Cold Fire

by Dustin Stevens

  “No,” I said, shaking my head less than an inch to either side. “Once I was out, I was out.”

  “Damn,” Diaz muttered, just audible above the air-conditioning fan in front of us.

  She left the comment open-ended, pausing for a moment, allowing me to fill in the blanks if I wanted to. There was plenty I could have inserted for her, ranging from the need to get as far away from the desert as I could, to the knowing if I was around it even a little bit there was no way I would be able to control the torrent of emotion within me.

  My actions a half hour before, the first of what I feared would be many, had already displayed a tiny bit of that, even after five years to suppress it.

  “First of all,” Diaz said, reaching up and adjusting the sunglasses on her face, the reflection bouncing in equal measure, “it was you guys that did it, not us.”

  Unable to stop it, my jaw dropped open a half-inch, my head twisting to the side. “Say what?”

  Diaz nodded, rocking her body forward an inch or two with it. “Maybe a year after you left. Took almost another year before Manny entered prison and all the details were ironed out, but, yeah. It was the last thing Hutch did before heading back to Washington.”

  I stared at her a long moment before turning back to face forward, running a hand over my face. For three solid days now I had been interacting with my old boss, but not once had he shared that bit of information with me. Why? Was he trying to protect some old wounds he thought I still carried?

  “Son of a . . .” I muttered, letting my voice trail away.

  “Yep,” Diaz agreed, nodding once more.

  Silence fell between us, my mind racing to determine what to make of this newest piece of information. My breathing grew louder as I sat and stewed on it, forcing air in and out through my nose, my eyebrows knitting together as I stared ahead.

  Sensing where my mind was, feeling the anger start to roll off me, Diaz pushed ahead. “The plea bargain was to cover Carlos and Mateo as well. I got the impression from reading the case file after the fact that Mateo was more of a throw-in than a demand, a pity toss by our side based on the volume of information he gave up.”

  This time I was more prepared for any surprises. I kept my mouth closed, not letting the wonder of this statement show.

  In all my time with the DEA, I had been a full-time field agent. Never was I inside the boardroom for final negotiations with anybody that we brought in, but not once could I remember our side throwing in extra concessions just for the sake of it.

  “All three protected under one plea deal? What the hell did he give up?”

  A smirk pushed Diaz’s head back as she glanced over my direction. “Who didn’t he give up? In total over a dozen distributors, stretched up the coast from here all the way to Fresno.”

  “Fresno?” I asked, letting shock show in my voice. “Damn, when I was running them they were making their way into Bakersfield. That’s over a hundred miles of expansion in just a couple years.”

  “Yeah,” Diaz said, nodding in agreement, “and my hunch is if we hadn’t gotten to them they’d have been all the way to the Bay Area within the decade.”

  An elongated whistle slid out between my lips, my head leaning back to sit on the headrest behind me. All told, that represented a stretch almost five hundred miles long, encompassing no less than five major cities, including LA, Oakland, and San Francisco. There were no doubt other competing interests in each of those areas, but just the fact that they were there spoke volumes of the scale they had become capable of operating on.

  “So you pinched Manny? And he rolled to protect his higher-ups?”

  Diaz lifted the sunglasses from her face onto her forehead and pulled her cell phone from the middle console between us. She checked the automated directions onscreen against the mile marker outside before dropping the phone and her glasses back into place.

  “Two more miles,” she said, both hands returning to the wheel. “I don’t know all the details, even now. Large chunks of the terms have been redacted, written off under the old company maxim—”

  “—‘above your pay grade,’” I finished for her, having heard the words a hundred times before, each just as bitter as the previous.

  “All I know for sure is Manny went in for fifteen, probably be out in less than half that. Carlos and Mateo were both put into protective custody, I assume in case any of the distributors they ratted out decide to go after them, and given the caveat that they provide any assistance we ask for with dealers along the coast.”

  She slowed the car to less than half our previous speed as a green mile-marker sign came closer along the right shoulder. We both leaned toward the window as it crept by, eyes aimed on the ground, looking for anything that might be construed as an in-road.

  Seventy yards after the sign we found it, a matching pair of indents in the shallow desert sand giving the place away. Without flipping on the blinker Diaz hooked a right, the car bouncing up and down, tires spinning, before settling into the grooves and rolling forward.

  I waited until the car evened out before returning my thoughts to the conversation. So much of what she was telling me wasn’t making sense. Priority one was to find Carlos, but getting him, Manny, and Hutch all together in the same room wasn’t far behind.

  Whatever had happened with the Juarez cartel three years before was a mess I had to get cleared up if I was to have any chance at deciphering why they were now under attack. There were dozens of questions still left unanswered, but I decided to let them go for the time being.

  Beside me, Diaz removed the sunglasses and tossed them atop the dash. She pulled her chin back into her neck, folds of skin gathering there, the frown back in place on her features.

  We rode in silence for a full five minutes, traversing the three miles from the roadway, just as Manny told us it would be. The entire way we both leaned forward in our seats, straining to see the faintest hint of a path through the sand. The sedan whined in protest as it pushed along. Outside I could hear the sound of sand crunching beneath our tires, mixed with gravel and soil beaten down hard over the years.

  “You think he’s here?” I asked, watching as a dune rose out of the desert ahead of us, seeming to swallow up the path we were on. The front side appeared to be a solid surface, though it was hard to decipher anything out of the wall of light brown.

  “I don’t know,” Diaz said, keeping her head locked in place. “I don’t see anybody, though, not even a car outside.”

  I nodded in agreement, the same thought spurring my question in the first place. “And he damned sure didn’t hike in here from anywhere.”

  There was no response from Diaz as she slid the car to a stop twenty feet away from the front door, the brakes again offering a tiny moan of protest. She killed the engine and left the keys in the ignition, both of us sitting in silence, sweeping our gazes over the grounds.

  A small part of me almost told her to stay put, that I would be right back, but I refrained. The move was not one of misogyny, but rather the feeling that anything we found here couldn’t be good. No point in subjecting us both to it.

  Instead I waited though, allowing her the lead, sitting in silence until she unlatched her door before climbing out on the opposite side.

  The structure seemed pretty simple, exactly as Manny had described it. A square concrete crash pad, partially covered by sand, painted to match. There was no foliage of any kind to be seen, the only path in being the one we were now parked on. Not a single thing seemed to be out of place until I took a deep breath, catching just the slightest hint of a smell on the breeze.

  “Oh, shit,” I muttered.

  Diaz snapped into a crouch on the other side of the sedan, her right hand cocked by her hip, poised to grab her weapon. “What?”

  “Draw,” I said, my voice low, reaching into the small of my back and extracting the Glock. I gripped
it in my right hand, my left wrapped around the base for support, bending at the knees to match Diaz’s pose. One foot at a time I advanced on the front door, pressing my back against the concrete alongside it, waiting as Diaz got into position opposite me.

  What? she mouthed again, her voice inaudible.

  I raised both sides of my nose at her in an even snarl and replied, “Smell that?”

  I paused as she drew in a deep lungful of air, her chest rising as it filled her body. Just as fast she shoved it out through her mouth, a look of revulsion on her face. “Blood.”

  The scent had caught me twenty feet away, a practiced response from my time in Yellowstone. There, fresh kill often meant predators in the area. Being able to recognize it at a moment’s notice was a necessary life skill.

  I rotated out away from the door and positioned myself in front of it, my legs square. Then I pointed down at my right leg, motioned at the door, and gestured for Diaz to go inside right after. One at a time she raised each foot from the sand and prepared to move, nodding in agreement as she shifted her focus on the wooden structure before us.

  Unwrapping my left hand from the gun, I lowered my hands to either side and drew in a quick breath. I allowed the moment of seeing Manny Juarez to enter my mind, of seeing his face for the first time in years to play across my senses, before snapping forward and driving my heel through the door just inches from the handle.

  The aged wood exploded backward on contact, disintegrating into a flurry of dust and shards. They still hung thick in the air as Diaz darted through, gun extended in front of her, moving fast. Her lower body was visible in the dim glow as I raised my weapon and joined her, swinging in the opposite direction.

  The open doorway was the only source of light in the place, but it was more than enough to illuminate everything there was to see. We each did a lap in our respective directions, meeting on the opposite side, directly across from the door, before holstering our weapons and walking side by side into the center of the room.

  “Oh, shit,” I said again.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The tip of the Pidka cigarette glowed brightly in the darkness, filling Victor Blok’s lungs with acrid, bitter smoke. He held it there a long moment, savoring the taste, letting it burn, before shoving it out. The sea breeze caught the smoke and pulled it away from his face in a sideways mist.

  The cigarettes in America were too pure for his taste; the tobacco was thinned out, watered down by additives. Making things worse, nearly every brand on the market had taken to jamming a filter on the end of it, removing all flavor, stripping the smoke of any inherent bite.

  Pidka cigarettes were the only thing Viktor ever missed from the Motherland. Everything else he could get at a moment’s notice, even good vodka, except for real smokes. Eight months earlier he had had a shipment brought in, one hundred cartons, to be used only in extreme situations.

  Tonight seemed like one such circumstance.

  Standing on the edge of his dock, Viktor watched as a small team, five men all dressed in black, loaded supplies into a boat. A high-end trawler painted glossy silver, the vessel would carry the men up the coast into La Jolla. Once in place offshore, four of the men would enter the water and go ashore, taking with them the supplies that were currently being loaded. The fifth would stay with the boat, pushing it north along the coast, and return in exactly an hour to retrieve them.

  The plan had been hashed and rehashed no less than ten times in the preceding hours. Viktor could sense from the last phone call with his uncle that the old man was growing antsy, threatening to exert his presence once again. For the time being, Viktor had Pavel out of his hair, hopefully still somewhere in the mountains, digging around for the remains of Lita.

  It was a very narrow window Viktor had, getting the operation completed before either Sergey or Pavel became aware of his actions. Once they did they would try to insert themselves, either eschewing his plan entirely or at the very least insisting on their involvement.

  If Viktor was ever going to break free from the tether his uncle insisted on keeping him tied to, this was where it had to begin. His operation, with his people, going off without a hitch. A simple in-and-out procedure that was effective and quiet, securing the last holdout in the network, allowing new distribution to begin.

  Taking one last drag on the cigarette, Viktor cast it into the ocean, watching the small white speck being swallowed beneath the dark waters. He blew the smoke from his lungs and stepped up alongside the ramp leading onto the boat. The evening breeze pushed his hair atop his head and tugged at the collar of his silk shirt.

  “This is the last of it,” Anton Chekov, the leader of the expedition, said, peeling himself off from the procession of men loading up the ramp for a final time. He stood several inches shorter than Viktor but was considerably thicker, his upper body cut from corded steel. He wore his dark hair shorn close to the scalp, and his face was free of any stubble.

  Behind him the other three continued on their way, the first carrying an automatic weapon in each hand, their barrels pointed at the sky, their butts resting in the crooks of his arms. The other two marched on either end of an elongated box, wooden, white in color.

  None of the three looked at Viktor or Anton as they went, moving in silence with complete precision.

  Through the front window of the boat’s cabin Viktor could see the fifth man, an affable young guy named Ivan with blond hair and ruddy cheeks. He was dressed in white linen pants and an Aloha shirt, just another rich playboy taking his boat up and down the coast for a late-night joyride.

  “Good,” Viktor said, nodding, fighting the urge to pull out another Pidka and light it. “Has he checked on the conditions yet?”

  “Twice now,” Anton said, offering a grim nod. “Everything is clear from here to Oregon. Should be no problem getting in and out this evening.”

  “Good,” Viktor repeated. Both men had been over the plan so many times there was nothing more to say. They each knew how important the run was, to their position in Mexico and to the operation as a whole.

  “I’ll be available by phone the entire time if anything should happen,” Viktor said, extending a hand toward Anton.

  A thin crack of a smile broke across Anton’s face as he returned the shake, squeezing hard for a moment before releasing it. “Nothing’s going to happen, sir. We’ll call and let you know when it’s done.”

  Viktor attempted to force a matching smile onto his features, though the best he could manage was a lopsided grimace. He nodded and slapped Anton on the shoulder, watching as he turned and bounded across the gangplank before lifting it from the edge of the boat and shoving it onto the dock.

  The water around the boat began to churn as the engine picked up steam, Viktor remaining in place as it started to ease away. The turbo-stroke diesel puttered in a steady cadence as the vessel moved forward, leaving a wide wake behind it.

  Viktor stood with his hands in his pockets, the scent of diesel smoke and saltwater in his nostrils, and watched until it was nothing more than a cluster of lights moving through the darkness. With it went his plans for the next decade, the first step in breaking free from the family, establishing his own empire on a new continent.

  The thought of it brought a smile to his face, a genuine response that stretched across his features as he climbed the steps away from the water’s edge, his shoes shuffling against wood. Deep within his right pocket he could feel his phone begin to vibrate against the palm of his hand, and his smile dropped away in an instant.

  “Already?” he muttered. “Jesus, they just left.”

  Shaking his head, he pulled the phone out and held it at arm’s length, his gaze settling on the name displayed before him. As if Pavlovian, his heartbeat began to thunder in his chest, sweat dampening his armpits. For the first time, he became aware of the taste of smoke and salt in his mouth, his tongue fighting to conj
ure any bit of saliva within him.

  After the fourth buzz, he accepted the call and pressed it to his ear.

  “Hello, Uncle.”

  “Where the hell were you this time?” Sergey barked, annoyance and anger in his voice.

  The same pair of emotions welled within Viktor as he finished ascending the stairs and stopped on the top landing. He rested his rear against the railing encasing it, the ocean breeze hitting him full in the back.

  “And why does it sound like you’re in a wind tunnel?”

  Viktor held the phone away from him for a moment and muttered a string of expletives, each with more hostility than the one before. When he could think of no more he brought the device back to his face, his features contorted in anger.

  “I’m down by the dock,” Viktor said. “I was here to send off a team headed north to La Jolla, going to take care of that last little problem we discussed.”

  Five minutes before, he’d hoped to be completed with the task before mentioning it to his uncle. Now, he just hoped his decisive action would be enough to curry a bit of favor with the old man.

  “You did what?” Sergey asked, his tone pointed, low.

  For a moment Viktor felt a bit of panic within him before pushing it aside. “There was a problem, I fixed it,” he said, shoving more bravado into his voice than he actually felt. “That is why you sent me here, isn’t it?”

  He could feel the challenge in his tone, knew that he was walking on very thin ice. Still, if this was to be his moment to break free, to put some distance between himself and things back home, this was where it had to begin.

  A long moment of silence passed, followed by the exaggerated inhalation of air. When his uncle spoke his voice was flinty, honed to a razor’s edge.

  “No, you arrogant little prick,” Sergey spat. “You’re there because my brother is dead and my son is in jail. If there was anybody else in this family to send, anybody, they would be there instead of you.