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“For you or her?” asked Gabe.
Dryer shrugged. “Less who know the better.” He gave the three tribal officers a gloomy look.
“You going to tell her? Or should I?” asked Gabe.
“Doesn’t matter. I got to tell her something.” Dryer looked toward Selena and then he directed his attention to Gabe. “She’s in because her dad told her that they’ll kill their family if she didn’t drive.”
“Another lie?” asked Gabe.
“That one is true. These guys are animals.”
Gabe resisted the urge to shove Dryer up against the car for dragging Selena into this.
Instead of falling in with criminals, Selena seemed to have done something more dangerous. She had fallen in with their hunters.
He glanced back at the vehicle where she waited and met her gaze. The urge to go to her was so strong he had to brace against it.
Gabe lifted the radio from his hip.
“No. No. You can’t use the radio or I’m made. Nobody can know about this.” Dryer scanned the scene. “Tell your guys to block traffic. A miracle no one has been by yet.”
Not really, thought Gabe. He already had a man stopping traffic at both ends of this circular drive from Route 60. This little side road led only to the junkyard and then back to the highway. Nobody was coming down this road unless it was from the junkyard some half mile beyond his unit. The miracle was that Gabe had seen the box truck’s tracks at the first turnoff from the highway.
“Hey, did you call an ambulance?”
“It’s in Black Mountain. Take another thirty or forty minutes,” said Juris. “We can transport you and Frasco to the medical center. Be quicker.”
“What did you call in over the radio?”
“Ten seventy-one,” said Gabe.
“Shooting,” said Dryer. “That’s okay. We have to make something up. But we have to get the truck out of here. Sammy Leekela cannot see this robbery attempt and we still got to make the delivery,” said Dryer and swore. “Two years’ work.”
Gabe wasn’t moved. Now he was pissed. “Next time, maybe tell us you’re operating on our land.”
“Yeah, right.” Dryer lifted his joined wrists. “Cuffs.”
“Stay on until I have confirmation.” He wanted to punch him for involving Selena in this. “Who is your supervisor?”
Dryer provided the name and number. Gabe saw Dryer seated in the rear of his brother’s unit but left the door open. Then he gave Kino the information Dryer had provided.
“Use your phone to call Yepa,” he said, referring to his personal assistant. “Don’t use the radio. Ask her to call DOJ and then ask for George Hayes.” That was the name of the supervisor Dryer had given them. “Tell her not to mention the call to anyone. If Hayes exists, see if he’s got an agent named Dryer on our land and tell him to call me directly or his boy is going into a jail cell.”
Kino stepped away to make the call. In his absence, Juris and Dryer practiced staring unblinkingly at each other and Gabe tried unsuccessfully to keep from glancing at Selena.
His brother returned with an expression that told him all he needed to know. “Yepa spoke to Hayes, said he was rude, furious and demanded his agent’s immediate release.”
Juris’s mouth twitched. “I guess that’s a yes.”
“Did you tell her about the shooting?”
“No, Chief.”
Gabe’s phone buzzed and he fielded an angry call from Dryer’s supervisor. Gabe told Hayes his agent was under arrest, refused to let him go, hung up on Hayes and then ignored his second call.
“Turn him loose,” Gabe said to Juris who removed the cuffs from Dryer’s wrists.
“You going to let me go?” asked Dryer.
Gabe shook his head.
Dryer snorted in annoyance. “We need to get out of here now.”
“Why’s that?” asked Juris.
“We have to make a delivery. All of us. If we aren’t all three in Phoenix in about three hours this operation is blown.”
Juris motioned to the bodies lying in the road. “Don’t you think this might be an issue?”
“I can have a team clean this up,” said Dryer.
Gabe shook his head. “No.”
“We can save this operation. But we have to move now.”
“Is that the operation that I know nothing about that endangers two members of my tribe?” asked Gabe.
Juris and Gabe exchanged a look and Juris gave a halfhearted shrug, leaving the decision about what to do up to his chief.
“We’re bringing Frasco in. And you’re coming, too,” Gabe said to Dryer.
“No. You are going to let him and the girl go with me. I gotta make a call,” he added.
“Who?”
“My contact who works with the distributor.”
“Name,” said Gabe.
He provided it, but it meant nothing to Gabe.
Dryer explained the basics. DOJ had the location of the meth lab on Black Mountain and Dryer would tell them where it was, but only if Gabe let him go. Gabe needed to know where the drugs were being received to figure out their distribution operation. Specifically where they were keeping the ingredients for production.
Gabe thought he could find the tractor trailer bed now functioning as a meth lab unassisted and from there he might locate the blue barrels. But it would be faster with the help of DOJ.
“Listen,” Dryer continued. “I have the lab and I have the American supplier, Cesaro Raggar. But we want to shut down distribution and production. So far all Raggar’s orders come through Nota. But we don’t know who is delivering messages from the Mexicans to Escalanti. Nota is Escalanti’s man. But I need time to connect Escalanti to the operation and find the Mexican’s go-between.”
“Manny Escalanti?” asked Juris, naming the head of the Wolf Posse.
Dryer nodded.
Selena had mentioned Escalanti a few minutes ago. She was terrified of him and with good reason. Manny Escalanti had become the leader of the Wolf Posse after the murder of his predecessor, Rubin Fox. Nota was a known gang member. Gabe knew the posse sold the weed they got from Mexico. He did not know that the gang took orders from a Mexican cartel or that they were producing methamphetamine.
Gabe returned Dryer’s phone and listened while Dryer placed a call.
“Listen, we’re going to be late.” A pause. “Icy roads is all. Have to put chains on the tires.” Another pause. “Chains. That’s what they use.” Dryer listened. “No, there’s snow. Fourteen thousand feet, remember? It’s a frozen wasteland up here.” A pause and then. “Sure. I’ll be careful.” Dryer disconnected and tucked away his phone.
Juris gave his captain a look. “You going to let the Doselas do this? They leave the rez and we can’t protect them.”
Gabe didn’t like that one little bit.
“Clearly someone knows your route,” Gabe jerked his thumb to the back of the truck where the two bodies had been placed.
“You ID them?” asked Dryer.
Gabe provided the name of the known gunman.
Dryer nodded. “Oh, yeah. That figures. That’s the junkie brother of the guy who runs the yard. Sammy must have tipped him off somehow.”
“That where the lab is, on Leekela’s place?” asked Juris.
“Yes. In a tractor trailer. Leekela is paid to look the other way. His brother must have found the lab and decided to make a few bucks.”
“What exactly is your operation and how does it involve the Doselas?”
“It’s the first delivery. If we make it, then they plan to put Frasco’s family in charge of transportation, bringing the chemicals to the lab and the product from the lab. We’ll have the precursor’s location. But we pull a no-show in Phoenix, then these rats will scurry back into their holes. One of those holes is likely on your reservation, Chief. And it’s full of fifty-gallon barrels of precursor. Enough to supply Raggar’s customers with meth for years. This is big, Chief. I’m ordering you to release the box truck and the Doselas to me immediately.”
Dryer’s order seemed the last straw for Detective Juris. He wheeled on Dryer, aiming a finger at him like a gun as he spoke to his chief.
“He doesn’t call the shots here.”
Gabe lifted a hand in conciliation. “Let’s take it easy.”
But Juris was past that. “He can’t set up a sting operation on our reservation without letting us know.”
“See, now that’s the trouble,” said Dryer. “Every time we let you know anything, they move the operation.”
“That was before we got Tessay,” said Gabe.
“You got that first lab up on Nosie’s land thanks to your brother Clay. But not the second mobile meth lab on the Leekela place,” said Dryer.
That was true.
“The precursor? Any leads?” asked Dryer.
“I found you,” said Gabe.
Dryer huffed. “An undercover federal agent. Not stellar. You can detain me, but I have immunity.”
“Don’t you always,” said Juris, regaining his control and his stoic expression.
Dryer shrugged. “Bottom line, you haven’t found that second mobile meth lab or the precursor.”
“It’s twelve thousand acres,” said Juris.
Dryer ignored Juris and directed his attention to Gabe. Gabe knew what Dryer implied—someone was informing the cartel of their movements. Someone on the inside.
Chapter Six (#ulink_6d7ce1a0-40d6-5c71-9d69-c96496173030)
The cold spot in Gabe’s stomach was gone, replaced by a solid pain that shot across his middle. It felt like that bucking strap they used in the rodeo to make the horses kick.
“You think my department has a leak.”
“Leak? You have a damned river. Tessay isn’t the only one here on Raggar’s payroll.”
“Who?”
Dryer rubbed his neck. “Escalanti is the only one we’re sure of.” He waved a hand at the highway. “Roadblock?”
Gabe turned to Kino. “Put the cuffs back on him.”
Kino moved to comply, looking much more content.
Dryer held up his hands, talking fast, trying to get it out before someone drove past and saw Selena’s truck. “All right. I’ll tell you. But only you. If you’re the ones, we’re screwed anyway.”
“What ones?”
“There’s a reason we haven’t sought permission this time.” Dryer rubbed his neck. “We don’t know who it is. What we do know is that when there is a joint operation, they know. Nota bragged about it.”
Gabe felt sick. When he had arrested Arnold Tessay, he thought he had found the one traitor here. Had that been naive?
“It’s back to business, here on Black Mountain,” said Dryer. “But with only one meth lab they aren’t meeting supply demands. They need to expand. But since Tessay’s arrest, they have moved the precursor stores twice. Just in case Tessay rolls, they’re moving it again. I don’t know when or where. But not here. You’re too much of a pain in their asses, Chief. I hear that you’ve even been close a few times. They’ve been debating if they should move operations or just kill you.”
Gabe glanced at Kino and saw him go white.
“Lucky you,” said Dryer. “They’re moving. Nota says it will be to Salt River Reservation.”
“I have to notify my tribal council of your presence here and alert the authorities on Salt River,” said Gabe.
“And he has to go. I’ll be glad to show him off our sovereign lands personally,” said Juris pointing at Dryer.
Dryer threw up his hands. “You need help. Admit it.”
“Not your kind of help,” said Juris.
“You telling me the federal authorities don’t have rights to investigate federal crimes on federal land?”
“They do,” said Gabe. “With our knowledge. The FBI uses the channels we established. DOJ needs to do the same.”
