Indy paused, and looked at his watch. “The last load was maybe 11 or 12 hours ago. It would have been early this morning.”
Suddenly Koopman slapped his hand to his forehead. “Indy, you’re right,” he gasped. “This is way bigger than drugs. Red cellophane, my God!” He turned to the other officers, and was faced with blank stares. “Jesus, don’t you guys watch the news or listen to your scanners? Mysterious loads transported in the middle of the night? Bricks wrapped in red cellophane? That Semtex that was stolen in Libya. It’s in bricks, wrapped in red cellophane. Rumored to be heading for an American target.”
With Koopman’s announcement, the atmosphere became electric, and the men turned on Dennis with renewed purpose.
“OK, Dennis, I think you probably know more than you’ve been telling us,” said Brink. “Who was it that came through here?”
Dennis only shrugged. Thinking again of Leon’s psychopathic rages, he said woefully, “I don’t know. I saw nothing. Not me. Nothing.”
“Can you describe what they were transporting?” pushed Koopman.
“Describe? Me? No sir. I didn’t see anything.”
Blackman interrupted. “Listen, you jackass, there’s a very good chance that what came through here was not drugs, but explosives. Semtex, headed toward the States, on the way to some massive terrorist attack. Haven’t you been listening to the news? The Emir promising the destruction of an entire city?”
“Oh, maybe. Yeah, I guess I heard something about that. But I didn’t think he would blow up Fernie.”
“Good, Dennis. Then you know that we may be dealing with international terrorism here. That means this is a real crime, not like getting caught with a joint. We’ve got you on the scene of that crime. You won’t be going to some nice, peaceful, happy Canadian jail. You’ll go to Guantanamo Bay and stay there until scorpions are crawling out of your asshole. If you talk now, we’ll take you back to the Canadian side of the border, where Canadian law governs. Otherwise we’ll leave you here until the FBI shows up, which, by the way, is not going to be very long. Do you want to talk now?”
Dennis reflected on that for a second or two. He knit his brow and fixed his gaze on the ground in front of him. Leon or Guantanamo? Shivs or scorpions?
“OK,” he said. “I’ll talk. But I go to the Canadian side.”
“Smart boy, this one,” said Koopman. “Sharp as a tack. So tell us, Dennis, what came through here, and when, and in what amounts?”
Turbee had been monitoring activity north of the border. He had been able to track the Semtex from Stewart, BC to Highway 1, east of Kamloops. With the assistance of the NSA, he was monitoring any satellite communications coming out of the southeast corner of BC. This yielded rich dividends when he picked up the Sat-phone license check by the Canadian cop.
As was his custom, Turbee raised his hand and waved it in the air, seeking someone’s attention.
“Now what?” snapped Dan.
“We just intercepted an RCMP Sat-phone transmission. It came from a location less than half a mile north of the Montana border. It was a vehicle plate check. The first three letters of the plate were DGO.”
When Dan didn’t respond, Rhodes decided to take over. He quickly glanced at the time the license plate check had taken place and did the math in his head.
“It’s arrived, people,” he said calmly. “There is now more than four tons of high explosive in the hands of terrorists, somewhere in the United States.”
“Assume that they’re going a steady 70 miles an hour on our freeways. Assume that they’ve been in the country for 12 hours. Here’s the area where they could be at the present time,” George added. He drew a large arc on the Atlas Screen, with Devil’s Anvil at the northernmost point. The arc included Kansas City, Cheyenne, Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, most of California, all of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nebraska, and on and on. George looked at Dan expectantly. “So what do we do, captain?”
Corporal Catherine Gray had been in the truck for several hours. The first hour had been almost unbearable, with a good amount of crashing and banging, as the truck navigated old skid trails and overgrown logging roads. But eventually the trip became smoother, and within two hours, she thought that they were riding on asphalt. There was a heavy stuffiness in the air, and the heat in the back of the truck increased as the day wore on. Then she remembered that there were a number of coolers sitting in the back of the truck with her. She flicked on her cigarette lighter and found them. She opened one and, to her delight, saw several cans of soda sitting in the bottom. She reached for one and had a long, pleasant swig of the pop. It was even cold.
Her thirst quenched, she sat back and used the flickering flame of the lighter to inspect the red bricks more closely. The drugs were definitely wrapped in red cellophane. She wondered again what that was all about. Maybe marketing, she thought. Even the criminals were getting MBA’s now. She had a closer look and found that there were labels on the cellophane. Printed on the center of the each label, apparent in the light of the flickering lighter flame, was the word “SEMTEX.” Semtex, Semtex, she mused to herself. Where had she heard that? Sometime in the past week… Then the penny dropped. The Libya explosion. The Presidential embarrassments. There had been missing Semtex. Was this it? Had she found the Semtex, here in the state of Montana, and heading south? What could that mean? Where was it heading? And damn the fact that her cell phone was dead!
Suddenly she realized that she was holding a cigarette lighter, and its little loop of flame, an inch or two from the brick’s label. She dropped it, and was happy to make the rest of the journey in darkness. “Oh shit,” she kept repeating quietly to herself. “Oh shit.”
42
Somewhere in Pakistan, Richard and Jennifer found themselves in a similarly dangerous situation. They were blindfolded, and then tossed unceremoniously into the back of a van. Richard was fading in and out of consciousness. He was alert enough to notice that the van turned and stopped many times as it made its way to the outskirts of Peshawar. They reached a highway, but he was unable to tell in which direction they were headed. The van appeared to be climbing, and that would mean either north or northwest. Not a good sign. They were probably entering the lawless tribal lands, where Pashtun warlords reigned. He reflected on what had happened to Zak. Would parts of their bodies also end up being autopsied in some forensic lab in Tel Aviv? He put that aside as unhelpful, and tried to think about things they could do to get out of the situation instead.
“The cavalry’s on its way, Jen,” said Richard. “They got enough of the phone call to know we’re in trouble.” He wasn’t sure if he was trying to offer comfort to her or to himself.
“Yes, of course. I forgot. The several million Marines that we have stationed in the Frontier Province are going to descend on us at any moment and take us back to the Embassy just in time for a late night snack,” said Jennifer sarcastically.
“Warm milk and cookies,” Richard tried to joke.
“Don’t joke, Richard. I think we’re headed into the mountains. Listen to the sound of the engine. He’s down shifting a lot, and we’re switching back and forth,” said Jennifer.
There were a few final steep switchbacks, and then the van came to a halt. The back doors were opened, and they were both dragged roughly out of the van and thrown to the ground. Richard, unable to brace himself, felt a blinding stab of pain to his right temple as his head hit the ground again. He saw lights, then nothing. Knocked out for the third time in less than three hours. It was 6:30PM, September 1, Pakistan time.