by R. B. Schow
They made their way upstairs to the congressman’s hotel room, knocked twice, and announced themselves. After that, they stood back as the door opened up to a steely-eyed man moving a bit gingerly.
“Tyler?” Yergha asked.
“You must be Leopold’s people,” he said as he moved back to let them inside.
“I’m Estella and this is Yergha. We’ll be running point on this operation both here and in Juárez if that’s where this thing is headed.”
“We think it is,” Tyler said, sitting down slowly, trying not to wince but doing so anyway.
“What happened to you?” Esty asked Tyler.
“Shot several times in the chest. The vest caught the lead, but I’m pretty sure I have two broken ribs, maybe three.”
“Did you crap yourself?” Esty asked.
“It was hard not to.”
“Yeah, you’ve probably got some problems in there. You should check yourself into emergency after this.”
“I’ll give you whatever you need,” the former soldier said. “Timelines, descriptions of the kidnappers, the gunmen, the getaway van, even the girls if you need it.”
“I have that covered, Tyler,” Camden said, standing up. He extended his hand, which both Esty and Yergha quickly shook. “It’s nice to meet both of you. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”
“These things can move quickly, so we need to try to move faster if we want to get our arms around it,” Esty said. “I need to know why you think they went over the border.”
“They were headed in that direction when they took the family and they were brazen,” Tyler said. “They grabbed the family in the middle of the day during a busy street fair and opened fire on me. They weren’t trying to hide. It can get like that in Mexico if you know the cops are in your back pocket. Not in El Paso, mind you, but in Mexico…definitely.”
“That’s not enough to go on,” Yergha said.
“I agree,” Tyler replied. “I made a call to a friend working with Border Patrol who called one of the supervisors at the BOA crossing. He noted the time of the incident and a description of the family, and then he calculated the approximate time of crossing. He understood the importance of the kidnapping, so he checked the surveillance feeds from the various booths looking for anything suspicious.”
“And?” Esty asked, rapt.
“We think maybe we got him but we can’t be certain. There is a man in a larger van but he’s too blurry for comparison video, let alone some kind of positive ID through any of the federal or international databases. What he did find was one of his border attendants selling what looked like Mexican plates and tourist visas to a guy in a carpet van.”
“Good,” Yergha said. “We have a man who can patch into the traffic system and find out where the van went after the incident in El Paso, but it’s going to take some time.”
“That’s not legal,” Camden said, matter-of-factly.
“Permission to speak freely?” Esty asked.
“This isn’t the military,” Camden replied. “You can say what you want.”
“You are the client,” Yergha said softly. “We are hired-hands, but we are not without manners or an understanding of our place in this operation.”
“Go ahead, Estella,” Camden said with the wave of a hand. “Say what’s on your mind.”
“None of what we’re going to do is legal,” she said. “But we weren’t hired to take legal action; we were hired to get your family back. We have some unsavory tactics, which is to say, we operate by any means necessary. I don’t want to give you the particulars for the purposes of plausible deniability but you need to know that when we find these men, we are going to gut them and scatter their insides from Juárez all the way into America if that’s what it takes.”
“I didn’t need to know that,” Camden said.
“Am I still free to speak my mind?” Estella asked.
“Be my guest,” he said, unable to look at her now. “We’ve already gone this far.”
“With all due respect, you’d better drop this little sweetheart act you have going on. Some very powerful people grabbed your entire family in broad daylight and likely smuggled them out of the country. I don’t know what you did, but you pissed these people off badly and not because you’re a good guy. Neither my partner nor me give a damn about your sensitivities or really what your weak ass stomach can handle. We don’t really even care about you. We are only here to find out what you know so we can recover your wife and kids. So, the longer you play this stupid game with us, the more you slow us down.”
Before he could say anything, Yergha got a few words in edgewise. “You people are so selfish. The fact that you’d put anything before your family, you fucking son of a—”
“Yergha!” Esty said, turning to him.
Camden looked between the two of them, shocked back into reality. The double-edged outburst seemed to change his thinking, though, because he said, “Yergha’s right. Do whatever you need to do to get them back.”
“We were going to do that anyway,” Esty said with some bite to her tone. “We don’t need your permission. We have Leopold’s permission and we know the consequences if we’re caught or if we fail.”
“Fair enough,” Camden said after looking at Tyler and getting his nod of approval.
“As I said, we have an associate who can get into the security camera footage either from traffic light cams, nearby businesses, or homes. We’ll find out where the van went that took your family. And if they switched vans mid-route, if they transferred into the larger van that Tyler’s contact saw at the border, we’ll find them.”
“But that will take time,” Camden said.
“That’s why we’re going into Juárez tonight,” Esty said.
“You don’t want to be there during the day,” Tyler warned, “let alone at night on such short notice.”
“Everything we do is on short notice,” Yergha told Tyler.
“Is there anything else you think you need from them, Yergha?” Esty asked her partner. He shook his head. She returned her attention to Camden. “We’ll need contact information for both of you, just in case.”
Both men nodded.
“Make sure your phones are fully charged with your ringers on,” she continued. “If we call, we need you to pick up your phone on the first ring because these things get dicey sometimes. What that means is that the difference between life and death may very well be the difference between you picking up on the first ring and you picking up on the second ring.”
“That seems a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Camden asked.
Yergha lunged forward just enough to make him back up. Esty put her arm across her partner’s chest, pulled him back. It didn’t matter; he’d already crossed that Rubicon.
“Dramatic is having your entire family kidnapped in the middle of a Saturday during a street fair in downtown El Paso,” Yergha hissed. “Dramatic is having your bodyguard shot. Dramatic is exactly how I will personally respond to you if you run that garbage hole mouth of yours again.”
“Save it for the field, brother,” Esty said into his ear. “Save it for the field.”
“You need to put that dog on a leash,” Camden growled, moving behind Tyler the slightest little bit.
“If you know what’s best for you right now,” Estella said softly, “you won’t say another word. Believe me when I say it’s in all of our best interests for you to say nothing.”
There was a knock on the door. Yergha shook off Esty then went to the door and looked through the peephole.
“It’s Leopold,” Yergha said.
“Let him in,” Esty replied, but Yergha was already throwing the locks.
The Pakistani quickly opened the door and stood back as Leopold waltzed inside with a manila folder tucked under his arm.
Camden shot to his feet and said, “I don’t want this man working for me.” He pointed at Yergha, which caused the Pakistani to blow out a breath and turn away in an at
tempt to control his temper.
“He doesn’t work for you,” Leopold said, “he works for me.”
“Well, he just insulted me!”
“The congressman seemed to think this would be a clean op,” Esty said.
Leopold looked at the politician and said, “We already had this conversation.”
“There was a lot going on,” Camden said.
“I was very clear.”
“We didn’t talk about this in any kind of detail.”
“That’s an error on your part, Congressman. We will find your family but it’s going to get wet and messy and there’s going to be a body count whether you like it or not. These are not nice people. These are the very worst people.”
“I’m clear on that now, but your man has to learn respect.”
Leopold took a deep breath, looked over at Yergha, then Esty, and then back to Camden. “He only has one job and that’s to get your family back. You don’t get to tell him what to do and you sure as hell don’t get to reprimand him. If you do something to inflame him and he goes after you with murder in his eyes, or his heart, I won’t stop him.”
“But I’m paying you to do a job!” Camden bellowed.
“Then do what we ask and stay out of the way. Oh, and don’t piss off the man who is planning to bring your family back to you. That’s just plain stupid, and you’re not a stupid man, are you Congressman?”
“No,” he grumbled.
“Then act accordingly,” Leopold said. “You’re supposed to be good under pressure.” Leopold looked back at Esty and said, “Have you got everything you need?”
Esty nodded. “Roger that.”
“Good, I’ll call you when I’m done here. I’m assuming you’re heading over the border?”
“Right away, boss. I have what I need to firm up the timeline of events as well.” Meaning she was about to put Codrin Pichler to work hacking into America’s security infrastructure.
“Good,” Leopold said. “I’ve already prepped him. He’s waiting on our call.” Turning back to both Tyler and Camden, he opened the manila folder and said, “Congressman Fox, this is a formal contract and this is a non-disclosure agreement.”
As she was leaving, Esty heard Camden say, “If this is an extrajudicial operation, then why am I signing documents?”
She opened the door for Yergha, who went out first, but then she turned to hear Leopold’s response.
“These are legal documents, which means if anything ever comes out and you try to burn us, these will be leaked to the press. But that’s only after my team comes and kills you, Tyler here, and anyone else associated with you that knows of this. I run a wet crew and we kill bad people in the process of saving good people. Think about it, but only after you sign. I’m not standing here for my health.”
She heard the congressman pick up the pen and start signing. “You really should work on your bedside manner,” Camden said, “especially when I’m paying you millions.”
“I have hundreds of millions, Congressman,” he said. “I don’t need your money. I just need a target and ample incentive. The incentive is your family, the target is everyone associated with the assholes who abducted them.”
“What are you, some kind of vigilante?” Camden asked sarcastically.
“As a matter of fact, I am. We all are.”
Smiling, Esty closed the door, caught up with Yergha, and said, “No one has ever had our backs like that before. No one.”
“It’s why we work for him,” Yergha said. “That and the money.”
“Mostly him,” she said. “I have plenty of money now.”
“Enough to bathe in fake scents of flowers,” he joked, giving her a little shove. She giggled and jumped at him with her arm up, getting her armpits on his shirt while he recoiled and started saying, “No!” and “Ew!” like a schoolgirl.
“I also like this job because of you, Yergha.”
“Is this where we make out?”
She punched him on the shoulder hard enough to stagger him. For a second, it looked like his arm went dead.
“Did anyone tell you that you need to lighten up on your foreplay?” he asked, rubbing his shoulder where she’d hit him.
“Keep your head in the game, Yergha,” she said with a smile. Then, when they got into the elevator, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and said, “That’s the most you’ll ever get from me, so savor it.”
He touched his face then said, “It almost happened too fast.”
“But it didn’t,” she said. “When we get to the car, you need to drive while I call Codrin. We have to find out for sure if those were our targets crossing the border.”
“If it was anyone else asking me to drive that baby-blue turd, I’d not only say no, I’d start a fistfight over it.”
“Thanks, Yergha,” she said as she lightly slapped his chest. “You really are the best.”
Chapter Eighteen
CAMDEN FOX
When Camden finished meeting with the team at his hotel room, he looked at Tyler and said, “What do you make of that?”
“Guys like this act like that,” Tyler said, reassuring him. “It’s going to be okay.”
A huge wave of emotion crashed over him at that point. His strange behavior, his odd detachment, and his concern about doing things by the book—how was he supposed to act in the middle of all of this? Sitting on the edge of the bed, Camden lowered his head into his hands and started to cry.
Tyler went silent, paced the room for a moment then said, “I’m sorry that I failed you, Congressman.”
Camden’s body shook and shuddered and all he could do at that moment was wave a hand in acknowledgment.
“I’m going to head to the hospital if that’s all right with you.”
Camden then looked up and said, “You’ll still be paid. I’m sorry about your ribs.”
He knew guys like this. Looking at him, Camden could tell that Tyler didn’t know how to respond. Military guys of his caliber had the emotions beat out of them early on and no matter how much shit they stepped in on the battlefield, most soldiers never got those emotions back. That was why they got uncomfortable whenever anyone else so freely surrendered to their feelings. And this was precisely why Camden bared his emotions the way he did. He wanted Tyler to leave the hotel room, which he did. The second Tyler left, the very instant the door latched shut, Camden stood and went to the minibar, pulled out a few mini bottles of Vodka, then opened them up and downed them.
His phone beeped again. He looked at the call log and saw several missed calls from numbers he didn’t recognize and a few from those numbers he did recognize. They were the phone numbers of reporters. There was also a call from El Paso’s West Texas Anti-Gang Center. He called the number the agent had left in a voicemail and waited for the line to ring through.
“West Texas Anti-Gang Task Force, Agent Otis Fykes here.”
“This is Camden Fox returning your call,” he said.
“Mr. Fox, I’m so sorry to hear about your family,” Agent Fykes said. “I am calling to find out if you’ve had a chance to speak with any other law enforcement.”
“I haven’t been taking calls,” Camden said.
“With all due respect, that’s not smart,” he said. “While this sort of thing is unusual for El Paso, there is an uptick in organized crime here.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
“Because the border is now wide open, Congressman Fox. You know this because you cover this. These people can just walk into our country now and do what they want, and unless we want to get railroaded by the woke mob, we pretty much have to let them do whatever the fuck they want.”
“If I could only say that on TV,” Camden said.
“Right?”
“To answer your question, I have been in touch with a hostage rescue team, but if I need any assistance from you, can I call this number?”
“Of course,” he said. “By the way, what HR team are you using?”
&nbs
p; “They’re a private team put together specifically for these kinds of incidents. You know the local PD and yourself as well…there is already too much going on, you’re underfunded, understaffed, and that’s when people burn out and things slip under the rug.”
“We’re pretty well staffed here,” he said. “I don’t mind helping out, even if it’s as a local liaison.”
“We believe that my family has been taken across the border,” Camden said.
“Oh, yeah,” Fykes said, sounding sincere. “Wow. Something like that…that’s an international issue. Way over my pay grade. But listen, if things come back to bite you here in El Paso or anywhere north of the border, you let me know so that I can maybe put some feelers out here. We’re pretty established when it comes to gang connections, CIs, and any number of other resources in our ever-improving database. We have one of the most intricate—”
“I appreciate your tenacity in this matter, Agent Fykes, and I will certainly have someone from the team reach out if we need either the FBI or the DEA.”
“Well, you have my number, and Congressman?”
“Yes?”
“I sincerely hope you find your family.”
“Thank you again, Agent Fykes.”
“My pleasure.” Camden hung up the phone and said, “Speaking of my pleasure…”
Turning on his laptop, he logged onto the WiFi connection, opened his private account at PornHub, and started scrolling through videos.
“Lesbian massage, nope. Interracial sex was tempting, but nope. Inked, pierced, big tit porn star, nope, nope, and nope. Rock climbing outdoor sex adventure…sorry ladies, but it’s too late for exercise. Twenty-year-old babysitter takes it rough for extra cash…bingo.”
He hit play then sat back as an attractive young woman with tattoos, acne scars, and eyes way too old for her age said to an older man with half a hard-on already in his pants, “Are you the one I talked to on the phone?”
