jerking around and get moving.”
The Spaniard started the engine, put the car in gear, and pulled out of the rest area and onto the motorway. Two exits later, Harvath signaled for him to turn off.
They followed a small country road and he instructed Scarface to pull behind a thick copse of trees. He then told him to turn off the engine.
Climbing out, he instructed them to exit the vehicle one at a time. “Afuera.” His Spanish was lousy, but the pistol was a wonderful interpretive aid that seemed to help get his points across.
He motioned for the men to put their hands on their heads and get down on their knees. It was obvious from their faces that they believed he was going to execute them.
He walked around to the back of the vehicle and popped the trunk.Pulling back an old blanket, he discovered two sawed-off shotguns. “ No pistolas. No armas , huh?”
Eyebrows began to speak, but Harvath cut him off. “Shut up.”
He searched the rest of the trunk, but didn’t find much. There was an empty gas can, some road flares, snow chains, a spare, and a jack. What he really would have loved was some duct tape, but there wasn’t any. The plastic Tuff Ties from his kit would have to do.
Walking around to the front of the car, he tucked his Glock in the back of his jeans and after making sure it was loaded, set one of the sawed-off shotguns on the hood of the car. With his eyes on Scarface and Eyebrows, he fished through his backpack and removed the plastic ties.
He walked over to Eyebrows and demonstrated how he wanted him to secure his friend. When Scarface was zipped up, Harvath had Eyebrows lie facedown in the dirt and he returned the favor.
With their ankles zipped together and wrists bound behind their backs, Harvath had them hop over to the car and helped load them in the trunk facedown. Once they were in, he chained a couple more Tuff Ties together so he could hog-tie the men. It was cramped quarters in the trunk and neither of them was going to be able to move until they were cut loose.
After gagging the men, he slammed the lid shut and climbed into the driver’s seat. He removed the GPS unit, fired it back up, and once it had acquired the satellites, planned an alternate route to the destination, which he quickly memorized.
The reason he had been able to ID Eyebrows and Scarface coming out of Bilbao was that they had been following close enough to be seen. If the GPS unit or the Opel he had been driving contained some sort of a tracking device, they should have been able to stay back and out of sight. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to gamble that the GPS device might give him away to whoever had sent the two geniuses in the trunk, and so as he pulled back out onto the country road and headed for the motorway, he dropped the unit out the window.
He had no idea that the car he was now driving was the biggest giveaway of all.
CHAPTER 11
C HICAGO
After leaving Area Five headquarters, Sergeant John Vaughan drove to the intersection where Alison Taylor had been struck. He parked his vehicle and surveyed the entire area on foot.
Beyond the lone Chicago Police Department blue light camera used to discourage street crime, Vaughan located five other privately owned security cameras that might have footage of the hit-and-run.
The first belonged to Alison Taylor’s apartment building. Vaughan scared up the resident manager, who had “already” spoken to the Area Five detectives. John mollified the man and explained that he was simply following up.
The manager told him exactly what he had told the detectives. The building’s exterior camera provided a 24/7 feed so that residents could see who was buzzing them from the front door. Unfortunately, the feed wasn’t recorded.
Was it possible that a resident could have had their TV switched to the video loop when the accident occurred? Yes, but at three o’clock on a weekday morning, he doubted it. The majority of his renters were young professionals like
James Leck, Yasemine Uçar, Marie Bartholomew, Danielle Mulhall
Michael Gilbert
Martin Edwards
Delisa Lynn
Traci Andrighetti, Elizabeth Ashby
Amy Cross
Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta
James Axler
Wayne Thomas Batson
Edie Harris