Border Crossed - Chapter 3

Taylor, Whitaker, and Matthews found a small, out-of-the-way Mexican place. Taylor always preferred somewhere quiet, over crowds, so it was perfect for him.

“You really think there’s more to all this, don’t you?” Matthews asked after the waitress took their order.

“I do. It just doesn’t feel right. I agree that the drugs and the violence are related, but I don’t think the bombings are targeted at the task force or anyone else in particular.”

“Then who do you think they’re targeting?” Matthews asked.

“Don’t know yet. Like I said, we need more information. We’re also going to have to start talking to the Mexicans more. The violence over there has the same weird pattern as on this side, but they aren’t matched up, so it’s not just being done on both sides simultaneously. They have different goals or maybe different targets, I don’t know. Once we figure that out, we’ll be closer to an answer. Hopefully, Chavez can come through with a contact and make our lives easier.”

“So you’re just going with your gut?” Matthews asked.

“He always does,” Whitaker said. “It hasn’t failed us so far.”

“Well, things are complex down here. Don’t go harrowing off too far. One of the first things they warned me about when they hired us to assist after the first couple of bombings was that a lot of eyes are on us, and to not get too far ahead of ourselves.”

“That’s what they always say when they’re more worried about how things look than actual results. Trust me, I’ve heard it before,” Taylor said.

“Maybe,” Matthews replied, noncommittally.

The silence lingered for a few minutes before Taylor said, “So, your own company doing government contracts. How did that happen?”

Matthews shrugged. “After I got out, I couldn’t see myself settling into civilian life. Missed the action too much. Turns out, Uncle Sam was missing us too. They pulled private contractors in from all over the place, trying to get fewer boots on the ground so a politician somewhere can say he’s pulling troops out of the forever war. I figured if they needed people who knew how to work in those places, I could provide the solution. I didn’t figure it would end up with me in El Paso, though.”

Taylor frowned. “You should be careful who you work with. Some of the groups out there give everyonea bad name. They have no accountability and hire the dregs, who got the big chicken dinner, ’cause they were cheaper and won’t say no, regardless of the op.”

“Big chicken dinner?” Whitaker asked.

“Bad conduct discharge,” Matthews explained. “And I know the people you’re talking about. We’ve had a few run-ins with them, and you’re right, they’re shit. We’re not like those pricks. My guys aren’t like that. We follow strict rules of engagement, make sure we have oversight on all contracts, and we turn down any jobs that feel like they might be over the line. My guys are soldiers, not mercenaries.”

“How can you afford to keep your men equipped if you’re turning down the bigger dollar jobs?” Taylor asked.

“We buy surplus direct from the manufacturers with DoD approval. It limits some of our capabilities but helps keep costs down.” Matthews leaned forward. “Look, I know you’ve seen PMCs overstep, but we value integrity above all else. My men save lives.”

He had to hand it to Matthews, the man sounded sincere. Still, Taylor couldn’t imagine that they’d be able to keep their hands as clean as he tried to make it sound.

“You have concerns, I get it,” Matthews continued. “But we’re one of the good ones, Taylor. Doing work that needs to be done while keeping our moral code intact.”

“And when the job calls for bending the rules?”

“Then we refuse it, like I said.” Matthews’ gaze was unwavering. “Some contracts aren’t worth the price. We’ve built our rep on getting the job done right. If a client wants us to cross lines, they can find another outfit.”

Taylor made a face, unable to hide his doubt.

“Man, you really aren’t a fan. What, did one of us sleep with your old lady or something?”

While it was not a secret that Taylor and Whitaker were married, they normally didn’t advertise that fact and had agreed a long time ago to just keep it to themselves.

“Had a run-in with a dodgy outfit last year,” Taylor said. “They were unprepared, things went sideways, and a bunch of people died. It was a complete disaster.”

Matthews frowned. “Like I said, those are the bad ones. We train our men right, and only take on missions we’re equipped to handle.”

“Ohh, I haven’t even gotten to the worst part. Had things not fallen into the crapper, their plan was to ‘fail’ at rescuing the hostages, kill them along with the terrorists, and kill me to make sure everything stayed quiet. It turns out, while the company whose employees were being held hostage hired them to get their people free, someone else in the company was actually working with the insurgents and their deal had gone south. They paid off the PMC to cover up any evidence of it.”

“Jesus.” Matthews paled. “No wonder you’re skeptical of us. Who was it?”

“White Mountain.”

“Ohh,” Matthews said, a sudden look of clarity on his face. “Those guys were all the rage and suddenly disappeared into nowhere. I wondered what happened to them.”

“Almost completely wiped out.”

“Okay, those guys were bad news, sure. And I can see why you’d lump us all together after that,” Matthews said. “But our outfit doesn’t operate like those sociopaths.”

“I hope not,” Taylor said.

“I guess we’ll just have to prove you wrong,” Matthews said with a grin.

“I hope you do,” Taylor said, his expression still doubtful. “I hope you do.”

***

It was late when they got back to the hotel. Taylor had meant to call it a night early, but the conversation had drifted off of PMCs to talk about their days in the service. There’s nothing two old vets could spend more time doing than spinning war stories. Whitaker had looked slightly bored, but even she hadn’t seemed to want to leave.

One of the things they don’t tell you when you become a parent of a small child is that your social life evaporates. You spend the first six months in a fog of exhaustion and have little time for anything but feeding and caring for the small life you created. It was rewarding, but it did make you crave other companionship with someone who wasn’t always spitting up on you.

“He seems to have done well for himself,” Whitaker said as Taylor flopped down on the bed.

“I guess. I’m still not crazy about working with one of these outfits, even if it is run by an acquaintance. Once war becomes for profit, shit gets weird.”

“Does it always have to be like that?” Whitaker asked. “He sounded like he was doing a lot more oversight and providing for some accountability, at least. There’s a chance he could change things.”

Taylor frowned, “We’ll see. I mean, yeah, he was a decent guy when we knew each other and I never caught a whiff of corruption from him, but the amount of money that swirls around these groups can turn a lot of good people bad. Power and profit are the two greatest sins we ever invented.”

“I thought that was people putting pineapple on pizza and trying to convince you it wasn’t nasty?” Whitaker replied with a grin.

“That’s just below power and profit. But only by a little bit,” Taylor said, grabbing her arm and pulling her down onto the bed next to him.

They both lay like that for several minutes, just existing in comfortable silence. Taylor turned and looked at her. He’d thought she’d just been peacefully thinking, but he recognized the look on her face. It was the same one she often had when a case wasn’t going well. She was frustrated, worried, maybe even a little angry.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said, not looking at him.

“I know that look. It’s not nothing. You’re worried about something.”

She was quiet for a full minute, not answering. Just staring at the ceiling. She blinked hard twice, and a tear trickled down her cheek.

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this. It’s only been a day, and I’m already a wreck.”

Taylor rolled over to face her and pulled her into his arms. She buried her face into his chest. She’d held it together all day, through travel, talking to the task force, looking at the forensics, even dinner with Matthews. He knew she could compartmentalize, but he hadn’t had a clue she was struggling this hard.

“I miss him too,” he said into her hair.

She shook her head, not pulling away from him. “He’s just so little, and he needs me. I know my sister will take care of him, but I’m his mother. I just … I can’t stand him not being with me.”

Now she pulled back, wiping away the tears that had started flowing as soon as she started talking.

“I feel so stupid. I love my job, and what I do is important. And I’m good at it. This is what I wanted, to get back in the field. I was driving everyone crazy, practically climbing the walls to get back out here. Twelve hours later, I’m crying just like Grace does.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s normal. You’re allowed to feel like this.”

“Am I? How many other women would go out in the field with a six-month-old at home? How many other agents would go out in the field and immediately want to go back home again? I don’t want to quit my job, I’m just …” she trailed off, gathering her thoughts. “I’m frustrated. I want both, and right now I don’t feel like I have either.”

Taylor fell silent. He was good at a lot of things, but this wasn’t one of them. Besides, he couldn’t fix what was going on. He could offer words of encouragement, but he wasn’t sure that’s what she wanted. The two things she wanted couldn’t happen at the same time. Either she’d find a way for her family and work to coexist, or she’d have to pick one. It was an age-old battle.

In a way, Taylor wondered if he should feel the same way. Of course, he’d worked through the entire pregnancy and being a father was different than being a mother, but he wondered if he should be more bothered by being away from their child.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sagging slightly. “I know this is an important case. I just … I’m having a hard time.”

Taylor rolled on his back and didn’t say anything for a moment, thinking.

“What if we quit?” he asked abruptly.

Whitaker’s head snapped up. “What?”

“The FBI. What if we quit and focus on the security company full-time?” Taylor propped himself up on his elbows. “Business is picking up. We’ll need to hire more guys soon. We could run the whole show and be home whenever we want.”

Whitaker shook her head, fresh tears pooling in her eyes. “I can’t. I’ve worked my whole life to get where I am. I won’t throw that away.”

“Even for Grace?” Taylor pressed.

“It’s not that simple.” Whitaker wiped angrily at her cheeks. “This job is important. What we do matters. I want to be there with her but I want to be here too. I can do both. I have to do both.”

She was silent for a second and then, in a whisper, she pleaded, “Please tell me I can have both.”

Taylor put his arms around her and pulled her back into him. “You can have both. I think we just needed to hear you say that out loud. I’m not saying it’s not going to be hard, but we can figure out a balance. Maybe we cut back on the kinds of cases we work. Maybe you start focusing on something more administrative and I go in with the company full time. Maybe we take Grace on every case with us. Who knows?”

“That last one was a terrible idea,” she said, although her voice sounded lighter.

“I know, I was being … I don’t know what the word is. Stupid.”

“Fatuous.”

“I’m not fat,” he said, and got a playful but not overly soft punch in the gut.

“You’re not funny.”

“I am, a little,” he argued.

“Fine, a little. Okay, we can start looking at alternatives as long as none of them involve me working away from home all the time or quitting the Bureau.”

“See, a starting point. That’s all we needed. Feel better?”

“Somewhat.”

“What if we FaceTime your sister and she points the camera at the baby?”

“Yes. That would help.”

Taylor pulled out his phone and handed it to Whitaker, so she could be in the front for the call, while he positioned himself behind her, so he could see the screen and they could see him. After a couple of rings, her sister answered, holding a happily gurgling Grace in her arms.

“Heyyy,” Whitaker said, sounding completely different as soon as their daughter was on screen. “How’s she been doing?”

“Good. She just ate and she’s about to get a bath,” her sister said from off-screen, keeping the phone focused on the baby.

“She’s been spoiling her rotten,” Kara’s voice came from off-screen.

Her sister panned the phone up. To their surprise, Kara and her best friend Mary Jane were standing over the chair, looking down at Whitaker’s sister and the baby.

“Hey, what are you guys doing there?” Whitaker asked. “I thought you had a big test this week that you needed to study for?”

“I have been studying; I’ve just been doing it over here. I thought Aunt Jess might need a hand.”

“Don’t let her fool you. Both of them have been over here, sleeping in her room. You’re catching me in a rare moment where I actually get to hold Grace. She’s very territorial.”

“You get to hold her while I’m at school, though,” Kara pointed out.

“You are studying though, right?” Whitaker asked.

“She has been,” Mary Jane added. “I’ve been quizzing her so she doesn’t need her hands. Grace is soooo cute. I can’t believe someone like Taylor made such a cute baby. It must be all your good genes.”

“I’m right here,” Taylor said, defensively.

“I said what I said,” Mary Jane retorted, trying to keep a straight face.

Taylor was happy to see her doing so well, and was grateful that she and Kara were as close as they were. Both girls had wild streaks in them that, oddly enough, each controlled better when they were around each other.

“If you’re staying at our place, where’s your security detail staying?”

“Mostly down in the van. They beefed up the security here when Mom sold the place to you because they knew we’d be here sometimes. I have my panic button if anything goes wrong, and they come in a couple of times a day to check on us. I’m at school too, as much as I am here.”

“Okay. Just, don’t get in Jessica’s way too much,” Whitaker chided.

“They’re not. They’ve been a big help. Plus, it would be a lot quieter if it was just me and the baby.”

“Okay, as long as you’re having a good time.”

“How are things going out there?” Kara asked.

Kara had started taking more of an interest in their cases ever since Taylor got back from Africa. He’d never gotten a straight answer about what happened here while he was gone, but he knew it had lit a fire under her. He, of course, couldn’t tell her everything, but he told her what he could. She had a really solid grasp on his process and how he worked, and if she continued on the career path she seemed to be focused on they were skills she’d be able to put to good use.

However, she wasn’t the only person there, and this wasn’t a secure way to talk about those kinds of things.

“We’re just getting started, so it’s hard to tell yet. We’ll probably know more in the next day or two,” Taylor said.

“Okay. Well, you two be careful. We all know how these cases go sometimes. At least the ones you’re involved with,” Kara said.

Whitaker let out a deep sigh as they disconnected.

“Better?” Taylor asked.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe this will get better with time. I mean, it’s the first time you’ve been away since he was born. Maybe we should wait and see how things go before we rush into any decisions.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said, but she didn’t sound completely convinced.

As they went to sleep that night, Taylor’s mind was split, which he knew wasn’t good. Part of it was on the case, where it needed to be. He always found it helpful to chew over information, let it sit in his brain and give his subconscious a go at figuring out the things that were bothering him about a case. There was a lot of that to consider with this one. He’d dealt with resistant law enforcement and investigations where everyone else was looking in the wrong direction, often at the same time, but here, he felt it even more. Nothing in their report made sense, and he knew he was missing the key that would unlock all of this for him.

Unfortunately, the other half of his brain was on Whitaker and the baby. He missed Grace, and he was worried about Whitaker. While he wanted to chalk it up to hormones left over from the pregnancy, he knew it went beyond that. He hoped it wouldn’t hinder their mission here, but it already was. Their focus needed to be on the job, and it wasn’t right now.

***

They didn’t need to wait long for something to help them focus, however. The sun was barely up when Taylor’s phone started ringing.

“Yeah,” he mumbled as he answered.

“Taylor, there’s been another one,” Matthew’s voice came through the receiver.

“Bombing?” Taylor asked, his brain slow to kick into gear.

He nudged Whitaker several times to get her to wake up. He was a light sleeper, had been since his days in the service, so he was awake before the ringtone finished its first notes. Whitaker took more time.

She rolled over and started to glower at being unexpectedly woken up until she saw the phone to his ear, and him pointing at it. She might have been a deeper sleeper than him, but she could focus when she needed to. The moment she saw the phone, her expression turned serious. Matthews had just confirmed, that yes, it was another bombing.

He switched the phone to speaker as he asked, “Where?”

Matthews gave an address that Whitaker jotted down in her phone, holding it up to show Taylor as he finished getting the details, which were very minimal. All anyone knew right now was that there was a bombing and there were fatalities.

It took almost forty-five minutes to make their way to the bombing location, an INS checkpoint fifty miles northeast of El Paso. Arriving, they found a wasteland where the checkpoint should have been.

The location itself should have had a smallish building to the right of the freeway, with a pull-off road. The road stretched around the building and through a large, covered section adjacent to it. The covered area was separated into two or three bays for cars and trucks to stop and be inspected, after which the pull-off road curved back towards the highway to let the vehicles rejoin traffic.

The bays were completely obliterated, with the large, corrugated metal roof lying well out in the scrub, the sun glinting off it showing just how far it had been blown. It wasn’t hard to see where the bomb had been. A large black hole sat in what was probably the closer of the two bays, the concrete that had held the roof in place showing an outline of both bays.

The bay to the right of it still had the twisted metal outline of a truck, but whatever had been in the bay with the crater had been obliterated. Taylor couldn’t even make out the frame of a chassis where the vehicle had been sitting. They must have used more explosives than the one in El Paso to achieve that kind of destruction.

Two Border Patrol SUVs which had been sitting maybe fifty yards from the bays had been knocked over by the force of the blast. The closest one even had drag marks to show that the explosion not only knocked it over but also pushed it away. Both vehicles were scorched, burned, and pockmarked by the shrapnel created by the exploding vehicle.

It was hard to tell what kind of destruction happened to the INS building itself, since it had been made of wood and had burned to the ground after the explosion, the fire probably started by the explosion itself. Only some twisted metal, warped by the heat, and the concrete foundation survived the inferno.

It was still visibly smoking, so the fire trucks sitting near the site must have only gotten the blaze out shortly before Taylor and Whitaker arrived. They parked next to the growing collection of local police, Texas Rangers, and Border Patrol vehicles grouped a little ways from the site.

“I hope they haven’t messed up the crime scene,” Whitaker said as they got out.

“Your people are here,” Taylor said, pointing at the FBI crime scene van partially obscured from view by the two fire trucks.

He’d been working as a consultant with the Bureau for several years now, and still, they were ‘her people.’ The two of them changed direction, heading for the truck and two men in Tyvek body suits standing next to it.

There were several techs already working on mobile stations and others were packing samples.

“What have you found?” Whitaker asked.

“Nothing yet. I’ll have some preliminary findings in a few hours, but anything beyond that will take time, since a lot of this will have to go to the lab.”

“You’re using the same one set up for the El Paso building?”

“Yeah. Davis’s setup is as good as anything this side of Dallas, so it will be faster. Unless you want us to ship it off to Washington.”

“No, send it to Davis,” Whitaker said.

“Any first thoughts?” Taylor asked. “I know you guys don’t like making guesses, but …”

“Not much. We’re still sifting through the debris, but everything I’m seeing says it’s the same explosives as were used in El Paso.”

“Blast profile?” Taylor asked.

“Yeah. Makes it C4 or something comparable,” the tech said.

When Whitaker gave Taylor a side-eyed glance, he said, “The blast was up and out, meaning it was probably shaped. The damage was wide, but the crater isn’t that deep. Something homemade would have made a giant hole since it would have exploded in all directions. It’s how we could tell the skill level of the bomb maker we’re dealing with when looking at IEDs.”

“It’s no amateur, whoever it is,” the tech said.

“Did any video survive?” Whitaker asked.

“Yes, up until the last batch. We have a vehicle driving up into the bay where the blast happened. The window isn’t as tight as I would have liked, and it’s possible they could have switched cars quickly and it was another car. I don’t think so. I didn’t study it that closely. The Border Patrol guys have it up on one of their laptops if you want to take a look.”

“We’ll do that. Let us know when you guys finish your first pass,” Whitaker said.

The guy gave a wave and went back to what he was doing. That’s what Taylor liked about the tech guys. They didn’t go in for all the glad-handing and making friends. They were specialists and tended to be very focused. Of course, they also had their drawbacks, like giving too much detail even when they weren’t asked, but he’d take it if he didn’t have to deal with bullshit.

They went over to the Border Patrol SUVs where four guys were gathered around a laptop, watching grainy video. They were mostly just skimming through it, Taylor assumed. If there was actually a perpetrator on the video, the tech would have mentioned it when he mentioned the possibility of a car.

Sure enough, Taylor watched as they scrubbed through the section where a small red sedan pulled up, the driver clearly a man but otherwise unidentifiable due to a dirty as hell and cracked front windshield and darker than normal side window. The video cut out before he rolled down the window, so whoever he was, they didn’t have a picture of him.

“I assume you already ran the license plate?” Whitaker asked the Border Patrol agents.

“Yeah. Reported stolen off a car in the El Paso suburbs. We sent someone to talk to the local department, although it doesn’t look like they were taking it seriously.”

“We should get Sullivan to follow up on it. Maybe the person who took the plates is on video.”

“Doubt it. Assuming it’s a person actually connected to this and not someone hired to steal it, they would have been smart enough to stay away from cameras. They timed this pretty close. If that red car was the one carrying the explosive and it had been just a minute tighter, we wouldn’t even have the license plate, and yet they still put stolen ones on it just in case. Put that with the C4, they know what they’re doing.”

“Sure, but it’s mistakes on the small stuff that usually gets them caught. Hell, that’s how we’ve solved half our cases.”

“Maybe, but it doesn’t feel like it.”

“Maybe not, but it’s Sullivan’s manpower and not ours.”

“Good point.”

After a few more minutes, the Border Patrol guys got bored and wandered off to either talk to each other or walk the site, although with the techs still going over it, Taylor couldn’t imagine what they thought they were going to accomplish by doing that.

Taylor took the opportunity to take over the laptop, not just watching the span of time just before the explosion but going back hours before that, stopping and rewatching sections here or there. He could feel Whitaker watching him, but he was focused. Something had been bugging him, and watching the video, he was feeling it even more.

Whitaker eventually got bored and, instead of bugging him to find out what he was looking for, wandered off. Taylor ignored her. She knew how to investigate a crime scene better than he did.

After almost two hours, he finally looked up from the laptop. Techs were swarming all over the blast site, and he saw Whitaker talking to one of them. A few task force members had shown up at some point, although not Matthews or Sullivan. None of them had come to talk to him, however. Or if they had, he hadn’t noticed.

He saw one of the techs talking to a guy from Border Patrol and decided to go run some questions past them that had been bugging him the longer he watched the security feed.

“You two have a sec?” Taylor asked, walking over to the pair.

The Border Patrol agent looked him up and down, probably wondering what agency Taylor was with, since he wasn’t dressed like any of the other feds from the task force wandering around or any of the Border Patrol personnel.

The tech, however, didn’t seem to notice and said, “Sure.”

“What’s this location for? I know it’s an immigration checkpoint, but what exactly are you looking for here?”

Since it wasn’t a technical question, the technician looked to the Border Patrol agent, who, for a second, seemed to consider if he was going to answer or not. Taylor hated how much everyone in law enforcement constantly guarded their territory, but he’d at least learned that if he kept his mouth shut and didn’t give them a reason not to, they’d answer his questions. Apparently, their territoriality didn’t outpace their desire to be thought of as “in the know.”

“Illegals,” he said in a thick drawl. “We use those cameras out by the road to see if a car is riding heavier than it should be or has hot spots it shouldn’t, and we have it pull in here so we can see if they’re smuggling anyone. We also flag down any cars that match the profile for someone who might be illegal themselves, driving up from the border.”

“What would that profile be, exactly?” Taylor asked, but already had a feeling he knew the answer.

Apparently, he wasn’t as good at hiding what he was thinking as he should have been, because the Border Patrol agent said, “It’s not that. Sure, if they’re Hispanic, that’s one thing, but it’s not just that. There are types of cars more commonly seen driving up from Mexico, or available at the border for illegals to drive. Usually, they are older models with lots of miles, pretty beat up. The kinds of cars that whoever loaned it to them wouldn’t care if it never made it back. They often have out-of-date tags or inspections because these guys can’t get insurance or licenses, which makes it hard to get them registered. There’s also behavior. They react nervously to the checkpoint, trying hard not to be noticed. It’s usually not one thing, but a whole range. An experienced inspector will know it when they see it.”

Taylor didn’t respond right away, thinking about what that answer meant. It actually reinforced the theory he was building in his head, but it also made the piece that didn’t fit stand out all that much more.

“If you do pull a car over, what’s the inspection like?”

“For cars, we’ll talk to the driver, look in the back seat and have them pull open anything that might be hiding a person, say someone lying on the floorboards. We’ll have them pop the trunk. That’s about it. We don’t tear the car apart searching it or anything. Basically, we only check the places a person could fit in. If it’s a box truck or something large like that, we might hop up inside, but if it’s packed, we usually don’t have them unload it unless the infrared camera picked up something. They want us to keep the traffic flowing as much as possible, so we try and keep our stops short, if possible.”

“So if someone was moving drugs, say hidden in the panels or something, you wouldn’t find that? You don’t use a drug dog?”

“Unless we have reason to suspect something, we don’t normally have drug dogs this far out. We have dozens of stops like this on all the major roads into the state that come up from the border, and in other states too, and we just don’t have enough drug dogs. Besides, drugs, they can take their sweet time getting them moved, coming up the side roads. We sit on these major roads, it gets hot as hell out here, and if there are people hiding in a truck, they have to move into the country pretty quickly. If they don’t, they end up with a tractor-trailer full of bodies, which almost always gets caught. The drug dogs are mostly at border checkpoints, since usually, that’s where most of it comes in, so there’s steady work for them.”

“That’s what I thought,” Taylor said. “Thanks.”

He didn’t wait for the guy to respond before he wandered off to find Whitaker, who was still with the techs, although they were back at their van, bagging evidence.

“Any luck?”

“No,” she said, sounding equal parts tired from being out in the heat and annoyed that everything was turning up empty. “Anything that might have had a number on it was ripped apart in the blast. No VIN. No part serial numbers. Nothing. The best they can tell us is that it wasn’t a truck or even an SUV. From the debris they’ve been able to pull together, it was a sedan or smaller, which is consistent with the car in the video.”

“Or any number of other cars that could have come through in the same time period.”

“Or that, although everyone is telling me they mostly stop trucks, not cars, which is why seeing the one in the video is a bit odd. Usually, the cars they see pull in are because the driver gets confused and thinks he has to stop.”

“Yeah, that’s the picture I was getting from the Border Patrol guys.”

“Anything on the video?” she asked, probably hoping he got something because he’d been going over it for so long.

“Nothing specific, but more questions.”

“So we’re dead in the water.”

“Pretty much. What I’m having trouble with is why they’d be here at all. The location for this bombing just doesn’t make sense. Everyone is telling me they’re only looking for people and are really mostly focused on trucks. Sullivan made it clear that the reason the cartel has been bombing things was to keep their drug shipments from being discovered, so we didn’t learn their new shipment method. Right? That was why they blew the truck in El Paso, even though it was guaranteed to cause escalation, right? If that’s the case, why in the hell would they need to blow this place up? The risk of finding drugs is so low, and apparently, the drug checks are only on the major roads. They could have easily taken a side road to avoid it altogether. This bombing shouldn’t have happened.”

“Maybe they had to switch to larger trucks to bring it further into the country. Based on the volumes we’re talking about, it’s more than they could just cram into cars. If that was the case, then there’d be a reason to stop them here, which could have forced them to blow the truck remotely, just like in El Paso.”

“We just agreed this was a sedan, not a truck. And even trucks could have taken a slower route, avoiding the checkpoints.”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying, it happened, so there has to be a reason for it?”

“Yeah, but we’re still going with the reason being to keep the evidence of their drug smuggling a secret. It doesn’t add up. I think there’s another reason that we’re not seeing.”

“Like what?”

“I have no idea. I want to head to the FBI office in El Paso and use some of their databases, see if I can’t turn something up.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“No, we still need to know as much as possible about this bombing. It sounds like it’s going to be hours until they clear the site. Let me head back to the office, and you stay with them to make sure they don’t miss anything.”

“You sure? Me staying in the field and you going into an office to stare at computers is kind of a reversal of our normal strategy, right?”

“Yeah, but this time I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just feel that something is missing, and I’m hoping I recognize it when I see it. Besides, you’ve been cooped up for months. Stretch your legs, enjoy the time in the field.”

“It’s like a hundred and five degrees,” she pointed out.

“So make sure to wear sunscreen. Can these guys give you a ride back?” he asked, pointing at the techs.

“Yeah,” she said, sounding like she was still uncomfortable with his sudden change in MO. “Let me know if you find anything.,”

“Sure. You do the same out here. I’m serious, Whitaker. Whatever’s happening out here, we’re missing it completely. Keep an eye out for anything weird. Okay?”

“Yeah. See you in a bit.”