It was mid-afternoon when he pulled off Highway 84/30 and into the parking lot of the Fairfield Inn & Suites. He shut off the ignition, then opened the travel atlas sitting on the passenger seat. He’d written nothing down, nor made any marks in the atlas. There was no need; he knew the route and distances by heart.
Six hundred forty miles to go, Musa thought. If he wished, he could start out early tomorrow and probably cover the remaining distance to Beatty, Nevada, in one day. It was tempting, but he decided against it. The Emir had been adamant in his orders. He would follow the timetable.
77
DESCENDING THROUGH twenty thousand feet on their way into Rio de Janeiro, Chavez and Dominic could see the pall of oily smoke hanging over São Paulo two hundred miles down the coast from Rio. North of São Paulo, the Paulinia fires were still raging. On the way to the airport the night before, they’d heard on the news that firefighters and rescue workers in the area had changed their strategy, focusing not on extinguishing the refinery inferno but on evacuation and containment. Ethanol had stopped spewing from the pipeline within an hour of the initial explosion, but in that time some ten thousand gallons of fuel had spilled into the refinery, and while some of that was still burning, it was now the dozens upon dozens of blending and storage tanks that were involved. The conflagration would eventually burn out, but experts both in Brazil and in the United States disagreed on how long that would take. Some predicted four days, others two weeks or more. What no one disagreed on, however, was the environmental toll the disaster was taking. Already oil soot was blanketing fields and homes as far south as Colombo. Emergency rooms were overflowing with patients complaining of respiratory problems.
“If that’s not hell on earth, I don’t know what is,” Dominic said, staring out the window.
“No argument there. How you feelin’?” While Ding had dozed on and off for much of the flight, Dominic had been dead to the world until an hour ago.
“Better, I think. I was ass-kicked.”
“In more ways than one, mano. I know I already said this, but sorry about Brian. He was a good troop.”
“Thanks. So when we touch down, what’s the plan?”
“Call home and check the news stations to see if Hadi’s information has hit the airwaves. If it has, we go hunting. If not, we hunker down and wait.”
Once off the plane and cleared through customs, they went straight to the Avis desk and checked in. Ten minutes later, they were standing at the curb, waiting for their Hyundai Sonata to be brought around. “Air-conditioning?” Dominic asked.
“Yeah, but manual transmission. Can’t have everything.”
The dark green Sonata came around the corner. The attendant climbed out, had Chavez sign a form, then nodded and walked away. They got in and pulled out. Dominic retrieved his sat phone from his carry-on and dialed The Campus.
“We’re down,” he told Hendley, and turned on the phone’s speaker.
“Good. You’re on speakerphone. Sam and Rick are here, too. Biery’s on his way up.” Dominic heard a door open, then the creaking of a chair. Biery said, “Dom, you there?”
“Yeah, both of us.”
“We’re in business. We cycled through ten online storage sites before we got a hit. He’s using a site called filecuda.com. Just like Jack figured, Hadi was using a variation of his e-mail for the log-in. The password we cracked in ten minutes. There’s nothing in the account’s inbox right now.”
Rick Bell said, “We’ve put together a message we think will get Hadi moving in our direction. Sam will give you the details.”
Granger came on. “We’re a little worried that the news leak will really spook Hadi, so we’re going to go with baby steps, move him from one place to another. He’ll be on guard, so we figure if he moves to the first spot and doesn’t get ambushed, he’ll start getting more comfortable with the idea. Once we think we’ve got him hooked, we’re going to tell him to meet a contact in the Rocinha-”
“The what?”
Ding answered. “It’s Portuguese. It means ‘Little Ranch.’ Down here, slums are called favelas, and the Rocinha’s the biggest one in Rio.”
“We figure we’ll move him two, maybe three, times before sending him to the Rocinha. Depends on the tone of his responses. I’ll e-mail you a list and timetable.”
“Why there?”
“The Rio police don’t go in there unless they absolutely have to. Be easier for you to operate.”
Dominic asked, “When are you dropping the dime on Hadi?”
“In about forty minutes, by fax to Record News. We put together our own sketch and description-hopefully, close enough that Hadi’ll recognize himself but vague enough that he won’t get nabbed right away.”
“How sure are we they’ll use it?” Chavez asked.
Hendley said, “Survival of the fittest. They’re a news channel, and they’re fighting for market share during the biggest disaster in Brazilian history. They’ll take the tip like a gift from God.”
“Gotta love cutthroat journalism,” Ding replied.
“We’re tuned in to all the channels here. As soon as it hits the airwaves, we’ll call you.”
Dominic hung up. To Chavez: “We hunting?”
“Damn straight we are. Need to make a stop first. I know a guy who knows a guy.”
“Who knows where to get his hands on some guns?”
“You got it.”
Frank Weaver woke up at five a.m., had two cups of coffee from the in-room brewer, then read the newspaper for twenty minutes before he showered and headed down to the lobby for the free continental breakfast. By seven-fifteen he was packed up and out the door.
His rig was exactly where he’d left it, as was the cask, but he knew they would be. The DOE had equipped his truck with an immobilizer. Start the engine without a key and the fuel system shuts down. Nice little feature. As for the cask, no one would run off with that thing. Maybe King Kong, who’d noticed he was missing one of his barbells, but no one else.
He did his usual inspection walk-around, checking the ratchets, padlocks, and chains, and, finding nothing out of order, he unlocked the driver’s door and climbed up into the cab. He was reaching his key toward the ignition when he stopped.
Something…
At first he couldn’t put his finger on it, but slowly it dawned on him: Someone had been in the truck. That couldn’t be, though. Like everything else with his rig, the door lock was beefed up. It’d take more than some crackhead thief to pick it. Weaver looked around. Nothing seemed out of place. He checked the glove box and center console for missing items. Everything was there. Same with the sleeping compartment. Everything was as he’d left it.
Gun.
He reached under his seat. The.38 revolver was still there, snug in its leather holster affixed to the seat frame.
Weaver sat in silence for half a minute before shrugging off the eerie feeling. Maybe the hotel coffee was stronger than he thought. Made him jumpy.
He powered up the dashboard GPS unit and waited for it to cycle through the self-diagnostic check, then punched up his route. Day three of four. An easy 310 miles to Saint George, Utah.