Free JET - Escape: (Volume 9) by Russell Blake Page B

already coated with a film of road dust, the caldrons on it steaming atop kerosene burners.
    The taller of the pair of officers stared at her deadpan when she interrupted their discussion with a terse, “I’ll take it from here.” His eyes narrowed and he squared his shoulders, obviously rankling at being talked down to by a woman.
    “And you are?” he snapped.
    “The person taking over,” Fernanda said.
    The cop stiffened and was preparing a harsh response when Viega approached and cut him off. “Officer, I’m Captain Viega, and this is my associate. Thank you for a job well done. I trust you followed orders and didn’t continue with the interrogation?”
    The cop looked at his feet sheepishly, offering the only answer they were likely to get as he and his partner stepped away from the old woman. “She’s all yours. Says she saw a strange woman here yesterday morning, and later, that she joined up with a man and a child.”
    Fernanda took a calming breath and smiled at the food vendor. “Tell me in your own words what you saw. Start at the beginning, slowly, and try to remember everything. We don’t know what might be important, so it’s critical that you search your memory for even the most insignificant details.”
    The woman nodded and began her account. She’d arrived at dawn, as she did each day, having awakened at four in the morning to prepare her food. She’d served three breakfasts and was worrying about how her business would go if it had started that slow when the woman appeared and bought food and started a discussion with one of the truck drivers. She’d thought that strange, and speculated that the woman was a prostitute desperate for drug money – until a few minutes later she and the white man had climbed into the truck with their child. The truck departed, and that’s the last she’d seen of them.
    Fernanda listened attentively, and when the old woman had finished, gently probed her with questions. In five minutes she was done and hurrying back to where Ramón was leaning against the SUV’s fender.
    “They got a ride with the truck driver. And he had Venezuelan plates.” She looked off into the distance. “They’re headed for Venezuela, if they aren’t there already.”
    Ramón shook his head. “There’s no way they could make it across the border. That’s one of the areas where we have a lot of pull, and we circulated her photo and their description to all the border-crossing guards, along with a large financial incentive to anyone who catches them.”
    “I want you to put out the word to everyone in both crossing areas. Police, informers, whoever. At this point we need a wide net. I just hope we aren’t too late.”
    “It takes a good fourteen hours to hit the closest crossing, which is Cúcuta. That’s if everything went well. The likelihood is they got there yesterday evening. Traffic would be extremely light after dark, so they’d have been spotted if they’d tried to make it over.”
    Fernanda nodded. “I hope you’re right. What about the other crossing point?”
    “Maracaibo. Not nearly as heavily traveled, and another three hundred something kilometers north of Cúcuta. If that’s where they’re headed, they probably just got there a couple of hours ago, assuming the driver went all night, which is virtually impossible. Nobody in their right mind drives at night with the robbery situation being what it is.”
    “I want roadblocks there and Cúcuta.”
    Ramón smiled sadly. “There’s a limit to what we can do. As we’ve discussed, that area is controlled by another group – a competitive cartel we’re enemies with. In Cúcuta we’re having to work in their backyard. It makes things more difficult. Not impossible, just difficult.”
    “Then you can’t draw on your military contacts for roadblocks?”
    “I’ll ask, but don’t count on it.” He paused, thinking. “We have a decent number of informers in the region, so we should be able to relay the