“You two want something to drink?”
Sam said, “Coffee? We left the house in a bit of a hurry.”
“It just finished making.” She pointed at a cabinet, “Get some cups out. I’ll pour.” As she did, Mona said, “I’m guessing this has to do with the last few nights around your place, the machine guns and the fire.”
Sam took a sip, “This is good. What kind is it?”
“Guatemalan roast. Stop dodging the question.”
“Yeah. There’s some things going on, and I need help figuring it out.” He took another sip, “I think Miguel should tell you this from the beginning, though.” He looked at Mona, “Miguel speaks English but he’s more comfortable speaking his native language. How’s your Spanish?”
Mona winked at Sam and turned to Miguel, “Digame, por favor, Miguel.”
Miguel told her, and Sam filled in from his perspective. By the time they finished, the Bunn coffee pot was empty.
Mona said, “Let me see the watch.” Miguel gave it to her and she had it figured out in seconds. “Come on, let’s see what sort of images we have.” She led them out of the kitchen and down a hallway, passing two bedrooms, to the door at the far end.
They entered and saw a long, narrow room, maybe ten feet wide, and filled along both sides with computers and electrical equipment. Sam said, “I remember the first time you showed me this. I thought I was on the command deck of the Battlestar Galactica.”
Mona grinned, “So say we all.” She sat in the chair and rolled it in front of an Apple computer hooked to two large monitors. She motioned for the two men to sit beside her. “It’ll take me a minute or so to sync, then we can look at the images on these monitors when I get things going.” She worked a tiny screwdriver to uncover a small opening on the watch, and then used a thin cable to hook it to the computer. Mona turned to the keyboard and typed very fast. Nothing happened.
“Is it broken?” Sam asked.
“Password protected. This will take a few minutes.” She used another cable to connect a panel with multi-colored lights to the computer. She typed in a burst of letters for thirty seconds, then leaned back in the chair as the lights blinked in staccato rhythms. “I put these lights on the panel as an homage to all the space movies I saw as a kid.”
“Sweet.” Sam said.
“Now we can let the machines do the work.”
Two minutes later, the colored lights settled to their normal steady glows. Mona unhooked the cable from the panel and typed on the keyboard. Several commands, written in Spanish, showed on the monitor, so Mona worked the mouse and clicked on them.
An image of a railroad yard appeared on the monitor, and the second image was of a tall building with greenish glass windows and a red walled side toward the street. Mona said, “That’s the Legislature building in Chihuahua City.” She advanced the images, and the next photos were of tractor-trailer rigs with long cylinders. They varied in color, with most in white, but some in yellow, or with yellow stripes on them. Other images showed buildings in Juarez and El Paso, highways and roads, several malls, Downtown Presidio and Ojinaga, and the International Bridge connecting Ojinaga and Presidio. Another image showed a different international bridge.
Sam said, “I think that’s BOTA, the Bridge Of The Americas, in El Paso.”
Mona nodded, “I think so, too.” She continued to pull up images. Two were of airports. One was large enough for a city, and a second was smaller, obviously for a town. Another image showed a high school football stadium.
The last images were two lines of numbers and letters written in sand, a blurred image of Sam’s face, and two images Sam had taken in the cave when he figured out the watch camera. “That was a fountain of knowledge, “ he said.
Miguel said, “Some of the pictures were taken in Mexico.”
Mona said, “This is bigger than you think, Sam. This watch had codes in it that were put in by CISEN. I’ve also been checking high level chatter, and CISEN Agents are suddenly all over Juarez this last month.” Mona tapped the watch with her finger, “This is a
CISEN agent’s watch, and he took these photos. The only reason for using a watch camera would be because he was undercover.”
Sam said, “Now he’s dead.”
“And there’s been no chatter about a dead Agent, just about a missing one. CISEN suspects he is dead, but they don’t know.”
Sam said, “Hunter told us that somebody took the body.”
Mona said, “Hunter Kincaid. Yeah, you might want to give her a call and have her come down here. We need to talk to somebody we can trust.”
Miguel shifted his feet; “She will send me to Mexico, then. But I understand.”
Mona said, “In this situation, that might not be the case.” She lifted the phone by her computer. “Use the land-line, Sam. And tell Kincaid to get on one. There are too many ears out there right now.”
When Sam hung up the phone, he said, “She’s coming. It was her day off, but she’s on her way. Raymond’s in Odessa, or she would have brought him, too.”