Suicide Mission

by William W. Johnstone

  But he had no choice except to work with this man, so he nodded to the guard and said, “Bring him in.”

  Tariq sized up the two men as soon as he came into the room. The big, beefy one—Estancia, that was his name, Tariq recalled—was just a thug, dangerous in a physical confrontation, no doubt, but stupid and easily outwitted if necessary.

  The other man, though, the slender, handsome one with the sleek dark hair and steel-rimmed glasses, his face was unreadable and completely devoid of emotion. That meant he might be dangerous.

  Tariq had been briefed on Alfredo Sanchez and knew that Sanchez was the man the cartel sent to supervise the most sensitive, important operations. Tariq figured he should be careful around Sanchez. They were allies for the moment, but Sanchez was an infidel and not to be trusted.

  “Señor Maleef,” Sanchez said. “You wished to see me?”

  “We have not yet met,” Tariq said. Both men spoke in university-educated English, the only language they had in common. “I thought we should.”

  “I agree completely.” Sanchez extended his hand but did not meet Tariq’s gaze. “Alfredo Sanchez.”

  Tariq didn’t read anything into Sanchez’s failure to look squarely at him as they shook hands. He had been told that was part of the culture in these Latin countries.

  “You are in charge of your organization’s part of the New Sun?” Tariq asked.

  “That’s right. And you have brought us what we need to complete the rising of that new sun, the dawning of a new day in the world?”

  Tariq allowed himself a faint smile and said, “I have it.”

  “Secure, I hope?”

  Tariq felt a surge of annoyance. Did this man think him a fool? He wasn’t going to carry around a suitcase-sized tactical nuclear weapon without taking the necessary precautions.

  “Very secure,” he told Sanchez. “The detonator is not armed and will not be until I place it where it’s supposed to go.”

  “Of course. You intend to handle the delivery yourself?”

  “When a task is this important, I prefer to see to it myself, yes. Your job is merely to get me over the border and provide transportation to San Antonio.”

  Sanchez nodded and said, “That won’t be any trouble.”

  It shouldn’t be, Tariq thought. While the main business of the cartel was drugs, they also did a thriving trade in illegal immigration. The so-called coyotes who worked for them smuggled thousands of people across the American border every month. One more “wetback” would not be noticed.

  Tariq knew he could pass for Mexican. Many of his countrymen could. Some of them had already been smuggled across the border and waited now on American soil, sleeper agents going about their day-to-day lives until the day came when they were needed to strike against the enemies of Islam.

  If Tariq had anything to say about it, that day would be soon.

  Estancia spoke up, addressing Sanchez as he picked up some photographs from the table where several computers sat.

  “I’ll take care of this,” the big man said.

  A look of annoyance flashed across Sanchez’s face, so quickly that most people probably wouldn’t have noticed it.

  Tariq did, though. He could tell that Sanchez would have preferred that Estancia wait until they were alone to mention the photographs. Out of curiosity, Tariq glanced at them. He couldn’t tell much about them, except that they were pictures of an unclothed woman.

  He loathed these Westerners and their obsession with sex. Whatever this was about, Tariq wanted no part of it, and yet he was concerned. He had to make sure the matter didn’t have anything to do with why he was here. He couldn’t allow anything to threaten his sacred goal of killing millions of Americans.

  “Is there a problem?” he murmured softly.

  “What?” Sanchez asked, and it seemed to Tariq he was trying not to show how distracted he was.

  “A problem?” Tariq repeated as he gestured at the photographs in Estancia’s coarse, sausage-like fingers.

  “Oh, no, just a personnel matter.”

  Tariq thought at first that Sanchez said “a personal matter” and wondered if the shameless woman was his mistress. Then he realized the man had said “personnel.” That meant it was related to business, and right now the cartel’s most important business was helping Tariq’s organization deliver death and despair to the Americans.

  “I wouldn’t want anything to interfere with our plans,” he said.

  Sanchez took his glasses off, polished the lenses with a linen handkerchief, and slipped them back on. Tariq recognized that for what it was, a momentary distraction to allow Sanchez to exert an iron grip on his emotions.

  “Nothing is going to interfere with our plans, I assure you, Señor Maleef. Everything is set for tomorrow. By the time the sun goes down a second time from now, the world will be changed forever.”

  “Changed for the better,” Tariq said.

  “That goes without saying.”

  Sanchez snapped his fingers at Estancia, who hurried out. Tariq didn’t even glance at the man or the photographs he held as Estancia went past him.

  He had no interest in the woman in the pictures. When his work on this world was done, there would be scores of beautiful virgins waiting for him in the afterlife. Until then he was fine with his monastic existence. The needs of the soul were much more important than any crude desires of the flesh.

  Anyway, he had been too quick to worry, he told himself.

  No Mexican slut could pose any threat to the glorious destiny that awaited him.

  CHAPTER 9

  Del Rio

  Bill drove into Del Rio in the middle of the afternoon. He had been here before, which meant he sort of knew his way around, although the border town might have changed some since he had visited it last. Once Bill had driven somewhere, it tended to stick in his mind.

  He stopped at a nondescript motel on the edge of town, one of a nationwide chain. He didn’t know how long he would be here, but if he needed a room he would have one.

  He topped off the pickup’s gas tank, too. Here in Texas there could be some long, empty stretches without any gas stations, so it was wise not to let the needle on the gauge drop too far below a half.

  And if he wound up with somebody chasing him, he sure as hell didn’t want to have to stop for gas.

  The new burner phone was in his shirt pocket. All he could do was wait for the “package” to call him and let him know where to meet her. While he was waiting, he turned on the TV in the motel room and changed the station to one of the cable news channels, the only one that could be counted on to broadcast something that bore a distant relationship to reality.

  As usual, the people in Washington who possessed the least bit of common sense were still in the minority, while those who didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground—the ones who kept getting elected and reelected by a lot of people who also didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground—kept yammering on about how everything would be just fine if all those filthy rich people would just pay more taxes, “rich” being continually defined downward because even if the government took everything from everybody there wouldn’t be enough to make a dent in the flood of runaway spending, and how all the country’s problems were still the fault of that guy who’d been in the White House three or four administrations earlier.

  After watching for ten minutes, Bill heaved a sigh and changed the channel. He found an old Western movie and left it there with the sound turned low for background noise while he checked his guns.

  Before he’d left Sonora he had opened the homemade stainless-steel toolbox and storage chest in the back of the pickup and taken out the locked case that held his handguns. He had picked the Browning Hi-Power to carry in a holster clipped under his shirt at the small of his back and slid a .25 caliber revolver down his boot. The popgun wasn’t much good unless you could stick the barrel in somebody’s ear before you pulled the trigger, but for that kind of close work it could come
in handy. He tucked a .32 behind his belt in the front. His shirt would cover it, too.

  Once he was gunned up he felt a little better. Would’ve been nice to be able to carry a shotgun, too, he thought, but folks tended to look a little funny at somebody who did that. They got nervous in a hurry, too, and Bill didn’t like having nervous people around him.

  The phone buzzing in his pocket interrupted a stream of inspired gibberish from Gabby Hayes on the TV. Bill muted the sound with the remote and opened the phone, held it to his ear and said, “Yeah?”

  “El Nuevo Sol.”

  The voice on the other end belonged to a woman, all right, a fairly young woman by the sound of it, although you couldn’t always tell by that. Bill said, “Go on.”

  “That’s all I know,” she said in only faintly accented English. “Except I need help. People are after me.”

  “What people would that be?” Bill asked in a casual drawl.

  “The . . . the cartel. The drug cartel.”

  “What’s your name?”

  The woman didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “You don’t need to know that.”

  “No offense, miss, but if you need my help, then I need to know what I say I need to know.”

  Again a momentary silence, then, “Catalina.”

  Maybe she was making it up, maybe she wasn’t. Bill didn’t really care. He just wanted to establish that he was running the show here. If he was going to help her, she needed to do whatever he said, including answering his questions.

  “Where are you, Catalina?” he asked.

  “I’m in church.”

  “The traditional sanctuary for sinners.”

  Her voice bristled as she said, “Are you here to help me or to judge me?”

  That brought a chuckle from him.

  “I’m long past the point of castin’ the first stone, darlin’,” he said. “Which church?”

  She told him. It was a Catholic church downtown. That was actually a pretty good choice for a hideout, Bill thought. The cartel didn’t care about religion, but here along the border with its heavy concentration of Catholics, even their gunmen would think twice about shooting up such a place.

  “I can pretend that I’m saying prayers for a while without anybody bothering me,” Catalina went on. “How soon can you get here?”

  “Not long,” Bill told her. “Fifteen, twenty minutes, more than likely.”

  “How will I know you?”

  Bill described himself, then asked, “And how will I know you?”

  “I’ll be the woman who looks like she’s been running for her life for the past sixteen hours.”

  “You should probably be a little more specific than that.”

  “I’m wearing blue jeans and a man’s shirt. I have dark brown hair, and it’s pulled back in a ponytail. There’s nobody else here right now who looks like that.”

  “All right, I’ll find you,” Bill said. “In the meantime, there’s one more thing you can do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe you ought to do more than pretend to pray.”

  Catalina sat on the pew with her head down, but she occasionally tipped it from side to side and shot glances from the corners of her eyes, studying the other people who went in and out of the church.

  At this time of day there were only a few of them, mostly middle-aged and older women, but from time to time a man would come in, too. None of them appeared to be threatening, and they paid no attention to her.

  Well, not much attention, anyway. Even drably dressed, with her hair pulled back and the makeup scrubbed off her face in a convenience-store restroom, she was a very attractive woman. Most of the men spared her a second glance and then went on about their business, probably feeling a little guilty at experiencing a moment of lust in such holy surroundings.

  Catalina was used to being looked at lustfully, of course. That hadn’t bothered her for years. Today, if a man looked at her and didn’t want to take her to bed, that would worry her.

  Because it could mean he wanted to kill her instead.

  She had left Eddie Velez’s truck in the truck parking area of a big convenience store on the edge of town, walked in, spent some time in the restroom, then bought a bottle of water and a candy bar. When she came out of the store she turned the other direction and simply walked away.

  After a few blocks, she had hitched a ride downtown, then walked around until she found this church. The smells, the hushed atmosphere, the stained-glass windows, all brought back faint memories from her childhood, from the days before she was on her own. That was a surprisingly comforting feeling.

  She was ready to get out of here now, though. Every time the sanctuary doors opened, letting sunlight slant into the gloom, she looked around as unobtrusively as possible.

  Finally, she saw a tall, lean figure silhouetted against the light in the doorway. The door swung closed, and she couldn’t see the man very well for a moment. As he came along the aisle between the pews, Catalina’s eyesight adjusted again, and she made out the rough work clothes the man wore. He could have been one of the ranch hands who worked in the area.

  Most of them were Hispanic, though, and this man was an Anglo. Catalina looked at the weathered face, the salt-and-pepper hair and mustache, and wondered why the Americans had sent an old man to help her. She needed someone who could take care of himself—and her—not a man who looked like he ought to be retired.

  Maybe he wasn’t the one the Americans had sent. He might have come here to pray or think and not have anything to do with her or her problem.

  But evidently his eyes were keen despite his age, because he slipped into the same pew and sat down a few feet from her. With her heart pounding, Catalina took a chance and said quietly, “El Nuevo Sol.”

  If he asked her what she was talking about, she could always make some excuse, she thought.

  But instead he replied, equally quietly, “The New Sun.”

  “You are the man I spoke to earlier?” she asked.

  “I am if you’re Catalina, and I reckon you must be. My name’s Bill.”

  She recognized his voice now. Even though she was still surprised by his age, she began to feel a little better. She still didn’t know who the man was on the other end of the phone number Marty had given her before he died, but she figured she had to be dealing with one of the American law enforcement agencies. The Border Patrol, maybe, or the DEA, those were the most likely. But this man who called himself Bill could even be CIA, she supposed.

  Although if he was, he was certainly an unlikely-looking spy.

  “You need to tell me what you know,” Bill went on. “If it’s important, more than one person should have the information.”

  “I know what makes it worthwhile for you to keep me alive,” she said curtly. “Take me somewhere I’ll be safe, and then I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  “How can I be sure it’s worth riskin’ my life?”

  Catalina drew in a deep breath through her nose and said, “Because they killed my friend over it.”

  “Your friend?”

  “Martin Chavez. He worked for the cartel, doing things with computers.”

  “Bunch of thugs gone high-tech,” Bill drawled. “Things have sure changed.”

  “You would know,” Catalina said dryly.

  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth under the mustache.

  “I’m not quite as much of a dinosaur as you might think I am, señorita. Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  He hesitated before answering, “San Antonio. There’ll be a place there where nobody can get to you.”

  “A CIA safe house?”

  “That’s more than you need to know.” He got to his feet. “Are you comin’ or not?”

  Catalina started to stand up, but she paused.

  “Wait,” she said. “I can trust you? You swear?” She gestured at their surroundings. “And remember where we are.”

  Bill smiled and
said, “I give you my word, señorita.”

  She nodded as she got to her feet.

  “All right, then. I’ll go with you.”

  They left the church together. Again, no one paid attention to them. As they stepped out onto the sidewalk, Catalina squinted against the bright afternoon sunlight. Bill touched her arm lightly, just enough to guide her, and said, “My truck’s parked over there.”

  They turned toward a dark blue pickup parked at the curb, and as they did, the doors of a car about twenty yards away opened. The movement caught Catalina’s eye, and when she looked in that direction, she saw four men getting out of the car.

  Her heart thudded painfully as she recognized two of them as men who had visited Marty at the apartment more than once. The other two were the same sort, soulless cartel gunmen who would stop at nothing to carry out their orders.

  She didn’t stop to think. She saw the men and turned to run for her life.

  CHAPTER 10

  Bill bit back a curse as he lunged after Catalina and grabbed her arm. He didn’t have to guess what had caused her to jackrabbit. The four mean-looking hombres who’d piled out of that car were pulling guns now as they rushed along the sidewalk.

  Catalina was young and strong and fast, but Bill had been dealing with trouble for a long time and knew how to react. He pivoted and used Catalina’s own momentum to swing her toward the pickup.

  “Get in the truck!” he called to her as his right hand swept behind his back and plucked the Browning from its holster.

  One of the gunmen yelled something in Spanish that probably translated to “Kill the old bastard!” Bill didn’t bother to figure it out. All he really had to know was that they were pointing guns at him.

  In fact, one of the men clutched a machine pistol while the other three held revolvers, so that made him the biggest threat. Bill shot him, the 9mm round sizzling through the air to punch into the gunner’s chest.