Lethal Agent (Mitch Rapp #18)(95)
CHAPTER 49
WEST OF MONTEMORELOS
MEXICO
RAPP held the hand pump on top of a fifty-five-gallon fuel drum while Coleman worked it. Their pilot had the nozzle inserted in their rented chopper and was encouraging them with nonstop updates on their progress.
They’d set down on a remote dirt track fifteen minutes ago and, after a fair amount of searching, located the fuel cache left for them. The foliage was thicker and the terrain more undulating than Rapp had expected in this part of Mexico. Mountains were visible in the distance and they’d flown past cliffs that looked to be more than a thousand feet high. Population centers were pretty spread out and largely connected by two-lane rural highways. Road surfaces weren’t bad, but inconsistent enough that the myriad transport trucks traveling over them were doing so at fairly conservative speeds.
The phone in his pocket started to vibrate, and he squinted at the screen through the midmorning sun.
“Go ahead,” he said, picking up and leaving the former SEAL to complete the job.
“We’ve got a good candidate,” Claudia said.
“Another one?”
They had nine cars on the road, looking for refrigerator trucks, supplemented by two private planes and the chopper they were currently refueling. At first he’d thought it wasn’t enough, but now he was wondering if it was too many. Passing plate numbers and transportation company names to Agency analysts had turned out to be an inexact science. They’d already had three false alarms—one caused by some misfiled paperwork in Guadalajara, one by a simple transposition of a numbers, and one that probably was a smuggler, but not the one they were after.
“This is solid,” she said. “We have circumstantial evidence that it originated in Córdoba around the same time that warehouse burned.”
Rapp nodded. Soft, but at least it was something.
“Do we have anyone in contact with it?”
“One car ahead. He’s stopped and will be in a position to get photos in about ten minutes.”
“What about Scott’s guys?”
“Bruno’s about half an hour from the target. Mas and Wick are probably more like an hour and a half out.”
“Understood.”
“Gary Statham’s waiting for your orders, and we have spec ops teams keeping a low profile at all the viable crossings. But this is starting to get tight, Mitch. Based on the maps we’re using, Halabi’s people could be within three hours of the nearest border. According to Irene, the president’s starting to panic. He wants to close them.”
Rapp looked out at the landscape surrounding him. The plan was still to let ISIS roll onto American soil unchallenged. Once they were on the U.S. side, a sniper would pump a single round into the driver and the army’s biohazard team would basically put a plastic bag over the entire site. On a gut level, it was a terrifying scenario, but it got better the more he thought about it. A semi at a border crossing was easily controlled—one car in front and one in back were enough to completely immobilize it. The driver was easily taken out and his body would be contained inside the cab. The likelihood that the people in back would have the ability to escape the trailer on their own was pretty remote, but even if they did, they wouldn’t make it two feet before they took a bullet to the chest.
“Tell her to hold him off. Right now we’re in reasonably good shape. We might not know for sure where Halabi’s people are but we’re fairly certain they’re contained and all together. If we lose that, we’re screwed.”
“I’ll relay the message.”
He heard a shout and saw Coleman waving him over. They were done refueling and the chopper’s blades were already starting to rotate.
“Send me the coordinates of that truck. We’ll be in the air inside of two minutes.”
? ? ?
“Did you say Grupo Amistoso?” Rapp shouted into the microphone hanging in front of his mouth.
Coleman, who was sitting next to him in the back of the chopper, gave him the thumbs-up. Rapp focused a pair of binoculars on a distant semi, but the trailer didn’t carry the logo they were looking for.
“That’s not it, Fred,” he said. “We’re still too far south.”
“Roger that,” their pilot said.
Coleman nudged him and slid a portable computer onto his lap. Rapp clicked on the file Claudia had sent and was rewarded with a series of high-resolution images depicting a truck driving along a straight stretch of highway. He enlarged one and focused on the windshield. Whoever had taken the photo was smart enough to use a polarizing filter, giving detail to the inside of the cab.
Muhammad Attia.
The surge of adrenaline that he expected didn’t materialize. The opposite, really. All he felt was a profound sense of relief.
“This is our guy.”
Coleman pumped a fist in the air.
“Fred, get eyes on him, but stay way back. We don’t want to get made. We need to find out where the closest exits off that road are and make sure they’re covered. Pull the planes back and keep our guy on the ground with him. Scott, what’s Bruno’s ETA?”
“Call it five minutes. Mas and Wick are still about an hour out.”
“Okay. We need to line up people and vehicles along every possible path so we can keep staggering them. We’re just here to keep an eye on him and stay invisible. Make sure everyone’s clear. No interference and nothing that could call attention to us.”