THE GULFSTREAM STRAIGHTENED AND LEVELED OFF, leaving the crash scene behind. A minute later we streaked low over the coastline, then made a U-turn back toward the east, back toward Brown Field, the airport from which Janus had taken off just nine hours before. A thousand feet below us, the Pacific glittered in the morning sun like polished pewter. When the waves reached shore—a pristine stretch of sand and grass—they curled into a white line of surf, broken only, at a single point, by a high, blank wall, dividing one featureless stretch of sand from another, splitting wave after wave of the ceaseless surf. I was puzzled for a moment, then I realized that the wall must be the border fence separating the United States from Mexico.
A few hundred yards inland, on the Tijuana side of the fence, I noticed a large, circular structure, like a high-sided bowl—it appeared to be a stadium of some sort, but it was proportioned more like Rome’s Colosseum than Knoxville’s Neyland Stadium. Encircled by the steep grandstands was a small patch of bare, brown dirt, barely a hundred feet across. “Hey, Mac,” I called across the aisle to McCready, “what’s this stadium-looking thing? Looks way too small for soccer, and I know that’s not a football field.”
“That would be the Plaza de Toros,” he said, without even looking. “The ‘Bullring by the Sea.’ Holds twenty thousand people. If it’s a big festival, every seat will be filled, and more people hanging over the railings. We should go, once we finish working this crash scene.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I’d have the stomach for it. I’m no animal-rights crusader, but a bullfight seems just plain cruel.”
“Nothing plain about it,” he said. “Very elaborate. But cruel? Define ‘cruel.’ You eat beef?” I nodded, knowing he was leading me into a trap. “Beef cattle get castrated,” he said, “force-fed growth hormones, crammed into feedlots and trucks, and then carried by conveyor belts into the slaughterhouse to have their brains knocked out. Me, I’d rather hang on to my cojones, service some heifers, and go out with a splash—maybe even take a matador down with me, just to even the scales. Sure, it’s a raw deal. But bulls make lousy house pets, Doc. And none of us gets out alive, remember.”
Just then I heard a click in the overhead speaker, followed by the pilot’s drawl. “Guys, we’re on final. Touchdown in about thirty seconds.”
I checked my watch. I had kissed Kathleen good-bye in my kitchen in Knoxville, two thousand miles to the east, at 7:30 A.M.. It was now 8:55. The Gulfstream wasn’t quite as swift as the transporter beam on Star Trek, but it would do in a pinch. It would definitely do.
WE WERE ON THE GROUND AT BROWN FIELD FOR LESS than ten minutes—just long enough for the group to make a pit stop and then cross the tarmac to our next vehicle, a helicopter labeled SAN DIEGO COUNTY SHERIFF. It was parked near a twin-engined cargo plane—a battered DC-3 that had seen not just better days, but better decades, and a fair number of better decades, at that. Faded paint along the side of the fuselage read AIRLIFT RELIEF INTERNATIONAL, and I recognized it as the same plane I’d seen in many of the newsletters I’d read on the flight from Knoxville. Crime-scene tape was stretched between stanchions placed around the plane’s perimeter, creating the odd impression that the aircraft was an exhibit in some bizarre history museum devoted to aviation outlaws. The same tape was stretched across the front of a large metal hangar, which was considerably newer and less battered than the DC-3. The hangar, too, bore the organization’s name.
The helicopter that awaited us, its turbine whining and its rotor spinning, was painted white, with blue lettering, but the paint did little to camouflage the craft’s military lineage: It was clearly a plainclothes version of the Huey, the U.S. Army’s helicopter workhorse during the Vietnam War. Nearing the whirling rotor, I ducked into a crouch—probably unnecessary; as far as I knew, no one had ever been decapitated because of good posture—but why take chances? Kimball and Boatman stashed their equipment and our bags in the back of the cabin, then clambered into the middle seats, leaving the seats directly behind the pilot to McCready and me. As we settled in, the pilot—a leathery deputy in aviator sunglasses—tapped his ear, then pointed to a pair of headsets hanging beside us. We nodded and tugged them on, their rubber seals shushing the urgent whine of the turbine and the jackhammer thud of the rotor. “Welcome, gentlemen,” he said. “Strap in and we’ll hop on up there.”
The FBI’s jet had been equipped with simple lap belts, like a commercial jetliner—as if a lap belt would have done any good if we’d hit the ground at almost the speed of sound. The sheriff’s helicopter, on the other hand, was equipped with five-point, military-style harnesses. As I struggled with the fittings, McCready leaned over to help, tugging the straps so tight I could scarcely move. The instant I was clipped in we took off—an upward leap and a forward tilt so swift that I decided the pilot, like the aircraft, probably had some links to Vietnam service. Two minutes later we reached Otay Mountain, which lay only a few miles beyond the end of the runway. “There it is, gents,” said the pilot. “Want to look it over before we land?”