Travis Starnes
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Border Crossed - Chapter 9
🕑 Added 2023-12-08 14:23:00 +0000 UTCTaylor gave one last look at the body and pulled out his phone. Matthews might have escaped, but he’d made a mistake. Until now, Taylor had been focused on accomplishing the goal they’d been sent out here to do; find out about the bombings and stop whoever was behind them. For him, it had just been work. Matthews had now made it personal, and he was going to make sure his “friend” paid for his betrayal.
“Did you get what you needed from the wife?” Sullivan asked, sounding wide awake in spite of the long day and early morning hour. That wasn’t a surprise. The idea that there was a leak had been confirmed by the motel attack, and he must have been feeling the same kind of betrayal that Taylor now felt.
“We found your leak,” Taylor said.
“Really? Who?”
“Matthews. I’ll explain everything later, but right now, I need you to get a forensics team out here ASAP. Matthews escaped and is in the wind, and we need to pick up his trail,” Taylor said, and read off the address of the warehouse.
“Mathews. I can’t believe it. Okay, I’ll get everyone out of bed and headed your way, but I want details when I get there.”
“Sure,” Taylor said, and hung up.
Whitaker was looking annoyed when he looked up from his phone at her. Cupping a hand over the receiver, she said, “They’re trying to find him.” Although Whitaker was normally able to get Solomon on his cell, being director meant there were times he had to go without it, handing his devices over to an aide while he went into secure hearings or a SCIF. Or he might just have been asleep. It was almost three in the morning, after all.
“Forensics team’s on the way,” Taylor said.
“Good. We’ll … Yeah, I’m here,” she said and then pressed the speaker button on her phone.
“What’s happening?” Solomon asked.
She sent regular updates to her boss; the last one had been while they were on the drive back to El Paso from the tunnel site, when they’d informed him that Sullivan had asked them to stay around to find the possible leak in his task force.
“We found the leak,” Whitaker said. “It is the head of the security contractors the DOJ hired to assist Sullivan’s task force, before we were brought in. Ryan Matthews.”
“Are you sure?” Solomon asked.
“Positive,” Whitaker said. “We found out that the shooter we identified was contacted by a former cellmate, probably to hire him for that job. We traced the friend’s cell phone to a warehouse here in town, and when we walked in, we found Matthews standing over the guy’s body, smoking gun in hand.”
“He killed your lead?” Solomon asked.
“Executed him just as we arrived,” Whitaker confirmed. “And then he opened fire on us before we could say anything.”
“Did you get him?” Solomon asked.
“No. He had a car waiting and got away,” Taylor said.
“Dang it. If he’s compromised, the entire task force is blown.”
“It has been,” Taylor said. “Considering how long it took to build the tunnel, they probably did that before buying him off. It’s unlikely they would have enough pull to get Matthews hired for the job, so they probably bought him off after the fact. Maybe they had reason to believe he was a weak link, I don’t know. He was almost certainly behind the bombings, trying to keep anyone from getting too close to the cartel’s tunnel.”
“All supposition, but it makes sense,” Solomon said. “What’s your next move?”
“We’ve got two options,” Whitaker said. “One, there might be a tangible connection between Matthews and the guy he shot. If he was the contact that Matthews used to hire the other motel shooters, then Matthews learned about him from somewhere. They might have a link we can use to track him down. Two, this warehouse wasn’t picked at random. The doors don’t look jimmied open and the place, while mostly empty, isn’t vacant, cluttered, or covered in debris and there are no signs of vagrants or anyone else squatting in it that I can see. Matthews, or our connection to the motel shooters, knew about it and knew to meet here. So there might be something here we can use to find him.”
“Forensics is already on the way, and we can start working on tracking Matthews and the guy he shot,” Taylor said. “I’m not sure what the point is, though. Matthews knows he’s blown, and he’ll start covering his ass. He’ll probably shut everything down and get out of the country. He was just the cartel’s errand boy, anyway. Their tunnel op might be blown, but they’ll just go back to moving stuff across the border like they always have.”
“You’re right, you’re not going to stop them, but that was never your mandate,” Solomon said tersely. “You weren’t sent there to end the drug trade. Your job was to deal with the bombings and bring those responsible for them to justice. It’s clear Matthews orchestrated the bombings, so he’s your target. Your job is to find him and bring him in.”
“We need to consider the possibility that the rest of Matthews’ men, or at least some of them, are compromised, too,” Whitaker pointed out.
“Possibly,” Solomon said. “At least, you can’t leave them in place and take the chance. I’ll have them picked up for questioning and hold them long enough to give you a chance to chase Matthews down. We’ll also freeze any accounts connected to his organization to make it harder for him to run.”
“Matthews is too smart to keep all his money where you can get at it,” Taylor said. “I guarantee he’s got some accounts you can’t find.”
“Perhaps we can still make it harder for him to get away,” Solomon replied. “Keep me posted if any new leads develop.”
“Will do,” Whitaker responded before ending the call. “I wish we’d get an easy case every once in a while.”
“It wouldn’t be as interesting that way,” Taylor remarked. “So … would you like me to begin looking into Matthews?”
“No, I think I’ll take that task,” Whitaker decided. “With my fresh perspective on Matthews, I may notice something you’d overlook. You coordinate with the forensics team since you were present when we discovered the crime scene. With Matthews’ assets frozen and his men in custody, he’ll be desperate and possibly sloppy. Let me know if you find any clues regarding his next moves or contacts.”
“You’ve got it,” Taylor agreed. “I’ll check in after going over the evidence collection process with the techs.”
Sullivan was a man of his word, and the first patrol cars showed up almost as soon as they hung up. More surprisingly, the FBI techs and the coroner’s van weren’t far behind. As Whitaker stepped outside to start making calls, Taylor watched the techs work, staying out of their way.
His instinct was to just start ripping crates open and searching for anything that might be a clue to what Matthews was up to, but that wasn’t how the technicians worked. Everything had to be photographed, cataloged, fingerprinted, and who knows what else before they opened a crate. It was slow, meticulous work, but he grudgingly admitted that their way was probably for the best, and he’d witnessed them pull tiny fragments of evidence from what seemed like nothing in the past.
So he watched them work, moving slowly around the warehouse, staying out of their way but close enough to see what was happening. For almost an hour, he watched them work. It had been a very long day, and he was exhausted, but he didn’t want to call it a day until they had some idea of what their next step was going to be.
While he waited, he had one of the techs pull him records of the building, half hoping that the building had been bought by Matthews at some point. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. It was currently owned by a bank that foreclosed after the metal fabricating business that had used the building for storage of raw materials went under almost five years ago. Maybe there wasn’t a lot of demand for spaces like this because it had been listed as unoccupied and empty since then.
Of course, it wasn’t empty. He could understand the pallets being left behind and ignored by the bank when they foreclosed on the property, but the crates, most of which seemed to be full of stuff, would surely have been auctioned off at some point. An even bigger question was the machinery. Besides the fact that the bank would have sold it off as well, it shouldn’t have been there to start with. The company that owned this place before it was foreclosed on had used it for storage for their nearby machine shop, which made the somewhat high-tech-looking machines out of place.
He’d directed some techs to look over the machines and figure out what they were, and after watching them crawl all over them for what seemed like ages, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“So, what is all this equipment?” Taylor asked.
“It covers a pretty wide range. Laser welding machines, automated test equipment, 3D printing, and what looks like testing equipment for electrical and computer systems, although we’ll have to get into the software to see what exactly they’re designed to test. There are a few other pieces that are most likely specialized, which we will have to research,” the tech replied.
“So, they were manufacturing something?”
“I’d say assembling. If they were actually manufacturing anything, I’d expect to see CNC equipment: mills, lathes, grinders, and the like. What you’ve got here is for putting pre-manufactured pieces together. Which makes sense considering what we found in the crates.”
“I saw some of it. Looked like large sheets of metal,” Taylor said.
He’d seen the techs pulling stuff out of crates and opening some of the drums, but he’d spent most of the time waiting on the techs to finish looking over the machines and going through the warehouse records. There were a lot of crates and containers, and he didn’t want to be in the techs’ way, slowing the process down. He’d worked with their type enough times, since teaming up with Whitaker, to know how they got if someone interrupted their step-by-step procedures trying to get quicker answers. Admittedly, they did it that way to preserve evidence for trial and to ensure it didn’t get contaminated, or whatever, but he still found the process too slow for his liking.
The stuff he had been close enough to see, however, looked fairly new. Or at least not like it had been left to rot away in a warehouse five years ago.
“Yes. Some of it is a kind of carbon alloy; others are lightweight aluminum that looks like what we’d expect to see in small aircraft. A little of it has some kind of sprayed-on coating, which we also found in some of the drums.”
“I saw that too, spilling out of the ones that got hit in the crossfire. It looked odd to me, though.”
“That’s because it’s not just paint. It’s got some kind of added filament or minuscule filament in it that gives it an odd texture. We’ll have to get samples in a spectrometer to be sure, but first guess, the stuff in the drums was being applied to the sheets of metal.”
“Is it possible all of this was left behind when the warehouse foreclosed five years ago?” Taylor asked. He’d already worked out that it probably wasn’t, but it was better to confirm than take action based on his hunch.
“I’d seriously doubt it. First, there’s the fact that the warehouse had been owned by a machining shop, which would explain the sheets of aluminum alloy but not the carbon fiber sheets, the wiring harnesses, or what looks like parts to an optics system of some kind that we found. More importantly, though, the manufacturing stamps on some of those machines are only two years old. They couldn’t have been just left behind five years ago.”
“You’re going to trace down those machines and find out who bought them, right?” Taylor asked.
“Yes, but that will take a few days.”
“Can I see some of the sheets that already had the weird paint applied?” Taylor asked.
“Sure,” the tech said, turning and waving for Taylor to follow.
They had a table on one side of the building where stuff from the crates was being cataloged, photographed, and tagged before being put in yet another crate, although this one the techs had brought with them. Taylor thought the tech would pull one out of the already processed pile, but instead, he picked up one of the smaller pieces, about the size of a very large textbook, although a lot thinner, and handed it to him.
Taylor took the metal sheet, which was lighter than he expected, and ran his hands over the surface. It was textured, and almost reminded him of those liners they sprayed in truck beds to give them grip, although it wasn’t that rough. The color was a dull, dark gray, and he recognized it.
“You guys are thinking this is for an aircraft, right?” Taylor asked.
“We are,” the tech said. “Maybe something like an ultralight, based on the size of the panels we’re seeing.”
“Have you considered it could be for a drone?” Taylor said.
“That’d make sense, too,” the tech said. “It would explain all the optical equipment and electronics we’re seeing. I’m not an expert in that field, but I wouldn’t think that would be needed for an ultralight. Once we get this back to our facilities, we are going to have some of our aviation experts go over it. They’ll be able to tell us more. And hopefully, tell us about this paint.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” a different tech who’d been labeling panels at the table said. “If you’re building an illegal plane, or drone, why bother painting it.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s to make it stealth,” Taylor said. “I think it’s radar-absorbent, or whatever the name you guys would use for that. I’m also betting you’ll find the carbon fiber pieces to have the same characteristic.”
It was the texture that did it for him. When he’d still been in the service, his team had worked with the Night Stalkers, the special forces branch of the Air Force that flew extremely dangerous missions, usually to insert Rangers, SEALs, and the like. And their helicopters were painted with a similar, textured paint. No one told him directly, but he knew they flew ‘stealth’ helicopters, although it was more like low-radar-profile helicopters than actual stealth.
Seeing everything together like this, the parts and the paint, it wasn’t hard to work out what Matthews was doing, or why they’d want to do it. With drones, real drones like the military used, and not the little models sold to civilians, that could avoid radar would be perfect for watching the border. They’d know when a section of the border was clear, and they’d be able to move men without fear of border patrol. That, in addition to the tunnel, which would also get some benefits from knowing about border patrol movements, would lower the cost of shipping drugs across the borders drastically, and raise the cartels’ profits.
Matthews had been a good choice for them. Besides being hired to help clean up messes as he had been, there’s a chance he had contacts to get this kind of stuff. It was doubtful this stuff was declassified, and there was no way the DOD would have approved its sale to a PMC, so he was getting it under the table somehow, which was a completely different and more troubling problem.
It also suggested that Taylor had been wrong. They hadn’t paid off Matthews when they’d needed someone inside the investigation. They’d already had him in their pocket. They would have had to for this whole drone thing to make sense. That left yet another question. How had Matthews gotten himself hired to join a task force looking into smuggling he was already directly involved in? That was a pretty tall order.
Instead of uncovering answers, this warehouse investigation was starting to pile on whole new questions that were a lot more concerning than a series of bombings. Anything else he was going to ask the techs was cut short when Whitaker came back in.
“The guy Matthews was meeting was named Carlos Diaz,” she said. “He’s a dual U.S. and Mexican citizen and has crossed the border dozens of times in the last year alone.”
“Suspected cartel ties?” Taylor said.
“Thin ones. He’s a thug, in and out for B and E, assault, robbery, and the like. The assault convictions were enhanced because of drugs. Reading between the lines, the Vargas Cartel hired him as local muscle to deal with collections or some such.”
“I guess we know which cartel we’re dealing with, although it’s doubtful that someone that low on the food chain was Matthews’ connection to the cartel. Probably just a name the cartel gave him when he needed someone not connected to him to make a hit on us. When it failed and we started tracking it back, he was trying to clean up anything that could tie back to him. Just his bad luck we got here so fast. A few minutes later and we wouldn’t have had a clue.”
“But we weren’t,” Whitaker said. “So now that he’s blown, where would he go?”
“Mexico,” Taylor said after a minute. “He might have money offshore or a bug-out location somewhere without extradition, but he’s failed fantastically in his job from the cartel’s point of view. Their tunnel is found, the drones they were making here have been discovered, and the cartels don’t care about treaties of extradition.”
“Drones?” Whitaker asked. “That’s what they’re building here?”
“I think so, although we’ll have to wait for your people here to make the actual call,” Taylor said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the techs behind him. “I’ve seen some stuff like this before, when I was still in the Army. But even if it’s something else, he was clearly in charge of the project, and they’ll be pissed. I’m no expert on cartels, but I’m pretty sure they’re not big on forgiveness.”
“Not even a little bit,” Whitaker said.
“So if he’s going to save his neck, he’s probably going to go back to Mexico to explain what happened in person. And, we’ve got another problem.”
Whitaker’s eyes narrowed, “What problem?”
“Some of the stuff he has here is almost certainly still classified. Matthews has been out for a while, and I don’t care how well-connected his outfit is, the Army’s not going to ship crates of this stuff to a civilian. He’s got someone in the service rolling classified materials out the back door.”
“That would explain where the C4 used in the bridge bombing came from, too.”
“Probably, and who knows what else. We’re talking some seriously classified shit here. The DOD needs to know about it now so they can find the guy who’s selling it.”
“Shouldn’t we call Solomon first?” Whitaker asked. “Our orders were to keep DOD out of this.”
“Sure, when we were looking for out-of-date explosives, but this is a whole new level of security.”
“Which means it’s above our pay grade,” Whitaker countered. “Let’s let Joe make that decision.”
“This is bigger than interagency agency squabbles. The DOD needs to know.”
“You don’t work for the Army anymore, John. Joe’s stuck his neck out for you several times. Let’s at least hear what he has to say first.”
Taylor didn’t say anything for several beats, looking back at her, before saying, “Fine. Solomon first.”
Whitaker pulled out her phone and dialed Solomon’s number. This time, no one had to go track him down.
“What did you find?” Solomon asked without preamble.
“Matthews is probably headed for Mexico. We’re pretty sure he’s working for the Vargas Cartel,” Whitaker said.
“Do you know where he’ll be in Mexico?”
“No, but the guy he shot did a lot of work for the Vargas Cartel, so probably wherever they’re located.”
“We have a bigger problem here,” Taylor interjected. “We found what looks like stealth paneling and coating along with machinery for assembling it. I’m pretty sure they’re assembling drones, but either way, this stuff is really highly classified. Between the materials here and the explosives, I’m convinced Matthews has someone in the DOD or a defense contractor working with him. We’re way outside of just bombings here.”
“The expired C4 makes it more likely the person is military or DOD personnel themselves,” Whitaker said. “That narrows our search.”
They heard Joe breathe out hard on the other side of the line, and Taylor could picture the man pinching the bridge of his nose. They were outside of straightforward law enforcement at this point. It was now political, and he’d probably end up in a congressional hearing at some point, answering questions about what happened here tonight.
“I really didn’t want to call in the DOD on this,” he said, annoyed. “But we don’t have much choice now. I’ll make the call and get the ball rolling to track down their leak.”
“What about Matthews’ people?” Whitaker asked. “Did you have any luck picking them up? Seeing this setup, he couldn’t have been doing it all by himself. Odds are some of them knew what was happening.”
“We picked up two, but they seemed pretty surprised. The rest vanished just about the time you walked into that warehouse. We pulled Matthews’ phone log, and he called most of them around that time, which was probably him telling them the jig was up.”
“So they either scattered to the four winds or headed to Mexico with him,” Taylor said.
“Probably,” Solomon said. “We’ll interview the two guys left behind, but they didn’t get a call, so odds are they didn’t know what was going on.”
“So … that’s it then?” Taylor asked. “That puts them outside our jurisdiction, and knowing the DOD, they’ll want to handle their side of things internally. So we’re done here.”
“Maybe. I’ve got some people in Mexico I can call to see if we can’t get some help tracking Matthews down. He’s still our priority. It’s almost dawn, and you two have been going for more than twenty-four hours now, and I know you’re beat. Go find a place to check in and get some rest. I’ll call you as soon as I know something,” Joe said, and hung up.
Part of Taylor had hoped that they were, in fact, done, and he could head back home, but the rest of him was glad Matthews wasn’t getting off that easily. They hadn’t been close, but they’d been friendly, and he didn’t take the betrayal lightly.
Mostly, though, he just wanted to get some sleep.
