by Alex Gilly
No one said anything for a moment. Both IA men looked unhappy.
“Fine,” said Ruiz. “Agent Finn, could you please relate to us the events that led to you shooting dead Rafael Aparición Perez on the morning of the eighth of October, as you remember them.”
Finn glanced at Mona, who nodded.
“Like I wrote in the report, I was on patrol with Agent Jimenez,” said Finn, “Toward the end of our shift, at about six A.M., we come across this boat running with her lights out—”
“Is that illegal?” said Ruiz.
“At night, yes.”
“At night … what about at six A.M.?” said Petchenko, looking up from a printout of the report Finn had written.
Finn straightened his back. “It’s October,” he said. “It’s still dark at six A.M.”
Petchenko shrugged.
“Go on,” said Ruiz with a reassuring smile.
“We’re about a mile northeast of Catalina Island. We approach the vessel and discover that she’s a big sport fisher. Her lights are out and she’s not fishing. We see no one aboard. We turn on our wailer and blue lights, and I signal her with the spotlight.”
“You didn’t try to contact her verbally?” said Ruiz.
“We didn’t have time. She took off as soon as we switched on our lights.”
“Why didn’t you have time? Did you sneak up on her in the dark?” said Petchenko.
“We approached the boat stealthily.”
“Why?”
“Because she was suspicious.”
“Why?”
Finn wondered whether Petchenko was really this stupid or this was some kind of brilliant circular-reasoning strategy internal affairs agents used to catch people out.
“Because she had her lights out.”
Petchenko looked stumped.
“Then what happened?” said Ruiz.
“Then we knew we had a twenty-two-thirty-seven.…”
Finn waited to see how well they knew their code. Neither agent said anything. He figured they didn’t want to lose face by asking.
“That’s Title Eighteen, Part One, Section 2237 of the Federal Code, namely, ‘failure to obey an order from a federal law-enforcement officer to heave to,’” Finn said helpfully. “So we set out after him. We signal him again with the spotlight. He still doesn’t stop. So I fire a warning shot across his bow.”
“You opened fire?” said Ruiz.
“As I wrote in my report, I fired a flash-bang from our shotgun. I aimed it ten feet ahead of the fleeing vessel, so that there was no chance he couldn’t see it.”
“So he thought he was being shot at.”
“Flash-bang shells have no projectile. They’re harmless.”
“But he doesn’t know that, does he? All he knows is a boat sneaks up on him in the dark, then he sees a big flash and hears gunfire. Easy to panic in a situation like that, when you’re being fired upon. Sorry—think you’re being fired upon,” said Ruiz.
Finn took a breath and wondered why these guys had such a hard-on for him. He glanced over at Mona, who had a stony look on her face.
“Okay. What happened next?” said Ruiz.
Finn knew the next bit was the tricky one. Firing a warning shot across a recalcitrant vessel’s bow was standard procedure. It was perfectly legal, and they were trained to do it.
Setting a line to tangle around a vessel’s propeller shaft, on the other hand, was Finn’s own initiative.
“Normally, when a panga doesn’t obey our order to heave to, we fire at its outboard and disable its means of propulsion. But this boat had an inboard engine, so we had to come up with another way to disable it. I used a rope.”
“A rope. Is that standard procedure, Agent Finn?” said Ruiz.
“Is it even legal?” said Petchenko.
Before Finn said anything, Mona stepped in. This was her area. She gave Petchenko a rundown of Title 19 of the U.S. Code, especially Chapter Four and the Enforcement Provisions of the Tariff Act contained therein. Then she gave him a dose of Chapter Five, the Anti-Smuggling Act. Finally, for good measure, she ran through myriad sections of Title 46, Shipping.
Mona said a lot and said it fast and with great conviction. Finn wasn’t sure that any of it cleared up whether his trick with the rope had been legal or not, but the investigators looked bamboozled. He listened to his wife draw to a close and tried not to smile.
There was a moment when no one said anything, the dust settling. Both investigators looked a little deflated.
“Okay. So you’ve managed to lawfully stop La Catrina,” said Ruiz, gamely. “Walk us through what you did next.”
“Agent Jimenez took the wheel while I fetched the M4 from the locker and fixed it to its mount on the starboard rail.”
“Why you?” said Petchenko.
“I served eight years in the navy. I’m more comfortable with … with that kind of hardware,” said Finn.
Petchenko wrote something down and showed it to Ruiz. Ruiz gave a little nod and said, “Go on.”
“The suspect emerged from the cabin. There was something off about him. He didn’t look like an angler. He was wearing the wrong clothes. A dark suit, a town suit. Not a spray jacket. Not something you’d go to sea in. We told him to put his hands up—”
“In what language?” interrupted Ruiz.
“I spoke to him in Spanish,” said Diego.
“Because you don’t speak Spanish, do you, Finn?” said Ruiz.
“That question is irrelevant,” said Mona.
“I don’t think so,” said Ruiz. “I thought it was a requirement for all CBP agents to be bilingual.”
“Today’s hearing is about the Perez incident, not Agent Finn’s linguistic abilities. Do you intend to follow this line much further, Agent Ruiz?” said Mona.
Finn felt a surge of gratitude for his wife.
“No, no. Please go on, Agent Finn,” said Ruiz.
“The guy’s not responding. He doesn’t put his hands up. I’ve got a bead on him. He starts making his way up the ladder to the flybridge—the platform at the top of the boat. A moment later, I see him come out with a gun—”
“This is at dawn, right?” interrupted Ruiz.
“Correct.”
“And he’s in a position east of you?”
“That’s right.”
“So the sun’s behind him, right? I mean, you were looking directly into the sun?”
Finn paused. He had to be careful here. “I could see them clearly.”
“What about the smoke? On account of the engine being on fire? You sure you could see him right, through the smoke, holding a weapon?”
“I’m sure.”
Ruiz didn’t look convinced.
“Can you describe the weapon?”
“Some kind of assault rifle. It sounded like an AK-47—”
“It sounded like an AK-47?”
Finn nodded. “I heard enough of them in Iraq to recognize one anywhere.”
“Even with the noise of the four engines on your boat? Even with the sound of your own weapon firing?”
Nice try, thought Finn.
“Outboards are loud, but guns are louder, especially when they’re being fired at you, and anyway we were idling. As for my own weapon, it was silent at that moment, as you know from my report.”
“I saw Perez open fire,” said Diego.
Ruiz frowned. “We’ll stick with Agent Finn’s account for the moment, Agent Jimenez. So what happened next?” he said, turning back to Finn.
“I shot him.”
“More precisely, Agent Finn.”
“I aimed at the individual’s torso and fired one three-round burst.”
“You didn’t think to evade his fire?”
“No, sir.”
No one said anything for a moment.
“How many rounds did you say he fired at you?”
“I didn’t say. He fired for maybe five seconds. He got off maybe twenty rounds.”
“Twenty rounds
? Yet there wasn’t one bullet hole in your boat?” said Petchenko.
Finn shrugged. “Boats move. You ever tried firing from a moving platform at another moving platform? Especially with a gun as inaccurate as an AK?”
“Yet you managed to put a hole in Perez’s chest in just that situation.”
“The M4 is a far more accurate rifle. Plus, I was trained. I served eight years with the Maritime Expeditionary Security Force.”
From the corner of his eye, Finn saw Glenn wince.
“What’s that?” said Ruiz.
“Inshore boats. Mainly we did port security in the Gulf. Guarded oil terminals, that kind of thing.”
“Inshore boats … is that like, swiftboats?” said Petchenko.
Finn frowned. Ever since John Kerry had been swiftboated, anytime he mentioned Coastal Warfare, everybody always thought swiftboats. The perversion of the word bugged the hell out of him.
“And you were a sniper?” said Ruiz.
“I did some marksman training,” said Finn. Playing it down. He’d been the best shot in his unit and had spent most of his tours manning the M4 mounted on the bow of a thirty-four-foot Dauntless-class patrol boat.
“What happened then?” said Ruiz.
“The impact caused the deceased to fall backward. He went over the rail into the water. His weapon fell with him.”
“You saw that?”
Finn nodded. “Yes.”
“And then?”
“Then I went across and extinguished the fire in the engine bay.”
“Where was Agent Jimenez while you were doing this?”
“He remained on our boat.”
“So you were alone on the victim’s boat?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“We recovered the deceased from the water.”
A moment passed.
“Have you seen the autopsy?” said Ruiz.
Finn hadn’t.
“The M.E. didn’t find any gunpowder residue on him,” said Ruiz. “Not on his fingers, not on his clothes.”
“He fell into the water. The water washed it off,” said Finn.
“Maybe so. But we’ve got nothing showing that he shot at you. No residue on him and no bullet holes in your boat. We don’t even have any evidence that he had a weapon, since you say it sunk to the bottom of the sea.”
“You’ve got the sworn testimony of two CBP marine interdiction agents.”
Ruiz sniffed. “Perez’s family’s lawyers say he was fishing.”
“I heard,” said Finn.
“So? Was he fishing?”
Mona leaned forward, but Finn spoke before she had a chance to interrupt.
“He wasn’t fishing.”
“You seem mighty sure about that,” said Petchenko, squinting at him. He was either myopic or he’d watched too many Clint Eastwood films, thought Finn.
Finn felt his right eye twitching, the way it did whenever he got angry. He took a deep breath, steadied his heart, the way he’d learned in marksman training.
“I have several reasons to believe that the deceased was not fishing. First, he was on his own, which is unusual on a boat that size and which is especially unusual for fishing expeditions. Second, to fish, you need bait, and there was none on the boat. None of his rods were rigged. He was not wearing fishing gear. But more than that, it’s where he was. You boys are from D.C., so you wouldn’t know this, but if you want to catch game fish nowadays, you go south to Mexico, to Los Coronados, Alijos Rocks, somewhere like that. Isn’t that right, sir?” he said, turning to Glenn.
“What’s your point?” said Ruiz.
“My point is, no one comes from Mexico to go fishing a mile off of Catalina. People go the other way. Perez was fishing about as much as I was.”
“So what do you think he was doing?”
Finn shrugged like it was obvious. “He ignored our signal to heave to. He used dangerous tactics to evade us. He had an assault weapon aboard his vessel and fired it at U.S. federal agents. He was a cartel man.”
“Yet you found no drugs.”
“We’re still looking.”
“It’s been two weeks.”
“It’s a big boat.”
“You say in your report he was coming from Catalina? Is that a drug hot spot?”
“Not that I know of. And I said he appeared to be coming from Catalina. I have no way of knowing where he had actually been.”
Now it was Ruiz’s turn to breathe loudly through his nose. He drummed his fingers on the table.
“You see our predicament, don’t you, Agent Finn?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Perez is a foreign national. You’re a U.S. federal agent. There’s no evidence he was doing anything other than enjoying his motorboat. No residue, no weapon, no bullet holes, no drugs. All we have is you and your partner saying he pointed a metal object at you. Then you opened fire. That’s right?”
“No, that’s not right. It was a rifle. And he opened fire. I returned it. On top of that, he failed to obey our order to heave to.”
“His lawyers say what you thought was an AK-47 was actually a fishing rod. They also say that you spooked him and that he couldn’t speak English.”
Finn couldn’t suppress a laugh.
“You think this is funny?” said Ruiz.
“You think I can’t tell the difference between an AK-47 and a fishing rod?”
“Maybe you weren’t sure what it was; maybe you were nervous and let off a burst without really meaning to. Hell, anyone could understand that,” said Ruiz, trying to bait Finn with a friendly-sounding compromise.
“Or maybe you couldn’t see clearly on account of the sun being in your eyes,” said Petchenko, squinting at him.
Finn held his gaze. “If that’s the case, what motive would I have to kill an unarmed man?”
Petchenko shrugged. “What do I know? Maybe you got a thing against Mexicans.”
“That’s it. This meeting’s over,” said Mona. She stood up and pointed a pen at Glenn.
“Director Glenn, this hearing is a travesty and I will be contacting the commissioner’s office immediately. Agent Finn came of his own volition in the hope of establishing the truth. Instead, he walked into a set-up, an interrogation in all but name. I will make it clear to the commissioner that you have failed in your duty to chair an impartial hearing. This is an outrage.”
Ruiz got to his feet. “Oh, get real. This hearing was prejudiced the minute Agent Finn walked in with half his family,” he said.
Everyone jumped to their feet and started shouting at one another.
Finn stayed seated, eyeballing Petchenko, his right eye twitching like a Morse code ticker.
CHAPTER FIVE
Finn walked Mona to her car. Petchenko’s racist jibe had hit a nerve. He was still angry.
They were standing by the driver’s-side door. Mona opened the door and threw her briefcase and handbag across to the passenger seat.
“I wish you hadn’t heard that,” murmured Finn.
“Are you kidding? I’m glad I was there. You’re lucky I was there. That was a set-up. They’re trying to build a case for prosecution.”
Finn was puzzled. “Prosecution?”
“They’re looking for a scapegoat. If they think they’ve got enough evidence against you—and believe me, they want to have enough evidence—then they’ll contact a U.S. attorney and present the case for prosecution. The U.S. attorney then goes to a grand jury to get an indictment against you. Then they get a judge to sign a warrant, and next thing you know, you’re in jail awaiting trial.”
Finn’s head was spinning. “Maybe you’re right. I should just resign.”
“You can’t now. They’ll use it against you. We have to clear your name first.” She looked at him and smiled. “Relax. It so happens you married one of the best lawyers in the nation. I think I may have mentioned once or twice that I topped my class at law school. They probably still speak about me in awed tones.”<
br />
Then, in a different tone, she said, “You know you’re the first border agent I’ve represented? Usually I’m assisting migrants against the CBP. It’s … interesting and feels weird at the same time. Like sleeping in someone else’s bed.”
Finn cocked an eyebrow. “So? Are we as bad as they say we are?”
She smiled but her eyes didn’t. “Are borders necessary?” she said quietly.
“What?”
“It’s the title of a paper I wrote in college. Seeing this…” she tapped the Customs and Border Protection patch on his shirtsleeve, “made me think of it.”
Finn was quiet for a while. Finally he said, “What do you think would happen if we opened the borders?”
Now she had a twinkle in her eye. “We’d all move to Canada,” she said.
He laughed. But he’d meant it as a serious question.
“Hey, why so serious? We’ll get through this, okay? Trust me, I deal with assholes like them every day—you find them in every government department. If you’re going to dig up dirt, you’re going to bring up the worms. But we’ve got the truth on our side, Nick. And truth stands by itself. Jefferson said that.”
He smiled. “You’re quoting Jefferson to me now?”
“I’m trying to school you, baby.”
His mood lifted.
She got into her RAV4.
“I’m going to put out the word, see if anyone has anything on Perez,” she said through the window. “I’ll call you the minute I hear anything. In the meantime, see if the federales have anything on him. And keep your head down. Don’t say anything about the shooting to anyone without checking with me first, okay?”
He nodded.
“One more thing,” she said through the car window.
He turned back toward her.
“I love you, baby,” she said. “And I can’t wait till Monterey.”
* * *
