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Crew didn’t seem to enjoy driving the speed limit.
The road between Andorra and the Spanish flatlands hugged the mountainsides and was never straight for more than a couple hundred feet. At one point, Crew had almost caught up to Carillo, so now Elliott had his laptop up to ensure the distance didn’t shrink.
Ryan and I sat quietly in the back seat.
I didn’t recognize the software Elliott was using on the laptop. It had to be something advanced that civilians had no access to. There was a live GPS map following the trackers, a constant stream of updates of locations, a message function that he used to communicate with Ramirez and Willow, and walls of code all over.
Elliott shook his head and typed something.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“No—Willow asked if she should give Carillo access to his bank accounts in order to gain more intel, but that would raise suspicion,” he replied absently. “He’d know we’re trying to set him up.”
“Who does he think is behind the freezing of his assets?” Ryan wondered. “He’s supposed to believe we’re going after Vincente, not him, yeah?”
“Freezing accounts is a standard government action,” Elliott replied. “He knows he’s wanted, he knows the US authorities are actively searching for him, so… But it doesn’t matter at this rate. After the Blanco news spread, it’s possible he thinks it is us, which is why I wanna intervene as soon as Carillo and Gajero are in the same location.”
He didn’t have to tell me why. Blake and Marisa were their leverage. Carillo was undoubtedly not afraid to demonstrate the power he held. It was such a bitch-ass cartel move. I’d seen it so many times. The smugglers we caught in the Caribbean and in the Pacific were sometimes pushing cartel merchandise because someone was holding a gun to a loved one’s head. Mules got extorted and coerced into doing what they did every fucking day. Even more so when it was drivers for narco-subs, something that required more skill.
I released a breath and tried to calm down. My heart was beating too fast for all thenothingI was doing.
Eventually, we ran out of mountains. The flatlands took over, and we had to slow down further to prevent detection.
The afternoon sun burned down on the terracotta desertscape, and the heat rested like a liquid blanket on the road.
It felt like an eternity passed before Elliott spoke again.
“They’re not going into Barcelona,” he stated. “We need to get on the C-25 heading north up here.”
“Got it.” Crew checked the rearview and switched to the right lane. “You think they’re going to France?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Elliott frowned and typed rapidly. “If I were them, I’d avoid another border crossing. It depends on—hold on.” Something happened on the screen. A new map appeared in its own window, taking up about a quarter of the screen, and it was tracking dozens of targets along the roads between Barcelona, Girona, and Manresa. “Goddamn, we’re sending Coach a big box of chocolates when this is over. And maybe a nice gun for his collection.”
“What’s going on?” Crew asked.
“He’s using traffic cams to narrow down possible vehicles for Gajero,” Elliott answered. “Those red dots on the map are rentals, cars reported stolen, unregistered vehicles, some he hasn’t found information about yet, and trucks belonging to less-established shipping companies. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a great indicator.”
Coach could have all the chocolate he wanted to, if that was his thing.
By the time we closed in on the city of Girona an hour later, we were down to four targets, all moving in the same direction. Every now and then, a new dot appeared on the map, before Coach dismissed it.
Girona was approximately an hour south of the French border, and we took smaller roads to stay out of sight, all while we monitored Carillo and the Gajero suspect moving closer together. Gajero from Barcelona, Carillo from Manresa and Vic.
“There. They just merged onto the AP-7,” Elliott said. “They’re on the same road now.”
Anticipation buzzed through me.
We passed Girona, and the AP-7 morphed into E-15, where we got on the freeway again. Messages flooded in from their little chat server on the screen at a rapid speed.
“Petrov’s on the phone,” he reported. “Forwarding audio to Mercier unless anyone here speaks German.”
No one said anything.
I’d thought I was all right for being fluent in two languages, and then I’d met these bastards. I already knew Elliott spoke Russian and Farsi along with Spanish, and the Tenleys and Quinns knew their way around several of the languages spoken in the Middle East and Africa. Mercier had worked primarily with Spanish as his main language, though he spoke French, German, and Italian as well.
Did they ever have time to watch TV or were they just crunching dictionaries?
“Jesus Christ, Willow’s fantastic,” Elliott muttered. “Our four targets moving north with Carillo’s entourage are confirmed. Willow infected Petrov’s contact list with spyware, which spread to the person he’s currently on the phone with—whose location is the same as the first dot on the map.”
