“He won’t like it when he finds out.”
“We can’t worry about that right now. Leonard has to believe Ernie escaped. If it leaks he’s in custody we can kiss Leonard good-bye. He’ll disappear. This is our only chance to bag him. We won’t get another opportunity. Ever.”
“Nathan, we lost another SWAT agent at the truck stop. Three civilians too.”
“I’m sorry, Holly.”
“I didn’t know SWAT was going to be there or I would’ve told you. ASAC Breckensen was under direct orders from Lansing. They left me out of the loop again.”
“The beat goes on.…”
“End this, Nathan, before anyone else gets killed.”
“You can count on it.” Nathan ended the call. “We need to get moving.” He pointed to the west where several sheriff’s cruisers were racing down the road with their light bars flashing blue and red. “We’ve got less than a minute to clear the area. You get everything we need out of the SUV?”
“Yes.”
They hurried back to the vehicles. Nathan was thankful the Crown Vic’s windows had survived the blast. He was in no condition for a freezing drive back to Sacramento. Grangeland took the rear seat next to Bridgestone while Nathan slid into the front. Harv left the headlights off as he pulled onto the road. He flipped the night-vision scope down to his eye and stomped the accelerator.
“All the roads in this area are laid out at ninety degrees to one another,” Grangeland said. “Take a right at the first major road we come to. That should take us back to the freeway or its frontage road.”
After another mile or so, Harv turned right and said, “Shit.”
The northbound lanes of the freeway were stopped dead. A string of headlights stretched to the south for at least a mile. Emergency vehicles were using the shoulder to advance. The inferno at Pete’s Truck Palace must have closed down the freeway.
“Keep going under the freeway,” Grangeland said. “We’ll take a parallel road until we’re past this.”
They had to go several miles until Harv could make a right turn. Flat farmland lined both sides of the road. Harv gunned the sedan up to seventy miles an hour. Other drivers had the same idea. The once-quiet country road now looked like a prime arterial. Following the pack, Harv made a right heading north and saw the same string of bumper-to-bumper headlights in the southbound lanes of I-5. After another right turn heading east, they passed under the freeway and accelerated up the northbound on-ramp.
Ernie remained silent. Nathan knew how he felt. Hell, he’d lived it. Immediately after his capture in Nicaragua, he’d been beaten senseless and thrown into the bed of a truck under armed guard. Angry faces had sneered down at him, some spat. The drive through the jungle had seemed endless.
Nathan turned his head and addressed Ernie. “Why don’t you give us the real GPS coordinates now.”
“What are you talking about?” Ernie said.
“I’ll be honest with you. You’ve got a nasty ten years ahead of you before you get the needle. And you are getting a needle. Think about it, death row at San Quentin with Scott Peterson, your brother Leonard, and the rest of the tattooed mutts. Within your first week, Big Bubba will make you his wife and swap you with all of his friends for packs of cigarettes.”
“Shut the fuck up, McBride.”
“Give me the real GPS coordinates and I’ll give you another option.”
“What other option?”
“A bullet to the head.”
Ernie said nothing,
“See, it’s like this,” Nathan continued. “I’m not turning you over to the FBI just yet. I’ve decided you’re coming with us to the coordinates and if you’re lying about them, we’ll start over. I’ve still got fifty-seven minutes left with you.” He made eye contact with Grangeland, who looked stressed.
Harv jumped in. “It costs the State of California a million dollars to go through the death-row appeals process. Isn’t that money better spent somewhere else?”
“I can’t argue with that,” she said, “but I need to be insulated from what you’re doing here.”
“Special Agent Grangeland, consider yourself insulated. I don’t care how you deal with it. Plug your nose, look the other way, pretend it never happened, whatever works.”
“I’ve got your word you won’t take me in?” Ernie asked, closing the deal.
“Marine to Marine. Now give me the real coordinates.”
Chapter 24
After dropping Harv, Grangeland, and Bridgestone at Sacramento Executive Airport, Nathan pulled his cell and looked at his watch. It would be a little after 0700, Eastern time. He dialed his father’s mobile number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Dad.”
“Nathan. Are you okay? The explosion and fire at the truck stop is all over the news.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Okay.…”
“Look, I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye. For what it’s worth, I feel like it’s my fault. I have trouble trusting people. Trusting you.”
“Nonsense. You’re my son. Just because we don’t always agree on things doesn’t mean we can’t trust each other.”
“I need to trust you. Now more than ever.”
“You can.”
“What I’m about to tell you can’t go any further. Tell no one. Absolutely no one else can know. It’s life-and-death, Dad. My life, and Harv’s.”
“What’s happened?”
“I need your word.”
“You don’t have to ask for that.”
“Your word.” He heard his dad sigh.
“Okay, I give you my word.”
It took five minutes for Nathan to tell the story and describe the plan going forward. He knew with certainty the news of the Ortega conspiracy to entrap the Bridgestones by selling them Semtex both shocked and angered his father. The only thing that surprised Nathan was how good it felt to know his dad hadn’t been in on it.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” Stone asked when Nathan had finished. “I mean, absolutely sure?”
“Yes.”
“You think you know someone. Frank and I were in Korea together, fought side by side. I can’t believe this whole thing is about revenge against Ernie Bridgestone.”
“It hurts, I know. Harv feels betrayed too. There is some good news. We recovered most of the missing Semtex. Nearly three hundred pounds.”
“That’s good news.”
“Leonard still has ten bricks and some blasting caps.”
“What can I do to help? Name it.”
“We need satellite images of the location where they stashed their cash.”
“I’ll get to work on it right away. Do you have exact coordinates?”
Nathan rattled them off. “I need twenty-four by twenty-four-inch prints at three meters per inch, ten meters per inch, and one hundred meters per inch. Radial from point zero. Did you copy that?”
“Yes, I’m writing it down.”
“Get me a fourth print at five hundred meters per inch. We’ll be airborne within the hour. Communication will be critical. My cell’s tied into the NavCom of my helicopter. It usually works over urban areas, but in the more remote locations, all bets are off.”
“Nathan, it’ll be hard to keep this under wraps once the military’s involved.”
Nathan didn’t respond.
“Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.”
“Do your best, Dad, that’s all I can ask. I think Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana is our best bet to download the images.”
“I know Malmstrom well. We put our first Minutemen silos up there.”
“Listen, I’ve got to go. We’ve got a long flight ahead of us.”
“Nathan, thank you for trusting me. I’m sorry for the things I said to you the other night.”
“Me too.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I have something to report.”
“Tell Mom I love her, okay?”
“You can tell herself when this is over.”
Nathan said nothing. He didn’t have to.
“I’ll tell her,” Stone said.
After dropping off Harv, Grangeland, and Bridgestone at Sacramento Executive Airport, he returned to the Hyatt and cleaned himself up as best he could. There was nothing he could about his head-turning trek through the lobby. He grabbed the duffels, returned to the sedan, and drove back to the airport. Grangeland looked concerned and asked about his arm. He told a white lie and handed her the medical supplies he’d stopped for on the way over.