Guardian of Lies (55 page)

“What do we have on the other truck, the one the cartel crew said they thought was a rental?” said Rhytag.

“Nothing. Not enough to track it,” said Thorpe.

“So where the hell did the damn thing go?”

“The drivers of the cargo truck had more than three hours from the time they left the ship in Ensenada to the time the CHP picked them up on the highway, up by Pendleton. They could have dropped the device off anywhere along the way,” said Thorpe.

“It still begs the question, how did they get across the border?” said Rhytag.

“It’s too late for that now.” The director of Homeland Security hustled through the door. He was followed by three high-ranking military officers. “The problem now is how to get as many people as possible out of the greater metropolitan San Diego area. The president’s been on a conference call with the governor and the city’s mayor, and it’s agreed that in”—he looked at his watch—“exactly twenty-two minutes, the president is going live on national television to make the announcement. Local authorities are implementing an emergency evacuation plan. We’re diverting all planes away from the San Diego airports. We’re shutting down all incoming highway traffic and making all lanes outbound. We’re using buses, trains, anything that rolls to get people out of the area. We’re telling them to take absolutely nothing, only themselves and their children.”

“You’ll have a traffic jam to choke a horse,” said Rhytag. “Besides, how do we know they didn’t transfer the bomb to another vehicle? For all we know it could be eastbound right now, headed here.”

“We have to exercise our best judgment based on what we do know. And the last information we had was that the device was in the San Diego area.”

As they argued, one of Thorpe’s minions stuck his head in the door. “Sir, line two is for you.”

Thorpe swung around in his chair and grabbed the phone behind him on the credenza. He punched the line button. “Thorpe here.

“Yes. Yeah.

“Where?”

Suddenly all the conversations in the room stopped.

“Have you pinpointed the location?

“Can you shoot it down here and put it on the screen?

“Do it!”

Thorpe hung up the phone and swung around to face them again.

“What is it?” said the director.

“Madriani’s back in town. They’ve picked up a signal from his cell phone again. This time in Coronado.”

“Isn’t that where you said his office was located?” said the director.

“It is,” said Thorpe.

“So maybe he’s just going home.”

“No,” said Rhytag. “If he’s there it’s for a reason and it’s not because he’s going home. The border was closed, right? Shut down tight. We can’t explain how the cargo container got across?”

“Agreed,” said the director.

“Madriani calls his partner on his home phone, which he knows we have tapped, and tells his partner to call my office with the information on the ship in Ensenada. So he’s tracking the device. Somehow he has information. He’s trying to get it to us.”

“Unless he’s feeding us false leads,” said Thorpe. “The container didn’t have the bomb, remember?”

“No. It’s in the other truck,” said Rhytag, “and Madriani knows it. If he’s shooting signals from that phone, it’s for a reason. There’s a fugitive warrant out for his arrest, the police are watching the airports, and the border is closed. So ask yourself, how did he get into the country?”

Thorpe was busy making a note on a legal pad. But as he stopped and lifted his eyes, the look of revelation on his face said it all.

“That’s right,” said Rhytag, “the same way the truck with the cargo container did. Madriani is either following, or else he’s on that other truck, and so is the bomb.”

A second later the large screen on the wall in the outer room flickered, as did the smaller monitor in the conference room. All eyes were on it as the satellite image honed in on a quiet street along the waterfront in Coronado.

“There it is,” said one of the military officers.

Sure enough, the orange-and-yellow top and cab of a box truck came into view.

The phone rang through this time, and Thorpe picked it up. “Yeah. We see it. Do you have an address?” Thorpe jotted it down on his pad. “Forward the information to the away team up on I-5. Tell them to get NEST, the two Delta snipers, and as many of our hostage-rescue people as possible. Pile them into choppers and dispatch them ASAP to that location. Give them the description of the truck and see if you can forward the satellite imagery so they can see it.”

One of the military officers tried to get Thorpe’s attention. “Ask them if they can zoom out on the image,” he said. “I’d like to see a larger area so we can assess what’s involved.”

Thorpe relayed the message, and a few seconds later the satellite image pulled back, offering a smaller-scale image and less detail of a much larger area including parts of the bay. The second it came into focus the officer, his eyes glued to the screen, said, “Oh, God! No!”

Alim opened the passenger-side door to the truck and climbed down onto the curb at the side of the road. He motioned for Nitikin to follow him.

The street was in a quiet residential area on what had once been an island many years before. It was still called North Island, but the narrow strip of water that had once separated the island from the town of Coronado had been filled in by the military when the island had been taken over as a naval base before World War II.

The street itself was one lane in each direction, with little traffic due to the fact that it dead-ended at a gate to the naval base. On each side of the street were expensive homes. On the east side where the truck was parked, they were more in the nature of estates, each one fronting on San Diego Bay, some with large boats docked on the water behind them. The sidewalks were virtually abandoned except for the occasional jogger or a resident walking a dog. The commercial and shopping areas of town were three miles away, to the south, along Orange Boulevard, near the Hotel del Coronado.

All the traffic for the homecoming of the USS
Ronald Reagan
had been routed through the main entrance to the base several blocks to the west, leaving this area almost deserted.

Afundi was wearing white overalls with a zipper down the front, the kind a painter or furniture mover might wear. There were two large pockets in the pants that passed directly through to the pockets in his slacks underneath the overalls. He carried a small Walther PPK pistol in the right pocket of his pants and made a point of showing it to Nitikin as the Russian stepped down out of the truck.

Alim said something to the interpreter, who told Nitikin to go and stand by the back of the truck.

The Russian immediately did as he was told, while Afundi and the interpreter continued to talk up front.

As he reached the back of the truck, Yakov’s eyes were riveted on the latch sealing the truck’s rear lift gate. He glanced at Alim and saw that he was deep in a discussion with the interpreter over something. Nitikin realized he would never have another chance. It was now or never. Casually he stepped off the curb and behind the truck, then silently opened the latch and without a sound lifted the door just enough to look inside.

Before his eyes could adjust to the darkness, Herman’s pocketknife was at his throat.

I cup my hand over Maricela’s mouth before she can cry out or say anything as I hold her quietly in place. Then I turn her head so she can see me and put the forefinger of my other hand to my lips.

She nods, and I let go of her.

Silently she crawls forward toward her father until she is right in his face as he whispers something to her in Spanish. She eases Herman’s knife away from his throat, then turns and motions that I should follow her and does the same to Herman. I crawl quickly forward.

By then Maricela has slipped through the two-foot opening under the lift gate. Herman holds the gate up as Nitikin helps his daughter to the ground where he directs her under the back of the truck. I follow her, and Herman takes up the rear.

A second later, without a word being spoken, the three of us are flat on our stomachs on the pavement under the truck. An inch at a time we ease slowly forward so that our feet won’t be seen by anyone standing up close next to the lift gate at the back of the vehicle.

I can feel the heat of the exhaust from the manifold and hear the engine tick and tack, issuing all the noises of contracting metal as it cools.

Herman is on the driver’s side, I’m on the right, with Maricela between us, each of us with the sides of our faces pressed to the pavement. I can see the shoes of the other man standing at the curb next to the passenger door. His left foot is so close that if I tried I could reach out and touch it with my right hand as we continue to inch forward toward the center of the truck.

Suddenly I feel someone touch my left hand. I lift my head and turn as Maricela is looking directly at me. She mouths something, but I don’t understand what she’s saying. Then she points up toward the bottom of the truck. I look at the undercarriage but I don’t see anything. She taps my hand again and shakes her head. She mouths the words “my father.” This I understand. Then she squeezes my hand and forms the word “bomb” with her lips as she points up toward the bed of the truck. Her father has told her the bomb is on the truck. The wooden crate!

Yakov had gently lowered the lift gate and was just about to latch it when he heard Alim’s raspy voice hollering by the side of the truck.

Afundi suddenly realized that Yakov had disappeared. An instant later the driver’s door opened and both men converged on the Russian from opposite sides of the vehicle.

The translator was twirling a closed padlock around his finger, shaking his head and smiling as he looked at the Russian.

Afundi had his pistol in his hand, looking at Nitikin through slit eyes until his gaze fell on the open latch at the back of the truck. Seeing it, he pushed Yakov out of the way and threw open the lift gate. He pointed the pistol inside as he scanned the interior and the large box. His focus finally centered on the area around the wooden crate up near the front wall, directly behind the cab.

Alim was about to climb onto the bed of the truck when his fingers touched something tucked just inside the corner behind the metal track that guided the lift gate up and down. He stopped and reached into the recess behind the railing. There his fingers found a small clamshell cell phone. He looked at it for a second and then turned to Yakov. He held the phone up and said something.

“He wants to know where it came from,” said the interpreter.

Nitikin locked eyes with Alim for a moment, then glanced back at the phone in his hand. “Tell him it’s mine. I have two of them,” he said. Then Yakov touched the front pocket of his pants with one hand as if to show them where the other phone was.

An instant later the interpreter was searching his pockets. Alim exploded and struck the Russian across the side of his face, full force with the back of his hand, the one holding the pistol. The front sight on the Walther’s short barrel caught Yakov’s cheek and ripped a jagged inch-long wound just under his left eye. The force of the blow sent the Russian to the ground.

Before the interpreter could pick him back up, Nitikin had sprung to his feet. His quickness surprised the two men as he spit a string of Russian invective at Afundi, blood dripping down his face.

Alim dropped both phones onto the pavement and stomped them into tiny bits of plastic and metal. He said something in Farsi.

“He wants to know who you called,” said the interpreter.

“Tell him I wanted to talk to my daughter, to make sure that she was all right, but he never went to Panama, so I couldn’t get a signal.”

As he listened to the translation, Alim eyed Yakov for a moment and then he smiled. “Tell him that his daughter is dead. Tell him I had her killed in San José and that she died slowly and screaming in pain.”

“There is no need,” said the interpreter. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Tell him!” Afundi yelled. He pointed the little pistol at the translator and then directed the barrel back into the Russian’s face before the translator could finish delivering the message.

Nitikin’s eyes showed his fury but it rolled off Alim like water. He motioned Yakov up into the back of the truck and the interpreter followed him while Afundi covered the Russian with the pistol.

Alim checked his watch as the interpreter slipped the closed padlock into his back pocket, pulled a set of handcuffs from his left front pocket, and pushed Nitikin toward the front of the truck and into the shadows where anyone driving by or walking down the sidewalk was less likely to see him. Then the interpreter clasped one of the handcuffs around the Russian’s wrists.

Alim kept checking his watch, then looking over his shoulder for the blue sedan. The two brothers who were supposed to take care of the Mexican should have been here by now.

From his pocket the interpreter pulled several pieces of cotton cloth, balled them up, and stuffed them into the Russian’s mouth. Then he retrieved a roll of duct tape and placed pieces over the Russian’s mouth and eyes.

With his mouth closed tight, Nitikin had to struggle to avoid choking on the cloth while he breathed through his nose. Blinded by the tape over his eyes, he was forced to hang on to the tie-down rail for fear of becoming disoriented, losing his balance, and falling.

Only then did Alim climb into the back of the truck. He pulled a screwdriver from his inside pants pocket, removed the side panel from the wooden crate, and checked the electronic timing circuit.

The timing device had been procured from a manufacturer in Switzerland and modified by technicians in Alim’s homeland before being trekked across the ocean in a Cuban diplomatic pouch. It was designed for industrial use and employed a handheld time setter about the size of a cell phone. This plugged into the small electronic circuit board that contained the digital timing chip. The circuit board was connected by two wires to the electronic detonator, which in turn was embedded in the cordite charge in the breech of the nuclear gun barrel.