by Jack Slater
And yet it seemed that picking a fight with all three was exactly what Grover had done. He had walked right up to the mouth of the tiger and punched it in the face – not just once, but three times in a row. And unfortunately, he hadn’t knocked any of them out.
For a time, at least, he had sown enough confusion that they started to maul each other. But even that comfort was fading. Even a cartel as powerful as the Federación could only spend so much blood and life and treasure before the well ran dry.
And the water was most certainly running out.
Carreon had set up his own command post in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city of Monterey, the capital of the northeastern state of Nuevo León. It was a place deep inside his own territory, and yet also one in which his enemies would never think to look. That, at least, was the idea. Whether it would bear out in practice was another matter entirely.
Grover had chosen today to pay him a visit: a reminder of who really held the power in their relationship. And yet nothing about the American’s demeanor exuded control, or even basic competence. He was pacing up and down the empty half of the warehouse, nervous energy sizzling off his frame, lashing out with his boots at stray stones that skittered across the concrete.
It had been several days since they made their deal. Carreon had played his part. Every night, his sicarios fanned out across Mexico, butchering, torturing, murdering, fighting, and generally causing chaos. And every night, Reyes’ men did the same. On a Tuesday, a safe house would be hit, liberated of cash and product. By Wednesday the loot might already have been taken back. The location of the trenches didn’t change, only who was fighting over them that particular day.
Carreon was aware that he was losing. But so was Reyes. And more to the point, so was Grover – or else he would not be here.
The Americans’ storm troopers were highly effective, that much was certain. It was clear when news of the night’s slaughter broke on social media or the news networks which was their handiwork. Clean kills. Accurate shooting. Explosive entry into target buildings. No evidence left behind.
His own sicarios were markedly less professional. Before a night of slaughter, they usually worked themselves up into a frenzy with drink or drugs or women or all three. They died just as fast as they lived.
Grover spent his men’s lives more carefully. But he spent them all the same.
And with the tide of battle turning against him, he no longer had the flow of information that allowed him to pick high-value targets for his special units. Instead, night after night they went to war with boys from the barrios. Men whose lives meant nothing to anyone, least of all themselves.
Carreon watched for a few minutes as Grover paced, clenching and unclenching his fists, until he finally judged that the time was right. He walked over and placed a hand on the man’s back, guiding him forcefully behind a pillar, far enough away from where his sicarios were resting and planning their next night’s work that they could not be overheard. He turned to face Grover.
“What the hell are you staring at?” Grover snarled, angrily dragging his fingertips across the top of his domed head.
The cartel chief shot him a black look, marveling at the thrill of danger that ignited within him as he did so. It would still be so very easy for Grover to kill him. Not now, but he need only give the word the second he left, and one of the “bodyguards” that clung like limpets to his side at every waking hour of the day would pull the trigger.
And Grover was getting to the point where he might do it, too. Jumpy. Nervous. At the end of his rope.
Without making it too obvious, Carreon scanned the warehouse to ensure that no one was watching. “Quiet,” he hissed, enjoying the taste of power, as limited as it was. “Or have you forgotten our bargain?”
Grover’s eyes bulged with rage. “Forgotten…” he scoffed. “You better not forget who’s in charge here, you understand?”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Carreon remarked dryly, allowing only enough insolence in his tone that he judged he wouldn’t draw another angry response. “But I could not help but notice that you seem on edge, Warren. Is anything wrong?”
He spoke with a honeyed, silver tongue, though in truth he was delighting in his rival’s discomfort, and they likely both knew it. Still, for now at least their fates were entwined. And Grover knew that also.
“What damn business is it of yours?” Grover muttered.
“We are in this together, are we not?” Carreon shrugged. “Blood brothers, if you will. So you might say I have an interest in seeing that no harm comes to you, Warren. And from where I’m standing, your odds are sinking every single day.”
The comment, made casually, plainly rocked Grover to the core. He stood silent, rage draining away from him and being replaced just as quickly with something that smelled like fear.
“You want to know the truth?” he spat, thick, rapid droplets of sweat spewing from his lips. “César’s gone. Dead, defected, how the hell should I know? Maybe he switched sides. Figured Reyes is the one who’s gonna come out of this with his ass smelling like daisies. Half my men are dead. This whole thing’s falling apart.”
He blinked, seeming to recognize precisely what he had just said – and to whom. His expression stiffened, and he leaned forward, speaking low enough that Carreon had to strain to hear him. “But don’t think they won’t kill you the second I give the order.”
“What happened to César?” Carreon asked, molding his expression to one of sorrow and regret even as an unbelievable lightness of elation threatened to send him airborne.
He gripped Grover by the shoulder and squeezed hard. “We’re in this together now, Warren. You screwed us both with this scheme of yours. And whether you like it or not, we’re each other’s best chance at getting out of this alive.”
Grover glowered up at him, and Carreon started to wonder whether the American would simply order him killed out of spite, figuring that if he could not possess the spoils then no one could. The look lingered, raking Carreon’s skin.
And then it faded. Became almost pathetic. Like a child begging for forgiveness and salvation.
“That fucking captain,” he moaned. “The Marine. The one the media’s turning into a hero. I sent César to kill him. For all I know he enlisted instead.”
Carreon still could not believe his luck. César scared him like few men on the planet. And given his line of work was not anything so drab as the sale of office supplies, that was saying something. With the psychopath out of the game, maybe he really did have a chance at surviving this.
“So what’s your plan?” he asked, calibrating his tone to Grover’s neediness. Testing, always testing.
“Plan?” Grover said, his voice a pathetic whimper.
“You still have a card to play, don’t you?” Carreon said, comforting now, almost therapizing.
“What you mean?”
“The Reyes bitch,” Carreon said dismissively. “You have her, or did you forget?”
“What the hell am I supposed to do with her?” Grover spat, angered once more. “I’ve made approaches. Offered to send her back in return for the Crusaders mob putting down their arms. I thought having her would at least bring him to the table. But nothing. No reply. I may as well get rid of her for all the use she’s been.”
“I wouldn’t be so hasty.” Carreon shrugged. “Maybe she can be some use to us yet.”
And just as suddenly as it started, Grover’s meltdown was gone. He looked hungry once more. And in his eyes was that same wheedling insincerity that Carreon had first noticed almost two years earlier, when the American came to him looking for a job.
Then he’d dismissed it as nothing more than ambition, which was something to be admired, not feared.
And it surely was ambition, too. But of a kind that was entirely divorced from reality and an honest appraisal of his own abilities. It was ambition that had brought both of them to the verge of utter disaster.
And even now, at the d
eath, it was threatening to sink them both.
But, Carreon thought, he recognized it now. He saw what drove Warren Grover. And if he played his cards right, he could use it.
Grover looked at him sharply. “How?”
“You need Reyes off the board, correct?”
“Of course,” he snapped. “If it was that easy I wouldn’t need you.”
You didn’t say you did, Carreon thought. But it’s good to know.
“Ramon is a proud man,” he remarked. “And losing his wife is an extraordinarily careless thing to do. But as long as nobody knows about it, she’s no risk to him. He can always find another.”
“So we let the world know – then what?”
“We lay down a gauntlet. Draw him to a time and a place of our choosing. And then we’ll see if your men really are as good as you once claimed to me they would be. If they can lop the head off the snake, then we can end this fight.”
“He’ll never fall for it,” Grover scoffed. “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that already?”
“He will if he thinks I’m going to be there,” Carreon said. “It’s a risk, but it’s one he has no choice but to take. And I suspect he won’t be able to resist the lure of getting rid of me once and for all. He’ll think it’s a trap, of course. But he’ll come.”
“What’s in it for you?”
Carreon studied the American, gauging how far he could push this. Too little, and he would never be believed. Too far, and the man’s pride might cause him to pinch off his only way out.
“I want out,” he said. “If you kill Reyes, you create a power vacuum. One that you can fill. My people wouldn’t follow you when they didn’t know where I was. But if I give you my blessing, maybe things could be different. They love nothing more than winning – and killing Reyes will make you a winner.”
“What about you?” Grover asked perceptively. “What’s stopping you from trying to fill it?”
“As long as you’re around,” Carreon scoffed, “there’s no future for me here. All I want is to be left alone to drink and screw my way to retirement. Five billion. Enough in cash and diamonds to fill my jet, you can stick the rest in a numbered account.”
He realized as soon as the words came out of his mouth that he might have sunk his own chance of escape. It all hinged on how perceptive Grover was, because he’d given the game away.
His only hope was that the American believed that everyone was as self-interested as he.
Grover held out his hand, eyes drunk on ambition and cunning and the tonic of possible salvation. “Deal. You hold up your end, I’ll hold up mine.”
Carreon exhaled slowly and shook the proffered digits. “You won’t regret it.”
40
“He is a murderer,” Hector said venomously, standing outside the bedroom door along with Trapp and Ikeda. “God only knows how many men, women, and children have died at his hands. And only God can judge him. But I’m happy to speed along the day of that judgment.”
“And if he doesn’t talk so freely this time?” Trapp asked with a raised eyebrow. “What then?”
Hector shrugged. “You can promise him the world. I might abide by what you agree. Or I might not.”
“Fine by me. But,” Trapp said, gripping the Mexican captain by the shoulder, “I think you should stay out of the room. He’s no fool.”
He grimaced, but after a short pause, bowed his head in agreement. “As you wish.”
Some hours ago, César had been moved to a bedroom. He was shackled to the bed as before, and the window had been boarded up outside. All items that could be used as either a weapon or to affect an escape had been removed. Two of Hector’s men watched the prisoner at all times.
As Trapp entered the makeshift cell, he jerked his head to the two guards, who filed out of the room. He closed the door after them.
“I heard you were feeling better,” he called out loudly, to attract César’s attention. “I’m glad.”
The Mexican stared directly at the ceiling. The lower half of his body was clothed in loose-fitting cotton joggers, but his torso was bare and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. “Who are you?”
“That is not your concern,” Trapp said firmly. “What I can do for you is the more pertinent question.”
“Go to hell,” César said without any real anger in his tone. It was as though he was going through the motions. “We both know I will get no mercy from you.”
“Do we know that?”
“Will you torture me, American?” César asked mockingly, looking at Trapp for the first time. He seemed to take pleasure in this change in attitude, to derive some energy from it. “Threaten to break my bones and remove my fingernails?”
Trapp walked over to the bed on which the Mexican hitman was strapped. A single, bare light bulb hung on the ceiling high above. A ring of dust indicated where a lamp had until recently stood on the bedside table. Irritating. He could have used a little extra light.
Still, even so, he could see the scars on César’s body. Several puckered, long-healed wounds that looked like bullet holes. There were knife scars. His nose was crooked, indicating that it had healed from some long-ago break.
“I don’t think you’re motivated by pain,” Trapp declared, tracing one of the longer sections of scar tissue that decorated César’s slick chest. “We could test that out, of course, but frankly I don’t have the time.”
César fixed him with his dark eyes. His English was thickly accented, but otherwise perfect. “What the hell do you want?”
“Grover.”
The Mexican’s gaze narrowed, taking on a cunning, deceptive look, almost as if he was attempting to work out what they already knew. “I hit my head. I was out of my mind.”
“We had his name already,” Trapp lied. “Lieutenant Colonel Warren Grover, US Army. Retired. We know he’s had this thing planned out for years. Though I have no idea what precisely took him so long.”
César said nothing.
“I don’t know what he promised you, but we both know that you aren’t going to get it. Not anymore. It’s too late for that.”
“I was never going to get what he promised me,” César snarled. “The man is a fool. A weak, pathetic fool.”
Trapp observed him dispassionately, and if anything, the lack of reaction seemed to enrage the Mexican more. It was as though his own mental instability was sated by provoking emotion in others – and when such a reaction was denied him, he couldn’t handle it.
It said a lot more about him than he knew.
He took advantage of it. “No, César. It’s the chaos you want, isn’t it? It’s what you can’t live without.”
The hitman lurched upward, tugging at his chains, searching toward Trapp with the hungered, manic intensity of some B-movie zombie. There wasn’t much slack in the lines, but enough for the Mexican to end up, slavering, just a few inches from his face.
Trapp did not flinch.
That was what César wanted, after all. To provoke a response. To elicit fear. It was an unusual, fascinating pathology. And it was one that others had indulged for far too long, whether through fear or through avarice – because they thought they could ride such an elemental force of nature to wherever it was they wanted to go.
But Trapp did not fear this man. In the abstract, César was terrifying. In the flesh, merely disappointing – no great specimen in a world of such psychopaths.
So he just watched.
When the burst of energy had died away and César was left panting, eyes closed from whatever pain in his skull the effort had provoked, he finally grunted an answer. “What would you give me?”
Trapp leaned forward and whispered his own response quietly into the killer’s ear. “I’ll give you exactly what you want, César. You tell me where he is, and I’ll give you a front row seat as I burn his whole house down.”
His eyes snapped open. He was curious, but not convinced. He wanted what Trapp offered but suspected he was being played for a fool.
“You think I care about what happens to this piece of shit country?” Trapp spat roughly, appealing to the basest part of César’s personality.
He understood instinctively that the Mexican would only trust someone he believed to be as depraved and amoral as he was. It was no good aiming for the angels in César’s nature. If there even were any. It was the demons that were in control of the man’s reins. It was they who needed to not just hear his argument – but believe it.
“No,” he continued. “All I care about is killing Grover and making sure no one finds out that the US had anything to do with this mess. Beyond that, for all I care Mexico can burn to the ground. I’ll give you the can of gasoline, if that’s what you want.”
César stared up greedily. “You mean that?”
Trapp nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Then I’ll give you what you want.”
41
“You never saw this, understood?” Burke said firmly as he set a ruggedized laptop down on the coffee table in the farmhouse’s living room. “As far as your government is concerned, we don’t do anything without proper signoff.”
“Consider this permission granted,” Hector replied, a dry smile on his lips. “I suspect that once we’re done, either the president will owe me his personal thanks, or we’ll all be in jail.”
“Speak for yourself,” Burke replied, seasoning the joke with a lusty wink. “If this goes south, I’m on the first plane out of here.”
“I wouldn’t blame you. If it wasn’t my country…” Hector spread his hands wide expressively. “But of course it is. And so I cannot.”
That bought him a nod of acknowledgment from the DEA agent. A reminder that even though this was deadly serious to all of them clustered around the small table, it just meant more to Hector and his men. Patriots, in a country that sometimes didn’t seem to value them.
Hell, Trapp thought. That’s all of them, sometimes.
Burke opened the laptop’s clamshell and hunched over it as he shielded the entry of his password. The surveillance program was already loaded, a clunky-looking thing which probably cost the government a pretty penny and still looked like it was right out of 1984.
