by Rick Mofina
He checked his email.
Nothing had come in.
Sweat beaded on his upper lip as he drove along the edges of Phoenix. From the news reports, seeing Cora begging for Tilly, urging him to go to police, he knew Cora was in agony. That Cora and Tilly were suffering because of him was tearing him up.
God, he was so sorry. He’d never, ever meant for any of this to happen.
He scanned the streets, thinking that whatever Cora thought of him now, she had to know that he was doing all he could. First, he needed gas. He spotted a service station.
One with a pay phone.
While filling up he decided he had to tell Cora, he had to risk the call being traced. He’d do it to give her some relief. After filling up, he went to the phone and called her number. A man answered, put him on hold, then-
“Lyle! Oh my God! Oh my God, Lyle!”
“Cora, I’m so-”
“Do you have Tilly?”
“I’m working on it… I-”
“Where are you?”
“Cora, listen, I am so sorry…this is all so complicated. I know we had dreams-”
“Turn yourself in now! Tell the FBI where you are. We have to find Tilly! Where are you?”
“I’m going to see Tilly soon, Cora. I swear to you I am going to fix this!”
53
Somewhere North of Phoenix, Arizona
Soon it would be over.
Ruiz Limon-Rocha finished his call and switched off the stolen cell phone. After taking the precaution of removing the battery, he hurled the pieces into the river, looking at the silvery rush of water for relief from his apprehension.
Considering their recent narrow escape from the motel and their brush with the patrolmen at the gas station, Ruiz figured it was a race between completion of the job or their luck running out.
Ruiz would be glad to return to Mexico; for the first time he missed the low-paying job of a soldier in the military.
It was a much simpler life.
Now they were wanted, hunted men in America and the FBI was gaining on them, given that Ruiz and Alfredo’s faces were as prominent in news stories about the kidnapping as the girl’s.
Since fleeing the motel, they had lain low, awaiting orders here on an isolated back road east of Interstate 17. They’d found sanctuary among a stand of mesquite trees. Their twisting branches offered cool shade. Nothing and no one else in sight.
“Was that Thirty again?” Alfredo said from the car’s reclined passenger seat.
“Yes. He said the sicario is coming, that he is close.”
“That’s what he said an hour ago. Does he have our coordinates?”
“Yes.”
“We should abort the operation. There is too much heat.”
“They don’t care. The operation will be completed. It’s a matter of honor for them. Remember, they want everyone to get the message.”
Ruiz narrowed his eyes, keeping vigil on the long dirt road.
“I have never killed anyone, Ruiz, have you?”
“Yes.”
“Who did you kill?”
“I don’t wish to talk about it,” Limon-Rocha said.
“If it comes down to us, I cannot kill a child. I have children.”
“Alfredo, I told you we do not do this, the sicario does it. We follow his orders. That is how it is done. And he does it in the most stunning way. You saw the news. You saw what he did to the American cops.”
“The Tarantula.”
“Yes.”
“He is a legend, there are narcocorridos written about him. Have you ever met him?”
“Yes, I helped him once before.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“He is a perfect assassin.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He will kill anyone. He is hollow, nothing inside.”
Ruiz nodded to the distance. Alfredo sat up and saw the rising dust clouds. After a long moment, a battered pickup truck emerged. As it drew closer they distinguished an old man in a straw hat behind the wheel.
The brakes creaked as it came to a halt with the engine running.
The young man in the passenger seat gave the driver cash and got out. He retrieved a backpack from the bed of the truck, tapped it with his palm, waving to the driver as the truck disappeared down the road, leaving his passenger standing before Ruiz and Alfredo.
Wearing sunglasses, a Lady Gaga T-shirt and torn, faded jeans, his pack slung over his shoulder, Angel Quinterra-the most feared cartel assassin-looked as if he’d just come from a high school class.
“Hola, Ruiz.”
54
Somewhere North of Phoenix, Arizona
Tilly could hear the creeps.
Beyond the metal walls of the trunk, their voices were clear, but they were talking so fast in Spanish she couldn’t understand everything they were saying.
Something about the legend of a dangerous spider, a tarantula.
Now she heard the crunch of wheels on dirt; a car was approaching, coming very close then creaking. It stopped but a motor was running.
A door opened then shut and the car drove away.
A new voice-it sounded younger.
Was this help? Or was this danger?
Fast talking in Spanish that Tilly could not understand before the voices faded and the talkers walked away, leaving her on the brink of tears.
Alone in this hot, dark, stupid coffin.
She wanted to scream at them.
Let me out! Let me go! I want my mom!
But she kept quiet. Noise made them angry.
Her eyes stung.
How long had it been? What day was this? She didn’t know how much longer she could last.
Don’t cry. Don’t give in. Be strong. Be smart.
The creeps fed her by placing bags of hamburgers, French fries, tacos, potato chips, chocolate bars and cans of soda in the trunk. Then they removed her gag and stood over her, watching for anyone approaching until she finished. Then they’d replace the gag. And she had no privacy. For a toilet, they’d take her to rest stops, one of them always entering with her, keeping the stall door open, making her hurry, making sure no one saw. It made her feel like an animal.
But she got used to it.
It was a little better now-now that they’d stopped cramming her into the suitcase. When they’d let her out, her hopes rose with the glowing interior trunk-release handle. Tilly pulled it but it didn’t work because the creeps had cut the cable. They’d put thick blankets and pillows on the trunk’s floor, letting her stretch out. They’d still kept her gagged with a bandanna and bound with duct tape. It was a bit cooler, too, but it was still stinky like rubber tires, exhaust and gasoline.
What’s going to happen? What’re they going to do to me?
A wave of sadness rolled over her.
Tilly missed her mom. She was the best mom in the world.
“Sweetheart, if you see me, I love you. We’re doing everything to bring you home safely…” When Tilly saw her on the TV news, she knew her mom would never give up looking for her.
And Tilly knew her mom would tell her the same thing she’d always told her: “You shouldn’t think about what you don’t have. Instead, you should thank God for what you do have-a mother who loves you and will always love you, no matter what.”
There were a few other things Tilly had learned from her mother.
Never ever give up on the important things, because they don’t come easy.
Tilly’s heart began to beat faster. Her pulse quickened.
Always fight back.
Like the day she showed Lenny Griffin how wrong he was to try to drown her in the pool.
Anger bubbled in the pit of Tilly’s stomach, anger at Lenny Griffin, anger at these creeps who’d taken her. She began kicking and pounding the trunk, rage burning through her as she writhed and struggled with her bindings.
The fury she’d unleashed strained the tape around her wrists. Her sweat and t
he wear had transformed it to material akin to fabric that now gave her enough play to nearly work her hands out.
Oh! Almost free! Please! Oh, please!
Tilly froze.
Footsteps of people approaching, the trunk’s lock being keyed. Don’t let them see my work on the tape. She held her breath under an explosion of sunlight diffused through the trees.
She shut her eyes tight for a long moment before gradually relaxing them to squint at the silhouettes looking down on her.
There were three people now.
Who was the third person?
Her eyes adjusted to the new face, which belonged to a man who was younger than the creeps.
He stared at Tilly as if she were something more than an eleven-year-old girl who’d been kidnapped.
Much more.
55
Near Phoenix, Arizona
Angel gazed upon the girl in the trunk.
So this was the famous face that had stared at him from newscasts. He took his time appraising her, the way a collector assesses art.
She exuded fear.
But he saw something more. A mixture of courage, defiance and, despite her ordeal, the polish of a privileged middle-class American life that was a universe away from the barrio he had known at her age.
Bound with silver tape, gagged with a blue bandanna, packaged in jeans and a pink embroidered T-shirt, this was the prize in his final job, his ticket out of narco world before someone put him in his grave.
He lowered the trunk with consideration, closing it gently with a snap.
“Let’s go,” he said to Limon-Rocha and Tecaza.
Angel sat in the rear seat of the car among their luggage and the equipment he required for finishing the job. Tecaza, behind the wheel, found him in the rearview mirror.
“Where are we going?”
“Head for Phoenix.”
“What are the next steps for the operation?” Limon-Rocha asked.
Angel looked away, preferring not to talk about a job. Instead he reflected on the landscape and how he’d escaped capture; how he’d traveled by using his youth to persuade strangers to give him a ride.
“I beg you. My mother is dying. I have no money.”
The incident on the bus had been a close one but Angel was confident in his training, proud of his survival skills. He didn’t know about these two ex-soldiers, who’d had their own narrow escape from FBI, as he’d seen on a news report he’d watched on a TV in a diner at a small-town gas station.
Assassinations in the U.S. were always a problem.
Unlike jobs in Mexico, they had no guarantee of support from dirty cops on the payroll, and now, because this one was high-profile, they were more exposed. Everyone’s picture was shown in the press. Angel shrugged.
They still held the most vital piece: the girl.
He considered her again.
She did not come from the drug world like most of his targets. Yet in the moments he’d studied her, he’d found something about her he resented. As a top sicario for the cartel he had enjoyed the world in luxury, but looking upon the girl, this innocent from a wealthier class, took him back to what he had come from.
Angel could smell the dump, taste the despair of the tumbledown shack his family had lived in, feel the shame of other kids laughing at his drunken father picking through the trash.
No, Angel would have no trouble completing this job. It was just a matter of choosing a method, a thought that gave rise to a familiar worry.
Will she haunt me like the others haunt me?
Angel’s cell phone rang and he fished it out of his backpack. The phone was a special design costing about $35,000 and stolen from the U.S. military. The cartel had obtained ten through a black market source. The phone’s signals were scrambled, encrypted, then scrambled and encrypted repeatedly. For now, the calls were untraceable.
The instant Angel answered, Thirty said, “Did you find them?”
“Yes.”
“And did you inspect the asset?”
“Yes. It looks good.”
“There’s been a twist.”
“What is it?”
“The man with our property has finally contacted us. He wants to make your job easier for you.”
“How?”
“He wants to meet, to exchange our property for the seized asset. As we’d planned, he feels pressured to come to us. We will arrange it. One of the soldiers will know the locations. Are they present?”
Angel glanced at them in the front of the car.
“Yes.”
“Put the older one on.”
“Ruiz, for you.”
Angel passed up his phone and watched several moments of nods punctuated with, “Si, si. I know it. We will.” When Ruiz returned the phone, Angel asked a question of Thirty.
“How do we know our contact won’t bring problems wearing badges with him. They are getting closer.”
“We possess the asset-that’s our strength. His weakness is his greed. We know that he needs the asset and our property. If he involves other parties, he will not achieve his goal.”
“It’s dangerous for us.”
“There is no other way. We have arranged shipment of the special material for you to ensure that he will surrender all of our property. It is all in place, waiting for you.”
“All right.”
“We are not happy about the close calls we’ve had. This attention creates difficulties. But we must use it to our advantage. We must not back down. This is a time of intense interest. It is precisely the time to tell the world that if you fuck with us, you die. The arrogance of the dirty American cops and the sniveling messenger, to steal from the Norte Cartel, the cartel Zartosa built upon the graves of his family, is an insult. We are at war. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Zartosa’s orders are to kill them all.”
56
Metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona
Lyle Galviera was still on his call to Cora when the FBI took action to arrest him.
Task Force members who were monitoring Cora’s home line knew he was calling from the pay phone at the FirstRate Gas Station on Old Gatehouse Road, at the city’s southern edge.
Before patching it to Cora at the FBI’s divisional office, they’d alerted the Maricopa County 911 Center to send police units to the gas station, stressing that they not use lights or sirens. After dispatching cars, the emergency coordinator phoned the gas station directly to request staff make a visual of the person using the pay phone.
The coordinator’s call was answered on the first ring. A male voice said: “I told you we are through, Darlene!”
The line clicked dead.
The dispatcher tried again but the line rang unanswered because Sheldon Cardick, the twenty-six-year-old clerk, was breaking up with his girlfriend. Actually, she’d dumped him and was now sorry. Well, tough titty.
Let the phone ring.
To calm down, Sheldon went outside to sweep the front walk, waving to his last customer as he drove off in a beat-up Cherokee after using the pay phone. Not many people used that phone these days, since everyone had a cell phone. After cleaning up, Sheldon returned to the counter and his manager-trainee binders, still pissed at Darlene.
She was the loser. Despite what her mother said, Sheldon Cardick was not going be “just a clerk all of his sad little life.” He was studying to be an executive with FirstRate. A lofty goal, Sheldon thought, just as a commotion outside pulled him from his binder.
What the-?
Four sheriff’s cars had materialized.
Two large deputies entered, their shoulder radios squawking. They were pumped.
“Can you tell us if you saw anyone using the pay phone out front in the last few minutes?”
Sheldon craned his neck, seeing the other deputies unrolling police tape around the area by the phone. What’s up with that? A knuckle knock on his counter got his attention.
“Hey, skip, eyes front! Did you see anybo
dy on the phone?”
“Yeah, some guy, bought gas, driving a shit box Cherokee.”
“What color and year?”
“White, 1990s I would guess.”
“You’d guess?”
“What’s going on?”
The second deputy was taking notes and talking in his radio as the first continued questioning Sheldon.
“Did the phone guy use a credit card?”
“Cash.”
“Any chance you got a license plate?”
“No. Why? What’s this about?”
The deputy pointed at the security cameras. “Those work?”
“Yes.”
“You going to volunteer your tapes, or do we need to get a warrant?”
“I, uh…well, I have to call my manager.”
“Do it now.”
Across the city in the FBI’s Phoenix offices, Jack Gannon and Cora demanded to know what Hackett and the task force had learned in the wake of Galviera’s call.
It was a major break.
They’d put the call through to this meeting room where Cora had taken her polygraph exam. Gannon checked his watch. Some twenty-five minutes had passed since Cora had spoken to Galviera.
It seemed like a lifetime.
They’d been here, waiting alone behind the room’s glass walls while in the outer office agents worked with quiet intensity on the break. Hackett returned head down, concentrating on his BlackBerry.
“What do you have?” Gannon asked.
“We know he called from a pay phone at a gas station.”
“You must know where.”
“We do but we’re not disclosing that now. We’ve got people on-site investigating.”
“Are you going to tell us?”
“You’re media, Jack.”
“Come on. This is the closest we’ve ever been.”
“No. We want it off the airwaves because we think these guys monitor police chatter on radio scanners. Everything’s still hot right now.” Hackett’s phone rang. “Excuse me.”
