Hayes took the bag and looked at it. “And where’d it come from?”
Sean pointed across the river. “From over there. At Camp Peary.”
At that instant a fireball raced into the sky. It was clearly coming from the other side of the York.
Everyone turned their attention to the sight.
“What the hell is that?” Ventris yelled.
“Oh, shit!” Michelle exclaimed. “That plane I heard going over earlier. I bet that was Champ’s plane. He must’ve escaped and flew it to Camp Peary with the drugs. They just blew it up to get rid of the evidence.”
“So you’re saying those drugs really came from Camp Peary?” Hayes said while nervously eying Ventris.
“Tell them, Whitfield,” Sean said.
Only Whitfield wasn’t there.
“Where the hell did he go?” Sean said.
Michelle said, “Sean, I don’t think he followed us out of the woods.”
“Ian Whitfield was with us. He saved my life.”
“It’s true,” Michelle said and Horatio nodded in agreement.
“Dammit, you have to believe us,” Sean said.
“We want to,” Hayes said quietly.
“Hold on!” Sean shouted, pulling the video camera out of his backpack. “Look at this.” He ran the tape for them, pointing out the plane, the Arabs, Valerie Messaline, and the bales being off-loaded.
Ventris said, “This footage is of Camp Peary. How the hell did you get it?”
“We’re going to have to have some amnesty on that,” Sean said uneasily.
Michelle pushed past Sean so she was directly in front of Ventris. “Listen to me,” Michelle snapped. “They have kidnapped Viggie Turing. They took her in one of the boats and they’re probably on their way back to Camp Peary.”
“You saw this?” Hayes said quickly.
“Yes!” Michelle screamed. She grabbed Ventris’s jacket. “Kidnapped. Remember the FBI’s specialty? So let’s get going.”
Hayes said, “We can’t just storm into Camp Peary for God’s sake. We at least need a warrant.”
“Then dammit get one. You’re the local sheriff, Hayes!”
He sighed and said, “No, I’m not, I am with DEA
. For the last two years Mike’s been working a joint task force with us. I was just planted here as the local sheriff.”
Michelle said, “Why here?”
“Because there have been a lot of drugs pouring into the East Coast. We narrowed it down to this area,” Ventris interjected. “We thought the source was Babbage Town, but we didn’t know how they were getting them into the country. We thought they were coming in by boat.”
“You must have known Champ had a plane,” Sean pointed out.
“We did. But that Cessna didn’t have the range to bring in shipments from out of the country. We wanted the source of the stuff,” Hayes said.
“We never suspected the CIA flights. They’re a government agency,” Ventris added, looking nervous.