NEW BOSTON, TEXAS
John Scroggins was dozing in his seat after his dawn-to-ten shift at the wheel. Absalom Bell had made the White Sands run before, but Scroggins was primarily a Florida-to-Maine man for Trask Industries. The flatness of the land, the will-sapping heat just outside the door, the whitewash bluntness of the sun-none of these were for him.
“You might as well be driving through hell,” he had told Bell when he turned over the wheel a few minutes before.
The sameness of the world around him included the sounds-the whoosh of air moving past at 80 mph, the tuning-fork sound of the hybrid engine, the hollow whisper of the tires on the road. Save for a vintage hot rod that passed them, there was nothing new.
Until there wasn’t.
Scroggins felt the dull drumming before he heard it.
“Is the engine okay?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“That ain’t us,” Bell said. “It’s them.”
“Eh?” Scroggins cracked an eye. It took a moment before he could see through the white glare of the windshield. The pale blue of the sky formed beyond it, and in that sky he saw three silver-white bugs. They were low on the horizon, just above the dashboard, and getting larger-and finally louder-by the moment. He felt as if he were sitting in a vibrating chair in a furniture showroom.
“Definitely not a traffic copter eye in the sky,” Bell said, sipping coffee.
“Must be some kind of maneuvers,” Scroggins said.
“How-to-fly-in-a-triangle training,” Bell joked and chuckled.
The Bell-Boeing V-22 Ospreys continued in a straight, sinister line along the interstate. They grew larger as they approached, their tilt-rotor pylons rippling like snakes in the heat rising from the asphalt.
Scroggins shifted uneasily, glanced in the side-view mirror, sat up, drummed anxiously on his knees. “Maybe you ought to pull over,” he suggested.
“What for? They ain’t the damn highway patrol.”
“No, but they are,” Scroggins said.
Bell looked in his mirror. Just coming over the horizon was a line of Ford Police Interceptors, their dark chassis blending with the asphalt in a way that made their white tops and red and blue lights seem to float forward.
“You running guns?” Scroggins asked.
“No. Heroin,” Bell replied.
“Don’t joke,” Scroggins said. “They may have some kind of listening shit.”
“Well, what kinda dumb question is that?”
“The kind that makes me wonder why we’ve got the law and the air force converging on our asses.”
“Maybe they’re after each other,” Bell said. “Some kinda drill. And they’re navy, not air force.”
“Excuse me all to hell,” Scroggins said.
The driver slowed and pulled off the road. The men watched as the THP vehicles neared-there were four of them-and the choppers formed a line in front of them, straddling the interstate. Their six main rotors were literally shaking their insides from waist to throat now, the propellers churning dirt from the plains below them. The brush struck Scroggins as ancient peoples waving and swaying before their gods. He wished he felt more like a god and less like a cactus.
The VTOL aircraft on the right descended. It set down ahead of them, beside the road, while the other two hovered at around 200 feet. The THP vehicles arrived almost simultaneously, spinning off the road, two on either side. Men with rifles got out and stood behind the open doors.
“Holy shit,” Scroggins said. “It is us.”
“Man, I swear I don’t know what’s goin’ on.”
“Don’t tell it to me, ” Scroggins said.
“Yeah? How do I know this ain’t about you?”
“I confess, brother. I’m a mule.”
“I’m serious-”
“And I ain’t, man,” Scroggins said. “Maybe you should call HQ.”
Bell nodded. The Minotaur was at his side, and he picked it up.
“Put your hands on the dashboard!” a mechanical-sounding voice blared from behind him. “Both of you, now! ”
Scroggins put his hands ahead of him slowly. Bell raised his, then rotated them down to the padded vinyl. The men didn’t know whether to look ahead or into the mirror. Armed men were emerging from the Osprey. They were covered head to foot, crouched behind raised weapons as they approached. It looked to Scroggins as if some of the automatic rifles were aimed beyond them.
“Lower your weapons!” shouted an amped voice from the Osprey.
“This definitely ain’t no drill,” Bell said.
“Just thinkin’ that myself,” Scroggins replied. “I’m sure hopin’ they’re mad at each other and we just got caught in-”
“Persons in the Trask vehicle,” said the voice from the Osprey. “Open both doors and emerge slowly.”
“I’m guessin’ that means we have to take our hands off the dashboard,” Scroggins said. “On three?”
“Huh?” Bell said.
“We gettin’ out?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Shit, I just can’t figure this.”
“I think we’re way past trying figuring anything,” Scroggins said. “One… two…”
On three, both men reached out and pushed open the doors.
“Nobody go shootin’ us!” Scroggins yelled as he swiveled in his seat and leaned his head out. His hands were raised as he stepped from the cab. “You guys hear me? Which way do we face?”
The Osprey decided that for them. The rotor wash from the transport was pelting them with dead foliage, sand, and pebbles. Both men turned their backs to the air force detachment. Scroggins didn’t like what he saw ahead of them. It reminded him of pictures he had seen at the Atlanta History Center from the turn-of-the-century South: early police cars and armed officers ready to face bootleggers, bank robbers, and black men. Though his brain told him he’d done nothing wrong, he started to pray.
“What do you want with these individuals?” someone in front of him said through a bullhorn.
“That is classified,” replied a voice from behind. “Stand down.”
“Stand down? Hell, we just got here,” the bullhorn replied.
“We repeat. Stand down!”
Lord Jesus, Scroggins thought. You don’t talk to Texas lawmen like that.
The military unit continued to advance. Scroggins saw the men behind the doors growing restless.
“Gentlemen, I’m just going to step from the line of fire,” Scroggins said.
“You stay where you are!” the Texan bullhorn shouted back.
“You will step backward and surrender, or we will seize you with whatever force is required!” the airman insisted.
“I’m going to do what that guy says!” Scroggins pointed both thumbs backward after considering the two commands. The one from the air force definitely had a colder sound. He glanced at Bell, who nodded.
The two men started walking back. Several airmen moved around them, toward the van. They were dressed in what had to be miserably hot long-sleeve camouflage uniforms with bulletproof vests, helmets, munitions belts, high boots, and goggles. There were four men in all. While two kept their weapons trained on the THP vehicles, the others opened the back of the van and went inside. They came out less than ten seconds later. One of them stepped wide, faced the mission leader, and ran his hand sideways across his throat. Scroggins guessed that meant what he could have told them if they’d asked: the cargo bay was empty. The four men rejoined the others.
Scroggins continued moving backward. He was watching the Texans closely, his heart a solid mass in his throat. He saw one man-the man with the bullhorn-lean toward the man beside him. They seemed to be conferring.
“Oh, man, tell me they ain’t gonna rush us,” Bell said to Scroggins as they cleared the front of the van.
“If they do, dive for the fender and hug that baby.”
Suddenly, a pair of Texans shouldered their weapons-one from behind each of the two nearest police vehicles. They rose from behind the doors with their hands raised shoulder high and started walking forward.
“Now what the hell do they want?” Scroggins asked.
He never found out. He heard boots clomp on the ground behind him, felt hands grab the fabric of his shirt at the shoulders and arms and remain there. He was turned around and found himself facing a pair of fliers with M4 carbines pointed past them-ugly little mosquito-looking black guns with barrels that made his knees turn to liquid. He was glad the hands were propping him up.
The guns jerked in little sweeping motions. “Move!” one of the men behind him said.
Bell and Scroggins half walked, half stumbled forward on liquid legs. Scroggins squinted into the hurricane winds caused by the rotors, tucked his chin into his chest, and pursed his lips tightly as he felt the dust and pieces of twig bite his face. He was helped up a step into the helicopter, still not looking, only feeling the darkness enfold him. The prickling pain stopped, and the noise changed from something harsh to something deep and throaty. Even as he was thrust into a seat and felt himself rising and tilting, he thought of something his grandmother had once told him after a tornado hit her Arkansas community: “Something ain’t so bad if you live to get a good story out of it.”
He was praying again, hard, that this was something that would impress his grandkids one day.
Lt. Samuel Calvin of the Texas Highway Patrol Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division lowered his hands as the choppers took off. Behind his dark aviator glasses his blue eyes remained fixed on the Ospreys, with a look that was somewhere between contempt and amusement.
“Everyone stand down!” he said, half turning and shouting over his shoulders. “Except you, Munson.”
“Yes, sir, Chief.”
The men got to their feet, stretching cramped legs. They lowered their weapons, reached for bottled water, and stood at ease. Only Letty Munson remained where she was. She was still crouched, watching the retreating Ospreys through her binoculars, shielding them with one hand so the lenses wouldn’t catch and reflect the sun.
“Doesn’t look like they’re taking any action,” she reported. “Those boys are headed home.”
Calvin nodded. Low on his to-do list was hanging around-let alone walking over to the van-as the choppers cut loose with incendiary ordnance of some kind.
“You were right, Lieutenant,” said the other man.
“Appears so.”
The two officers were standing behind the Trask Industries vehicle, one man on either side, their crisp light brown uniforms stained with perspiration under the armpits and around the collar.
“They follow orders like they were written by the finger of God Himself,” the thirty-one-year-old said. “Sent for two individuals. They go back with two individuals.” The blue eyes lowered as he turned his sun-leathered face toward the van. “Check the cargo back, would you, Patrolman?”
“Yes, sir.”
Calvin was on the driver’s side and walked around it. People don’t always have the information you want, or else they lie, he thought with satisfaction as he approached the open door. Evidence does not.
From the moment the THP came within visual contact of the van-and the Ospreys-Calvin knew what he wanted. The van had Georgia plates. The men had been on the road awhile. Whatever they had done, whatever the navy wanted them for, it had most likely taken place during that drive. That meant the van would bear the fingerprints of whatever was at issue here. The military didn’t confiscate it because, Calvin-a veteran of four years in army intelligence-knew, HUMINT was prized above all. Get prisoners to talk. And they clearly didn’t want a showdown with the THP. Whoever was in charge of the operation snared the targets and got out.
Calvin bent and looked into the driver’s side. He saw what he expected to see: soda cans, candy wrappers, coffee cups, two newspapers, and an iPod. The GPS was still on. He checked their route. Atlanta to New York to White Sands.
They were headed there, anyway, Calvin thought. Why the rush? To keep them out of our hands, he decided.
“The bay is clean except for muddy footprints,” the officer reported.
“That’s why they were so shiny.”
“Sir?”
“The Ospreys,” he said. “They were cleaning them. Got the order to deploy real sudden.”
He grinned. High school kids at a car wash. “Thank you, Carter. Go back to the vehicle. I’ll be there in a minute.”
The patrolman left and Calvin climbed in. He took the keys; never knew what else they might open. He checked the glove compartment. No one used it for maps anymore. There was a flashlight and a small tool kit. A first-aid kit was attached to the underside of the dashboard.
There was one thing more. It was in the small compartment between the seats, along with a packet of registration material and a St. Christopher’s medallion. A cell phone, one unlike any Calvin had ever seen. He took it, and the charger, then used his Swiss Army knife to unscrew the GPS. He tucked it under his arm and went back to his own prowler. He was most curious about the phone but did not want to risk turning it on and triggering some kind of data self-destruct code in the phone’s program.
“Take us back to division,” he said to the driver. “On the double.”
The driver signaled the turnaround to the others, adding, “And put the spurs to the flanks.”
Calvin didn’t know what he had in his little trophy, but he knew that it made him smile. He imagined one of two things would happen next: the choppers would come back when HQ found out they hadn’t swept the vehicle, or they’d dispense with the vehicular pat down and toast it from the air.
Either way, Calvin scored that one for what his grandfather used to call “us Texicans.” But as the glow of their success faded, he began to wonder what was really behind the apprehension of two men who didn’t appear to have a clue what was happening. In light of what had occurred in Baltimore and New York, followed by the alert from Trask Industries, plus the emptiness of the cargo bay-it all suggested nothing good.
He hoped to have some of those answers when they reached the mobile unit in New Boston. In the meantime, he texted a brief on-site report to the division leader so that Washington could be alerted.