Kelly recognized the look in Jake’s eye. She’d only seen him that angry once before. “And you figured this out when?” He asked evenly, the accusation plain in his voice.
Syd waved him off. “Relax. It came to me on the flight, once George told us what they found here.”
“Thanks for the input,” Leonard said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.”
“What, that didn’t help?” the Asian guy asked.
“Oh, it helped. But how the material got here isn’t the issue right now.”
“You want to know where it’s going,” Kelly said, suddenly understanding. The entire case flashed through her mind: the illegals, Jackson Burke, the float. “And I think I know.”
Every eye turned to her.
“How the hell would you?” Leonard said. “Agent Jones, you know too much about all this for my comfort.”
“Maybe because she’s good at her job,” Jake said, stepping forward, fists clenched.
Kelly flashed him a look, and he stepped back. “Like I said, it’s my case, I just didn’t know what we were following. But now…” Something dawned on her, and she froze.
“Well?” Leonard said impatiently.
“What’s the date tomorrow?” she asked, turning to Rodriguez.
“The fourth.” His eyes widened. “Oh, shit. The Independence Day parades.”
“Exactly.” Kelly nodded. “That’s why there was a float in the warehouse with the illegals.”
“Yes, that occurred to us,” Leonard said drily. “It’s the most logical date for an attack.”
“So you’ll be checking parade staging areas?” Kelly asked, deflated by his response.
Leonard barked a laugh. “What, all of them? We know they had multiple tractor trailers in the warehouse, they could have driven the bombs hundreds of miles by now. Based on the vic’s time of death, our best guess is they pulled out twenty-four hours ago. That gives us a range of nearly twelve hundred miles.”
“Jesus, they could be almost anywhere in the country,” Jake said.
“Wait,” Syd said. “Bombs? Meaning there’s more than one?”
Leonard glanced around at them, seemed to decide something, and nodded. “Inside the warehouse we found iridium, the main component in radiography cameras. They have a few industrial uses, mainly oil pipeline inspection. Once we got that info, we matched up deliveries to facilities, and it turns out-” he glanced at Syd “-three trucks were rerouted on the twenty-ninth by our vic. Each held one camera. And each camera has enough raw material for a dirty bomb. Based on the tire tracks, we’re looking for three semis, and maybe that many bombs. Or they could have consolidated the material into one bomb, or spread it among dozens. We have no idea.”
“Jesus,” Jake said. “How many people could one of these bombs take out?”
“Depends,” Leonard said. “The initial blast wouldn’t be as strong as a nuclear explosion. But in a major city, a bomb goes off and people hear radiation…” His brow darkened as he said, “It could induce mass panic. Plus the fallout would pollute the area for months, or years. Cleanup would be in the billions.”
“It could cripple the country,” Kelly said.
“And make 9/11 look minor by comparison,” Leonard concluded.
“So you’re looking at likely targets,” Syd said.
Leonard nodded. “Unfortunately, there are parades in nearly every major city tomorrow, and a hell of a lot of minor ones. Some of the parades require registration permits for floats, some don’t. And there’s no way we can cover them all.”
A pall descended over the trailer.
“So what do we do?” Jake said after a minute.
“We’re already doing everything we can,” Leonard said, ushering them out. “So thanks for the help, and we’ll be-”
“I have a lead you can follow up on,” Kelly said. “But in exchange, I want to stay on this case.”
Dante tensed as they approached the checkpoint. Looked like a standard agriculture stop, but now that the Feds had found the warehouse, it could mean almost anything. Creeper was driving, and he glanced at Dante.
“Be cool,” Dante said. Creeper got his nickname by being so notoriously unflappable it creeped people out. He’d killed a family of five once, then made himself a sandwich and watched TV before leaving. Dante figured on a run like this, the most important thing was to have someone who wouldn’t get flustered by a speeding stop. Plus Creeper had a license to drive these rigs.
One of the cops let through a white Toyota and waved them forward. Creeper eased the eighteen-wheeler between the orange cones. The cop motioned for Creeper to roll down his window.
Dante gnawed on the inside of his lip, rankled by the cop’s attitude. Typical CHP asshole, he thought with disdain. Always power-tripping. Another cop appeared on his side of the truck. He made a show of grinning, even waved and said, “Morning, officer.”
“Where you boys headed?”
“ San Diego,” Creeper said.
“Yeah? Coming in from where? Looks like you got a full load back there.”
“Drill bits, headed for China,” Dante said. There were, in fact, crates half-filled with drill bits, to compensate for the added weight of the lead-encased barrel the bomb was stored in.
The cop examined them for another minute. Dante could practically see the wheels spinning in his head. Obviously he and Creeper weren’t upstanding, law-abiding citizens; any cop worth his salt could smell that. But then, plenty of truckers had done time. Not a reason to stop them.
Please don’t inspect the truck, Dante thought over and over, a litany in his head.
“You folks mind pulling over? Think we’ll have a look inside,” the cop at Creeper’s window said.
Creeper said, “Yes, officer,” and drove to the shoulder where another cop waited with a clipboard. Dante’s pulse raced, and he fought to keep the tension from showing in his face. He glanced over at Creeper, who still wore an impenetrable mask. But his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. They were so fucking close now, too. They were the final truck in a caravan that originated in Houston. Over the past two days they’d driven a hard line north, then west, covering more than one thousand miles. They’d stopped to check preparations at each site, then moved on, their numbers dwindling until only he and Creeper remained. Somewhere around Tucson it occurred to Dante that in the past few days he’d seen more of the country than he had the entire rest of his life. Most of it by night, of course, but still. It was something.
And now this could be it, Dante thought. A traffic stop that ruined everything and sent him to death row or worse, Gitmo. The Feds claimed to have closed it, but that was probably a lie like everything else they said. Shit, being penned in with a bunch of towel heads would be worse than death.
Calm down, Dante told himself. Unless they dug past three rows of crates, they wouldn’t encounter anything suspicious. And like most cops, they were probably lazy at heart.
Creeper leaned forward, reaching for the piece under the front seat. Dante grabbed his hand, stopping him, and shook his head. Too risky. If things went south, Dante would handle it from the cab. In which case he’d probably be leaving Creeper behind, but no need for him to know that. Creeper climbed out of the truck cab and went to unlock the back. Dante sat there, legs jiggling up and down. He heard the panel door slide up. A scraping sound, wood on metal-they’d moved one box. The crates were heavy as hell, though, he’d made sure of that. Dante could picture them shining a beam over the wooden crates, trying to peer into the depths of the truck. Good luck, he thought. Now let us go.
The sound of the door sliding shut again, a clank as it latched. Dante released a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Creeper said something, and one of the cops laughed. A second later Creeper climbed back into the cab. The cop, face split wide in a grin, waved them back onto the highway. Dante watched the roadblock diminish in his side mirror, until they went over a bump in the road and it vanished completely.