by Jack Slater
The freshly minted agent was seated at the conference table and barely even looked up as the party entered the room. She might as well have been rocking back and forth, so clearly preoccupied was she by her thoughts.
He nodded at her. “Kelly.”
Nothing.
Trapp cleared his throat and tried again. “Kelly.”
This time, she looked up, and a spark of recognition flared in her eyes at the sight of a familiar face, accompanied swiftly after by a slight, and quickly disguised, frown of surprise at Ikeda’s presence.
“This is Eliza,” he said in explanation. “My girlfriend.”
Ikeda stifled a smile as the words escaped Trapp’s lips, and stretched out a hand in greeting. He felt unaccountably embarrassed at the admission, though there was no good reason to do so, especially since Kelly took it in her stride.
The door clicked shut behind Pope, who leaned over the conference table and punched a series of digits into the keypad of the phone sitting in the center before lifting the handset to his ear. He paused for a second before saying, “This is Agent Nick Pope from the FBI. I understand that you’re – yes. Okay.”
He replaced the handset in the cradle, and the speakerphone played – well, a whole lot of nothing. Just a tiny rustle on the line to indicate that the phone call was active and hadn’t simply dropped.
“No hold music, huh?” Trapp commented. “You think after everything we pay in taxes, they could at least afford that.”
He fell silent after Pope shot him an irritable glance and thrust his fingers through his hair once more. Instead, his eyes met Ikeda’s as he wondered what she was thinking right now. This wasn’t exactly the weekend away that he’d promised.
The longer they waited for the president to join the call – and in the absence of any sound that might have broken the ice – the longer the whole thing seemed ridiculous to Trapp. And by the time they reached, and then passed, five minutes, he could see from the amused crinkles forming at the corner of Ikeda’s mouth that she felt exactly the same way.
By that point, even Kelly seemed on the verge of a bout of giggles.
The problem was, nobody in the room wanted to say anything, just on the off-chance that the president would choose that precise moment to do the same.
So they lingered in silence.
At long last, a male voice emanated from the speaker and announced, “Mr. President, the FBI.”
“Thank you,” President Nash’s booming voice replied, causing the speaker to crackle before Pope tapped the volume down button a couple of times. “I didn’t keep you waiting, did I?”
“Not at all, Mr. President,” he lied, leaning forward and resting on his elbows to get closer to the speaker.
Just a man, Trapp reminded himself. Though even he was forced to admit that the trappings of the office, and the history, and even the charisma of the individual who occupied it at this present moment meant that that wasn’t entirely true.
“Is Jason there?” President Nash inquired.
“Yes sir. Along with Special Agent Kelly Andrews, and Eliza –” His eyes flickered to Kelly, and his voice momentarily trailed away.
“That’s my doing, Mr. President,” Trapp added, covering for him. “I thought she might be useful.”
“A crack team,” Nash agreed, not seeming particularly concerned by the news. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m speaking to you like this, Agent Pope.”
“The thought hasn’t crossed my mind, sir.”
Nash chuckled before turning more serious. “You’re a liar, agent. But never mind, I find I have that effect on people.”
Pope stayed silent, seeming to decide that it was the more sensible course of action.
“First of all, let me be clear: I have cleared both this conversation and my proposed course of action with Director Rutger. We are of one mind on this.”
“That’s good to know, sir.”
“What I find myself needing to know – and doing so with considerable urgency – is not just why this happened, but why it happened now. Neither the FBI nor CIA had any inclination that an attack of this magnitude was coming. I read my daily brief religiously, Agent Pope, and to my recollection there was no indication that the cartels had any desire to so dramatically raise the table stakes. And yet in the past 48 hours, one cartel has gone to war with the United States, and another seems to be doing their best to tear Mexico apart.”
Trapp frowned. What on earth was President Nash talking about? The US bit he understood. But what had happened in Mexico?
“I also have no intention of pre-empting the results of the inter-agency process. We will discover who killed the administrator, and I imagine the Justice Department will very much appreciate being let off the leash, after the losses it sustained. But all that will take time, and I sense that the men we are up against might be quite practiced at covering their tracks. Especially…”
“If they know what we’re thinking,” Pope agreed, eyes flaring as he realized he’d just cut across his President.
“Precisely. I need to know if the incident you discovered this week is a once-off, or whether the cartels might have penetrated our law enforcement and intelligence communities. And after the –” Nash said, pausing to clear his throat, “the situation a few months back, you’re a man I know I can trust. I would appreciate it if you can assure me the same about the rest of your colleagues. And soon.”
“Yes sir,” Pope agreed. “I’ll do my best.”
“You mind if I ask why I’m involved, Mr. President?” Trapp inquired. “I didn’t even really see what happened. That was all Agent Kelly’s doing, really.”
Special Agent Andrews blushed, then ducked her head behind her hair to disguise the color of her cheeks.
“Someone needed to make up the numbers, Jason,” Nash replied with a measure of amusement in his voice. “And besides, something tells me your particular skills might come in useful at some point. Any more questions?”
When there were none, he signed off.
“So what happened in Mexico?” Trapp asked after the line clicked.
“Where have you been the last couple of days, Jason – the bottom of a well?” Pope grunted, rocking back on the rear legs of his chair, evidently relieved that the call was now over.
“Virginia.” Trapp grinned in response. “So close enough.”
“You heard the name Fernando Carreon?” Pope asked.
Trapp bit his lip, trying to place the name. “Carreon… Yeah. Cartel boss, right? The Mexicans picked him up a few months ago. He’s awaiting trial. That’s all I got.”
“You’re half right, anyway,” Pope said with a grimace. “The Mexicans had him, all right. In Altiplano Prison. They were slow-walking his extradition, but they were sitting on him nice and tight.”
“So…”
“So were is the operative word. At about the same time Administrator Engel was getting pumped full of lead in Houston, a bunch of sicarios took down the joint. Hell, they pulled it apart.”
“What do you mean, took it down?” Trapp squinted as Ikeda leaned forward to hear better, eyes alive with interest.
“Exactly what I said, Jason. They came armed for bear. Trojan horsed their way inside, then flew off in hijacked Mexican Air Force choppers, chewing up a whole company of Marines on the way out. Well, not hijacked, exactly. The pilots and their families, they’re all gone.”
“Paid off,” Trapp muttered.
“Sure feels like it,” he agreed. “Put yourself in Carreon’s shoes. Say it sets you back 5 million bucks for each of the crewmembers. Six choppers, that can’t be more than eighty, maybe a hundred million. I’m not saying that’s what he paid, but the guy’s worth billions. In his shoes, I’d pull the trigger at ten times the price.”
“Just a cost of doing business.”
“That’s about right.”
“So what now?”
Pope shrugged. “You heard the president: We start digging. If these assholes wan
t to start a war with us, that’s their prerogative. But I don’t figure they’re the ones who will get to end it. Besides, we got a name to add to a face.”
Trapp’s eyebrows kinked up with interest. “Who?”
“Leo Conway. Engel’s chief of staff. He was one of the only people who knew the administrator’s exact schedule. He was the one Kelly spotted.”
“It’s a start. Let’s get moving.”
18
“You did well, my friend,” Warren Grover observed, leaning back against a wheeled chair in his makeshift office. It promptly squeaked. “Carreon’s people have their suspicions about what has taken place, but as long as we control the king, we have the board.”
César said nothing.
“I understand you have a talent for extracting information,” Grover said after enough time had elapsed in silence that he was sure that was all he was getting. “I may have some use of it over the coming weeks.”
“I am at your service,” César said, drawing out the words at such length that Grover began to wonder whether he was being mocked.
“Good,” Grover said, steepling his fingers and pushing himself upright before glancing at the watch on his left wrist. “It’s about time. Would you like to watch?”
“Why not?” César shrugged.
The sicario followed his present boss down the hallway in the basement of a nondescript warehouse situated in a nondescript part of Mexico City. It was not the kind of location one might expect to find a cartel leader, and not just because Mexico’s capital was ordinarily an inhospitable environment for the drug gangs.
In the comfort of his own mind, Grover could admit that César unsettled him. There was something about the Mexican that prevented him from ever relaxing, and that was unusual indeed. After all, he had spent most of his career in the employ of the more hard-nosed of America’s military and intelligence organizations – including the last, which had never officially existed – and there was little that truly scared him anymore.
But César did.
He had met plenty of dangerous men over his life, and there were many who considered him to fit that bracket. But these cartel people, they were indisputably different, Grover knew. Where his people were professionals who mostly took no particular pleasure in the taking of human life, men like César were different.
They had no souls, nor remorse. They were animals.
But sometimes animals had their uses.
Still, Grover was relieved when they entered the grandly titled control center, which was in truth a simple conference room equipped with a fiber-optic Internet cable and enough screens and communications equipment to render the space a sweltering hellhole, despite the best efforts of the ancient air conditioning system.
Three separate television screens were set up on the room’s long wall, each displaying an overhead video feed supplied by a loitering drone. The UAVs had been purchased commercially, and while they were equipped with thermal imaging cameras, the quality was not as clear as that provided by a USAF Reaper.
But they were also a hundredth of the price.
“Who are they?” César asked, walking to the wall and studying the television screen on the left.
“Reyes’s men. The one you’re looking at, that’s Carlos Guerra, his cousin. The two to the right of that are both owned by Emiliano Mendoza. We believe he’s at one of them. We just don’t know which.”
“So you decided to hit both,” César mused.
“Indeed,” Grover agreed.
Did the Mexican sound impressed? It was hard to say; the man showed little if any emotion, even at the best of times. Perhaps that was what made him so effective. It also meant he was damned difficult to read.
César peered at the screen, the fingers of his right hand flickering. He was counting, Grover realized.
“I see seven,” he said. “All yours?”
“That’s right,” Grover agreed. “There’s an eighth on the building opposite. A sniper, you see?”
César’s head turned slightly, and the American watched as he focused on the somewhat indistinct light gray dot on top of the compound opposite Guerra’s villa. “I see him.”
“Watch.”
The Mexican nodded, and the two men lapsed back into silence once more. It was a little like watching a video game, and Grover marveled that a lifetime spent practicing the darker arts for his country had so perfectly prepared him for his present role.
The dots moved in unison, as he had trained them to do. They were mostly Mexican, drawn from Carreon’s own sicarios, though he’d seeded many of the units with mercenaries. Mostly officers and NCOs who preferred the finer things in life and were prepared to lead a unit of cartel gunmen in exchange for sufficient payment. Two decades of a global war on terror had created a ready supply of such men.
There were even those for whom money wasn’t the prime motivator. Men like César himself, who was driven not by the prospect of financial reward but by the aphrodisiac of power. Not – or not just – power as Grover himself conceived it, but control over other men.
It made him a dangerous bedfellow, of course. But Grover had convinced himself that by understanding what drove César and others like him, he had the upper hand when it came to using them.
That was the theory. He was never quite so confident in it when he was actually confronted with his supposed puppets.
There was a slight flash on the screen as the sniper fired several shots. A second later, the doorway flared, presumably as a result of a breaching charge removing the impediment. The dots that indicated Grover’s strike force quickly piled into Carlos Guerra’s villa.
“You don’t want to listen?” César said.
“I trust them.” Grover shrugged. “They’ve proven highly effective these past few nights.”
“They haven’t come up against anyone this senior yet. You think seven is enough?”
“Eight,” he corrected. “And Carlos is a fool. Everyone knows that. He doesn’t take his own personal security seriously. We’ve been watching the villa for a week. He has half a dozen guards. They are mostly drunk or high. At least, when he’s home.”
“Which he is tonight.”
“Exactly. He’s a weak link. I have no idea why Reyes keep him around.”
“Carlos is family,” César said. “That means something down here.”
Grover bristled. Was the sicario trying to say something? “Not to you.”
“Not to me,” he agreed, “but I’m not typical.”
No, Grover thought. No, you are not.
At some point, he knew, César would prove a liability. And at that point, he would have to be eliminated. The man was willing to subordinate himself for the present, but it would not last. It wasn’t so much that he was ambitious, but that some psychological process within his mind drove him to test his boundaries. And once he found one, to not stop until it was crushed into rubble. Right now, there were other obstacles in his path.
But not for long.
And yet, for now at least, Grover needed him. Over the past two years, he had created dozens of special forces-type units inside the Federacion Cartel. Carreon hadn’t needed much convincing even before he went behind bars. After, it was even easier.
But those men were tactical operators, not strategic minds. And except for the mercenaries stiffening their spines, they mostly followed Carreon himself, only listening to his own instructions because they thought he spoke for the boss.
César married both technical skill and strategic genius, and beyond that he commanded the respective Federacion’s sicarios. The grunts didn’t like him, but they respected him. Or were at least scared of him. And that was good enough.
“Forty seconds,” César murmured approvingly, looking away from the screen. “Looks like they have a prisoner.”
“Casualties?” Grover barked.
The communications operator held a hand against his headset, then shook his head. “None. They’re bugging out now. They found a c
ouple hard drives and a bunch of cell phones. Intel will go through it all the second it arrives.”
“Good.” Grover looked over at César, finding himself strangely hungry for the killer’s approval. “So – what do you think?”
“As I said, very impressive. But it won’t be enough.”
Grover frowned. “Why not?”
“You need Reyes.”
“We’ll get him,” Grover insisted.
“When?”
“Soon.”
“That’s not good enough.” César shrugged. “You get one shot at this. If you miss, Reyes will burn this country to cinders just so you can’t have it. Either the Mexican government will be stung into doing something about the aftermath, or the Americans will. Either way, unless you chop his head off right at the start, you’re screwed. It’ll be all-out war, and your toy soldiers will help, but they’ll only get you so far.”
“That’s the plan,” Grover snapped. “But it’s not so easy to find a man like Ramon Reyes when he doesn’t want to be found.”
The communications operator winced, clearly unwilling to interrupt the intense conversation between the two men. “They hit the Mendoza place. It’s empty.”
“Which one?”
“Both of them.”
Grover cursed, wishing that César hadn’t heard. It gave credence to the man’s view, whether he liked it or not. “Dammit. He was the key.”
“Carlos might know something,” César remarked.
“The cousin? I told you, he’s a fool.”
“Even fools have ears. And sometimes men can be most intemperate around those they do not respect. You’re right when you say that Ramon has no trust in his cousin. Perhaps we might use that to our advantage.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Let me interrogate him when he arrives. If you know something, I will tease it out.”
Grover gritted his teeth, still furious that they’d missed Mendoza. Reyes’ lieutenant was a slippery bastard, but the intelligence should still have been good. And losing him was a hell of a setback. Anything Reyes knew, so did Mendoza. With him in their clutches, finding Reyes would have been child’s play.
