Chapter 40
"They're sitting on my truck," Scott said.
Benny looked confused. "Someone is sitting on your truck?"
They were at a table inside a corner café two blocks from Scott's truck, drinking strong Mexican coffee and eat-ing tortillas stuffed with scrambled eggs and sausage. Scott was looking out the window at a black Chevrolet Suburban parked three blocks on the other side of his truck.
"Not literally," Scott said. "I mean they're watching it."
Benny washed down a bite of food with a sip of coffee. "In this neighborhood, that SUV stands out like a...What's that expression about the jug of punch?"
"A turd in a punch bowl."
She nodded. "That's it, but I'm still not sure I under-stand exactly what that means."
Scott smiled. "You have to picture it. You have this bowl filled with delicious red punch, with lots of ice to keep it cool. Then you see this-"
Holding up a hand, Benny said, "You have another ex-pression that I do understand, too much information."
"What it really means," Scott said, "is that we have to find another way across the border."
A deep rumbling sound came from the street outside.
Benny sprang out of her chair and headed for the door. "I have an idea."
Scott rushed to catch up, leaving his coffee on the table but gobbling down the rest of his burrito on the way.
Outside, a city bus lumbered toward them, belching smoke from its exhaust pipe as it ground its way down the street from the direction of Scott's truck and the black Sub-urban. Timing her move so that the bus shielded them from the surveillance vehicle, Benny led Scott to the corner and raised her hand to flag down the bus. It lurched to a stop with a hiss of brakes and the door sprang open. Benny and Scott climbed up the steps and stood beside the driver. He was an overweight man in his forties with a bad complexion. Benny asked him something in Spanish, and as soon as he answered she turned to Scott. "It's ten pesos."
Scott pulled out his wallet. He had a single five dollar bill left. "That's all I have."
"It's plenty." She took the bill and held it out to the driver.
He looked at the five dollars but didn't take it. Then he said something in Spanish, but all Scott could make out was the word pesos. Apparently, he only took Mexican pesos, not U.S. dollars. As Benny argued with the driver, Scott looked down the length of the bus, past the dozen or so pas-sengers, and out through the grimy back windows. He could see his truck and the black Suburban. The Suburban hadn't moved.
Benny's raised voice drew Scott's attention. He turned just in time to see her shove the five dollar bill into the bus driver's hand. The driver grumbled but took the money. He offered her no change. They took the first available seats.
"What was all that about?" Scott whispered.
"That should have only cost about two dollars, but he claimed he couldn't make change for U.S. money. So it cost you the whole five. I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it."
"We still have to pay to walk across the bridge."
"How much does that cost?"
"To go north is ten pesos."
"How much is that in American money?"
"About seventy cents."
Scott dug thirty-five cents out of his pocket. "We're go-ing to be a little short."
"You have the video," Benny said. "You don't need me to go with you."
"You're the one who can identify-"
"Shh, don't say his name," Benny warned, glancing around nervously to see if anyone was listening to them.
"The man in the video," Scott said. "You know who he is."
"Now you know too."
"But my boss is going to want to talk to you."
"I have to get home to my daughter."
"You'll be back this afternoon."
"Will I have to give a statement?"
"Eventually, yes," Scott said. "We both will. But this is important. It's going to change things."
She stared past him out the window. "That's what I'm afraid of."
He held out the coins in his hand. "First we need to find another dollar and five cents."
Benny glanced up at the bus driver.
Scott was afraid she was going to pull her pistol and force the driver to give them three dollars in change or what-ever the equivalent amount was in pesos. "If I can find an ATM," he said, "I can get some money."
"They have ATMs at the bridge."
"Good, then we're all set." Scott looked at his watch. "We can be at the Radisson in forty-five minutes. I'll give the video to Glenn. We'll tell him what we know. Then this mess will be somebody else's problem."
She smiled at him. "You really think it's going to be that easy?"
"Sure. Why not?"
"Things might happen like that in the United States," she said. "But this is Mexico."
Chapter 41
For the duration of his stay in Laredo, Robert Stockwell, special agent in charge of DEA's Houston Division, had set up camp in Scott Greene's office. As the local resident agent in charge, Greene had the only private office. The rest of the agents worked in a cubicle farm down the hall.
Glenn Peterson sat in one of two wooden armchairs in front of Greene's desk. The office door was closed.
"I wanted to talk to you before OPR got here," Stock-well said. "I know you and Greene have a history."
"I was his group supervisor in New Orleans," Peterson said. "His first posting after the academy."
The SAC nodded impatiently. "You and I need to make sure we're on the same page."
"What page is that?"
"I don't think I need to tell you how bad this looks, es-pecially to headquarters."
"How bad it looks?" Peterson said. "We lost three agents."
"Exactly. And unless we manage the situation correctly, there could be significant blowback."
"Blowback from headquarters?"
The SAC leaned forward and planted his elbows on the desk. "Of course from headquarters. And beyond. This thing could land us in a Congressional hearing. That's why we need to make it clear right up front that Greene was acting on his own, without authority from the division, certainly without authority from headquarters, and that no one, no one, in his chain of command was aware that he was plan-ning to conduct an illegal operation in Mexico, in contraven-tion of Mexican law, United States law, and DEA policy."
The SAC sounded strange, like he was testifying al-ready. Peterson guessed he was getting warmed up before he had to give a statement to the suits from OPR. "I didn't know what he was planning," Peterson said, "but come on, Bob, we both know extraordinary renditions happen from time to time, and headquarters tends to give them...tacit ap-proval."
"I don't know anything about that," Stockwell said. "And if you knew about any renditions coming out of this division it was your responsibility to come to me so that I could..."
"Could what, Bob?"
"Take appropriate action."
Peterson decided not to press the issue. The SAC was full of shit, but there was no way to prove it. No paper was cut on renditions. Thus there were no official requests and no official approvals. They were done off the books, and when a case agent filed a DEA Form 6, a Report of Investi-gation, to document an arrest made by rendition, the report always said that the defendant was apprehended on the U.S. side of the border and that the information about the defendant's whereabouts came from an anonymous tip.
Staring across Greene's desk at the SAC, Peterson was once again struck by how strange the man sounded. Stock-well was fond of cursing. Like a lot of desk jockeys he thought it made him sound tough. Now he was speaking in pure bureaucratese. Something he normally didn't do, espe-cially not one-on-one. Unless...
"Bob, are you recording this conversation?" Peterson asked.
Stockwell rubbed a hand across his face. "Why would you ask that?"
"Are you?"
Stockwell tried a hard stare, but he couldn't quite pull it off. The street agents didn't call
him Bobby Socks for noth-ing. "No, I'm not recording it," he finally said in a voice that was a notch or two higher than normal. "Should I be?"
Peterson knew when he was being lied to, and he was being lied to right now, by his boss. He shook his head. "No reason I can think of."
"Scott Greene's reckless disregard for the law and DEA policy got three agents killed."
"Four crooked Mexican police officers killed our agents," Peterson said. "And that's who we should be going after. Not Scott Greene."
Stockwell shook his head. "No one is going after Scott Greene, but he has to be held accountable for his actions. Just like everyone else."
"The U.S. attorney's office indicted Sergeant Felix Ortiz for his participation in the abduction, torture, and murder of a DEA agent. What did DOJ expect? That would be the end of it? That we'd be happy with a tick mark in the indicted column? Case closed, move onto the next one? No, because that's not how we do things at DEA." He jabbed a finger out the window. "Those dope dealers out there need to know that we won't stop, that we will keep coming, that we will go to the ends of the earth and do whatever it takes to catch them and drag them back to an American prison for killing one of our agents. Because that's how we protect the rest of our agents."
"There are procedures," Stockwell said in a precise and moderated voice. "You know them as well as I do. When pursuing international fugitives we work through Main Jus-tice and the State Department in order to coordinate with our foreign partners."
"Are you fucking kidding me," Peterson said. "Foreign partners? Is that what we're calling Mexico now? Our for-eign partner? It's a narco-state run by gangsters. You think the Mexican government was ever going to turn over Felix Ortiz to us? There was only one way to get our hands on him and that was to go in and take him. So that's exactly what Scott did." Peterson hesitated for a second before plunging ahead. "Then you let two spooks snatch him right out of our holding cell."
"The agents from OPR aren't coming here to talk about how Ortiz got out of our custody. They're coming here to talk about the illegal way he got into our custody. So I sug-gest you focus on that."
"It'll be a short interview then because, like I said, I had no idea what Scott was planning."
"Would you agree that Special Agent Greene has a problem with authority?"
"You're talking about Afghanistan?"
Stockwell nodded. "DOD almost threw us out of the country because of that stunt he pulled."
"It wasn't a stunt," Peterson said. "He raided the big-gest heroin processing plant in the country and made the largest heroin seizure in DEA history."
"He didn't clear the raid with the military."
"Because the military was protecting the plant."
"That was never proven."
"An entire platoon of Marines was assigned to guard that plant because it belonged to a warlord who happened to be on our side that week. The only reason the Marines didn't shoot down Greene and his entire team was because the pla-toon commander thought the helicopters were carrying their relief."
"The situation over there has always been complicated," Stockwell said. "We have to make deals and we have to compromise. That's why every operation has to be cleared through the International Enforcement Division and coordi-nated with DOD. We're not an agency of cowboys anymore. We don't kick down every door we come across just because there's an ounce of coke on the other side."
"This morning when I looked at my badge it still said Drug Enforcement Administration, not Department of De-fense."
The SAC leaned back in his chair. "Greene is missing and we have to find him."
"So you can throw him under the bus?"
"You're mandatory in six months."
Peterson nodded. "And that means I'm the only one in this room not bucking to cap my career by landing a chief's job at headquarters."
"Scott Greene broke the law in two countries."
"The op went sideways on him," Peterson said. "He'll have to answer for that. But he's not responsible for the deaths of those agents."
"You need to get out ahead of this, Glenn. If you know where he is..."
"I have no idea where he is."
Stockwell stared at him for a long moment. "With or without your help, we're going to bring him in. His cell phone has gone dark, but I have alerts on his credit and debit cards. We'll know within ten minutes if he tries to use them."
"Sounds like you have everything covered."
"Have you spoken to him?"
"No," Peterson said without hesitation. Thirty years of carrying a badge and a gun and dozens of brushes with death had proved to him the truth behind the old adage, He who hesitates is lost. Maybe Stockwell knew he had talked to Greene, but maybe he was just fishing. Either way, he wasn't getting any help from his ASAC in railroading a good agent.
"Do you really want to bet your pension on Scott Greene?"
"Are you threatening me? Is that really where you want to go with this?"
"It's not a threat," Stockwell said. "It's simple reality. Because when the music stops, somebody always gets left without a chair. I know that somebody isn't going to be me. And I'd rather it not be you."
Peterson opened his mouth to tell his boss to fuck off, but before he could get the words out someone knocked on the door.
"Come in," Stockwell said in a hurry.
The door opened and the two suits from OPR walked in.
Chapter 42
Scott and Benny got off the bus at the Gateway to the Americas Bridge, along with most of the other passengers. As the door hissed closed behind them and the bus rumbled away, they walked across Avenida 15 de Junio with their fellow passengers, but instead of continuing straight to the bridge with everybody else, Scott and Benny stopped at the edge of the fan-shaped service plaza at the foot of the bridge. The plaza was crowded with people, most of them headed north.
The bridge itself was a thousand feet long, with four traffic lanes and two pedestrian walkways. Scott had heard or read somewhere that it was actually the fourth bridge built at that location, the first three having been destroyed by floods. Right now the Rio Grande was little more than a wide creek. You could wade across it, which is exactly what a few thousand people did every day.
Benny nodded at a bank of payphones. "I need to check on Rosalita and make sure Maria can pick her up after school."
Scott pointed toward a cash exchange booth, a cambio, on the other side of the service plaza. "Don't those exchang-es usually have an ATM?"
"Yes," Benny said.
"You check on your daughter, and I'll get us some cash. We'll meet by the bridge."
"Okay."
"Be careful," he said.
"You too."
Then they walked away in opposite directions.
* * * *
The cash exchange was a fortified booth, big enough for two people, maybe three if they were good friends, but Scott could see through the bulletproof window that there was on-ly one person working inside, a serious-looking man in his twenties wearing some kind of uniform shirt.
Beside the window was an ATM. Scott fished his wallet out and shoved his debit card into the slot. He selected the English option and punched in his PIN. Then he chose WITHDRAW and U.S. dollars as the currency. A series of fast cash options came up. He pressed the button for a hundred dollars. Nothing happened.
He waited. Still nothing happened. His eyes wandered. He saw a security camera behind a pane of dark glass, the lens aimed at his face. Then a message flashed on the ATM screen: INVALID TRANSACTION. The screen cycled back to its initial greeting and instructions, in Spanish, and the ATM kept his debit card. "Son of a bitch," he said.
In the reflection from the glass, Scott saw a man step up behind him. It took all of his willpower not to turn around. He couldn't see the man's face clearly, but judging from his actions the man didn't look threatening, just impatient.
Scott pulled his credit card from his wallet. The card had a cash advance option. Scott had never used
it, but he had set up the credit card with the same PIN as his debit card. He pushed the card into the slot, went through the same options, and tried to withdraw a hundred dollars. But once again the screen flashed INVALID TRANSACTION and the ATM ate his card.
Scott looked through the dark glass at the camera and wondered if someone was watching him.
* * * *
Humberto Larios, the man known as El Capitán, and the leader of the Los Zetas cartel, which the American DEA called the most violent criminal organization in the world, stood outside the fenced practice ring and watched his torero run a young bull through his paces. The bull, for whom Larios had not yet decided on a name, was a marvelous animal, with a beautiful coat, so black it almost looked blue, covering a thick sheath of rippling muscles, and a head crowned by the start of an excellent set of horns. Oh, this beast was magnifico.
Larios's cell phone rang. The called ID showed a Nuevo Laredo telephone number. Larios didn't recognize it, but fewer than a dozen people knew the number to his cell phone. He punched the ANSWER button. "Yes," he said in Spanish.
"It's me," the voice on the other end of the call said, also in Spanish.
Larios recognized the voice. "Do you have it?"
"Not yet," Benny Alvarez said.
"Where are you?"
"The old bridge. He's about to go across."
"Does he have the video?"
"On a flash drive around his neck."
"Then why haven't you taken it from him?"
"I..."
Larios waited without saying anything.
"Why not let him take it across?" Benny said. "All of the American news channels will show it. Their government will be exposed. Everyone will know."
Larios let out a bark of laughter. "You think that's what will happen?"
"Yes."
"If that video gets across the border, the American gov-ernment will bury it."
"He said he's going to give it to a man he trusts, one of his superiors."
This time Larios shouted into the phone. "They all work for the same government. They will make sure no one ever sees that video."
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