They drove for another hour, still heading south, when the truck exited the freeway and pulled into a gas station. All three men got out. They entered the convenience store, where two slipped down a back hall, presumably to use the bathroom, and the third, the driver, went over to the soda-and-beer case.
Moore instructed Ansara to park at the pump behind the truck, and within two minutes he had placed the GPS transponder beneath their bumper and was back to pumping gas into their own pickup truck. He tugged down the baseball cap he’d put on before getting out, and he kept his head low as the men returned, climbed into the truck, and pulled away.
They had redundant systems of surveillance now, and Moore felt very confident that they would not lose the truck again. They had them by video streamed from the satellite, by the driver’s cell phone, and now by Moore’s GPS transponder. If these guys escaped, Moore would retire on the spot. Then again, he’d better not make that promise. Stranger things had happened.
“They bought some Corona and limes,” said Ansara. “They’re celebrating already.”
Before Moore could answer, Ansara reached for his vibrating cell phone. “Yeah? Really? Okay. We’ll be on it. Thanks, kid …”
He looked at Moore. “My mule says he’s making a run through the new tunnel tonight, and afterward, he’s been told to stick around to do some heavier moving.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient,” Moore said.
“These guys are going to Calexico. I’d bet anything on that.”
“If you’re right, it’ll be dark by the time we get there. Going to hit some traffic as we get through San Bernardino.”
“Only there?” Ansara asked. “We’ll be sitting in traffic for most of the way.”
Moore sighed and glanced out the window at the cars passing them, at another pickup truck with a couple of dirt bikes lashed to the truck’s bed. He grinned to himself. If he tried riding one of those, he’d definitely kill himself.
Pedro Romero had twice tried to call his wife, Cecilia, but she had failed to answer her cell phone. Then he’d tried Blanca’s number, but his sixteen-year-old daughter did not answer her cell, either. María, the twelve-year-old, did not have a phone but liked to call their home land line her own. And no, she didn’t answer, and the answering machine did not pick up. Maybe they’d gone shopping? The cell-phone network was down? Romero had called them only to say he’d be late, and now he was beginning to worry.
Yet when he pulled into the driveway, his wife’s Corolla was parked on the street and the lights were on inside the house. This was very strange, indeed.
He opened the front door and shifted inside, into the entrance foyer. He called out to his wife. No answer. He moved farther down the hall and into the living room.
What he saw felt like a curved blade plunged deeply into his spine to send out bolts of white-hot pain. He could not speak. He could not breathe. He could only stand there, in shock, in sudden fear, as in the next second he shuddered and widened his eyes.
Blanca and María were sitting on the sofa, hands behind their backs, their mouths covered by silver duct tape. Their eyes were red, their hair disheveled. Seated beside them was his wife, she too gagged and taped. And on either side of them were two men, olive-skinned and dressed in jeans and flannel shirts, like migrant workers, although they were anything but. They had long beards and held pistols on his family.
Another man came out of the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea, the bag’s string dangling from his mug. He was dressed like the others, bearded as well but a bit older. He narrowed his gaze on Pedro and spoke in accented Spanish. “We’ve been waiting a long time for you, Señor Romero. Was that you trying to call to say you’d be late?”
Romero began to pant in fear and in anger. More in fear. “Who are you?”
“We understand you are building something — a tunnel, perhaps?”
As an engineer, as a man who’d been trained to construct and deconstruct situations for the better part of his life, he knew immediately what was happening. These were Arabs. Terrorists, more than likely. They wanted safe passage into the United States, and they’d kill his family if he didn’t comply. No other words needed to be spoken.
“I understand,” said Romero.
The tall man widened his gaze. “You do?”
“Of course. I can make a call and let them know we’re coming. I’ll get you through. And you will release my family.”
“Señor Romero, you are a very brave and smart man. You do as we ask, and all will be well.”
“Is it just you three?”
The man shook his head. “No, we have fourteen more. Seventeen of us in all.”
“Seventeen?” Romero said and gasped.
“Why are you so worried? We won’t hurt your family.”
“But the men I work for will — if they learn I’ve allowed so many of you to go through.”
“They won’t find out.”
“That will be difficult. I’ll have to evacuate the tunnel before you arrive and have the cameras turned off. Will you have someone to pick you up on the other side?”
“I will arrange that. I will need the address.”
The toilet flushed in the other room, and then a Mexican man appeared, about Romero’s age. He frowned at Romero, then shrugged, as if to say, I’m sorry.
“This is Felipe. He’ll remain here to make sure we get through to the other side. If I call him and tell him that, your family will be released. If he doesn’t receive that call, he has instructions to kill them.”
Romero spoke rapidly to Felipe, hoping the sheer speed of his words would confuse the Arabs. He could tell they were translating in their heads as he spoke. “Señor, why have you gotten in bed with these terrorists? They want to kill the Americans, who are the cartel’s best customers. If that happens, we’ll both be killed. You are playing with fire, my friend.”
Felipe made a face. “They pay better than the cartel.”
The backpack rose higher than his head and extended down past his rump. The thing weighed a ton, and Rueben Everson was supposed to be back home, doing his math assignment. Instead he was about to enter a three-thousand-foot-long tunnel with about twenty-five kilos of cocaine strapped to his back. He, along with ten other guys of various ages, some Mexican, some American, had arrived at the warehouse and were loaded up by a team from the cartel.
They were supposed to deliver their backpacks to a room inside the house on the other side. Once there, they would wait for another delivery to arrive, and that second delivery would be carried back down the tunnel. This was the heavy-lifting part the sicarios had mentioned. After that, he and the rest of the mules would be transported from the warehouse via vans. Rueben had his doubts that he’d actually get a ride all the way home, but he took the cash ahead of time and figured he could use a few bucks of the thousand they’d given him to pay for a taxi.
The tunnel entrance inside the warehouse had been carefully concealed within a narrow electrical maintenance room. There was a four-foot-by-four-foot hole cut into the concrete, with a wooden staircase leading down to the dirt floor. Rueben carefully descended the stairs, following the heavyset man in front of him, then turned to his right, staring down the seemingly endless shaft. The ceiling rose to nearly six feet, and his backpack didn’t even brush along the sides of the tunnel, which he thought were at least three feet apart. LED lights had been strung across the ceiling, as though the cartel had decorated the place for the holidays. Rueben also noticed ventilation pipes and electrical wires, along with a piece of PVC piping that ran along the right side of the floor. As they got farther into the tunnel, the walls and ceiling became covered in strange white panels that he overheard one of the guys behind him say were being used to absorb sound.