Black List

CHAPTER 37

There they are. Right there,” the ranch manager said as she backed up the closed-circuit footage.

They were sitting in the security office on the first floor of the main house, built and decorated in the same Tex-Mex Mission style as the other buildings. “I have a monitor with a live feed at my place,” she continued, “but I have to come here if I want to rewind anything.”

Harvath used a trackball to slowly roll the footage backward and forward. “Do you get a lot of people who cross through the ranch?”

“The illegals, you mean?”

“Anyone. Illegals, poachers, whatever.”

“Most of them tend to be illegals moving their way up from Mexico. They hide and camp during the day, then move across the ranches down here at night. With the cloud cover and no moon, they’ve got a perfect night for it.”

It wasn’t the only thing a night like this was perfect for. “Does this happen every night?”

Maggie shook her head. “A couple of times a month, maybe.”

“When was the last time?”

She shrugged. “We’d have to go through all the footage. No one watches the cameras unless the Knights are here.”

“But you were watching.”

“I happened to be awake and something caught my eye. I wouldn’t characterize that as watching. Like I said, I only came out to make sure you-all were okay.”

Harvath froze a frame of video. Despite hunching over when they moved, they couldn’t hide their size. “These guys look pretty big to me,” he said, “or am I wrong?”

She leaned in next to him and looked at the monitor. “No, you’re right. They do look big.”

“Are the groups normally made up of four people?”

Maggie shook her head. “There isn’t a standard. For every one you see, there can be five or ten more.”

“What about clothing? Is this the kind of stuff you normally see?”

“The clothing is perfect.”

“Even with all four men wearing baseball caps?”

“It’s all perfect, but there’s something missing.”

Harvath looked at her. “What?”

“Anything these people own, they’re usually carrying it with them. But these four aren’t carrying anything. No food, no water, no plastic grocery bags. Nothing.”

It was a very good observation. “How do I zoom in?” he asked.

She showed him and Harvath tightened up as close as he could. “What do those look like to you?”

“Whatever they are,” Maggie replied as she studied the pixilated, infrared image, “they definitely aren’t cowboy boots.”

She was right. In fact, even with the rough quality of the extreme close-up, the boots they were wearing looked exactly like what Harvath envisioned had left the prints near the generator.

Zooming out, he scrolled through the rest of the night’s footage, trying to ascertain when and how the men had crossed onto the property, what they had done while there, and when and how they had left. The problem was that there were large gaps. The men had been captured on only a couple of the cameras, and they never showed their faces. They’d either been extremely lucky or had known exactly what they were doing, purposely avoiding the cameras.

As he played some of the footage again, Maggie said, “Freeze that.”

Harvath stopped the feed and peered at the image. “What do you see?”

“Now that I look at it again, there’s something not right about the clothes.”

“How?”

“It can be pretty cold at night this time of the year. You normally see these people wearing multiple layers that they can take on and off as they need to. It’s warm tonight, but none of these guys has any extra clothes tied around their waists. Now zoom in on the last one in that frame there.”

“What am I looking for?”

“The shirtsleeves. See how high up the cuffs ride on his arms? Now pull out just a bit and look at all four of them. Their pants and boots fit, but nothing else does.”

“Because those aren’t their clothes,” stated Harvath.

“Then where’d they get them from?”

Harvath remembered the buzzards from earlier that were circling the watering hole and wondered if maybe it wasn’t deer that had stopped to drink there. “I think I may have an idea,” he said.

Before leaving the house, Harvath talked Maggie into opening up the gun room for him. It looked like something out of a British castle: rows of mahogany cabinets filled with expensive hunting rifles, watched over by exotic animal heads adorning the walls. Down the center was a long glass table with drawers containing a range of handguns.

Some of their barrels were threaded, which meant there probably were suppressors somewhere. Maggie confirmed this, but explained to him that they were kept in a separate safe that only the Knights had the combination to.

It would have been a helpful thing to have, but he’d have to live without it.

Harvath selected a Heckler & Koch Mark 23 pistol, took a handful of spare magazines, and helped himself to one of Mr. Knight’s Benchmade knives. All told, he was in and out of the room in under two minutes.

He had thought of using Maggie’s cell phone to call Nicholas, but the man was already on alert. Besides, for all he knew, Maggie’s phone was being monitored, and reaching out to Nicholas might set something in motion before he could get back, so he had decided against it.

Not knowing how many eyes were on the ranch, Harvath lay on the floor of Maggie’s truck as she drove out one of the service gates.

A mile down the county road, she pulled onto a rutted access path and brought the truck to a stop. Harvath climbed out of the back and into the passenger seat. “How far away are we?” he asked.

“Less than a mile.”

He nodded, and Maggie put the truck in gear and resumed driving. He needed to check out that watering trough. Seeing the ill-fitting clothing of the “illegals” on the CCTV footage had set alarm bells ringing in his head.

As they were nearing the trough, Harvath signaled for Maggie to stop.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I think there’s a vehicle up ahead.”

“Where? I don’t see anything.”

“Kill the lights. Shut off the engine.”

Maggie did as she was told.

“Do you have a flashlight?” he asked.

The ranch manager nodded, opened the armrest, and handed him one.

“When I come back,” he said, “I’ll let you know it’s me by flashing the light three times; two longs and a short. If you see anyone else, shoot them.”

Maggie looked at him like he was crazy. “What are you talking about?”

“Trust me,” he replied. Then, after disabling the dome light, he climbed out of the truck and disappeared.

Creeping toward the vehicle he had seen in the bounce of Maggie’s headlights, he reflected on what he would do if tasked with assaulting Three Peaks Ranch. Surveillance would be the first order of the day, but before that, he’d need a place to hide whatever he was driving. You couldn’t just leave a car parked along a county road out here. It would attract too much attention. You needed someplace to hide it, close enough that you could cover the rest of the distance by foot.

Using an adjacent ranch that abutted your target made sense, especially if the area you picked wasn’t currently in use. The windmill was also a good landmark, easy to navigate back to.

It was the presence of water, though, that had bothered Harvath. Water didn’t attract only animals, it also attracted human beings.

Moving through the darkness, he arrived at a dark Dodge Durango that had been pulled off the road and partially hidden behind a tall clump of scrub. The doors were locked and there was nothing inside. Reaching his hand out, the hood was cool to the touch. How long the SUV had been sitting there was anyone’s guess. Twenty yards on, he could make out the silhouette of the windmill. Beneath it would be the trough that it pumped water into.

Harvath stood for several moments and listened for any sound indicating there were people up ahead. He didn’t hear any and quietly continued on toward the trough. He came across the first body ten yards on.

It looked to be a young Hispanic man who had been shot in the back of the head, execution-style. He had been dead for at least a day, probably more, and his flesh had been picked apart.

Moving onto the trough, he found five more bodies, a mix of men and women. All had been shot at close range and dumped into a shallow grave. Whoever did the burying, though, hadn’t realized how quickly the bodies would be dug up and feasted upon by scavengers.

Playing the light over the carnage, Harvath was able to re-create enough to figure out what had happened. Many illegals carried maps marked with “safe” places to camp and find water along their routes. Judging by what he saw, somebody else was already here when they arrived and it didn’t end well.

Four of the victims had been stripped to the waist. Scattered around the trough were the illegals’ few possessions, mostly in plastic grocery bags, just as Maggie had said.

Studying the ground, Harvath discovered perfect matches for the boot prints around the generator outside the guesthouse. He had seen enough.

After flattening the tires of the Durango with his knife, he rejoined Maggie, making sure to signal her with the flashlight before he got too close.

“What did you find?” she asked.

“You need to get back to the ranch as fast as you can,” he replied.

The look on his face must have said it all. Maggie didn’t ask any more questions. Firing up the truck, she turned it around and stepped on the gas as Harvath began giving her instructions.

When they reached the main county road, Maggie headed toward Three Peaks Ranch. Half a mile out, she slowed down and Harvath opened his door and leapt out.