Hostile Borders Read Free Page B

cover and watch the prisoners. On top of the shelter was a flagpole with the American flag flying from it. A pair of spotlights illuminated the flag so that it could fly twenty-four hours a day.
    As he stood and watched Pena, Munson spoke quietly to himself.
    â€œA half-million dollars,” he said. “Enough money to start again anywhere. And it’s not like the courts would convict him, not with all of his money. Fucking lawyers.”
    Reaching into his shirt pocket, Munson pulled out a small plastic bag wrapped in his handkerchief. Spreading the handkerchief out over his hand, Munson dumped the contents of the bag onto it. Tumbling out of the bag was a nine-volt battery and a small plastic cube about half the size of the battery. Though he didn’t know it, the cube was an IR-15 model Phoenix infrared flashing beacon. What Munson knew was that he was supposed to snap the terminals on the bottom of the cube onto the top of the battery and drop it to the rooftop.
    Holding the parts inside of his handkerchief to keep his fingerprints from the battery, he snapped the two pieces together. Invisibly, the light inside the Phoenixbeacon began to flash. Though Munson couldn’t see anything happening, under good conditions, the flashing infrared beacon could be seen for twenty nautical miles by anyone looking for it through a night-vision device.
    Dropping the beacon to the rooftop, Munson reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a cell phone. Like the parts to the beacon, the cell phone had been given to Munson by one of Pena’s lawyers inside an envelope that held a page of instructions and a thick wad of cash. The money had been a down payment to Munson for a promised half-million dollars. All he had to do to earn the rest of the money was follow the directions on the sheet. As an added incentive, the sheet also listed a secure Web site for an offshore bank along with an account number and a set of codes. On a computer at the San Diego Public Library, Munson was able to pull up a bank account, a secret account in the Grand Caymans. Not even the IRS could check this account without the long strings of numbers and letters that made up the access code.
    Staring at him from the computer screen was his own name followed by a huge number, $450,000.00. More money than he could ever expect to make in his whole life. Enough money to drop a job where he was spit at and ridiculed by the prisoners he guarded. And when he retaliated to the abuse, the higher-ups in the federal system looked down on him. They even took the side of the prisoners most of the time. This much money was freedom, and he wasn’t going to let it go.
    Assembling and dropping the beacon was only partof what Munson had to do. Before he burned the envelope and the instruction sheet to ashes, he had memorized the few lines on the sheet. Once Pena was away, Munson would be able to access the money in his account. How the man intended to get out of the building, Munson neither knew or cared. He was just supposed to act as if everything was normal, even to giving Pena a hard time. And, he was to make sure that Pena was exercised early in the morning.
    There was nothing about the cell phone that looked at all unusual. Flipping up the cover on the phone, Munson watched as the small display lit up. Punching in the numbers 999-999-999, he pushed the little green-phone symbol. When the light on the screen went out a moment later, he dropped the phone back into his pocket.
    Though his heart was still beating as if he had just finished a hard run, Munson’s hands had stopped shaking. Now he would just see what was going to happen next.
    Inside his pocket, the Global Positioning System locator beacon disguised inside the cell phone sent out a steady, coded signal up into the night sky.

Chapter Two
    â€œWe’ve got a signal!” the pilot of the Super Courier said into the boom microphone of his headpiece.
    â€œWhere away?” Garcia