Jones was sitting in the passenger seat of the Suburban as Gavin drove them west on East Saunders Street toward I-35, pretty much smack in the middle of Laredo, when his BlackBerry rang. The caller ID showed a blocked number. No surprise there. Most of Jones's calls came from blocked numbers. "Yes," he answered.
"I may have found him," the caller said without pream-ble. The voice belonged to the CIA liaison to the National Security Agency. "One of my go-to comm geeks has been scanning cell phone freqs in the Laredo corridor and we just got a hit."
"A hit on what?" Jones asked, already getting annoyed that the liaison man didn't just get straight to the point.
"The software picked up the words Agent Greene, American, Benetta, and Los Zetas in the same conversation."
Jones felt his pulse quicken. "Are you up on the phone?"
"No, but we're tracking it," the liaison said. "My guy tells me if he throws the switch to listen, the system auto-matically generates a report for the weekly metadata file that goes to the Congressional Oversight Committee." The caller dropped his voice a notch so that it was just above a whis-per. "I thought you might not want anything so official."
Jones reached for his briefcase on the floor and slipped out an iPad. "You thought right. Where is the phone now?"
"Laredo, Texas."
"Specifically."
"Uh...hold on a sec." After a pause, during which Jones activated his iPad and started a GPS tracking application, the liaison continued. "Headed north on state highway 1472, approaching Las Cruces Drive. But moving slowly with sev-eral stops. Looks like he's on a bus."
"Send it to me."
"Just did. You should get it-"
"Got it," Jones said as soon as he saw the blip on his screen. "Keep me looped in. I'll let you know when I have them."
"Glad to help an old-"
Jones hung up.
"You got a fix on them?" Gavin asked.
Jones studied the map on his iPad for a few seconds. "Take thirty-five north to San Dario Avenue. They're on a city bus."
Gavin stomped the gas and cut into the far right lane. A sign said that I-35 was three-quarters of a mile ahead. "A city bus?"
"That's what the man said."
"What kind of covert operator takes a bus?"
"The kind who keeps getting away from us," Jones said.
* * * *
Holy Ghost School educated girls from ages five through seventeen. Even though professional teachers now taught most of the classes, nuns from the Society of Saint Teresa of Jesus still ran the school. Father Rodrigo knew the mother superior, a fierce woman in her seventies who still managed to strike a hint of fear into Rodrigo's heart, despite his clerical collar.
The school spanned an entire city block and was sur-rounded by a tall iron fence topped with razor wire. Heavy gates stood at either end of the U-shaped driveway. The gates were only opened mornings and afternoons, when the girls came to school and when they left. During classes, the school was on permanent lockdown, with armed guards pa-trolling the hallways and grounds.
It was just before the dismissal bell when Rodrigo ap-proached the school. Both gates were open and a long line of cars stretched into the street, waiting on the students to swarm out of the building as soon as the bell sounded. Driv-ing past the line of waiting cars, Rodrigo noted that many of them were European-Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Volvo, even a Maserati and a Bentley-and that chauffeurs were behind the wheels of most of them. Some of the cars even bore sub-tle signs of having been armored.
Holy Ghost was a good school, probably the best in Nuevo Laredo, and it was expensive. Benetta could never have afforded the tuition on a policia salary, but Rodrigo had talked the mother superior into granting a substantial discount for Rosalita.
At the entrance, Rodrigo thought there was just enough room for him to squeeze his truck between the waiting cars and the gate's left stanchion. This was an emergency. But his depth perception turned out to be off by a few inches, and the iron post tore the cracked mirror off the driver's side door. He kept going, creeping up the driveway toward the front of the school, hearing the other drivers shouting at him.
Then he noticed something that seemed out of place, two Cadillac Escalades idling at the bottom of the U, next to the portico, under which there appeared to be some kind of disturbance going on. Rodrigo drove to the front of the line and jerked the truck to a stop when he got close enough to see what was happening. Four men with M-16 assault rifles were backing away from the school's main door. One of them was also carrying a kicking, squirming, screaming bundle under his arm. The bundle was dressed in a school uniform skirt and blouse, with high socks and blue and white leather shoes. The bundle had long black hair.
Rosalita.
A trio of nuns followed the kidnappers, their hands raised in supplication and no doubt begging the gunmen not to take the little girl. The men ignored them.
One of the gunmen stopped and aimed his rifle at a fat security guard who stood on the concrete apron under the portico. In response to a command from the gunman, the ter-rified guard plucked his revolver from its holster and dropped it. The steel made a loud clank as it hit the concrete. The gunman smiled and the security guard seemed to relax. Then the gunman shot the guard in the chest with a short burst from his M-16. The crack of the high-velocity shots echoed down the driveway as the blast drove the guard backward and then dumped him in a heap on the concrete just a few feet from his discarded revolver.
The nuns screamed and crossed themselves. One knelt beside the dying guard. Rodrigo crossed himself too and sent a quick prayer up to God asking him to bless the security guard's soul and to look after his family.
Some of the drivers waiting to pick up students sprang out of their cars in panic and ran. Rodrigo stayed in his truck, sitting motionless behind the steering wheel and wait-ing as the gunmen strolled back to their SUVs. The man car-rying Rosalita tossed her into the back seat of the lead Cadil-lac and climbed in after her. A second man got into the front passenger seat, and the other two gunmen climbed into the second SUV. Then the two vehicles raced to the end of the driveway and sped away.
Rodrigo stepped on the clutch and pulled the shift lever on the steering column down into first gear. For just a sec-ond he looked at the nuns, all three of them now huddled around the guard's body, their habits stained with his blood. Then Rodrigo popped the clutch and mashed the gas pedal to the floor.