“Good,” Kurtzman said. “That’ll leave us with one less ball to juggle.”
Delahunt nodded and shifted her attention back to her computer monitor. “As for the situation in Arizona, we’ve got AHP and sheriff’s personnel from three different counties helping the FBI lay a dragnet. The airports are covered, and if there’s enough manpower to go around, they’ll have a car at every off-ramp on the highways leading away from—Wait, hold on…”
Delahunt cut herself off and both she and Kurtzman stared at her computer screen. The woman had brought up a partial roadmap of central Arizona and a blinking star had just appeared along a stretch of Interstate I-17 just north of Phoenix. As Kurtzman watched, she placed her cursor on the star and clicked her mouse, zooming in on the flagged area. A text box automatically opened alongside the zoom shot, relaying an instant transcription of LE dispatches from the area in question. There were a few glitches with the voice-recognition software, but Delahunt and Kurtzman were able to make enough sense of the dispatch to realize that the REDI operatives had apparently pulled yet another car switch at a rest stop just off the interstate. They’d left behind a slain motorist, who’d been found slumped over the steering wheel of his locked Subaru.
“He probably witnessed the switch,” Kurtzman surmised.
“And he’s probably the only one who did,” Delahunt said, “which means we don’t know what kind of vehicle they’re in now.”
Kurtzman nodded grimly. “Sure looks that way.”
“At least we know they were heading south,” Delahunt said. “Provided they didn’t backtrack, that would put them on a course towards Phoenix.”
“Not much of a silver lining,” Kurtzman said.
They were interrupted by Wethers, who called from across the room, “I may have gotten a bite.”
“Stay on this,” Kurtzman told Delahunt before wheeling back to Wethers’ station. “What have you got, Hunt?”
“It’s the FBI in Los Angeles,” Wethers explained. “They’ve been getting more information out of the gang member they brought in after that raid in Koreatown.”
“New stuff?” Kurtzman said. “Because we’ve already got all the stuff he spilled yesterday.”
“Yes, I saw all that,” Wethers responded, “This is fresh, within the past hour. This gangster just gave up the location of a port dock in San Pedro where the Killboys were picking up their heroin shipments. The DEA and FBI are both sending teams to check it out.”
“That’ll be a nice break if it pans out,” Kurtzman admitted, “but the Killboys’ drug-dealing really isn’t top priority at the moment. At least not for us.”
“Maybe not directly,” Wethers said, “but there might be a connection to this whole defector business.”
“What kind of connection?”
“Think about it,” Wethers said. “If North Korea is using this port as a conduit, it’s probably not limited to just drug-running. They’re probably running other rackets through it, and it might even be the way they smuggled these REDI agents stateside in the first place.”
Kurtzman grinned faintly and nodded. “Now I know why we pegged you for that think tank, Hunt. Good call.”
“I’m doing a search on the company working out of that port,” Wethers said, scrolling through the steady stream of data coming up on his monitor. “Here we go.
“It’s called the Far East Trading Company. It’s chartered by the Chinese, but obviously North Korea has their finger in the pie somewhere.”
Kurtzman quickly pieced together Wethers’ findings with the information Carmen Delahunt had just come up with. An idea came to him.
“Can you switch gears for a second?” he asked Wethers. “Try doing a cross-reference search for Far East and Phoenix, Arizona.”
“I think I can manage that.” Wethers cued up one of his customized search engines and typed in a quick command.
In less than three seconds, he had the information they were looking for: the address for a Far East distribution center in Phoenix.
“Bingo.” Kurtzman glanced over his shoulder and called to Carmen Delahunt, “Patch through a quick call to Striker. I think we know where that REDI crew is headed.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Phoenix, Arizona
The Far East Trading Company was one of four enterprises sharing the privately owned Cooper Heights airfield four miles north of downtown Phoenix, and as the Clark County Metro chopper carrying Mack Bolan drifted toward the facility, a FedEx cargo plane was in the process of lifting off the runway. A cream-colored FETC jet, meanwhile, was taxiing into position for a takeoff of its own.