Nearly a quarter-mile stretch of the winding road was illuminated by headlights and taillights. Several dozen vehicles were idling in place, trailing clouds of exhaust into the night air. He traced the line of cars and trucks with his binoculars, then held his focus on the head of the line. There, two army transport trucks were parked off on the shoulder. Three armed soldiers blocked the road while more than a dozen other men circled the first two vehicles, searching the interiors and scrutinizing its occupants. After a few moments, the vehicles were waved through and the troops closed around the next two cars. Manziliqua was too far away to hear any of the activity, but soon he heard the faint droning of rotors and, glancing up, he saw the lights of a helicopter approaching the roadblock.
Lowering his binoculars, Manziliqua scrambled downhill to the boulders where he’d fallen asleep earlier. Next to the Barrett .50 was an AN/PRC-126 radio. He snatched up the transceiver and hurriedly patched through a call. He was wide awake now, pulse racing. The roadblock had clearly been in place for some time. How was he going to explain not having reported it earlier? Miguel was going to be furious. Manziliqua had seen him pistol-whip men for lesser transgressions. What would happen to him if Miguel figured out he’d fallen asleep at his station?
Think fast, Manziliqua murmured to himself. Think fast….
“IDIOT!” MIGUEL RIGO switched off his microphone and slammed it back on the cradle of a transceiver mounted under the dashboard of the Mack truck he was riding in. “He’ll pay for this!”
Zacharias Brinquel, a rotund Basque in his midfifties, was behind the wheel of the big rig. He’d overheard enough of Miguel’s angry exchange with Luis Manziliqua to know the problem they’d run into.
“We’re headed for a roadblock?” he said without taking his eyes off the narrow mountain road before him.
“Yes. Three miles from here,” Miguel muttered. The clean-shaved, thirty-year-old leader of the Basque Liberation Movement pounded his fist against the dashboard, then popped open the glove compartment and pulled out a well-worn topographical map. “He claims the fog kept him from spotting it earlier. Pah!”
Brinquel took a final drag on his small cigar, then flicked the cheroot out his window. “More likely the only fog was between his ears,” he guessed.
“I’ll teach him to fall asleep at his post!”
Miguel quickly unfolded the map across his lap and shone a small penlight on the area they were driving through.
“Slow down,” he told the driver. “There should be a spot around the next bend where we can turn.”
Brinquel frowned. “Turn? Up here in the mountains? Not with our load.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“I’m not a truck driver, Miguel,” Brinquel protested. “It’s hard enough for me to keep us on the road. I’ve never backed a truck up and turned it around.”
“Now is a good time to learn,” Miguel countered. “Put on your flashers.”
Brinquel shook his head wearily and switched on the emergency lights. He checked his rearview mirror, but it was impossible to see if there was any traffic behind them. The truck was hauling a forty-foot-long prefab trailer home, and the structure extended out more than ten feet on either side of the flatbed it was resting on, blocking Brinquel’s view, as well as taking up a good portion of the oncoming lane. Twice already the trailer had been nearly clipped by traffic coming the other way, and as he slowly rounded the next bend on the mountain road, he again took up both lanes.
As Miguel had predicted, once they’d cleared the bend, they came upon a straightaway where the road was flanked on either side by a good twenty yards of level ground. To their right, just beyond the wide shoulder, a flimsy guardrail marked the edge of a precipitous drop into a deep, narrow gorge. Turning the truck without going over the side would be a chore, even for an experienced driver. Brinquel weighed his predicament and shook his head again.
“I can’t do it, Miguel,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”
Miguel reached to his side for a 9 mm Walther pistol similar to the one his sister had used earlier in the day to execute the woman who’d been picked up near the BLM’s worksite in Barcelona. He pressed the gun’s barrel to Brinquel’s head and barked, “Try!”
Brinquel didn’t so much as flinch. His eyes went cold, as did his voice.
“Who do you think you’re talking to, Miguel?” he asked calmly.
Miguel held the pistol in place a moment, then slowly pulled it away. He averted his gaze from the driver and busied himself attaching the Walther’s sound-and-flash suppressor.
“I apologize, Zacharias,” he finally murmured.
“You and your brother. Such hotheads.” Zacharias sighed. He managed a faint smile. “Just like your father, rest his soul.”
“Don’t forget Angelica.”
“Yes, your sister, too,” Brinquel said.
“I guess none of the apples have fallen far from the tree.”
His point made, Brinquel dropped his smile and told Rigo, “Your father never pulled a gun on me.”
Miguel was given pause. His father and Brinquel had been best friends since the early years of the ETA, and Zacharias had been at Carlos Rigo’s side the day, just over a year ago, when he’d been gunned down by the Ertzainta. By all rights, Brinquel had been next in line to take over as the head of the Navarra cell, but power held little interest for him and after he’d helped avenge Carlos’s death in an assault against the Ertzainta, he’d turned the organization over to Miguel, his friend’s elder son, who’d promptly broken with the ETA. Still, Miguel continued to rely on Brinquel’s experience and quiet wisdom as a counterpoint to their impatience and hardheadedness. He looked up to the man and the more he thought about it, the more Miguel regretted having taken his frustrations out on him.
“It won’t happen again,” Miguel promised.
“No, it won’t,” Zacharias responded calmly. “Now, are you sure there is no other way around the roadblock? What about San Marcos Pass?”
Miguel inspected the map again and shook his head. “The road is too steep,” he said. “Besides, if the traffic is backed up as far as Luis says, we would be seen. No, we need to turn around.”
Brinquel chuckled. “Somehow I knew you were going to say that.”
“I have confidence in you, Zacharias,” Miguel assured the driver. “Just take it slow.”
Brinquel nodded. “With this load, I couldn’t take it fast if I wanted to.”
Halfway through the straightaway, the older man eased the semi off onto the shoulder and headed toward the guardrail. Once he was within a few yards of it, Brinquel turned the wheel sharply and headed back toward the road. He’d hoped that by some miracle there would be enough shoulder on the other side of the road for him to turn the truck without having back up, but once he crossed the median, he quickly ran out of room and was forced to put on the brakes just shy of the mountains. The truck was now completely straddling both lanes of the road.
“So far, so good,” he said, putting his foot on the clutch and reaching for the gearshift knob rising up from the floor. “Now is when we need to say our—”
Brinquel’s voice was drowned out by the sudden bleating of a car horn. A pair of headlights switched to high beam and bathed the truck’s cab with a harsh glow.
Miguel squinted past Brinquel and saw a small sports car in the road. He couldn’t tell the make of the car, but from the sound of the horn he guessed it was a Fiat. Its driver continued to work the horn, giving off a series of short blasts, then settling on a prolonged, one-note wail that echoed off through mountains.