by M. A. Lawson
“You’re lying.”
“I thought you’d say that. Hang on.”
Kay popped the trunk lid open and said to Caesar, “Talk to Mora. Tell him he’d better do what I say.”
Kay placed the cell phone near Caesar’s mouth, and he said, “It’s me, Raphael. She took me from my house. I’m in the trunk of a car, and my hands are cuffed. Do what she says.”
Kay slammed the trunk lid shut and said, “Okay, Mora, are we on the same page now? I’ll give you Caesar if you give me my daughter. You hurt my daughter, I hurt Caesar. You kill my daughter, I kill Caesar.”
“Why are you doing this? Why aren’t you exchanging Tito for your daughter?”
“Because Tito’s dead.”
“What?”
“There you go again. Stop saying What? Tito’s dead. He was killed when my car overturned near Pendleton, and that’s why I had to kidnap your boss. Now, I’m going to call you again just before dawn and tell you where to meet me to exchange Caesar for my daughter. I’m picking a place where I’ll be able to see if you have people with you or if you bring a shooter. You be ready to move when I call.”
“Wait a minute,” Mora said, but Kay hung up. Then she took the battery out of Caesar’s cell phone so one of Mora’s wizards wouldn’t be able to track her using the GPS chip in the phone.
44
Mora had known something was wrong when Hamilton didn’t call when she should have, but this was the last thing he’d expected. He also now knew what he’d seen at Caesar’s, the thing he had been trying to drag from the recesses of his brain for the last four and a half hours. He’d seen Kay Hamilton and hadn’t recognized her.
Although he was certain that Hamilton had told him the truth about having kidnapped Caesar, he had to make sure. He’d feel like an even bigger fool if Hamilton was lying and her phone call was part of some elaborate ruse. He called the house at Rosarito Beach and asked to speak to Carmen Vega, the woman who had been responsible for frisking Caesar’s whore.
“Where’s Caesar?” he asked when Carmen came to the phone.
“He’s on his yacht with the woman who came here tonight,” Carmen said. Carmen disapproved of the prostitutes as much as Mora did.
“How do you know he’s on the yacht?” Mora asked.
“Because that’s where he said he was going.”
“You didn’t send men with him?” Mora said. It wasn’t really a question; he already knew the answer.
“No. He insisted on going alone.”
“Well, he’s been kidnapped, Carmen. The whore wasn’t a whore. She was a DEA agent.”
“Madre de Dios,” Carmen said in a whisper. Carmen Vega was an intelligent woman. She knew what happened when you made a serious mistake working for Caesar Olivera—and she couldn’t have made a more serious mistake.
But Mora surprised her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “This isn’t your fault.”
Mora meant what he said—it really wasn’t Carmen’s fault. He had always known that Caesar’s sexual escapades posed a security problem; he just hadn’t anticipated this particular problem.
Since Mora knew he couldn’t stop Caesar from seeing the women, he took precautions to make sure the whores weren’t armed and to make sure they didn’t try to slip listening devices into Caesar’s house. His biggest fear had always been that one of the whores might be someone who wanted revenge against Caesar, some woman whose family had been harmed by him, some woman so overcome by the need for vengeance that she’d be willing to sacrifice herself to kill Caesar. Since the women weren’t armed when they met with Caesar, the best they might be able to do was grab a steak knife and try to stab him or use some heavy object and try to crush his skull, but he couldn’t imagine a woman being able to overcome a man as physically powerful as Caesar Olivera. The one thing he had warned Caesar about repeatedly was to never fall asleep after he finished having sex with the women.
The other thing was, Claudio hired the whores and recruited them from a wide variety of places. He rarely used the same escort service more than once, and any woman who approached Claudio and volunteered to be Caesar’s guest for the night, Claudio instantly rejected. That was the only way to make sure that some woman didn’t try to use Claudio to get near Caesar.
But somehow Hamilton had found a way to replace the whore Claudio had planned to send to Caesar tonight. Mora remembered looking at the woman as he was walking down the steps at Caesar’s house, thinking something about her looked familiar, but he’d been talking to Perez at the time and the phone call distracted him. And it was somewhat understandable that he didn’t recognize her. He’d only seen Hamilton in the flesh one time, when he’d met her in her home in San Diego, and her hair had been blond and not very stylish, and although she was an attractive woman, he wouldn’t have described her as gorgeous. But with makeup on, the sea-green dress clinging to her figure, the red hair . . . she just didn’t look like the same woman.
So he could understand how she had managed to get into Caesar’s house, but what he couldn’t understand was how Hamilton had managed to convince Caesar to leave the house with her. She must have found some way to get a weapon into the house, although that seemed unlikely. Or maybe she’d compromised one of Caesar’s servants, and the servant left a weapon in the house someplace where she could get to it easily after she passed through the security checkpoint. No, that didn’t make sense. Hamilton would not have had time to recruit one of Caesar’s people after her daughter was kidnapped, nor would she have known that Caesar would be staying at Rosarito Beach. Well, however it happened, she had been able to find a gun and force Caesar to leave the house with her.
“What was Caesar driving when he left the house?” Mora asked Carmen.
“A Jeep. A red one.”
“Send men to the marina to see if by some chance Caesar is there, and get them looking for the Jeep.”
Mora was fairly certain, however, that Kay Hamilton didn’t have Caesar in the Jeep. Caesar said something about being in the trunk of a car.
“Find Claudio, too, and question him. Question him hard.” Mora almost felt sorry for the pimp. “Call Alberto as well. Tell him to try to locate Caesar’s cell phone using the GPS system. I imagine Hamilton has disabled the phone, but I want him constantly monitoring to see if he can locate it.”
“Yes, sir,” Carmen said. Mora could tell she was weeping.
—
Mora hung up and closed his eyes.
What would Hamilton do? What was her next move in this little game of chess they were now playing?
She would probably make the exchange in Mexico. It would be very hard for her to cross into the United States with Caesar as her prisoner. The American border guards would find a man hiding in the trunk of a car. Hamilton must also be worried about her own people arresting her when she tried to cross the border.
Yes, that was logical. She’d make the exchange in Mexico but someplace close to the border, and then she’d scurry across the border as soon as she had her daughter. She would also want to make the exchange in some area where she could see if he had brought men with him, someplace where she could see in all directions for a fairly long distance.
The most logical place, he concluded, would be east of Tijuana, in a barren desert area near the border fence line. But he knew he was missing something. Something huge.
He tried to visualize the exchange: Hamilton arrives at the exchange point first with Caesar. She looks around for places where a team of men or a sniper might hide. She calls him, giving him her location but little time to reconnoiter the area. He drives to the exchange point with Hamilton’s daughter. He stops his car fifty yards from Hamilton, maybe less, maybe more. Hamilton has a weapon, most likely a pistol. She tells him to send the girl to her, and at the same time she tells Caesar to start walking. She keeps her weapon aimed at Caesar; she’ll kill him if Mora tries anything. S
he probably hides behind her vehicle to make her less of a target for a sniper. So Caesar and the girl walk toward each other, they pass each other on the road, the girl reaches Hamilton and . . .
And what? Did Hamilton think she’d just jump into her car with her daughter and run for the nearest border crossing? No. She couldn’t be that stupid. She would know that the moment he had Caesar, he’d send men after her to catch her and stop her from crossing the border. So what would she do to get away?
A helicopter. Yes, that made sense. Hamilton would have someone waiting on the U.S. side with a helicopter, and as soon as she had her daughter, the helicopter would swoop in, pick up Hamilton and the girl, and fly back into the U.S.
Hmmm. Maybe, but he still felt like he was missing something.
Mora woke up Perez. Like Mora, Perez was ex-military, a former officer, and Mora’s second-in-command. He told Perez to pick four good men, men with brains, not thugs. One of the men would be the sniper Mora had taken with him to San Diego the day they killed the marshals. Although he expected the exchange would be made during daylight hours, he told Perez to make sure the sniper had a night vision scope. He also told him to bring rocket-propelled grenades and the .50 caliber rifle he used in San Diego. He didn’t have time to acquire a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile.
Mora knew Caesar Olivera would want Hamilton to suffer before she died, and he would want to make her watch her daughter suffer—but rather than let Hamilton escape by helicopter, he would blow her out of the sky.
45
After speaking to Mora, Kay drove east, through Tijuana, and stopped near the eastern edge of the sprawling city. She checked her watch. Two a.m. Right on time.
Kay had wanted to exchange her daughter for Caesar Olivera in the U.S. and not on Caesar’s turf in Mexico. The problem was that she couldn’t easily bring Caesar across the border because, unlike the Olivera cartel, she didn’t have specially designed vehicles and tunnels for smuggling people into the U.S.
Going from the United States into Mexico was relatively easy. The Mexican border guards checked to see if you had a passport, asked if you had anything to declare, and rarely searched cars. And unless it was the rush hour with hordes of Mexican workers going back into Mexico at the end of the workday, the border crossing was usually fairly quick.
Going from Mexico into the U.S. was a whole different story. It could take anywhere from an hour to four hours to cross the border. Some cars were funneled through enclosures, where they were X-rayed and dogs were used to sniff for contraband. Vehicles were frequently searched, including vehicles driven by people who were obviously American. The searches sometimes seemed arbitrarily random, and probably were. So Kay couldn’t drive across the border with Caesar in the trunk, and she couldn’t drive across with him sitting next to her as a passenger with no passport and his hands cuffed behind his back.
As much as she hated to do it, she was going to have to make the exchange in Mexico, and she knew as soon as Mora had Caesar he would try to kill her. But she was prepared for that.
She put the battery back into Caesar’s cell phone. She was counting on Mora using Caesar’s phone to track her and that’s why she’d driven east of Tijuana—far away from the place where she planned to exchange Caesar for her daughter. She wanted to confuse the shit out of Raphael Mora.
She called U.S. Marshal Kevin Walker.
—
Kay figured a Las Vegas bookie would put the odds of her and Jessica making it to the United States at about a hundred to one. Even if her plan for getting out of Mexico worked, she would need help to enter the U.S. and, more important, she would need someone to protect her daughter. She knew the minute she set foot on U.S. soil she was going to be arrested for helping Tito Olivera escape, and then Jessica would be on her own.
She figured the best person to help her was Kevin Walker. For one thing, Walker was in the protection business. The other thing was, she needed a man who could make up his mind in a hurry and wasn’t afraid to act independently.
She could have called Jim Davis, her boss at the DEA, but Davis was too much of a bureaucrat, too much of a team player, and too close to retirement. He wasn’t going to put his pension on the line to save Kay Hamilton’s bacon, and she didn’t blame him. Whether it would be to cover his ass or because he felt it was the correct thing to do, Davis would call back to D.C. for permission and probably contact a couple of other federal agencies, too. At a minimum, he’d alert Homeland Security, who owned the customs agents at the border. The FBI might be included as well. And somebody, most likely somebody back in D.C., might even decide it would be a good idea to call someone in the Mexican government to let them know what was going on—and the last thing Kay wanted was the Mexican government involved in any part of her plan.
Walker’s phone rang six times and went to voice mail. Shit. Since it was two in the morning, there was a pretty good chance that he was sleeping and didn’t hear the phone ring. She called the number again, and this time, on the fourth ring, Walker answered.
“What?” he said. “Who the hell is this?”
It didn’t sound like he’d been sleeping. He sounded drunk. Great.
“Marshal, it’s Kay Hamilton. I need your help.”
Walker started laughing. He was definitely drunk.
“Listen to me!” Kay said. “Caesar Olivera kidnapped my daughter, so I had to break Tito out of the brig. I was going to exchange Tito for my daughter, but he’s dead. Did you hear me? Tito’s dead. He died in a car accident right outside Pendleton. But I’ve got Caesar and—”
“You what?”
“I said I’ve got Caesar Olivera. I’m going to exchange him for my daughter in three hours, then I’m going to make a run for the U.S. I need you to meet me, to help me get into the U.S., and then take my daughter into protective custody.”
“Jesus,” Walker said, then he added, “Hang on a minute.”
Kay heard the sound a bottle makes when it hits the lip of a glass. “Are you drunk?” she asked.
Walker laughed again. “Yep. I’m about as drunk as a man can get and still be vertical. Let me tell you something else, Hamilton. Thanks to you, I’m out of a job. They were thinking about firing me when my men were massacred, but decided not to. They decided because I’m such a good guy, they’d give me another chance. But after you got Tito out of the brig, they shitcanned me, and I don’t blame ’em. Right now, I’m officially on administrative leave, which means I’ll be on leave until the paperwork goes through to permanently remove my ass from the U.S. Marshals Service. So I’m sorry to hear about your daughter, but you called the wrong guy.”
Kay didn’t say anything for a moment. “Look, I can’t make a dozen calls from this cell phone. If I do, Olivera’s guys are going to locate me, and I don’t have time to call ten other people. So sober up for five fuckin’ minutes and listen to me! Please. In three hours . . .”
Kay told him her plan, concluding with, “Now I need you to call the right person and send some help my way. Will you do that for me, Kevin? Please. Will you do that for my daughter?”
She heard the bottle strike the rim of the glass again as Walker thought about the question.
She wondered what odds the Vegas bookies would give her now.
—
Mora’s cell phone rang. It was Alberto, the technician monitoring Caesar’s cell phone.
“She just made a seven-minute call,” Alberto said. “She was east of Tijuana when she made it, and I have the GPS coordinates if you want them.”
This was just what Mora had predicted: Hamilton was planning to make the exchange out in the barren area along the border fence line.
“Is she still in that location?” Mora asked.
“I don’t know. As soon as she made the call, she disabled the phone.”
“Thank you,” Mora said. “Keep monitoring the phone.”
&n
bsp; He could send men out to find her. He could send fifty men, a hundred men, two hundred men. He would tell them to look for a white woman driving alone at two in the morning. How many could there possibly be? But if they located her, there could be problems, the biggest one being that she might kill Caesar if they attempted to capture her. If they attempted to follow her, she would probably see them, because the traffic would be sparse at this time of night. Then there was the problem that the people who would be looking for her weren’t the brightest people in the world, and who knew what one of them might do.
No. The best thing would be to let the exchange proceed and kill her after he had Caesar.
Then another thought occurred to him, a thought that he realized had been in the back of his mind for some time. What if Caesar was killed? With Tito dead, who would replace Caesar Olivera? He knew half a dozen men who would try to fill the power vacuum—but none of those men was as bright as he was.
—
Jessica didn’t have any idea what time it was or where she was. She knew it had been early morning when she tried to escape and it was dark outside now, so at least a day had passed. But she didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious after she was injected with that knockout drug. All she knew was that she was hungry, really thirsty, and her left arm ached where that woman had injected her.
The room she was in was similar to the room in the other place—just a bed, no other furniture, nothing she could use for a weapon. Someone had even taken the clothes rod out of the closet. The one difference was that instead of being in a basement, she was on the top floor of the place. She knew this because there was a cheap skylight in the ceiling, one that appeared to be made of plastic, not glass. There was no way for her to reach the skylight without a ladder.
She thought about banging on the door to see if someone would bring her some food and water, but decided not to. She didn’t want to annoy these people. She could still see Carlos lying on the floor, the blood seeping from the hole in his head, his fingers twitching as he died. It was the twitching fingers she couldn’t forget. And until Carlos had been killed, all her fears had been in her head—imagining what they might do to her—but Carlos’s death had been real, and now that she’d seen what Perez was willing to do, she was even more afraid. No, she wasn’t going to bang on the door; she figured that if they still cared about keeping her alive, they’d bring her something to eat and drink eventually.
