Oath to Defend

by Scott Matthews

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll check the images for that period and call you back. What will you do now?”

  “We’re heading back to Cozumel. We’ll regroup. I’ll wait for your call. Good luck and thanks.” He ended the call.

  “What did she say?” Casey asked.

  “She’s checking satellite imagery to see if she can find out how Barak eluded us. You have to give her credit for that. Probably more CYA than tactical foresight, but getting satellite imagery was a good move. Why don’t you head back to the lobby and pick up your conference stuff at the front desk. I’ll round up our rides. No use letting them think we were just here for a free lunch.”

  “Speaking of lunch….”

  “Do not go there.”

  Drake parked his cart in the lot and led the three taxis back to the lobby, where Casey was tipping the valet and waiting with the others.

  “Let’s vamoose,” he said. “I think they just found the bodyguard, if hombre muerto means what I think it means. They’re calling the policia as we speak.”

  “Anyone suspicious?” Drake asked quietly.

  “The conversation I overheard behind the front desk included the word ‘cartel,’ so they’re probably thinking it’s drug related. I didn’t stick around to ask.”

  Drake signaled the other men to load up, and soon they were back on Highway 307, heading south to the ferry terminal. As he stared out the window of his taxi, he thought about what Casey had said about Afghanistan. More than once, after days of surveillance from a nearby hillside, they had approached a target they knew was hiding in a village of mud brick dwellings only to find the man wasn’t there. How he’d been smuggled out, or perhaps slipped out through a tunnel they didn’t know about, they had never learned. Most likely, as his friend had reminded him, someone had reported their presence in time for their target to escape.

  This time, though, no one at the resort knew who they were. Even if Barak had been tipped off, how had he left without them seeing him? Assuming Barak had shot the bodyguard, he might have already been gone before they surrounded his suite. No one had seen him, however, so maybe the bodyguard had been alone and his murder wasn’t even connected to Barak.

  The bodyguard had to be the key. Drake remembered that when he first saw him at the ferry terminal, he had been looking at brochures for excursions to the ruins at Tulum. If he was staying at the Mayakoba, he asked himself, why wouldn’t he have booked his tour from there instead of driving to the ferry terminal?

  Because he was waiting for someone on the ferry!

  “Mike, when we saw the bodyguard at the ferry terminal, do you think he spotted us?”

  “He never looked at me that I remember. He was reading a brochure and then, as the rest of us got on in our taxis, he got in his Range Rover and followed one of the buses. I don’t think he was paying any attention to us.”

  “He wasn’t interested in us or seeing the ruins. Remember how he walked around, following that tour group? He wasn’t there for the tour. He was following someone. He was at the terminal waiting for the ferry from Cozumel.”

  “I didn’t see him talking with anyone.”

  “Maybe he was doing the same thing we were, just following someone.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how Barak knew we were coming.”

  “The guy he was following,” they said at the same time.

  “He could have been the one who spotted us and tipped off Barak,” Drake said. “If he’s the one, he’s the only link we have to Barak. If we can access the security cameras I saw at the terminal, we might find out who the bodyguard was waiting for.”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Casey. “You can buy your tickets for the ferry online, so I should be able to hack into the system when we get back to the hotel. But that still won’t tell us where Barak is now.”

  “Maybe not, but it might give us someone who can lead us to him. That’s all we have right now.”

  9

  Barak was alone in the well appointed cabin of a Gulfstream G450 flying to Tijuana. The jet was owned by Mexico’s most powerful cartel, as was the black cigarette boat that had picked him up in the blue waters off the beach at the resort.

  For the first time, he felt his life was out of control. When he was running his international security firm in Las Vegas, he had developed a private army of assassins that he kept hidden among the company’s other employees. No one had ever ordered him around the way Ryan and the Alliance were doing now. The Brotherhood, which sponsored him, had left him alone to carry out their plan to assassinate American and other world leaders. They had trusted him.

  But he wasn’t sure they still trusted him.

  Now he was being told what to do and when to do it. He knew he was being tested, but he could not let that knowledge interfere with his plan to use the demolition nuke in America. That would put an end to the humiliation of his current order to serve as a subcontracted assassin for Hezbollah in Tijuana.

  He knew that Hezbollah had established a base in Tijuana and was doing some of the heavy lifting for the Tijuana cartel. Many of the two thousand murders in the last two years were the work of Hezbollah assassins, which was precisely why he was uneasy with the order to step in for them now. He was going to have to be very careful in the next few days.

  The Gulfstream began its descent through the polluted clouds to the Tijuana International Airport, located just three hundred meters south of the U.S.-Mexico border. It taxied to the general aviation terminal and stopped in front of an idling black Mercedes S600.

  Barak waited for the exit door to be opened for him, then walked alone to the Mercedes. The rear door was held open by a young Mexican with a pearl handled .45 stuck in the front of his jeans. Barak got in and found that he was alone in what he realized was an armored vehicle. He should have expected that a cartel flying its own Gulfstream around Mexico wouldn’t be driving anything less than the safest car in the world, next to the armored Cadillac the American President used. The cartel moved two thirds of the drugs smuggled into the U.S. and had operations in fifty-two countries around the world. It could well afford the best.

  After the Mercedes was waved through a gate guarded by two soldiers, the driver said over his shoulder, “Señor, we have an hour’s drive to the villa. There is Scotch in the bar and a basket of tapas.”

  Leaning forward, Barak opened the panel of the bar and found a crystal tumbler, a bottle of Glenmorangie Scotch (his favorite), and a plate of tapas on ice. As they drove through Tijuana’s squalid streets, he savored an olive that reminded him of his boyhood in Egypt and poured two fingers of scotch in the tumbler. He was used to luxury, but it was always nice to be treated with respect.

  Most of the drive south and east passed in silence. When they reached the Guadalupe Valley and the Mexican wine country, Barak saw that the paved road they were traveling was lined with vineyards, olive orchards, and small farms.

  “Most people don’t know we make fine wine,” the driver said proudly. “They think only of tequila and cerveza. You will taste our fine wines when you drink tonight at the villa.”

  “Are we close?” Barak asked.

  “See the lights on that hilltop?” The driver pointed to his left. “That is where you are going.”

  Barak looked out at the lights of an arched veranda that ran along the front of a two-story villa. Small floodlights lined the driveway and illuminated a vineyard on one side and an olive orchard on the other. Two black Cadillac Escalades were parked in front of the villa. As they drew nearer, he saw that the villa was guarded by men wearing paramilitary dress and carrying AK-9s, the new Kalashnikov assault weapon. He counted ten men on the drive up and could see more moving in the shadows around the villa. Whoever he was meeting wasn’t taking any chances with his personal safety.

  The driver stopped in front of a gravel terraced walkway lined with blooming lavender. With a flourish, a young man approached and opened the rear door of the Mercedes.

  “Come,
señor, I will show you the way.”

  Barak stretched for a moment, enjoying the fragrance of the warm evening, before he followed the young man up the steps. The villa, he saw, was magnificent with adobe and flagstone walls and a red tile roof. The veranda was lined with potted cacti. Three men were seated at a table in the middle of the veranda.

  “Thank you, Manolito,” the shortest of the three men said. “You may go. He turned to Barak.

  “Come, join us,” he said. He nodded to one of his comrades. “This is Jesus, the head of our armed wing. This is Saleem, our friend from Hezbollah. I am Felipe Calderon. Please have a seat.”

  Barak sat, facing the three men. Jesus, he knew, was the enforcer for the cartel and a former member of Mexico’s elite commandos that had been trained to fight the cartels. According to information he’d received from Ryan and the Alliance, Saleem was the head of Hezbollah in Tijuana. Felipe Calderon was the top lieutenant for the cartel and reported directly to its leader, a man known as El Verdugo, the Executioner.

  “I understand, Señor Calderon,” Barak said, “that you have requested my services. May I ask why?” He paused. “Surely Jesus is capable of carrying out your desires.”

  Calderon gave a thin smile. “Thank you for recognizing that,” he said, “but this time Jesus and his men must not be involved. Do you know about the little war that has been going on here in Tijuana with our rival for the last several years?”

  “I do.”

  “Then you know they blame us for the arrests of their leader, the Architect, and his top lieutenant. Which we deny, of course. What you do not know, because we have just learned this, is they have borrowed commandos from our main competition to the east. They plan to kill El Verdugo and as many of the rest of us as they can. We want you to put a stop to this.”

  Barak nodded. “And how do I do that?”

  “We know that Ramon Guerrero, the brother of the Architect, and Antonio Mendoza, the borrowed commando from the east, will be having lunch on the day after tomorrow at the Cien Años restaurant in Tijuana. It’s Ramon’s birthday. He wants a proper celebration. You will make it his last celebration, his last birthday.”

  “How am I to do this for you?” Barak asked, wanting to know the cartel’s expectations.

  “You are the master assassino, Señor. That is for you to figure out. Use the assassins you have trained. If there are casualties, they cannot be traced back to us. We do not want to start a war with our competitors to the east.”

  Barak gave this some thought. “In return, I understand you will help me get my merchandise across the border.”

  “If you are successful, we will help you. That is why Saleem is here. Our business is feeding the American appetite for our drugs, not killing the Americans. That’s what you and Saleem want to do. It would be very bad for us if America learned that we helped you with your merchandise.”

  “Then we have a deal.”

  Calderon nodded. “Now let us drink a little tequila. Then you will eat with us, the finest food, and drink some Mexican wine, also the finest. Then you will get to work.”

  10

  Drake was stepping out of the shower when his phone started vibrating on the tile counter. Caller unknown, he saw, but he recognized the prefix.

  “Hi Liz. Got anything?”

  “What happened to hello, how are you, and all that?”

  “You mean foreplay? I don’t have time. I just stepped out of the shower.”

  “Gee, I hope that innuendo was accidental.”

  He smiled at the phone. “Hello Liz, how are you, thanks for everything, got anything for me?”

  “Better. Your man was picked up in a boat about a hundred yards off shore. Just before you guys went in. He knew you were coming.”

  “He was swimming out there? Watching us the whole time?”

  “That’s what the satellite images show. They dropped him off in Cancun and then he was driven to the airport. We can’t tell which plane he left on, or if he left at all. Our guess is that he flew out not long after he was picked up.”

  “We may have a lead you can help us with.” Drake said. “We think his bodyguard was following someone he was waiting for at the ferry terminal. While we were following the bodyguard, this someone must have spotted us and called Barak. Mike is searching the surveillance videos from the ferry terminal to see if we can identify him. If we can, you might be able to listen in if he calls Barak.”

  “You mean ask the NSA for a little Echelon help?” she asked.

  “Barak’s a threat to our security. He’s also involved with the cartels. They should jump at the chance to help.”

  Drake knew that the global network of computers operated by the five signatory countries of the surveillance agreement ─Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States—was able to intercept communications anywhere in the world. The system, which allowed governments to monitor citizens and their communications, was controversial. But it was very, very effective.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Liz replied. “Go dry yourself and call me if you ID the guy.”

  Drake considered her reaction to his use of the word “foreplay” and smiled. Was she flirting with him? He dressed and left to join Casey in his room. It felt strange to think about someone being interested in him, or even noticing it, just a year after he’d lost his wife to cancer.

  “Hey, Mike, you want another Dos Equis?”

  “Sure. And grab one for yourself. I need another pair of eyes on this security video.”

  “You got in.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “I’ve never questioned your skill. I just didn’t think you could do it this quickly.”

  Drake fetched their beers and sat down next to his friend. Casey was searching the video one frame at a time. The big bodyguard was standing with his back to the wall reading one of the excursion brochures. In front of him, people were getting off the ferry.

  They could see most of the main floor of the terminal on the glare-free screen of Casey’s laptop. Casey pointed. “He stands there like that until this group comes off the ferry. This guy, the blond with the sunglasses, blue polo shirt and the linen pants is the only single in the group, but the bodyguard doesn’t seem to notice him until,” he advanced the frames, “right now. See? He looks down at his cell phone, then looks right at the guy’s face. He’s making sure this is his guy. Watch. From then on, he keeps the guy in sight until he walks out with this tour group and leaves for his Range Rover.”

  “Go back and run it again.”

  Drake watched the sequence two more times and slapped his partner on the back.

  “Mike, that’s our guy. He’s right here at the InterContinental. I noticed him on the bus we took from the lobby to the ferry terminal this morning.”

  “There are two hundred and twenty rooms here,” Casey said. “We don’t know if he’s still here. How do we find him?”

  Drake smiled. “You think Gonzalez could find another cooperative maid?”

  Casey touched the neck of his bottle to Drake’s. “We don’t want to wear the lad out, but why not give him the chance?”

  After Casey left to meet with Gonzalez, Drake called Liz back.

  “Hello Liz, how are you and thanks for everything.”

  “Wise guy. Got anything for me?”

  “Mike came up with the guy on the security video from the ferry terminal. We think he’s staying right here, and we’re looking for him right now. If he’s here, what do you need to get a fix on him?”

  “If you find him, get someone close to him with one of your cell phones. We’ll track both phones from that point on.”

  “Uh, that might be a problem. If he’s the one that spotted us following the bodyguard, he knows what we look like.”

  “Do you have anyone there he won’t know?”

  “We have a pilot that wasn’t with us.”

  “Use him. Just let me know which cell phone he’ll be carrying
at least fifteen minutes ahead of time.”

  “Thanks, Liz. Wish us luck?”

  Drake hung up and called their pilot, who had stayed with the plane, and asked him to join them for dinner poolside in an hour. Then he left to see how Gonzalez was doing. He found Casey talking with their Latin Romeo in the hallway.

  Casey turned to him and grinned. “Gonzalez has scored again, figuratively speaking. Our man has an ocean suite on the fifth floor. He registered in the name Sven Johannsen, from Denmark. He’s up there now, but he’s checking out tomorrow.”

  “That was fast. Good work, Ricardo. I invited our pilot to join us for dinner. We’ll use him to get close to Mr. Johannsen. Do we risk being seen together?”

  “And pass up a great dinner while we’re here?” Casey sounded almost indignant. “I say we draw straws. The loser gets to stake out the guy’s room and eat later.”

  “And if you draw the short straw?” Drake asked.

  “Not going to happen. I hold the straws, and they’re my men. Short straw, big bonus, no problem.”

  “All right, make it happen. But I hope your growling stomach doesn’t screw this up.”

  “Trust me, my friend. Napoleon said an army marches on its stomach. Those are words to live by.”

  Unless you’re marching to Waterloo, Drake thought.

  Casey’s young Ranger from New York, Billy Montgomery, drew the short straw and left to keep an eye on the fifth-floor ocean suite. Drake and crew went to the open-air restaurant and took a table for eight. Their view included the white sand all the way to the dark waters of the Cozumel Strait.

  After ordering a round of beers for everyone, Drake turned to Casey. “Liz is ready to track our man’s cell phone. She needs a call from one of our phones while we’re standing next to him. They’ll track him and monitor his calls, one of which we hope will be to or from Barak.”

  “What do you plan on doing in the meantime?”

  “Maybe I’ll stay here for another day. Barak’s no doubt left Cancun by now, but if we get something right away, we can follow him. Otherwise, I guess we head home and wait. We were so close!”