Memorial Day

Sixty-Five

Hanover County deputy sheriff David Sherwood was looking forward to his weekend off. He'd just purchased a new Jet Ski that could do eighty miles an hour, and this would be his first chance to really open it up. This was his first Memorial Day weekend off since joining the department four years ago, and he planned on spending it down on Lake Gaston on the Virginia-North Carolina border. One of his high school buddies had purchased a little place with five beds, and Sherwood planned on getting one of them. More than twenty people had been invited and told to bring tents and sleeping bags. Sherwood didn't do the tent thing. Not unless some little hottie wanted him to share her sleeping bag.

No, he definitely had his eye on one of the beds, and that meant when his shift was over at 2:00 he would have to get his ass out of town quickly or it would be tent city. His truck was all gassed up and his shiny new wet bike was hooked up and ready to go. All he had to do was pick up a case of beer on his way down and he'd be in great shape.

The pickup truck and its trailer had caught his attention several miles back down the road. Sherwood had a theory. Most people who pulled trailers were morons, himself excluded, of course. For starters they thought that the two-wheeled box they were pulling gave them an excuse to dispose with all common sense and the rules of the road.

This particular moron had pulled off in such a way that the tail end of his trailer was practically hanging out in traffic. And, of course, he hadn't bothered to turn his hazards on. Sherwood had had no idea just how many stupid people there were in the world until he got into law enforcement.

As Sherwood pulled his cruiser to a stop he hit his lights and radioed in that he was making a routine traffic stop. A lot of people would die on the road this weekend, and just maybe he could talk some sense into this idiot before he caused an accident.

Sherwood noticed the Georgia plates on the trailer and shook his head. He got out and walked up to the already open driver's window of the vehicle. He kept his right hand on the butt of his gun and stopped just short of the driver as he'd done a thousand times before.

"Is there a problem here?" he asked.

"No. No problem," the man answered, sounding no more nervous than the average motorist.

Sherwood noticed a slight accent. He couldn't place it but it definitely wasn't southern. "License and registration, please." The man handed it over immediately, which was always a good sign. Sherwood studied the Georgia license, and then looked over the top of his wraparound sunglasses at the driver. The photo matched the face.

"Where are you from, David?"

"Atlanta," Hasan answered.

"I can see that...I mean, where are you from originally?"

"Oh...I'm sorry. Greece." Hasan was suddenly grateful that al-Yamani had made them rehearse their stories over and over.

Sherwood nodded and then looked at the other two men in the vehicle. Something about the man in the backseat struck him. He was small, like a teenager, and he looked jumpy.

"Did I do something wrong?" Hasan wanted to distract the police officer's attention from the nervous scientist.

Foreigners,Sherwood thought. "This isn't exactly the best place to pull over."

"Sorry."

"You should be more careful when you're pulling a trailer like this. Your tail end is hanging out in traffic." Sherwood would probably let him off with a verbal warning, but he'd make him sweat a bit. "Sit tight while I run your license, and I'll be back in a couple of minutes." Sherwood took another look at the passenger in the backseat. There was something about the guy, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

Sherwood began walking back to his cruiser. He paused briefly and memorized the plate on the truck and then stopped at the trailer and looked at the heavy padlock. The padlock and the Georgia plates caused something to click. And then he thought of the dark skin and the accents. Greece wasn't the Middle East, but it was close and besides, Sherwood didn't have the foggiest idea what a Greek guy was supposed to sound like. He'd been tired when he came into work at 5:00 a.m., but he seemed to remember some stink that the Feds were making about a couple of foreign guys they were looking for who had been in the Atlanta area. He couldn't remember specific features from the photos he had glanced at, but he did remember that one of the guys looked a little young to be a terrorist.

Sherwood stepped away from the trailer and looked back at the truck. The driver was watching him intently in the big side-view mirror. The twenty-five-year-old deputy put his right hand back on his gun and with his left hand he toggled the transmit button on his radio.

Tilting his head toward the shoulder mike he said, "Dispatch...this is..."

The deputy never finished his sentence. Nor did he see what hit him. A passing car swerved from the right lane of traffic and struck him in the left leg, sending him bouncing off the trailer and to the ground, where his head hit violently. His eyes fluttered briefly and then closed.