“Can we help you, sir?” one of the government men asked. The other studied Max and Renee, his hand held loose outside his holster.
Max explained who he was and tried to convince them to let him pass.
The two men looked at each other in confusion. One said, “Sir, this is a restricted area. Please move along.”
Max understood. To them, he was just some random stranger with a story. Their job wasn’t to let people in, it was to keep people out. He thanked the guards and walked away, taking out his phone while he dialed Trent. “They won’t let me in.”
A moment later, one of the doors on the mobile interrogation unit swung open and Trent exited. “Gents, they’re with us.”
The guard swore, looking like he was debating it, but said, “I’d need to hear it from my superiors.”
It took about ten minutes of phone calls and arguing. Wilkes was pissed that Max had flown out there. “Next time you better tell me what you’re up to,” he said. But he made arrangements for Max to enter the interrogation unit.
Walking up the ladder into the large trailer, Max asked, “Where’s Wilkes, anyway? Why isn’t he here himself?”
“I don’t know. He said he had to take care of something else in D.C. But he’s monitoring all the reports out of here.”
They stepped into a dark, quiet room. Swivel chairs screwed into deck plates on the ground. Two men with clipboards and pens sat in the chairs, listening to the prisoner’s interview. They glanced back at Max and Renee, shrugged, and turned back towards the show. A single two-way mirror showed the interrogation room. Sound was being pumped into this section of the trailer via overhead speakers. Rojas sat at a table across from a black man of about fifty — the interrogator.
“What else did you find out?” Max whispered.
“Shh.” One of the men with a clipboard placed his finger over his mouth.
Max, Trent, and Renee scooted to the far end of the small space and watched some of the interrogation.
Rojas and the interrogator were conversing in Spanish. Max caught a few words, including Ian Williams’s name, but that was about it.
Max and Trent whispered as quietly as they could manage.
Trent said, “He says Ian Williams, the tall white dude that snatched Wilkes’s agent in Mexico, has his own agenda. Rojas here claims that Williams influences Martinez, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, to the point of controlling him. He lets Martinez make the legitimate business decisions on production schedules and pricing and all that… but the Brit is the one who handles the darker side of the business. I was surprised to hear he was from the UK.”
Max said, “Yeah. Renee dug up some info on him. Ian Williams is former MI6.”
Another shush from one of the clipboard men and Trent took the hint. “Let’s talk outside for a bit. I’ll get you caught up and then we can come back in.” The three of them went back into the warm Texas sun, walked past the guards, and towards the flight line where Max’s aircraft was parked. They walked about two hundred yards and sat near an empty picnic table on the far side of the airport’s only hangar, the only place with shade. The hangar and flight line were empty. An orange-and-white barricade blocked the street entrance that led to the airport, with a state trooper’s car parked next to it.
“So Ian Williams was MI6?”
“Yeah. Crazy, right?”
“And he’s worked for the cartels for what, a year?”
“Something like that.”
“He used to work in Afghanistan and Pakistan for MI6, but got removed for some type of scandal.”
“What happened?”
Renee said, “The details weren’t available. But the little I could find implied that it involved being too cozy with Pakistani intelligence.”
“Very interesting,” said Trent.
Max looked back at Trent. “Did Rojas know anything about the man that was killed in Virginia?”
Trent said, “To be honest, I had a hard time following that one. As you saw, the interrogator was speaking in Spanish, and mine is only passable. You might want to ask the interrogation team or see if Wilkes will show you the transcripts. What I think I heard was that Rojas confirmed Williams has a hit list that he’s working his way through before this big VIP meeting they’ve got coming up. Rojas thinks that this guy who was assassinated in Virginia was on the hit list.”
“Why does he think that?”
“Because Rojas overheard a conversation between Williams and someone else, talking about the first name in the list being in D.C.”
“A phone conversation or in person?”
“I assume phone, but I didn’t catch that. Sorry, man, I’m operating on fumes here.”
“I thought you were special operations,” said Renee, smiling.
“I retired. Now I take naps,” Trent said.
Max noticed that the silhouette of the driver in the state police vehicle was no longer visible. Odd. He had been there a moment ago, and Max hadn’t seen him exit the vehicle. He made a mental note of it and pressed Trent further.
“Who else is on the list?”
“Rojas says he has another name but was negotiating for something in return. The interrogators are doing their thing, trying to get everything they can before they start promising him stuff. Rojas is trying to see what leverage he has. A few hours ago, he said he didn’t have any names, and that he didn’t know anything about the Pakistanis.”
“So what’s with the meeting? When is it, what is it?”
Trent held up his hand, his eyes squinting back towards the end of the airfield. Max heard the sound of shouting coming from the interrogation unit’s trailer.
Max turned to look, saying, “What is it?”
A sudden metallic boom thundered through the air.
Trent was peering around the corner of the hangar in seconds, his pistol drawn. Max and Renee were slower, deafened and stunned from the explosion. Trent turned back towards them and mouthed something, but Max couldn’t make out what he was saying, his ears ringing.
Then he saw Trent pointing towards Max’s plane.
“What’s going on?” he heard Renee ask, the sounds of the world returning.
Max crept to the corner of the hangar and looked in the direction Trent was pointing. The mobile interrogation unit was a burning heap. Its roof was completely missing, and most of its trailer wall was torn away. Ripped, singed metal, dust, and at least one hunk of flesh on the ground nearby.
Trent said, “One o’clock. See ’em?”
About one hundred yards beyond the blast site, three oversized pickup trucks had veered off the highway and were now bouncing over the grass field surrounding the airport. The trucks were heading towards the burning wreckage of the interrogation trailer.
Trent said, “How quick can you get us out of here in that thing?” He was again pointing to Max’s Cirrus, which was only fifty feet away.
“What about the people in the trailer? Is there anyone still alive?” Renee asked. She winced as the loud, rapid rattle of heavy machine-gun fire echoed over the airfield. Men in the pickup trucks fired at the two government SUVs parked near the interrogation trailer. Pops in the metal and shattered glass as bullets riddled the vehicles. Max didn’t see any return fire. At least two bodies on the pavement near the vehicles. Neither moving.
Max looked around the airfield, trying to identify all their options.
Max turned to the airport entrance and saw the state police vehicle still sitting there, its blue lights off, with no sign of a driver. Max could just barely make out a spiderweb crack in the rear window.
If anyone was left alive in the police vehicles, they were going to be killed soon. The same was true for anyone left alive in what remained of the smoking trailer. Trent had a single handgun, as did Max, but his was still in the plane. Their enemy had them outnumbered and outgunned, and they had too great of a head start.