The Black Ice (hb-2)

climbing the ladder, one hand holding the flashlight.
    He was scared. In Vietnam, leaving one of Charlie’s tunnels always meant the end of fear. It was like being born again; you were leaving the darkness for safety and the hands of comrades. Out of the black and into the blue. But not this time; this time was the opposite.
    When he reached the top, before rising through the opening, he flashed the beam around again but saw nothing. Then, like a turtle, he slowly moved his head out of the opening. The first thing he noticed in the beam was the sawdust everywhere on the floor. He climbed farther out, taking in the rest of the surroundings. It was some kind of storage room. There were steel shelves stocked with saw blades, boxes of sanding belts for industrial machinery. There were some hand tools and carpentry saws. One group of shelves were stacked with wooden dowel pegs, with different sizes on different shelves. Bosch immediately thought of the pegs attached to the baling wire that had been used to kill Kapps and Porter.
    He moved fully into the room now and signaled to Aguila that it was safe to come up. Then Harry approached the storage room’s door.
    It was unlocked and it opened into a huge warehouse with lines of machinery and work benches on one side and the completed product-unfinished furniture, tables, chairs, chests of drawers-stacked on the other. Light came from a single bulb that hung from a cross support beam. It was the night-light. Aguila came up behind him then. They were in Mexitec, Bosch knew.
    At the far end of the warehouse were sets of double doors. One of these was open and they moved to it quickly. It led to a loading-dock area that was off the back alley Bosch had walked through the night before. There was a puddle at the bottom of the parking bay and he saw wet tire tracks leading into the alley. There was no one in sight. Zorrillo was long gone.
    “Two tunnels,” Bosch said, unable to hide the dejection in his voice.

    * * *

    “Two tunnels,” Corvo said. “Ramos’s informant fucked us.”
    Bosch and Aguila were sitting on chairs of unfinished pine watching Corvo pacing and looking like shit, like a man in charge of an operation that had lost two men, a helicopter and its main target. It had been nearly two hours since they had come up through the tunnel.
    “How d’you mean?” Bosch asked.
    “I mean the CI had to have known about the second tunnel. How’s he know about one and not the other? He set us up. He left Zorrillo the escape route. If I knew who he was I’d charge him with accessory in the death of a federal agent.”
    “You don’t know?”
    “Ramos didn’t register this one with me. Hadn’t gotten around to it.”
    Bosch breathed a little easier.
    “I can’t fucking believe this,” Corvo was saying. “I might as well never go back. I’m done, man. Done… Least you got your cop killer, Bosch. I got a shit sandwich.”
    “Have you put out a Telex?” Bosch said to change the subject.
    “Already out. To all stations, all law enforcement agencies. But it doesn’t matter. He’s long gone. He’ll probably go to the interior, lie low for a year and then start over. Right where he left off. Probably Michoacan, maybe farther down.”
    “Maybe he went north,” Bosch said.
    “No way he’d try to cross. He knows if we get him up there, he’ll never see daylight again. He went south, where’s he’s safe.”
    There were several other agents in the factory with clipboards, cataloging and searching. They had found a machine that hollowed out table legs so that they could be filled with contraband, recapped and sent across the border. Earlier they had found the second tunnel opening in the barn and followed it through to EnviroBreed. There had been no explosives on the trapdoor and they had gone in. The place was empty except for the two dogs outside. They killed them.
    The operation had closed down a major smuggling network. Agents had left for Calexico to arrest the head of EnviroBreed, Ely. There were fourteen arrests made on the ranch. Others would follow. But all of that wasn’t enough for Corvo or anybody. Not when agents were dead and Zorrillo was in the wind. Corvo had been wrong if he thought Bosch would be satisfied that Arpis was dead. Bosch wanted Zorrillo, too. He was the man who had called the hits.
    Bosch got up so he wouldn’t have to witness the agent’s anguish anymore. He had enough of his own. Aguila must have felt the same. He, too,