Kendrick paled. "I didn't steal nothing. I just tossed his wallet on the hood." "We'll see," Pendergast said. "Agent Kovac, start pulling the hard drives.
I want the dashcam footage from unit 7 immediately."
Kendrick lunged forward. "No, you can't take the dashcam." It was a reflex action born of panic. Kendrick tried to block the door leading to the back offices. In a split second, the two MPs had Kendrick pinned against the wall.
One of them twisted Kendrick's arm behind his back, the exact same move Kendrick had used on Darius.
"Assaulting a federal agent," Lang noted calmly. "Add it to the list." Sheriff Voss watched his deputy get handcuffed. He realized the walls were closing in. He looked at Darius.
"Commander, tell them. Tell them this is unnecessary. We were letting you go."
Darius walked over to Kendrick, who was now pressed cheek-first against the wall, panting. Darius leaned in close. "You asked me if I had weapons," Darius whispered. "I told you no, but I never said I didn't have an army."
Darius turned to Lang. "Secure the station, Marcus. Nobody leaves, not until we find out why this deputy was so terrified of a simple dashcam video." Lang nodded. "Lock it down.
Nobody in or out. Sheriff, you're in your office. Don't touch the phone." The station, once the seat of Voss's power, was now occupied territory. The hunters had become the prey.
The occupation of the Ironwood Sheriff's Department lasted hours. The locals gathered outside, whispering, filming with their phones as federal agents carried boxes of files out to the SUVs. The rumor mill was on fire: terrorists, spies, murder. Inside, the air conditioning was humming, but the sweat was real.
Commander Kane had showered in the locker room and changed into a fresh set of fatigues brought by the team. He sat in the sheriff's briefing room, which had been converted into a command center. He wasn't acting as a detainee anymore. He was leading the operation. Agent Pendergast walked in, looking grim.
He was holding a tablet.
"Commander, we recovered the dashcam footage," Pendergast said. "Kendrick tried to delete it remotely about ten minutes before we entered, but he wasn't tech-savvy enough to scrub the cloud backup." "Show me," Darius said. Lang and Kane gathered around the tablet.
The video played. It showed the interior of Kendrick's cruiser. Kendrick was on his cell phone, not the radio. The audio was crystal clear. "Yeah, boss.
I'm near Big Al's," Kendrick's voice said on the recording. "No, the shipment is late. The cartel boys said wait."
Kendrick paused in the video, squinting through the windshield as he drove past the gas station. He saw Darius standing by the pump in his dress blues. "Boss, we got a problem," Kendrick said, his voice tightening. "There's a fed at the pumps. Navy, looks high brass, dress uniform."