Preston insisted on climbing into the tent to lay down. Angie knew he wasn’t so very tired because they hadn’t ridden that far, and certainly not very hard. Lying on his back, he stared up at the interior surface of the tent.
“When I was in the Army, the Military Police in Europe always had access to VW vans with the police markings and emergency lights mounted on top, just like the older K-Mar vehicles before they started getting the fancy paint jobs they have now. The US version was dark green with large white patches and big black letters. On the inside, the had a heavy wire cage wall separating the front seats from the passenger area. The sliding side door always had the inside handle removed. It was basically a prisoner transport vehicle with room for six passengers.”
Angie finally understood. She lay down next to him. “So, we do some night watching,” she suggested.
“Yep.”
Preston couldn’t sleep. He tethered the laptop to his cellphone and began researching, looking for images to indicate whether the US MPs still used such vans. Apparently there were still some in service here and there across Europe. Social sites offered photos aplenty. Then he scanned the satellite images of the area.
“Without knowing for sure, I’m just guessing the car we saw was headed right over here to that new Albert Heijn shopping center. It’s probably the closest thing of that sort to Javelin. The next nearest thing is an Aldi out in Brüggen, tiny by comparison and not any closer. There’s also the Rheindahlen Complex” Preston seemed almost thinking aloud, but Angie understood he was explaining where his mind was going. “Without knowing where they might be going or bringing the next load of kids, all we need to do is establish a baseline of routine coming and going by any Military Police vehicles at night across the border.”
It seemed to take forever, but finally the sun went down. In the dead of summer, that meant nearly 9PM. They road slowly back to the small bridge passing over the autobahn. Parking their bikes out of sight at the bottom, the didn’t climb all the way up. Instead, they sat part way up where they could just see over the side for west-bound traffic coming from Germany.
While they waited and watched, Preston and Angie chattered about almost anything simply to occupy their minds and stay wide awake. “If I were planning to run small batches of kids into this area, I’d want to make sure I had the same vehicles come and go routinely so the local and national police never gave it a thought. I’d make sure they came across the border at least once nightly.”
He also told stories of apparent corruption he observed or had heard about in the US Army. He became just a bit passionate about it to the point of distraction. It was Angie who recognized the aging VW van with white patches and emergency light bar on top heading toward the bridge where they sat. Preston turned quickly, raised the camera from his lap and immediately began snapping still images. He then stood and made sure to catch the rear license plates.
The camera told him it was pressing midnight. He decided nonetheless to send a text message to his boss, explaining his notion and promising to post a picture of the rear of the MP van with the plates visible into the dropbox.
The next morning Preston’s cellphone twittered a reply while he was getting dressed. He snatched it up while still half-naked to see what it said.
Plausible. Plates ambiguous — Rheindahlen or Javelin. See drop.
In Preston’s mind, the idea of using a small skiff to transfer from barge to van would explain a lot. Düsseldorf had a great many private havens and several kilometers of beach areas with small roads nearby. Even if an MP van would be conspicuous, other types of cargo vehicles would not. At some point between Düsseldorf and the border were any number of transfer points to switch vehicles. But it would mean someone in the MPs with the means to control and corrupt several others to keep it all quiet. That would hardly be new in the US Army.
Checking the dropbox account, Preston and Angie saw this message:
You’ll need to stay around and catch where they take the cargo. No precise location known for the breaking house. Another unintended vacation.
Gary’s wry sense of humor kept this job sane.
