The Gatekeeper

Thirty-One

Kelly scanned the scene. The perimeter now encompassed a full half mile around the warehouse. They had passed through two checkpoints to get within one hundred yards of the building. The entire warehouse had been covered in plastic sheeting, and the parking lot was bumper-to-bumper mobile labs and office units. It was like a small city had been raised within the past twelve hours. Dozens of people hurried from trailer to trailer, most wearing full Hazmat suits and masks, looking like so many moths fluttering around a bulb. It was madness, Kelly thought, taking it all in.

“Jesus,” Rodriguez said, almost reverently. Kelly guessed she wore the same expression of befuddled awe. In all her time with the Bureau, she’d never seen anything quite like this. It drove home the enormity of what they had stumbled across.

Someone directed them to one of the many trailers, and she stood on the threshold. It was packed with people, a solid mass of bodies. Leonard leaned against a desk on the far side of the room, flanked by two other agents in matching suit pants and windbreakers. He was in his mid-fifties, taller than average with a beaklike nose and dyed hair. Against the opposite wall, facing him, stood Jake.

Kelly was surprised by a sudden welling of emotion. All the events of the past week caught up with her, and she had to restrain herself from rushing into his arms. As if sensing her, Jake turned. A slow smile spread across his face and he crossed the trailer in two long strides, elbowing people out of the way. He grabbed her in a tight hug and kissed her hair.

“Hey, babe. I missed you,” he whispered.

Kelly let herself relax into him for a moment before becoming aware of everyone’s stares. She stiffened and pulled away, managing a weak smile.

“So you two know each other,” Leonard said drily.

“This is my fiancé,” Kelly said, self-consciously running a hand through her hair.

“We were discussing what a strange coincidence that is.” Leonard’s face had hardened, as if he’d like nothing better than to slap handcuffs on her wrists.

“So has there been a break in the case?” Rodriguez asked, crowding in behind her.

Kelly stepped forward to give him room, at the same time surveying the rest of the crowd. She recognized Syd, who issued a nod along with her usual look of dismissive disdain. Another agent, an Asian man, stood next to her. The mood in the trailer wasn’t friendly.

“You could say that. Apparently the vic hired these people,” Leonard said, pronouncing it as though their status as people was in question, “to find his daughter. Then he disappeared.”

“Where’s the daughter?” Kelly asked, turning to Jake.

“Fine. At a hospital in Sacramento with her mother and sister.”

Leonard’s cell rang and he made a show of turning away, as if privacy was possible under the circumstances. “Agent Leonard.”

They all stayed in place as if frozen, waiting for him to finish. Kelly felt Jake’s arm wrap around her waist, his thumb stroking her side through her shirt, and she repressed a shiver. Now that he was here, all of her doubts about their future seemed silly.

Leonard hung up.

“Well?” Syd asked.

“I’m afraid everything about this investigation is on a need-to-know basis,” Leonard said dismissively.

“This is my investigation,” Kelly said fiercely, taking a step forward.

“Was. Now it’s being overseen by a joint task force, under the umbrella of Homeland Security.” Leonard eyed her coolly. “You don’t like that, take it up with your boss. He signed off on it.”

“C’mon everyone. Let’s take this down a few notches,” the Asian agent said. “We’re all on the same team.”

“Not really,” retorted Leonard. “Unless I’m mistaken, those two-” he pointed at Jake and Syd “-are civilians.”

“Civilians who have information about your vic, and might be able to shine light on what’s going on,” the agent continued calmly. “And I’m guessing time is short. We play nice, everyone wins.”

Leonard opened his mouth to reply, but Syd cut him off. “I know what Randall was working on. What he might have given them.”

Jake snapped his head toward her. Interesting, Kelly thought, that Syd hadn’t shared that information with her new partner.

“We’re already working on…”

“Getting that information? From the facility?” Syd snorted. “Good luck with that. I’m guessing they’re so busy trying to cover their asses right now they’ve buried you in red tape.”

Leonard looked peeved, but shrugged. “So? What’s the connection?”

“Randall was in charge of making sure all low-level radioactive waste was transferred to a few high security facilities. My guess is, he was paid to reroute a few of them. That jibe with what you found inside?” Syd jerked her head toward the warehouse.

“Maybe,” Leonard said noncommittally.

“Randall was a trained physicist. If they were trying to construct, oh, say, a dirty bomb-” Leonard stiffened visibly at the word, and Syd flashed a smug smile “-they’d need someone like him to provide access to radiation sources. So they kept him at the facility, and kidnapped his daughter when money wasn’t enough to persuade him. Then they grabbed him for the second phase, to process the raw material. That fit your scenario?”

Leonard shifted, glancing at his partners before saying, “It fits.”

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.

“What did you say to him?” Dante asked, breaking the silence.

“Who?”

“The cop. Why’d he laugh?”

“Told him it was about time the Chinese had to deal with something stamped Made in Texas,” Creeper said.

It was the longest sentence Creeper had uttered in the four years he’d known him, which was startling in and of itself. But that, combined with the fact that he’d made a joke, and to a cop, no less…Dante processed that, then cracked up. “Jesus, Creeper. Didn’t know you had it in you.”