Cartel Fire

by Tom Riggs

  “Don’t worry,” said Munro to her unsaid question. “I trust Eduardo.”

  The convoy of Humvees drew up at the chain-link gate smoothly and came to a stop. Munro got out of the cabin, holding onto the side door to steady himself against the shooting pain in his shoulder.

  At the same time, all the doors on all three Humvees opened. Munro hesitated when he saw several federal police get out of the first two. They were dressed in black combat fatigues, Teflon vests and carried M16s. They looked ready for war. They got out with their guns raised and quickly split up, covering the area around Munro and the pick-up. There were eight of them and they were quickly in a position whereby a 100 metre radius was covered by their automatic rifles. Munro did not move. He just watched the men. They were fast and professional. Anna went to say something, he could tell she was worried, but he put his hand up inside the cab to stop her. He trusted Eduardo.

  On a signal from one of the men, the side door to the third Humvee opened and two men in plain clothes got out. They were in plain clothes, but little was left to the imagination as to what they did for a living. Both wore blue jeans and fresh white trainers, both wore t-shirts that were tight against their trained torsos, both wore dark sunglasses. Both carried Heckler and Koch submachine guns. They got out casually, but with their guns raised. Munro still did not move. One of them walked over to the gate, his gun raised. But he was not in a hurry. He got to the fence.

  “Nombre?” he said to Munro. Name.

  Munro told him, and he looked at Munro closely and then Anna. Munro could feel Anna’s rising panic, but he did not want to raise his hand again. No sudden movements. The man continued to look at them for a few moments. Suddenly he turned and shouted something fast and unintelligible to his partner. He turned back to Munro and smiled.

  “Welcome to Cancun Airport, señor, please come in.” And with that he put down his weapon, leaning it against the chain link fence, and took out a key to unlock the gate.

  As Munro and Anna stumbled through the fence, exhausted, bloody and dirty, they looked up to see a man step out of the passenger door of the third Humvee. Munro looked at him. Green combat fatigues, almost tailored into perfectly polished black combat boots, rows of dress medals and a lieutenant-colonel’s epaulets.

  “Eduardo,” said Munro.

  Eduardo stepped out of the Humvee and walked towards them smiling, his arms held out, whether in a gesture of conciliation or greeting, it was not clear.

  “Jack, my old friend, how good to see you. And you señorita, must be Miss Neuberg. It is an honour.”

  Munro walked up to him, shook his hand but backed off from the embrace that Eduardo went into.

  “You set us up Ed. Twice. Used us like bait in a trap. We very nearly didn’t make it.”

  Eduardo looked at Munro’s blood stained shoulder and went slightly white.

  “Medico!” he called to his men, before turning back to Munro.

  “Jack, I’m so sorry. I really am. But Acapulco was not me. You were seen by a cab driver. I only found out because there was a spy for the cartel on my staff. We were listening to his calls, we found out they were coming for you just in time.”

  “And the villa?” said Anna, glaring at Eduardo. He shrugged and smiled.

  “What was I going to do? I was bringing you there anyway. I thought I would turn the situation to my advantage, use the rat against his employers. I let him leak the information to the Sonora cartel, then I leaked the information to the chief of police, who works for Los Zetas. My plan was to get you two safely out the way long before they showed up.”

  “So you sent the two gangs to the villa, at the same time?”

  Eduardo smiled, “Exactly! Let the animals fight each other somewhere out of the way. Why waste bullets?”

  Munro looked at his old friend. A man at war, thinks like a man at war. He smiled.

  “Nice move … did it work?”

  “Like a treat,” said Eduardo picking up Anna’s bag. “My nephew is down there now, mopping up. He’s counted thirty dead narcos so far. Not bad for an afternoon’s work. But enough of that, let’s get you two cleaned up and then onto that plane. By the way what happened to your shoulder?”

  Munro told him about the fight with Hector earlier, not mentioning Anna’s role. Eduardo stopped and looked at them both closely, his smile gone.

  “You have done Mexico a great service Jack. A great service. Hector Ortega was a cancer, a cancer that you have removed. But I am sorry it came to that, as I said, my plan was that you would both be gone before anything happened.” He paused, and then smiled again.

  “But in return, I have a lovely plane waiting for you. A Gulfstream Five, nice and big. Three elderly bird watchers, on their way back from Costa Rica. I asked them nicely, and they are only too happy to have two more passengers. You will be in London in no time at all Jack, no time at all.”

  He turned and led them towards his Humvee. As he moved, the cordon of guards moved with him, their rifles still raised, still scanning everything, ready to move, ready to shoot.

  PART 3

  38

  Hampshire, England

  Munro woke up with sun on his face. Bright, winter morning sun. He immediately realised it was late, much later than usual.

  “So much for the hour before dawn.” He turned and saw Anna lying next to him. Her skin was nut brown against his stark white sheets. She looked beautiful, even first thing in the morning.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked her.

  “You told me in Mexico that you always get up the hour before dawn, learned it in the army or something. It’s hours past dawn now, soldier. You’re slipping.”

  Munro looked at his watch. Almost nine, he really was slipping.

  “There’s only one person to blame for that,” he said smiling and taking Anna in his arms. His shoulder still hurt from where Hector had cut him with the machete, but it was worth the pain.

  Anna smiled and leaned in to kiss him, before getting up on her knees and effortlessly positioning herself astride him.

  “There’s another thing as well, you know,” she said looking down at him, the sun framing her.

  “What’s that?” asked Munro. He was ready to stop talking.

  “You slept in a bed last night, on a mattress, like a normal person. You’re changing captain.”

  He did not reply, but he realised with pleasant alarm that she might be right.

  Later, they stood in Munro’s large kitchen drinking coffee from chipped mugs. Anna was looking out of the window at the view. Cold sunny fields, the grass still hard from the night’s frost. The trees in the woods beyond were devoid of any leaves, but the sky was pale blue and the sun strong for March.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, “I can see why you live here. Back home we go over to Vancouver Island at the weekends, it’s so nice to get away from the city for a bit.”

  “I couldn’t live in London,” said Munro, “I need my space.” He looked at her, standing by his window, drinking his coffee, wearing a shirt, his shirt. He realised he would like nothing more than to stay there all day with her.

  Anna walked over to the kitchen counter and took in the sparse worktop, bare except for a near-empty bottle of whiskey. Without asking she opened one of the cupboards above it. It too was empty except for a silver framed photograph of a pretty, blond haired woman.

  “Sorry,” she said closing the cupboard, “just looking for something to eat.”

  “It’s pretty Spartan here, sorry,” replied Munro. “I generally eat in London or at the local pub.” Anna said nothing but kept looking at the cupboard with the photo inside.

  “My ex-wife,” said Munro eventually, “I’ve been meaning to get rid of that for a while. We were divorced after less than a year.” He paused, unsure whether to go on. He thought back to his life before. It had been good at first, almost perfect. He had been stationed in London and they would spend their weekends going for walks in the park, having lo
ng lunches in local pubs and talking about their future together. When he proposed to her in Hyde Park they had been together for only six months, but it had felt like a life time.

  Two weeks after their honeymoon he had got his next mission: West Africa, two months, no outside contact.

  Anna was still looking at him closely.

  “She married me with the hope that I would leave the army and get a normal job, work in a bank or something,” he said after a while. “I suppose I didn’t change fast enough for her. Eventually she got bored of being on her own half the year, and being with a fuck-up the other half.” He looked at the cupboard, her photo inside. His stomach was suddenly knotted.

  “Oh Jack,” said Anna putting down her coffee and coming over to him, “you’re not a fuck-up.” She smiled at him and hugged him, “you’re just a little fucked-up.”

  Munro laughed; she was right. Again, he thought how much he would like to spend all day in the cottage with her. He also realised he had work to do.

  “Look Anna, talking of the city, I need to go into London. You can either come with me, or stay here. But I need to meet up with Rudd, we still have a murder investigation to do I’m afraid.”

  Anna turned; the moment was gone.

  “Of course, you do, I’m sorry. I almost forgot about Richard this morning. Is that bad?”

  “No, of course not. And as you say, you hardly knew him anyway.”

  “And you never knew him,” said Anna looking at Munro closely. “I know I’ve asked you this before. But why are you really doing this? Is it really just for the money? There must be easier ways to make a buck.”

  “It’s not for the money, it never has been,” replied Munro. “I’ve told you a bit about what I did for the army.”

  “In Africa?”

  “In Africa, Afghanistan. Bad places, we went after some bad people.” He paused, uncertain whether to go on. Eventually, he did.

  “We were doing dangerous work, it was inevitable that men would die, men in my unit.” He paused again, the faces of men and boys coming back to him in bright images. He suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to tell her everything.

  “I was their commanding officer, so it was down to me to write to their parents, their wives…their mothers. I’ve written a lot of letters to a lot of mothers of a lot of dead men…men who were really still boys. Our missions were always classified, top secret, all that shit. But it meant that I could never tell them how and where their sons really died. After a while, that really begins to eat you up.” Again, he paused, looking for the right words.

  “When I saw Richard’s mother sitting there, I saw every mother of every man who had died under my command. At the very least, I thought I could tell her how and why her son had died.”

  Anna came over to him and put her arms around him.

  “You go and do what you have to do Jack, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Thanks, you’ll be alright here?”

  “I’ll be fine, as long as the Mexican drug cartels don’t have a Hampshire branch.”

  “Good. Stay on the phone though, I’ll be calling to check up on you.”

  “I will captain, I promise.”

  Munro smiled, kissed her quickly and left. His Norton motorbike was still at the garage, so he took his Landrover. It was a short wheelbase Defender 90, turbocharged diesel engine. It would do.

  An hour and a half later, Munro turned onto Canon Street, in the City of London. The day had turned from one of beautiful winter sun to standard English grey. He parked his Landrover and looked up. The cloud cover was complete, no sign of sun or sky. Just an unending blanket of grey and white. Munro realised that he had been in England for less than twenty-four hours and he already missed the tropics.

  It was mid-morning as he walked down Queen Street. The narrow street was crowded with smartly dressed men and women, moving fast, going to meetings or getting a quick cup of coffee. Munro moved fast too, although in jeans and a shirt and suntanned he did not quite fit in. He slowly swung his injured left shoulder. The doctor at Cancun airport had been efficient and fast, disinfected the wound and bandaged it tight. But it still hurt, the dull unending pain that comes when a piece of steel has been forced into your flesh, forced through your skin and jammed down to the bone. He stretched as he walked, flexing his back. It hurt, but he had felt worse.

  He walked into the office to find Rudd crouched over his PC, glasses on, looking intently at a long list of text. He looked up when Munro came in and smiled, standing up slowly, grimacing slightly at the pain from his injury where the bullet had grazed his ribs.

  “Charles,” said Munro walking over to him and embracing him carefully, “you don’t know how good it is to see you.”

  “Jack old boy,” said Rudd embracing him back, “it’s good to see you safe and sound as well. Look at us, two injured old soldiers.”

  “I know,” said Munro laughing. “I thought we were meant to have desk jobs.”

  They stood there for a moment looking at each other. They had had a brief conversation while Munro was on the plane back from Cancun. Rudd had escaped from Acapulco with ease.

  “You were right,” he said, “they weren’t looking for me at all. I just walked straight past them. But you started a mini-war down there. The army turned up, some other police turned up, and they all started shooting at each other. It was mayhem.”

  “We saw some of it from the air,” said Munro, before filling Rudd in on what had happened at the villa and the death of Hector.

  “I can’t say I’m sad to be out of Mexico,” said Rudd, “when even the police are against you, you know you’re in trouble. But what now old boy? Our prime suspect for the murder is dead on a petrol station forecourt near Cancun.”

  “It’s not ideal, I agree,” replied Munro. “And I’m not sure how we break it to Sarah Stanfield. ‘We found your son’s murderer, and then we killed him’.”

  “Quite,” said Rudd, “I think we might’ve exceeded our brief somewhat. But the who is less important here than the why. We know that Hector Ortega killed Richard Stanfield. That Ortega is now dead is beside the point. Mrs Stanfield will want to know why. We can say for sure that it wasn’t a random act.”

  “Can we?” asked Munro, “for the sake of argument, let’s say that Ortega was on Isla Margarita for a holiday, got into an argument with Richard and killed him. A man like Hector Ortega kills random people all the time. You look at a man like that in a funny way, he’ll probably kill you.”

  Rudd looked at Munro and raised his eyebrows.

  “You really think that’s what happened? That it was a random act of violence?”

  “No, of course not. I was just playing devil’s advocate. Richard’s murder was a premeditated act by professional killers, who, as we have just seen, will do almost anything to tie up the loose ends. Which in this case is our witness, Anna.”

  “Talking of whom,” said Rudd, “where is the lovely Miss Neuberg?”

  “She’s at my place,” said Munro turning away from Rudd and looking at his computer screen, “what are you looking at here?”

  Rudd looked at Munro in disappointment.

  “So much for staying professional,” he said, ignoring Munro’s question, “I’ve got to say I’m not surprised. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.”

  Munro continued to look at Rudd’s screen, intently.

  “I’m sorry, Charles,” he said quickly and quietly not looking at Rudd, “it just happened.”

  “As I knew it ‘just’ would. But anyway, back to business. On my screen is a list of people who have been arrested in the last two years for smuggling drugs on the Amazon and Japura rivers. As you can see, there are quite a lot of them.”

  Munro scrolled down the list, there were over a hundred names.

  “Who the hell did you get this information from Charles? This is from the Brazilian Federal Police database.”

  “An old friend,” said Rudd chuckling and saying nothing more. />
  Munro did not attempt to inquire further. He had quickly learnt that it was best not to inquire too closely as to who these ‘old friends’ were.

  “So what do these names tell us?” asked Munro, squinting his eyes to look at the text. “That a lot of people get arrested for drug smuggling on the Amazon? So what?”

  “What they tell us,” said Rudd, “is that a large proportion of those arrested for smuggling cocaine or cocaine base on the Japura river in the last two years were Colombian. What this information also tells us further down,” Rudd scrolled down to another page, also of dense text, also in Portuguese, “is that of those Colombians arrested for smuggling drugs on the Japura river, eighty per cent had links to major drug producing groups. And guess who the report lists as one of the groups?”

  “Las Aguilas Negras,” said Munro.

  “Exactly! The Black Eagles. The employer of the late Señor Hector Ortega, the murderer of Richard Lipakos.”

  “So we’re still on that theory are we?” said Munro.

  Rudd stood up and stamped his feet in exasperation and excitement.

  “It’s the only theory there is Jack! It’s the only theory that makes sense. Think about it. We know from Anna that Richard took time off to go and visit his father’s bio-reserve. We know that the Japura river runs straight through the reserve. We know that the river is a route for cocaine to be smuggled from Colombia to Brazil by, among others, the Black Eagles. We know that Hector was employed by the Black Eagles. We know that Hector killed Richard. And finally, we know that Richard used the word ‘Japura’ in nervous conversations in the days leading up to his death. Connect the dots Jack, and what do you get?”

  “I know, I know,” replied Munro. “Hector killed Richard Lipakos to stop him presenting his father, or maybe the media, with evidence of drug smuggling on the Japura river.”

  “Something like that, yes,” replied Rudd. “I know it’s a bit imperfect, but it makes sense. Don’t you think?”