She looks at me with a certain anxiety in her eyes. Or he could be dead, she must be thinking. But she doesn’t say it.
“We can’t wait any longer,” I tell her. “We need to get to the taxi, grab our stuff at the room, and get out there.” I point to the end of the road that runs along the top of the breakwater where it merges with the coast highway heading north. “If we lose them now, we’ll never find them again.”
We head off running as fast as we can along the path toward the canal.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Listen, thank him for us. How many units are they sending?” Thorpe listened as he penciled notes on a pad on the table.
Rhytag looked on. They were closeted in the operations center in the bowels of the FBI building with communications at their fingertips and a small army of agents and technicians working computers and handling phones.
“Any idea how long it’ll be before they get there?” Thorpe flashed all five fingers of one hand at Rhytag twice in quick succession. Ten minutes.
“Did you offer them the NEST team?”
NEST was the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, a group of scientists, technicians, and engineers operating under the U.S. Department of Energy. The teams were trained and prepared to respond to nuclear accidents or incidents anywhere in the world.
Thorpe shook his head slowly and made a face. It was apparent that the Mexican government, at least for the moment, had declined the assistance of the specialists. “So they understand they may be getting in over their heads?”
“Okay, keep me posted.” He hung up the phone.
“They’ve got thirty police units going in. The Mexican government is also bringing in some military forces to cordon off the area around the port. The problem is, the container may have already left the facility. They won’t know for at least fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Until then there’s nothing we can do but wait.”
“No. You’re wrong,” said Rhytag. “Contact the director at Homeland Security. Tell him what we’ve got and that our recommendation is that they close the border immediately. Every crossing from San Ysidro east to the Arizona border. Tell them to shut ’em down now. Nothing gets through. No cars, no trucks until we can figure out where this thing is and how to stop it. And tell them to be sure and warn our people at the border as to what they’re dealing with.”
“The second we shut the border the media’s gonna know. It’ll be all over the news. If the device is still at the port and the Mexicans stop it, the White House will hand you your head when the public finds out how close they came to another nine-eleven or worse,” said Thorpe.
He was right. Too many law enforcement officials would have to be told what they were looking for to keep it under wraps.
“Then the White House spinmeisters can make up a story to feed the media. We can’t stick our head in the sand any longer. I’ll take full responsibility. Besides, what if the Mexicans don’t stop it?”
Thorpe didn’t have an answer.
By the time we get to the canal, Herman has a taxi waiting. Maricela and I bundle into the backseat as Herman gives directions to the driver in Spanish.
From the backseat of the taxi I am straining my eyes through the binoculars to see if I can pick up any sight of the container. From here it is a long distance across the water, and the Amora is in the way. But I can see part of the road leading out of the port, and there is a train of trucks on it, heading for the highway.
“It was a strange shade of green,” says Maricela. She is talking about the container. “It had some lettering sprayed on one side.”
She is right. I see the container on the back of a truck just as the taxi passes a building on the left that cuts off my view.
“You wanna stop and pick up the bags at the hotel?” says Herman.
“Leave them. We can’t take the time.” I can once again see the truck with the container, across the harbor. It is only a few hundred feet from the exit gate at the port where a uniformed guard is checking vehicles and paperwork. If we could only get there, we could stop it.
“Herman, tell him to pick it up, otherwise we’re gonna lose him going through town. If he gets out on that highway and takes a turnoff, we’ll never see him again.”
Herman says something to the driver, and the man says something back.
“He says his foot’s on the floor,” says Herman.
“Great! Let’s hope there are a lot of hills between here and wherever that truck’s going, because we’re never going to catch him at the gate.”
We make the wide swing to the left around the port, headed for where the port facility joins the highway.
When I look once more with the field glasses, the truck with the container is gone. It’s already cleared the gate. As the road curves to the right and heads up the hill, I see it chugging up the grade about a quarter of a mile ahead of us. It’s just ahead of a U-Haul truck struggling up the hill, unable to pass it.
Herman points with his finger and says something to the taxi driver who slides into the right lane and slows down. The highway is first world, two lanes in each direction with a center divider and cross traffic only where the divider is broken.
There are several vehicles between us and the cargo carrier. The driver wants to know if he should pass them. Herman tells him no, to keep a few of the vehicles between us, but not to lose the container truck.
As we continue to climb the hill, the few cars ahead of us begin to pull out. Within ten minutes we find ourselves directly behind the U-Haul, trying to stay shielded behind the big box truck and not appear too obvious.
Herman tells the driver to back off a little and the guy says something back to him. “He wants to know how far we’re going,” says Herman.
“Tell him we’ll know when we get there.”
This doesn’t seem to satisfy him. He has a longer conversation with Herman.
“He says he stops at Rosarita,” says Herman. “He won’t go any farther north than that. He says the traffic up around Tijuana coming back this way in the afternoon is too much. He’ll lose too many fares.”
“Tell him we’ll pay him for his time.”
“You’re getting pretty extravagant,” says Herman. “Maybe we should count up our cash again, see what we’ve got left.”
“We’ve got close to six hundred,” I tell him. “For that he ought to take us to San Francisco.”
“I can tell you one thing, if they cross the border he won’t go beyond there. He can’t unless he’s got a visa and insurance. Maricela’s gonna have the same problem, and if you try and cross you’ll get your ass arrested.” The minute he says it Herman looks at me and bites his lip.
We both glance at Maricela. She is looking so intently out the side window, her face pressed up close to the glass, that she didn’t even hear him.
“If they try to cross the border, at least one of us has to make it to the kiosk to get the border patrol to stop them,” I tell him.
“That means me, since you can’t run for squat,” he says.
A half hour past the turnoff to El Descanso the road becomes a freeway and the driver tells us we’re approaching Rosarita. Just as he says it the U-Haul hits its turn signal to make a right on the next off-ramp.
Herman tells the taxi driver to slow down, and as we fall back I nearly panic when I realize the container truck is no longer out in front on the highway. Then I see it on the off-ramp in front of the U-Haul.
“Derecho. Derecho,” says Herman.