Juan mustered his courage and tried to gain back some of his lost nerve.
“You will be free tomorrow when your rich American family pays,” Juan said in Spanish to his prisoner. “If not, you will die. Now listen, old man, you did well with that Scorpion. Forget about those bitches. They’ll wish they were dead when they wake up. Very sad.”
Juan felt a tinge of guilt and thought maybe he was not as hard as he pretended. “I am not evil, just poor. The Scorpions, those men, they do this for some other reason.” He shook his head and looked away from the old man’s eyes.
Armando Gonzalez stared at Juan, no longer faking his ailments. “You are all the same,” he said. “My daughter, she is not wealthy but will pay. You must not play games with her. You need to make your peace with God before you meet him. It will not be a good meeting.”
He shook his head and hoped that Sophia would not come to this satanic place. “You should kill me if you have the guts. Save everyone some trouble. Death in this world is a new life for me. I know where I am going, Juan. Do you?”
Juan shifted his weight from foot to foot and chewed on his lip. He wished his gang members were here; they would know what to say. This old man had no fear and a surreal calmness and peace, and that terrified Juan.
Armando was sad for the girls. He looked past the tormented Juan and at the motionless, covered bodies. He prayed for their safety.
CHAPTER 5
Baggage Pickup
Outside the People’s Market, two men sat in a small car with tinted windows. Miguel and Francisco had been members of Mexico’s elite antinarcotics unit before defecting and joining what could best be described as an underground mercenary group known as Dark Cloud. They had been gathering information on Gerard Blaise—Gerard—and other gatekeepers in the Scorpion gang. Gatekeepers were basically area managers and had direct contact with Mario, the Eastern Cartel leader.
“Well, what do you think?” asked Miguel.
“I think something has gone wrong.” Francisco, the elder of the two, spoke in a quiet, unassuming manner. “He always flies in, picks up the load of girls, takes them to the airport, and leaves. Stops at the same places every time. Today, though, the van breaks down. As a creature of habit, he has it towed away, no doubt to be fixed. They have no need for situational security, for they are in a hurry. They could easily just get a new damn vehicle, but, no, not Gerard. This obsessiveness with habit, this unwillingness to remain vigilant and observe operational security, shows me that he is lazy.”
“OK, so what’s the plan? Should we pass information to the police and have the girls rescued?” Miguel asked, not hiding his boredom or impatience.
“No. No tactical benefit. Nathan was clear: observe Gerard, see if he meets with any other big players. No direct action.”
“Unfortunately, Francisco, we have done this a few times, and we never figure out where he takes the girls. They vanish—that is our key.”
“Well, that’s Nathan’s job. He claims that this time he can track the plane. This time we mark it, and they track it. I hear that he has someone on the inside now, someone close to Mario.”
No one spoke for a second, and then Francisco looked at his cell phone. He had a text.
“We have to go to the airport. Team Two is going to relieve us.”
“Oh, great. Going to watch Mr. Zipcatonal again? What’s the point?” Miguel complained. “We have all this new technology, but if you ask me, it just makes things more complex. Painting the plane with a laser, tracking, watching, using computers. I say we snatch Gerard and melt his balls with a blowtorch till he talks. That’s the real world! The Mexican way! Letting innocent girls get sold into slavery to rich Saudis—despicable! Screw operational security!”
“Ah, my friend, Miguel. You are so funny!”
“And another thing, Francisco. Why watch Mr. Z? Nathan is spreading us too thin!”
“We just do our job. Get it? Mr. Z has a background in intelligence. If he is clean, we will recruit him.”
They watched Gerard and his henchmen walk out to the curb and get into a cab driven by a good-looking woman.
“Traffic,” said Miguel, groaning, as he eased the car into a fast-moving stream of vehicles.
Mexico City, 1400 Hours
Roger walked through the rain trying to stay under trees as best he could. Traffic was heavy on the busier streets. The cars thudded through potholes, splashing him with water. It was late afternoon and a little cool. He cursed and kept walking. The rain had stopped by the time he turned down the side street. Roger paused by a predetermined signpost. He looped the duffel bag over his shoulder and adjusted his baseball cap and his wet jeans.
“I hate being wet,” he grumbled out loud to the surveillance team, wherever they were. “You realize they are going to kill me and just take the money. Manuel is probably already dead.” His words made him feel depressed.
He was impressed by Dark Cloud’s technology. He was wearing a tiny microphone and camera concealed in his baseball cap. He had a backup microphone on his shirt collar. His watch and cloned cell phone were providing GPS data separately. Dark Cloud even knew his heart rate. The fact that they could see him, hear him, and monitor his phone calls did little to reassure him.
Following the kidnappers’ directions, Roger was unarmed and had zigzagged on foot some twenty-five blocks through the garden and business districts of Mexico City. Apparently, the bad guys did not want him going into a bad section of town and getting robbed.
The cell phone in his pocket rang. “Doesn’t matter if the good guys know where I am—or where the money is, for that matter,” he muttered. “They can’t stop a bullet.” He took out the phone provided by the kidnappers. “Aye,” said Roger, slowly looking all around. Both the good guys and the bad guys were listening. Both most likely knew that the others were listening. Let the cat-and-mouse game begin, he thought nervously.
“OK, gringo, listen.”
“First of all, you little bean eater, I’m not a gringo; I’m Scottish.”
“I no care. You walk up to statue. There be motorcycle cop ten minutes. You ask for light. You give bag. You wait.”
“Wait for what, you wanker?”
“No questions. We give proof of life. You give money. Second drop.” The Mexican’s English was choppy. He had probably lived in the States at one time.
The phone went dead, and Roger took a deep breath. “I hope you bastards know what you’re doing,” he said under his breath as he began walking up the street.
He felt sweaty and like he needed a shower. His head was not throbbing as badly. He purposely had not taken any Percocet so he could keep his wits about him. He couldn’t ever recall a time when he was ready to die, and this was no different.
The plan had three phases. First, Roger would drop off the first bag of money, which could be tracked via a microsized tracer. Second, Roger would go to a second place, where he would get proof of life. The final phase was the final money drop and exchange.
Roger figured he would be shot by this point and wasn’t sure what he was going to do.
He knew that typically the gangs would kidnap or kill whoever delivered the money on the first drop. Often gangs would either demand more money or just kill the courier and the original victim or levantado. Generally, a kidnap victim was never seen again. Roger recalled the narco lingo and bloody stories that he had heard from Mr. Rosa’s detective brother over the years. It did little to soothe Roger but did increase the fight factor over the flight urge.
If you were a body stuffed into a trunk, you were an encajuelados. If you were bound and blindfolded with tape, you were known as encintados. Encobijado meant that you were one rolled up in a blanket, which seemed common with the sicarios or hit men. Roger began to feel more edgy and alert as he recalled Rosa’s brother talking about El Pozolero, “the Soup Maker,” a hit man in the border region who dissolved his victims’ bodies in acid. Narcocorridos, narco ballads, had been written about him. Roger
shook his head. Americans complained about how gangster rap influenced kids in the States, turning suburban kids into gangster wannabes. But here, the narcos actually paid to have albums made about them and their grisly exploits.
Roger looked around him at the business of the city. Despite the violence and craziness, Roger still loved the country. The food was awesome and varied and the people were colorful and, for the most part, friendly. Life in Mexico was so different from that in Scotland or Europe. And he loved the difference. Still, Roger wished that he was ignorant of the whole subculture that ran beneath the surface. He just wanted to focus on learning Spanish, cooking, and maybe even meeting a nice girl.
“Kidnapping! Who knew it was such big business,” Roger grumbled out loud. “Working is so much easier than living a life of crime!”
Negotiating ransoms was a booming industry in Mexico. Some of the agencies actually hired thugs to kidnap potential clients. The agency would then act as a mediator and solicit money from the families for negotiating the victim’s recovery. Thus the agency got money on both ends. Money was king in Mexico just like everywhere else.
Roger made his way uphill to a large statue. He had driven by the impressive white statue of an Aztec before but had never really looked at it.
“They won’t have to shoot me,” he said. “I’ll just have a freaking heart attack.”
He was walking along Aventia Reforma, and traffic was heavy. He felt isolated near the traffic circle and statue. Life was moving all around him, oblivious to his predicament.
“Doing OK?” a female voice crackled in his ear.
“No.” Roger leaned against the low wall that framed the long-dead Aztec king. “I am thinking too much and beginning to have second thoughts about this.”
“Cuauhtémoc That is his name, Roger, known as Fallen Eagle. He was a great Aztec king,” said the voice.
“Easy for you to say,” Roger grumbled, recognized the voice, and tried to catch his breath. The stress of the day, the beating, and fear were all creeping into his joints and torso.
Roger decided if he survived this, he was going to start working out.
He thought back briefly to the attractive woman named Mia, a Dark Cloud technical operative he had briefly met at the Rosas’ house. Roger pegged Dark Cloud to be a highly paranoid and secretive organization of ex-spooks and law-enforcement types cashing in on Mexico’s growing private-mercenary industry. Roger had only seen a couple of people at a time and only the face of Mia. Members usually wore masks, did not use their names, and seemed to be divided into cells or groups. Roger had been briefed that Dark Cloud was financed by wealthy businessmen and government officials. He would have never trusted nor gone along with this whole plan had he not known that Mr. Rosa had given his blessing.
“Mercenaries, connected mercenaries,” he grumbled. “Less I know about you, all the better.”
“Hey, you!”
Roger spun around and looked at a motorcycle cop who pulled over to the curb and stopped. He was tall for a Mexican and looked more European. He grinned, showing crooked, yellow teeth. Traffic kept moving.
Roger reluctantly spoke the code word he had been instructed to use. “You got a light?”
“Give me bag, you!” snarled the cop, who looked stoned and had his hand on a pistol.
A million thoughts went through Roger’s head as he handed over the bag. He was soaked in sweat from the uphill hike and forgot for a second how annoyed he was.
The cop smiled, slung the duffel over his shoulder, and was gone. Roger watched for a full five minutes in silence as the bike merged into traffic. He watched little VW cabs, expensive cars, pedestrians, street vendors, and tourists amble about the city. Not one of them cared or even noticed him.
Roger suddenly felt like a fool. “This is all freaking pointless,” he said. “Now what?”
“Wait,” Mia spoke into his ear.
“Aye, time, that’s all I have,” he said, noting a homeless person who was watching him with glazed, sleepy eyes.
Roger turned away. “Have you people done this before?” he asked.
“Sí,” she said.
“If I did not know you through the Rosas, I would say your group is working with the kidnappers. Happens all the time.”
The feminine voice grew hostile. “Without connections we would never trust you either, Roger. No one is asking you to join. Just participate in this operation.”
“Bueno,” Roger said and coughed. “Ten thousand security companies in Mexico—how did you guys get picked? The phone book?”
Roger heard laughter this time, but something in the tone said, You have no idea who you are screwing with. All cuteness drained away as she said in a serious voice, “We are not a security company.”
“Can we go out sometime?” Roger blurted. “Will you let me cook dinner for you?”
The phone went silent. The homeless man began peeing on a bench. “Hey, you fucking wanker! Don’t you know people sit on that! I may want to since I’ve been standing for hours!” Roger took a step forward, and the homeless man grunted and turned to run, not even bothering to zip his pants.
CHAPTER 6
Made in Mexico
Juárez, Mexico, February 14, 2200 Hours
Located in the high desert at 3,730 feet, just south of El Paso, Texas, Juárez was founded in the mid-seventeenth century by Franciscan friars. If their vision had been that the area would one day become a center for spreading the gospel and civilizing pagan natives, they would be disappointed. Modern Juárez has an estimated population of about 1.5 million people, give or take the time of year and who is counting. Rated as one of the most violent cities in the world outside of a war zone, its reputation stands firm. There are four ports of entry into the city or out of it, depending on where you stand: the Bridge of Americas, Ysleta International Bridge, Paso del Norte, and Stanton Bridge.
Evan stopped thinking about the mess of Juárez, history, and the dismal state of man when the pilot signaled the descent into Juárez. He turned off his iPod and looked out the window at the city lights. All cities look similar from the air. It was when you could smell and hear them and see the looks on people’s faces that you really knew where you were. He wished he could drown himself in entertainment and mind-numbing consumerism—be a “sheeple” instead of someone who compulsively thought about the world and where it seemed headed.
A pretty Mexican flight attendant asked him to put his tray table up, and he nodded. From here on he would only speak Spanish and make an effort to stay in character. Evan thought briefly about his time in Colombia and half a dozen other South American countries. He tried to total the number of years he had lived outside the United States and figured it was way over ten. After decades of living in and blending into foreign cultures, first growing up and then in his work, something had shifted, either in his mind or in the collective conscience of the United States, that made him feel as if he were a stranger.
Evan was far less concerned about geography than he was about being somewhere where he could belong, live off the radar screen, and not have to look over his shoulder. “Then why the hell am I in Mexico? Not the safest of choices,” he muttered. He watched the city lights below and thought about Costa Rica or a remote village in the Andes, somewhere he could just be away from it all. He longed to reduce life to its essentials, the basics.
“I am turning into one of those nut jobs my dad always talked about—a hermit—in my old age. Freaking afraid and untrusting of everything,” Evan whispered to his reflection in the airplane window.
The captain made an announcement in Spanish and then repeated it in English: “This is your captain. It is fifty degrees in Juárez and ten o’clock local time. We will be landing shortly. When we land, you will have to fill out a customs form if you have anything to declare. Please have your passport ready.”
Evan smiled. Not many people smuggle stuff into Mexico; it’s the flight out that’s the problem. He thought about the border and how t
hat line signified a personal border that he had crossed. How far was he going to go on this mission, or how far was he willing to go? He disliked operating without any backup, but here he was. The wheels made the familiar touchdown noise and bump. He smiled wryly and texted a single word to his brother Jack: In.
He retrieved his bag and moved away from the crowds at the baggage carousel. He was sweating in his suit and tie and would be glad to change. Scanning the exit, he spotted a man looking directly at him.
The man was sixtyish, short and stocky, with a pockmarked face and thinning hair. He wore jeans; cowboy boots; a colorful, long-sleeved shirt; and a cowboy hat too big for his head. Evan had met Mr. Z twice years earlier. He had been a valuable asset, providing safe houses and getting items for agents for years.
“Señor E?” asked the Mexican tentatively. “Cómo fue tu vuelo, mi amigo?”
“Largo,” replied Evan shortly.
“Bienvenida a Juárez. No ha cambiado.”
“Where is the car?”
“Outside. Your bags?”
“I got them. I’m booked at the Quality Inn near the American consulate. On Paseo de la Victoria,” replied Evan. “You lost weight, Z?”
“Sí, nerves. The cartels are here. They are not small players any longer.”
Evan remembered him as a man of few words, which was exactly why Mr. Z was still alive. As they left the terminal, a man on a cell phone quickly snapped a photo. Airports, bus stations, hospitals, and busy street corners in most border towns were hangouts for halcones—hawks—for cartels. These lookouts notified bosses of police, military, or rival gang activity. But this man was not a lookout for the underworld.
Francisco took a picture of Mr. Z and Evan shaking hands and e-mailed it to his boss. It only took moments for Francisco to figure out where the plane had departed from: nonstop from Baltimore. He e-mailed Nathan again and then called Miguel, who was circling the parking lot. “Team One said they believed Mr. Z was picking up his aunt from Peru,” Francisco said.
Silver Lead and Dead (Evan Hernandez series Book 1) Page 5
