The Last Line (23 page)

Teller read the relief in Castro's face and decided to push just a little harder. “One more question,” he said.

“Yes?”

“The two packages. Where are they going?”

“How should I know? To the north.”

“Do you know by which route?”

“No.” He hesitated. There was fear in Castro's eyes again.

“I think you do know. Shall we go have a word with my friend over there?”

“Look … I just heard Hamadi talking with one of the others. They were speaking Spanish, so I understood. Hamadi mentioned taking them to the ruins.”

Las ruinas.
The way Castro said the words, it sounded like a specific place, a place name, rather than a general description of a place.

“And what happens to them there?”

A shrug. “Who knows? The submarine, I suppose.”

“They're taking the crates away on a submarine?”

“Look, Hamadi simply had me bring the … the two crates here from Karachi! I don't know anything else! I swear!”

“Do you know what those devices are?”

“I was told … I was told that they held special chemicals for processing drugs. That's
all
I know! Please!”

Teller let a very relieved Castro leave after that, waited for a few moments, then strolled out of El Cocodrilo, exchanging another friendly wave with Winters and his friend as he passed. He rejoined Procario on the bench across from the
Zapoteca.

“I think,” he told the other, “that we have a lead.”

“Really? The guy saw the nukes?”

“Better than that … and he knows where they are now. C'mon. We have to put a call in to Langley.”

It promised to be a long night.

HOLIDAY INN ZÓCALO

MEXICO CITY

2315 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

Jacqueline Dominique hit
ENTER
, then leaned forward to watch as data flooded down from the satellite and across the screen of her laptop. This, she thought, was going to be a game changer.

She and Chavez had returned to her room at the Holiday Inn, and she'd spent the past several hours trying to get clearance from Langley to go deep black—operating inside of Mexico without the knowledge or approval of the local government. She was still awaiting word on that; such requests involving mere administrative details would likely not be reviewed until regular working hours tomorrow. In the meantime, Chavez had gotten her a seat on a flight back to Washington leaving Benito Juárez International at three thirty the following afternoon, just in case.

In the meantime, Teller had uploaded the results of his investigation in Chetumal to Langley, but he'd included her in a blind cc. His report mentioned two crates that likely were the missing nuclear weapons hidden in a warehouse, and an informant's statement that a submarine was hidden somewhere close by, at a place identified as “las ruinas.”

“Ruins” could mean any of a thousand locations across the Yucatán. Fifteen hundred years ago, the Mayan Empire had been at its height, with immense stone cities scattered across the jungles of what one day would be southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. Those cities, with names like Chichén Itzá, Tikal, and Copán, fascinated the modern world and continued to draw visitors from all across the globe to marvel and wonder at the stark, forest-choked relics of a vanished civilization.

Which ruins the informant was referring to was as yet unknown. However, Teller's report had discussed the probability that the submarine must be somewhere close by Chetumal. It made sense. The
Zapoteca
had brought the weapons from Pakistan to Chetumal; from there, they were being transferred to a submarine that would take them to their final destination. That implied that the submarine and the ruins were relatively close by.

Dominique called up a mapping program and began studying satellite images pulled in from the servers at Langley. The NRO had photographed the entire region extensively while searching for the
Zapoteca
over the past few days. She concentrated on satellite images of the coastline within a few miles of Chetumal. Each image had three versions, one in visible light, one in infrared, and one at radar wavelengths. She spent a lot of time going back and forth between the three, looking for anomalies.

Her bosses back at Langley, she thought, would not have approved. Image analysis was properly carried out at the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Virginia, or at CIA Headquarters itself. Field officers might be given the final, highly polished results of a satellite pass, but they certainly weren't encouraged to look at the raw data and make their own assessments.

A friend in the Office of Imagery Analysis—a department of the Agency's Intelligence Directorate—had broken the rules and given her access to these pictures. The original set, ordered to find the hiding place of the
Zapoteca,
covered so many thousands of square miles of water and jungle that weeks would pass before a full analysis would be available.

Chris Teller's discoveries in Chetumal had sharply narrowed the search field, and Dominique knew what she was looking for.

Thirty minutes later, she found it and reached for her phone.

 

Chapter Twelve

CHETUMAL HOLIDAY INN

YUCATÁN, MEXICO

0215 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

19 APRIL

“I think,” Teller said, studying the screen, “that Jackie's onto something. Look at this!”

Teller and Procario had returned to the hotel at around midnight and spent the next couple of hours composing a report to zap back to Langley. They'd found an e-mail attachment waiting for them, a collection of very large image files sent by Dominique to Teller's computer.

On the screen, a photo taken from space looked straight down on water and jungle.

Within the sheltered, inland waters of Chetumal Bay, a smaller, deeply cut bay named for the fishing town of Corozal extended westward into the jungles of northern Belize. The southern coast of Corozal Bay was actually a slender peninsula, like a fang extending three miles east into the blue waters of the Bahía de Chetumal.

On the northern coast of the peninsula, ten miles southeast of Chetumal, was a point of land and a cluster of white stone ruins called Cerros.

Teller zoomed in on the point, an equilateral triangle cloaked in forest extending north into the azure waters. A dirt road connected the site with the village of San Fernando two and a half miles to the southeast and, in roundabout fashion, with Corozal across the bay on the northern coast.

“Okay,” Procario said, looking over Teller's shoulder at the screen, “she's found some Mayan ruins ten miles from Chetumal. There are other ruins closer.”

He was referring to the ruins at Oxtankah just seven miles north up the coast from Chetumal. Both Teller and Procario had spent some time earlier that morning going over the local maps, looking for
las ruinas.

“Yeah,” Teller said. “But take a look at the same thing in IR.”

He shifted the satellite imagery to infrared. The waters of the bay turned black and cold, the land areas warmer, a deep blue green. Several brighter and hotter spots appeared scattered near the coast.

One object hot enough to show as a brilliant yellow glowed right at the line between jungle and bay.

“Huh,” Procario said. “What is
that
? Too big and hot to be a truck.”

“How about a Kilo class diesel submarine snugged up against the shore?”

Nothing showed at visible wavelengths. The submarine, if that's what it was, had been pulled close enough to the shoreline that it was well masked by the dense jungle canopy extending over the water's edge. Radar seemed to show something reflective enough to be metallic, though the water itself showed up as bright and hard under radar.

“At least two hundred feet long,” Procario noted, reaching past Teller's shoulder to use the software's ruler tool to measure the radar footprint. “Maybe two hundred twenty.”

“About the above-water length of a Kilo-class submarine resting on the surface.”

“And the heat signature is about where the exhaust vents would be.”

“That's what I was thinking.”

“How old are these?”

“Two days.”

“Not good. If the diesels were running, they were getting ready to take her out then. She's probably already left.”

Two days at twelve knots—that meant the sub could be anywhere at all within over five hundred nautical miles, maybe even off the northwestern coast of Cuba and approaching southern Florida. If those two mininukes were on board, it was very bad news indeed.

“Or she'd just arrived two days ago,” Teller pointed out. “Or they were charging her batteries, running her pumps, checking her engines—any of a dozen possible things.”

“Right there,” Procario said, pointing, “that could be an open forward hatch. Yeah. It must be hot as hell inside.”

“Exactly. I think they were running the air pumps to cool off inside.”

“Makes sense.”

A submarine was a tiny, enclosed metal cylinder with over fifty people stuffed inside. In the tropics, even sitting on the water's surface and tucked back into the shade of the trees, it would be sweltering inside, stinking of sweat and diesel fuel. The crew might well have decided to take a chance and fire up the engines in order to circulate fresh air through the vessel.

“Way too big to be a home-grown narco-sub,” Procario said. “We need a team in there, and we need it
now.
”

“I agree,” Teller said. He picked up his phone. “Let's see how long it takes to arm a lily pad.”

AVENIDA DEL PIÑÓN

MEXICO CITY

0920 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

“The traffic is horrible,” Chavez said.

“Maybe it's a sign,” Dominique told him. “I should stay put.”

She was angry. Her department head, Charles Vanderkamp, had ordered her back to Langley, siding, apparently, with de la Cruz and CISEN.

“I don't think you'll be able to convince them,” Chavez said. “Vanderkamp sounded pretty insistent.”

“He's just pissed that I found the submarine on those photos instead of him.”

“Well, you did kind of go outside the SOP,” Chavez reminded her. “Ah, that's what the holdup is. Another demonstration.”

A sea of marching people was visible ahead, marching northwest along the broad and tree-lined expanse of the Avenue del Piñón. At the forefront, protestors carried an enormous green banner:
LA PRIMAVERA DE LOS LATINOS.

The Latino Spring. They'd been hearing that phrase a lot over the past couple of days—a deliberate parallel with the “Arab Spring” of 2011. It wasn't referring to an independence movement within Mexico but showed solidarity with the Aztlanista movement back in the United States.

A traffic cop just ahead was gesturing, moving traffic off the avenue and onto a side street. Flashing lights showed where police vehicles were forming a roadblock. Traffic continued to crawl forward as the main thoroughfare leading from downtown out to the airport was diverted.

“I didn't break any regs,” Dominique told him.

“No, but you're probably due for the official you-need-to-be-part-of-the-team lecture. If you're lucky, they won't accuse you of being a cowboy.”

“I'm beginning to think Chris has the right idea. Do what's right, and fuck 'em if they don't like it.”

“I guess you are due for the cowboy lecture. Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“Idiot,” Chavez said. He was watching his side mirror.

Dominique turned, looking back. A motor scooter was making its way past the traffic jamming the narrow street, traveling on the sidewalk to pass them. Pedestrians were leaping out of the way to avoid being hit. Abruptly, the scooter bumped back onto the street, coming up alongside the rental car carrying Chavez and Dominique. The driver was wearing a black motorcycle helmet, anonymous. He reached into a saddlebag, pulling out a package …

“Get out!” Chavez screamed.
“Out of the car!”

Acting on instinct, Dominique yanked the car door handle and threw herself into the street. The scooter was already accelerating, racing ahead up the street. Chavez threw his own door open …

The explosion struck her like an incoming ocean wave, slamming her over as flame seared the air above her head and bits of metal and glass snapped past her. She didn't have her handgun, not when her next stop was going to be the airport and a security check. Rolling over, she looked up at the car, its interior twisted and flame-licked. “Ed!” she yelled, trying to rise to her feet. “Ed!”

Chavez had caught the full fury of the blast, which had peeled open the left side of the car. Close by, people screamed, or simply lay on the pavement, motionless, while others came to help. Storefront windows on both sides of the street had been blown out; the street was covered with glass.

Dominique realized she was bleeding, her face cut …

She made it to her feet at last. A man grabbed her by her shoulders and guided her toward the front step of a storefront.
“¡Señorita! ¿Estás herida?”

“No, no … I'm okay…”

A second man arrived to help, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and pressing it to her forehead to stop the bleeding, but she waved both of them off. She had to get out, get out
now
before the police showed up. With a government as corrupt as this one, the police who got there first would be there to finish the job.

Sirens wailed close by.

CERROS RUINS

YUCATÁN, BELIZE

1227 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

Teller lay on his belly beside a low stone wall covered with odd glyphs and ornate carvings, using his binoculars to peer down at the coast two hundred yards to the southeast. The triangle of land jutting out into the bay gave them a good vantage point looking back at the shore from across the water. Unfortunately, the coast there, deeply shaded by the jungle canopy, was heavily indented. A submarine could easily be hidden in there close to shore and remain invisible. Through binoculars, Teller could see something that might be a wooden pier running along the shore, however, and a curtain beyond, like dark green haze, that might be the hanging folds of a large camouflage net.