these dogs are my caballeros. A man and twelve of these fellas can handle a herd of three hundred head very easily.”

Kenneally had been working with what looked like the Mexican military. But it could be anybody, even other Customs and Borders officers in disguise, who knew? The kid was in it, though, in deep, and somebody was going to want to talk to him, for sure. Not Jim, though. All Jim wanted was to track down the bomb, if there was one.

“I need to get back to my office,” he said. “I’ll pay you to drive me, or I’ll buy your vehicle.”

“Where’s your office?”

Was it dangerous to reveal that information? He wished he knew more about what he was dealing with. What if they came up out of the brush later and worked this man over? What might he reveal when his eyeballs were being washed with acid? “El Paso,” Jim lied.

The old man was silent so long that Jim thought he hadn’t heard. “Problem is,” he finally said, “if I sell you the truck for what it’s worth, which is about fifteen dollars, how am I gonna get another truck? And I can’t go to El Paso; I got three hundred head on feed; they need papa.”

Legally, Jim could not commandeer the truck. “How much do you need, then?”

“Ten thousand is gonna do me a decent replacement.”

He couldn’t write the man a personal check for that amount, because the expenditure wouldn’t get approved and money transferred to his account before the check bounced. “Mister, I want to appeal to your patriotism.”

“I am sorry to tell you, but I am faithful to an America that has been gone so long you never had the good fortune to know it. That makes me a real patriot, fella.”

“I hear you and I understand and I agree.”

“You only think you do, and that’s the problem with all’a you people.”

Jim had no choice. He would lie again. “Sir, I am going to commandeer the truck. I have the legal right to do this. I will leave you a receipt, and I will have it returned to you as soon as possible.”

“Billions of dollars thrown down the drain every day, and all you can do is steal one old man’s old truck. You oughtta be ashamed, Federal Officer. Course you’re not, ’cause you’re the same as the rest of ’em, just somehow lost the thread of freedom. I shoulda let ’em pop you, see how my dogs do on white meat.”

Jim respected this man’s suspicion of government, but what could he do? “The vehicle will be returned by six o’clock tomorrow night, and you’ll be compensated fairly.” He held out his hand. “I am taking the keys.”

That brought a moment between the two of them, not pleasant. Jim could see the old man considering what to do—shoot him, set his dogs on him, or give him the truck.

He waited for the decision. The old man took in a breath, let it out as a sigh. “There goes one perfectly good truck,” he said, “Federal Officer.”

As Jim went to the truck, he watched the dogs carefully. They were no longer in the slightest interested in the night out beyond the house pasture, but they were tracking him with their eyes. A snap of the old man’s fingers and he’d be torn apart.

The truck was ancient, its radio torn out, its cab dusty with old feed. He felt rotten taking it, even for a day. Worse, he’d have to rely on what was going to be a very busy San Antonio FBI to return it.

He opened his wallet and counted out as much as he dared to go light, a hundred dollars. “I’m sorry I’m not good for more. But I might need my cash.”

The old man took the money. “My tax refund?” he asked with bitter irony.

“Is there any way out of here that doesn’t involve Fifty-seven?”

“Well, you can use my track over to Eighty-three, then head down to Crystal City, then over toward Big Wells on Eighty-five. That’ll get you to the interstate.”

He went as fast as he could, listening to the brush scrape the truck, glimpsing a snake rushing in its headlights. As he drove, he pulled the battery out of his cell phone. He didn’t know exactly what sort of detection equipment his pursuers might possess, and he didn’t intend to experiment.

The truck was gasping by the time he reached Highway 83, another empty strip disappearing into the dark. His situation was extremely serious. With so few roads in the area, he understood that he was still in extraordinary danger. He’d been in similar situations before, though, and he knew from experience that the keys were misdirection and speed.

But they knew the area; he didn’t. So much for misdirection. And as far as speed was concerned, as he accelerated onto the highway he found that the old F-150 topped out at under fifty. He kept the lights off, navigating by the faint glow of the road between the dark masses of brush that choked both sides. When he needed to slow down, he downshifted to avoid flashing the brake lights.

The highway made a sharp curve, and he found himself in a small community called Carrizo Springs. As soon as he could, he left the main road, pulling into a closed gas station and around the side of the building. He sure as hell needed a weapon. Maybe the thing to do was roust out the local cops. There had to be a sheriff’s station here, maybe even a local police force. He needed to get that report called in, and fast. He must not be the only person alive with this information.

There was a pay phone out near the station’s air stop, but it was out of order, long since shut down. Beside it, though, there still hung a badly weathered phone book. He found an address for the Dimmit County constable’s office and headed for it. The streets of the small community were empty at eleven, and when he found it the police station was closed. There was an emergency number, but that meant using the cell phone. Probably safe, probably it would work, but what if these things weren’t true and they caught up with him and killed him? You didn’t take a job like this unless you were willing to die for your duty, and he had no problem with that. But he did have a problem with not getting that information through.

The problem was easily solved, though. On his way here, he had seen a motel with a lit sign, and he returned there now.

He drove past the motel, then turned a corner and cut his lights. Nobody appeared, so he went back and pulled up in front. Inside the lobby, he could see an empty clerk’s counter. Hopefully there’d be somebody back in there somewhere.

As he prepared to enter the dimly lit lobby, the great cities of the American West surged and crackled with the energy of life. Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco—they were all gigantic jewel boxes packed with innocent
humanity. In Las Vegas the Strip glowed and hummed with late-night excitement, but in the little community of Pahrump a few miles away all was quiet. Ressman had landed, delivered his cargo, and flown on. The crate had now been in the cage at the Pahrump Valley Airport for two hours. It was all alone, just a large, black box with a bill of lading taped to it indicating that it contained frozen chickens. The airport was dark, and the road leading up to it was even darker, the silence absolute.

After a time, though, a truck appeared on that road. It moved so slowly and quietly that not even an armadillo scuffling along in the nearby brush was disturbed by its passing. In the truck were two young men, their faces vague in the faint light from the dashboard.

The truck parked for a time. There were flashlights, and careful shadows as the two men entered the cargo cage and brought out the box. A moment later the truck left, its gears grinding. The cargo cage was now empty, the moon low in the western sky. The armadillo crossed the road, snuffling busily for beetles.

The Las Vegas metro area is home to over 4 million people, Los Angeles to more than 13 million. Denver, San Francisco, and Phoenix also are not far from Pahrump.

Las Vegas was a glittering target, as was San Francisco. But 43 percent of all goods that enter the United States come in through the port of Los Angeles. Destroy it, and the United States of America is plunged into chaos.

VIRTUAL NATION

Nabila al-Rahbi found the new website so easily that it crossed her mind that it
might have been pushed just to her. The enemy knew, perhaps, not exactly who she was but certainly that she was here. Her work was to find terrorist websites—real ones—and determine who ran them and who visited them and uncover the links from one person to the next across the web. Unlike National Security Agency units trolling for e-mails, text messages, and such, her work was much more focused and personal. She was one of a tiny number of people in the intelligence community who could read Arabic, Farsi, and the other essential languages of terrorism. Her security clearance, however, was so narrowly focused that she couldn’t even enter most of the offices on her floor, let alone talk shop with anybody. She came to work, reported upchannel, and went home.

She looked at the new page, comparing the simple Arabic to the English translation that had been provided by whoever had created it: “This from the Mahdi: Women of the West, you must assume the
hijab
or there will be a serious consequence.” The translation was accurate enough.

According to Shia tradition, also endorsed in this case by many Sufis, the Mahdi was the Muslim savior. Most Shia were “twelvers,” who believed that the Twelfth Imam, who went into hiding in the year 940, was the Mahdi. He was expected to return at the end of time, to join with Jesus and unite
the world in peace. Sunni, far more numerous than Shia, did not have any specific doctrine about the Mahdi, but the idea had appeal. So whoever might be claiming to be the Mahdi was not being stupid. He could expect the support of Shia, and would appeal to the hopes of all Muslims, including the Sunni.

She worked with the site a bit, but this was all it contained, just the words printed against a beige background. It demanded that every woman in the West, presumably, take the veil. Well, the hell with that. She was a Muslim woman herself and she wore the veil when she chose to wear the veil, and that was what was right. Some stupid idiot had posted this, but the world was full of them, wasn’t it, Muslim and otherwise?