“Seriously,” he said, shaking Callahan’s hand as they stood in the hall outside the interrogation room. “You and I have the same goals here.”
Callahan took a step back and folded her arms, giving him an up-and-down once-over. She was attractive, in an I’ll-kick-your-ass sort of way. Her stylish blouse was unbuttoned one button farther than she probably realized. At first glance, her ponytail gave her a look of innocence, but one look from her green eyes warned that she was anything but.
At length, she held out her hand and snapped her fingers. “Let’s see your creds.”
“They checked them downstairs.”
Callahan scoffed. She reminded Caruso of his mother checking his hands for dampness to make sure he’d actually washed them before dinner. “Well, I want to check them again.”
He passed the black leather case to her and shot a glance at Tim Dixon while he waited.
“Don’t look at me for aid and comfort,” the supervisor said. “She just happened to ask you before I did.”
Callahan studied the ID card and the badge, obviously disappointed that they weren’t fake. “How did you find out about Feng so quickly?” Her lip curled up in disgust. “You must have had him under surveillance, and if that’s the case, why in the hell didn’t you step in and rescue the kids? Could there possibly be anything more important than that?”
Caruso took a deep breath. “First of all, I can’t speak to how I knew. But I can promise you that if I’d seen any children in danger, they would have become my highest priority. I would have gotten them out in a heartbeat.”
Callahan looked at him for a long moment and then handed him back his credentials. “I believe you on that one tiny count, Dominic Caruso. But that doesn’t mean I’m all giddy about having you attached to my hip. And anyway, if you are what I believe you to be, I fully expect you to lie to me at least a dozen times a day.” She turned back to the interrogation room, pausing with her hand on the door. Her eyes softened a notch. “Listen, I know what you’re doing is probably super-duper important in the great scheme of the geopolitical chess game. But the work my team is doing here isn’t a game in any sense of the word. We estimate that there are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in recorded history—and many of them are just kids, being forced to do unspeakable things, sometimes in a rented box truck at some peach orchard servicing a line of migrant workers waiting their turn, sometimes on a webcam. Some piece of trash gets arrested for child porn and their defense attorney boohoos to the judge and says, ‘Oh, Your Honor, my client is just a collector. He would never touch an actual child.’ Well, I say people who collect baseball cards eventually go to a game. People tell me that in adults, at least, prostitution is a victimless crime. Maybe one case in a million they might possibly have a point. But you try and have sex ten or fifteen times a day and see how you feel. Johns are rapists—they just pay somebody for the experience.”
Caruso raised both hands in surrender. “I’m not arguing with you. Really, I am on your side.”
“I just wanted you to know why I’m so bitchy right from the get-go,” Callahan said. “There is so much inertia in this ocean of evil shit that I have to push back or I’ll drown, you know. Anyway, I haven’t quite figured out Eddie Feng’s angle yet. But he’s about to tell us where we can find a guy one step up the ladder in what looks like a major human-trafficking ring. Supposedly there’s some connection to a Chinese guy that goes by the handle of Coronet. That mean anything to you?”
“Coronet?” Caruso said, repeating it so Clark and the others could hear. “I’m interested to hear where we can find a link to him. Mind if I come along?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Caruso grinned. “Not really.”
17
John Clark’s voice crackled over the radio immediately after Caruso repeated Naldo Cantu’s address. “We’ve got about twenty minutes if we’re lucky with traffic,” Clark said. “Everyone jump. I want to see what kind of intel we can grab before they get there.”
“Copy that,” Ryan said. The rest of the team confirmed they’d heard the transmission and were immediately en route.
Interstate 35 was a stone’s throw away from the FBI field office, around which he and the others were strategically parked so as to be close enough to pick up Caruso’s transmissions. His signal was garbled but readable. I-35 ran directly from Dallas to Red Oak, roughly eighteen miles away, which meant Ryan and the rest of The Campus could reach their objective in a relatively short time—as long as the evening traffic didn’t snarl. But the same held true for Special Agent Callahan and her task force. It would take a few minutes for the raid team to hit the head and gear up. Judging from the tone of her voice, this lady didn’t seem like the kind to mess around. She wouldn’t be far behind.
“You gonna try and get there sometime today or what, Jack?” Ding asked from the passenger seat.
Ryan accelerated south on the freeway. Traffic was heavy but moving, and going close to the speed limit.
Midas spoke next. He was behind the wheel in the car with Clark now, and his impatience at the traffic was evident in his voice. “They’ll be able to use lights and sirens to get through this shit. Caruso sure as hell better stall.”
Adara defended her boyfriend. “Dom will do what he can,” she said. “He’ll definitely let us know when they’re on the road.”
Ryan sped past a highway patrolman doing ninety. Mercifully, the trooper had already pulled over another vehicle.
It was dark and beginning to sprinkle by the time Ryan took the exit to Farm Road 644. Midweek traffic was light on the farm-to-market road, even at rush hour, and he poured on the speed, feeling the Avenger’s engine open up with a throaty roar. He’d been nearest to the interstate when Dom gave the address, so he felt certain Midas’s and Adara’s vehicles were somewhere behind him.
“Watch these wet roads, ’mano,” Chavez said as Ryan drifted around a corner, a mile away from their target residence now, according to the GPS on his phone.
“Nag, nag, nag,” Ryan said, and punched the gas.
Chavez flipped him off and hung on to the side handle.
A minute later Ryan slowed, driving past a white frame house set back off the road about five hundred feet. Barbed-wire fencing, meant to keep in cattle, ran in front of the property and a heavy gate made of rusted drilling pipe blocked the entry. The porch light was visible through the trees. Ryan took the first left past the target address. He was surprised to find Clark’s pickup truck already parked in the tall Johnson grass along the gravel road. He and Midas were nowhere to be seen.
“How the hell did you get here first?” Ryan said into his mic.
“Superior navigation, kid,” Clark said.
“Position?” Ryan asked.
“You guys are late,” Midas said. “We’re already moving up to the house.”
Clark suddenly gasped over the radio, whispering, “Midas, get up here. Everyone else stand by.”